Starship

by Brian W Aldiss

  Before the party of five could move away, the noise had summoned two men from a rear compartment. They came and stood defensively behind the screaming woman.

  "They'll do us no harm!" said Fermour with relief.

  That was immediately obvious. Both men were old, one bent almost double with the promise of the Long Journey he would shortly take, the other painfully thin and lacking an arm, which had evidently been parted from him in some ancient knife fight.

  "We ought to kill them," Wantage said, one half of his face suddenly agleam. "Especially that hag there."

  At these words, the woman stopped screaming and said rapidly, "Expansion to your separate egos, plague on your eyes, touch us, and the curse that is on us will be on you."

  "Expansion to your ear, madam," said Marapper sulkily. "Come on, heroes, we don't need to linger here. Let's move before somebody rougher comes to investigate her crazy screaming."

  They turned back into the tangles. The three in the room watched them go without stirring. They might have been the last remnants of a Deadways tribe; more likely, they were fugitives, eking out a slender existence in the wilds.

  From then on, the travelers found signs of other mutants and hermits. The ponics were frequently trampled, progress being consequently easier; but the mental strain of keeping watch on all sides was greater, although they were never actually challenged.

  The next subsidiary connection between decks that they came to was closed, and the steel door, fitting closely into its sockets, resisted their united attempt at opening it.

  "There must obviously be a way to open it," Roffery said angrily.

  "Tell the priest to look it up in his book," Wantage replied. "For me, I'm sitting down here and having something to eat."

  Marapper was all for pressing on, but the others agreed with Wantage, and they made a meal in silence.

  "What happens if we come on a deck where all the doors are like that?" Complain wanted to know.

  "That won't happen," Marapper said firmly. "Otherwise we would never have heard of Forwards at all. There obviously is a route —probably more than one— left open to those parts. We just have to move to another level and try there."

  Finally they found their way into Deck 59 and then, with encouraging rapidity, into 58. By that time, it was growing late: a dark sleep-wake was almost upon them. Again they grew uneasy.

  "Have any of you noticed anything?" Complain asked abruptly. He was now leading the procession again, and liberally splashed with sweat and miltex. "The ponics are changing type."

  It was true. The springy stems grew more fleshy and less resilient. The leafage seemed reduced, and there were more of the waxy green flowers in evidence. Underfoot there was a change too. Generally, the grit was firm, intersected by a highly organized root system which drained every available drop of moisture. Now the walking was softer, the soil dark and moist.

  The further they went, the more pronounced these tendencies became. Soon, they were splashing through mud. They passed a tomato plant, and another fruit-bearer they could not identify, and several other types of growth straggling among the evidently weakened ponics. This change, being unfamiliar, worried them. Just the same, Marapper called a halt, since if they did not shortly find a place to rest they would be overtaken by darkness.

  They pushed into a side room which someone had already broken into. It was piled high with rolls of heavy material, which seemed to be covered by an intricate pattern. The probing beam of Fermour's flashlight dislodged a swarm of moths. With a thick, buttery sound, they rose from the fabric, leaving it patternless, but sagging with deep-chewed holes. Around their room they whirled, or past the men into the corridor. It was like walking into a dust storm.

  Complain dodged as a large moth bore toward his face. For the softest moment he had an odd sensation that he was to recall later: although the moth flew by his ear, he had an hallucinatory idea it had plunged straight on into his head; he seemed to feel it big in his very mind; then it was gone.

  "We won't get much sleep here," he said distastefully, and led on down the marshy corridor.

  Through the next door that opened to them, they found an ideal place to pitch camp. This was a machine shop of some kind, a large chamber filled with benches and lathes and other gadgets in which they had no interest. A faucet supplied them with an unsteady flow of water which, once turned on, they could not turn off; it trickled steadily down the sink, to the vast reclamation processes functioning somewhere below the deck on which they stood. Wearily, they washed and drank and ate some of their provisions. As they were finishing, the dark came on, the natural dark which arrived one sleep-wake in four.

