Brian W. Aldiss - Starship

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Contents

VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY

Somewhere in the fabled region called Forwards lay the answers to a

400-year-old secret: Who were they? Where did they come from? Where were they

going?

But Forwards was far away, through lands of unimaginable horror. And the

answers they sought were the jealously guarded secret of the mysterious

Unknowns—a secret so hideous that even those superior beings dared not reveal

it ... ' Other SIGNET Science Fiction

THE LONG AFTERNOON OF EARTH by Brian Aldiss The nightmarish story of a handful

of people trying to survive the death throes of an Earth which has stopped

rotating. (#D2018—50{)

JOURNEY BEYOND TOMORROW by Robert Sheckley

Barbed and brilliant science fiction about a South Sea Islander who finds

himself in an insane 21st century America.

(#D2223—50{)

THE BLACK CLOUD by Fred Hoyle

Man fights for survival against a strange black substance which invades the

earth's atmosphere.

(#D2202—50f)

METHUSELAH'S CHILDREN by Robert A. Heinlein

A group of Earth men are driven into a daring space-journey by the jealousy of

others who envy their long life spans.

(#D2191—500)

To OUR READERS: If your dealer does not have the SIGNET and MENTOR books you

want, you may order them by mail, enclosing the list price plus 5lJ a copy to

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postcard. The New American Library of World Literature, Inc., P. 0. Box 2310,

Grand Central Station, New York 17, New York.

BRIAN ALDISS

A SIGNET BOOK PUBLISHED BY THE NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY For whom else but Ted

Cornell

permission. For information address Criterion Books, Inc., 257 Fourth Ave.,

New York 10, New York, who have authorized this softcover edition.

Published as a SIGNET BOOK, by arrangement with Criterion Books, Inc., and

distributed throughout the British Commonwealth by permission of Faber &

Faber, Ltd.

This book was published in England by Faber & Faber, Ltd., under the title

Non-Stop

FIRST PRINTING, FEBRUARY, 1960 SECOND PRINTING, FEBRUARY, 1963

SIGNBT TRADEMARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

REGISTERED TRADEMARK----MAHOA HEGISTRADA

HBOHO EN CHICAGO, D.8.A.

SIGNET BOOKS are published by

The New American Library of World Literature, Inc.

501 Madison Avenue, New York 22, New York

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA To travel hopefully is a

better thing than to arrive . . .

—R. L. Stevenson

It is safer for a novelist to choose as

his subject something he feels about than

something he knows about.

—L. P. Hartley

Contents

Part One – Quarters

Part Two – Deadways

Part Three – Forwards

Part Four – The Big Something

Prologue

A community that cannot or will not realize how insignificant a part of

the universe it occupies is not truly civilized. That is to say, it contains a

fatal ingredient which renders it, to whatever extent, unbalanced. This is a

story of one such community.

An idea, which is man-conceived, unlike most of the myriad effects which

comprise our universe, is seldom perfectly balanced. Inevitably, it bears the

imprint of man's own frailty; it may fluctuate from the meager to the

grandiose. This is the story of a grandiose idea.

To the community it was more than an idea: it had become existence itself.

For the idea, as ideas will, had gone wrong and gobbled up their real lives.

PART

ONE

Quarters

LIKE an echo bounding from a distant object and returning to its source,

the sound of Roy Complain's beating heart seemed to him to fill the clearing.

He stood with one foot on the threshold of his compartment, listening to the

rage hammering through his arteries.

"Well, go on out then if you're going! You said you were going!"

The shrill sarcasm of the voice behind him, Gwenny's voice, propelled him

into the clearing. He slammed the door without looking back, a low growl

rasping the back of his throat, and then rubbed his hands together painfully

in an attempt to regain control of himself. This was what living with Gwenny

meant, the quarrels arising out of nothing and these insane bursts of anger

tearing like illness through his being. Nor could it ever be clean anger; it

was muddy stuff, and even at its full flood the knowledge was not hidden from

him that he would soon be back again, apologizing to her, humiliating himself.

