Brian Aldiss - Non-Stop

This notion scared him a great deal more than hearing Deight pronounce his death sentence had done.

In a sweat of panic, he flicked back the four tongues which kept Zac Deight’s grille in place, slithered the grille along the duct and dropped down into the councillor’s room. Pulling up a table, he climbed on to it and moved the grille back into its proper position. Then he felt safer.

Zac Deight was not dead: Complain’s dazer had been turned only to half power; but he had been at close enough range to receive a shock of sufficient strength to keep him senseless for some while. He looked harmless, even benevolent, huddled on the deck with hair fallen over his ashen forehead. Complain took the councillor’s keys without a stir of compunction, collected his heat gun, unlocked the door, and let himself out into the silent corridor.

At the last moment he paused, turning back into the room to flash his torch up at the grille. Sharp little pink hands grasped the bars, a dozen sharp faces hated down at him. Hair prickling up his neck, Complain gave them the daze. The little burning eyes lost their brilliance at once, the pink hands relaxed their grip.

Squeals following him down the corridor told Complain he had also winged concealed reinforcements.

His ideas flowed fast as he walked. One thing he stubbornly determined: Councillor Deight’s role in this affair, and all that he had said on the strange instrument to Curtis (where was Curtis?) should be mentioned to nobody until he had discussed it with Vyann. They could no longer tell who was on their side and who was not.

‘Just supposing Vyann…’ he began aloud; but he quickly tucked that dread away. There was a point where distrust merged with insanity.

A practical item worried Complain, but he could not quite formulate it. It was something to do with the rescue of Fermour… No, it would have to wait. He was too anxious to reason coolly; he would consider it later. Meanwhile, he wanted to give the heat gun, the welder, as Deight had called it, over to somebody who could make best use of it: Master Scoyt.

The excitement round Scoyt had gloriously increased; he had transferred himself into the centre of a whirlpool of activity.

The barriers between Forwards and Deadways had been broken down. Sweating men busily tore down the barricades, relishing the work of destruction.

‘Take them away!’ Scoyt shouted. ‘We thought they guarded our frontiers, but now that our frontiers are all round us, they are useless.’

Through the broken barriers, the tribe of Gregg came. Ragged and filthy, male or female or hermaphrodite, well or wounded, on foot or on rough stretchers, they docked excitedly among the watching Forwarders. They bore bundles and bedding rolls and boxes and panniers; some pulled crude sledges they had dragged through the ponics; one woman drove her belongings before her on the back of an emaciated sheep. With them all flew the black midges of Deadways. Such was the fever of excitement which simmered over Forwards, that this animated gaggle of squalor was greeted with welcoming smiles and an occasional cheer. The tattered legion waved back. Roffery had been left behind; he was considered near enough dead to make any trouble expended on his account worthless.

One thing at least was clear: the outcasts, wounded though many of them were from their encounter with the rats, were prepared to fight. Every man jack of them was loaded down with dazers, knives and improvised pikes.

Gregg himself, accompanied by his weird henchman, Hawl, was conferring with Scoyt, Pagwam and Councillor Ruskin behind a closed door when Complain arrived on the scene. Without ceremony, he thrust his way into the room. He savoured an unprecedented confidence which even their shouts at his intrusion did not sap.

‘I’ve come to help you,’ he said, facing Scoyt as the natural leader there. ‘I’ve two things for you, and the first is a bit of information. We’ve discovered that there are trapdoors on every level of every deck; that is only one way the Giants and Outsiders can escape. They also have a handy exit in every single room!’

He jumped up on to the table and demonstrated to them how a grille opened. Climbing down again without comment, he enjoyed the surprised look in their faces.

‘That’s something else for you to watch, Master Scoyt,’ he said. And then the point about Fermour’s escape that had been troubling him slid into his mind without effort; instantly, a slice more of the puzzle became clear.

‘Somewhere in the ship, the Giants have a headquarters,’ he said. ‘They took me to it when they caught me, but I don’t know where it is — I was gassed. But obviously it’s in a part of a deck or level cut off from us, deliberately or by design. There are plenty such places in the ship — that’s where we have to look.’

‘We’ve already decided that,’ said Gregg, impatiently. ‘The trouble is, things are in such a muddle, on most decks we don’t know when a bit’s cut off and when it isn’t. An army could be hiding behind any bulkhead.’

‘I’ll tell you one such place near at hand,’ Complain said tensely. ‘ Above the cell Fermour was kept in , on Deck 21.’

‘What makes you think that, Complain?’ Scoyt asked curiously.

‘Deduction. The Giants, as we have realized, went to an enormous amount of trouble to lure everyone away from the corridors so that they could get to Fermour and rescue him via the trap-doors. They could have spared themselves all that bother if they had simply pulled him up through the grille in his cell. It would not have taken them a minute, and they could have remained unseen. Why didn’t they? My guess is, because they couldn’t. Because something on the level above has collapsed, blocking that grille. In other words, there may be chambers up there we have no access to. We ought to see what’s in them.’

‘I tell you there are a hundred such places –’ Gregg began.

‘It certainly sounds worth investigating –’ Councillor Ruskin said.

‘Suppose you’re right, Complain,’ Scoyt interrupted. ‘If the grille’s blocked, how do we get through?’

‘Like this!’ Complain levelled the heat gun at the nearest wall, fanning it horizontally. The wall began to drip away. He switched off power when a ragged archway had formed, and looked challengingly at them. For a moment all were silent.

‘Gawd’s blood!’ Gregg croaked. ‘That’s the thing I gave you.’

‘Yes. And that’s how you use it. It’s not a real weapon, as you thought — it’s a flame projector.’

Scoyt stood up. His face was flushed.

‘Let’s get down to Deck 21,’ he said. ‘Pagwam, keep your men pulling up trap-doors as fast as you can circulate that ring. Complain, you’ve done well. We’ll try that gadget out at once.’

They moved out in a body, Scoyt leading. He gripped Complain’s arm gratefully.

‘Given time, we can pull the damn ship apart with that weapon,’ he said. It was a remark which did not fully register on Complain until much later.

Chaos reigned on the middle level of Deck 21, where Fermour’s cell was. All the manholes were exposed, each being now guarded by a sentry; their covers were flung aside in untidy piles. The few people who lived here — mostly men of the barriers and their families — were evacuating before further trouble came, straggling among the sentries, getting in everyone’s way. Scoyt elbowed his way roughly through them, pushing squeaking children to right and left.

As they flung open Fermour’s cell door, Complain felt a hand on his arm. He turned, and there was Vyann, fresh and bright of eye.

‘I thought you were asleep!’ he exclaimed, smiling with the delight of seeing her again.

‘Do you realize it’s within a watch of waking?’ she said. ‘Besides, I’m told things are about to happen. I had to come and see that you didn’t get into trouble.’