Brian Aldiss - The Complete Short Stories - The 1950s

‘… And by so discharging our morbid impulses we may be freed from inner conflict,’ he intoned.

‘And live in psychosomatic purity,’ they replied.

‘So that this unnatural life may be delivered down to journey’s end.’

‘And sanity propagated.’

‘And the ship brought home.’ The priest had the last word.

Carappa scuffled round in the dark, shaking their hands and wishing expansion to their egos. Brandyholm pushed him roughly away.

‘After the mumbo jumbo, perhaps you’ll tell us how you’re going to get us out of here,’ he said. ‘I see now why all this sector was called Dead Ways.’

‘There will be another door near here. After sleep, we will hack our way round the wall till we find it. We can endure a little inconvenience, Tom, for the sake of the power to come.’

In the little clearing they had made, ponic seedlings would already be thrusting up. Even as they lay, the little stems were pushing through all round them. High over their heads, the dead and dying foliage curled against the ceiling and hung down. Although vibrant with the tiny sub-noises of rapid growth, the air was almost unbreathable: the wall of diseased plants cut off the oxygen released by the living ones beyond.

Nevertheless, Brandyholm slept. A nightmare trailed behind his eyes, a nightmare he was unable to recall afterwards, however hard he tried – for the religious held it a sign of ill-health not to remember and confess a bad dream. He only knew that an infinite menace was bearing down upon him, and then he awoke with Bob Crooner’s cries coming thickly to his ears. Rolling over half-drugged by sleep, he came upon two bodies fighting desperately with their bare hands. By the sounds they made, he knew they were Crooner and Wantage, and Wantage was on top. He flung himself at the latter, tearing at his shoulders.

Wantage sent a wild punch behind him; Brandyholm caught his wrist and twisted his arm back cruelly until the man rolled away from Crooner, kicking and shouting. They were all shouting by now. After what seemed an endless period of struggle, a light came on and Carappa stood over them, flashing his torch. In the brightness, Wantage’s knife was revealed. He dived for it, and Crooner pinned his wrist to the ground with a heavy foot.

Breathing heavily, Wantage lay as he was. His face was almost unrecognisable; normally pale and thin, it was now suffused with blood and so puffy his eyes were almost closed. He lay in a pulp of ponic leaves and miltex, looking at them like a beaten animal.

‘He suddenly set on me in the dark,’ Crooner said. ‘Thanks for the help, Tom.’ He was shaking violently.

Brandyholm smiled in pleasure at the gratitude, so unexpected because it was hardly considered manly to admit one ever stood in need of help. The smile nearly cracked his face. His head throbbed as if it would split.

The priest was on his hands and knees in front of Wantage, prodding him and speaking swiftly to him. At length he said to the other two, ‘I’ve seen a good many go like this. Wantage is insane. He is suffering from what we priests know as hyper-claustrophobia; actually we all have it in some degree. It causes forty-five per cent of Greene tribe deaths.’

‘Never mind the statistics, Carappa,’ Crooner said angrily. ‘What are we going to do with him?’

‘You don’t appreciate what an interesting case he is,’ the priest reproved. ‘Funny to observe how like a man’s beginning his end often is. Wantage’s mother was an outcast living in Dead Ways with a man; both of them had been turned out of Forwards or one of the minor Midway tribes. The man was killed hunting and the woman sought refuge with us. She could not live in the tangle alone. Wantage was then about eighteen months old, and his mother became – as the unattached females frequently do – one of our women. She was killed in a drunken brawl when he was fourteen.’

‘What’s this to do with Wantage going mad now?’ Crooner asked contemptuously. Priests were too fond of talking.

‘He deliberately submerged the memory of his mother because she was a bad lot,’ said Carappa triumphantly. ‘But being back in the tangle brought back the shame of her. He was overwhelmed by infantile fears of darkness and insecurity.’

‘Now that our little object lesson in the benefits of religion is over – ’ Crooner began, but at that instant Wantage sprang up, striking out right and left. A chance blow on the priest’s cheek sent him spinning round into Brandyholm. Wantage snarled in triumph and burst through the ponics in the direction he had come.

‘Leave him!’ Carappa snapped angrily, although neither Brandyholm nor Crooner had made any attempt to follow. ‘We shan’t see him again.’

He was wrong. Wantage could hardly have got twenty yards from them when he stopped suddenly. They heard him give a curious whistling sigh. He turned, staggered back towards them through the tangle, collapsed, and crawled back into the torchlight on hands and knees.

When he rolled over and lay still, they saw an arrow sticking squarely out of his solar plexus.

They were still peering stupidly at the body when the armed guards of Forwards slid from the shadows and surrounded them.

The Forwards official in front of whom they were dragged received them standing. Her hands hung calmly by her side and she made no movement of interest when they came in. She was young, her hair cut short to reveal the contour of her proud head, and her brow and eyes created an impression of magnificence. Only when one’s gaze dropped to her mouth and jaw was there a hint that it might be undesirable to know her too well.

She said her name was Viann. She questioned them, they answered. They might have been three performing dogs hustled before her, so detachedly did she regard the two more silent figures and the third figure, that of Carappa, slightly ahead of his companions, gesticulating, talking, throwing his weight first onto one leg, then the other. They were, indeed, to her only random elements in a problem that must be solved.

‘So your plea that your lives should be saved – ’ already it had come to that – already they were begging for their breath ‘– rests on your idea that you have knowledge which could be useful to us here in Forwards?’ Viann said to them.

‘I said I have the knowledge,’ suggested Carappa craftily. ‘If you also deign to spare the lives of my poor, ignorant friends I should, of course, be grateful, but they can tell you nothing.’

‘So?’ She permitted herself a frosty smile.

‘If we have not knowledge, we have strength to serve you with,’ Brandyholm offered. The sick feeling which had possessed him ever since they were captured in the ponic tangle showed no sign of weakening its grip on his intestines.

She said to him, without really bothering to look at him, ‘Your “priest” has the right idea: intelligence only can bribe me – not muscle.’

Turning to Bob Crooner, she asked, ‘What have you to say for yourself? You have not spoken yet.’

Crooner looked steadily at her before dropping his eyes and replying, ‘We have no ladies like you in our little tribe. My silence was only a mask for disturbed thoughts.’

‘That sort of thing is not acceptable as a bribe either,’ Viann said levelly. ‘You will all three be taken to a cell now; I shall question you individually, at my convenience.’

Guards appeared, and despite Carappa’s protests they were marched away to a featureless room close at hand. Groaning, Brandyholm lay down on a thin rug and propped himself on one elbow.

‘These people are more civilised than we,’ he said to the priest. ‘They will be sure to kill us. Had you promised us this when we set out, you would have set out alone.’