Non-Stop

by Brian W Aldiss

  ‘…this continuum

  …far too long

  …Gloria.’

  An old song, poorly remembered; he shut it off sharply with his closing door. Once again Marapper waited for him, greasy face cupped in his hands, rings glittering on his fat fingers.

  Complain was suddenly undermined by the sensation that he knew what the priest was going to say; he seemed to have lived this scene over before. He tried to break through the web-like illusion, but could not.

  ‘Expansion, son,’ said the priest, languidly making the rage sign. ‘You look bitter; are you?’

  ‘Very bitter, father. Only killing could ease it.’ Through his words, try as he would to say something unexpected, Complain’s sense of re-enacting a scene persisted.

  ‘There are more things than killing. Things you do not dream of.’

  ‘Don’t give me that crap, father. You’ll be telling me next that life is a mystery and rambling on like my mother. I feel I need to kill someone.’

  ‘You shall, you shall,’ the priest soothed. ‘And it is good you should feel so. Never grow resigned, my son; that way is death for us all. We are being punished here for some wrong our forefathers committed. We are all maimed! We are all blind — we thrust out in wrong directions…’

  Complain had climbed wearily on to his bunk. The illusion of re-living the scene had gone, and directly it was gone, it was forgotten. Now he wanted only to sleep. Tomorrow he would be evicted from his single room and stroked; now he wanted only to sleep. But the priest had stopped talking. Complain glanced up and found Marapper leaning on his bunk, gazing at him. Their eyes met for a moment, before Complain pulled his hurriedly away.

  One of the strongest taboos in their society was directed against one man’s looking another straightly in the eyes; honest, well-intentioned men gave each other only side glances. Complain stuck out his lower lip truculently.

  ‘What the hem do you want with me, Marapper?’ he exploded. He was tempted to tell the priest that he had just learned of his bastardy.

  ‘You didn’t get your six strokes, Roy, boy, did you?’

  ‘What’s that to you, priest?’

  ‘A priest knows no self-seeking. I ask for your good; besides, I have a personal interest in your answer.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t beaten. They’re all flat out, as you know — even the Public Stroker.’

  The priest’s eyes were after his again. Complain heaved over uncomfortably and faced the wall; but the priest’s next question brought him round again.

  ‘Do you ever feel like running amok, Roy?’

  Despite himself, Complain had a vision: he was running through Quarters with his dazer burning, everyone scattering, fearing him, respecting him, leaving him master of the situation. His heart beat uncomfortably. Several of the best and most savage men of the tribe — even Gregg, one of his own brothers — had run amok, bursting through the settlement, some escaping to live afterwards in unexplored areas of tangle, or joining other communities, afraid to return and face their punishment. He knew it was a manly, even an honourable thing to do; but it was not a priest’s business to incite it. A doctor might recommend it if a man were mortally sick; a priest should unite, not disrupt his tribe, by bringing the frustration in human minds up to the surface, where it might flow freely without curdling into neurosis.

  For the first time, he realized Marapper was wrestling with a crisis in his own life, and wondered momentarily if it had any connection with the fact of Bergass’s illness.

  ‘Look at me, Roy. Answer me.’

  ‘Why are you speaking to me like this?’ He was sitting up now, almost forced there by the urgency in the priest’s voice.

  ‘I must know what you are made of.’

  ‘You know what the Litany tells us: we are the sons of cowards, our days are passed in fear.’

  ‘This you believe?’ the priest asked.

  ‘Naturally. It is the Teaching.’

  ‘I need your aid, Roy. Would you follow where I led you — even out of Quarters, into Deadways?’

  All this was spoken low and fast. And low and fast beat the indecision in Complain’s blood. He made no effort to come to a consciously debated decision; the nerves must be arbiter: mind was not trustworthy — it knew too much.

  ‘That would require courage,’ he said at length.

  The priest slapped his great thighs, yawning in nervous enthusiasm with a sound like a tiny shriek.

