Non-Stop

I

In Quarters, a well-worn precept said ‘Leap before you look’; rashness was proverbially the path of wisdom, and the cunning acted always on the spur of the moment. Other courses of conduct could hardly be entertained when, with little reason for any action, a brooding state of inaction threatened to overwhelm every member of the tribe. Marapper, who was adept at twisting any councils to his own advantage, used these arguments of expediency to rouse the last three members of his expedition.

They followed him grudgingly, snatching up packs, jackets and dazers, and moving sullenly behind him through the corridors of their village. Few saw them go, and those few were indifferent, for the recent festivities had provided a generous quota of hangovers. Marapper stopped before the door of his compartment and felt for his key.

‘What are we halting here for? We’ll be caught if we hang about here, and chopped into little pieces. Let’s get into the ponics if we’re going.’

Marapper swung a surly slab of cheek towards the questioner. Then he turned it away again, not deigning to reply. Instead, he pushed open the door and called, ‘Come out, Roy, and meet your companions.’

Wary, a good hunter avoiding a possible trap, Complain appeared with his dazer in his hand. Quietly, he surveyed the three who stood by Marapper; he knew them all well: Bob Fermour, elbows resting placidly on the two bulging pouches strapped to his belt, grinning non-commitally; Wantage, rotating his fencing stick endlessly in his hands; and Ern Roffery, the valuer, face challenging and unpleasant. For long seconds, Complain stared at them as they stood waiting.

‘I’m not leaving Quarters with that lot, Marapper,’ he said definitely. ‘If they are the best you can find, count me out. I thought this was going to be an expedition, not a Punch and Judy show.’

The priest clucked impatiently like a dyspeptic hen, and started towards him, but Roffery brushed him away and confronted Complain with one hand on the butt of his dazer. His moustache vibrated within six inches of Complain’s chin.

‘So, my running meat specialist,’ he said. ‘That’s how you feel. Don’t recognize your superiors when you see them, eh? If you think…’

‘It is how I feel,’ Complain said. ‘And you can stop picking at that toy in your holster or I’ll fry your fingers off. The priest told me this was going to be an expedition, not a rakeout of the red light rooms.’

‘So it is an expedition,’ the priest roared, butting himself in between them and shaking his face from one to the other, spitting in his rage. ‘It is an expedition, and by hem you’ll all come into Deadways with me if I have to carry your corpses there one by one. You fools, barking here like dogs at each other’s stupid faces, you contemptible fools, do you reckon that either of you is worth a credit’s worth of the other’s attention, let alone mine? Get your stuff together and move, or I’ll call the Guards on to you.’

This threat was so palpably foolish that Roffery burst into scoffing laughter.

‘I joined you to get away from sallow countenances like Complain’s, priest,’ he said. ‘Still, on your head be it! Lead on, you’re chief!’

‘If you feel like that about it, why waste time making a stupid scene?’ Wantage snapped.

‘Because I’m second in command here and I make what scenes I like,’ Roffery answered.

‘You aren’t second in command, Ern,’ Marapper said, explaining in kindly fashion. ‘There’s just me in command and you lot following, equal in the sight of the law.’

At this Wantage laughed jeeringly and Fermour said, ‘So if the pack of you have stopped bitching, perhaps we can move out of here before someone discovers us and settles all our troubles for good.’

‘Not so fast,’ Complain said. ‘I still want to know what that valuer is doing here. Why doesn’t he go back to his valuing? He had a soft job; why did he leave it? It doesn’t make sense to me: I shouldn’t have left it, in his place.’

‘But you don’t happen to have the guts of a frog,’ Roffery growled, straining against the priest’s outflung arm. ‘We’ve all got our own reasons for coming on this mad jaunt, and my reason’s none of your business.’

‘What are you making such a fuss about anyway, Complain?’ Wantage shouted. ‘Why are you coming? I’m dead sure I don’t want your company!’

The priest’s short sword was suddenly between them. They could see his knuckles white from his grip on the handle.

‘As I am a holy man,’ he growled, ‘I swear by every drop of rancid blood in Quarters I’ll Long Journey the next man that speaks.’

They stood there stiff with hostility, not speaking.

‘Sweet, peace-making blade,’ Marapper whispered, and then, in ordinary tones, unhitching a pack from his shoulder, ‘Strap this harness on your back, Roy, and pull yourself together. Ern, leave your dazer alone — you’re like a girl with a dolly. Soften up, the lot of you, and start walking with me. Keep in a bunch. We’ve got to get through one of the barriers to get into Deadways, so take your lead from me. It won’t be easy.’

He locked the door of his compartment, glanced thoughtfully at the key and then slipped it into a pocket. Without another sign to the others, he started to walk down the corridor. They hesitated only momentarily, and then fell obediently in beside him. Marapper’s iron stare remained firmly fixed ahead, relegating them all to another, inferior universe.

At the next corridor junction, he turned left and, at the next but one, left again. This led them into a short cul-de-sac with a mesh gate filling all the far end; a Guard stood before it, for this was one of the side barriers.

The Guard was relaxed but alert. He sat on a box, resting his chin on his hand, but directly the five came in view around the corner he jumped up and levelled a dazer at them.

‘I should be happy to shoot,’ he cried, giving the standard challenge. Eyes hard, legs braced, he made it sound more than a cliché.

‘And I to die,’ responded Marapper amiably. ‘Tuck your weapon away, Twemmers; we are no Outsiders. You sound a little nervy, methinks.’

‘Stop or I fire!’ the Guard, Twemmers, called. ‘What do you want? Halt, all five of you!’

Marapper never paused in his stride, and the others came slowly on with him. For Complain, there was a certain fascination about it that he could not explain.

‘You are getting too short-sighted for that job, my friend,’ the priest called. ‘I’ll see Zilliac and get you taken off it. It is I, Marapper your priest, the agent of your doubtful sanity, with some well-wishers. No blood for you tonight, man.’

‘I’d shoot anybody,’ Twemmers threatened ferociously, waving his weapon, but backing towards the mesh gate behind him.

‘Well, save it for a better target — although you’ll never have a bigger,’ said the priest. ‘I have something important here for you.’

During this interchange, Marapper’s advance had not faltered. They were now almost on the Guard. The wretched man hesitated uncertainly; other Guards were within hail, but a false alarm could mean lashes for him, and he was anxious to preserve his present state of misery intact. Those few seconds’ indecision were fatal. The priest was up to him.

Drawing the short sword swiftly from under his cloak, Marapper with a grunt dug it deep into the Guard’s stomach, twisted it, and caught the body neatly over his shoulder as it doubled forward. He hoisted it until Twemmer’s limp hands knocked against the small of his back, and then grunted again, with satisfaction.

‘That was neatly done, father,’ Wantage said, impressed. ‘Couldn’t have improved on it myself!’

‘Masterly!’ Roffery exclaimed, respect in his voice. It was good to see a priest who so ably practised what he preached.

‘Pleasure,’ grunted Marapper, ‘but keep your voices low or the hounds will have us. Fermour, take this, will you?’

The body was transferred to Bob Fermour’s shoulder; he, being five foot eight, and nearly a head taller than the others, could manage it most easily. Marapper wiped his blade daintily on Complain’s jacket, holstered it, and turned his attention to the mesh gate.

From one of his voluminous pockets, he produced a pair of wire cutters, and with these snicked a connection on the gate. He tugged at the handle; it gave about an inch and then stuck. He heaved and growled, but it moved no further.

‘Let me,’ Complain said.

He set his weight against the gate and tugged. It flew suddenly open with a piercing squeal, running on rusted bearings. A well was now revealed, a black, gaping hole, seemingly bottomless. They shrank back from it in some dismay.

‘That noise should attract most of the Guards in Quarters,’ Fermour said, inspecting with interest a notice, ‘RING FOR LIFT’, by the side of the shaft. ‘Now what, priest?’

‘Pitch the Guard down there, for a start,’ Marapper said. ‘Look lively!’

The body was hurled into the blackness, and in a moment they had the satisfaction of hearing a heavy thud.

‘Sickening!’ exclaimed Wantage with relish.

‘Still warm,’ Marapper whispered. ‘No need for death rites — just as well if we are to continue to claim our life rights. Now then, don’t be afraid, children, this dark place is man-made; once, I believe, a sort of carriage ran up and down it. We’ve got to follow Twemmer’s example, although less speedily.’

