Then they sat looking at each other, scared, sheepishly triumphant, across the quiet bodies. Outside, all was silence; only the prevailing indolence after the recent merry-making saved them from a crowd of sightseers and inevitable exposure. Slowly, Complain found himself able to think again.
‘What about the Guard who passed on your scheme to Zilliac?’ he asked. ‘We shall have trouble from him soon, Marapper, if we stay here.’
‘If we stayed here forever he would not trouble us,’ the priest said, ‘except to offend our nostrils. He lies here before us now.’ He pointed to the man Meller had dragged in, adding: ‘Which makes it look as if my plans have been passed on no further. So we are fortunate: we still have a little while before a search starts for Zilliac. He, I suspect, was nourishing some little scheme of his own on the quiet, otherwise he would have had an escort. So much the better for us. Come, Roy, we must move at once. Quarters is no longer healthy for us.’
He stood up on legs unexpectedly shaky and promptly sat down again. He rose again with more care, saying defensively: ‘For a man of sensibility, I worked neatly with that bunk, eh?’
‘I’ve yet to hear what they were after you for, priest,’ Meller said.
‘The greater credit to the speed of your assistance,’ said Marapper smoothly, making towards the door. Meller put his arm across it and answered, ‘I want to hear what you are involved in. It seems to me I am now involved in it too.’
When Marapper drew up but did not speak, Complain said impetuously, ‘Why not let him come with us, Marapper?’
‘So…’ the artist said reflectively. ‘You’re both leaving Quarters! Good luck to you, friends — I hope you will find whatever you are going looking for. Myself, I’d rather stay here safely and paint, thanks for the invitation.’
‘Brushing aside the minor point that no invitation was offered, I agree with all you say,’ Marapper said. ‘You showed up well just now, friend, but I need only real men of action with me: and at that I want a handful, not an army.’
As Meller stepped aside and Marapper took hold of the door handle, the latter’s attitude softened and he said, ‘Our lives are of microscopically small moment, but I believe that we now owe them to you, painter. Back to your dyes now with our thanks, and not a word to anyone.’
He made off down the corridor, Complain hurrying to get by his side. Sleep had closed over the tribe. They passed a late sentry, going to one of the rear barricades; two young men and two girls in bright rags were attempting to recapture the spirit of the past revelry; otherwise, the place was deserted.
Turning sharply down a side corridor, Marapper led the way to his own quarters. Glancing about him furtively, he produced a magnetic key and opened the door, pushing Complain in ahead of him. It was a large room, but crowded with the acquisitions of a lifetime, a thousand articles bribed or begged, things meaningless since the extinction of the Giants, and now merely fascinating totems of a more varied and advanced civilization than theirs. Complain stared about him almost helplessly, regarding without recognizing a camera, electric fans, jigsaw puzzles, books, switches, condensers, a bed pan, a bird cage, vases, fire extinguishers, keys in bundles, two oil paintings, a scroll labelled ‘Map of the Moon (Devizes Sector)’, a toy telephone and a crate full of bottles containing a thick sediment called ‘Shampoo’. Loot, all loot, with little perhaps but curiosity value.
‘Stay here while I get the other three rebels,’ Marapper said, making to go. ‘Then we’ll be on the move.’
‘Supposing they betray you as the Guard did?’
‘They won’t — as you’ll know when you see them,’ Marapper said shortly. ‘I only let the Guard in on it because he saw this going in here.’ He thumped the looker inside his tunic.
After he had gone, Complain heard the magnetic lock click into place. If something did go awry with the priest’s plans, he would be trapped here with much awkward explaining to do on his release, and would probably die for Zilliac’s death. He waited tensely, picking nervously at an irritation in one hand. He glanced down at length, and saw a minute splinter embedded in the flesh of his palm. The legs of Gwenny’s stool had always been rough.
PART II
DEADWAYS
I
In Quarters, a well-worn precept said ‘Leap before you look’; rashness was proverbially the path of wisdom, and the cunning acted always on the spur of the moment. Other courses of conduct could hardly be entertained when, with little reason for any action, a brooding state of inaction threatened to overwhelm every member of the tribe. Marapper, who was adept at twisting any councils to his own advantage, used these arguments of expediency to rouse the last three members of his expedition.
They followed him grudgingly, snatching up packs, jackets and dazers, and moving sullenly behind him through the corridors of their village. Few saw them go, and those few were indifferent, for the recent festivities had provided a generous quota of hangovers. Marapper stopped before the door of his compartment and felt for his key.
‘What are we halting here for? We’ll be caught if we hang about here, and chopped into little pieces. Let’s get into the ponics if we’re going.’
Marapper swung a surly slab of cheek towards the questioner. Then he turned it away again, not deigning to reply. Instead, he pushed open the door and called, ‘Come out, Roy, and meet your companions.’
Wary, a good hunter avoiding a possible trap, Complain appeared with his dazer in his hand. Quietly, he surveyed the three who stood by Marapper; he knew them all welclass="underline" Bob Fermour, elbows resting placidly on the two bulging pouches strapped to his belt, grinning non-commitally; Wantage, rotating his fencing stick endlessly in his hands; and Ern Roffery, the valuer, face challenging and unpleasant. For long seconds, Complain stared at them as they stood waiting.
‘I’m not leaving Quarters with that lot, Marapper,’ he said definitely. ‘If they are the best you can find, count me out. I thought this was going to be an expedition, not a Punch and Judy show.’
The priest clucked impatiently like a dyspeptic hen, and started towards him, but Roffery brushed him away and confronted Complain with one hand on the butt of his dazer. His moustache vibrated within six inches of Complain’s chin.
‘So, my running meat specialist,’ he said. ‘That’s how you feel. Don’t recognize your superiors when you see them, eh? If you think…’
‘It is how I feel,’ Complain said. ‘And you can stop picking at that toy in your holster or I’ll fry your fingers off. The priest told me this was going to be an expedition, not a rakeout of the red light rooms.’
‘So it is an expedition,’ the priest roared, butting himself in between them and shaking his face from one to the other, spitting in his rage. ‘It is an expedition, and by hem you’ll all come into Deadways with me if I have to carry your corpses there one by one. You fools, barking here like dogs at each other’s stupid faces, you contemptible fools, do you reckon that either of you is worth a credit’s worth of the other’s attention, let alone mine? Get your stuff together and move, or I’ll call the Guards on to you.’
This threat was so palpably foolish that Roffery burst into scoffing laughter.
‘I joined you to get away from sallow countenances like Complain’s, priest,’ he said. ‘Still, on your head be it! Lead on, you’re chief!’