Non-Stop

by Brian W Aldiss

  As far as could be judged, he was of middle age. Taking in Vyann’s and Complain’s awed gaze, he muttered a fragment of scripture.

  ‘May my neuroses not offend…’

  ‘Now, Shameface,’ Master Scoyt said genially. ‘What guarantee does your good master offer our representative — if we send him one — of getting back here in safety?’

  ‘If I get back safely to the Captain,’ Hawl mumbled, ‘your man shall get back safely to you. This we swear.’

  ‘How far is it to this brigand you call the Captain?’

  ‘That your man will know when he comes with me,’ Hawl replied.

  ‘Very true. Or we could drag it out of you here.’

  ‘You couldn’t!’ There was something in the strange creature’s tone which compelled respect. Scoyt evidently felt it, for he told the man to get up and dust himself down and take a drink of water. While he did so, Scoyt asked, ‘How many men in Gregg’s gang?’

  Hawl put the drinking utensil down and stood defiantly with hands on hips.

  ‘That your man will be told when he comes with me to arrange terms,’ he said. ‘Now I’ve said all I’m going to say, and you’ll have to make up your minds whether you agree or not. But remember this — if we come here, we shall be no trouble. And we shall fight for you rather than against. This also we swear.’

  Scoyt and Vyann looked at each other.

  ‘It’s worth trying if we can get a foolhardy volunteer,’ he said.

  ‘It’ll have to go to the Council,’ she said.

  Complain had not spoken yet, awaiting his opportunity. Now he addressed Hawl.

  ‘This man you call Captain,’ he said. ‘Has he another name than Gregg?’

  ‘You can ask him that when you’re arranging terms,’ Hawl repeated.

  ‘Look at me carefully, fellow. Do I resemble your Captain in any way? Answer.’

  ‘The Captain has a beard,’ Hawl said evasively.

  ‘He should give it you to cover your head with!’ Complain snapped. ‘What do you say to this then? — I had a brother who ran amok into Deadways long ago. His name was Gregg — Gregg Complain. Is that your Captain, man?’

  ‘Gord’s guts!’ Hawl said. ‘To think the Captain has a brother lounging in this bed of pansies!’

  Complain turned excitedly to Master Scoyt, whose heavy face creased with surprise. ‘I volunteer to go with this man to Gregg,’ he said.

  The suggestion suited Master Scoyt well. He immediately turned his vast energy to getting Complain on his way as soon as possible. The full force of his persuasiveness, genial but relentless, was applied to the elders of the Council of Five, who convened at once under his direction; Tregonnin was urged reluctantly from the library, Zac Deight disentangled from a theological argument with Marapper, and Billyoe, Dupont and Ruskin, the other three of the Council, lured from their various interests. After a private discussion, they had Complain brought before them, instructed him on the terms to lay down before Gregg, and dismissed him with their expansions. He would have to hurry to be back before the next dark sleep-wake descended upon them.

  Though the disadvantages of having Gregg’s band in Forwards were obvious, the Council was keen to welcome them in; it would mean an end to most of the skirmishing on Forwards’ perimeter and the acquiring of an experienced ally to fight against the Outsiders.

  An orderly returned Complain’s dazer and torch to him. He was in his room strapping them on when Vyann entered, closing the door behind her. On her face was a comically defiant expression.

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ she said, without preamble.

  Complain crossed to her, protesting. She was not used to the ponics, danger might lurk there, Gregg might well play them false, she was a woman — She cut him short.

  ‘It’s no good arguing,’ she said. ‘This is Council’s orders.’

  ‘You got round them! You arranged it!’ he said. He could see he guessed rightly, and was suddenly deliriously glad. Seizing her wrist, he asked, ‘What made you wish to come?’

  The answer was not as flattering as he might have wished. Vyann had always wanted to hunt in the ponics, she said; this was the next best thing. And suddenly Complain was reminded — without pleasure — of Gwenny and her passion for the hunt.

  ‘You’ll have to behave yourself,’ he said severely, wishing her reason for joining him could have been more personal.

  Marapper appeared before they left, seeking a word alone with Complain. He had found a mission in life: the people of Forwards needed to be reconverted to the Teaching; since the more lenient rule of the Council began, the Teaching had lost its grip. Zac Deight in particular was against it — hence Marapper’s argument with him.

