Brian Aldiss - Non-Stop

‘My woman was killed in the fight last night,’ he said. ‘She was torn to bits — ugh, you never heard such screams! I couldn’t get to her. I just couldn’t get to her. She’d have cleaned this muck up by now. Perhaps you’d like to do it for me?’

‘We will discuss your proposals and then leave as soon as possible,’ Vyann said tightly.

‘What was it about this fight that has scared you so, Gregg?’ Complain asked.

‘“Captain” to you,’ his brother said. ‘Nobody calls me Gregg to my face. And understand, I’m not scared: nothing’s ever scared me yet. I’m only thinking of my tribe. If we stay here we’ll be killed, sure as shame. We’ve got to move, and Forwards is as safe a place as any to move to. So –’ he sat wearily on the bed and waved to his brother to do the same — ‘It’s not safe here any more. Men we can fight, but not rats.’

‘Rats?’ Vyann echoed.

‘Rats, yes, my beauty,’ Gregg said, baring his fangs for emphasis. ‘Great big dirty rats, that can think and plan and organize like men. Do you know what I’m talking about, Roy?’

Complain was pale.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve had them running over me. They signal to each other, and dress in rags, and capture other animals.’

‘Oh, you know them, do you? Surprising… You know more than I credited you with. They’re the menace, the rat packs, the biggest menace on the ship. They’ve learnt to co-operate and attack in formation — that’s what they did last sleep when they fought us — that’s why we’re getting out. We wouldn’t be able to beat them off again if they came in strength.’

‘This is extraordinary!’ Vyann exclaimed. ‘We’ve had no such attacks in Forwards.’

‘Maybe not. Forwards is not the world,’ Gregg said grimly. He told them his theory, that the rat packs kept to Deadways because there they found the solitary humans whom they could attack and destroy without interference. Their latest raid was partly evidence of increasing organization, partly an accident because they had not at the outset realized the strength of Gregg’s band. Deciding he had said enough, Gregg changed the subject abruptly.

His plans for coming into Forwards were simple, he said. He would retain his group, numbering about fifty, as an autonomous unit which would not mix with the people of Forwards; they would spend their wakes as they spent them now, skirmishing through Deadways, returning only for sleeps. They would be responsible for the guarding of Forwards from Outsiders, Giants, rats and other raiders.

‘And in return?’ Complain asked.

‘In return, I must keep the right to punish my own folk,’ Gregg said. ‘And everyone must address me as Captain.’

‘Surely rather a childish stipulation?’

‘You think so? You never knew what was good for you. I’ve got here in my possession an old diary which proves that I — and you, of course — are descended from a Captain of this ship. His name was Captain Complain — Captain Gregory Complain. He owned the whole ship. Imagine that if you can…’

Gregg’s face was suddenly lit with wonder, then the curtain of surliness fell again. Behind it was a glimpse of a human trying to come to terms with the world. Then he was once more a scruffy brute, sitting on bandages. When Vyann asked him how old the diary was, he shrugged his shoulders, said he did not know, said he had never scanned more than the title page of the thing — and that, Complain guessed shrewdly, would have taken him some while.

‘The diary’s in the locker behind you,’ Gregg said. ‘I’ll show it you some time — if we come to terms. Have you decided about that?’

‘You really offer us little to make the bargain attractive, Brother,’ Complain replied. ‘This rat menace, for instance — for your own motives you are over-estimating it.’

‘You think so?’ Gregg stood up. ‘Then come and have a look here. Hawl, you stay and keep an eye on the lady — what we’re going to see is no sight for her.’

He led Complain along a desolate muddle of corridor, saying as they went how sorry he was to have to leave this hideout. The ancient explosion and a chance arrangement of closed inter-deck doors had given his band a fortress only approachable through the gashed roof by which Complain and Vyann had entered. Still talking — and now beyond his habitual surliness were tokens that he felt some pleasure at the sight of his brother — Gregg burst into a cupboard-like room.

‘Here’s an old pal for you,’ he said, with a sweeping gesture of introduction.

The announcement left Complain unprepared for what he saw. On a rough and dirty couch lay Ern Roffery, the valuer. He was barely recognizable. Three fingers were missing, and half the flesh of his face; one eye was gone. Most of the superb moustache had been chewed away. It needed nobody to tell Complain that this was the work of the rats — he could see their teeth-marks on a protruding cheek bone. The valuer did not move.

‘Shouldn’t be surprised if he’s made the Journey,’ Gregg said carelessly. ‘Poor cur’s been in continual pain. Half his chest is eaten away.’

He shook Roffery’s shoulder roughly, raised his head and let it drop back on to the pillow.

‘Still warm — probably unconscious,’ he said. ‘But this’ll show you what we’re up against. We picked this hero up last wake, several decks away. He said the rats had finished him. It was from him I heard about you — he recognized me, poor cur. Not a bad fellow.’

‘One of the best,’ Complain said. His throat was so tight he could scarcely speak; his imagination was at work — involuntarily — picturing this horrible thing happening. He could not drag his eyes from Roffery’s ravaged face. In a daze he stood there while his brother kept talking. The rats had picked Roffery up in the swimming pool; while he was still helpless from the effects of the Giants’ gassing, they had loaded him on to a sort of stretcher and dragged him to their warrens. And there he had been questioned, under torture.

The warren was between broken decks, where no man could reach. It was packed stiff with rats, and with an extraordinary variety of bric-à-brac they had scavenged and built into dens and caves. Roffery saw their captive animals, existing under appalling conditions. Many of these helpless beasts were deformed, like human mutations, and some of them had the ability to probe with their minds into other minds. These mutated creatures were set by the rats to question Roffery.

Complain shuddered. He recalled his disgust when the rabbit had bubbled its insane interrogations into his mind. Roffery’s experience, long protracted, had been infinitely worse. Whatever they learnt from him — and they must have acquired much knowledge of the ways of men — Roffery learnt something from them: the rats knew the ship as no man ever had, at least since the catastrophe; the tangles were no obstacle to them, for they travelled by the low roads between decks, which was why men saw them rarely, travelled by the ten thousand pipes and sewers and tubes that were the great ship’s arteries.

‘Now you see why I’m not happy here,’ Gregg said. ‘I don’t want my flesh chewed off my skull. These rats are the end as far as I’m concerned. Let’s get back to your woman. You picked lucky with her, brother. My woman was no beauty — the cartilage in her legs was all bone, so she could not bend her knees. But… it didn’t worry her in bed.’

Vyann seemed content when they returned to her; she was drinking a hot liquid. Only Hawl looked guilty and saw fit to explain that the bloody bandages had made her ill, so he had gone to fetch her a drink.

‘There’s a drop left for you, Captain,’ the small-head added. ‘Drain it off like a good fellow.’