Cables hung in the middle of the opening. The priest leant forward and seized them, then lowered himself gingerly hand over fist down fifteen feet to the next level. The lift shaft yawning below him, he swung himself on to the narrow ledge, clung to the mesh with one hand and applied his cutters with the other. Tugging carefully, levering with his foot against an upright, he worked the gate open wide enough to squeeze through.

One at a time, the others followed. Complain was the last to leave the upper level. He climbed down the cable, silently bidding Quarters an uncordial farewell, and emerged with the others. The five of them stood silently in rustling twilight, peering about them.

They were on strange territory, but one stretch of ponic warren is much like another.

Marapper shut the gate neatly behind them and then faced forward, squaring his shoulders and adjusting his cloak.

‘That’s quite enough action for one wake, for an old priest like me,’ he said, ‘unless any of you care to resume our dispute about leadership?’

‘That was never under dispute,’ Complain said, looking challengingly past Roffery’s ear.

‘Don’t try and provoke me,’ the latter warned. ‘I follow our father, but I’ll chop anyone who starts trouble.’

‘There’ll be enough trouble here to satisfy the most swinishly stupid appetite,’ Wantage prophesied, swinging the bad side of his face towards the walls of growth about them. ‘It would make most sense if we stopped yapping and saved our swords for someone else’s stomachs.’

Reluctantly, they agreed with him.

Marapper brushed at his short cloak, scowling thoughtfully; it was bloodied at the hem.

‘We shall sleep now,’ he said. ‘We will break into the first convenient room and use that for camp. This must be our routine every sleep: we cannot remain in the corridors — the position is too exposed. In a compartment we can post guards and sleep safe.’

‘Would we not be better advised to move further from Quarters before we sleep?’ Complain asked.

‘Whatever I advise is the best advice,’ Marapper said. ‘Do you think any one of those supine mothers’ sons back there is going to risk his scabby neck by entering an unknown stretch of ponics, with all its possibilities for ambush? Just to save my breath answering these inane suggestions, you’d better all get one thing perfectly clear — you are doing what I tell you to do. That’s what being united means, and if we aren’t united we aren’t anything. Hold firm to that idea and we’ll survive. Clear enough? Roy? Ern? Wantage? Fermour?’

The priest looked into their set faces as if he were holding an identification parade. They hooded their eyes from his gaze, like a quartet of drowsy vultures.

‘We’ve agreed to all that once already,’ Fermour said impatiently. ‘What more do you want us to do, kiss your boots?’

Although all were in some measure in agreement with him, the other three growled angrily at Fermour, he being a somewhat safer target for growls than the priest.

‘You can kiss my boots only when you’ve earned that privilege,’ Marapper said. ‘But there is something else I want you to do. I want you to obey me implicitly, but I also require you to swear you will not turn on one another. I’m not asking you to trust each other, or anything stupid like that. I’m not asking for any breaches of the canons of the Teaching — if we’re to make the Long Journey, we’re making it Orthodox. But we cannot afford constant quarrelling and fighting; your easy times in Quarters are over.

‘Some of the dangers we may meet, we know about — mutants, outsiders, other tribes, and finally the terrible people of Forwards themselves. But have no doubt that there will also be dangers of which we know nothing. When you feel spite for one of your fellows, nurse that bright spark for the unknown: it will be needed.’

He looked searchingly at them again.

‘Swear to it,’ he commanded.

‘That’s all very well,’ Wantage grumbled. ‘Of course I agree, but it obviously means sacrificing — well, our own characters. If we do that, it’s up to you to do the same sort of thing, Marapper, and give up all these speeches. Just tell us what you want us to do and we’ll do it without holding an oration over it.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Fermour quickly, before fresh argument could break out. ‘For hem sake let’s swear and then get some kip.’

They agreed to forego the privilege of private quarrels, and pressed slowly into the ponic fringes, the priest leading, fishing out an enormous bundle of magnetic keys. Some yards on, they came to the first door. They halted, and the priest began to try his keys one by one on to the shallow impression of the lock.

Complain, meanwhile, pushed on a little further and called back to them after a minute.

‘There’s a door here which has been broken into,’ he said. ‘Another tribe has evidently passed this way at some time. It would save us trouble if we went in here.’

They moved up to him, pressing back the rattling canes. The door stood open only a finger’s breadth, and they eyed it with some apprehension. Every door presented a challenge, an entry to the unknown; all knew of tales of death leaping from behind these silent doors, and the fear had been ingrained in them since childhood.

Drawing his dazer, Roffery lifted his foot and kicked out. The door swung open. Within, the briefest of scuttles was heard, and then dead silence. The room was evidently large, but dark, its sources of illumination having been broken — how long ago? Had there been light within, the ponics would have forced the door in their own remorseless way, satisfying their unending thirst for light, but they had even less use than man for the corners of darkness.

‘Only rats in there,’ Complain said, a little breathlessly. ‘Go on in, Roffery. What are you waiting for?’

For answer, Roffery took a torch from his pack and shone it ahead. He moved forward, the others crowding after him.

It was a big room as rooms went, eight paces by five; it was empty. The nervous eye of Roffery’s torch flicked sharply over the usual grille in the ceiling, blank walls and a floor piled with wreckage. Chairs, and desks, their drawers flung aside, their paraphernalia scattered, had been savagely attacked with a hatchet. Light-weight steel cabinets were dented, and lay face down in the dust. The five men stood suspiciously on the threshold, wondering dimly how long ago the havoc had been wrought, feeling perhaps a memory of that savagery still in the air, for savagery — unlike virtue — endures long after its originators have perished.

‘We can sleep here,’ Marapper said shortly. ‘Roy, have a look through that door over there.’

The door at the far side of the room was half open. Skirting a broken desk, Complain pushed at the jamb; a small lavatory was revealed, the china bowl broken, piping torn away. A path of ancient rust ran down the wall, but the water had long ceased to flow. As Complain looked, a shaggy white rat sped from the wreckage past him with a drop-sided scamper; Fermour kicked at it and missed, and it vanished into the ponic tangle of the corridor.

‘This will do,’ Marapper repeated. ‘We will eat and then you will draw lots for guard duty.’

They ate frugally from the supplies in their packs, wrangling over the meal as to whether or not a guard was necessary. Since Complain and Fermour held it was necessary and Roffery and Wantage held it was not, the sides were equally balanced, and the priest did not find himself bound to join the disagreement. He ate in silence, wiped his hands delicately on a rag, and then said, from a still full mouth, ‘Roffery, you will guard first, then Wantage, so that you two will have the earliest opportunity of proving yourselves right. Next sleep, Fermour and Complain will guard.’

‘You said we should draw lots,’ Wantage said angrily.

‘I changed my mind.’

He said it so bluntly that Roffery instinctively abandoned that line of attack and remarked, ‘You, I suppose, father, never guard?’

Marapper spread his hands and edged a look of childlike innocence on to his face. ‘My dear friends, your priest guards you all the time, awake or asleep.’

Rapidly, he pulled a round object from under his cloak and continued, changing the subject, ‘With this instrument, which I had the forethought to relieve Zilliac of, we can scientifically regulate our spells of guard so that no man does more than another. You see that it has on this side a circle of numbers and three hands or pointers. It is called a watch, so called after a period of guard, which is — as you know — also a watch. The Giants made it for this purpose, which shows that they too had Outsiders and madmen to deal with.’

Complain, Fermour and Wantage inspected the watch with interest; Roffery, who had handled such things in his job as valuer, sat back superciliously. The priest retrieved his possession and began to press a small stud on its side.

‘I do this to make it work,’ he explained grandly. ‘Of the three pointers, the little one goes very rapidly; that we can disregard. The two big ones go at different speeds, but we need only bother with the slower one. You see it is now touching the figure eight. Ern, you will stay awake until it touches the figure nine; then you will rouse Wantage. Wantage, when the pointer points to ten, you will rouse us all, and we will begin our journey. Clear?’

‘Where are we going?’ Wantage inquired sullenly.

‘We will go into all that when we have slept,’ Marapper said, in a tone of finality. ‘Sleep comes first. Wake me if you hear anybody moving outside — and don’t wake me for false alarms. I am apt to be irritable if my dreams are disturbed.’

He rolled over into a corner, kicked a shattered office stool away and composed himself for sleep. Without much hesitation, the others did likewise, except Roffery, who watched them unlovingly.

