‘Your expense, warrior. Oh, it’s you, Roy Complain, is it? What do you want? I thought every fool young man was drunk. You’d better come in. Don’t make a noise.’
It was a large room, absolutely cluttered with dried ponic poles. They lined all the walls, making of the room a dead forest. Bergass had had an obsession that the very fabric of their world, walls and deck, might be demolished, and the tribe live in the ponic tangles in rooms built of these poles. He had tried this experiment himself in a broad part of Deadways and survived; but nobody else had taken up his idea.
A smell of broth filled the place, emanating from a great steaming cauldron in one corner. A young girl stirred this stew. Other women, Complain saw through the steam, stood about the room. Ozbert Bergass himself, surprisingly enough, sat on a rug in the middle of the room. He was delivering a speech which nobody heeded, all being busy talking to each other. Complain wondered how his knock had ever been heard.
He knelt down beside the old man. The trailing rot was far advanced. Starting, as always, from his stomach, it was working its short way up to the heart. Soft brown rods as long as a man’s hand trailed out of his flesh, giving the withered body the aspect of a corpse pierced by decaying sticks.
‘… and so the ship was lost and man was lost and the very losing was lost,’ the old man said huskily, fixing blank eyes on Complain. ‘And I have climbed all among the wreckage and I know, and I say that the longer time goes on the less chance we have of finding ourselves again. Yon fool women do not understand, you do not care, but I’ve told Gwenny many a time he does wrong by his tribe. “You’re doing wrong”, I’ve told him, “destroying everything you come across just because it is not necessary to you. These books you burn, these rolls of film”, I said, ‘You destroy them because you think someone might use them against you. But they hold secrets we ought to know”, I said, “and you’re a fool; we ought to be piecing things together, not destroying them. I tell you I’ve travelled more decks than you know exist”, I said… What do you want, sir?’
Since this interruption in the monologue seemed to be addressed to him, Complain answered that he came to be of service if possible.
‘Service?’ Bergass asked. ‘I’ve always fended for myself. And my father before me. My father was the greatest guide of them all. Do you know what has made us the tribe we are? I’ll tell you. My father was out searching with me when I was a youngster and he found what the Giants used to call an armoury. Yes, chambers full of dazers — full of ’em! But for that discovery the Greenes would not be what we are; we should have died out by now. Yes, I could take you to the armoury now, if you dare to come. Away beyond the centre of Deadways, where feet turn into hands and the floor moves away from you and you swim in the air like an insect…’
‘He’s babbling now,’ Complain thought. Pointless to tell him about Gwenny while he was jabbering about feet turning into hands. But the old guide stopped suddenly and said, ‘How did you get here, Roy Complain? Give me some more broth, my stomach’s dry as wood.’
Beckoning to one of the women for a bowl, Complain said, ‘I came to see how you were faring. You are a great man: I am sorry to find you like this.’
‘A great man,’ the other muttered stupidly, then, with a burst of fire, ‘Where’s my broth? By hem’s bladders, what are those whores doing? Washing their —s in it?’
A young woman hastily passed over a bowl of broth, winking mischievously at Complain as she did so. Bergass was too feeble to help himself, and Complain spooned the fatty stuff into his mouth. The guide’s eyes, Complain observed, were seeking his, as if with a secret to impart; it was said that the dying always tried to look into someone else’s eyes, but habit made Complain reluctant to meet that bright gaze. Turning away, he was suddenly conscious of the filth everywhere. There was enough dirt on the deck for ponics to seed in; even the dead ponic poles were caked in greasy condensation.
‘Why is not the Lieutenant here? Where is Lindsey the doctor? Should not Marapper the priest be attending you?’ he burst out angrily. ‘You should have better attendance here.’
‘Steady with that spoon, laddie. Just a minute while I make water… ah, my damned belly. Tight. Very tight… The doctor — I had my women send the doctor away. Old Greene, he won’t come, he’s afraid of the rot. Besides, he’s getting as old as I am; Zilliac’ll knock him off one of these fine sleep-wakes and take control himself… Now there’s a man –’
Seeing Bergass was wandering again, Complain said desperately, ‘Can I get you the priest?’
‘The priest? Who, Henry Marapper? Come nearer, and I’ll tell you something, just between us two. A secret. Never told anyone else. Easy… Henry Marapper’s a son of mine. Yes! I don’t believe in his bag of lies any more than I believe –’
He interrupted himself with a fit of croaking which for a moment Complain took for gasps of pain; then he realized it was laughter, punctuated by the words, ‘My son!’ There was no point in staying. With a curt word to one of the women, he got up, suddenly disgusted, leaving Bergass shaking so violently that his stomach growths clapped together. The other women stood about disinterestedly, hands on hips or making the perpetual fanning gesture against the flies. Snatches of their talk beat unheeded against Complain’s ears as he left.
‘… and where’s he get all those clothes from, I’d like to know. He’s only a common farm hand. I tell you he’s an informer…’
‘You’re too free with your kisses, young Wenda. Believe me, when you get to my age –’
‘… nicest dish of brains I’ve ever had.’
‘… that Ma Cullindram has just had a litter of seven. All still-born but one poor little tyke. It was quins last time, if you remember. I told her straight, I said “You want to be firm with your man –”’
‘… gambling away his earnings –’
‘… lying…’
‘… never laughed so much…’
Back in the dark corridor, he leant for a time against a wall, sighing with relief. He had done nothing, had not even broken the news of Gwenny’s death that he had come to tell Bergass, yet something had happened inside him. It was as if a great weight were rolling forward in his brain; it brought pain, but it enabled him to see more clearly. From it, he instinctively knew, some sort of climax would crystallize.
It had been overpoweringly hot in Bergass’s room; Complain was dripping sweat. From the corridor, now he listened, he could still hear the rumble of women’s voices. Suddenly a vision of Quarters as it really was came into his mind. It was a great cavern, filled exhaustingly with the twitter of many voices. Nowhere any real action, only the voices, dying voices.
IV
The wake wore slowly on and, as the sleep period drew nearer, Complain’s stomach, in anticipation of the next dose of his punishment, grew more uneasy. One sleep-wake in four, in Quarters and in all the known territories round about, was dark. Not an absolute dark, for here and there in the corridors square pilot lights burned like moons; in the apartments it was entirely dark and moonless. This was an accepted law of nature. There were old people to say that their parents recalled how in their youth the darks had not lasted so long; but old people notoriously remember wrongly, spinning out strange tales from the stuff of their vanished childhoods.
In the darks, the ponics crumpled up like sacking. Their slender rods cracked, and all but the lustiest shoots turned black. This was their brief winter. When the light returned, fresh shoots and seedlings climbed energetically up, sweeping away the sacking in a new wave of green. And they in turn would be nipped in four more sleep-wakes. Only the toughest or most favoured survived this cycle.