Non-Stop - Brian W. Aldiss [90]
Halting before the room in which he had left the dazed councillor, Complain levelled his torch and flung open the door.
Zac Deight was there, sitting on a metal stool. So was Marapper, his bulky body eased into a chair; he had a dazer clamped in his hand.
‘Expansions to your egos, children,’ he said. ‘Come in, Roy, come in. And you too, Inspector Vyann, my dear!’
IV
‘What the hull do you think you’re doing here, Marapper, you oily old villain?’ Complain asked in surprise.
The priest, ignoring this unpleasant form of address, which Complain would never have employed in the old days, was as usual only too ready to explain. He was here, he said, with the express purpose of torturing the last secret of the ship out of Zac Deight, but had hardly begun to do so since, although he had been here some while, he had only just managed to pull the councillor back to consciousness.
‘But you told the council meeting he was not here when you came to look for him,’ Vyann said.
‘I didn’t want them pulling Deight to bits for being an Outsider before I got at him,’ Marapper said.
‘How long have you known he was an Outsider?’ Complain asked suspiciously.
‘Since I came in and found him on the ground – with an octagonal ring on his finger,’ Marapper said, with a certain amount of smugness in his tone. ‘And I’ve so far elicited one thing from him, with the help of a knife under his fingernails. The Outsiders and Giants come from the planet you saw outside; but they can’t get back there till a ship comes up to get them. This ship can’t go down there.’
‘Of course it can’t, it’s out of control,’ Vyann said. ‘Priest Marapper, you are wasting your time. I also cannot allow you to torture this councillor, whom I have known since I was a girl.’
‘Don’t forget he was going to kill us!’ Complain reminded her. She made no answer beyond looking stubbornly at him, knowing, woman-like, that she had an argument superior to reason.
‘I had no alternative but to try and remove you both,’ Zac Deight said huskily. ‘If you will save me from this horrible creature I will do anything – within reason.’
There are few more awkward situations in the world than to be dragged into a three-cornered argument between a priest and a girl; Complain did not enjoy the position. He would have been contented enough to let Marapper wring information out of Deight by any means possible, but with Vyann present he could not do it; nor could he explain his sudden sensitivity to the priest. They began a wrangle. It was interrupted by a noise nearby, a curious noise, a scraping rustle, frightening because it was unidentifiable. It grew louder. Suddenly, it was overhead.
Rats were on the move! They drummed along the air duct above this level; across the grille Complain had recently climbed through, pattering pink feet came and went, as the tribe thundered by. Dust showered down into the room, and with the dust came smoke.
‘That sort of thing’ll be happening all over the ship,’ Complain told Zac Deight gravely, when the stampede had gone by. ‘The fire is driving the rats out of their holes. Given time, the men will gut the place absolutely. They’ll find your secret hideout in the end, if they kill us all doing it. If you know what’s good for you, Deight, you’ll get on that instrument and tell Curtis to come out with his hands up.’
‘If I did, they would never obey,’ Zac Deight said. His hands, paper-thin, rustled together on his lap.
‘That’s my worry,’ Complain said. ‘Where is this Little Dog? – Down on the outside of the planet?’
Zac Deight nodded confirmation miserably. He kept clearing his throat, a nervous trick which betrayed the strain he was undergoing.
‘Get up and tell Curtis to speak to Little Dog double quick and make them send a ship up here for us,’ Complain said.