They were all lying on the floor when Wantage spoke hesitantly. ‘Father, Father Marapper,’ he called, with a note of pleading in his voice. ‘Will you not give us a prayer for the safety of our skins?’

‘I’m too tired to intercede for anyone’s skin,’ Marapper replied.

‘A short prayer, father.’

‘As you wish. Children, expansion to our egos, let us pray.’ He commenced to pray as he lay hunched on the dirty floor, his words coming indifferently at first, and then gaining power as he drew interest from his train of thought.

‘O Consciousness, we gathered here are doubly unworthy to be thy vessels, for we know we have imperfections and do not seek to purge them as we ought to do. We are a poor lot, in a poor way of life; yet as we contain thee there is hope for us. O Consciousness, direct particularly these five of the poor vessels here, for there is more hope for us than for those we left behind, and therefore there is more room for thee in us. We know that when thou art not here there is only the adversary, Subconscious, in us; make our thoughts to swim solely in thee. Make our hands quicker, our arms stronger, our eyes sharper, and our tempers fiercer: that we may overcome and kill all who oppose us. May we smite and sunder them! May we scatter their entrails through the length of the ship! So that we come in the end to a position of power, in full possession of thee, and in thy full possession. And may thy spark breathe in us until that last dread moment when the adversary claims us, and we too take the Long Journey.’

As he had intoned, the priest had risen to his knees and stretched his hands above his head. Now he, with all the others copying the movement, drew his outstretched right index finger symbolically, ritualistically, across his throat.

‘Now shut up, the lot of you,’ he said, in his normal tone, and settled again in his corner.

Complain lay with his back to a wall and his head on his pack; he slept usually like an animal, lightly, and with no dozing stages between sleep and waking. But in these strange surroundings he lay for some while with his eyes half-shut, trying to think. He thought only in generalized pictures: Gwenny’s empty bunk; Marapper standing triumphant over Zilliac; Meller, with the jumping animal growing under his fingers; a greasy broth bubbling out Ozbert Bergass’s life; the tensed muscles on Wantage’s neck, ready to twitch his head away from prying eyes; the Guard, Twemmer, tumbling tiredly into Marapper’s arms. And behind the pictures lay the significant fact that they concerned only what had passed, and that for what was to come he could find no pictures, for he was following into unknown realms: he was moving into the other darkness his mother had spoken of and feared.

He drew no conclusions, wasted no time in worry; indeed, he felt a kind of hope, for, as a village saying had it, the devil you don’t know may conquer the one you do.

He could see, before he slept, the desolate room lit by the light percolating from the corridor and, through the outer door, a section of the everlasting tangle. In the changeless, draughtless heat, the ponics rustled ceaselessly; occasionally, a click sounded near at hand as a seed was flicked into the room. The plants grew so rapidly that, when Complain woke, the younger ones would be inches taller and the older ones wilting against the restriction of the bulkheads; then, choking and choked would alike be nipped by the next dark. But he failed to see in this ceaseless jostling a parallel with the human lives about him.

II

‘You snore, priest,’ Roffery said pleasantly, as they ate together at the beginning of the next wake.

The relationship between them had subtly changed, as if some occult power had been active during the sleep. The feeling that they were five rivals snatched almost casually from Quarters had vanished; they were still rivals, in the sense that all men were rivals, but now there was a mute acknowledgement of union against the forces about them. The period of watch had undoubtedly been good for Roffery’s soul, and he seemed almost submissive. Of the five of them, Wantage alone appeared to be in no way altered. His character had been eroded by constant loneliness and mortification, as the flow of water wears away a wooden post, and he no longer had anything in him amenable to change; he could only be broken or killed.

‘We must move as far as possible this wake,’ Marapper said. ‘The coming sleep-wake is a dark, as you know, and it may not be advisable to travel then, when our torches will give us away to any watchers. Before we go, however, I will condescend to tell you something of our plans; and for that it is necessary to say something about the ship.’

He looked round at them, grinning and eating extravagantly as he spoke.

‘And the first point is, that we are in a ship. All agreed there?’

His gaze forced some sort of a reply from each of them; an ‘Of course’ from Fermour; an impatient grunt from Wantage, as if he found the question irrelevant; an airy wave of the hand, meaningless, from Roffery; and from Complain ‘No’.

To the latter, Marapper immediately turned his full attention.

‘Then you’d better understand quickly, Roy,’ he said. ‘Firstly, the proofs. Listen hard — I feel strongly on this question, and a show of determined stupidity might make me regrettably angry.’

He walked round the shattered furniture as he spoke, very emphatic and solid, his face heavy with seriousness.

‘Now, Roy — the great thing is, that not being in a ship is vastly different from being in it. You know — we all know — only what being in one is like; it is that which makes us think there is only ship. But there are many places which are not ship — huge places, many of them… This I know because I have seen records left by the Giants. The ship was made by the Giants, for their own purposes which are — as yet — hidden from us.’

‘I’ve heard this argument in Quarters,’ Complain said unhappily. ‘Suppose I believe all you say, Marapper. What then? Ship or world, what’s the difference?’

‘You don’t see. Look!’ Savagely, the priest leant forward and snatched a handful of ponic leaves, waving them before Complain’s face.

‘These are natural, something grown,’ he said.

He burst into the rear room, giving the broken china bowl a resounding kick.

‘That is made, artificial,’ he said. ‘Now do you see? The ship is an artificial thing. The world is natural. We are natural beings, and our rightful home is not here. The whole ship is made by the Giants.’

‘But even if it is so –’ Complain began.

‘It is so! It is so! The proof is round you all the time — corridors, walls, rooms, all artificial — but you are so used to it, you can’t see it is proof.’

‘Never mind if he can’t see it,’ Fermour told the priest. ‘What does it matter?’

‘I can see it,’ Complain said angrily. ‘I just can’t accept it.’

‘Well, sit there and be quiet and chew it over, and meanwhile we’ll go on,’ Marapper said. ‘I have read books, and I know the truth. The Giants built the ship for a purpose; somewhere, that purpose has been lost, and the Giants themselves have died. Only the ship is left.’

He stopped pacing and leant against a wall, resting his forehead against it. When he spoke again, it was almost to himself.

‘Only the ship is left. Only the ship and, trapped in it, all the tribes of man. There was a catastrophe: something went terribly awry somewhere, and we have been left to a terrible fate. It is a judgement passed on us for some awful, unguessable sin committed by our forefathers.’

‘To the hull with all this chatter,’ Wantage said angrily. ‘Why don’t you try and forget you’re a priest, Marapper? Let’s hear how this has any bearing on what we are going to do.’

‘It has every bearing,’ Marapper said, sticking his hands sulkily into his pockets, and then withdrawing one to pick at a tooth. ‘Of course, I’m only really interested in the theological aspects of the question. But the point as far as you are concerned is that the ship, by definition, has come from somewhere and is going to somewhere. These somewheres are more important than the ship; they are where we should be. They are natural places.

‘All that is no mystery, except to fools; the mystery is, why is there this conspiracy to keep us from knowing where we are? What is going on here behind our backs?’

‘Something’s gone wrong somewhere,’ Wantage answered eagerly. ‘It’s what I’ve always said: something’s gone wrong.’

‘Well, cease to say it in my presence,’ the priest snapped. It seemed to him that his position of authority was weakened by allowing others to agree with him. ‘There is a conspiracy. We have been plotted against. The driver or captain of this ship is concealed somewhere, and we are forging on under his direction, knowing neither the journey nor the destination. He is a madman who keeps himself shut away while we are all punished for this sin our forefathers committed.’

This sounded to Complain both horrifying and unlikely, although no more unlikely than the whole idea of being in a moving vessel. Presumably accepting one premise meant accepting the other, so he said nothing. A vast feeling of insecurity engulfed him. Looking round unobtrusively at the others present, he detected no particular signs that they agreed enthusiastically with the priest: Fermour was smiling rather derisively, Wantage’s face presented its usual meaningless glare of disagreement, and Roffery was tugging impatiently at his moustache.

‘Now here is my plan,’ said the priest, ‘and unfortunately I need your co-operation to help carry it out. We are going to find this captain, hunt him down wherever he may be hiding. He is well concealed, but no locked doors shall save him from us. When we reach him, we kill him — and we shall be in control of the ship!’

‘And what do we do with it when we’ve got it?’ Fermour asked, in a tone carefully designed to counteract Marapper’s runaway enthusiasm.

