Non-Stop - Brian W. Aldiss [42]
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