by Brian Aldiss
‘Somewhere in the tangles,’ Fermour said, in his usual unhurried way. ‘I never knew where exactly.’
‘Why weren’t you born in a tribe?’
‘My parents were fugitives from their tribe. It was one of the little Midway tribes – smaller than Quarters.’
‘When did you join the Greene tribe?’
‘After my parents died,’ Fermour said. ‘They had the trailing rot. By then I was full grown.’
Scoyt’s mouth, naturally heavy, had now elongated itself into a slit. A rubber cosh had appeared, and was lightly balanced between Scoyt’s hands. He began to pace up and down in front of Fermour, watching him closely.
‘Have you any proof of all this stuff you tell me?’ he asked.
Fermour was pale, tensed, incessantly twisting the heavy ring on his finger.
‘What sort of proof?’ he asked, dry-mouthed.
‘Any sort. Anything about your origins we can check on. We aren’t just a rag-taggle village in Deadways, Fermour. When you drift in from the tangles, we have to know who or what you are . . . Well?’
‘Marapper the priest will vouch for me.’
‘Marapper’s dead. Besides, I’m interested in someone who knew you as a child: anyone.’ He swung round so that they were face to face. ‘In short, Fermour, we want something you seem unable to give – proof that you’re human!’
‘I’m more human than you, you little –’ As he spoke, Fermour jumped, his fist swinging.
Nimbly, Scoyt skipped back and brought the cosh hard across Fermour’s wrist. Numbness shooting up his arm, Fermour subsided deflatedly, face sour with malice.
‘Your reflexes are too slow,’ Scoyt said severely. ‘You should easily have taken me by surprise then.’
‘I was always called slow in Quarters,’ Fermour muttered, clutching his sleeve.
‘How long have you been with the Greene tribe?’ Scoyt demanded, coming closer to Fermour again and waggling the cosh as if keen to try out another blow.
‘Oh, I lose track of time. Twice a hundred dozen sleepwakes.’
‘We do not use your primitive method of calculating time in Forwards, Fermour. We call four sleep-wakes one day. That would make your stay with the tribe . . . six hundred days. A long time in a man’s life.’
He stood looking at Fermour as if waiting for something. The door was pushed roughly open and a guard appeared on the threshold, panting.
‘There’s an attack at the barriers, Master Scoyt,’ he cried. ‘Please come at once – you’re needed.’
On his way to the door, Scoyt paused and turned back towards Fermour, grim-faced.
‘Stay there!’ he ordered. ‘I’ll be back as soon as possible.’
In the next room, Complain turned slowly to Vyann. Her dazer had gone back in its holster at her waist.
‘So that tale about the attack at the barriers is just a trick to get Master Scoyt out of the room, is it?’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ she said steadily. ‘See what Fermour does now.’
For a long moment, Complain stood looking into her eyes, caught by them. He was close to her, alone in what she had called the observation room, next to the room in which Fermour now was and Complain had been earlier. Then, pulling himself away in case his heart might be read in his face, Complain turned and fixed his gaze through the peephole again.
He was in time to see Fermour grab a small stool from the side of the room, drag it into the middle, stand on it, and reach up towards the grille that here, as in most apartments, was a feature of the ceiling. His fingers curled helplessly a few inches below the grille. After a few fruitless attempts to jump and stand on tip-toe, Fermour looked round the room in desperation and noticed the other door beyond which lay his pack. Kicking the stool away, he hurried through it, so vanishing from Complain’s sight.
‘He has gone, just as I went,’ Complain said, turning to brave the grey eyes again.
‘My men will pick him up before he gets to the ponics,’ Vyann said carelessly. ‘I have little doubt your friend Fermour is an Outsider, but we shall be certain in a few minutes.’
‘Bob Fermour! He couldn’t be!’
‘We’ll argue about that later,’ she said. ‘In the meantime, Roy Complain, you are a free man – as far as any of us are free. Since you have knowledge and experience, I hope you will help us attack some of our troubles.’