The priest looked blank only for a moment.

‘We will find a destination for it,’ he said. ‘You leave that sort of detail to me.’

‘Where exactly do we discover this captain fellow?’ Roffery enquired.

For anwer, the priest flung back his cloak and felt inside his tunic; with a flourish, he produced the looker Complain had already seen. He waved the title under their eyes, but this meant little except to Roffery, the only fluent reader among them. To the others, the syllables were intelligible, but they were unable to master unfamiliar words without long effort. Pulling the looker out of their reach again, Marapper explained condescendingly that it was called ‘Manual of Electrical Circuits of Starship’. He also explained — for this explanation gave him an opportunity for boasting — how the looker had come into his possession. It had been lying in the store in which Zilliac’s Guards had found the cache of dyes, and had been confiscated and added to a pile of goods awaiting inspection in the Lieutenancy. There Marapper had seen it and, recognizing its value instantly, had pocketed it for his own use. Unfortunately, one of the Guards had caught him, and the silence of this loyal man could only be bought by the promise that he should go with Marapper and find power for himself.

‘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?

Certainly there was a distant sound, as throaty as the noise of running water. The longer Complain listened, the louder it seemed. With a glance back at his three sleeping companions, Complain slipped out to trace the sound. This alarming course seemed to him slightly preferable to having to wake the priest and explain that he had dozed.

Once in the corridor, he cautiously flashed a torch and picked up Roffery’s footprints in the sludge, pointing towards the unexplored end of this level. Walking was easier now that the tangle was sagging into the centre, away from the walls. Complain moved slowly, not showing a light and keeping his dazer ready for action.

At a corridor junction he paused, pressing on again with the liquid sound to guide him. The ponics petered out and were replaced by deck, washed bare of soil by a stream of water. Complain allowed it to flow against his boots, walking carefully so as not to splash. This was new in his experience. A light burned ahead. As he neared it, he saw it was shining in a vast chamber beyond two plate-glass doors. When he got to the doors, he stopped; on them was painted a notice, ‘Swimming Pool’, which he pronounced to himself without understanding. Peering through the doors, he saw a shallow flight of steps going up, with pillars at the top of them; behind one pillar stood the shadowy figure of a man.

Complain ducked instantly away. When the man did not move, Complain concluded he had not been seen and looked again, to observe that the figure was staring away from him. It looked like Roffery. Cautiously, Complain opened one of the glass doors; a wave washed against his legs. Water was pouring down the steps, converting them into a waterfall.

‘Roffery!’ Complain called, keeping his dazer on the figure. The three syllables he uttered were seized and blown to an enormous booming, which moaned several times round the cavern of darkness before dying. They washed away with them everything but a hollow stillness, which now sounded loud in its own right.

‘Who’s there?’ challenged the figure, in a whisper.

Through his fright, Complain managed to whisper his name back. The man beckoned him. Complain stood motionless where he was and then, at another summons, slowly climbed the steps. As he came level with the other he saw with certainty that it was the valuer.

Roffery grabbed his arm.

‘You were sleeping, you fool!’ he hissed in Complain’s ear.

Complain nodded mutely, afraid to rouse the echoes again.

Roffery dismissed that subject. Without speaking, he pointed ahead. Complain looked where he was bid, puzzled by the expression on the other’s face.

Neither of them had ever been in such a large space. Lit only by one tube which burned to their left, it seemed to stretch for ever into the darkness. The floor was a sheet of water on which ripples slid slowly outwards. Under the light, the water shone like metal. Breaking this smooth expanse at the far end, was an erection of tubes which suspended planks over the water at various heights, and to either side were rows of huts, barely distinguishable for shadow.

‘It’s beautiful!’ Roffery breathed. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’

Complain stared at him in astonishment. The word ‘beautiful’ had an erotic meaning, and was applied only to particularly desirable women. Yet he saw that there was a sight here which needed a special choice of vocabulary. His eyes switched back to the water: it was entirely outside their experience. Previously, water had meant only a dribble from a tap, a spurt from a hose, or the puddle at the bottom of a utensil. He wondered vaguely what this amount could be for. Sinister, uncanny, the view had another quality also, and it was this Roffery was trying to describe.

‘I know what it is,’ Roffery murmured. He was staring at the water as if hypnotized, the lines of his face so relaxed that his appearance was changed. ‘I’ve read about this in old books brought me for valuing, dreamy rubbish with no meaning till now.’ He paused, and then quoted, ‘“Then dead men rise up never, and even the longest river winds somewhere safe to sea.” This is the sea, Complain, and we’ve stumbled on the sea. I’ve often read about it. For me, it proves Marapper’s wrong about our being in a ship; we’re in an underground city.’

This meant little to Complain; he was not interested in labels of things. What struck him was to perceive something he had worried over till now: why Roffery had left his sinecure to come on the priest’s hazardous expedition. He saw now that the other had a reason akin to Complain’s own: a longing for what he had never known and could put no name to. Instead of feeling any bond with Roffery about this, Complain decided he must more than ever beware of the man, for if they had similar objectives, they were the more likely to clash.

‘Why did you come up here?’ he asked, still keeping his voice low to avoid the greedy echoes.

‘While you were snoring, I woke and heard voices in the corridor,’ Roffery said. ‘Through the frosted glass I saw two men pass — only they were too big for men. They were Giants!’

‘Giants! The Giants are dead, Roffery.’

‘These were Giants, I tell you, fully seven feet high. I saw their heads go by the window.’ In his eyes, Complain read the uneasy fascinated memory of them.

‘And you followed them?’ Complain asked.

‘Yes. I followed them into here.’

At this Complain scanned the shadows anew.

‘Are you trying to frighten me?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t ask you to come after me. Why be afraid of the Giants? Dazers’ll despatch a man however long he measures.’

‘We’d better be getting back, Roffery. There’s no point in standing here; besides, I’m meant to be on watch.’

‘You might have thought of that before,’ Roffery said. ‘We’ll bring Marapper here later to see what he makes of the sea. Before we go, I’m just going to look at something over there. That was where the Giants disappeared to.’

He indicated a point hear at hand, beside the huts, where a square of curb was raised some four inches above the water-line. The solitary light which overhung it looked almost as if it had been temporarily erected by the Giants to cast a glow there.

‘There’s a trapdoor inside that curb,’ Roffery whispered. ‘The Giants went down there and closed it after them. Come on, we’ll go and look.’

This seemed to Complain foolhardy in the extreme, but not venturing to criticize he merely said, ‘Well, keep to the shadows in case anyone else comes in here.’

‘The sea’s only ankle deep,’ Roffery said. ‘Don’t be afraid of getting your feet wet.’

He seemed strangely excited, like a child, with a child’s innocent disregard of danger. Nevertheless, he obeyed Complain’s injunction and kept to the cover of the walls. They paddled one behind the other on the fringes of the sea, weapons ready, and so came to the trapdoor, dry behind its protecting curb.

Pulling a face at his companion, Roffery stooped down and slowly lifted the hatch. Gentle light flowed out from the opening. They saw an iron ladder leading down into a pit full of piping. Two overalled figures were working silently at the bottom of the pit, doing something with a stopcock. As soon as the hatch was opened, they must have heard the magnified hiss of running water in the chamber above them, for they looked up and fixed Roffery and Complain with an astonished gaze. Undoubtedly they were Giants: they were monstrously tall and thick, and their faces were dark.

Roffery’s nerve deserted him at once. He dropped the hatch down with a slam, and turned and ran. Complain splashed close behind. Next second, Roffery disappeared, swallowed by the water. Complain slopped abruptly. He could see at his feet, below the surface of the sea, the lip of a dark well. Roffery bobbed up again, a yard from him, in the well, striking the water and hollering. In the darkness, his face was apoplectic. Complain stretched out a hand to him, leaning forward as far as he dared. The other struggled to grasp it, floundered, and sank again in a welter of bubbles. The hubbub in the vast cavern was deafening.

When he appeared again, Roffery had found a footing, and stood chest-deep in the water. Panting and cursing, he pushed forward to seize Complain’s hand. At the same time, the trapdoor was flung open. The Giants were coming out. As Complain whirled round, he was aware of Roffery pausing to grab at his dazer, which would not be affected by damp, and of a pattern of crazy light rippling on the ceiling high above them. Without aiming, he fired his own dazer at a head emerging from the vault. The daze went wide. The Giant launched himself at them, and Complain dropped his weapon in panic. As he bent to scrabble for it in the shallow water, Roffery fired over his stooped back. His aim was better than Complain’s.

