The Complete Short Stories- The 1950s - Volume One

by Aldiss, Brian

  He looked hopelessly at the book Carappa had left. Most of it consisted of unreadable diagrams and instructions, obviously of a technical nature. Here and there was a sentence – such as ‘The daily six-hour dim-down of all inessential lighting, established to give an illusion of night, will be the period normally devoted to routine maintenance’ – which seemed to make sense without being really comprehensible. Realising how little he understood of the world, Brandyholm began to pace rapidly up and down. Confinement! It was killing him.

  He flung himself violently at the door, hammering and scratching on it, screaming.

  In a kind of daze, he felt Crooner pull him over onto his back.

  ‘Got to get away, got to get away, Bob!’ he cried. ‘Can’t we escape – get back to the tribe?’

  ‘Lie quiet and shut up,’ Crooner advised grimly. ‘Wait your chance. It’ll come, with luck.’

  They waited, Brandyholm in a kind of stupor. When the guards came again and called for him, they had to haul him to his feet. He was dragged roughly along corridors and finally pushed into a small room. A uniformed man with a lean face confronted him.

  ‘I am Master Scott,’ the man said. ‘Expansion to your ego.’

  Brandyholm, trying to focus on him through swimming vision, did not reply. A swung hand, catching him sharply on the cheek, cleared his head with remarkable efficiency.

  ‘Expansion to your ego,’ Master Scott repeated menacingly.

  ‘At your expense,’ replied Brandyholm feebly.

  ‘That’s better. What’s the matter with you? Are you ill?’

  ‘Migraine.’

  ‘You confess regularly?’

  ‘When my priest, Carappa, is at liberty.’

  ‘Then you should not suffer guilt-attacks which produce migraines,’ answered Scott, ignoring Brandyholm’s thrust. Changing his tone, he said, ‘I have to ask you some questions. It would be wise to answer carefully. First: where were you born?’

  ‘In Quarters.’

  ‘Proof of that?’

  ‘What do you call proof? Go and catch my mother: she’s still alive: she’ll tell you.’

  ‘Have you any reasons why your life should be spared?’

  ‘What reason have you to kill me?’

  Master Scott made an impatient gesture. ‘I’m trying to be patient. Reasons, quickly. Have you any knowledge?’

  ‘What if I have?’

  The words were hardly out of his mouth when his mouth was slammed shut by a palm under his chin. He was pinned against the wall, struggling, while a long finger flicked unpleasantly against his windpipe.

  ‘Understand this,’ Scott said, synchronising words with flicks, ‘Everyone on shipboard is in a damn beastly situation. It’s a ship, see, and it’s headed hell-knows-where, and there are some queer things going on aboard – never mind that – you wouldn’t understand. What you can understand, is that we’re all expendable, and if you can’t show you’re any use you’re bound for the Long Jump. Now – talk.’

  Sick, sweating, Brandyholm said the first thing that came into his head: ‘The daily six-hour dim-down of all unessential lighting, established to give a delusion of night, will be the period devoted to maintenance.’

  He was instantly released. Instantly, he slumped to the floor.

  ‘What’s that?’ Scott asked, stirring him slightly with one foot. He wrote it down in a notebook while Brandyholm repeated it.

  ‘Is it important?’ Brandyholm asked.

  ‘Could be. Where did you get it from?’ He listened intently while the other explained about the book of circuits, which he had left in the cell.

  The silence which followed was broken by the entry of an excited man who grabbed Scott’s arm and said, ‘You’re needed at once at the barricades! An attack is developing. Everyone is wanted.’

  ‘I’m coming,’ Scott said. Without another glance at Brandyholm, they ran from the room. The latter took no advantage of their disappearance beyond arranging himself more comfortably on the floor. So deeply had a feeling of defeat crept into him that he scarcely realised he was alone; when he did realise it, he was at first unable to do anything about it. Gradually, however, he fostered a strengthening rage in himself. He had been tricked, trapped, maligned, persecuted, bullied, he who deserved only kindness … Tears stood in his eyes, and he hauled himself to his feet. He was going to show them. An exhilarating urge to clamp his hands round somebody’s throat seized him.