She was so much more beautiful and frightening than Gwenny had ever been. His voice betraying his nervous excitement, Complain said, ‘I will help you in any way I can.’
‘Master Scoyt will be grateful,’ she said, moving away with a sudden sharpness in her voice. It brought him back to realities, and he asked with an equal sharpness what the Outsiders did that made them so feared; for though they had been dreaded by the Greene tribe, it was only because they were strange, and not like men.
‘Isn’t that enough?’ she said. And then she told him of the powers of Outsiders. A few had been caught by Master Scoyt’s various testing methods – and all but one had escaped. They had been thrown into cells bound hand and foot, and sometimes unconscious as well – there to vanish completely; if guards had been in the cells with them, they had been found unconscious without a mark on their bodies.
‘And the Outsider who did not escape?’ Complain asked.
‘He died under torture on the presses. We got nothing from him, except that he came from the ponics.’
She led him from the room. He humped his pack on to his back, walking tiredly by her side, occasionally glancing at her profile, sharp and bright as torchlight. No longer did she appear as friendly as she had a moment ago; her moods seemed capricious, and he hardened himself against her, trying to recall the old Quarters’ attitude to women – but Quarters seemed a thousand sleep-wakes out of date.
On Deck 21, Vyann paused.
‘There is an apartment for you here,’ she said. ‘My apartment is three doors further along, and Roger Scoyt’s is opposite mine. He or I will collect you for a meal shortly.’
Opening the door, Complain looked in.
‘I’ve never seen a room like this before,’ he said impressed.
‘You’ve had all the disadvantages, haven’t you?’ she said ironically, and left him. Complain watched that retreating figure, took off his grimy shoes and went into the room.
It held little luxury, beyond a basin with a tap which actually yielded a slight flow of water and a bed made of coarse fabric rather than leaves. What chiefly impressed him was a picture on the wall, a bright swirl of colour, non-representational, but with a meaning of its own. There was also a mirror, in which Complain found another picture; this one was of a rough creature smirched with dirt, its hair festooned with dried miltex, its clothes torn.
He set to work to change all that, grimly wondering what Vyann must have thought of such a barbarous figure. He scrubbed himself, put on clean clothes from his pack, and collapsed exhausted on the bed – exhausted, but unable to sleep; for at once his brain started racing.
Gwenny had gone, Roffery had gone, Wantage, Marapper, now Fermour, had gone; Complain was on his own. The prospect of a new start offered itself – and the prospect was thrilling. Only the thought of Marapper’s face, gleaming with unction and bonhomie, brought regret.
His mind was still churning when Master Scoyt looked round the door.
‘Come and eat,’ he said simply.
Complain went with him, watching carefully to gauge the other’s attitude towards him, but the investigator seemed too preoccupied to register any attitude at all. Then, looking up and catching Complain’s eye on him, he said, ‘Well, your friend Fermour is proved an Outsider. When he was making for the ponics, he saw the body of your priest and kept straight on. Our sentries had an ambush for him and caught him easily.’
Shaking his head impatiently at Complain’s puzzled look, Scoyt explained, ‘He is not an ordinary human, bred in an ordinary part of the ship, otherwise he would have stopped automatically and made the genufle
ctions of fear before the body of a friend; that ceremony is drummed into every human child from birth. It was your doing that which finally convinced us you were human.’
He sank back into silence until they reached the dining-hall, scarcely greeting the several men and women who spoke to him on the way. In the hall, a few officers were seated, eating. At a table on her own sat Vyann. Seeing her, Scoyt instantly brightened, went over to her and put a hand on her shoulder.
‘Laur, my dear,’ he said. ‘How refreshing to find you waiting for us. I must get some ale – we have to celebrate the capture of another Outsider – and this one won’t get away.’
Smiling at him, she said, ‘I hope you’re also going to eat, Roger.’
