Non-Stop - Brian W. Aldiss [82]
Deight was speaking again. ‘I had the chance of slipping into Vyann’s room,’ he said, ‘while your diversion down on the Drive Floors was in full swing. And there I found something else the dizzies have got hold of: a file we never knew existed, written by the first man to captain the ship on the way back from Procyon V. It contains far more than the dizzies should know; it’ll set them questioning all sorts of things. By a stroke of luck, I have managed to get both file and welder into my possession . . . Thanks. Even more luckily, nobody but Complain and this girl Vyann yet know anything about – or realize the significance of – either file or laser. Now then, I know all about Little Dog’s ideas on the sanctity of dizzy lives, but they’re not up here coping with this problem, and it’s getting more difficult hour by hour – if they want their precious secret kept, there is one easy way to do it. I’ve got Complain locked in next door to me now . . . Of course not, no force; he just walked into the trap like an angel. Vyann is asleep in her room. What I’m asking you is this, Curtis: I want your sanction to kill Complain and Vyann . . . Yes, I don’t like it either, but it’s the only way we can possibly retain the status quo, and I’m prepared to do it now before it’s too late . . .’
Zac Deight was silent, listening, an expression of impatience creeping over his long face.
‘There isn’t time to radio Little Dog,’ he said, evidently interrupting the speaker. ‘They’d procrastinate too long. You’re in charge up here, Curtis, and all I need is your permission . . . That’s better . . . Yes, I do consider it imperative. You don’t think I enjoy the task? I shall gas them both through the air vents of their rooms, as we’ve done before in similar awkward cases. At least we know it’s painless.’
He rang off. He pushed the cupboard back into place. He stood for a while hesitating, gnawing his knuckles, his face seamed with distaste. He opened the cupboard and removed a long cylinder. He looked speculatively up at the ceiling grille. He took the blast of Complain’s dazer right in his face.
The colour fled from Zac Deight’s brow. His head flopped on to his chest and he collapsed, sprawling, on the floor.
For a minute, Complain lay where he was, his mind attempting to adjust to events. He was brought back to the immediacy of the present by a horrible sensation. An alien thought had somehow drifted among his thoughts; it was as if somebody’s thickly furred tongue licked his brain. Flipping on his torch, he found a tremendous moth hovering before his eyes. Its wing span was about five inches; the tapetum lucidum in its eyes reflected the light like two cerise pin points.
Sickened, he struck at it but missed. The moth fluttered rapidly away down the air duct. Complain recalled another moth in Deadways which had left a similar delicately dirty fingerprint on his mind. Now he thought, ‘This power the rabbits have – the moths must have it in lesser degree. And the rats seem to be able to understand them . . . Perhaps these moths are a sort of airborne scouts for the rat-hordes!’
This notion scared him a great deal more than hearing Deight pronounce his death sentence had done.
In a sweat of panic, he flicked back the four tongues which kept Zac Deight’s grille in place, slithered the grille along the duct and dropped down into the councillor’s room. Pulling up a table, he climbed on to it and moved the grille back into its proper position. Then he felt safer.
Zac Deight was not dead: Complain’s dazer had been turned only to half power; but he had been at close enough range to receive a shock of sufficient strength to keep him senseless for some while. He looked harmless, even benevolent, huddled on the deck with hair fallen over his ashen forehead. Complain took the councillor