Non-Stop - Brian W. Aldiss [2]
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 ghastly 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 semi-nomadic, 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 ones, 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 into the deck. 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 covering the deck: evidence that