Non-Stop - Brian W. Aldiss [101]
‘Never!’ Vyann said. ‘Some of us have devoted our lives to getting out of this tomb. We’ll die sooner than stay!’
‘That’s what I was afraid of,’ Fermour said, almost to himself. ‘We’ve always thought this day might come. It’s not entirely unprepared for – others before you have found out vital secrets, but we’ve always managed to silence them in time. Now . . . Well, you might be all right on Earth: we have taken some of your babies down there, and they’ve survived, but we’ve always –’
‘We!’ Vyann exclaimed. ‘You keep saying “we”! But you are an Outsider, an ally of the Giants. What relation are you to true Earthmen?’
Fermour laughed without humour.
‘Outsiders and Giants are true Earthmen,’ he said. ‘When “Big Dog” was towed into orbit, we – Earth – fully realized our grave responsibility to you all. Doctors and teachers were your especial need. Holy men were required, to counter the vile irreligion of the Teaching – which, vile though it was, undoubtedly assisted your survival in some measure. But there were snags: the doctors and people could not just creep into the air locks and mingle with you, easy though that was, with the inspection way system and the hydroponic tangles to shelter them. They had to be trained at Little Dog Institute to move and speak as quickly as possible, to sleep in catnaps, to – oh, in short to act like dizzies. And to bear the horrible stench in the ship. And, of course, they had to be abnormally small men, since none of you are above five feet high.
‘Some of these men, performing a dangerous mission, you knew and liked. Doctor Lindsey and Meller, the artist, were both Earthmen stationed in Quarters – Outsiders, but your friends.’
‘. . . And you,’ Complain said. He made a sweeping gesture before his face; a moth circled there, eluding his hand.
‘I’m an anthropologist,’ Fermour said, ‘although I also tried to help spread the light. There are several of us aboard. This is a unique chance to discover the effects of a closed environment on man; it has taught us more about man and society than we have been able to learn on Earth for centuries.
‘Zac Deight was head of everyone on board whom you would call Outsiders. Our usual term of field work aboard is two years – my time is nearly up, but I can’t stay here now; I shall go back home and write a thesis on being an Outsider. The field work has its personal rewards: it’s arduous, yet not particularly dangerous, unless one runs against efficient people like Scoyt. Zac Deight loved dizzies – loved you. He stayed in the ship long beyond his term, to try and soften conditions and lead Forwards’ thought back into more normal channels – in which he was very successful, as you can see if you compare conditions in Forwards with conditions in a Deadways tribe like Quarters.
‘He was a wonderful man, Zac Deight, a humanist like Schweitzer in the twentieth or Turnball in the twenty-first century. Perhaps I shall amass his biography when I’ve finished my thesis.’
Discomfort rose in Complain at this, to recall how he and Marapper had shot down the old councillor without compunction.
‘I suppose, then, that Giants are just big humans?’ he said, deflecting the subject of conversation.
‘They’re just normal-size humans,’ Fermour said. ‘Six-footers and up. They did not have to be picked for small stature, since they were never meant to be seen by you, unlike Outsiders; they were the maintenance crew who came aboard when the ship was in orbit and began, secretly, to make the place more suitable and comfortable for you to live in. They sealed off these controls, in case anybody finding them should start wondering about things; for although we always tried to foster in you the knowledge that you are in a ship – in case a day ever came when you might be able to leave it – the maintenance crews were always careful to destroy any direct evidence which might, by inducing you