‘You know my foolish stomach,’ he said, beckoning an orderly and beginning to tell her at once the details of Fermour’s capture. Not very happily, Complain took a seat by them; he could not help feeling jealous of Scoyt’s easy way with Vyann, although the investigator was twice her age. Ale was set before them, and food, a strange white meat that tasted excellent; it was wonderful too, to eat without being surrounded with midges, which in Deadways formed an unwanted sauce to many a mouthful; but Complain picked at his plate with little more enthusiasm than Scoyt showed.
‘You look dejected,’ Vyann remarked, interrupting Scoyt, ‘when you should be feeling cheerful. It is better here, isn’t it, than locked up in a cell with Fermour?’
‘Fermour was a friend,’ Complain said, using the first excuse for his unhappiness that entered his head.
‘He was also an Outsider,’ Scoyt said heavily. ‘He exhibited all their characteristics. He was slow, rather on the weighty side, saying little . . . I’m beginning to be able to detect them as soon as I look at them.’
‘You’re brilliant, Roger,’ Vyann said, laughing. ‘How about eating your fish?’ And she put a hand over his affectionately.
Perhaps it was that which sparked Complain off. He flung his fork down.
‘Rot your brilliance!’ he said. ‘What about Marapper? – he was no alien and you killed him. Do you think I can forget that? Why should you expect any help from me after killing him?’
Waiting tensely for trouble to start, Complain could see other people turning from their meal to look at him. Scoyt opened his mouth and then shut it again, staring beyond Complain as a heavy hand fell on the latter’s shoulder.
‘Mourning for me is not only foolish but premature,’ a familar voice said. ‘Still taking on the world single-handed, eh, Roy?’
Complain turned, amazed, and there stood the priest, beaming, scowling, rubbing his hands. He clutched Marapper’s arm incredulously.
‘Yes, I, Roy, and no other: the great subconscious rejected me – and left me confoundedly cold. I hope your scheme worked, Master Scoyt?’
‘Excellently, Priest,’ Scoyt said. ‘Eat some of this beastly indigestible food and explain yourself to your friend, so that he will look at us less angrily.’
‘You were dead!’ Complain said.
‘Only a short Journey,’ Marapper said, seating himself and stretching out for the ale jug. ‘This witch doctor, Master Scoyt here, thought up an uncomfortable way of testing you and Fermour. He painted my head with rat’s blood and laid me out with some beastly drug to stage a death scene for your benefit.’
Just a slight overdose of chloral hydrate,’ said Scoyt, with a secretive smile.
‘But I touched you – you were cold,’ Complain protested.
‘I still am,’ Marapper said. ‘It’s the effects of the drug. And what would be that beastly antidote your men shot into me?’
‘Strychnine, I believe it’s called,’ Scoyt said.
‘Very unpleasant. I’m a hero, no less, Roy: always a saint, and now a hero as well. The schemers also condescended to give me a hot coffee when I came round; I never tasted anything so good in Quarters . . . But this ale is better.’
His eyes met Complain’s still dazed ones over the rim of the mug. He winked, and belched with charming deliberation.
‘I’m no ghost, Roy,’ he said. ‘Ghosts don’t drink.’
Before they had finished the meal, Master Scoyt was looking fretful. With a muttered apology, he left them.
‘He works too hard,’ Vyann said, her eyes following him out of the hall. ‘We must all work hard. Before we sleep, you must be put in the picture and told our plans, for we shall be busy next wake.’
‘Ah,’ Marapper said eagerly, clearing his bowl, ‘that is what I want to hear. You understand my interest in this whole matter is purely theological, but what I’d like to know is, what do I get out of it?’
‘First we are going to exorcise the Outsiders,’ she smiled. ‘Suitably questioned, Fermour should yield up their secret hiding place. We go there and kill them, and then we are free to concentrate on unravelling the riddles of the ship.’
This she said quickly, as if anxious to avoid questioning on that point, and went on at once to usher them out of the dining-room and along several corridors. Marapper, now fully himself again, took the chance to tell Complain of their abortive search for the Control Room.
