Brian Aldiss - Non-Stop

‘Laur, my dear,’ he said. ‘How refreshing to find you waiting for us. I must get some ale — we have to celebrate the capture of another Outsider — and this one won’t get away.’

Smiling at him, she said, ‘I hope you’re also going to eat, Roger.’

‘You know my foolish stomach,’ he said, beckoning an orderly and beginning to tell her at once the details of Fermour’s capture. Not very happily, Complain took a seat by them; he could not help feeling jealous of Scoyt’s easy way with Vyann, although the investigator was twice her age. Ale was set before them, and food, a strange white meat that tasted excellent; it was wonderful too, to eat without being surrounded with midges, which in Deadways formed an unwanted sauce to many a mouthful; but Complain picked at his plate with little more enthusiasm than Scoyt showed.

‘You look dejected,’ Vyann remarked, interrupting Scoyt, ‘when you should be feeling cheerful. It is better here, isn’t it, than locked up in a cell with Fermour?’

‘Fermour was a friend,’ Complain said, using the first excuse for his unhappiness that entered his head.

‘He was also an Outsider,’ Scoyt said heavily. ‘He exhibited all their characteristics. He was slow, rather on the weighty side, saying little… I’m beginning to be able to detect them as soon as I look at them.’

‘You’re brilliant, Roger,’ Vyann said, laughing. ‘How about eating your fish?’ And she put a hand over his affectionately.

Perhaps it was that which sparked Complain off. He flung his fork down.

‘Rot your brilliance!’ he said. ‘What about Marapper? — he was no alien and you killed him. Do you think I can forget that? Why should you expect any help from me after killing him?’

Waiting tensely for trouble to start, Complain could see other people turning from their meal to look at him. Scoyt opened his mouth and then shut it again, staring beyond Complain as a heavy hand fell on the latter’s shoulder.

‘Mourning for me is not only foolish but premature,’ a familar voice said. ‘Still taking on the world single-handed, eh, Roy?’

Complain turned, amazed, and there stood the priest, beaming, scowling, rubbing his hands. He clutched Marapper’s arm incredulously.

‘Yes, I, Roy, and no other: the great subconscious rejected me — and left me confoundedly cold. I hope your scheme worked, Master Scoyt?’

‘Excellently, Priest,’ Scoyt said. ‘Eat some of this beastly indigestible food and explain yourself to your friend, so that he will look at us less angrily.’

‘You were dead!’ Complain said.

‘Only a short Journey,’ Marapper said, seating himself and stretching out for the ale jug. ‘This witch doctor, Master Scoyt here, thought up an uncomfortable way of testing you and Fermour. He painted my head with rat’s blood and laid me out with some beastly drug to stage a death scene for your benefit.’

Just a slight overdose of chloral hydrate,’ said Scoyt, with a secretive smile.

‘But I touched you — you were cold,’ Complain protested.

‘I still am,’ Marapper said. ‘It’s the effects of the drug. And what would be that beastly antidote your men shot into me?’

‘Strychnine, I believe it’s called,’ Scoyt said.

‘Very unpleasant. I’m a hero, no less, Roy: always a saint, and now a hero as well. The schemers also condescended to give me a hot coffee when I came round; I never tasted anything so good in Quarters… But this ale is better.’

His eyes met Complain’s still dazed ones over the rim of the mug. He winked, and belched with charming deliberation.

‘I’m no ghost, Roy,’ he said. ‘Ghosts don’t drink.’

Before they had finished the meal, Master Scoyt was looking fretful. With a muttered apology, he left them.

‘He works too hard,’ Vyann said, her eyes following him out of the hall. ‘We must all work hard. Before we sleep, you must be put in the picture and told our plans, for we shall be busy next wake.’

‘Ah,’ Marapper said eagerly, clearing his bowl, ‘that is what I want to hear. You understand my interest in this whole matter is purely theological, but what I’d like to know is, what do I get out of it?’

‘First we are going to exorcise the Outsiders,’ she smiled. ‘Suitably questioned, Fermour should yield up their secret hiding place. We go there and kill them, and then we are free to concentrate on unravelling the riddles of the ship.’

This she said quickly, as if anxious to avoid questioning on that point, and went on at once to usher them out of the dining-room and along several corridors. Marapper, now fully himself again, took the chance to tell Complain of their abortive search for the Control Room.

‘So much has changed,’ Vyann complained. They were passing through a steel companionway whose double doors, now open, allowed egress from deck to deck. She indicated them lightly, saying: ‘These doors, for instance — in some places they are open, in some closed. And all the ones along Main Corridor are closed — which is fortunate, otherwise every marauder aboard ship would make straight for Forwards. But we cannot open or shut the doors at will, as the Giants must have been able to do when they owned the ship. As they stand now, so they have stood for generations; but somewhere must be a lever which controls them all. We are so helpless. We control nothing.’

Her face was tense, the pugnacity of her jaw more noticeable. With a flash of intuition which surprised him, Complain thought, ‘She’s getting an occupational disease like Scoyt’s, because she’s identifying her job with him.’ Then he doubted his own perceptions and, with a terrifying mental picture of the great ship with them all in it hurtling forever on its journey, had to admit the facts were enough to worry anyone. But it was still with the idea of checking her reactions that he asked Vyann, ‘Are you and Master Scoyt the only ones working on this problem?’

‘For hem’s sake, no!’ she said. ‘We’re only subordinates. A group calling itself the Survival Team has recently been constituted, and it and all other Forwards officers apart from guard officers are also devoting attention to the problem. In addition, two of the Council of Five are in charge of it; one of them you met, Priest — Councillor Zac Deight, the tall, longhaired man. The other of them I’m taking you to see now — Councillor Tregonnin. He is the librarian. He must explain the world to you.’

So it was that Roy Complain and the priest came to their first astronomy lesson. Tregonnin, as he talked to them, hopped about the room from object to object; he was almost ludicrously small and nervous. Although he was neat in a womanish way, the room he ruled over was heaped with lookers and miscellaneous bric-à-brac in disorderly fashion. Confusion had here been brought to a fine art. Tregonnin explained first that until very recently in Forwards — as was the rule still in Quarters — anything like a looker or a video had been destroyed, either from superstition or from a desire to preserve the power of the rulers by maintaining the ignorance of the ruled.

‘That, no doubt, was how the idea of the ship became lost to begin with,’ Tregonnin said, strutting in front of them. ‘And that is why what you see assembled round you represents almost all the records intact in the area of Forwards. The rest has perished. What remains allows us only a fragment of the truth.’

As the councillor began his narrative, Complain forgot the odd gestures with which he accompanied it. He forgot everything but the wonder of the tale as it had been pieced together, the mighty history patched up in this little room.

Through the space in which their world moved, other worlds also moved — two other sorts of worlds, one called sun, from which sprang heat and light, one called planet. The planets depended on the suns for heat and light. At one planet attached to a sun called Sol lived people; this planet was called Earth and the people lived all over the outside of it, because the inside was solid and had no light.