The Complete Short Stories: The 1950s. Brian Aldiss

neither Brandyholm nor Crooner had made any attempt to follow. ‘We shan’t see him again.’

      He was wrong. Wantage could hardly have got twenty yards from them when he stopped suddenly. They heard him give a curious whistling sigh. He turned, staggered back towards them through the tangle, collapsed, and crawled back into the torchlight on hands and knees.

      When he rolled over and lay still, they saw an arrow sticking squarely out of his solar plexus.

      They were still peering stupidly at the body when the armed guards of Forwards slid from the shadows and surrounded them.

       III

      The Forwards official in front of whom they were dragged received them standing. Her hands hung calmly by her side and she made no movement of interest when they came in. She was young, her hair cut short to reveal the contour of her proud head, and her brow and eyes created an impression of magnificence. Only when one’s gaze dropped to her mouth and jaw was there a hint that it might be undesirable to know her too well.

      She said her name was Viann. She questioned them, they answered. They might have been three performing dogs hustled before her, so detachedly did she regard the two more silent figures and the third figure, that of Carappa, slightly ahead of his companions, gesticulating, talking, throwing his weight first onto one leg, then the other. They were, indeed, to her only random elements in a problem that must be solved.

      ‘So your plea that your lives should be saved – ’ already it had come to that – already they were begging for their breath ‘– rests on your idea that you have knowledge which could be useful to us here in Forwards?’ Viann said to them.

      ‘I said I have the knowledge,’ suggested Carappa craftily. ‘If you also deign to spare the lives of my poor, ignorant friends I should, of course, be grateful, but they can tell you nothing.’

      ‘So?’ She permitted herself a frosty smile.

      ‘If we have not knowledge, we have strength to serve you with,’ Brandyholm offered. The sick feeling which had possessed him ever since they were captured in the ponic tangle showed no sign of weakening its grip on his intestines.

      She said to him, without really bothering to look at him, ‘Your “priest” has the right idea: intelligence only can bribe me – not muscle.’

      Turning to Bob Crooner, she asked, ‘What have you to say for yourself? You have not spoken yet.’

      Crooner looked steadily at her before dropping his eyes and replying, ‘We have no ladies like you in our little tribe. My silence was only a mask for disturbed thoughts.’

      ‘That sort of thing is not acceptable as a bribe either,’ Viann said levelly. ‘You will all three be taken to a cell now; I shall question you individually, at my convenience.’

      Guards appeared, and despite Carappa’s protests they were marched away to a featureless room close at hand. Groaning, Brandyholm lay down on a thin rug and propped himself on one elbow.

      ‘These people are more civilised than we,’ he said to the priest. ‘They will be sure to kill us. Had you promised us this when we set out, you would have set out alone.’

      Carappa came over to him, squatted on his haunches and seized Brandyholm’s shirt front with two large hands. His voice was as thick as cool treacle.

      ‘Did not the Teaching tell you that a man without backbone is a ponic without miltex? What is your wretched, sordid life to care a curse over? Where in your mind is anything so precious that it should not be carelessly extinguished? Are we not where we desired to be, Tom Brandyholm – in Forwards, near Control? You sick, dispirited thing! I am a man, and like a man I will lie and cheat my way out of this situation. I advise you to do likewise.’

      Brandyholm made no answer. The priest’s outburst meant little to him under the circumstances. It was one thing to tell this woman that the ship had a hidden control room with a captain in, and to bluff that they alone knew the way to it; whether or not that would save their lives was quite another thing.

      ‘Nothing to say?’ the priest asked, still gripping his shirt.

      Before Brandyholm could attempt an answer, the door was flung open, and a man stood there calling for Carappa. Neatly, unobserved, as if he had rehearsed it, Carappa slipped the electrical circuits book out of his own shirt front and down Brandyholm’s. Then he got up slowly and left them without a word.

      He was escorted to a room with two chairs in which sat Viann and a man who announced himself as Master Scott. His cadaverous face bore an expression which might be construed either as integrity or intransigence; a glance at the long fingers which tapped against one cheekbone suggested that if he was a cruel man, he would be cruel with artistry.

      Eloquently, and in suitably vague terms, the priest explained his theory to them.

      ‘If you will trust me,’ he said, ‘trust me and give me power, I will set this ship – for such I assure you it is – at its destination, and we will be free of it and its oppression altogether.’

      He continued falteringly, for it was obvious even to him that his small audience was full of derision and harsh amusement. Silence fell. Under their gaze he fidgeted and rubbed his jowls and muttered to himself. They continued to stare, lips curled with contemptuous enjoyment of his growing discomfiture.

      ‘Because I come of a small tribe you have no faith in me,’ he grumbled.

      ‘Not that,’ said Master Scott, almost with kindness. ‘You have at least proved something we were anxious to know – that you are a true native of this ship. I may explain that remark later.’

      ‘You see, in Forwards we have known for generations that this is a ship,’ Viann said. Her manner was more human now. ‘This control room you speak of in such indefinite fashion was actually found some while ago. But the controls are wrecked, ruined, and there was no captain – nor anyone we could train as captain. These facts are not common knowledge: it is better people should remain in ignorance of the world in which they live.’

      ‘I will be captain! I will see us all safe!’ burst out Carappa.

      ‘You are talking like a fool, man,’ said Master Scott. ‘You are unaware of the vast issues involved. It might possibly be instructive for you to see this control room. Come along with us.’

      As they made their way along a corridor – the corridors here were immaculately clean and free of all ponic plants – Viann sketched in a few facts she thought Carappa was capable of understanding. ‘The blackness of Nothingness, Written upon the manuscript of the Universe, And punctuated with Stars’ was a sentence from a religious poem which he knew. This Viann tried to translate into scientific terms for him, told him of suns and planets, of the distances between planetary systems and of a metal ship constructed to travel between them.

      She spoke of the planet Earth, where the ship was built. She spoke of the launching of the ship and of its travelling at a velocity a twentieth that of light towards the planetary system Procyon.

      ‘How do you know all this?’ cried Carappa. As he listened the tears had begun to stream from his eyes, and now he flung up his hands in dismay. The world was suddenly more awesome than he dreamed: something too big ever to control.

      ‘You must understand that some terrible catastrophe happened in the ship, thwarting the ideas and ideals of its launchers,’ the slender girl told him.

      ‘That indeed I know … some terrible wrong of our forefathers.’

      ‘Some records have survived. You understand that less than a quarter of the ship is accessible to us. All the same, we have pieced these facts together.’

      The priest passed a hand over his grey face. ‘But – ’ he began. ‘No, it doesn’t matter …’

      ‘Here is the control room,’