The Giant staggered and fell with a splash which roused the echoes. As far as Complain could remember afterwards, the monster had been unarmed.

The second Giant was armed. Seeing the fate of his companion, he crouched on the ladder, shielded by the curb, and fired twice. The first shot got Roffery in the face. Without a sound, he slipped beneath the water.

Complain dived flat, kicking up spray, but he was an easy target for the marksman. His temple stopped the second shot.

Limply, he slumped into the water, face down.

The Giant climbed out of the pit and came grimly towards him.

III

At the centre of the human metabolism is the will to live. So delicate is this mechanism that some untoward experience early in life can implant within it the opposite impulse, the will to die. The two drives lie quietly side by side, and a man may pass his days unaware of their existence; then some violent crisis faces him and, stripped momentarily of his superficial characteristics, his fatal duality is bare before him; and he must stop to wrestle with the flaw within before he can fight the external foe.

It was so with Complain. After oblivion, came only the frantic desire to retreat back into unconsciousness. But unconsciousness had rejected him, and the prompting soon came that he must struggle to escape from whatever predicament he was in. Then again, he felt no urge to escape, only the desire to submit and fade back into nothing. Insistently, however, life returned.

He opened his eyes for a moment. He was lying on his back in semi-darkness. A grey roof of some kind was only a few inches above his head. It was flowing backwards, or he was moving forwards: he could not tell which, and closed his eyes again. A steady increase in bodily sensation told him his ankles and wrists were lashed together.

His head ached, and a foul smell pervaded his lungs, making breathing an agony. He realized the Giant had shot him with some kind of gas pellet, instantly effective but ultimately, perhaps, innocuous.

Again he opened his eyes. The roof still seemed to be travelling backwards, but he felt a steady tremor through his body, telling him he was on some kind of moving vehicle. Even as he looked, the movement stopped. He saw a Giant loom beside him, presumably the one who had shot and captured him. Through half-closed eyes, Complain saw the immense creature was on hands and knees in this low place. Feeling on the roof, he now knuckled some kind of switch, and a section of the roof swung upwards.

From above came light and the sound of deep voices. Complain was later to recognize this slow, heavy tone as the typical manner of speech of the Giants. Before he had time to prepare for it, he was seized and dragged off the conveyance and passed effortlessly up through the opening. Large hands took hold of him and dumped him not ungently against the wall of a room.

‘He’s coming round,’ a voice commented, in a curious accent Complain hardly understood.

This observation worried him a great deal; partly because he thought he had given no indication he was recovering, partly because the remark suggested they might now gas him again.

Another body was handed up through the opening, the original Giant climbing up after it. A muttered conversation took place. From the little Complain could hear, he gathered that the body was that of the Giant Roffery had killed. The other Giant was explaining what had happened. It soon became apparent he was talking to two others, although Complain, from where he lay, could see only wall.

He slumped back into a mindless state, trying to breathe the dirty odour out of his lungs.

Another Giant entered from a side room and began talking in a peremptory tone suggestive of command. Complain’s captor began to explain the situation over again, but was cut short.

‘Did you deal with the flooding?’ the newcomer asked.

‘Yes, Mr Curtis. We fitted a new stopcock in place of the rusted one and switched the water off. We also unblocked the drainage and fitted a length of new piping there. We were just finishing off when Sleepy Head here turned up. The pool should be empty by now.’

‘All right, Randall,’ the peremptory voice addressed as Curtis said. ‘Now tell me why you started chasing these two dizzies.’

There was a pause, then the other said apologetically, ‘We didn’t know how many of them there were. For all we knew, we might have been ambushed in the inspection pit. We had to get out and see. I suppose that if we had realized to begin with that there were only two of them, we should have let them go without interfering.’

The Giants spoke so sluggishly that Complain had no difficulty in understanding most of this, despite the strange accent. Of its general intention he could make nothing. He was almost beginning to lose interest when he became the topic of conversation, and his interest abruptly revived.

‘You realize you are in trouble, Randall,’ the stern voice said. ‘You know the rules: it means a court martial. You will have difficulty in proving self-defence, to my mind. Especially as the other dizzy was drowned.’

‘He wasn’t drowned. I fished him out of the water and put him on the closed inspection hatch to recover in his own time.’ Randall sounded surly.

‘Leaving that question aside — what do you propose doing with this specimen you’ve brought here?’ Curtis demanded.

‘He’d have drowned if I had left him there.’

‘Why bring him here?’

‘Couldn’t we just knock him off and have done with it, Mr Curtis?’ One of the Giants spoke for the first time since Curtis had come in.

‘Out of the question. Criminal breach of the rules. Besides, could you kill a man in cold blood?’

‘He’s only a dizzy, Mr Curtis,’ spoken defensively.

‘Could he go for rehabilitation?’ Randall suggested, in the tone of one dazzled by the brightness of his own idea.

‘He’s far too old, man! You know they only take children. What the deuce was the idea of bringing him here?’

‘Well, as I say, I couldn’t leave him there, and after I fished his pal out, I — well, it’s pretty creepy there and — I thought I heard something. So I — nipped him to safety with me quickly.’

‘It’s quite obvious you panicked, Randall,’ Curtis said. ‘We certainly don’t want a spare dizzy here. You’ll have to take him back, that’s all.’ The voice was curt and decisive. Complain took heart from it; nothing would suit him better than to be taken back. Not, he realized, that he had much fear of the Giants; now he was among them, they seemed too slow and gentle for malice. Curtis’s was not an attitude he understood, but it was certainly convenient.

There was some argument between the Giants as to how Complain’s return should be effected. Randall’s friends sided with him against the one in command, Curtis; the latter lost his temper.

‘All right,’ he snapped, ‘come into the office, the lot of you, and we’ll buzz through to Little Dog and get an authoritative ruling.’

‘Losing your nerve, Curtis?’ one of the others asked, as they followed him through — with that crazy, slow-motion walk the Giants had — into the other room, slamming the door on Complain without a glance at him. Complain’s immediate thought was that they were fools to leave him unguarded; he could now escape back through the hole in the floor by which he had come. This illusion burst the moment he tried to roll over. As soon as he attempted to move a muscle, it filled with a brittle ache, and the pervasive stench in his lungs seemed to turn solid. He groaned and lay back, his head against the curve of wall.

Complain was alone only for a second after the Giants had gone. A grating noise sounded from the region of his knees. Craning his neck slightly, Complain saw a small section of the wall, a jagged patch roughly six inches square, slide out. From this hole, nightmare figures emerged.

There were five of them, bursting out at an immense rate, circling Complain, jumping him, and then reporting back like lightning to the hole. They evidently carried some sort of reassurance, for three more figures promptly whisked into view, beckoning to others behind them. They were all rats.

The five scouts wore spiked collars round their necks; they were small and lean of body; one had lost an eye, in the vacant socket of which gristle twitched sympathetically with the glances of the surviving pupil. Of the next three to appear, one was jet black and obviously the leader. He stood upright, pawing the air with little mauve hands. He wore no collar, but the upper half of his body was accoutred with an assembly of bits of metal — a ring, a button, a thimble, nails — evidently intended for armour; round his waist was a buckler with an instrument like a small sword attached. He squeaked furiously and the five scouts circuited Complain again, flashing along his leg, grinning momentarily into his eye, scrapping over his neck, slithering down his blouse.

The rat-leader’s two bodyguards waited nervously, ever glancing back, flicking their whiskers. They stood on all fours, and wore only shabby little patches like cloaks over their backs.

During this activity, Complain did an amount of involuntary flinching. He was used to rats, but there was an organized quality to these that disturbed him; also, he fancied that he could manage little by way of defence should they decide it suited their cause to gnaw his eyes out.

But the rats were on something other than a delicacy hunt. The rearguard now appeared. Panting from a hole in the wall came four more buck rats. They dragged a small cage which, under the whistled orders of the rat-leader, was pulled rapidly to a position before Complain’s face, where he had every opportunity of inspecting it and inhaling the odour from it.

The animal in the cage was larger than the rats. From the fur at the top of its oval skull sprouted two long ears; its tail was merely a white scut of fluff. Complain had not seen a creature of this species before, but he recognized it from the descriptions of old hunters back in Quarters. It was a rabbit, scarce because natural prey for the rat. He looked at it with interest, and it stared nervously back at him.

