The Complete Short Stories- The 1950s - Volume One

by Aldiss, Brian

  This, however, proved impracticable. Some sort of machinery blocked the other side of the hole and sealed it effectively. They were only left with the option of climbing through the overhead bulkhead, and this they did as speedily as possible, frequently glancing back to make sure nobody was creeping up on them. When Crooner, the last and the heaviest, was hauled up, they started slowly forward by the light of Carappa’s torch, the artificial lighting still being defunct.

  Gaping doorways of disordered rooms slid threateningly by. Dust stirred beneath their feet. When they saw light again ahead, Carappa flicked off the torch and their approach was wary.

  The light came from a side door which bore the legend Dining Hall. Summoned into being by the light, more ponics grew, rooted in the litter dropped by themselves and the tiny insects that crawled among them. Their outer ranks were puny blades which seemed to grow from the deck itself, but they increased so in stature that two yards from the doorway they curled against the ceiling.

  Wantage, Crooner, Brandyholm and the priest stared in disgust at the tangle, for it was obvious that their way lay through it. Great doors with the words Panic Valve stencilled on them in yellow sealed off the corridor. Reluctantly, with hardly a word to each other, they moved in and commenced hacking.

  The jungle was more than usually impenetrable. Caught among the growth, sometimes on the ground, sometimes chest high, sometimes suspended above their heads, were an almost infinite number of metal tables and chairs. It was like cutting one’s way slowly through a nightmare.

  And it grew worse. They came upon clusters of ponics which had collapsed under the extra weight and rotted in slimy bundles, while other plants grew out of them. The air became thick and sickly, and soon every stem about them was attacked by blight and they moved through a stippled wall of disease.

  Brandyholm glanced at Wantage, who was next to him hacking in silence. The man’s face was grey, his eyes and nose streaming, and his mouth working. Seeing Brandyholm’s eye upon him, he began to curse monotonously.

  Finally they came up against a blank wall. Wantage attacked it wildly with his knife, until Crooner downed him with a blow at the back of his ear.

  ‘Pity to spoil a good blade,’ Crooner said, pulling a hand across his dark, grimy face. ‘Now what do we do, priest?’

  As if in answer to his question, the lights went out. It was dim-sleep, the dark time that came once in every four sleeps and would bring a dim-wake after it. Night came billowing in on them like a hot breath.

  ‘Nothing is left but self-confession,’ Carappa cried in desperation. He fell to his knees and began to recite the General Belief, the others coming in half-heartedly with the responses. Their voices rose and fell; by the end of it they all felt slightly better.

  ‘… And by so discharging our morbid impulses we may be freed from inner conflict,’ he intoned.

  ‘And live in psychosomatic purity,’ they replied.

  ‘So that this unnatural life may be delivered down to journey’s end.’

  ‘And sanity propagated.’

  ‘And the ship brought home.’ The priest had the last word.

  Carappa scuffled round in the dark, shaking their hands and wishing expansion to their egos. Brandyholm pushed him roughly away.

  ‘After the mumbo jumbo, perhaps you’ll tell us how you’re going to get us out of here,’ he said. ‘I see now why all this sector was called Dead Ways.’

  ‘There will be another door near here. After sleep, we will hack our way round the wall till we find it. We can endure a little inconvenience, Tom, for the sake of the power to come.’

  In the little clearing they had made, ponic seedlings would already be thrusting up. Even as they lay, the little stems were pushing through all round them. High over their heads, the dead and dying foliage curled against the ceiling and hung down. Although vibrant with the tiny sub-noises of rapid growth, the air was almost unbreathable: the wall of diseased plants cut off the oxygen released by the living ones beyond.

  Nevertheless, Brandyholm slept. A nightmare trailed behind his eyes, a nightmare he was unable to recall afterwards, however hard he tried – for the religious held it a sign of ill-health not to remember and confess a bad dream. He only knew that an infinite menace was bearing down upon him, and then he awoke with Bob Crooner’s cries coming thickly to his ears. Rolling over half-drugged by sleep, he came upon two bodies fighting desperately with their bare hands. By the sounds they made, he knew they were Crooner and Wantage, and Wantage was on top. He flung himself at the latter, tearing at his shoulders.

