Non-Stop (10 page)

‘That being the Guard, presumably, which Meller despatched outside my room?’ Complain asked.

‘The same,’ said the priest, automatically making the token of mourning. ‘When he had thought over the scheme he very likely decided he could get most profit from it by revealing it all to Zilliac.’

‘Who knows he was wrong about that?’ Roffery commented sardonically.

Ignoring this thrust, the priest spread his looker open and thumped a diagram.

‘Here is the whole key to my campaign,’ he said impressively. ‘This is a plan of the entire ship.’

To his annoyance, he had to interrupt his speech at once to explain what a plan was, the concept being entirely new to them. This was Complain’s turn to be superior to Wantage, for while he quickly grasped the idea, the latter could not be made to comprehend the two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional object as large as the ship; analogies with Meller’s sub-life-size paintings did not help him, and eventually they had to leave the matter as assumed, just as Complain now had to ‘assume’ they were in a ship without anything he could regard as rational evidence.

‘Nobody has ever had a plan of the complete ship before,’ Marapper told them. ‘It was fortunate it fell into my hands. Ozbert Bergass knew as much about the layout as anyone, but he was only really familiar with the Sternstairs region and a part of Deadways.’

The plan showed the ship to be shaped like an egg, elongated so that the middle was cylindrical, both ends coming to a blunted point. The whole was composed of eighty-four decks, which showed a circular cross-section when the ship was opened through its width, each being proportioned like a coin. Most of the decks (all but a few at each end) consisted of three concentric levels, upper, middle and lower; these had corridors in them, connected by lifts and companion ways; round these corridors were ranged the apartments. Sometimes the apartments were just a nest of offices, sometimes they were so big they filled a whole level. All decks were connected together by one large corridor running right through the longitudinal axis of the ship: the Main Corridor. But there were also subsidiary connections between the circular corridors of one deck and those of the decks on either side.

One end of the ship was clearly labelled ‘Stern’. At the other end was a small blister labelled ‘Control’; Marapper planted his finger on it.

‘This is where we shall find the captain,’ he said. ‘Whoever is here has power over the ship. We are going there.’

‘This plan makes it as easy as signing off a log,’ Roffery declared, rubbing his hands. ‘All we’ve got to do is strike along the Main Corridor. Perhaps we weren’t such fools to join you after all.’

‘It won’t be as easy as that,’ Complain said. ‘You’ve spent all your wakes comfortably in Quarters, you don’t know what conditions are like. Main Corridor is fairly well known to hunters, but it does not go anywhere, as a proper corridor should.’

‘Despite your naïve way of putting things, you are correct, Roy,’ the priest agreed. ‘But I have found in this looker the reason why it does not go anywhere. All along the Main Corridor, between each deck, were emergency doors. Each circle of deck was built to be more or less self-sufficient, so that in time of crisis it could be cut off on its own and its inhabitants still survive.’

He flicked through series of complex diagrams.

‘Even I cannot pretend to understand all this, but it is clear that there was an emergency, a fire or something, and the doors of the Main Corridor have remained closed ever since.’

‘That’s why – ponics apart – it’s so difficult to get anywhere,’ Fermour added. ‘All you can do is go round in circles. What we have to do is find the subsidiary connections which are still open, and advance through them. It means constant detouring instead of just moving straightforwardly.’

‘I’ll give you the instructions, thanks,’ said the priest, shortly. ‘Since you all seem to be so clever, we’ll be on our way without further ado. Get that pack on your back, Fermour, and get moving!’

They shuffled obediently to their feet. Outside the compartment, Deadways waited; it was not inviting.

‘We’ll have to get through Forwards area to reach control,’ Complain said.

‘Frightened?’ Wantage sneered.

‘Yes, Slotface, I am.’

Wantage turned away, resentful but too preoccupied to quarrel, even over the use of his nickname.

They moved through the tangles in silence. Progress was slow and exhausting. A solitary hunter on his own ground might creep among ponics without cutting them, by keeping close to the wall. Moving in file, they found this method less attractive, since branches were apt to whip back and catch the man behind. This could be avoided by spacing themselves out, but by common consent they were keeping as close together as possible, it being uncomfortable on the nerves to be exposed either at the front or the rear of the little party. There was, too, another objection to walking by the walls: here the chitinous ponic seeds lay thickest, where they had dropped after being shot against this barrier, and they crunched noisily as they were trodden on. To Complain’s experienced hunter’s eye, their plenitude was a sign that there
were few wild animals in the area, the seeds being delicacies to dog and pig alike.

No diminution in the plague of flies was noticeable. They whined endlessly about the travellers’ ears. As Roffery in the lead swung his hatchet at the ponics, he wielded it frequently round his head, in a dangerous attempt to rid himself of this irritation.

When they came to the first subsidiary connection between decks, it was clearly enough marked. It stood in a short side corridor and consisted of two single metal doors a yard apart, each capable of closing off the corridor, although now blocked open with the ubiquitous green growth. Before one, the words ‘Deck 61’ were stencilled and, after the other, ‘Deck 60’. Marapper grunted in satisfaction at this, but was too hot to make further comment. Complain on his hunting had come across such connections before, and seen similar inscriptions, but they had meant nothing; now he tried to integrate the previous knowledge into the conception of a moving ship: but as yet the idea was too new to be acceptable.

On Deck 60 they met other men.

Fermour was now in the lead, hacking his way stoically ahead, when they came level with an open door. Open doors always signified danger, but since they had to pass the thresholds, they grouped together and passed
en bloc
. So far, these distractions had been uneventful. This time, they were confronted by an old woman.