As the rabbit was drawn up, the five original scout rats spread out by the inner door, keeping watch for the Giants’ return. The leader-rat whisked forward to the cage; the rabbit shrank away, but was tethered by all four legs to the bars of his prison. The leader-rat ducked his head at the sword in his buckler, standing erect again with a fierce little blade fitting over his two front teeth, a tiny scythe which he twitched avidly about in the direction of the rabbit’s neck.

This display of menace over, he sheathed the blade again and darted vigorously between cage and Complain’s face, gesticulating. Obviously, the rabbit understood what was intended. Complain stared puzzledly at it. The pupils of its eyes appeared to swell, and he flinched in his mind from a feeling of tentative discomfort. The feel remained. It soaked about his brain with the cautious advance of a puddle round cobbles. He tried to shake his head, but the eerie sensation maintained itself and strengthened. It was seeking something, witlessly, like a dying man blundering round darkened rooms, feeling for the light switch. Complain broke into a sweat, grinding his teeth as he tried mentally to repel the beastly contact. Then it found its correct port of entry.

His mind blossomed into an immense shout of interrogation.

WHY ARE –

WHO IS –

WHAT DO –

HOW CAN –

DO YOU –

CAN YOU –

WILL YOU –

Complain screamed with anguish.

Instantly, the desolating gibberish ceased, the formless inquiry died. The scout rats leapt from their posts, and they and the four driver rats spun the imprisoned rabbit round and shot the cage back into the wall. Spurring them savagely, the ratleader followed with his guard. Next moment, the square of wall banged down behind them — only just in time, for a Giant burst into the room to find what the screaming was about.

He rolled Complain over with his foot. The latter stared up hopelessly at him, trying to speak.

Reassured, the Giant lumbered back to the other room, this time leaving open the connecting door.

‘The Dizzy’s got a headache,’ he announced.

Complain could hear their voices. They sounded to be talking at some kind of machine. But he was almost totally absorbed by the ordeal with the rats. A madman had lived for a moment within his skull! The Teaching warned him that his mind was a foul place. The holy trinity, Froyd, Yung and Bassit, had gone alone through the terrible barriers of sleep, death’s brother; there they found — not nothing, as man had formerly believed — but grottoes and subterranean labyrinths full of ghouls and evil treasure, leeches, and the lusts that burn like acid. Man stood revealed to himself: a creature of infinite complexity and horror. It was the aim of the Teaching to let as much of this miasmic stuff out to the surface as possible. But supposing the Teaching had never gone far enough?

It spoke, allegorically, of conscious and subconscious. Supposing there was a real Subconscious, a being capable of taking over the mind of a man? Had the trinity been down all the slimy corridors? Was this Subconscious the madman who screamed inside him?

Then he had the answer, simple yet unbelievable. The caged creature had brought its mind into contact with his. Reviewing that fizzing questionnaire, Complain knew it had come from the animal and not some dreadful creature inside his own head. The ordeal was at once made tolerable. One can shoot rabbits.

Ignoring the how of it with true Quarters’ philosophy, Complain dismissed the matter.

He lay still, resting, trying to breathe the clinging smell from his lungs, and in a short while the Giants returned.

Complain’s captor, Randall, picked him up without further ado and opened the trapdoor in the floor. Their argument had evidently been settled in Curtis’s favour. Randall eased himself and his burden back into the low tunnel. He put Complain on to the conveyance and, by the sound of things, climbed on himself behind his captive’s head.

With a quiet word to the Giants above, he started the motor. Again the grey roof flowed overhead, punctuated by crisscrossing pipe, wire and tube.

At length they stopped. Fumbling on the roof, the Giant pressed his fingers to it, and a square opened above them. Complain was hauled out of the hole, carried a few yards, bundled through a door, and dropped. He was back in Deadways: its smell to a hunter was unmistakeable. The Giant hovered over him wordlessly, a shadow in shadows, and then vanished.

The darkness of the dim sleep-wake embraced Complain like a mother’s arms. He was back home, among dangers he was trained to face. He slept.

Phantom legions of rats swarmed over him, pinning him down. The rabbit came; it climbed into his head and slithered down the long warrens of his brain.

Complain woke, groaning, humiliated by the beastliness of his dream. It was still dark. The rigidity in his limbs, induced by the gas pellet, had relaxed, his lungs were clear. Carefully, he stood up.

Shielding his torch till it gave the barest whisper of light, Complain moved to the door and looked out at blackness. As far as he could see, a gulf stretched infinitely before him. He slid out, feeling along to the right, and found a row of doors. Using the light again, he found damp, bare tile underfoot. Then he knew where he was; a hollowness in his ear reinforced the certainty. The Giant had brought him back to what Roffery had called the sea.

Getting his bearings, Complain flashed the light cautiously. The sea itself had gone. He walked to the edge of the pit into which Roffery had fallen. It was empty, all but dry. Roffery had gone. The walls of the pit glinted with festoons of rust, blood-coloured; in the warm air, the floor of the pit was drying rapidly.

Complain turned and walked from the chamber, minding not to wake the haggard echoes. He headed back to Marapper’s camp. The ground still squelched lightly underfoot, holding its moisture. He brushed gently by the sagging muck of last season’s ponics, and came to the camp door. He whistled eagerly, wondering who would be on guard: Marapper? Wantage? Fermour? Almost lovingly, he thought of them, reversing the old Quarters’ adage to whisper to himself: ‘Better the devils you know than the ones you don’t.’

His signal went unanswered. Holding himself tense, he pushed into the room. It was empty. They had moved on. Complain was alone in Deadways.

Self-control snapped then; he had gone through too much. Giants, rats, rabbits, he could bear — but not the scabrous solitudes of Deadways. He rioted round the room, flinging up the splintered wood, kicking, cursing, out into the corridor, roaring, swearing, tearing a way through the vegetable mash, howling, blaspheming.

A body cannoned into him from behind. Complain sprawled in the tangle, fighting insanely to turn and tackle his assailant. A hand clamped itself unshakeably over his mouth.

‘Shut up, you drab-spawned he-hag!’ a voice snarled in his ear.

He ceased struggling. A light was turned on to him and three figures hunched over him.

‘I — I thought I’d lost you!’ he said. Suddenly, he began to cry. Reaction turned him into a child again. His shoulders heaved, the tears poured down his cheeks.

Marapper smacked him efficiently across the face.

IV

They travelled. Grimly, cutting, pushing, they worked through the ponics; circumspectly, they moved through dark regions where no lights burned and no ponics grew. They passed through badly plundered areas, whose doors were broken, whose corridors were piled high with wreckage. Such life as they met was timid, eluding them where possible; but few creatures lived here — a rogue goat, a crazed hermit, a pathetic band of sub-men who fled when Wantage clapped his hands. This was Deadways, and the emptiness held unrecorded eras of silence. Quarters was left far behind the travellers, and forgotten. Even their nebulous destination was forgotten, for the present, with its ceaseless call upon their physical reserves, required all their attention.

Finding the subsidiary connections between decks was not always easy, even with the help of Marapper’s plan. Liftshafts were often blocked, levels frequently proved dead ends. But they gradually moved forward; the fifties decks were passed, then the forties, and so they came, on the eighth wake after leaving Quarters, to Deck 29.

By now, Roy Complain had begun to believe in the Ship theory. The reorientation had been insensible but thorough. To this, the intelligent rats had greatly contributed. When Complain had told his companions of his capture by the Giants, he had omitted the rat incident; something fantastic about it, he knew instinctively, would have defied his powers of description and awoken Marapper’s and Wantage’s derision; but he now found his thoughts turning frequently to those fearsome creatures. He saw a parallel between the lives of the rats and the human lives emphasized in their man-like conduct of ill-treating a fellow creature, the rabbit. The rats survived where they could, giving no thought to the nature of their surroundings; Complain could only say the same of himself until now.

Marapper had listened to the tale of the Giants intently, commenting little. Once he said, ‘Then do they know where the Captain is?’

He was particularly pressing for full details of what the Giants had said to each other. He repeated the names ‘Curtis’ and ‘Randall’ several times, as if muttering a spell.

‘Who was this little dog they went to speak to?’ he asked.

‘I think it was a name,’ Complain said. ‘Not a real little dog.’