  Wantage sent a wild punch behind him; Brandyholm caught his wrist and twisted his arm back cruelly until the man rolled away from Crooner, kicking and shouting. They were all shouting by now. After what seemed an endless period of struggle, a light came on and Carappa stood over them, flashing his torch. In the brightness, Wantage’s knife was revealed. He dived for it, and Crooner pinned his wrist to the ground with a heavy foot.

  Breathing heavily, Wantage lay as he was. His face was almost unrecognisable; normally pale and thin, it was now suffused with blood and so puffy his eyes were almost closed. He lay in a pulp of ponic leaves and miltex, looking at them like a beaten animal.

  ‘He suddenly set on me in the dark,’ Crooner said. ‘Thanks for the help, Tom.’ He was shaking violently.

  Brandyholm smiled in pleasure at the gratitude, so unexpected because it was hardly considered manly to admit one ever stood in need of help. The smile nearly cracked his face. His head throbbed as if it would split.

  The priest was on his hands and knees in front of Wantage, prodding him and speaking swiftly to him. At length he said to the other two, ‘I’ve seen a good many go like this. Wantage is insane. He is suffering from what we priests know as hyper-claustrophobia; actually we all have it in some degree. It causes forty-five per cent of Greene tribe deaths.’

  ‘Never mind the statistics, Carappa,’ Crooner said angrily. ‘What are we going to do with him?’

  ‘You don’t appreciate what an interesting case he is,’ the priest reproved. ‘Funny to observe how like a man’s beginning his end often is. Wantage’s mother was an outcast living in Dead Ways with a man; both of them had been turned out of Forwards or one of the minor Midway tribes. The man was killed hunting and the woman sought refuge with us. She could not live in the tangle alone. Wantage was then about eighteen months old, and his mother became – as the unattached females frequently do – one of our women. She was killed in a drunken brawl when he was fourteen.’

  ‘What’s this to do with Wantage going mad now?’ Crooner asked contemptuously. Priests were too fond of talking.

  ‘He deliberately submerged the memory of his mother because she was a bad lot,’ said Carappa triumphantly. ‘But being back in the tangle brought back the shame of her. He was overwhelmed by infantile fears of darkness and insecurity.’

  ‘Now that our little object lesson in the benefits of religion is over – ’ Crooner began, but at that instant Wantage sprang up, striking out right and left. A chance blow on the priest’s cheek sent him spinning round into Brandyholm. Wantage snarled in triumph and burst through the ponics in the direction he had come.

  ‘Leave him!’ Carappa snapped angrily, although neither Brandyholm nor Crooner had made any attempt to follow. ‘We shan’t see him again.’

  He was wrong. Wantage could hardly have got twenty yards from them when he stopped suddenly. They heard him give a curious whistling sigh. He turned, staggered back towards them through the tangle, collapsed, and crawled back into the torchlight on hands and knees.

  When he rolled over and lay still, they saw an arrow sticking squarely out of his solar plexus.

  They were still peering stupidly at the body when the armed guards of Forwards slid from the shadows and surrounded them.

  III

  The Forwards official in front of whom they were dragged received them standing. Her hands hung calmly by her side and she made no movement of interest wh
en they came in. She was young, her hair cut short to reveal the contour of her proud head, and her brow and eyes created an impression of magnificence. Only when one’s gaze dropped to her mouth and jaw was there a hint that it might be undesirable to know her too well.

  She said her name was Viann. She questioned them, they answered. They might have been three performing dogs hustled before her, so detachedly did she regard the two more silent figures and the third figure, that of Carappa, slightly ahead of his companions, gesticulating, talking, throwing his weight first onto one leg, then the other. They were, indeed, to her only random elements in a problem that must be solved.

  ‘So your plea that your lives should be saved – ’ already it had come to that – already they were begging for their breath ‘– rests on your idea that you have knowledge which could be useful to us here in Forwards?’ Viann said to them.

