Brian Aldiss - The Complete Short Stories - The 1950s

‘Oh – twice a hundred dozen sleep-wakes.’

‘We do not use your primitive method of calculating time here. We call four sleep-wakes one day. That would make your stay in Quarters six hundred days. A long time in a man’s life.’

Crooner made no reply to this. At that juncture an excited man burst into the room and grabbed Scott by the arm.

‘You’re needed at once at the barricades!’ he exclaimed. ‘An attack is developing. Everyone is needed.’

‘Right, I’m coming,’ Scott said. Without another glance at Crooner, they hurried from the room, leaving him sprawled on the floor.

In some alarm, Brandyholm looked up from the spyhole through which he had been observing this interview.

‘So the business about the attack at the barricades is just bluff to get Master Scott out of the room?’ he asked Viann.

She nodded. ‘There are no barricades.’

‘Why?’

She closed her spy-hole before answering. When she did reply, her voice was slow and held none of the confidence her appearance suggested. ‘For the final part of this rough test we have devised for you, of course. Now that you have passed this test, I can explain.’

‘It was not – not a bravery test, was it?’

‘If it was you would hardly have passed it, would you?’ Viann was inspecting him closely, and he found himself looking reluctantly into her eyes. They were very clear and held an alertness which sent nervous excitement through him. Finally she said, ‘Listen, Tom Brandyholm, this ship has been travelling a long time – too long, far too long. It is slowly becoming a ghost ship. Two chief problems confront us; one you can guess: how to control the ship, and make it stop somewhere. If it does not stop, only death can await us.’ She stopped there, her eyes brooding, and finally said, ‘That problem seems insuperable … But the other problem is one we can deal with. There is a strange race on this ship – a new race that was not here before.’

‘You mean – a new tribe, like the Greene tribe?’ he asked, looking anxiously at her strained beauty (so much more desirable than Gwenny had ever been).

‘No, nothing like that!’ she said impatiently. ‘A super-natural race, masquerading as men! You know the ponic tangles, don’t you?’

Brandyholm nodded dumbly, recalling the thickets they had ploughed through before being captured.

‘In those tangles,’ Viann continued, ‘a new race has generated itself, or so I believe. Half the ship is filled with that silent, impenetrable ponic growth, and somewhere, somewhere this race has been born. They come in from their secret centre to spy upon us and learn our ways. But although they try to, they do not and cannot behave like us in all respects. All strangers who are found near Forwards are now subjected to tests, devised to weed out these aliens. You have just undergone your test. Crooner has now almost finished his.’

How do you tell these – aliens?’ Brandyholm asked.

‘For one thing, they seem to be longer lived than we; consequently, their actions are slower. They seem calmer in manner, more phlegmatic.’

She would have said more, but Master Scott entered the room. Triumph lent his face an unaccustomed liveliness. He looked searchingly at Brandyholm, and then said, ‘Your friend Bob Crooner is proved to be an alien. It is definite.’

‘What?’ exclaimed Brandyholm.

‘I suspected as much,’ Viann said. ‘We watched his interview from the spyholes here.’

‘How did you prove it?’ Brandyholm asked.

‘We’ve just had the final proof. When I left him alone, he made out by the other door, just as you did. He saw Carappa, but hardly paused. Instead, he hurried on and escaped into the ponic tangle.’

‘How does that prove anything?’

‘You, when you were escaping, still had to stop and perform the fear ceremony over the dead. Why? Because from birth all of us on the ship are taught that ceremony as routine. Not so Crooner! He scarcely broke his stride. You see, his upbringing has been – different. He is of the alien company.’

‘He was always different,’ Brandyholm muttered reflectively. ‘Cheerful … slow … saying little.’ Then he bowed his head, shaken to think he had lived with the man and cautiously liked him.

‘Crooner is now being followed by our men,’ Scott continued. ‘He will lead them to the secret haunts of the aliens. And then – we will hunt them out and slay them all. My mouth waters at the thought of that killing. You will help us, Brandyholm?’

Silence. Viann’s eyes upon him.

‘No,’ Brandyholm said. ‘You killed my priest, who was no alien. To the devil with you all.’

He did not look up, hunched tensely, waiting to be struck. The blow never came. Instead, footsteps came over to him, and a heavy hand fell on his shoulder.

‘Mourning for me is not only forbidden but premature, Tom,’ a familiar voice said. ‘Get up, you worm, and spit the world in the face.’

He looked up, and it was Carappa. He exclaimed the priest’s name, clutching his arm in his incredulity.

‘Yes, I, Tom, and confoundedly cold. This witch doctor, Scott here, painted me with rat’s blood and laid me out with some beastly drug to stage a death bed scene for you and – the other.’

‘A slight overdose of chloral hydrate,’ said Scott.

‘How are you feeling, priest?’ Viann inquired, with scientific curiosity rather than womanly sympathy in her voice.

‘Desolate, madam. And what would that beastly antidote be that your men shot into me?’

‘Strychnine, I believe it’s called.’

‘Very unpleasant. They also condescended to give me a hot coffee; I never tasted anything so good in Quarters.’ He caught Brandyholm’s eye still upon him and said, ‘I’m no ghost, you see Tom. Ghosts don’t drink coffee.’

‘I still can’t believe you’re alive!’ Brandyholm gasped.

‘Then you are persisting in a particularly irritating brand of foolishness,’ Viann said, moving towards the door. ‘Try to realise that you are no longer a yokel in a jungle outpost; pull yourself together if you wish to live in Forwards. We need wits here. Come on below, everyone. We will eat, and then await a report from Crooner’s trackers. After that, we shall be busy.’

The meal was excellent, not only in the standard of the food, but in the blessed absence of the swarms of flies which attended every mouthful back in Quarters. It was slightly marred for Brandyholm and Carappa by the presence of the Council of Five, the rulers of Forwards, who came to hear what Master Scott and Viann had discovered. These five worthies paid no attention whatsoever to the two strangers.

‘It is just a custom,’ Scott explained airily to Carappa, when the priest commented on this insult after the Five had again withdrawn.

‘They should have acknowledged me at least,’ snorted Carappa. ‘Look here, Master Scott, my interest in this whole business is purely theological, but what I want to know is – what do I get out of it?’

Viann answered the question, smiling sourly.

‘So far, you have retained your life, priest: a doubtful benefit, possibly. What other advantages you – and we – everyone – will extract from the situation remains to be seen. But it seems that the electric wiring manual you tried to hide from us – it has been recovered from your erstwhile cell – will be useful. We have what we lacked before: a plan of the ship.’

‘You are a man of vigour and brain, priest,’ Scott added. ‘To keep those virtues at our service it is necessary to retain your tongue in your head; please try and keep it to the immediate problem as much as possible.’

Brandyholm, tired of sitting quietly, said, ‘Why are there no plans of the ship, no controls? How did the ship leave without them?’