‘A name of what?’

‘I don’t know. I tell you I was half-conscious.’ Indeed the more he thought, the less clear he was as to what exactly had been said. Even at the time, the episode had been sufficiently outside his normal experience to render it half incredible to him.

‘Was it another Giant’s name, do you think, or a thing’s name?’ the priest pressed, tugging at the lobe of his ear, as if to extract the facts that way.

‘I don’t Know, Marapper. I can’t remember. They just said they were going to talk to “little dog” — I think.’

At Marapper’s insistence, the party of four inspected the hall marked ‘Swimming Pool’, where the sea had been. It had completely dried up now. There was no sign of Roffery, which was baffling, considering that one of the Giants had said that the valuer would recover from the gas pellet as Complain had done. They searched and called, but Roffery did not appear.

‘His moustache will be hanging over a mutant’s bunk by now,’ Wantage said. ‘Let’s get a move on!’

They could find no hatch which might have led to the Giants’ room. The steel lid covering the inspection pit where Complain and Roffery had first seen the two Giants was as secure as if it had never opened. The priest shot Complain a sceptical glance, and there the matter was left. Taking Wantage’s advice, they moved on.

The whole incident lowered Complain’s stock considerably. Wantage, quick to seize advantage, became undisputed second-in-command. He followed Marapper, and Fermour and Complain followed him. At least it made for peace in the ranks, and outward accord.

If, during the periods of intent silence when they pushed along the everlasting rings of deck, Complain changed into someone more thoughtful and self-sufficient, the priest’s nature also changed. His volubility had gone, and the vitality from which it sprang. At last he realized the true magnitude of the task he had set himself, and was forced to put his whole will to enduring.

‘Been trouble here — old trouble,’ he said at one place in their trek, leaning against the wall and looking ahead into the middle level of Deck 29. The others paused with him. The tangles stretched for only a few yards in front of them, then began the darkness in which they could not grow. The cause of the light failure was obvious: ancient weapons, such as Quarters did not possess, had blasted holes in the roof and walls of the corridor. A heavy cabinet of some kind protruded through the roof, and the nearby doors had been buckled out of their sockets. For yards round, everywhere was curiously pock-marked and pitted from the force of the explosion.

‘At least we’ll be free of the cursed tangle for a space,’ Wantage remarked, drawing his torch. ‘Come on, Marapper.’

The priest continued to lean where he was, pulling at his nose between first finger and thumb.

‘We must be getting close to Forwards’ territory,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid our torches may give us away.’

‘You walk in the dark if you feel like it,’ Wantage retorted. He moved forward, Fermour did the same. Without a word, pushing past Marapper, Complain followed suit. Grumbling, the priest tagged on; nobody suffered indignity with more dignity than he.

Getting near the edge of shadow, Wantage flicked his torch on, probing it ahead. Then the strangeness began to take them. The first thing that Complain, whose eyes were trained to notice such things, observed which went against natural law was the lie of the ponics. As always, they tailed off and grew stunted towards the lightless passage, but here they were peculiarly whispy, their stalks looking flaccid, as if unable to support their weight, and they ventured further from the overhead glow than usual.

Then his footsteps failed to bite on ground.

Already, Wantage was floundering ahead of him. Fermour had gone into an odd high-stepping walk. Complain felt strangely helpless; the intricate gears of his body had been thrown out of kilter — it was as if he was trying to march through water, yet he had an unaccountable sensation of lightness. His head swam. Blood roared in his ears. He heard Marapper exclaim in astonishment, and then the priest blundered into his back. Next moment, Complain was sailing on a long trajectory past Fermour’s right shoulder. He doubled up as he went, striking the wall with his hip. The ground rose slowly to meet him and, spreading both arms, he landed on his chest and went sprawling. When he looked dizzily into the darkness, he saw Wantage, still gripping his torch, descending even more slowly.

On the other side of him, Marapper was floundering like a hippopotamus, his eyes bulging, his mouth speechlessly opening and shutting. Taking the priest’s arm, Fermour spun him expertly round and pushed him back into the safe area. Then Fermour bunched his stocky form and dived out into the dark for Wantage, who was blaspheming quietly near the floor; glissading off the wall, Fermour seized him, braked himself with an out-thrust heel, and floated softly back on the rebound. He steadied Wantage, who staggered like a drunken man.

Thrilled by this display, Complain saw at once that here was an ideal way of travel. Whatever had happened in the corridor — he dimly supposed that the air had changed in some way, although it was still breatheable — they could proceed quickly along it in a series of leaps. Getting cautiously to his feet and snapping on his torch, he took a tentative jump forward.

His cry of surprise echoed loudly down the empty corridor. Only by putting up his hand did Complain save himself a knock on the head. The gesture sent him into a spin, so that he eventually landed on his back. He was dizzy: everything had been the wrong way up. Nevertheless, he was ten yards down the corridor. The others, fixed in a drum of light with a green backcloth, looked distant. Complain recalled the rambling memories of Ozbert Bergass; what had he said, in the truth Complain had mistaken for delirium? ‘The place where hands turn into feet and you fly through the air like an insect.’ Then the old guide had roved this far! Complain marvelled to think of the miles of festering tunnel that lay between them and Quarters.

He rose too hastily, sending himself spinning again. Unexpectedly, he vomited. It floated forward in the air, forming up into globelets, splashing round him as he made a clumsy retreat back to the others.

‘The ship’s gone crazy!’ Marapper was saying.

‘Why doesn’t it show this on your map?’ Wantage asked angrily. ‘I never did trust that thing.’

‘Obviously the weightlessness occurred after the map was made. Use your damned brains if you’ve got any,’ Fermour snapped. This unusual outburst was perhaps explained by the anxiety in his next remark. ‘I should think we’ve made enough racket to bring all Forwards on our trail; we’d better get back from here quickly.’

‘Back!’ Complain exclaimed. ‘We can’t go back! The way to the next deck lies up there. We’ll have to get through one of these broken doors and work our way through the rooms, keeping parallel to the corridor.’

‘How in the hull do we do that?’ Wantage asked. ‘Have you got something that bores through walls?’

‘We can only try, and hope there will be connecting doors,’ Complain said. ‘Bob Fermour’s right — it’s madness to stay here. Come on!’

‘Yes, but look here — ‘Marapper began.

‘Oh, take a Journey!’ Complain said angrily. He burst open the buckled nearest door and pushed his way in; Fermour followed close behind. With a glance at each other, Marapper and Wantage came too.

They were fortunate in that they had chosen a large room. The lights still functioned, and the place was stacked with growth; Complain chopped at it savagely, keeping near the wall next to the corridor. Again the lightness enveloped them as they advanced, but the effect was less serious here, and the ponics afforded them some stability.

They came level with a rent in the wall. Wantage peered past the ragged metal into the corridor. In the distance, a circular light winked out.

‘Someone’s following us,’ he said. They looked uneasily into each other’s faces, and with one accord pressed onward again.

A metal counter on which ponics now sprouted in profusion blocked their way. They were forced to skirt it, going towards the centre of the room to do so. This — in the days of the Giants — had been some kind of mess hall; long tables flanked with tubular steel chairs had covered the length and breadth of it. Now, with slow, vegetable force, ponics had borne up the furniture, entangling themselves in it, hoisting it waist high, where it formed a barrier to progress. The further they went, the more they were impeded. It proved impossible to get back to the wall.

As if in a nightmare, they cut their way past chairs and tables, half-blinded by midges which rose like dust from the foliage and settled on their faces. The thicket grew worse. Whole clumps of ponic had collapsed under this self-imposed strain and were rotting in slimy clumps, on top of which more plants grew. A blight had settled in, a blue blight sticky to the touch, which soon made the party’s knives difficult to handle.

Sweating and gasping, Complain glanced at Wantage, who laboured beside him. The good side of the man’s face was so swollen that his eye hardly showed. His nose ran, and he was muttering to himself. Catching Complain’s eyes upon him, he began to curse monotonously.

Complain said nothing. He was too hot and worried.

They moved through a stippled wall of disease. The going was slow, but finally they broke through to the end of the room. Which end? They had lost all sense of direction. Marapper promptly sat down with his back to the smooth wall, settling heavily among the ponic seeds. He swabbed his brow exhaustedly.

‘I’ve gone far enough,’ he gasped.

‘Well, you can’t go any further,’ Complain snapped.

