The Complete Short Stories: The 1950s. Brian Aldiss
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front. Dropping onto hands and knees, Brandyholm peered down into a vast room full of partitions with metal frames in. There was no sign of the man: he had already merged into twilight.
A short council was held, after which they went on, carefully skirting the hole. A few yards further on, another hole stopped them, and this one was unbridgeable. An explosion from below had ripped out floor, one wall and bulkhead. The edges of the torn metal were smooth, as if great heat had melted what it sundered. The lighting had also been disrupted.
They looked at each other uncertainly, quick to feel nonplussed.
‘We can’t jump across this gap,’ the priest said. ‘We must push through this hole in the wall and get back onto the corridor as soon as possible.’
This, however, proved impracticable. Some sort of machinery blocked the other side of the hole and sealed it effectively. They were only left with the option of climbing through the overhead bulkhead, and this they did as speedily as possible, frequently glancing back to make sure nobody was creeping up on them. When Crooner, the last and the heaviest, was hauled up, they started slowly forward by the light of Carappa’s torch, the artificial lighting still being defunct.
Gaping doorways of disordered rooms slid threateningly by. Dust stirred beneath their feet. When they saw light again ahead, Carappa flicked off the torch and their approach was wary.
The light came from a side door which bore the legend Dining Hall. Summoned into being by the light, more ponics grew, rooted in the litter dropped by themselves and the tiny insects that crawled among them. Their outer ranks were puny blades which seemed to grow from the deck itself, but they increased so in stature that two yards from the doorway they curled against the ceiling.
Wantage, Crooner, Brandyholm and the priest stared in disgust at the tangle, for it was obvious that their way lay through it. Great doors with the words Panic Valve stencilled on them in yellow sealed off the corridor. Reluctantly, with hardly a word to each other, they moved in and commenced hacking.
The jungle was more than usually impenetrable. Caught among the growth, sometimes on the ground, sometimes chest high, sometimes suspended above their heads, were an almost infinite number of metal tables and chairs. It was like cutting one’s way slowly through a nightmare.
And it grew worse. They came upon clusters of ponics which had collapsed under the extra weight and rotted in slimy bundles, while other plants grew out of them. The air became thick and sickly, and soon every stem about them was attacked by blight and they moved through a stippled wall of disease.
Brandyholm glanced at Wantage, who was next to him hacking in silence. The man’s face was grey, his eyes and nose streaming, and his mouth working. Seeing Brandyholm’s eye upon him, he began to curse monotonously.
Finally they came up against a blank wall. Wantage attacked it wildly with his knife, until Crooner downed him with a blow at the back of his ear.
‘Pity to spoil a good blade,’ Crooner said, pulling a hand across his dark, grimy face. ‘Now what do we do, priest?’
As if in answer to his question, the lights went out. It was dim-sleep, the dark time that came once in every four sleeps and would bring a dim-wake after it. Night came billowing in on them like a hot breath.
‘Nothing is left but self-confession,’ Carappa cried in desperation. He fell to his knees and began to recite the General Belief, the others coming in half-heartedly with the responses. Their voices rose and fell; by the end of it they all felt slightly better.
‘… And by so discharging our morbid impulses we may be freed from inner conflict,’ he intoned.
‘And live in psychosomatic purity,’ they replied.
‘So that this unnatural life may be delivered down to journey’s end.’
‘And sanity propagated.’
‘And the ship brought home.’ The priest had the last word.
Carappa scuffled round in the dark, shaking their hands and wishing expansion to their egos. Brandyholm pushed him roughly away.
‘After the mumbo jumbo, perhaps you’ll tell us how you’re going to get us out of here,’ he said. ‘I see now why all this sector was called Dead Ways.’
‘There will be another door near here. After sleep, we will hack our way round the wall till we find it. We can endure a little inconvenience, Tom, for the sake of the power to come.’
In the little clearing they had made, ponic seedlings would already be thrusting up. Even as they lay, the little stems were pushing through all round them. High over their heads, the dead and dying foliage curled against the ceiling and hung down. Although vibrant with the tiny sub-noises of rapid growth, the air was almost unbreathable: the wall of diseased plants cut off the oxygen released by the living ones beyond.
Nevertheless, Brandyholm slept. A nightmare trailed behind his eyes, a nightmare he was unable to recall afterwards, however hard he tried – for the religious held it a sign of ill-health not to remember and confess a bad dream. He only knew that an infinite menace was bearing down upon him, and then he awoke with Bob Crooner’s cries coming thickly to his ears. Rolling over half-drugged by sleep, he came upon two bodies fighting desperately with their bare hands. By the sounds they made, he knew they were Crooner and Wantage, and Wantage was on top. He flung himself at the latter, tearing at his shoulders.
Wantage sent a wild punch behind him; Brandyholm caught his wrist and twisted his arm back cruelly until the man rolled away from Crooner, kicking and shouting. They were all shouting by now. After what seemed an endless period of struggle, a light came on and Carappa stood over them, flashing his torch. In the brightness, Wantage’s knife was revealed. He dived for it, and Crooner pinned his wrist to the ground with a heavy foot.
Breathing heavily, Wantage lay as he was. His face was almost unrecognisable; normally pale and thin, it was now suffused with blood and so puffy his eyes were almost closed. He lay in a pulp of ponic leaves and miltex, looking at them like a beaten animal.
‘He suddenly set on me in the dark,’ Crooner said. ‘Thanks for the help, Tom.’ He was shaking violently.
Brandyholm smiled in pleasure at the gratitude, so unexpected because it was hardly considered manly to admit one ever stood in need of help. The smile nearly cracked his face. His head throbbed as if it would split.
The priest was on his hands and knees in front of Wantage, prodding him and speaking swiftly to him. At length he said to the other two, ‘I’ve seen a good many go like this. Wantage is insane. He is suffering from what we priests know as hyper-claustrophobia; actually we all have it in some degree. It causes forty-five per cent of Greene tribe deaths.’
‘Never mind the statistics, Carappa,’ Crooner said angrily. ‘What are we going to do with him?’
‘You don’t appreciate what an interesting case he is,’ the priest reproved. ‘Funny to observe how like a man’s beginning his end often is. Wantage’s mother was an outcast living in Dead Ways with a man; both of them had been turned out of Forwards or one of the minor Midway tribes. The man was killed hunting and the woman sought refuge with us. She could not live in the tangle alone. Wantage was then about eighteen months old, and his mother became – as the unattached females frequently do – one of our women. She was killed in a drunken brawl when he was fourteen.’
‘What’s this to do with Wantage going mad now?’ Crooner asked contemptuously. Priests were too fond of talking.
‘He deliberately submerged the memory of his mother because she was a bad lot,’ said Carappa triumphantly. ‘But being back in the tangle brought back the shame of her. He was overwhelmed by infantile fears of darkness and insecurity.’
‘Now that our little object lesson in the benefits of religion is over – ’ Crooner began, but at that instant Wantage sprang up, striking out right and left. A chance blow on the priest’s cheek sent him spinning round into Brandyholm.