Complain needed his woman.

This early in the waking period, several men were up; later, they would be

dispersed about their business. A group of them sat playing Travel-Up.

Complain walked over to them, hands in pockets, and stared moodily down

between their ragged heads. The board stretched twice as far as the span of a

man's outstretched arms. It was scattered with counters and symbols. One of

the players leaned forward and moved a pair of his blocks.

"An outflank on Five," he said, with grim triumph, looking up and winking

at Complain conspiratorially.

Complain turned away indifferently. For long periods of his life, this game

had exerted an almost uncanny attraction on him. He had played it till his

adolescent limbs cracked from squatting and his eyes could hardly focus on the

silver tokens. On others, too, nearly all the Greene tribe, Travel-Up cast

its spell; it gave them a sense of spaciousness and power lacking in their

lives. Now Complain was free of the spell, and missed its touch. To be

absorbed in anything again would be good.

He ambled moodily down the clearing, hardly noticing the doors on either

hand. Instead, he darted his eyes about among the passers-by, as if seeking a

signal. He saw Wantage hurrying along to the barricades, instinctively keeping

the deformed left side of his face away from others' eyes. Wantage never

played at the long board: he could not tolerate people on both sides of him.

Why had the council spared him as a child? Many deformities were born in the

Greene tribe, and only the knife awaited them. As boys, they had called

Wantage "Slotface," and tormented him; but he had grown up strong and

ferocious, which had decided them to adopt a more tolerant attitude toward

him. Their jibes now were veiled.

Hardly realizing the change from aimlessness to intent, Complain also

headed in the direction of the barricades, following Wantage. The best of the

compartments, naturally appropriated for council use, were down here. One of

the doors was flung open and Lieutenant Greene himself came out, followed by

two of his officers. Although Greene was now an old man, he was still an

irritable one, and his jerky gait held something yet of the impetuous stride

of his youth. His officers, Patch and Zilliac, walked beside him, dazers

prominent in their belts.

To Complain's great pleasure, Wantage was panicked by their sudden

appearance into saluting his chief. It was a shameful gesture, almost a

bringing of the head to the hand rather than the reverse, which was

acknowledged by a grin from Zilliac. Subservience was the general lot,

although pride did not admit the fact.

When Complain's turn came to pass the trio he did it in the customary

manner, turning his head away and scowling. Nobody should think he, a hunter,

was not the equal of any other man. It was in the Teaching: "No man is

inferior until he feels the need to show respect for another."

His spirits now restored, he caught up with Wantage, clapping his hand on

the latter's left shoulder. Spinning in the other direction, Wantage presented

a short fencing stick to Complain's stomach. He had an economical way of

moving, like a man closely surrounded by naked blades. His point lodged neatly

against Complain's navel.

"Easy now, my pretty one. Is that how you always greet a friend?" Complain

asked, turning the point of the stick away.

"I thought—Expansion, hunter. Why are you not out after meat?" Wantage asked,

sliding his eyes away from Complain.

"Because I am walking down to the barricades with you. Besides, my pot is

full and my dues paid: I have no need of meat."

They walked in silence, Complain attempting to get on the other's left

side, the other eluding his efforts. Complain was careful not to try him too

far, in case Wantage fell on him. Violence and death were pandemic in

Quarters, forming a natural balance to the high birth rate, but nobody

cheerfully dies for the sake of symmetry.

Near the barricades, the corridor was crowded; Wantage, muttering that he

had cleaning work to do, slipped away. He walked close to the wall, narrowly

upright, with a sort of bitter dignity in his step.

The leading barricade was a wooden partition with a gate in it which

entirely blocked the corridor. Two guards were posted there continually.

There, Quarters ended and the mazes of ponic tangle began. But the barrier was

a temporary structure, for the position itself was subject to change.

