Brian Aldiss: Non-Stop

With room for once to reach something like their full stature, the ponies on the lower level had grown up into thin trees, arching overhead. Complain slipped to the brink of the drop, peering down through the tall ponics. An animal moved down there, rooting contentedly; he could see no litter, although the squealing had sounded like the cries of small creatures.

As he worked cautiously down the slope, also overwhelmed with the ubiquitous tangle, he felt a momentary pang for the life he was about to take. A pig’s life! He squashed the pang at once; the Teaching did not approve of ‘softness’.

There were three piglets beside the sow. Two were black and one brown: shaggy, long-legged creatures like wolves, with prehensile noses and scoop jaws. The sow obligingly turned a broadflank for the readying arrow. She raised her head suspiciously and probed with her little eye through the poles round her.

‘Roy! Roy! Help –’

The cry came piercingly from above: Gwenny’s voice, raised to the striking pitch of fear.

The pig family took fright instantly, breaking through the stalks at speed, the young determinedly keeping up their mother’s pace. Their noise did not quite cover the sounds of a scuffle above the hunter’s head.

Complain did not hesitate. At the startlement of Gwenny’s first cry, he had dropped his arrow. Without attempting to pick it up, he whipped the bow over his shoulder, pulled out his dazer and dashed back up the slope of Sternstairs. But a stretch of uphill tangle is not good running ground. When he got to the top, Gwenny was gone.

A crashing sounded to his left and he ran that way. He ran doubled up, making himself as small a target as possible, and was rewarded by the sight of two bearded men bearing Gwenny off. She was not struggling; they must have knocked her unconscious.

It was the third man Complain did not see who nearly settled him. This man had dropped behind his two companions, stepping back into the stalks to cover their retreat. Now he set an arrow whipping back along the corridor. It twanged past Complain’s ear. He dropped instantly, avoiding a second arrow, and grovelled quickly back along the trail. Being dead helped nobody.

Silence now, the usual crumbling noise of insane plant growth. Being alive helped nobody either. The facts hit him one by one and then altogether. He had lost the pigs; he had lost Gwenny; he would have to face the council and explain why they were now a woman short. Shock for a moment obscured the salient fact: he had lost Gwenny. Complain did not love her, often he hated her; but she was his, necessary.

Comfortingly, anger oiled up in his mind, drowning the other emotions. Anger! This was the salve the Teaching taught. Wrenching up handfuls of root-bound soil, he pelted them from him, distorting his face, working up the anger, creaming it up like batter in a bowl. Mad, mad, mad… he flung himself flat, beating the ground, cursing and writhing. But always quietly.

At last the fit worked itself off, and he was left empty. For a long time he just sat there, head in hand, his brain washed as bare as tidal mud. Now there was nothing for it but to get up and go back to Quarters. He had to report. In his head his weary thoughts ran.

I could sit here forever. The breeze so slight, never changing its temperature, the light only seldom dark. The ponics rearing up and failing, decaying round me. I should come to no harm but death …

Only if I stay alive can I find the something missed, the big something. Something I promised myself as a kid. Perhaps now I’ll never find it, or Gwenny could have found it for me — no she couldn’t: she was a substitute for it, admit it. Perhaps it does not exist. But when something so big has non-existence, that in itself is existence. A hole. A wall. As the priest says, there’s been a calamity .

I can almost imagine something. It’s big. Big as… you couldn’t have anything bigger than the world or it would be the world. World, ship, earth, planet… other people’s theories, no concern of mine: theories solve nothing. Mere unhappy muddles, more unhappy muddles, middles, mutters .

Get up, you weak fool .

He got himself up. If there was no reason for returning to Quarters, there was equally no reason for sitting here. Possibly what most delayed his return was the foreknowledge of all the practised indifference there: the guarded look away, the smirk at Gwenny’s probable fate, the punishment for her loss. He headed slowly back through the tangle.

Complain whistled before coming into view of the clearing in front of the barricade, was identified, and entered Quarters. During the short period of his absence a startling change had taken place; even in his dull state, he did not fail to notice it.

That clothing was a problem in the Greene tribe the great variety of dress clearly demonstrated. No two people dressed alike, from necessity rather than choice, individuality not being a trait fostered among them. The function of dress in the tribe was less to warm the body than to serve, Janus-faced, as guard of modesty and agent of display; and to be a rough and ready guide to social standing. Only the élite , the Guards, the hunters and people like the valuer, could usually manage something like a uniform. The rest muddled by with a variety of fabrics and skins.

But now the drab and the old in costume were as bright as the newest. The lowliest blockhead of a labourer sported flaring green rags!

‘What the devil’s happening here, Butch?’ Complain asked a passing man.

‘Expansion to your ego, friend. The guards found a cache of dye earlier. Get yourself a soak! There’s going to be a honey of a celebration.’

Further on, a crowd was gathered, chattering excitedly. A series of stoves were ranged along the deck; over them, like so many witches’ cauldrons, boiled the largest utensils available. Yellow, scarlet, pink, mauve, black, navy blue, skyblue, green and copper, the separate liquids boiled, bubbled and steamed, and round them churned the people, dipping one garment here, another there. Through the thick steam their unusual animation sounded shrilly.

This was not the only use to which the dye was being put. Once it had been decreed that the dye was no use to the council, the Guards had thrown the bags out for anyone to have. Many bags had been slit open and their contents thrown against walls or floor. Now the whole village was decorated with round bursts or slashes or fans of bright colour.

Dancing had started. In still wet clothes, trailing rainbows which merged into brown puddles, women and men joined hands and began to whirl about the open spaces. A hunter jumped on to a box, beginning to sing. A woman in a yellow robe leapt up with him, clapping her hands. Another rattled a tambourine. More and more joined in the throng, singing, stamping round the cauldrons, up the deck, turning about, breathlessly but gladly. They were drunk on colour: most of them had hardly known it before.

Now the artificers and some of the Guards, aloof at first, joined in too, unable to resist the excitement in the humid air. The men were pouring in from the fieldrooms, sneaking back from the various barricades, eager for their share of pleasure.

Complain eyed it all dourly, turned on his heel and went to report to the Lieutenancy.

An officer heard his story in silence and curtly ordered him before Lieutenant Greene himself.

Losing a woman could be a serious matter. The Greene tribe comprised some nine hundred souls, of which nearly half were under age and only about one hundred and thirty were women. Mating duels were the commonest form of trouble in Quarters.

He was marched in front of the Lieutenant. Guard-flanked, the old man sat at an ancient desk, eyes carefully guarded under grizzled eyebrows. Without a movement or sign he conveyed displeasure.