‘Don’t forget I didn’t suggest all this, Roy.’

Complain drew a deep breath. The air was foul; he had the nasty illusion that his lungs were coated with midges.

‘We’ve only got to work our way along the wall till we come to a door. It’s easier going here,’ he said. Then, despite his determination, he sank down beside the priest.

Wantage began to sneeze.

Each onslaught bent him double. The ruined side of his face was as swollen as the good one; his present distress completely hid his deformity. On his seventh sneeze, all the lights went out.

Instantly, Complain was on his feet, flashing his torch into Wantage’s face.

‘Stop that sneezing!’ he growled. ‘We must keep quiet.’

‘Turn your torch off!’ Fermour snapped.

They stood in indecisive silence, their hearts choking them. Standing in that heat was like standing in a jelly.

‘It could be just a coincidence,’ Marapper said uneasily. ‘I can remember sections of lights failing before.’

‘It’s Forwards — they’re after us!’ Complain whispered.

‘All we’ve got to do is work our way quietly along the wall to the nearest door,’ Fermour said, repeating Complain’s earlier words almost verbatim.

‘Quietly?’ Complain sneered. ‘They’d hear us at once. Best to stand still. Keep your dazers ready — they’re probably trying to creep up on us.’

So they stood there, sweating. Night was a hot breath about them, sampled inside a whale’s belly.

‘Give us the Litany, Priest,’ Wantage begged. His voice was shaking.

‘Not now, for gods ache,’ Fermour groaned.

‘The Litany! Give us the Litany!’ Wantage repeated.

They heard the priest flop down on to his knees. Wantage followed suit, wheezing in the thick gloom.

‘Get down, you two bastards!’ he hissed.

Marapper began monotonously on the General Belief. With an overpowering sense of futility, Complain thought, ‘Here we finish up in this dead end, and the priest prays; I don’t know why I ever mistook him for a man of action.’ He nursed the dazer, cocking an ear into the night, half-heartedly joining in 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,’ the priest intoned.

‘And live in psychosomatic purity,’ they repeated.

‘So that this unnatural life may be delivered down to Journey’s End.’

‘And sanity propagated,’ they replied.

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

He crept round to each of them in the grubby dark, his confidence restored by his own performance, shaking their hands, wishing expansion to their egos. Complain pushed him roughly away.

‘Save that till we’re out of this predicament,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to work our way out of here. If we go quietly, we can hear anyone who approaches us.’

‘It’s no good, Roy,’ Marapper said. ‘We’re stuck here and I’m tired.’

‘Remember the power you were after?’

‘Let’s sit it out here!’ the priest begged. ‘The ponic’s too thick.’

‘What do you say, Fermour?’ Complain asked.

‘Listen!’

They listened, ears strained. The ponics creaked, relaxing without light, preparing to die. Midges pinged about their heads. Although vibrant with tiny noises, the air was almost unbreathable; the wall of diseased plants cut off the oxygen released by the healthy ones beyond.

With frightening suddenness, Wantage went mad. He flung himself on to Fermour, who cried out as he was bowled over. They were rolling about in the muck, struggling desperately. Soundlessly, Complain threw himself on to them. He felt Wantage’s wiry frame writhing on top of Fermour’s thick body; the latter was fighting to shake off the hands round his throat.

Complain wrenched Wantage away by the shoulders. Wantage threw a wild punch, missed, grabbed for his dazer. He brought it up, but Complain had his wrist. Twisting savagely, he forced Wantage slowly back and then hit out at his jaw. In the dark, the blow missed its target, striking Wantage’s chest instead. Wantage yelped and broke free, flailing his arms wildly about his body.

Again Complain had him. This time, his blow connected properly. Wantage went limp, tottered back into the ponics and fell heavily.

‘Thanks,’ Fermour said; it was all he could manage to say.

They had all been shouting. Now they were silent, again listening. Only the creak of the ponics, the noise that went with them all their lives, and continued when they had made the Long Journey.

Complain put out his hand and touched Fermour; he was shaking violently.

‘You should have used your dazer on the madman,’ Complain said.

‘He knocked it out of my hand,’ Fermour replied. ‘Now I’ve lost the bloody thing in the muck.’

He stooped down, feeling for it in a pulp of ponic stalks and miltex.

The priest was also stooping. He flashed a torch, which Complain at once knocked out of his hand. The priest found Wantage, who was groaning slightly, and got down on one knee beside him.

‘I’ve seen a good many go like this,’ Marapper whispered. ‘But the division between sanity and insanity was always narrow with poor Wantage. This is a case of what we priests term hyper-claustrophobia; I suppose we all have it in some degree. It causes a lot of deaths in the Greene tribe, although they aren’t all violent like this. Most of them just snap out like a torch.’ He clicked his fingers to demonstrate.

‘Never mind the case history, priest,’ Fermour said. ‘What in the name of sweet reason are we going to do with him?’

‘Leave him and clear out,’ Complain suggested.

‘You don’t see how interesting a case this is for me,’ said the priest reprovingly. ‘I’ve known Wantage since he was a small boy. Now he’s going to die, here in the darkness. It’s a wonderful, a humbling thing to look on a man’s life as a whole: the work of art’s completed, the composition’s rounded off. A man takes the Long Journey, but he leaves his history behind in the minds of other men.

‘When Wantage was born, his mother lived in the tangles of Deadways, an outcast from her own tribe. She had committed a double unfaith, and one of the men concerned went with her and hunted for her. She was a bad woman. He was killed hunting: she could not live in the tangle alone, so she sought refuge with us in Quarters.

‘Wantage was then a toddling infant — a small thing with his great deformity. His mother became — as unattached women frequently will — one of the guards’ harlots, and was killed in a drunken brawl before her son reached puberty.’

‘Whose nerves do you think this recitation steadies?’ Fermour asked.

‘In fear lies no expansion; our lives are only lent us,’ Marapper said. ‘See the shape of our poor Comrade’s life. As so often happens, his end echoes his beginning; the wheel turns one full revolution, then breaks off. When he was a child, Wantage endured nothing but torment from the other boys — taunts because his mother was a bad lot, taunts because of his face. He came to identify the two as one woe. So he walked with his bad side to the wall, and deliberately submerged the memory of his mother. But being back in the tangle brought back his infant recollections. He was swamped by the shame of her, his mother. He was overwhelmed by infantile fears of darkness and insecurity.’

‘Now that our little object lesson in the benefits of self-confession is over,’ Complain said heavily, ‘perhaps you will recollect, Marapper, that Wantage is not dead. He still lives to be a danger to us.

‘I’m just going to finish him,’ Marapper said. ‘Your torch a moment, dimly. We don’t want him squealing like a pig.’

Bending down gingerly, Complain fought a splitting headache as the blood flow into his skull increased. The impulse came to do just what Wantage had done: hurl away the discomforts of reason, and charge blindly into the ambushed thickets, screaming. It was only later that he questioned his blind obedience to the priest at this dangerous hour; for it was obvious on reflection that Marapper had found some sort of mental refuge from this crisis by turning to the routines of priesthood; his exhumation of Wantage’s childhood had been a camouflaged seeking for his own.

‘I think I’m going to sneeze again,’ Wantage remarked, in a reasonable voice, from the ground. He had regained consciousness without their knowing it.

His face, in the pencil of light squeezed between Complain’s fingers, was scarcely recognizable. Normally pale and thin, the countenance was now swollen and suffused with blood; it might have been a gorged vampire’s mask, had the eyes not been hot, rather than chill with death. And as the light of Complain’s torch fell upon him, Wantage jumped.

Unprepared, Complain went down under a frontal attack. But, arms and legs flailing, Wantage paused only to knock his previous assailant out of the way. Then he was off through the tangles, crashing away from the little party.

Marapper’s torch came on, picking at the greenery, settling dimly on Wantage’s retreating back.

‘Put it out, you crazy fool priest!’ Fermour bellowed.

‘I’m going to get him with my dazer,’ Marapper shouted.

But he did not. Wantage had burst only a short way into the tangle when he paused and swung about. Complain heard distinctly the curious whistling noise he made. For a second, everything was still. Then Wantage made the whistling noise again and staggered back into range of Marapper’s torch. He tripped, collapsed, tried to make his way to them on hands and knees.

Two yards from Marapper, he rolled over, twitched and lay still. His blank eye stared incredulously at the arrow sticking out of his solar plexus.

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