Brian Aldiss - Non-Stop

‘Have you any proof of all this stuff you tell me?’ he asked.

Fermour was pale, tensed, incessantly twisting the heavy ring on his finger.

‘What sort of proof?’ he asked, dry-mouthed.

‘Any sort. Anything about your origins we can check on. We aren’t just a rag-taggle village in Deadways, Fermour. When you drift in from the tangles, we have to know who or what you are… Well?’

‘Marapper the priest will vouch for me.’

‘Marapper’s dead. Besides, I’m interested in someone who knew you as a child: anyone.’ He swung round so that they were face to face. ‘In short, Fermour, we want something you seem unable to give — proof that you’re human!’

‘I’m more human than you, you little –’ As he spoke, Fermour jumped, his fist swinging.

Nimbly, Scoyt skipped back and brought the cosh hard across Fermour’s wrist. Numbness shooting up his arm, Fermour subsided deflatedly, face sour with malice.

‘Your reflexes are too slow,’ Scoyt said severely. ‘You should easily have taken me by surprise then.’

‘I was always called slow in Quarters,’ Fermour muttered, clutching his sleeve.

‘How long have you been with the Greene tribe?’ Scoyt demanded, coming closer to Fermour again and waggling the cosh as if keen to try out another blow.

‘Oh, I lose track of time. Twice a hundred dozen sleepwakes.’

‘We do not use your primitive method of calculating time in Forwards, Fermour. We call four sleep-wakes one day. That would make your stay with the tribe… six hundred days. A long time in a man’s life.’

He stood looking at Fermour as if waiting for something. The door was pushed roughly open and a guard appeared on the threshold, panting.

‘There’s an attack at the barriers, Master Scoyt,’ he cried. ‘Please come at once — you’re needed.’

On his way to the door, Scoyt paused and turned back towards Fermour, grim-faced.

‘Stay there!’ he ordered. ‘I’ll be back as soon as possible.’

In the next room, Complain turned slowly to Vyann. Her dazer had gone back in its holster at her waist.

‘So that tale about the attack at the barriers is just a trick to get Master Scoyt out of the room, is it?’ he said.

‘That’s right,’ she said steadily. ‘See what Fermour does now.’

For a long moment, Complain stood looking into her eyes, caught by them. He was close to her, alone in what she had called the observation room, next to the room in which Fermour now was and Complain had been earlier. Then, pulling himself away in case his heart might be read in his face, Complain turned and fixed his gaze through the peephole again.

He was in time to see Fermour grab a small stool from the side of the room, drag it into the middle, stand on it, and reach up towards the grille that here, as in most apartments, was a feature of the ceiling. His fingers curled helplessly a few inches below the grille. After a few fruitless attempts to jump and stand on tip-toe, Fermour looked round the room in desperation and noticed the other door beyond which lay his pack. Kicking the stool away, he hurried through it, so vanishing from Complain’s sight.

‘He has gone, just as I went,’ Complain said, turning to brave the grey eyes again.

‘My men will pick him up before he gets to the ponics,’ Vyann said carelessly. ‘I have little doubt your friend Fermour is an Outsider, but we shall be certain in a few minutes.’

‘Bob Fermour! He couldn’t be!’

‘We’ll argue about that later,’ she said. ‘In the meantime, Roy Complain, you are a free man — as far as any of us are free. Since you have knowledge and experience, I hope you will help us attack some of our troubles.’

She was so much more beautiful and frightening than Gwenny had ever been. His voice betraying his nervous excitement, Complain said, ‘I will help you in any way I can.’

‘Master Scoyt will be grateful,’ she said, moving away with a sudden sharpness in her voice. It brought him back to realities, and he asked with an equal sharpness what the Outsiders did that made them so feared; for though they had been dreaded by the Greene tribe, it was only because they were strange, and not like men.

‘Isn’t that enough?’ she said. And then she told him of the powers of Outsiders. A few had been caught by Master Scoyt’s various testing methods — and all but one had escaped. They had been thrown into cells bound hand and foot, and sometimes unconscious as well — there to vanish completely; if guards had been in the cells with them, they had been found unconscious without a mark on their bodies.

‘And the Outsider who did not escape?’ Complain asked.

‘He died under torture on the presses. We got nothing from him, except that he came from the ponics.’

She led him from the room. He humped his pack on to his back, walking tiredly by her side, occasionally glancing at her profile, sharp and bright as torchlight. No longer did she appear as friendly as she had a moment ago; her moods seemed capricious, and he hardened himself against her, trying to recall the old Quarters’ attitude to women — but Quarters seemed a thousand sleep-wakes out of date.

On Deck 21, Vyann paused.

‘There is an apartment for you here,’ she said. ‘My apartment is three doors further along, and Roger Scoyt’s is opposite mine. He or I will collect you for a meal shortly.’

Opening the door, Complain looked in.

‘I’ve never seen a room like this before,’ he said impressed.

‘You’ve had all the disadvantages, haven’t you?’ she said ironically, and left him. Complain watched that retreating figure, took off his grimy shoes and went into the room.

It held little luxury, beyond a basin with a tap which actually yielded a slight flow of water and a bed made of coarse fabric rather than leaves. What chiefly impressed him was a picture on the wall, a bright swirl of colour, non-representational, but with a meaning of its own. There was also a mirror, in which Complain found another picture; this one was of a rough creature smirched with dirt, its hair festooned with dried miltex, its clothes torn.

He set to work to change all that, grimly wondering what Vyann must have thought of such a barbarous figure. He scrubbed himself, put on clean clothes from his pack, and collapsed exhausted on the bed — exhausted, but unable to sleep; for at once his brain started racing.

Gwenny had gone, Roffery had gone, Wantage, Marapper, now Fermour, had gone; Complain was on his own. The prospect of a new start offered itself — and the prospect was thrilling. Only the thought of Marapper’s face, gleaming with unction and bonhomie, brought regret.

His mind was still churning when Master Scoyt looked round the door.

‘Come and eat,’ he said simply.

Complain went with him, watching carefully to gauge the other’s attitude towards him, but the investigator seemed too preoccupied to register any attitude at all. Then, looking up and catching Complain’s eye on him, he said, ‘Well, your friend Fermour is proved an Outsider. When he was making for the ponics, he saw the body of your priest and kept straight on. Our sentries had an ambush for him and caught him easily.’

Shaking his head impatiently at Complain’s puzzled look, Scoyt explained, ‘He is not an ordinary human, bred in an ordinary part of the ship, otherwise he would have stopped automatically and made the genuflections of fear before the body of a friend; that ceremony is drummed into every human child from birth. It was your doing that which finally convinced us you were human.’

He sank back into silence until they reached the dining-hall, scarcely greeting the several men and women who spoke to him on the way. In the hall, a few officers were seated, eating. At a table on her own sat Vyann. Seeing her, Scoyt instantly brightened, went over to her and put a hand on her shoulder.