The trio had to possess themselves in uneasy patience until the guards came back. For some while, the silence was broken only by an uneasy whine deep in the priest’s intestines. Then all three began to fidget.
Marapper tried to remove some clotted filth from his cloak. Working half-heartedly, he looked up with eagerness when the door was opened and two men appeared in the open doorway; pushing roughly past Fermour, the priest strode over to them.
‘Take me to your Lieutenant and expansion to your egos,’ he said. ‘It is important I see him as soon as possible. I am not a man to be kept waiting.’
‘You will all come with us,’ one of the pair said firmly. ‘We have our orders.’
Wisely, Marapper saw fit to obey at once, although he kept up a flow of indignant protest as they were ushered into the corridor. They were led deeper into Forwards, passing several curious bystanders on their way. Complain noticed these people stared at them angrily; one middle-aged woman called, ‘You curs, you killed my Frank! Now they’ll kill you.’
His senses nicely stimulated by a scent of danger, Complain took in every detail of their route. Here, as throughout Deadways, what Marapper had called the Main Corridor was blocked at each deck, and they followed a circuitous detour round the curving corridors and through the inter-deck doors. In effect, it meant that to go further forward they took, not the straight course a bullet takes to leave a rifle, but the tight spiral traced by the rifling in the barrel.
‘By this method they traversed two decks. Complain saw with mild surprise the notice ‘Deck 22’ stencilled against the inter-deck door; it was a link with all the seemingly unending deck numbers which had punctuated their trek; and it implied, unless Deadways began again on the other side of Forwards, that Forwards itself covered twenty-four decks.
This was too much for Complain to believe. He had to remind himself forcibly how much he was incapable of crediting which had actually been proved to be. But — what lay beyond Deck 1? He could picture only a wilderness of super-ponics, growing out into what Myra, his mother, had called the great stretch of other darkness, where strange lanterns burned. Even the priest’s theory of the Ship, backed as it was by printed evidence, had little power to thrust out that image he had known since childhood. With a certain pleasure, he balanced the two theories against each other; never before in his life had he felt anything but discomfort at the contemplation of intangibles. He was rapidly sloughing the dry husk that limited Greene tribe thinking.
Complain’s interior monologue was interrupted by their guards, who now pushed him with Fermour and the priest into a large compartment, entering themselves and shutting the door. Two other guards were already in the room.
A couple of unusual features distinguished the room from any other Complain had been in. One was a plant bearing bright flowers which stood in a tub, as if for some purpose — though what purpose, the hunter could not guess. The other unusual feature was a girl; she stood regarding them from behind a desk, dressed in a neat grey uniform and with her hands restfully down at her sides. Her hair fell straight and neat about her neck. The hair was black, and her eyes were grey; her face was thin, pale and intense, the exact curve of her cheek down to her mouth holding, Complain felt compulsively, a message he longed to understand. Although she was young and her brow magnificent, the impression she gave was not so much of beauty as of gentleness — until one’s gaze dropped to her jaw. There lay delicate but unmistakeable warning that it might be uncomfortable to know this girl too well.
She surveyed each of the prisoners in turn.
Complain experienced a strange frisson as her eyes engaged his; and something tense in Fermour’s attitude revealed that he, too, felt an attraction to her. That her direct gaze defied a strict Quarters’ taboo only made it the more disturbing.
‘So you’re Gregg’s ruffians,’ she said finally. Now she had seen them, she was obviously inclined to look at them no more; she tilted her neat head up and studied a patch of wall. ‘It is good that we have caught some of you at last. You have caused us much unnecessary irritation. Now you will be handed over to the torturers; we have to extract information from you. Or do you wish to surrender it voluntarily here and now?’
Her voice had been cold and detached, using the tone the proud employ to the criminal. Torture, it was implied, was the natural disinfectant for their sort.
Fermour spoke.
‘We beg you, as you are a kind woman, to spare us from torture!’
‘It is neither my business nor my intention to be kind,’ she replied. ‘As for my sex — that, I think, lies outside the scope of your concerns. My name is Inspector Vyann; I investigate all captives brought into Forwards, and those who are coy about talking go on the presses. You ruffians in particular deserve nothing better. We need to know how to get to the leader of your band himself.’
Marapper spread his hands wide.
‘You may take it from me we know nothing of this leader,’ he said, ‘nor of the ruffians who serve him. We three are completely independent; our tribe lies many decks away. As I am a humble priest, I would not lie to you.’
‘Humble, are you?’ she asked, thrusting the little chin out. ‘What were you doing so near Forwards? Do you not know our perimeters are dangerous?’
‘We did not realize we were so near Forwards,’ said the priest. ‘The ponics were thick. We have come a long way.’
‘Where exactly have you come from?’
This was the first question of a series that Inspector Vyann thrust at them. Marapper answered them greasily and unhappily; he was not permitted to deviate. Whether she spoke or listened, the girl in grey looked slightly away from them. They might have been three performing dogs hustled before her, so detachedly did she ignore them as people; the two silent figures and the third, Marapper, standing slightly ahead of his companions, gesticulating, protesting, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, were for her mere random elements in a problem awaiting solution.
The direction of her interrogation soon made it obvious that she began by believing them to be members of a marauding gang, and ended by doubting it. The gang, it became apparent, had been carrying out raids on Forwards from a nearby base at a time when other — as yet unspecified — problems pressed.
Vyann’s natural disappointment at finding the trio less exciting than hoped for chilled her manner still further. The thicker grew the ice, the more voluble grew Marapper. His violent imagination, easily stimulated, pictured for him the ease with which this impervious young woman might snap her fingers and launch him on his Long Journey. At last he stepped forward, placing one hand gently on her desk.
‘What you have failed to realize, madam,’ he said impressively, ‘is this: that we are no ordinary captives. When your skirmishers waylaid us, we were on our way to Forwards with important news.’
‘Is that so?’ Her raised eyebrows were a triumph. ‘You were telling me a moment ago you were only a humble priest from an obscure village. These contradictions bore us.’
‘Knowledge!’ Marapper said. ‘Why question where it comes from? I warn you seriously, I am valuable.’
Vyann permitted herself a small, frosty smile.
‘So your lives should be spared because you hold some vital information between you. Is that it, priest?’
‘I said I had the knowledge,’ Marapper pointed out craftily, puffing up his cheeks. ‘If you also deign to spare the breath of my poor, ignorant friends here, I should, of course, be everlastingly delighted.’
‘So?’ For the first time, she sat down behind the desk, a hint of humour lurking round her mouth, softening it. She pointed to Complain.