  The door by which Scott and the other man had left proved to be locked. The opposite wall also had a door, which opened into a sort of ante-room. Passing through this, Brandyholm came into a deserted corridor, at the far end of which, beyond a gap, he could see ponics growing. He had never been so grateful for the sight of those growths in his life. Once in among them, escape should be easy, and he could find his way back to Quarters. Here was the luck Crooner had spoken of.

  He began to run down the corridor. There was one room to pass with an open door; he sprinted past it, glancing in as he did so. What he saw made him halt and turn back. Lying on a couch just inside the room, relaxed as if he were merely sleeping, lay Carappa. His huge body sprawled untidily, his legs were crossed, and face bore the expression of a well-fed bulldog – and blood was clotted over his hair and temple.

  ‘Carappa!’ Brandyholm exclaimed, leaning forward and touching the priest’s arm. It was stone cold.

  The teaching laid down strict instructions on the ceremony to be observed over the dead. Death has a sting, said the Teaching, for those who observe it; it strikes fear into their hearts. This fear must not be allowed to permeate the subconscious: it must be acted out of the system at once, in a complex ritual of expressions of terror. So firmly had this principle been instilled into Brandyholm that, abandoning all thought of escape, he snapped straight away into the first gesture of prostration.

  ‘I’m afraid we must interrupt,’ said a cool female voice behind him. He jumped round. Viann and two guards with levelled dazers confronted him. Her lips were beautiful but her smile was unnerving.

  ‘Well, warrior?’ Crooner asked defiantly, looking up at the man who stood on the threshold of his cell, his thumbs tucked theatrically in his belt.

  ‘Your turn for interrogation. Look lively,’ the man said. He was an ugly looking brute: Crooner thought it wise to jump to his feet at once.

  He was marched along the course Carappa and Brandyholm had taken earlier. Now he too faced Master Scott. They exchanged greetings in surly fashion as the guard left them to confront each other

  ‘Where were you born?’ Scott snapped.

  ‘Somewhere in the tangles.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My parents were fugitives from their tribe – one of the little Midway tribes. My father ran amok, I believe. It often happens. I was fully grown when I joined the Greene tribe.’

  ‘Have you proof of all that?’ Scott asked, elongating his mouth to a mere slit.

  ‘Why do you need to ask these questions?’

  Scott caught him a ringing slap across the face and repeated in the same dead level tone, ‘Have you proof of all that?’

  Crooner put his hand up to his cheek, and then suddenly pounced with arms extended. He was not quick enough. Master Scott chopped his arms expertly and ducked to one side; as he ducked, he produced a short rubber cosh, with which he smashed a blow behind Crooner’s knee. Crooner collapsed onto the floor.

  ‘Your reflexes are too slow,’ Scott said. ‘You should easily have been able to take me by surprise then.’

  ‘I was always called slow in Quarters.’

  ‘How long have you been with the Greene tribe?’ Scott demanded, standing over Crooner and waggling the cosh as if eager to use it again.

  ‘Oh – twice a hundred dozen sleep-wakes.’

  ‘We do not use your primitive method of calculating time here. We call four sleep-wakes one day. That would make your stay in Quarters six hundred days. A long time in a man’s life.’

  Crooner made no
reply to this. At that juncture an excited man burst into the room and grabbed Scott by the arm.

  ‘You’re needed at once at the barricades!’ he exclaimed. ‘An attack is developing. Everyone is needed.’

  ‘Right, I’m coming,’ Scott said. Without another glance at Crooner, they hurried from the room, leaving him sprawled on the floor.

  In some alarm, Brandyholm looked up from the spyhole through which he had been observing this interview.

  ‘So the business about the attack at the barricades is just bluff to get Master Scott out of the room?’ he asked Viann.

  She nodded. ‘There are no barricades.’

  ‘Why?’

  She closed her spy-hole before answering. When she did reply, her voice was slow and held none of the confidence her appearance suggested. ‘For the final part of this rough test we have devised for you, of course. Now that you have passed this test, I can explain.’

  ‘It was not – not a bravery test, was it?’

