The Complete Short Stories: The 1950s

‘Crooner is slow, you said so yourself,’ Brandyholm complained, his heart sinking now he was committed.

‘But he is big. Come! We can leave now.’

‘During this sleep?’

‘But of course. We must skulk out unseen. If you will come, I promise – what I promise you I cannot tell. Power … Chiefly power, my son …’

It was a well-worn precept to be rash, not to think ahead, to act on the spur of the moment. Doing otherwise meant inertia, degenerating into the brooding state of inaction which constantly threatened to overwhelm them all. Brandyholm seized up a fresh shirt, his antique jacket and his pack, and followed the bulky figure of the priest out of the door.

Crooner and Wantage were rounded up. Neither of them had women at present. They gave Brandyholm reassuringly guarded looks and fell in beside Carappa. Their features were uniformly sullen; only the priest’s meaty-chops betrayed anything like excitement.

‘Tomorrow’s sleep will be dim. Would it not have been safer to have waited till then?’ asked Wantage complainingly. He had pale hair to match his face, and a long jaw; he could look as cruel as anybody in Quarters. As a child he had been known to the other children as Rockface.

‘We might all be dead at the end of another sleep-wake,’ the priest said in reply.

‘True,’ Wantage admitted grudgingly. The Teaching taught that antagonism was a man’s best armour against oblivion; Wantage was commonly reckoned to be a natural survivor-type.

One sleep-wake in every four was almost totally dark. Universally, lighting dipped to dimness; nobody in Quarters could explain why – it was just a natural phenomenon in their lives – although some philosophical spirits used it to reinforce the ship theory.

Carappa led them away from the barricades to a solid metal bulkhead at the far end of Second Corridor. A guard stood there relaxed but alert. As the four approached, he raised his dazer, calling out the usual challenge: ‘I should be glad to fire!’

‘And I to die!’ responded Carappa amiably. ‘Put your weapon down, Zwemmer. No blood for you tonight. Would you shoot me, the instrument of your doubtful sanity?’

‘I’d shoot anybody,’ the guard said ferociously.

‘Well, save it for a better target. I have something important to show you.’ During this interchange, Carappa had never faltered in his advance. The guard, Zwemmer, hesitated uncertainly; other guards were within call, but a false alarm might mean lashes for him and he was anxious to preserve his present state of misery. In those few seconds of hesitation, the priest was up to him. Drawing a knife swiftly from under his short robe, Carappa sunk it deep into the other’s stomach, twisted it, and caught the body neatly over his shoulder as it doubled forward.

‘That was smartly done, father,’ Wantage exclaimed, respect in his voice. It was good to see a priest who so ably practised what he preached.

‘A pleasure,’ the priest grunted, wiping his knife. He passed his burden to Crooner who, being five foot eight and a head higher than the others, could manage it more easily. A metal grill stood in the wall before them. Carappa produced a pair of metal cutters from a capacious pocket, snicked at a connection, and calmly slid the grill back into the wall. A plain sheet of metal was now revealed; Carappa pressed a button on it and it also rolled back.

The others jumped away involuntarily. A dark, gaping hole stood before them.

‘Fear not, fearful ones,’ Carappa said. ‘It’s only a man-made shaft. A carriage of some sort once ran up and down it. Pitch the guard down there for a start, Crooner.’

The body was hurled into the gap and they listened with some satisfaction to a heavy thud a moment later.

‘Now follow me. We follow Zwemmer, but at a less furious speed.’

Cables hung in the middle of the opening. Carappa seized them and climbed down fifteen feet to the next level. The lift shaft yawning below him, he swung himself onto a narrow ledge and manipulated the double gates open. One by one, the others followed him into a rustling twilight. The ponic tangle grew here as everywhere. Carappa closed the gates neatly behind them and then faced forwards, squaring his shoulders and adjusting his robe.

‘Great discoveries are before us, friends!’ he announced, adding, ‘So first let us sleep to be fresh to meet them.’

‘If we sleep here, will the tribe not come and find us?’ Crooner asked slowly.

Wantage caught him smartly across the face with the back of his hand. The blow opened Crooner’s lower lip and sent a slow line of blood coursing down his chin. He stood there mutely, working his mouth and swinging his fists in a dull anger.

‘That’s for questioning the priest’s leadership,’ Wantage said. ‘You must know they will not waste a search party on us. Dreams tell us ourselves.’

‘And a blow may forestall murder.’ Crooner growled the prescribed answer of the formula for avoiding a duel.

They settled down where they were, eating frugally and saying little. The priest promised to tell them his plans tomorrow. Round them as they slept were the changeless, draughtless heat and the unending rustle of the ponics. Their lean stems were the last things Brandyholm saw before he closed his eyes; so rapidly did they grow, the young ones would be feet taller and the old ones dead by the time he woke. He failed to see in this frenetic jostling a parallel with the human lives about him.