  ‘No, Roy, you lie, true to the list of liars who begot you. If we went, we should be escaping, fleeing, evading the responsibilities of grown men in society. Ha, we shall slip away furtively. It will be the old back-to-nature act, boy, a fruitless attempt to return to the ancestral womb. Why, it would be the very depth and abysm of cowardice to leave here. Now, will you come with me?’

  Some meaning beyond the words themselves hardened a decision in Complain. He would go! Always there had been that cloud just beyond his comprehension, from which he must escape. He slid off the bunk, trying to hide this decision from Marapper’s wily eyes until he had learnt more of the venture.

  ‘What should we two do alone in the tangles of Deadways, priest?’

  The priest thrust a great thumb searchingly up one nostril and spoke with his gaze steady over his fist. ‘We shall not go alone. Four others come with us, picked men. I have been preparing for this for some while, and all is now ready. You are discontented, your woman is taken: what have you to lose? I strongly advise you to come — for your own sake, of course — although it will suit me to have someone about with a weak will and a hunter’s eye.’

  ‘Who are the four others, Marapper?’

  ‘I will tell you that when you say you are coming. If I were betrayed to the Guards, they would slit all our throats — mine especially! — in twenty places.’

  ‘What are we going to do? Where are we going?’

  Marapper rose slowly to his feet and stretched. With long fingers he raked through his hair, making at the same time the most hideous sneer he could devise, twisting the two great slabs of his cheeks, one up, one down, until his mouth coiled between them like knotted rope.

  ‘Go by yourself, Roy, if you so distrust my leadership! Why, you’re like a woman, all bellyache and questioning. I’ll tell you no more, except that my scheme is something too grand for your comprehension. Domination of the ship! That’s it! Nothing less! Complete domination of the ship — you don’t even know what the phrase means.’

  Cowed by the priest’s ferocious visage, Complain merely said, ‘I was not going to refuse to come.’

  ‘You mean you will come?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Marapper gripped his arm fervently, without a word. His cheeks gleamed.

  ‘Now tell me who the other four are who come with us,’ Complain said, alarmed the moment he had committed himself.

  Marapper released his arm.

  ‘You know the old saying, Roy: the truth never set anyone free. You will learn soon enough. It is better that I do not tell you now. I plan we shall start early next sleep. Now I shall leave you; I have work still to do. Not a word to anyone.’

  Half out of the door, he paused. Thrusting a hand into his tunic, he pulled something out and waved it triumphantly. Complain recognized it as a looker, the collection of reading matter used by the extinct Giants.

  ‘This is our key to power!’ Marapper said dramatically, thrusting it back into its place of concealment. Then he closed the door behind him.

  Idle as statuary, Complain stood in the centre of the floor, only his head working. And in his head there was only a circle of thought, leading nowhere. But Marapper was the priest, Marapper had knowledge most others could not share, Marapper must lead. Belatedly, Complain went to the door, opened it and peered out.

  The priest had already gone from sight. Nobody was near except Meller, the bearded artist. He was painting a bright fresco on the corridor wall outside his room, dabbing on with shrewdly engrossed face the various dyes he had collecte
d the sleep-wake before. Beneath his hand, a great cat launched itself up the wall. He did not notice Complain.

  It was growing late. Complain went to eat in the almost deserted Mess. He fed in a trance. He returned, and Meller was still painting in a trance. He shut his door and prepared slowly for bed. Gwenny’s grey dress still hung on a hook by the bed; he snatched it down suddenly and flung it out of sight behind a cupboard. Then he lay down and let silence prolong itself.

  Suddenly into the room burst Marapper, bulbously, monumentally out of breath. He slammed the door behind him, gasping and tugging the corner of his cloak which had caught in the jamb.

  ‘Hide me, Roy — quick! Quickly, don’t stare, you fool. Get up, get your knife out. The Guards’ll be here, Zilliac’ll be here. They’re after me. They’d massacre poor old priests as soon as look at them.’

  As he spoke, he ran to Complain’s bunk, swung it out from the wall and began to crouch behind it.

  ‘What have you done?’ Complain demanded. ‘Why are they after you? Why hide here? Why drag me into it?’

  ‘It’s no compliment. You just happened to be near and my legs were never constructed for running. My life’s in danger.’