  No prayers were requested, and the priest volunteered none. He was tired and, too, he was occupied with a thought which dogged the others. They had traveled only three decks: a long spell of walking lay between them and Control. For the first time, Marapper realized that, whatever assistance his chart gave them, it did not show the true magnitude of the ship.

  The precious watch was handed to Complain, who would wake Fermour when the large hand had made its full circuit. Enviously, the hunter watched the others sprawl under benches and drift to sleep. He remained doggedly standing for some while, but eventually fatigue forced him to sit. His mind ranged actively over a hundred questions and then it, too, grew weary. He sat propped with his back to a bench, staring at the closed door; through a circle of frosted glass inset in the door, a dim pilot light glowed in the corridor outside. The circle apparently grew larger and larger before him, swimming, rotating, and Complain closed his eyes to it.

  He woke again with a start, full of apprehension. The door now stood wide open. In the corridor, the ponics, most of their light source gone, were dying rapidly. Their tops had buckled, and they huddled against each other like a file of broken-backed old men kneeling beneath a blanket. Ern Roffery was not in the room.

  Pulling out his dazer, Complain got up and went to listen at the doorway. It seemed highly unlikely that anything could have abducted Roffery: there would have been a scuffle which would have aroused the others. Therefore he had gone voluntarily. But why? Had he heard something in the corridor?

  Certainly there was a distant sound, as throaty as the noise of running water. The longer Complain listened, the louder it seemed. With a glance back at his three sleeping companions, Complain slipped out to trace the sound. This course seemed to him preferable to having to wake the priest and explain that he had dozed.

  Once in the corridor, he cautiously flashed a light and picked up Roffery's footprints in the sludge, pointing toward the unexplored end of this level. Walking was easier now that the tangle was sagging into the center, away from the walls. Complain moved slowly, not showing light and keeping his dazer ready for action.

  At a corridor junction he paused, pressing on again with the liquid sound to guide him. The ponics petered out and were replaced by deck, washed bare of soil by a stream of water. Complain allowed it to flow against his boots, walking carefully so as not to splash. This was new in his experience. A light burned ahead. As he neared it, he saw it was shining in a vast chamber beyond two plate-glass doors. When he got to the doors, he stopped; on them was painted a notice, swimming pool, which he pronounced to himself without understanding. Peering through the doors, he saw a shallow flight of steps going up, with pillars at the top of them; behind one pillar stood the shadowy figure of a man.

  Complain ducked instantly away. When the man did not move, Complain concluded he had not been seen and looked again, to observe that the figure was staring away from him. It looked like Roffery. Cautiously, Complain opened one of the glass doors; a wave washed against his legs. Water was pouring down the steps, converting them into a waterfall.

  "Roffery!" Complain called, keeping his dazer on the figure. The three syllables he uttered were seized and blown to an enormous booming, which moaned several times around the cavern of darkness before dying. They washed away with them everything but a hollow stillne
ss, which now sounded loud in its own right.

  "Who's there?" challenged the figure, in a whisper.

  Through his fright, Complain managed to whisper his name back. The man beckoned him. Complain stood motionless where he was and then, at another summons, slowly climbed the steps. As he came level with the other he saw with certainty that it was the Valuer.

  Roffery grabbed his arm.

  "You were sleeping, you fool!" he hissed in Complain's ear.

  Complain nodded mutely, afraid to rouse the echoes again.

  Roffery dismissed that subject. Without speaking, he pointed ahead. Complain looked where he was bid, puzzled by the expression on the other's face.

  Neither of them had ever been in such a large space. Lit only by one bulb which burned to their left, it seemed to stretch forever into the darkness. The floor was a sheet of water on which ripples slid slowly outward. Under the light, the water shone like metal. Breaking this smooth expanse at the far end, an erection of tubes suspended planks over the water at various heights, and to either side were rows of huts, barely distinguishable for shadow.