The Greene tribe was seminomadic, forced by its inability to maintain

adequate crops or live food to move along on to new ground frequently. This

was accomplished by thrusting forward the leading barricade and moving up the

rear one, at the other end of Quarters, a corresponding distance. Such a move

was now in progress. The ponic tangle, attacked and demolished ahead, would be

allowed to spring up again behind them: the tribe slowly worked its way

through the endless corridors like a maggot through a mushy apple.

Beyond the barricade, men worked vigorously, hacking down the tall ponic

stalks, the edible sap, miltex, spurting out above their blades. As they were

felled, the stalks were inverted to preserve as much sap as possible. This

would be drained off and the hollow poles dried, cut to standard lengths and

used eventually for a multitude of purposes. Almost on top of the busy blades,

other sections of the plants were also being harvested: the leaves for

medicinal use, the young shoots for table delicacies, the seed for various

uses, as food, as buttons, as loose ballast in the Quarters' version of

tambourines, as counters for the Travel-Up boards, as toys for babies (into

whose all-sampling mouths they were too large to cram).

The hardest job in the task of clearing ponics was breaking up the interlacing

root structure, which lay like a steel mesh under the grit, its lower tendrils

biting deep. As it was chopped out, other men with spades cleared the humus

into sacks; here the humus was particularly deep, almost two feet of it:

evidence that these were unexplored parts, across which no other tribe had

ever worked. The filled sacks were carted back to Quarters, where they would

be emptied to provide new fields in new rooms.

Another body of men were also at work before the barricade, and these

Complain watched with especial interest. They were of a more exalted rank than

the others present; they were guards, recruited only from the hunters, and the

possibility existed that one day, through fortune or favor, Complain might

rise to that enviable class.

As the almost solid wall of tangle was bitten back, doors were revealed,

presenting black faces to the onlookers. The rooms behind these doors would

yield mysteries: a thousand strange articles, useful, useless, or meaningless,

which had once been the property of the vanished race of Giants. The duty of

the guards was to break open these ancient tombs and appropriate whatever lay

within for the good of the tribe, meaning themselves. In due time the loot

would be distributed or destroyed, depending on the whim of the council. Much

that emerged was declared to be dangerous, and was burned.

The business of opening these doors was not without its hazards, imaginary

if not real. Rumor had it that other small tribes, also struggling for

existence in the tangle warrens, had silently vanished away after opening such

doors.

Complain by now was not the only one caught by the perennial fascination

of watching people work. Several women, each with an ample quota of children,

stood by the barricade, getting in the way of the procession of humus and

ponic bearers. To the constant small whine of flies, from which Quarters was

never free, was added the chatter of small tongues: and to this chorus the

guards broke down the next door. A moment's silence fell, in which even the

workers paused to stare half in fear at the opening.

The new room was a disappointment. It did not even contain the skeleton of

a Giant to horrify and fascinate. It was a small store merely, lined with

shelves loaded with little bags. The little bags were full of variously

colored powders. A bright yellow and a scarlet one fell and broke, forming two

fans on the deck, and in the air two intermingling clouds. Shouts of delight

from the children, who rarely saw much color, caused the guards to bark orders

brusquely and begin to carry their discoveries away.

Aware of a vague sense of anticlimax, Complain drifted on. Perhaps, after

all, he would go hunting.

"But why is there light in the tangles when nobody is there to need it?"

The question came to Complain above the general bustle. He turned and saw

the questioner was one of several small boys who clustered around a big man

squatting in the midst. One or two mothers stood by, smiling indulgently,

their hands idly fanning awav the flies. "There has to be light for the ponics

to grow, just as you could not live in the dark," came the answer to the boy.

Complain saw the man who spoke was Bob Fermour, a slow fellow fit only for

laboring in the fieldrooms. He was genial—rather more so than the Teaching

entirely countenanced—and consequently popular with the children. Complain

recalled that Fermour was reputed to be a storyteller, and felt suddenly eager

to be diverted. Without his anger he was empty.