  ‘I said I have the knowledge,’ suggested Carappa craftily. ‘If you also deign to spare the lives of my poor, ignorant friends I should, of course, be grateful, but they can tell you nothing.’

  ‘So?’ She permitted herself a frosty smile.

  ‘If we have not knowledge, we have strength to serve you with,’ Brandyholm offered. The sick feeling which had possessed him ever since they were captured in the ponic tangle showed no sign of weakening its grip on his intestines.

  She said to him, without really bothering to look at him, ‘Your “priest” has the right idea: intelligence only can bribe me – not muscle.’

  Turning to Bob Crooner, she asked, ‘What have you to say for yourself? You have not spoken yet.’

  Crooner looked steadily at her before dropping his eyes and replying, ‘We have no ladies like you in our little tribe. My silence was only a mask for disturbed thoughts.’

  ‘That sort of thing is not acceptable as a bribe either,’ Viann said levelly. ‘You will all three be taken to a cell now; I shall question you individually, at my convenience.’

  Guards appeared, and despite Carappa’s protests they were marched away to a featureless room close at hand. Groaning, Brandyholm lay down on a thin rug and propped himself on one elbow.

  ‘These people are more civilised than we,’ he said to the priest. ‘They will be sure to kill us. Had you promised us this when we set out, you would have set out alone.’

  Carappa came over to him, squatted on his haunches and seized Brandyholm’s shirt front with two large hands. His voice was as thick as cool treacle.

  ‘Did not the Teaching tell you that a man without backbone is a ponic without miltex? What is your wretched, sordid life to care a curse over? Where in your mind is anything so precious that it should not be carelessly extinguished? Are we not where we desired to be, Tom Brandyholm – in Forwards, near Control? You sick, dispirited thing! I am a man, and like a man I will lie and cheat my way out of this situation. I advise you to do likewise.’

  Brandyholm made no answer. The priest’s outburst meant little to him under the circumstances. It was one thing to tell this woman that the ship had a hidden control room with a captain in, and to bluff that they alone knew the way to it; whether or not that would save their lives was quite another thing.

  ‘Nothing to say?’ the priest asked, still gripping his shirt.

  Before Brandyholm could attempt an answer, the door was flung open, and a man stood there calling for Carappa. Neatly, unobserved, as if he had rehearsed it, Carappa slipped the electrical circuits book out of his own shirt front and down Brandyholm’s. Then he got up slowly and left them without a word.

  He was escorted to a room with two chairs in which sat Viann and a man who announced himself as Master Scott. His cadaverous face bore an expression which might be construed either as integrity or intransigence; a glance at the long fingers which tapped against one cheekbone suggested that if he was a cruel man, he would be cruel with artistry.

  Eloquently, and in suitably vague terms, the priest explained his theory to them.

  ‘If you will trust me,’ he said, ‘trust me and give me power, I will set this ship – for such I assure you it is – at its destination, and we will be free of it and its oppression altogether.’

  He continued falteringly, for it was obvious even to him that his small audience was full of derision and harsh amusement. Silence fell. Under their gaze he fidgeted and rubbed his jowls and muttered to himself. They continued to stare, lips curled with contemptuous enjoyment of his growing discomfiture.

  ‘Because I come of a small tribe you have no faith in me,’ he grumbled.

  ‘Not that,’ said Master Scott, almost with kindness. ‘You have at least proved something we were anxious to know – that you are a true native of this ship. I may explain that remark later.’

  ‘You see, in Forwards we have known for generations that this is a ship,’ Viann said. Her manner was more human now. ‘This control room you speak of in such indefinite fashion was actually found some while ago. But the controls are wrecked, ruined, and there was no captain – nor anyone we could train as captain. These facts are not common knowledge: it is better people should remain in ignorance of the world in which they live.’

  ‘I will be captain! I will see us all safe!’ burst out Carappa.

  ‘You are talking like a fool, man,’ said Master Scott. ‘You are unaware of the vast issues involved. It might possibly be instructive for you to see this control room. Come along with us.’