  ‘If it was you would hardly have passed it, would you?’ Viann was inspecting him closely, and he found himself looking reluctantly into her eyes. They were very clear and held an alertness which sent nervous excitement through him. Finally she said, ‘Listen, Tom Brandyholm, this ship has been travelling a long time – too long, far too long. It is slowly becoming a ghost ship. Two chief problems confront us; one you can guess: how to control the ship, and make it stop somewhere. If it does not stop, only death can await us.’ She stopped there, her eyes brooding, and finally said, ‘That problem seems insuperable … But the other problem is one we can deal with. There is a strange race on this ship – a new race that was not here before.’

  ‘You mean – a new tribe, like the Greene tribe?’ he asked, looking anxiously at her strained beauty (so much more desirable than Gwenny had ever been).

  ‘No, nothing like that!’ she said impatiently. ‘A super-natural race, masquerading as men! You know the ponic tangles, don’t you?’

  Brandyholm nodded dumbly, recalling the thickets they had ploughed through before being captured.

  ‘In those tangles,’ Viann continued, ‘a new race has generated itself, or so I believe. Half the ship is filled with that silent, impenetrable ponic growth, and somewhere, somewhere this race has been born. They come in from their secret centre to spy upon us and learn our ways. But although they try to, they do not and cannot behave like us in all respects. All strangers who are found near Forwards are now subjected to tests, devised to weed out these aliens. You have just undergone your test. Crooner has now almost finished his.’

  How do you tell these – aliens?’ Brandyholm asked.

  ‘For one thing, they seem to be longer lived than we; consequently, their actions are slower. They seem calmer in manner, more phlegmatic.’

  She would have said more, but Master Scott entered the room. Triumph lent his face an unaccustomed liveliness. He looked searchingly at Brandyholm, and then said, ‘Your friend Bob Crooner is proved to be an alien. It is definite.’

  ‘What?’ exclaimed Brandyholm.

  ‘I suspected as much,’ Viann said. ‘We watched his interview from the spyholes here.’

  ‘How did you prove it?’ Brandyholm asked.

  ‘We’ve just had the final proof. When I left him alone, he made out by the other door, just as you did. He saw Carappa, but hardly paused. Instead, he hurried on and escaped into the ponic tangle.’

  ‘How does that prove anything?’

  ‘You, when you were escaping, still had to stop and perform the fear ceremony over the dead. Why? Because from birth all of us on the ship are taught that ceremony as routine. Not so Crooner! He scarcely broke his stride. You see, his upbringing has been – different. He is of the alien company.’

  ‘He was always different,’ Brandyholm muttered reflectively. ‘Cheerful … slow … saying little.’ Then he bowed his head, shaken to think he had lived with the man and cautiously liked him.

  ‘Crooner is now being followed by our men,’ Scott continued. ‘He will lead them to the secret haunts of the aliens. And then – we will hunt them out and slay them all. My mouth waters at the thought of that killing. You will help us, Brandyholm?’

  Silence. Viann’s eyes upon him.

  ‘No,’ Brandyholm said. ‘You killed my priest, who was no alien. To the devil with you all.’

  He did not look up, hunched tensely, waiting to be struck. The blow never came. Instead, footsteps came over to him, and a heavy hand fell on his shoulder.

  ‘Mourning for me is not only forbidden but premature, Tom,’ a familiar voice said. ‘Get up, you worm, and spit the world in the face.’

  He looked up, and it was Carappa. He exclaimed the priest’s name, clutching his arm in his incredulity.

  ‘Yes, I, Tom, and confoundedly cold. This witch doctor, Scott here, painted me with rat’s blood and laid me out with some beastly drug to stage a death bed scene for you and – the other.’

  ‘A slight overdose of chloral hydrate,’ said Scott.

  ‘How are you feeling, priest?’ Viann inquired, with scientific curiosity rather than womanly sympathy in her voice.

  ‘Desolate, madam. And what would that beastly antidote be that your men shot into me?’

  ‘Strychnine, I believe it’s called.’