"What was there before the ponics were there?" a little girl demanded. In

their unpracticed way, the children were trying to start Fermour on a story.

"Tell 'em the tale about the world, Bob!" one of the mothers advised.

Fermour glanced quizzically up at Complain.

"Don't mind me," Complain said. "Theories are less than flies to me." The

powers of the tribe discouraged theorizing, or any sort of thought not on

severely practical lines; hence Fermour's hesitation.

"Well, this is all guesswork, because we don't have any records of what

happened in the world before the Greene tribe began," Fermour said. "Or if we

do find records, they don't make much sense." He glanced sharply at the adults

in his audience before adding quickly, "Because there are more important

things to do than puzzle over old legends."

"What is the tale about the world, Bob? Is it exciting?" a boy asked

impatiently.

Fermour smoothed the boy's hair back from his eyes and said earnestly, "It

is the most exciting tale that could possibly be, because it concerns all of

us, and how we live. Now the world is a wonderful place. It is constructed of

layers and layers, like this one, and these layers do not end, because they

eventually turn a circle on to themselves. So you could walk on and on for

ever and never reach the end of the world. And all those layers are filled

with mysterious places, some good, some evil; and all those corridors are

blocked with ponics."

"What about the Forwards people?" the boy asked. "Do they have green

faces?"

"We are coming to them," Fermour said, lowering his voice so that the

youthful audience crowded nearer. "I have told you what happens if you keep to

the lateral corridors of the world. But if you can get on to the main corridor

you get on to a highway that takes you straight to distant parts of the world.

And then you may arrive in the territory of Forwards."

"Have they really all got two heads?" a little girl asked.

"Of course not," Fermour said. "They are more civilized than our small

tribe"—again the scanning of his adult listeners—"but we know little about

them because there are many obstacles between their lands and ours. It must be

the duty of all of you, as you grow up, to try and find out more about our

world. Remember there is much we do not know, and outside our world may be

other worlds of which we cannot at present guess."

The children seemed impressed, but one of the women laughed and said, "Fat

lot of good it'll do them, guessing about something nobody knows exists."

Mentally, Complain agreed with her as he walked away. There were a lot of

these theories circulating now, all differing, all unsettling, none encouraged

by authority. He wondered if it would improve his standing to denounce

Fermour; but unfortunately everybody ignored Fermour: he was too slow. Only

last wake, he had been publicly stroked for sloth in the fieldrooms.

Complain's more immediate problem was, should he go hunting? A memory of

how often recently he had walked restlessly like this, to the barricade and

back, caught him unawares. He clenched his fists. Time passing, opportunities

lacking, and always something missing, missing. Again—as he had done since a

child—Complain whirled furiously around his brain, searching for a factor

which promised to be there and was not, ever. Dimly, he felt he was preparing

himself—but quite involuntarily—for a crisis. It was like a fever brewing, but

this would be worse than a fever.

He broke into a run. His hair, long and richly black, flopped over his

wide eyes. His expression became disturbed. Usually his young face showed

strong and agreeable lines under a slight plumpness. The line of jaw was true,

the mouth in repose heroic. Yet over the countenance as a whole worked a

wasting bitterness; and this desolation was a look common to almost the whole

tribe. It was a wise part of the Teaching which said that one man's eyes

should not meet another's directly.

Complain ran almost blindly, sweat bursting out on his forehead. Sleep or

wake, it was perpetually warm in Quarters, and sweat started easily. Nobody he

passed regarded him with interest: much senseless running took place in the

tribe, many men fled from inner phantoms. Complain only knew he had to get

back to Gwenny. Women held the magic salve of forgetfulness.

She was standing motionless, a cup of tea in her hand, when he broke into

their compartment. She pretended not to notice him, but her whole attitude

changed, the narrow planes of her face going tense. She was sturdily built,

her stocky body contrasting with the thinness of her face. This firmness

seemed to emphasize itself now, as though she braced herself against a

physical attack. "Don't look like that, Gwenny. I'm not your mortal enemy." It

was not what he had meant to say, nor was its tone placating enough, but the

sight of her brought some of his anger back.

