Non-Stop - Brian W. Aldiss [43]
‘. . . 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