  "It's beautiful!" Roffery breathed. "Isn't it beautiful?"

  Complain stared at him in astonishment. The word "beautiful" had an erotic meaning, and was applied only to particularly desirable women. Yet he saw that there was a sight here which needed a special choice of vocabulary. His eyes switched back to the water: it was entirely outside their experience. Previously, water had meant only a dribble from a tap, a spurt from a hose, or the puddle at the bottom of a utensil. He wondered vaguely what this amount could be for. Sinister, uncanny, the view had another quality also, and it was this Roffery was trying to describe.

  "I know what it is," Roffery murmured. He was staring at the water as if hypnotized, the lines of his face so relaxed that his appearance was changed. "I've read about this in old books brought to me for valuing." He paused, and then quoted, ‘Then dead men rise up never, and even the longest river winds somewhere safe to sea.' Complain, we've stumbled on the sea. I've often read about it. For me, it proves Marapper's wrong about our being in a ship; we're in an underground city."

  This meant little to Complain; he was not interested in labels of things. What struck him was to perceive something he had worried over till now: why Roffery had left his important office to come on the priest's hazardous expedition. He saw that the other had a reason akin to Complain's own: a longing for what he had never known and could put no name to. Instead of feeling any bond with Roffery about this, Complain decided he must more than ever beware of the man, for if they had similar objectives, they were the more likely to clash.

  "Why did you come up here?" he asked, still keeping his voice low to avoid the echoes.

  "While you were snoring, I woke and heard voices in the corridor," Roffery said. "Through the frosted glass I saw two men pass— only they were too big for men. They were Giants!"

  "Giants! The Giants are dead, Roffery."

  "These were Giants, I tell you, fully seven feet high. I saw their heads go by the window." In his eyes, Complain read the uneasy, fascinated memory of them.

  "And you followed them?" Complain asked.

  "Yes, I followed them here."

  At this Complain scanned the shadows anew.

  "Are you trying to frighten me?" he asked.

  "I didn't ask you to come after me. Why be afraid of the Giants? Dazers'll dispatch a man however long he measures."

  "We'd better be getting back, Roffery. There's no point in standing here; besides, I'm on watch."

  "You might have thought of that before," Roffery said. "We'll bring Marapper here later to see what he makes of the sea. Before we go, I'm just going to look at something over there. That was where the Giants disappeared."

  He indicated a point near at hand, beside the huts, where a square of curb was raised some four inches above the water-line. The solitary light which overhung it looked almost as if it had been temporarily erected by the Giants to cast a glow there.

  "There's a trapdoor inside that curb," Roffery whispered. "The Giants went down there and closed it after them. Come on, we'll go and look."

  He seemed strangely excited, like a child, with a child's innocent disregard of danger. They paddled one behind the other on the fringes of the sea, weapons ready, and so came to the trapdoor, dry behind its protecting curb.

  Roffery stooped down and slowly lifted the hatch. Gentle light flowed out from the opening. They saw an iron ladder leading down into a pit full of piping. Two overalled figures were working silently at the bottom of the pit. As soon as the hatch was opened, they must have heard the magnified hiss of running water in the chamber above them, for they looked up and fixed Roffery and Complain with an astonished gaze. Undoubtedly they were Giants: they were monstrously tall and thick, and their faces were dark.

  Roffery's nerve deserted him at once. He dropped the hatch down with a slam, and turned and ran. Complain splashed close behind. Next second, Roffery disappeared, swallowed by the water. Complain stopped abruptly. He could see at his feet, below the surface of the sea, the lip of a dark well. Roffery bobbed up again, a yard from him, in the well, striking the water and hollering. In the darkness, his face was apoplectic. Complain stretched out a hand to him, leaning forward as far as he dared. The other struggled to grasp it, floundered, and sank again in a welter of bubbles. The hubbub in the vast cavern was deafening.