"Yes, you are rny mortal enemy!" she said distinctly, still looking away.

"No one I hate like you."

"Give me a sip of your tea then, and we'll both hope it poisons me."

"I wish it would," she said venomously, passing the cup.

He knew her well enough. Her rages were not like his; his had to subside

slowly; hers were there, then gone.

"Gwenny . . . Gwenny, come on," he coaxed.

Her manner changed abruptly. The haggard watchfulness of her face was

submerged in dreaminess.

"Will you take me hunting with you?"

"Yes," he said. "Anything you say."

What Gwenny said or did not say, however, had small effect on the

irresistible roll of events. Two girls, Ansa and Daise, remote relations by

marriage of Gwenny's, arrived breathless to say that her father, Ozbert

Bergass, had taken a turn for the worse and was asking for her. He had fallen

ill with the trailing rot a sleep-wake ago. It was thought he would not last:

people who fell ill in Quarters seldom lasted long.

"I must go to him," Gwenny said. The independence children had to maintain

of their parents was relaxed at times of crisis; the law permitted visiting of

sick beds.

"He was a great man in the tribe," Complain said solemnly. Ozbert Bergass

had been senior guide for many sleep-wakes, and his loss would be felt. All

the same, Complain did not offer to go and see his father-in-law; sentiment

was one of the weaknesses the Greene tribe strove to eradicate. Instead, when

Gwenny had gone, he went down to the market to see Ern Roffery the Valuer, to

ask the current price of meat.

On his way, he passed the pens. They were fuller of animals than ever

before, domesticated animals fitter and more tender than the wild ones the

hunters caught. Roy Complain was no thinker, and there seemed to him a paradox

here he could not explain to himself. Never before had the tribe been so

prosperous or its farms so thriving; the lowest laborer tasted meat once in a

cycle of four sleep-wakes. Yet Complain himself was less prosperous than

formerly. He hunted more, but found less and received less for it. Several of

the other hunters, experiencing the same thing, had already thrown up the hunt

and turned to other work.

This deteriorating state of affairs Complain simply attributed to a grudge

the Valuer held against the hunter clan, being unable to integrate the lower

prices Roffery allowed for wild meat with the abundance of domestic fare.

Consequently, he pushed through the market crowd and greeted the Valuer in

surly fashion.

" 'spansion to your ego," he said grudgingly.

"Your expense," the Valuer replied genially, looking up from an immense

list he was painfully compiling. "Running-meat's down today, hunter. It'll

take a good sized carcass to earn six loaves."

"Hem's guts! And you told me wheat was down the last time I saw you, you

twisting rogue."

"Keep a civil turn of phrase, Complain: your own carcass isn't worth a

crust to me. So I did tell you wheat was down. It is down—but running-meat's

down more."

The Valuer preened his great moustaches and burst out laughing. Several

other men idling nearby laughed too. One of them, a burly, stinking fellow

called Cheap, bore a pile of round cans he was hoping to exchange in the

market. With a savage kick, Complain sent the cans flying. Roaring with rage,

Cheap scrambled to retrieve them, fighting to get them back from others

already snatching them up. At this Roffery laughed the louder, but the tide of

his humor had changed, and was no longer against Complain.

"You'd be worse off living in Forwards," he said consolingly. "They are a

people of miracles there. Create beasts for eating from their breath, catching

them in the air, they do. They don't need hunters at all." He slammed

violently at a fly settling on his neck. "And they have vanquished the curse

of flying insects."

"Rubbish!" said an old man standing nearby.

"Don't contradict me, Eff," the Valuer said. "Not if you value your dotage

higher than droppings."

"So it is rubbish," Complain said. "Who would be fool enough to imagine a

place without flies?"