  ‘I don’t like that man,’ the priest grumbled. ‘There’s something horribly sincere about him.’

  ‘Don’t stir up trouble here, please,’ Complain begged, ‘just when these people have got round to accepting us. For hem sake relax, Marapper. Stop being yourself!’

  Marapper shook his head so sadly his cheeks wobbled.

  ‘You also are falling among the unbelievers, Roy,’ he said. ‘I must stir up trouble: turmoil in the id — it must out! There lies our salvation, and of course if the people rally round me at the same time, so much the better. Ah, my friend, we have come so far together, only to find a girl to corrupt you.’

  ‘If you mean Vyann, Priest,’ Complain said, ‘have a care to leave her out of this. I’ve warned you before, she’s nothing to do with you.’

  His voice was challenging, but Marapper was as bland as butter in return.

  ‘Don’t think I object to her, Roy. Though as a priest I cannot condone, as a man, believe me, I envy.’

  He looked forlorn as Complain and Vyann made for the barriers, where Hawl awaited them. His old boisterousness had been muted by Forwards, where everyone was a stranger to him; undoubtedly, for Marapper, to be a big fish in a small pool was better than being a small fish in a big pool. Where Complain had found himself, the priest was beginning to lose himself.

  Hawl, his incredibly tiny head cocked, looked only too glad to get back into the ponics; the reception Forwards had given him had not been notably cordial. Once the little party of three were seen through the barricades, he loped ahead professionally, Vyann behind him, Complain bringing up the rear. No longer a mere freak, Hawl moved with an ability the hunter in Complain could only admire; the fellow hardly seemed to stir a leaf. Complain wondered what could have alarmed a man of his stamp so much that he was willing to forsake his natural element for the unfamiliar disciplines of Forwards.

  Having only two decks to cover, they were not long in the ponics. This, in Vyann’s view at least, was all to the good; the tangles, she found, were not romantic; merely drab, irritating and full of tiny black midges. She stopped gratefully when Hawl did, and peered ahead through the thinning stalks.

  ‘I recognize this stretch!’ Complain exclaimed. ‘It’s near where Marapper and I were captured.’

  A black and ruinous length of corridor lay ahead, the walls pock-marked and scarred, the roof ripped wide with the force of some bygone explosion. It was here the explorers from Quarters had run into the eerie weightlessness. Hawl shone a light ahead and let out a fluttering whistle. Almost at once, a rope floated out of the hole in the roof.

  ‘If you go and grab hold of that, they’ll pull you up,’ Hawl said. ‘Just walk slowly to it and catch hold. It’s simple enough.’

  It could, despite this reassurance, have been simpler. Vyann gave a gasp of alarm as the lightness seized her, but Complain, more prepared, took her waist and steadied her. Without too much loss of dignity, they got to the rope and were at once hauled up. They were hauled through the roof, and through the roof of the level above that — the damage had been extensive. Hawl, scorning the aid of ropes, dived up head first and landed nonchalantly before they did.

  Four ragged men greeted them, crouched over a desultory game of Travel-Up. Vyann and Complain stood in a shattered ro
om, still almost weightless. A miscellany of furniture was ranged round the hole from which they emerged, obviously acting as a shelter for anyone needing to guard the hole in the event of an attack. Complain expected to be relieved of his dazer, but instead Hawl, having exchanged a few words with his tattered friends, led them out to another corridor. Here their weight immediately returned.

  The corridor was filled with wounded men and women lying on piles of dead ponics, most of them with face or legs bandaged; they were presumably the victims of the recent battle. Hawl hurried past them clucking sympathetically and pushed into another apartment filled with stores and men, most of them patched, bandaged or torn. Among them was Gregg Complain.

  It was unmistakably Gregg. The old look of dissatisfaction, manifesting itself round the eyes and the thin lips, was not altered by his heavy beard, or by an angry scar on his temple. He stood up as Complain and Vyann approached.

  ‘This is the Captain,’ Hawl announced. ‘I brought your brother and his fine lady to parley with you, Captain.’