II

Despite his swollen lip, Bob Crooner was cheerful enough to whistle when they got up. Carappa seemed in a mood of pleasurable grimness; doubtless he gained satisfaction from knowing the others waited for what he had to say. Brandyholm and Wantage preserved their usual dour silence; the world affronted them, and they had sense enough to show it.

Nourishment was their first and hasty consideration. Neat slashes at the joints of two young ponic poles produced enough of the gooey white miltex for their requirements. It could be assimilated raw, and they munched it down quickly.

‘You believe the ship theory?’ Carappa suddenly challenged Wantage.

‘Yes. I’ll fight the man who says I’m wrong.’

The priest nodded his question at Crooner.

‘No. How can it be right?’ Crooner said.

The priest nodded his question at Brandyholm.

‘I don’t know. What does it matter either way to us?’

‘Fool!’ the priest said. ‘It matters in a million ways.’ He picked vigorously at a decaying tooth. ‘I, of course, am interested only in the theological aspects of this question. If this is a ship, it has come from somewhere and will arrive somewhere. If this is not a ship, I can only presume we are figments of the unconscious of some singularly beastly creature.’

They looked at him in alarm. He sneered into their faces and continued, ‘Fortunately, there can be little rational doubt that this is a ship – which brings up the question: Why should there be a conspiracy to keep us in ignorance of the fact?’

‘Something’s gone wrong somewhere,’ Wantage suggested eagerly. ‘That’s what I always say: something’s terribly wrong.’

‘Well, cease to say it in my presence,’ said Carappa smoothly. ‘There is a more likely explanation: that the driver or captain of this ship is a madman punishing us for some wrong our fore-fathers committed.’

‘Punishing us for a wrong,’ echoed Brandyholm, in whom the words struck a familiar chord. ‘Yes, that is why we are suffering. You make me believe the theory, father, for we all sin.’

‘Now this is my plan, and unfortunately I need your aid,’ continued Carappa, ignoring Brandyholm. ‘We are going to find out this captain, hunt him down. He is concealed somewhere behind a locked door. When we get to him and kill him, we – we will be in control of the ship!’

‘And where shall we go to with it?’ asked Crooner.

For a moment the priest looked blank. ‘We’ll find somewhere,’ he said confidently. ‘Leave that to me.’

He stood up and with a flourish pulled a book from his pocket. He thrust the title under their eyes, but they could hardly read; a few syllables were intelligible, but they were unable to decipher unaccustomed words. Carappa explained condescendingly to them that it was called Manual of Electrical Circuits of Starship. Until two days ago it had reposed in a trunk among other official and unused regalia of the Lieutenancy; happening upon it, the priest had appropriated it. Now it would show them the way they had to go; they were in the rear of the ship and must proceed to the front, to a spot in the nose marked ‘Control’ in the manual.

Feeling rather dazed by this entire concept, Brandyholm muttered, ‘Then we venture into Forwards territory.’

‘Expecting to find Gwenny again?’ Wantage asked laughingly.

‘No, not expecting to see anyone again, if we get among them, Rockface,’ Brandyholm said, using the other’s childhood nickname without consciously feeling the urge to irritate him. Wantage flared up almost automatically in response.

‘I don’t suppose Forwards are as terrible as we make them out to be,’ Crooner interrupted mildly.

‘Of course they aren’t,’ the priest agreed. ‘They are feared because they are unknown. That’s how superstitions are born, through ignorance. That’s how men go mad. That’s how the idea of being in a ship grows strange to us. Deep down in a man’s mind lurks elemental evil; if he forgets about it or does not acknowledge it, it swallows his knowledge and his sense. That is why so many of us become mad – ’

‘Cut the cackle, priest, and let’s move if we must,’ Wantage interrupted. He had no real desire to go on, his desire was merely to interrupt. The hatred of others had constantly to be expressed if a man was to stay healthy: that was a basic tenet of the Teaching. What was more difficult was to express one’s hatred of oneself.

Their progress was slow. The ponics grew thickly. It was difficult to keep moving straight; once or twice they worked themselves into rooms and were finally confronted with black walls. Gradually, spilt miltex covered their bodies, adhered and hardened. At one stage, after their mid-wake snack, the growths mercifully thinned, and they found themselves in a clear corridor with a bend just ahead.

With a whoop of pleasure, Brandyholm bounced round the corner, and then stopped abruptly. A man was just sliding silently down a rope into a wide gash in the floor in front. Dropping onto hands and knees, Brandyholm peered down into a vast room full of partitions with metal frames in. There was no sign of the man: he had already merged into twilight.