"I can imagine a place without Complains," roared Cheap, who had now

recovered his cans and stood ferociously by Complain's shoulder. They faced

each other now, poised for trouble.

"Give it to him," the Valuer called to Cheap. "Show him I want no hunters

interrupting my business."

"Since when was a scavenger of tins of more merit in Quarters than a

hunter?" the old man called Eff asked generally. "I warn you, a bad time's

coming to this tribe. I'm only thankful I won't be here to see it."

Growls of derision for the old man and dislike for his sentiments arose on

all sides. Suddenly tired of the company, Complain edged away. He found the

old man following and nodded cautiously to him.

"I can see it all," Eff said, evidently anxious to continue his tidings of

gloom. "We're growing soft. Soon nobody will bother to leave Quarters or clear

the ponics. There won't be any incentives. No brave men will be left—only

eaters and players. Disease and death and attacks by other tribes will come; I

see it as sure as I see you. Soon only tangles will exist where the Greene

tribe was."

"I have heard that Forwards folk are good," Complain said, cutting into

this tirade. 'That they have sense and not magic."

"You've been listening to that fellow Fermour then," Eff replied grumpily,

"or one of his ilk. Some men are trying to blind us to who are our real

enemies. I call them men but they aren't men, they're—Outsiders. That's what

they are, hunter, Outsiders: supernatural entities. I'd have 'em killed if I

had my way. I'd have a witch-hunt. Yes, I would. But we don't have witch-hunts

here any more. When I was a kid we always used to be having them. I tell you,

the whole tribe's going soft, soft. If I had my way. . . ."

His breathless voice broke off, drying up perhaps before some old

megalomaniac vision of massacre. Complain moved away from him almost

unnoticed: he saw Gwenny approaching across the clearing.

"Your father?" he inquired.

She made a faint gesture with one hand, indicative of nothing.

"You know the trailing rot," she said tonelessly. "He will be making the

Long Journey before another sleep-wake is spent."

"In the midst of life we are in death," he said solemnly: Bergass was a

man of honor.

"And the Long Journey has always begun," she replied, finishing the

quotation from the Litany for him. "There is no more to be done. Meanwhile, I

have my father's heart and your promise of a hunting. Let us go now, Roy. Take

me into the ponics with you—please."

"Running-meat's down to six loaves a carcass," he told her. "It's not

worth going, Gwenny."

"You can buy a lot with a loaf. A pot for my father's skull, for

instance."

"That's the duty of your step-mother."

"I want to come with you hunting."

He knew that note in her voice. Turning angrily on his heel, he made for

the leading barricade without another word. Gwenny followed demurely.

Hunting had become Gwenny's great passion. It gave her freedom from Quarters,

for no woman was allowed to leave the tribal area alone, and it gave her

excitement. She took no part in the killing, but she crept like Complain's

shadow after the beasts who inhabited the tangles.

Despite its growing stock of domesticated animals and the consequent slump

in the value of wild stock, Quarters had not enough meat for its increasing

needs. The tribe was always in a state of unbalance; it had been formed only

two generations before, by Grandfather Greene, and would not be

self-sufficient for some while. Indeed, a serious accident or setback might

still shatter it, sending its component families to seek what reception they

could find with other tribes.

Complain and Gwenny followed a tangle trail for some way beyond the

leading Quarters barricade and then branched into the thicket. The one or two

hunters and catchers they had been passing gave way to solitude, the crackling

solitude of the tangles. Complain led them up a small companionway, pushing

through the crowded stalks rather than cutting them, so that their trail

should be less obvious. At the top he halted, Gwenny peering eagerly,

anxiously over his shoulder.

The individual ponics pressed up toward the light in bursts of short-lived

energy, clustering overhead. The general illumination was consequently of a

sickly kind, rather better for imagining things than actually seeing them.

Added to this were the flies and clouds of tiny midges that drifted among the

foliage like smoke: vision was limited and hallucinatory. But there was no

doubt a man stood watching them, a man with beady eyes and chalk-white

forehead.

