Brian Aldiss - Non-Stop

‘Word has come to me that you have prisoners, Master Scoyt,’ the newcomer said slowly. ‘Have we caught some of Gregg’s men at last?’

‘I fear not, Councillor Deight,’ Scoyt said. ‘They are only three wanderers from Deadways. This is one of them.’

The councillor looked hard at Marapper, who looked away.

‘The other two?’ the councillor prompted.

‘They are in Cell Three, Councillor,’ Scoyt said. ‘We shall question them later. Inspector Vyann and I are testing this prisoner now.’

For a moment, the councillor seemed to hesitate. Then he nodded and quietly withdrew. The priest, impressed, stared after him — and it was rarely the priest was impressed.

‘That’, Scoyt said for Marapper’s benefit, ‘was Councillor Zac Deight, one of our Council of Five. Watch your manners in front of any of them, and particularly in front of Deight.’

Vyann pocketed the priest’s circuit looker. They left the room in time to see the old councillor disappear round the curve of the corridor. Then began a long march towards the extremity of Forwards, where the diagram indicated the controls to be; it would have taken them several sleep-wakes to make the distance had it been uncharted and overgrown with ponics and their attendant obstacles.

Marapper, engrossed though he was with future plans — for the discovery of the ship’s controls would undoubtedly put him in a strong position — kept an interested eye on his surroundings. He soon realized that Forwards was far from being the wonderful place that Deadways’ rumour painted, or that he had supposed at first sight. They passed many people, of whom a good proportion were children. Everyone wore less than in Quarters; the few clothes they had looked washed and neat, and the general standard of cleanliness was good, but bodies were lean, running to bone. Food was obviously short. Marapper surmised shrewdly that being less in contact with the tangles, Forwards could count on fewer hunters than Quarters, and those perhaps of inferior quality. He found also, as they progressed, that though all Forwards, from the barriers at Deck 24 to the dead end at Deck 1, was under Forwards’ sway, only Decks 22 to 11 were occupied, and they but partially.

As they passed beyond Deck 11, the priest saw part of the explanation for this. For three entire decks, the lighting circuits had failed. Master Scoyt switched on a light at his belt, and the three proceeded in semi-darkness. If darkness had been oppressive in Deadways, it was doubly so here, where footsteps rang hollow and nothing stirred. When they circled into Deck 7, and light shone falteringly again, the prospect was no more cheerful. The echo still followed them and devastation lay on all sides.

‘Look at that!’ Scoyt exclaimed, pointing to where a section of wall had been cut entirely away and curled back against the bulkheads. ‘There were once weapons on the ship which could do that! I wish we had something that would cut through a wall. We should soon find our way into space then.’

‘If only windows had been built somewhere, the original purpose of the ship might not have been forgotten,’ Vyann said.

‘According to the plan,’ Marapper remarked, ‘there are large enough windows in the Control Room.’

They fell silent. The surroundings were dreary enough to annihilate all conversation. Most doors stood open; the rooms they revealed became increasingly full of machines, silent, broken, smothered under the dust of generations.

‘Many strange things of which we have no knowledge happen in this ship,’ Scoyt said gloomily. ‘Ghosts are among us, working against us.’

‘Ghosts?’ Marapper asked. ‘You believe in them, Master Scoyt?’

‘What Roger means,’ Vyann said, ‘is that we are confronted with two problems here. There is the problem of the Ship, where it is going, how it is to be stopped; that is the background problem, always with us. The other problem grows; it did not face our great-grandfathers: there is a strange race on this ship that was not here before.’

The priest stared at her. She was glancing carefully into each doorway as they went by; Scoyt was being as cautious. He felt the hair on his neck bristle uncomfortably.

‘You mean — the Outsiders?’ he asked.

She nodded.’ A supernatural race masquerading as men…’ she said. ‘You know, better than we, that three-quarters of the ship is jungle. In the hot muck of the tangles, somewhere, somehow, a new race has been born, masquerading as men. They are not men; they are enemies; they come in from their secret places to spy on us and kill us.’

‘We have to be always on the look-out,’ Scoyt said.

From then on, Marapper also looked in every doorway.

Now the layout changed. The three concentric corridors on each deck became two, their curvature sharpened. Deck 2 consisted of one corridor only with one ring of rooms around it, and in the middle the great hatch at the beginning of Main Corridor, sealed forever. Scoyt tapped it lightly.

‘If this corridor, the only straight one in the ship, were opened up,’ he said, ‘we could walk to Sternstairs at the other end of the ship in less than a wake!’

A closed spiral staircase was now the sole way forward. Heart beating heavily, Marapper led them up it; the Control Room should be at the top if his diagram spoke truth.

At the top, a dim light showed them a small circular room, completely unfurnished, floor bare, walls also bare. Nothing else. Marapper flung himself at the walls, searching for a door. Nothing. He burst into furious tears.

‘They lied!’ he shouted. ‘They lied! We’re all victims of a monstrous… a monstrous…’

But he could think of no word big enough.

Roy Complain yawned boredly and changed his position on the cell floor for the twentieth time. Bob Fermour sat with his back to the wall, rotating a heavy ring endlessly round a finger of his right hand. They had nothing to say to each other; there was nothing to say, nothing to think. It was a relief when the pug-ugly on guard outside thrust his head round the door and summoned Complain with a few well-chosen words of abuse.

‘See you on the Journey,’ Fermour said cheeringly as the other got up to go.

Complain waved to him and followed the guard, his heart beginning to beat more rapidly. He was led, not to the room where Inspector Vyann had interviewed them, but back along the way he had first been brought, into an office on Deck 24, near the barricades. The ugly guard stayed outside and slammed the door on him.

Complain was alone with Master Scoyt. The alien investigator, under the increasing pressure of the trouble piling up about them, looked more eroded than ever. As if his cheeks ached, he supported them with long fingers; they were not reassuring fingers; they could be cruel with artistry, although at present, resting against that haggard countenance, they seemed more the hands of a self-torturer.

‘Expansion to you,’ he said heavily.

‘Expansion,’ Complain replied. He knew he was to be tested, but most of his concern went on the fact that the girl Vyann was absent.

‘I have some questions to ask you,’ Scoyt said. ‘It is advisable to answer them properly, for various reasons. First, where were you born?’

‘In Quarters.’

‘That is what you call your village? Have you any brothers and sisters?’

‘In Quarters we obeyed the Teaching,’ said Complain defiantly. ‘We do not recognize brothers and sisters after we are waist high to our mothers.’

‘To the hull with the T—’ Scoyt stopped himself abruptly, smoothing his brow as one who keeps himself in control only by effort. Without looking up, he said tiredly, ‘How many brothers and sisters would you have to recognize now if you did recognize them?’