  When he appeared again, Roffery had found a footing, and stood chest-deep in the water. Panting and cursing, he pushed forward to seize Complain's hand. At the same time, the trapdoor was flung open. The Giants were coming out. As Complain whirled around, he was aware of Roffery pausing to grab at his dazer, which would not be affected by damp, and of a pattern of crazy light rippling on the ceiling high above them. Without aiming, he fired his own dazer at a head emerging from the vault. The daze went wide. The Giant launched himself at them, and Complain dropped his weapon in panic. As he bent to scrabble for it in the shallow water, Roffery fired over his stooped back. His aim was better than Complain's.

  The Giant staggered and fell with a splash which roused the echoes. As far as Complain could remember afterward, the monster had been unarmed.

  The second Giant was armed. Seeing the fate of his companion, he crouched on the ladder, shielded by the curb, and fired twice. The first shot got Roffery in the face. Without a sound, he slipped beneath the water.

  Complain dived flat, kicking up spray, but he was an easy target for the marksman. His temple stopped the second shot. Limply, he slumped into the water, face down.

  The Giant climbed out of the pit and came toward him.

  III

  At the center of the human mechanism is the will to live. So delicate is this mechanism that some untoward experience early in life can implant within it the opposite impulse, the will to die. The two drives lie quietly side by side, and a man may pass his days unaware of their existence; then some violent crisis faces him and, stripped momentarily of his superficial characteristics, his fatal duality is bare before him; and he must stop to wrestle with the flaw within before he, can fight the external foe.

  It was so with Complain. After oblivion came only the frantic desire to retreat back into unconsciousness. But unconsciousness had rejected him, and the prompting soon came that he must struggle to escape whatever predicament he was in. Then again, he felt no urge to escape, only the desire to submit and fade back into nothing. Insistently, however, life returned.

  He opened his eyes for a moment. He was lying on his back in semidarkness. A gray roof of some kind was only a few inches above his head. It was flowing backward, or he was moving forward: he could not tell which, and closed his eyes again. A steady increase in bodily sensation told him his ankles and wrists were lashed together.

  His head ached, and a foul smell pervaded his lungs, making breathing an agony. He realized the Giant had shot him with some kind of gas pellet, instantly effective but ultimately, perhaps, innocuous.

/>   Again he opened his eyes. The roof still seemed to be traveling backward, but he felt a steady tremor through his body, telling him he was on some kind of moving vehicle. Even as he looked, the movement stopped. He saw a Giant loom beside him, presumably the one who had shot and captured him. Through half-closed eyes, Complain saw the immense creature was on hands and knees in this low place. Feeling on the roof, he now knuckled some kind of switch, and a section of the roof swung upward.

  From above came light and the sound of deep voices. Complain was later to recognize this slow, heavy tone as the typical manner of speech of the Giants. Before he had time to prepare for it, he was seized and dragged off the conveyance and passed effortlessly up through the opening. Large hands took hold of him and dumped him not ungently against the wall of a room.

  "He's coming around," a voice commented, in a curious accent Complain hardly understood.

  This observation worried him a great deal; partly because he thought he had given no indication he was recovering, partly because the remark suggested they might now gas him again.

  Another body was handed up through the opening, the original Giant climbing up after it. A muttered conversation took place. From the little Complain could hear, he gathered that the body was that of the Giant Roffery had killed. The other Giant was explaining what had happened. It soon became apparent he was talking to two others, although Complain, from where he lay, could see only wall.

  Another Giant entered from a side room and began talking in a peremptory tone suggestive of command. Complain's captor began to explain the situation over again, but was cut short.

  "Did you deal with the flooding?" the newcomer asked.

  "Yes, Mr. Curtis. We fitted a new stopcock in place of the rusted one and switched the water off. We also unblocked the drainage and fitted a length of new piping there. We were just finishing when the dizzies turned up. The pool should be empty by now."

  "All right, Randall," the peremptory voice addressed as Curtis said. "Now tell me why you started chasing the two dizzies."