He was three paces ahead of them. He stood alertly. His great torso was

bare and he wore only shorts. He seemed to be looking at a point a little to

their left. Yet so uncertain was the light that the harder one peered the

harder it was to be sure of anything, except that the man was there. And then

he was not there.

"Was it a ghost?" Gwenny hissed.

Slipping his dazer into his hand, Complain pressed forward. He could

almost persuade himself he had been tricked by a pattern of shadow, so

silently had the watcher vanished. Now there remained no sign of him but

trampled seedlings where he had stood.

"Don't let's go on," Gwenny whispered nervously. "Suppose it was a

Forwards man—or an Outsider."

"Don't be silly," he said. "You know there are wild men who have run amok

and live solitary in the tangles. He will not harm us. If he had wanted to

shoot us, he would have done so then."

All the same, his skin crawled uneasily to think that even now this stray

might be planning their deaths as surely and invisibly as if he had been a

disease.

"But his face was so white," Gwenny protested. He took her arm firmly, and

led her forward. The sooner they were away from the spot, the better.

They moved fairly swiftly, once crossing a pig run, and passed into a side

corridor. Here Complain squatted with his back to the wall and made Gwenny do

the same.

"Listen, and see if we are being followed," he said.

The ponics slithered and rustled, and countless small insects gnawed into

the silence. Together, they formed a din which seemed to Complain to grow

until it would split his head. And in the middle of the din was a note which

should not be there.

Gwenny had heard it too.

"We are getting near another tribe," she whispered. "There's one down this

alley."

The sound they could hear was the inevitable one of babies crying and

calling, which announced a tribe long before its barricades were reached. Only

a few wakes ago, this area had been pig territory, which meant that a tribe

had come up from another level and was slowly approaching the Greene hunting

preserves.

"We'll report this when we get back," Complain said, and led her the other

way.

He worked easily along, counting the turns as they went, so as not to get

lost. When a low archway appeared to their left, they moved through it,

picking up a pig trail. This was the area known as Sternstairs, where a great

hill led down to lower levels. A crashing sounded from over the brink of the

slope, followed by an unmistakable squealing. Pig!

Motioning Gwenny to stay where she was at the top of the hill, Complain,

dexterously sliding his bow from his shoulder and fitting an arrow to it,

began the descent. His hunter's blood was up, all worries forgotten, and he

moved like a wraith. Gwenny's eye sped him an unnoticed message of

encouragement.

With room for once to reach something like their full stature, the ponics

on the lower level had grown up into thin trees, arching overhead. Complain

slipped to the brink of the drop, peering down through the tall ponics. An

animal moved down there, rooting contentedly; he could see no litter, although

the squealing had sounded like the cries of small creatures.

As he worked cautiously down the slope, also overwhelmed with the

ubiquitous tangle, he felt a momentary pang for the life he was about to take.

A pig's life! He squashed the pang at once; the Teaching did not approve of

softness.

There were three piglets besides the sow. Two were black and one brown;

shaggy, long-legged creatures like wolves, with prehensile noses and scoop

jaws. The sow obligingly turned a broad flank for the readying arrow. She

raised her head suspiciously and probed with her little eye through the poles

around her.

"Roy! Help------"

The cry came from above: Gwenny's voice raised to the striking pitch of

fear.

The pig family took fright instantly, disappearing through the stalks, the

young determinedly keeping up their mother's pace. Their noise did not quite

cover the sounds of a scuffle above the hunter's head.

Complain did not hesitate. At Gwenny's first cry, he dropped his arrow,

whipped the bow over his shoulder, pulled out his dazer and dashed back up the

slope of Sternstairs. But a stretch of uphill tangle is not good running

ground. When he got to the top, Gwenny was gone.

A crashing sounded to his left. He ran doubled up, making himself as small

a target as possible, and was rewarded by the sight of two bearded men bearing

Gwenny off. She was not struggling; they must have knocked her unconscious.