  Gregg moved over to them, eyes searching them as if his life depended on it. He had lost the old Quarters’ habit of not looking anyone in the eye. As he scanned them, his expression never changed. They might have been blocks of wood; he might have been a block of wood; the blood relationship meant nothing to him.

  ‘You’ve come officially from Forwards?’ he finally asked his younger brother.

  ‘Yes,’ Complain said.

  ‘You didn’t take long to get yourself into their favours, did you?’

  ‘What do you know of that?’ Complain challenged. The surly independence of his brother had, from all appearances, grown stronger since his violent withdrawal from Quarters long ago.

  ‘I know a lot of what goes on in Deadways,’ Gregg said. ‘I’m captain of Deadways, if nowhere else. I knew you were heading for Forwards. How I knew, never mind — let’s get down to business. What did you bring a woman with you for? To wipe your nose?’

  ‘As you said, let’s get down to business,’ Complain said sharply.

  ‘I suppose she’s come to keep an eye on you to see you behave yourself,’ Gregg muttered. ‘That seems a likely Forwards arrangement. You’d better follow me; there’s too much moaning going on in here… Hawl, you come too. Davies, you’re in charge here now — keep ’em quiet if you can.’

  Following Gregg’s burly back, Complain and Vyann were led into a room of indescribable chaos. All over its scanty furnishings, bloody rags and clothes had been tossed; red-soaked bandages lay over the floor like so many broken jam rolls. A remnant of manners still lurked in Gregg, for seeing the look of distaste on Vyann’s face, he apologized for the muddle.

  ‘My woman was killed in the fight last night,’ he said. ‘She was torn to bits — ugh, you never heard such screams! I couldn’t get to her. I just couldn’t get to her. She’d have cleaned this muck up by now. Perhaps you’d like to do it for me?’

  ‘We will discuss your proposals and then leave as soon as possible,’ Vyann said tightly.

  ‘What was it about this fight that has scared you so, Gregg?’ Complain asked.

  ‘“Captain” to you,’ his brother said. ‘Nobody calls me Gregg to my face. And understand, I’m not scared: nothing’s ever scared me yet. I’m only thinking of my tribe. If we stay here we’ll be killed, sure as shame. We’ve got to move, and Forwards is as safe a place as any to move to. So –’ he sat wearily on the bed and waved to his brother to do the same — ‘It’s not safe here any more. Men we can fight, but not rats.’

  ‘Rats?’ Vyann echoed.

  ‘Rats, yes, my beauty,’ Gregg said, baring his fangs for emphasis. ‘Great big dirty rats, that can think and plan and organize like men. Do you know what I’m talking about, Roy?’

  Complain was pale.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve had them running over me. They signal to each other, and dress in rags, and capture other animals.’

  ‘Oh, you know them, do you? Surprising… You know more than I credited you with. They’re the menace, the rat packs, the biggest menace on the ship. They’ve learnt to co-operate and attack in formation — that’s what they did last sleep when they fought us — that’s why we’re getting out. We wouldn’t be able to beat them off again if they came in strength.’

  ‘This is extraordinary!’ Vyann exclaimed. ‘We’ve had no such attacks in Forwards.’

  ‘Maybe not. Forwards is not the world,’ Gregg said grimly. He told them his theory, that the rat packs kept to Deadways because there they found the solitary humans whom they could attack and destroy without interference. Their latest raid was partly evidence of increasing organization, partly an accident because they had not at the outset realized the strength of Gregg’s band. Deciding he had said enough, Gregg changed the subject abruptly.

  His plans for coming into Forwards were simple, he said. He would retain his group, numbering about fifty, as an autonomous unit which would not mix with the people of Forwards; they would spend their wakes as they spent them now, skirmishing through Deadways, returning only for sleeps. They would be responsible for the guarding of Forwards from Outsiders, Giants, rats and other raiders.

  ‘And in return?’ Complain asked.

  ‘In return, I must keep the right to punish my own folk,’ Gregg said. ‘And everyone must address me as Captain.’

  ‘Surely rather a childish stipulation?’

