Non-Stop - Brian W. Aldiss [64]
Marapper shook his head so sadly his cheeks wobbled.
‘You also are falling among the unbelievers, Roy,’ he said. ‘I must stir up trouble: turmoil in the id – it must out! There lies our salvation, and of course if the people rally round me at the same time, so much the better. Ah, my friend, we have come so far together, only to find a girl to corrupt you.’
‘If you mean Vyann, Priest,’ Complain said, ‘have a care to leave her out of this. I’ve warned you before, she’s nothing to do with you.’
His voice was challenging, but Marapper was as bland as butter in return.
‘Don’t think I object to her, Roy. Though as a priest I cannot condone, as a man, believe me, I envy.’
He looked forlorn as Complain and Vyann made for the barriers, where Hawl awaited them. His old boisterousness had been muted by Forwards, where everyone was a stranger to him; undoubtedly, for Marapper, to be a big fish in a small pool was better than being a small fish in a big pool. Where Complain had found himself, the priest was beginning to lose himself.
Hawl, his incredibly tiny head cocked, looked only too glad to get back into the ponics; the reception Forwards had given him had not been notably cordial. Once the little party of three were seen through the barricades, he loped ahead professionally, Vyann behind him, Complain bringing up the rear. No longer a mere freak, Hawl moved with an ability the hunter in Complain could only admire; the fellow hardly seemed to stir a leaf. Complain wondered what could have alarmed a man of his stamp so much that he was willing to forsake his natural element for the unfamiliar disciplines of Forwards.
Having only two decks to cover, they were not long in the ponics. This, in Vyann’s view at least, was all to the good; the tangles, she found, were not romantic; merely drab, irritating and full of tiny black midges. She stopped gratefully when Hawl did, and peered ahead through the thinning stalks.
‘I recognize this stretch!’ Complain exclaimed. ‘It’s near where Marapper and I were captured.’
A black and ruinous length of corridor lay ahead, the walls pock-marked and scarred, the roof ripped wide with the force of some bygone explosion. It was here the explorers from Quarters had run into the eerie weightlessness. Hawl shone a light ahead and let out a fluttering whistle. Almost at once, a rope floated out of the hole in the roof.
‘If you go and grab hold of that, they’ll pull you up,’ Hawl said. ‘Just walk slowly to it and catch hold. It’s simple enough.’
It could, despite this reassurance, have been simpler. Vyann gave a gasp of alarm as the lightness seized her, but Complain, more prepared, took her waist and steadied her. Without too much loss of dignity, they got to the rope and were at once hauled up. They were hauled through the roof, and through the roof of the level above that – the damage had been extensive. Hawl, scorning the aid of ropes, dived up head first and landed nonchalantly before they did.
Four ragged men greeted them, crouched over a desultory game of Travel-Up. Vyann and Complain stood in a shattered room, still almost weightless. A miscellany of furniture was ranged round the hole from which they emerged, obviously acting as a shelter for anyone needing to guard the hole in the event of an attack. Complain expected to be relieved of his dazer, but instead Hawl, having exchanged a few words with his tattered friends, led them out to another corridor. Here their weight immediately returned.
The corridor was filled with wounded men and women lying on piles of dead ponics, most of them with face or legs bandaged; they were presumably the victims of the recent battle. Hawl hurried past them clucking sympathetically and pushed into another apartment filled with stores and men, most of them patched, bandaged or torn. Among them was Gregg Complain.
It was unmistakably Gregg. The old look of dissatisfaction, manifesting itself round the eyes and the thin