It was the third man Complain did not see who nearly finished him. This

man had dropped behind his two companions, stepping back into the stalks to

cover their retreat. Now he set an arrow whipping back along the corridor. It

twanged past Complain's ear. He dropped instantly, avoiding a second arrow,

and groveled quickly back along the trail. Being dead helped nobody.

Silence now, the usual crumbling noise of insane plant growth. Being alive

helped nobody either. The facts hit him one by one and then all together. He

had lost the pigs; he had lost Gwenny; he would have to face the council and

explain why they were now a woman short. Shock for a moment obscured the

salient fact: he had lost Gwenny. Complain did not love her, often he hated

her; but she was his, necessary.

Comfortingly, anger boiled up in his mind, drowning the other emotions.

Anger! This was the salve the Teaching taught. Wrenching up handfuls of

root-bound soil, he pelted them from him, distorting his face, working up the

anger, creaming it up like batter in a bowl. Mad, mad, mad . . . he flung

himself flat, beating the ground, cursing and writhing. But always quietly.

At last the fit worked itself off, and he was left empty. For a long time

he just sat there, head in hand, his brain washed as bare as tidal mud. Now he

must get up and go back to Quarters. He had to report. In his head his weary

thoughts ran.

/ could sit here forever. The breeze so slight, never changing its

temperature, the light only seldom dark. The ponics rearing up and failing,

decaying around me. I should come to no harm but death. . . , Only if I stay

alive can I find the something missed, the big something. Perhaps now I'll

never find it, or Gwenny could have found it for me—no she couldn't: she was a

substitute for it, admit it. Perhaps it does not exist. But when something so

big has nonexistence, that in itself is existence. A hole. A wall. As the

priest says, there's been a calamity.

Get up, you weak fool.

He got himself up. If there were no reason for returning to Quarters,

there was equally no reason for sitting here. Possibly what most delayed his

return was the foreknowledge of all the practiced indifference there: the

guarded look, the smirk at Gwenny's probable fate, the punishment for her

loss. He headed slowly back through the tangle.

Complain whistled before coming into view of the clearing in front of the

barricade, was identified, and entered Quarters. During the short period of

his absence a startling change had taken place; even in his dull state, he did

not fail to notice it.

That clothing was a problem in the Greene tribe, the great variety of

dress clearly demonstrated. No two people dressed alike, from necessity rather

than choice, individuality not being a trait fostered among them. The function

of dress in the tribe was less to warm the body than to serve as guard of

modesty and agent of display; and to be a rough and ready guide to social

standing. Only the élite, the guards, the hunters, and people like the Valuer,

could usually manage something like a uniform. The rest wore a variety of

fabrics and skins.

But now the drab and the old in costume were as bright as the newest. The

lowliest laborer sported flaring green rags!

"What's happening here?" Complain asked a passing man.

"Expansion to your ego, friend. The guards found a cache of dye earlier.

Get yourself a soak! There's going to be a celebration."

Further on, a crowd was gathered, chattering excitedly. A series of stoves

were ranged along the deck; over them, like so many witches' cauldrons, boiled

the largest utensils available. Yellow, scarlet, pink, mauve, black, blue,

green, and copper, the separate liquids boiled, bubbled, and steamed, and

around them churned the people, dipping one garment here, another there.

Through the thick steam their unusual animation sounded shrilly.

This was not the only use to which the dye was being put. Once it had been

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ContentsVOYAGEOFDISCOVERYSomewhereinthefabledregioncalledForwardslaytheanswerstoa400-year-oldsecret:Whowerethey?Wheredidtheycomefrom?Whereweretheygoing?ButForwardswasfaraway,throughlandsofunimaginablehorror.AndtheanswerstheysoughtwerethejealouslyguardedsecretofthemysteriousUnknowns—asecretsohideoust...

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Brian W. Aldiss - Starship

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