  While he was talking, Marapper stared wildly about, as if for a better hiding place, and then evidently decided to stay where he was. By adjusting a blanket over the far side of the bed he was screened from the doorway.

  ‘They must have seen me come in here,’ he said. ‘It’s not that I care for my own skin, but I’ve got plans. I let one of the Guards in on this scheme of ours and he went straight in and told it to Zilliac.’

  ‘Why should I—’ Complain began hotly. A scuffle outside gave them the briefest warning and then the door was hurled open, rebounding on its hinges. It missed Complain by inches only, for he stood half behind it.

  The crisis powered his inspiration. Flinging both hands over his face, he bent forward, groaning loudly and staggering, making believe the edge of the door had struck him. Through his fingers he saw Zilliac, the Lieutenant’s right-hand man, next in line for the lieutenancy, burst into the room and kick the door shut behind him. He glared contemptuously at Complain.

  ‘Hold your filthy row, man,’ Zilliac shouted. ‘Where’s the priest? I saw him come in here.’

  As he turned, dazer ready, to survey the room, Complain whipped up Gwenny’s wooden stool by one leg and brought it down at the base of Zilliac’s skull, square across the tense neck. A delightful splintering sound of wood and bone, and Zilliac toppled full length. He had barely hit the deck before Marapper stood up. With a heave, all teeth showing, he tipped the heavy bunk over sideways, sending it falling across the fallen man.

  ‘I’ve got him!’ the priest exclaimed. ‘Hem’s guts, I’ve got him!’ He gathered up Zilliac’s dazer, moving with agility for a heavy man, and faced the door.

  ‘Open up, Roy! There’ll doubtless be others outside, and it’s now or never if we’re getting out of this with breathable throats.’

  But the door swung open at that moment without Complain’s aid. Meller the artist stood there, sheathing a knife, his face pale as boiled fowl.

  ‘Here’s an offering for you, priest,’ he said. ‘I’d better bring him in before someone comes along.’

  He grabbed the ankles of a guard who lay crumpled in the corridor. Complain went to his aid, and together they dragged the limp body in and closed the door. Meller leaned against the wall mopping his forehead.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re up to, priest,’ he said, ‘but when this fellow heard the rumpus in here, he was off to fetch his friends. I thought it looked most convenient to despatch him before you had a party.’

  ‘May he make the Long Journey in peace,’ Marapper said weakly. ‘It was well done, Meller. Indeed, we’ve all done well for amateurs.’

  ‘I have a throwing blade,’ Meller explained. ‘Fortunately — for I dislike hand-to-hand fighting. Mind if I sit down?’

  Moving dazedly, Complain knelt between the bodies and felt for a heart beat. Directly action had started, the ordinary Complain had been shuffled away for another, an automatic man with defter movement and sure impulse. He it was who took over when the hunt was on. Now his hand searched Zilliac and the crumpled Guard and found there was no pulse between the two of them.

  Death was as common as cockroaches in the small tribes. ‘Death is the longest part of a man’, said a folk poem. This stretched-out spectacle, so frequently met with, was the subject of much of the Teaching: there had to be a formal way of dealing with it. It was fearful, and fear must not be allowed to lodge in a man. The automatic man in Complain, confronted with death now, fell straight into the first gesture of prostration, as he had been brought up to do.

  Seeing their cue, Marapper and Meller instantly joined him, Marapper crying softly aloud. Only when their intricate business was over and the last Long Journey said did they lapse back into something like normality.

  Then they sat looking at each other, scared, sheepishly triumphant, across the quiet bodies. Outside, all was silence; only the prevailing indolence after the recent merry-making saved them from a crowd of sightseers and inevitable exposure. Slowly, Complain found himself able to think again.

  ‘What about the Guard who passed on your scheme to Zilliac?’ he asked. ‘We shall have trouble from him soon, Marapper, if we stay here.’