She lay naked on the floor, a tethered sheep sleeping by her side. She was looking away from them, so that they had an excellent view of her left ear. This, by the humour of some strange disease, had swollen up like a sponge, standing out from her skull and pushing back a mat of rancid grey hair. The tissue of this abnormality was a startling pink, in contrast to the pallor of her face.

Slowly she swung her head round, fixing them with two owl eyes. Without changing her expression, she began to scream
hollowly. Even as she did so, Complain noticed that her right ear was normal.

The sheep woke and ran away to the end of its rope, blaring and coughing in alarm.

Before the party of five could move away, the noise had summoned two men from a rear compartment. They came and stood defensively behind the screaming woman.

‘They’ll do us no harm!’ said Fermour with relief.

That was immediately obvious. Both men were old, one bent almost double with the promise of the Long Journey he would shortly take, the other painfully thin and lacking an arm, which had evidently been parted from him in some ancient knife fight.

‘We ought to kill them,’ Wantage said, one half of his face suddenly agleam. ‘Especially that monstrosity of a hag there.’

At these words, the woman stopped screaming and said rapidly, ‘Expansion to your separate egos, plague on your eyes, touch us and the curse that is on us will be on you.’

‘Expansion to your ear, madam,’ said Marapper sulkily. ‘Come on, heroes, we don’t need to linger here. Let’s move before somebody rougher comes to investigate her crazy screaming.’

They turned back into the tangles. The three in the room watched them go without stirring. They might have been the last remnants of a Deadways tribe; more likely, they were fugitives, eking out a slender existence in the wilds.

From then on, the travellers found signs of other mutants and hermits. The ponics were frequently trampled, progress being consequently easier; but the mental strain of keeping watch on all sides was greater, although they were never actually challenged.

The next subsidiary connection between decks that they came to was closed, and the steel door, fitting closely into its sockets, resisted their united attempt at opening it.

‘There must obviously
be
a way to open it,’ Roffery said angrily.

‘Tell the priest to look it up in his damned looker,’ Wantage replied. ‘For me, I’m sitting down here and having something to eat.’

Marapper was all for pressing on, but the others agreed with Wantage, and they made a meal in silence.

‘What happens if we come on a deck where all the doors are like that?’ Complain wanted to know.

‘That won’t happen,’ Marapper said firmly. ‘Otherwise we should never have heard of Forwards at all. There obviously is a route – probably more than one – left open to those parts. We just have to move to another level and try there.’

Finally they found their way into Deck 59 and then, with encouraging rapidity, into 58. By that time, it was growing late: a dark sleep-wake was almost upon them. Again they grew uneasy.

‘Have any of you noticed anything?’ Complain asked abruptly. He was now leading the procession again, and liberally splashed with sweat and miltex. ‘The ponics are changing type.’

It was true. The springy stems grew more fleshy and less resilient. The leafage seemed reduced, and there were more of the waxy green flowers in evidence. Under foot there was a change too. Generally, the grit was firm, intersected by a highly organized root system which drained every available drop of moisture. Now the walking was softer, the soil dark and moist.

The further they went, the more pronounced these tendencies became. Soon, they were splashing through mud. They passed a tomato plant, and another fruit-bearer they could not identify, and several other types of growth straggling among the evidently weakened ponics. This change, being unfamiliar, worried them. All the same, Marapper called a halt, since if they did not shortly find a place to rest they would be overtaken by darkness.

They pushed into a side room which someone had already broken into. It was piled high with rolls of heavy material, which seemed to be covered by an intricate pattern. The probing beam of Fermour’s torch dislodged a swarm of moths. With a thick, buttery sound, they rose from the fabric, leaving it patternless, but sagging with deep-chewed holes. About the room they whirled, or past the men into the corridor. It was like walking into a dust storm.

Complain dodged as a large moth bore towards his face. For the softest moment he had an odd sensation that he was to recall later: although the moth flew by his ear, he had an hallucinatory idea it had plunged straight on into his head; he seemed to feel it big in his very mind; then it was gone.

‘We shouldn’t get much sleep here,’ he said distastefully, and led on down the marshy corridor.

Through the next door that opened to them, they found an ideal place to pitch camp. This was a machine shop of some kind, a large chamber filled with benches and lathes and other gadgets in which they had no interest. A tap supplied them with an unsteady flow of water which, once turned on, they could not turn off; it trickled steadily down the sink, to the vast reclamation processes functioning somewhere below the deck on which they stood. Wearily, they washed and drank and ate some of their provisions. As they were finishing, the dark came on, the natural dark which arrived one sleep-wake in four.

No prayers were requested, and the priest volunteered none. He was tired and, too, he was occupied with a thought which dogged the others. They had travelled only three decks: a long spell of walking lay between them and Control. For the first time, Marapper was realizing that, whatever assistance his chart gave them, it did not show the true magnitude of the ship.

The precious watch was handed to Complain, who would wake Fermour when the large hand had made its full circuit. Enviously, the hunter watched the others sprawl under
benches and drift to sleep. He remained doggedly standing for some while, but eventually fatigue forced him to sit. His mind ranged actively over a hundred questions and then it, too, grew weary. He sat propped with his back to a bench, staring at the closed door; through a circle of frosted glass inset in the door, a dim pilot light glowed in the corridor outside. This circle apparently grew larger and larger before him, swimming, rotating, and Complain closed his eyes to it.

He woke again with a start, full of apprehension. The door now stood wide open. In the corridor, the ponics, most of their light source gone, were dying rapidly. Their tops had buckled, and they huddled against each other like a file of broken-backed old men kneeling beneath a blanket. Ern Roffery was not in the room.

Pulling out his dazer, Complain got up and went to listen at the doorway. It seemed highly unlikely that anything could have abducted Roffery: there would have been a scuffle which would have aroused the others. Therefore he had gone voluntarily. But why? Had he heard something in the corridor?