  ‘Very unpleasant. They also condescended to give me a hot coffee; I never tasted anything so good in Quarters.’ He caught Brandyholm’s eye still upon him and said, ‘I’m no ghost, you see Tom. Ghosts don’t drink coffee.’

  ‘I still can’t believe you’re alive!’ Brandyholm gasped.

  ‘Then you are persisting in a particularly irritating brand of foolishness,’ Viann said, moving towards the door. ‘Try to realise that you are no longer a yokel in a jungle outpost; pull yourself together if you wish to live in Forwards. We need wits here. Come on below, everyone. We will eat, and then await a report from Crooner’s trackers. After that, we shall be busy.’

  V

  The meal was excellent, not only in the standard of the food, but in the blessed absence of the swarms of flies which attended every mouthful back in Quarters. It was slightly marred for Brandyholm and Carappa by the presence of the Council of Five, the rulers of Forwards, who came to hear what Master Scott and Viann had discovered. These five worthies paid no attention whatsoever to the two strangers.

  ‘It is just a custom,’ Scott explained airily to Carappa, when the priest commented on this insult after the Five had again withdrawn.

  ‘They should have acknowledged me at least,’ snorted Carappa. ‘Look here, Master Scott, my interest in this whole business is purely theological, but what I want to know is – what do I get out of it?’

  Viann answered the question, smiling sourly.

  ‘So far, you have retained your life, priest: a doubtful benefit, possibly. What other advantages you – and we – everyone – will extract from the situation remains to be seen. But it seems that the electric wiring manual you tried to hide from us – it has been recovered from your erstwhile cell – will be useful. We have what we lacked before: a plan of the ship.’

  ‘You are a man of vigour and brain, priest,’ Scott added. ‘To keep those virtues at our service it is necessary to retain your tongue in your head; please try and keep it to the immediate problem as much as possible.’

  Brandyholm, tired of sitting quietly, said, ‘Why are there no plans of the ship, no controls? How did the ship leave without them?’

  He received a withering glare from the priest. ‘An accident happened,’ the latter said tersely.

  ‘It seems likely the ship left Procyon without the present ponic tangle,’ said Viann. ‘We believe all parts of the ship were clear and could communicate with each other.’

  Carappa struck his fist on the table, rattling the empty dishes. ‘Some terrible wrong of our forefathers!’ he exclaimed.

  There was a brief knock at the door and a messenger entered, giving the customary greeting, which Master Scott returned. He sai
d he was a runner who had gone with the warriors deputed to follow Bob Crooner. Crooner had dived into the ponic tangle but had gone only a few yards before stopping in a side corridor. There he had pulled the ponic stalks aside with his bare hands, torn out their roots and scooped away the nine inches or so of decayed vegetable matter which covered the floor. After a little searching, he located what he was looking for, and opened up a circular hatch. He rapidly climbed down into this and disappeared, closing the hatch after him.

  ‘Well?’ Scott demanded of the runner. ‘And then?’

  ‘I was then despatched with this report, sir,’ said the runner. ‘The warriors stayed guard over the place. In a day, it would be covered by new ponic sprouts.’

  ‘The aliens cannot live under the floor between levels,’ Scott said, frowning. ‘We had better go there straightaway and investigate. What say you, Viann?’

  ‘Ready,’ she said, throwing her head up as if scenting battle, and patting her dazer. ‘You two had better come with us,’ she added to the priest and Brandyholm. The latter looked dubiously at Carappa, who nodded eagerly.

  ‘Take your report to the Council of Five, tell them we have gone ahead and ask them to hold men in readiness,’ Scott snapped to the messenger.

  He left the room at the double, the others following. They ran along a short passage, clattered down a companionway and branched thence into the corridor along which Crooner had escaped. The trail of broken ponics was easy to follow, and in five minutes they stood beside three armed men, gazing down at the round bolt hole.

  ‘Whoever enters there first risks getting shot,’ Viann remarked speculatively.

  ‘Alas that the hole is too small for me to enter at all,’ Carappa said hastily.

  ‘Open it up, you, and go and see what’s down there,’ Master Scott motioned to one of the men.

  ‘Er – yes, sir. Can’t we put the lights out along here?’ the man said, rubbing his hands nervously together.