Non-Stop - Brian W. Aldiss [78]
‘But why should he want to be seen and hunted?’ Councillor Ruskin asked plaintively.
‘I can see why, Councillor,’ said Marapper. ‘The Giant wanted to create a diversion while these other Giants rescued Fermour from his cell.’
‘Exactly,’ agreed Scoyt, without pleasure. ‘This all happened just as we began to question Fermour; we had scarcely started to soften him up. It was a ruse to get everyone out of the way while the Giants helped Fermour to escape. Now that the Giants know we know they are about, they’ll be forced to do something – unless we do something first! Priest Marapper, get down on your hands and knees and and show me exactly what you think it was that Fermour did to make the trap-door open.’
Puffing, Marapper got down as directed. The light of every torch present centred on him. He scuffled to one corner of the trap, looking up dubiously.
‘I think Fermour was about here,’ he said. ‘And then he leant forward like this . . . and put his fist down on the deck like this – with his knuckles along the floor like this. And then – no, by hem, I know what he did! Scoyt, look!’
Marapper moved his clenched hand. A faint click sounded. The trap-door rose, and the way of the Giants lay open.
Laur Vyann and Roy Complain came slowly back to the inhabited part of Forwards. The shock of finding the controls ruined had been almost too much for both of them. Once again, but now more insistently than ever before, the desire to die had come over Complain; a realization of the total bleakness of his life swept through him like poison. The brief respite in Forwards, the happiness Vyann afforded him, were absolutely nothing beside the overriding frustration he had endured since birth.
As he sank down into this destroying sadness, one thing rescued him: the old Teaching of Quarters, which a little while ago he had told himself proudly he had eschewed.
Back to him echoed the voice of the priest: ‘We are the sons of cowards, our days are passed in fear . . . The Long Journey has always begun: let us rage while we can, and by so discharging our morbid impulses we may be freed from inner conflict . . .’ Instinctively, Complain made the formal gesture of rage. He let the anger steam up from the recesses of his misery and warm him in the withering darkness. Vyann had begun to weep on his shoulder; that she should suffer too added fuel to his fury.
He foamed it all up inside him with increasing excitement, distorting his face, calling up all the injuries he and everyone else had ever undergone, churning them, creaming them up together like batter in a bowl. Muddy, bloody, anger, keeping his heart a-beat.
After that, feeling much saner, he was able to comfort Vyann and lead her back to the regions of her own people.
As they approached the inhabited part, a curious clanging grew louder in their ears. It was an odd noise without rhythm, an ominous noise, at the sound of which they increased their pace, glancing at each other anxiously.
Almost the first person they met, a man of the farmer class, came up quickly to them.
‘Inspector Vyann,’ he said, ‘Master Scoyt is looking for you; he’s been shouting about everywhere!’
‘It sounds as if he’s pulling the ship apart for us,’ Vyann said wryly. ‘We’re on our way, thank you.’
They quickened their step, and so came upon Scoyt at Deck 20, from which Fermour had been rescued. Co-Captain Pagwam, with a squad of men, was pacing along the corridor, bending every so often and opening a series of traps in the deck. The heavy covers, flung aside, accounted for the strange clanging Vyann and Complain had heard. As each hole was revealed, a man was left to guard it while other men hurried on to the next trap.
Directing operations, Scoyt looking