The body was transferred to Bob Fermour’s shoulder; he, being five foot eight, and nearly a head taller than the others, could manage it most easily. Marapper wiped his blade daintily on Complain’s jacket, holstered it, and turned his attention to the mesh gate.
From one of his voluminous pockets, he produced a pair of wire cutters, and with these snicked a connection on the gate. He tugged at the handle; it gave about an inch and then stuck. He heaved and growled, but it moved no further.
‘Let me,’ Complain said.
He set his weight against the gate and tugged. It flew suddenly open with a piercing squeal, running on rusted bearings. A well was now revealed, a black, gaping hole, seemingly bottomless. They shrank back from it in some dismay.
‘That noise should attract most of the Guards in Quarters,’ Fermour said, inspecting with interest a notice, ‘RING FOR LIFT’, by the side of the shaft. ‘Now what, priest?’
‘Pitch the Guard down there, for a start,’ Marapper said. ‘Look lively!’
The body was hurled into the blackness, and in a moment they had the satisfaction of hearing a heavy thud.
‘Sickening!’ exclaimed Wantage with relish.
‘Still warm,’ Marapper whispered. ‘No need for death rites — just as well if we are to continue to claim our life rights. Now then, don’t be afraid, children, this dark place is man-made; once, I believe, a sort of carriage ran up and down it. We’ve got to follow Twemmer’s example, although less speedily.’
Cables hung in the middle of the opening. The priest leant forward and seized them, then lowered himself gingerly hand over fist down fifteen feet to the next level. The lift shaft yawning below him, he swung himself on to the narrow ledge, clung to the mesh with one hand and applied his cutters with the other. Tugging carefully, levering with his foot against an upright, he worked the gate open wide enough to squeeze through.
One at a time, the others followed. Complain was the last to leave the upper level. He climbed down the cable, silently bidding Quarters an uncordial farewell, and emerged with the others. The five of them stood silently in rustling twilight, peering about them.
They were on strange territory, but one stretch of ponic warren is much like another.
Marapper shut the gate neatly behind them and then faced forward, squaring his shoulders and adjusting his cloak.
‘That’s quite enough action for one wake, for an old priest like me,’ he said, ‘unless any of you care to resume our dispute about leadership?’
‘That was never under dispute,’ Complain said, looking challengingly past Roffery’s ear.
‘Don’t try and provoke me,’ the latter warned. ‘I follow our father, but I’ll chop anyone who starts trouble.’
‘There’ll be enough trouble here to satisfy the most swinishly stupid appetite,’ Wantage prophesied, swinging the bad side of his face towards the walls of growth about them. ‘It would make most sense if we stopped yapping and saved our swords for someone else’s stomachs.’
Reluctantly, they agreed with him.
Marapper brushed at his short cloak, scowling thoughtfully; it was bloodied at the hem.
‘We shall sleep now,’ he said. ‘We will break into the first convenient room and use that for camp. This must be our routine every sleep: we cannot remain in the corridors — the position is too exposed. In a compartment we can post guards and sleep safe.’
‘Would we not be better advised to move further from Quarters before we sleep?’ Complain asked.
‘Whatever I advise
The priest looked into their set faces as if he were holding an identification parade. They hooded their eyes from his gaze, like a quartet of drowsy vultures.
‘We’ve agreed to all that once already,’ Fermour said impatiently. ‘What more do you want us to do, kiss your boots?’
Although all were in some measure in agreement with him, the other three growled angrily at Fermour, he being a somewhat safer target for growls than the priest.
‘You can kiss my boots only when you’ve earned that privilege,’ Marapper said. ‘But there is something else I want you to do. I want you to obey me implicitly, but I also require you to swear you will not turn on one another. I’m not asking you to trust each other, or anything stupid like that. I’m not asking for any breaches of the canons of the Teaching — if we’re to make the Long Journey, we’re making it Orthodox. But we cannot afford constant quarrelling and fighting; your easy times in Quarters are over.
‘Some of the dangers we may meet, we know about — mutants, outsiders, other tribes, and finally the terrible people of Forwards themselves. But have no doubt that there will also be dangers of which we know nothing. When you feel spite for one of your fellows, nurse that bright spark for the unknown: it will be needed.’
He looked searchingly at them again.
‘Swear to it,’ he commanded.
‘That’s all very well,’ Wantage grumbled. ‘Of course I agree, but it obviously means sacrificing — well, our own characters. If we do that, it’s up to you to do the same sort of thing, Marapper, and give up all these speeches. Just tell us what you want us to do and we’ll do it without holding an oration over it.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Fermour quickly, before fresh argument could break out. ‘For hem sake let’s swear and then get some kip.’
They agreed to forego the privilege of private quarrels, and pressed slowly into the ponic fringes, the priest leading, fishing out an enormous bundle of magnetic keys. Some yards on, they came to the first door. They halted, and the priest began to try his keys one by one on to the shallow impression of the lock.
Complain, meanwhile, pushed on a little further and called back to them after a minute.
‘There’s a door here which has been broken into,’ he said. ‘Another tribe has evidently passed this way at some time. It would save us trouble if we went in here.’
They moved up to him, pressing back the rattling canes. The door stood open only a finger’s breadth, and they eyed it with some apprehension. Every door presented a challenge, an entry to the unknown; all knew of tales of death leaping from behind these silent doors, and the fear had been ingrained in them since childhood.
Drawing his dazer, Roffery lifted his foot and kicked out. The door swung open. Within, the briefest of scuttles was heard, and then dead silence. The room was evidently large, but dark, its sources of illumination having been broken — how long ago? Had there been light within, the ponics would have forced the door in their own remorseless way, satisfying their unending thirst for light, but they had even less use than man for the corners of darkness.
‘Only rats in there,’ Complain said, a little breathlessly. ‘Go on in, Roffery. What are you waiting for?’
For answer, Roffery took a torch from his pack and shone it ahead. He moved forward, the others crowding after him.
It was a big room as rooms went, eight paces by five; it was empty. The nervous eye of Roffery’s torch flicked sharply over the usual grille in the ceiling, blank walls and a floor piled with wreckage. Chairs, and desks, their drawers flung aside, their paraphernalia scattered, had been savagely attacked with a hatchet. Light-weight steel cabinets were dented, and lay face down in the dust. The five men stood suspiciously on the threshold, wondering dimly how long ago the havoc had been wrought, feeling perhaps a memory of that savagery still in the air, for savagery — unlike virtue — endures long after its originators have perished.
‘We can sleep here,’ Marapper said shortly. ‘Roy, have a look through that door over there.’
The door at the far side of the room was half open. Skirting a broken desk, Complain pushed at the jamb; a small lavatory was revealed, the china bowl broken, piping torn away. A path of ancient rust ran down the wall, but the water had long ceased to flow. As Complain looked, a shaggy white rat sped from the wreckage past him with a drop-sided scamper; Fermour kicked at it and missed, and it vanished into the ponic tangle of the corridor.
