like transparent nail parings fell out.
‘Microfilm!’ Tregonnin said, sweeping the flakes under a table with his foot. ‘It was brought in to me from a far corner of Forwards. Damp has ruined it, but even if it were intact it would be of no use to us: it needs a machine to make it readable.’
‘Then I don’t see –’ Complain began puzzledly, but the councillor held up a hand.
‘I’ll read you the labels on the tins,’ he said. ‘Then you’ll understand. Only the labels survive. This one says, “FILM: Survey New Earth, Aerial, Stratospheric, Orbital. Mid-Summer, N. Hemisphere.” This one says, “FILM: Flora and Fauna Continent A, New Earth”. And so on.’
He put the cans down, paused impressively and added, ‘So there, young man, is the answer to your question; on the evidence of these tins, it is obvious the ship reached Procyon’s planets successfully. We are now travelling back to Earth.’
In the untidy room deep silence fell, as each struggled alone to the very limits of his imagination. At last Vyann rose, shaking herself out of a spell, and said they should be going.
‘Wait!’ Complain said. ‘You’ve told us so much, yet you’ve told us so little. If we are travelling back to Earth, when do we get there? How can we know?’
‘My dear fellow,’ Tregonnin began, then sighed and changed his mind about what he was going to say. ‘My dear fellow, don’t you see, so much has been destroyed… The answers aren’t always clear. Sometimes even the
‘But one thing at least we do know,’ Vyann interposed. ‘Tell Roy Complain about the Forwards Roll, Councillor.’
‘Yes, I was just about to,’ Tregonnin said, with a touch of asperity. ‘Until we of the Council of Five took over command of Forwards, it was ruled by a succession of men calling themselves Governors. Under them, Forwards grew from a pitiful tribe to the powerful state it now is. Those Governors took care to hand down to each other a Roll or Testament, and this Roll or Testament the last Governor handed over to my keeping before he died. It is little more than a list of Governors’ names. But under the
The councillor opened his eyes and said, ‘So you see, although the names of the first three men are lost, we have in the Roll a record of how many generations have lived aboard this ship since it started back for Earth. The number is twenty-three.’
Marapper had not spoken for a long while. Now he asked, ‘Then that is a long time. When do we reach Earth?’
‘That is the question your friend asked,’ Tregonnin said. ‘I can only answer that I know for how many generations we have been travelling. But no man knows now when or how we stop. In the days before the first Governor, came the catastrophe — whatever that was — and since then the ship goes on and on non-stop through space, without captain, without control. One might almost say: without hope.’
For most of that sleep, tired though he was, Complain could not rest. His mind seethed and churned with fearful images, and fretted itself with conjecture. Over and over, he ran through what the councillor had said, trying to digest it.
It was all disquieting enough. Yet, in the midst of it, one tiny, irrelevant detail of their visit to the library kept recurring to him like toothache. At the time, it had seemed so unimportant that Complain, who was the only one who noticed it, had said nothing; now, its significance grew till it eclipsed even the thought of stars.
While Tregonnin was delivering his lecture, Complain had chanced to glance up at the library ceiling. Through the grille there, alert as if listening and understanding, peered a tiny rat’s face.
III
‘Contraction take your ego, Roy!’ Marapper exploded. ‘Don’t start mixing yourself up with the ideas of Forwards. It’s that girl who’s doing it, I know — you mark my words, she’s playing her own game with you! You’re so busy dreaming about the spicy secrets of her skirts, you can’t see the wood for the ponics. Just remember: we came here with our own objectives, and they’re still our objectives.’
Complain shook his head. He and the priest were eating alone early the next wake. Officers crowded the dining-hall, but Vyann and Scoyt had not yet appeared. Now Marapper was making his old appeal, that they should try for power together.
‘You’re out of date, Marapper,’ he said shortly. ‘And you can leave Inspector Vyann out of it. These Forwards people have a cause beyond any petty seeking for power. Besides, what if you killed the lot of them? What good would it do? Would it help the ship?’
‘To the hull with the ship. Look, Roy, trust your old priest who never let you down yet. These people are using us for their own ends; it’s only common sense to do the same ourselves. And don’t forget the Teaching tells you always to seek for yourself so that you may be freed from inner conflict.’
‘You’re forgetting something,’ Complain said. ‘The Litany ends “And the ship brought home”; it’s one of the main tenets of the Teaching. You were always a shockingly bad priest, Marapper.’
They were interrupted by the appearance of Vyann, looking fresh and attractive. She said she had already taken breakfast. With more irritation than he usually showed, Marapper excused himself. Something in Vyann’s manner told Complain she was happy enough to let him go; it suited him well also.
‘Has Fermour been questioned yet?’ he asked.
‘No. One of the Council of Five, Zac Deight, has seen him, but that’s all. Roger — that is, Master Scoyt — will question him later, but at present he is involved with some other, unexpected business.’
He did not ask what this business might be. Seeing her so close again overpowered him, so that he could hardly think of anything to say. Mainly, he longed to tell her that nothing less than a miracle could have arranged her dark hair as it was. Instead, and with an effort, he asked what he was required to do.
‘You are going to relax,’ she said brightly. ‘I have come to show you round Forwards.’
It proved an impressive tour. Many rooms, here as in Quarters, were barren and empty; Vyann explained that this must be because their contents had been left on Procyon’s planet, New Earth. Others had been turned into farms far surpassing Quarters’ in scale. Many varieties of animal Complain had never seen before. He saw fish for the first time, swimming in tanks — here Vyann told him that they yielded the white meat he had enjoyed. These farm rooms, he was told, were controlled by quantputer. Not understanding the reference, he held his tongue. There were amazing varieties of crops, some grown under special lighting. Cultivated ponics grew also, and brightly flowering shrubs. In one long room fruit grew, trees against the walls, bushes and plants in raised trenches in the middle; Complain inspected his first grapefruit here. The temperature was high in this room, the gardeners working naked to the waist. Sweat stood out on Complain’s face, and he noticed Vyann’s blouse sticking to her breasts; for him they were the sweetest fruits aboard the ship.
Many men and women worked on these agricultural decks, at humble tasks and complicated ones. Essentially a peaceful community, Forwards regarded agriculture as its chief occupation. Yet, despite all the trouble lavished on them, Vyann said, harvests mysteriously failed, animals died without apparent cause. Starvation remained a constant threat.
They moved to other decks. Sometimes the way was dark, the walls scarred with tokens of unguessable and forgotten weapons: souvenirs of the catastrophe. They came, feeling lonely now, to the Drive Floors, which Vyann said were strictly forbidden to all but a few officers. Here nobody lived; all was left to the silence and the dust.
‘Sometimes I imagine this as it must once have been,’ Vyann whispered, sweeping her torch to left and right.