A short council was held, after which they went on, carefully skirting the hole. A few yards further on, another hole stopped them, and this one was unbridgeable. An explosion from below had ripped out floor, one wall and bulkhead. The edges of the torn metal were smooth, as if great heat had melted what it sundered. The lighting had also been disrupted.

They looked at each other uncertainly, quick to feel nonplussed.

‘We can’t jump across this gap,’ the priest said. ‘We must push through this hole in the wall and get back onto the corridor as soon as possible.’

This, however, proved impracticable. Some sort of machinery blocked the other side of the hole and sealed it effectively. They were only left with the option of climbing through the overhead bulkhead, and this they did as speedily as possible, frequently glancing back to make sure nobody was creeping up on them. When Crooner, the last and the heaviest, was hauled up, they started slowly forward by the light of Carappa’s torch, the artificial lighting still being defunct.

Gaping doorways of disordered rooms slid threateningly by. Dust stirred beneath their feet. When they saw light again ahead, Carappa flicked off the torch and their approach was wary.

The light came from a side door which bore the legend Dining Hall. Summoned into being by the light, more ponics grew, rooted in the litter dropped by themselves and the tiny insects that crawled among them. Their outer ranks were puny blades which seemed to grow from the deck itself, but they increased so in stature that two yards from the doorway they curled against the ceiling.

Wantage, Crooner, Brandyholm and the priest stared in disgust at the tangle, for it was obvious that their way lay through it. Great doors with the words Panic Valve stencilled on them in yellow sealed off the corridor. Reluctantly, with hardly a word to each other, they moved in and commenced hacking.

The jungle was more than usually impenetrable. Caught among the growth, sometimes on the ground, sometimes chest high, sometimes suspended above their heads, were an almost infinite number of metal tables and chairs. It was like cutting one’s way slowly through a nightmare.

And it grew worse. They came upon clusters of ponics which had collapsed under the extra weight and rotted in slimy bundles, while other plants grew out of them. The air became thick and sickly, and soon every stem about them was attacked by blight and they moved through a stippled wall of disease.

Brandyholm glanced at Wantage, who was next to him hacking in silence. The man’s face was grey, his eyes and nose streaming, and his mouth working. Seeing Brandyholm’s eye upon him, he began to curse monotonously.

Finally they came up against a blank wall. Wantage attacked it wildly with his knife, until Crooner downed him with a blow at the back of his ear.

‘Pity to spoil a good blade,’ Crooner said, pulling a hand across his dark, grimy face. ‘Now what do we do, priest?’

As if in answer to his question, the lights went out. It was dim-sleep, the dark time that came once in every four sleeps and would bring a dim-wake after it. Night came billowing in on them like a hot breath.

‘Nothing is left but self-confession,’ Carappa cried in desperation. He fell to his knees and began to recite the General Belief, the others coming in half-heartedly with the responses. Their voices rose and fell; by the end of it they all felt slightly better.

‘… 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.

III

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.’

Carappa came over to him, squatted on his haunches and seized Brandyholm’s shirt front with two large hands. His voice was as thick as cool treacle.

‘Did not the Teaching tell you that a man without backbone is a ponic without miltex? What is your wretched, sordid life to care a curse over? Where in your mind is anything so precious that it should not be carelessly extinguished? Are we not where we desired to be, Tom Brandyholm – in Forwards, near Control? You sick, dispirited thing! I am a man, and like a man I will lie and cheat my way out of this situation. I advise you to do likewise.’

Brandyholm made no answer. The priest’s outburst meant little to him under the circumstances. It was one thing to tell this woman that the ship had a hidden control room with a captain in, and to bluff that they alone knew the way to it; whether or not that would save their lives was quite another thing.

‘Nothing to say?’ the priest asked, still gripping his shirt.

Before Brandyholm could attempt an answer, the door was flung open, and a man stood there calling for Carappa. Neatly, unobserved, as if he had rehearsed it, Carappa slipped the electrical circuits book out of his own shirt front and down Brandyholm’s. Then he got up slowly and left them without a word.

He was escorted to a room with two chairs in which sat Viann and a man who announced himself as Master Scott. His cadaverous face bore an expression which might be construed either as integrity or intransigence; a glance at the long fingers which tapped against one cheekbone suggested that if he was a cruel man, he would be cruel with artistry.

Eloquently, and in suitably vague terms, the priest explained his theory to them.

‘If you will trust me,’ he said, ‘trust me and give me power, I will set this ship – for such I assure you it is – at its destination, and we will be free of it and its oppression altogether.’

He continued falteringly, for it was obvious even to him that his small audience was full of derision and harsh amusement. Silence fell. Under their gaze he fidgeted and rubbed his jowls and muttered to himself. They continued to stare, lips curled with contemptuous enjoyment of his growing discomfiture.