  ‘If we stayed here forever he would not trouble us,’ the priest said, ‘except to offend our nostrils. He lies here before us now.’ He pointed to the man Meller had dragged in, adding: ‘Which makes it look as if my plans have been passed on no further. So we are fortunate: we still have a little while before a search starts for Zilliac. He, I suspect, was nourishing some little scheme of his own on the quiet, otherwise he would have had an escort. So much the better for us. Come, Roy, we must move at once. Quarters is no longer healthy for us.’

  He stood up on legs unexpectedly shaky and promptly sat down again. He rose again with more care, saying defensively: ‘For a man of sensibility, I worked neatly with that bunk, eh?’

  ‘I’ve yet to hear what they were after you for, priest,’ Meller said.

  ‘The greater credit to the speed of your assistance,’ said Marapper smoothly, making towards the door. Meller put his arm across it and answered, ‘I want to hear what you are involved in. It seems to me I am now involved in it too.’

  When Marapper drew up but did not speak, Complain said impetuously, ‘Why not let him come with us, Marapper?’

  ‘So…’ the artist said reflectively. ‘You’re both leaving Quarters! Good luck to you, friends — I hope you will find whatever you are going looking for. Myself, I’d rather stay here safely and paint, thanks for the invitation.’

  ‘Brushing aside the minor point that no invitation was offered, I agree with all you say,’ Marapper said. ‘You showed up well just now, friend, but I need only real men of action with me: and at that I want a handful, not an army.’

  As Meller stepped aside and Marapper took hold of the door handle, the latter’s attitude softened and he said, ‘Our lives are of microscopically small moment, but I believe that we now owe them to you, painter. Back to your dyes now with our thanks, and not a word to anyone.’

  He made off down the corridor, Complain hurrying to get by his side. Sleep had closed over the tribe. They passed a late sentry, going to one of the rear barricades; two young men and two girls in bright rags were attempting to recapture the spirit of the past revelry; otherwise, the place was deserted.

  Turning sharply down a side corridor, Marapper led the way to his own quarters. Glancing about him furtively, he produced a magnetic key and opened the door, pushing Complain in ahead of him. It was a large room, but crowded with the acquisitions of a lifetime, a thousand articles bribed or begged, things meaningless since the extinction of the Giants, and now merely fascinating totems of a more varied and advanced civilization than theirs. Complain stared about him almost helplessly, regarding without recognizing a camera,
electric fans, jigsaw puzzles, books, switches, condensers, a bed pan, a bird cage, vases, fire extinguishers, keys in bundles, two oil paintings, a scroll labelled ‘Map of the Moon (Devizes Sector)’, a toy telephone and a crate full of bottles containing a thick sediment called ‘Shampoo’. Loot, all loot, with little perhaps but curiosity value.

  ‘Stay here while I get the other three rebels,’ Marapper said, making to go. ‘Then we’ll be on the move.’

  ‘Supposing they betray you as the Guard did?’

  ‘They won’t — as you’ll know when you see them,’ Marapper said shortly. ‘I only let the Guard in on it because he saw this going in here.’ He thumped the looker inside his tunic.

  After he had gone, Complain heard the magnetic lock click into place. If something did go awry with the priest’s plans, he would be trapped here with much awkward explaining to do on his release, and would probably die for Zilliac’s death. He waited tensely, picking nervously at an irritation in one hand. He glanced down at length, and saw a minute splinter embedded in the flesh of his palm. The legs of Gwenny’s stool had always been rough.

  PART II

  DEADWAYS

  I

  In Quarters, a well-worn precept said ‘Leap before you look’; rashness was proverbially the path of wisdom, and the cunning acted always on the spur of the moment. Other courses of conduct could hardly be entertained when, with little reason for any action, a brooding state of inaction threatened to overwhelm every member of the tribe. Marapper, who was adept at twisting any councils to his own advantage, used these arguments of expediency to rouse the last three members of his expedition.

  They followed him grudgingly, snatching up packs, jackets and dazers, and moving sullenly behind him through the corridors of their village. Few saw them go, and those few were indifferent, for the recent festivities had provided a generous quota of hangovers. Marapper stopped before the door of his compartment and felt for his key.

  ‘What are we halting here for? We’ll be caught if we hang about here, and chopped into little pieces. Let’s get into the ponics if we’re going.’