Non-Stop - Brian W. Aldiss [45]
One radical distinction between Forwards and the villages lost in the festering continent of Deadways soon became obvious. Whereas the Greene tribe and others like it were always slowly on the move, Forwards was firmly established, its boundaries fixed and unchanging. It looked the result of organization rather than accident. Complain’s conception of it had always been vague; in his mind it had featured as a place of dread, the more dreadful for being vague. Now he saw it was immensely larger than a village. It was almost a region in its own right.
Its very barriers differed from Quarters’ make-shift affairs. The skirmishing party, as they pushed unceremoniously through the ponics, came first of all to a heavy curtain which, loaded with small bells, rang as they drew it aside. Beyond the curtain was a section of corridor, dirty and scarred but devoid of ponics, terminating in a barricade formed of desks and bunks, behind which Forwards guards stood ready with bows and arrows.
After an amount of hailing and calling, the skirmishing party – which numbered four men and two women – was allowed up to and past this last barricade. Beyond it was another curtain, this time of fine net, through which the hitherto ubiquitous midges, one of the scourges of Deadways, could not get. And beyond that lay Forwards proper.
For Complain, the incredible feature was the disappearance of ponic plants. Inside Quarters, of course, the thickets had been hacked or trampled down, but with indifferent enthusiasm and in the knowledge that the clearance was only temporary; often enough the old root system was allowed to remain covering the deck. And always there had been tokens of them about, from the sour-sweet miltex smell pervading the air to the dried staves used by men and the chitinous seeds played with by children.
Here the ponics had been swept away as if they had never been. The detritus and soil that attended them had been completely removed; even the scoured pattern the roots made on the hard deck had been erased. The lighting, no longer filtered through a welter of greedy foliage, shone out boldly. Everywhere wore such a strange aspect – so hard, bare and, above all, so geometrical – that some while was to elapse before Complain realized fully that these doors, corridors and decks were not an independent kingdom but, in fact, only an extension of their dingier counterparts elsewhere; the external appearance was so novel that it blinded him to its real conformity with the lay-out of Quarters.
The three prisoners were prodded into a small cell. All their equipment was removed and their hands freed. The door was slammed on them.
‘O Consciousness!’ Marapper groaned. ‘Here’s a pretty state for a poor, innocent old priest to be in. Froyd rot their souls for a pack of dirty miltex-suckers!’
‘At least they let you do the death rites for Wantage,’ said Fermour, trying to pick the filth out of his hair.
They looked at him curiously.
‘What else would you expect?’ Marapper asked. ‘The brutes are at least human. But that doesn’t mean to say that they won’t be wearing our intestines round their necks before they eat again.’
‘If only they hadn’t taken my dazer . . .’ Complain said. Not only their dazers, but their packs and all their possessions had been taken. He prowled helplessly round the little room. Like many apartments in Quarters, it was all but featureless. By the door, two broken dials were set into a wall, a bunk was fixed into another wall, a grille in the ceiling provided a slight current of air. Nothing offered itself as a weapon.
The trio had to possess themselves in uneasy patience until the guards came back. For some while, the silence was broken only by an uneasy whine deep in the priest’s intestines. Then all three began to fidget.
Marapper tried to remove some clotted filth from his cloak. Working half-heartedly, he looked up with eagerness when the door was opened and two men appeared in the open doorway; pushing roughly past Fermour, the