  As they made their way along a corridor – the corridors here were immaculately clean and free of all ponic plants – Viann sketched in a few facts she thought Carappa was capable of understanding. ‘The blackness of Nothingness, Written upon the manuscript of the Universe, And punctuated with Stars’ was a sentence from a religious poem which he knew. This Viann tried to translate into scientific terms for him, told him of suns and planets, of the distances between planetary systems and of a metal ship constructed to travel between them.

  She spoke of the planet Earth, where the ship was built. She spoke of the launching of the ship and of its travelling at a velocity a twentieth that of light towards the planetary system Procyon.

  ‘How do you know all this?’ cried Carappa. As he listened the tears had begun to stream from his eyes, and now he flung up his hands in dismay. The world was suddenly more awesome than he dreamed: something too big ever to control.

  ‘You must understand that some terrible catastrophe happened in the ship, thwarting the ideas and ideals of its launchers,’ the slender girl told him.

  ‘That indeed I know … some terrible wrong of our forefathers.’

  ‘Some records have survived. You understand that less than a quarter of the ship is accessible to us. All the same, we have pieced these facts together.’

  The priest passed a hand over his grey face. ‘But – ’ he began. ‘No, it doesn’t matter …’

  ‘Here is the control room,’ Master Scott said quietly. Producing a sonic key, he slid open a panel door; as they passed through it, it closed behind them.

  The control room was not large, although it had once been impressive in its functionalism. It was shaped much like a segment of orange, the long curve before them from ceiling to floor being ribbed vertically at intervals. Carappa swung his head slowly from side to side like an animal in pain, as he took it in.

  ‘And where are the stars?’ he asked.

  ‘Behind there, we think.’ Viann indicated the ribbed wall. ‘But if those are shutters we no longer have the power to withdraw them. They are firmly locked in place.’

  ‘No longer have the power …’ Carappa echoed. His tears were running again as he paced up and down. ‘I am only a poor provincial priest and I feel very humble – ’

  ‘Stop dramatising yourself, man,’ Scott said sharply. ‘Take your mind off your own ego and look instead at these.’

  He swept a hand eloquently over the semi-circular bank of controls. The whole structure was a ruinous, coagulated mass; it had been destroyed by heat and acid till not a switch or dial remained int
act.

  ‘This can never be repaired,’ he said gravely.

  They stood isolated together in the middle of the floor, a sense of their helplessness suddenly giving them a need for kinship.

  ‘It is worse than you thought, priest?’ Viann asked.

  He nodded dumbly, and finally said, ‘This voyage to Procyon – it would take several generations?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘The seventh generation would be young and fit to colonise any planet they reached.’

  ‘Only seven? Should the ship – how should I say – ’ He paused. He was weary. Again he dragged a heavy hand across his face. ‘Should we not be at Procyon now?’

  Master Scott said, ‘We have a log book of an early captain of the ship we could show you. The ship reached the Procyon system and actually found a habitable planet.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘It landed half the people as colonists, took in fresh stocks of water – which had apparently run short – and began back for home, for Earth, again.’

  Once more the silence.

  As if compelled to probe into something he had no wish to discover, the priest said, ‘And this journey back – another seven generations?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Slowly he rephrased a question he had already asked: ‘Should we not be back at Earth now?’

  ‘We should,’ said the girl. Her face tilted up towards his as she added through clenched teeth, ‘We have evidence that twenty-two generations have passed since the ship left Procyon.’

  For a moment he did not grasp her meaning, asking, ‘Then where are we?’

  In the wide room her quiet answer, ‘Lost,’ was almost lost.

  Steadying himself, Carappa said dully, ‘You may ask your men to kill me now.’

  IV

  For some while after the priest was taken from them, Tom Brandyholm and Bob Crooner sat quietly in their cell. Trepidation pinned Brandyholm where he was, slumped against one wall; his entire fibre seemed to have dissolved into a sort of watery paralysis. He did not recognise a form of nervous disease which had carried off a number of his acquaintances; in the unprecedented conditions of the ship, its circumscribed inhabitants perished easily from inner tensions.