Non-Stop - Brian W. Aldiss [51]
‘If only windows had been built somewhere, the original purpose of the ship might not have been forgotten,’ Vyann said.
‘According to the plan,’ Marapper remarked, ‘there are large enough windows in the Control Room.’
They fell silent. The surroundings were dreary enough to annihilate all conversation. Most doors stood open; the rooms they revealed became increasingly full of machines, silent, broken, smothered under the dust of generations.
‘Many strange things of which we have no knowledge happen in this ship,’ Scoyt said gloomily. ‘Ghosts are among us, working against us.’
‘Ghosts?’ Marapper asked. ‘You believe in them, Master Scoyt?’
‘What Roger means,’ Vyann said, ‘is that we are confronted with two problems here. There is the problem of the Ship, where it is going, how it is to be stopped; that is the background problem, always with us. The other problem grows; it did not face our great-grandfathers: there is a strange race on this ship that was not here before.’
The priest stared at her. She was glancing carefully into each doorway as they went by; Scoyt was being as cautious. He felt the hair on his neck bristle uncomfortably.
‘You mean – the Outsiders?’ he asked.
She nodded.’ A supernatural race masquerading as men . . .’ she said. ‘You know, better than we, that three-quarters of the ship is jungle. In the hot muck of the tangles, somewhere, somehow, a new race has been born, masquerading as men. They are not men; they are enemies; they come in from their secret places to spy on us and kill us.’
‘We have to be always on the look-out,’ Scoyt said.
From then on, Marapper also looked in every doorway.
Now the layout changed. The three concentric corridors on each deck became two, their curvature sharpened. Deck 2 consisted of one corridor only with one ring of rooms around it, and in the middle the great hatch at the beginning of Main Corridor, sealed forever. Scoyt tapped it lightly.
‘If this corridor, the only straight one in the ship, were opened up,’ he said, ‘we could walk to Sternstairs at the other end of the ship in less than a wake!’
A closed spiral staircase was now the sole way forward. Heart beating heavily, Marapper led them up it; the Control Room should be at the top if his diagram spoke truth.
At the top, a dim light showed them a small circular room, completely unfurnished, floor bare, walls also bare. Nothing else. Marapper flung himself at the walls, searching for a door. Nothing. He burst into furious tears.
‘They lied!’ he shouted. ‘They lied! We’re all victims of a monstrous . . . a monstrous . . .’
But he could think of no word big enough.
II
Roy Complain yawned boredly and changed his position on the cell floor for the twentieth time. Bob Fermour sat with his back to the wall, rotating a heavy ring endlessly round a finger of his right hand. They had nothing to say to each other; there was nothing to say, nothing to think. It was a relief when the pug-ugly on guard outside thrust his head round the door and summoned Complain with a few well-chosen words of abuse.
‘See you on the Journey,’ Fermour said cheeringly as the other got up to go.
Complain waved to him and followed the guard, his heart beginning to beat more rapidly. He was led, not to the room where Inspector Vyann had interviewed them, but back along the way he had first been brought, into an office on Deck 24, near the barricades. The ugly guard stayed outside and slammed the door on him.
Complain was alone with Master Scoyt. The alien investigator, under the increasing pressure of the trouble piling up about them, looked more eroded than ever. As if his cheeks ached, he supported them with long fingers; they were not reassuring fingers; they could be cruel with artistry, although at present, resting against that haggard countenance, they seemed more the hands of a self-torturer.
‘Expansion to you,’ he said heavily.
‘Expansion,’ Complain replied. He knew he was to be tested, but