  ‘You think so? You never knew what was good for you. I’ve got here in my possession an old diary which proves that I — and you, of course — are descended from a Captain of this ship. His name was Captain Complain — Captain Gregory Complain. He owned the whole ship. Imagine that if you can…’

  Gregg’s face was suddenly lit with wonder, then the curtain of surliness fell again. Behind it was a glimpse of a human trying to come to terms with the world. Then he was once more a scruffy brute, sitting on bandages. When Vyann asked him how old the diary was, he shrugged his shoulders, said he did not know, said he had never scanned more than the title page of the thing — and that, Complain guessed shrewdly, would have taken him some while.

  ‘The diary’s in the locker behind you,’ Gregg said. ‘I’ll show it you some time — if we come to terms. Have you decided about that?’

  ‘You really offer us little to make the bargain attractive, Brother,’ Complain replied. ‘This rat menace, for instance — for your own motives you are over-estimating it.’

  ‘You think so?’ Gregg stood up. ‘Then come and have a look here. Hawl, you stay and keep an eye on the lady — what we’re going to see is no sight for her.’

  He led Complain along a desolate muddle of corridor, saying as they went how sorry he was to have to leave this hideout. The ancient explosion and a chance arrangement of closed inter-deck doors had given his band a fortress only approachable through the gashed roof by which Complain and Vyann had entered. Still talking — and now beyond his habitual surliness were tokens that he felt some pleasure at the sight of his brother — Gregg burst into a cupboard-like room.

  ‘Here’s an old pal for you,’ he said, with a sweeping gesture of introduction.

  The announcement left Complain unprepared for what he saw. On a rough and dirty couch lay Ern Roffery, the valuer. He was barely recognizable. Three fingers were missing, and half the flesh of his face; one eye was gone. Most of the superb moustache had been chewed away. It needed nobody to tell Complain that this was the work of the rats — he could see their teeth-marks on a protruding cheek bone. The valuer did not move.

  ‘Shouldn’t be surprised if he’s made the Journey,’ Gregg said carelessly. ‘Poor cur’s been in continual pain. Half his chest is eaten away.’

  He shook Roffery’s shoulder roughly, raised his head and let it drop back on to the pillow.

  ‘Still warm — probably unconscious,’ he said. ‘But this’ll show you what we’re up against. We picked this hero up last wake, several decks away. He said the rats had finished him. It was from him I heard ab
out you — he recognized me, poor cur. Not a bad fellow.’

  ‘One of the best,’ Complain said. His throat was so tight he could scarcely speak; his imagination was at work — involuntarily — picturing this horrible thing happening. He could not drag his eyes from Roffery’s ravaged face. In a daze he stood there while his brother kept talking. The rats had picked Roffery up in the swimming pool; while he was still helpless from the effects of the Giants’ gassing, they had loaded him on to a sort of stretcher and dragged him to their warrens. And there he had been questioned, under torture.

  The warren was between broken decks, where no man could reach. It was packed stiff with rats, and with an extraordinary variety of bric-à-brac they had scavenged and built into dens and caves. Roffery saw their captive animals, existing under appalling conditions. Many of these helpless beasts were deformed, like human mutations, and some of them had the ability to probe with their minds into other minds. These mutated creatures were set by the rats to question Roffery.

  Complain shuddered. He recalled his disgust when the rabbit had bubbled its insane interrogations into his mind. Roffery’s experience, long protracted, had been infinitely worse. Whatever they learnt from him — and they must have acquired much knowledge of the ways of men — Roffery learnt something from them: the rats knew the ship as no man ever had, at least since the catastrophe; the tangles were no obstacle to them, for they travelled by the low roads between decks, which was why men saw them rarely, travelled by the ten thousand pipes and sewers and tubes that were the great ship’s arteries.

  ‘Now you see why I’m not happy here,’ Gregg said. ‘I don’t want my flesh chewed off my skull. These rats are the end as far as I’m concerned. Let’s get back to your woman. You picked lucky with her, brother. My woman was no beauty — the cartilage in her legs was all bone, so she could not bend her knees. But… it didn’t worry her in bed.’

  Vyann seemed content when they returned to her; she was drinking a hot liquid. Only Hawl looked guilty and saw fit to explain that the bloody bandages had made her ill, so he had gone to fetch her a drink.