‘So much has changed,’ Vyann complained. They were passing through a steel companionway whose double doors, now open, allowed egress from deck to deck. She indicated them lightly, saying: ‘These doors, for instance – in some places they are open, in some closed. And all the ones along Main Corridor are closed – which is fortunate, otherwise every marauder aboard ship would make straight for Forwards. But we cannot open or shut the doors at will, as the Giants must have been able to do when they owned the ship. As they stand now, so they have stood for generations; but somewhere must be a lever which controls them all. We are so helpless. We control nothing.’
Her face was tense, the pugnacity of her jaw more noticeable. With a flash of intuition which surprised him, Complain thought, ‘She’s getting an occupational disease like Scoyt’s, because she’s identifying her job with him.’ Then he doubted his own perceptions and, with a terrifying mental picture of the great ship with them all in it hurtling forever on its journey, had to admit the facts were enough to worry anyone. But it was still with the idea of checking her reactions that he asked Vyann, ‘Are you and Master Scoyt the only ones working on this problem?’
‘For hem’s sake, no!’ she said. ‘We’re only subordinates. A group calling itself the Survival Team has recently been constituted, and it and all other Forwards officers apart from guard officers are also devoting attention to the problem. In addition, two of the Council of Five are in charge of it; one of them you met, Priest – Councillor Zac Deight, the tall, longhaired man. The other of them I’m taking you to see now – Councillor Tregonnin. He is the librarian. He must explain the world to you.’
So it was that Roy Complain and the priest came to their first astronomy lesson. Tregonnin, as he talked to them, hopped about the room from object to object; he was almost ludicrously small and nervous. Although he was neat in a womanish way, the room he ruled over was heaped with lookers and miscellaneous bric-à-brac in disorderly fashion. Confusion had here been brought to a fine art. Tregonnin explained first that until very recently in Forwards – as was the rule still in Quarters – anything like a looker or a video had been destroyed, either from superstition or from a desire to preserve the power of the rulers by maintaining the ignorance of the ruled.
‘That, no doubt, was how the idea of the ship became lost to begin with,’ Tregonnin said, strutting in front of them. ‘And that is why what you see assembled round you represents almost all the records intact in the area of Forwards. The rest has perished. What remains allows us only a fragment of the truth.’
As the councillor began his narrative, Complain forgot the odd gestures with which he accompanied it. He forgot everything but the wonder of the tale as it had been pieced together, the mighty history patched up in this little room.
Through the space in which their world moved, other worlds also moved – two other sorts of worlds, one cal
led sun, from which sprang heat and light, one called planet. The planets depended on the suns for heat and light. At one planet attached to a sun called Sol lived people; this planet was called Earth and the people lived all over the outside of it, because the inside was solid and had no light.
‘The folk did not fall off it, even when they lived on the bottom of it,’ Tregonnin explained. ‘For they had discovered a force called gravity. It is gravity which enables us to walk all the way round a circular deck without falling off.’
Many other secrets the men discovered. They found a way to leave their planet and visit the other planets attached to their sun. This must have been a difficult secret, for it took them a long while. The other planets were different from theirs, and had either too little light and heat or too much. Because of this, there were no men living on them. This distressed the men of Earth.
Eventually they decided they would visit the planets of other suns, to see what they could find there, as their Earth was becoming exceptionally crowded. Here the scanty records in Tregonnin’s possession became confusing, because while some said that space was very empty, others said it contained thousands of suns – stars, they were sometimes called.
For some lost reason, men found it hard to decide which sun to go to, but eventually, with the aid of instruments in which they were cunning, they picked on a bright sun called Procyon to which planets were attached, and which was only a distance called eleven light years away. To cross this distance was a considerable undertaking even for the ingenious men, since space had neither heat nor air, and the journey would be very long: so long that several generations of men would live and die before it was completed.
Accordingly, men built this ship in which they now were, built it of inexhaustible metal in eighty-four decks, filled it with everything needful, stocked it with their knowledge, powered it with charged particles called ions.
Tregonnin crossed rapidly to a corner.