It is all planned! I wanted only a hunter like you to join us.’
‘Crooner is slow, you said so yourself,’ Brandyholm complained, his heart sinking now he was committed.
‘But he is big. Come! We can leave now.’
‘During this sleep?’
‘But of course. We must skulk out unseen. If you will come, I promise – what I promise you I cannot tell. Power … Chiefly power, my son …’
It was a well-worn precept to be rash, not to think ahead, to act on the spur of the moment. Doing otherwise meant inertia, degenerating into the brooding state of inaction which constantly threatened to overwhelm them all. Brandyholm seized up a fresh shirt, his antique jacket and his pack, and followed the bulky figure of the priest out of the door.
Crooner and Wantage were rounded up. Neither of them had women at present. They gave Brandyholm reassuringly guarded looks and fell in beside Carappa. Their features were uniformly sullen; only the priest’s meaty-chops betrayed anything like excitement.
‘Tomorrow’s sleep will be dim. Would it not have been safer to have waited till then?’ asked Wantage complainingly. He had pale hair to match his face, and a long jaw; he could look as cruel as anybody in Quarters. As a child he had been known to the other children as Rockface.
‘We might all be dead at the end of another sleep-wake,’ the priest said in reply.
‘True,’ Wantage admitted grudgingly. The Teaching taught that antagonism was a man’s best armour against oblivion; Wantage was commonly reckoned to be a natural survivor-type.
One sleep-wake in every four was almost totally dark. Universally, lighting dipped to dimness; nobody in Quarters could explain why – it was just a natural phenomenon in their lives – although some philosophical spirits used it to reinforce the ship theory.
Carappa led them away from the barricades to a solid metal bulkhead at the far end of Second Corridor. A guard stood there relaxed but alert. As the four approached, he raised his dazer, calling out the usual challenge: ‘I should be glad to fire!’
‘And I to die!’ responded Carappa amiably. ‘Put your weapon down, Zwemmer. No blood for you tonight. Would you shoot me, the instrument of your doubtful sanity?’
‘I’d shoot anybody,’ the guard said ferociously.
‘Well, save it for a better target. I have something important to show you.’ During this interchange, Carappa had never faltered in his advance. The guard, Zwemmer, hesitated uncertainly; other guards were within call, but a false alarm might mean lashes for him and he was anxious to preserve his present state of misery. In those few seconds of hesitation, the priest was up to him. Drawing a knife swiftly from under his short robe, Carappa sunk it deep into the other’s stomach, twisted it, and caught the body neatly over his shoulder as it doubled forward.
‘That was smartly done, father,’ Wantage exclaimed, respect in his voice. It was good to see a priest who so ably practised what he preached.
‘A pleasure,’ the priest grunted, wiping his knife. He passed his burden to Crooner who, being five foot eight and a head higher than the others, could manage it more easily. A metal grill stood in the wall before them. Carappa produced a pair of metal cutters from a capacious pocket, snicked at a connection, and calmly slid the grill back into the wall. A plain sheet of metal was now revealed; Carappa pressed a button on it and it also rolled back.
The others jumped away involuntarily. A dark, gaping hole stood before them.
‘Fear not, fearful ones,’ Carappa said. ‘It’s only a man-made shaft. A carriage of some sort once ran up and down it. Pitch the guard down there for a start, Crooner.’
The body was hurled into the gap and they listened with some satisfaction to a heavy thud a moment later.
‘Now follow me. We follow Zwemmer, but at a less furious speed.’
Cables hung in the middle of the opening. Carappa seized them and climbed down fifteen feet to the next level. The lift shaft yawning below him, he swung himself onto a narrow ledge and manipulated the double gates open. One by one, the others followed him into a rustling twilight. The ponic tangle grew here as everywhere. Carappa closed the gates neatly behind them and then faced forwards, squaring his shoulders and adjusting his robe.
‘Great discoveries are before us, friends!’ he announced, adding, ‘So first let us sleep to be fresh to meet them.’
‘If we sleep here, will the tribe not come and find us?’ Crooner asked slowly.
Wantage caught him smartly across the face with the back of his hand. The blow opened Crooner’s lower lip and sent a slow line of blood coursing down his chin. He stood there mutely, working his mouth and swinging his fists in a dull anger.
‘That’s for questioning the priest’s leadership,’ Wantage said. ‘You must know they will not waste a search party on us. Dreams tell us ourselves.’
‘And a blow may forestall murder.’ Crooner growled the prescribed answer of the formula for avoiding a duel.
They settled down where they were, eating frugally and saying little. The priest promised to tell them his plans tomorrow. Round them as they slept were the changeless, draughtless heat and the unending rustle of the ponics. Their lean stems were the last things Brandyholm saw before he closed his eyes; so rapidly did they grow, the young ones would be feet taller and the old ones dead by the time he woke. He failed to see in this frenetic jostling a parallel with the human lives about him.
II
Despite his swollen lip, Bob Crooner was cheerful enough to whistle when they got up. Carappa seemed in a mood of pleasurable grimness; doubtless he gained satisfaction from knowing the others waited for what he had to say. Brandyholm and Wantage preserved their usual dour silence; the world affronted them, and they had sense enough to show it.
Nourishment was their first and hasty consideration. Neat slashes at the joints of two young ponic poles produced enough of the gooey white miltex for their requirements. It could be assimilated raw, and they munched it down quickly.
‘You believe the ship theory?’ Carappa suddenly challenged Wantage.
‘Yes. I’ll fight the man who says I’m wrong.’
The priest nodded his question at Crooner.
‘No. How can it be right?’ Crooner said.
The priest nodded his question at Brandyholm.
‘I don’t know. What does it matter either way to us?’
‘Fool!’ the priest said. ‘It matters in a million ways.’ He picked vigorously at a decaying tooth. ‘I, of course, am interested only in the theological aspects of this question. If this is a ship, it has come from somewhere and will arrive somewhere. If this is not a ship, I can only presume we are figments of the unconscious of some singularly beastly creature.’
They looked at him in alarm. He sneered into their faces and continued, ‘Fortunately, there can be little rational doubt that this is a ship
