Four ragged men greeted them, crouched over a desultory game of Travel-Up. Vyann and Complain stood in a shattered room, still almost weightless. A miscellany of furniture was ranged round the hole from which they emerged, obviously acting as a shelter for anyone needing to guard the hole in the event of an attack. Complain expected to be relieved of his dazer, but instead Hawl, having exchanged a few words with his tattered friends, led them out to another corridor. Here their weight immediately returned.
The corridor was filled with wounded men and women lying on piles of dead ponics, most of them with face or legs bandaged; they were presumably the victims of the recent battle. Hawl hurried past them clucking sympathetically and pushed into another apartment filled with stores and men, most of them patched, bandaged or torn. Among them was Gregg Complain.
It was unmistakably Gregg. The old look of dissatisfaction, manifesting itself round the eyes and the thin lips, was not altered by his heavy beard, or by an angry scar on his temple. He stood up as Complain and Vyann approached.
‘This is the Captain,’ Hawl announced. ‘I brought your brother and his fine lady to parley with you, Captain.’
Gregg moved over to them, eyes searching them as if his life depended on it. He had lost the old Quarters’ habit of not looking anyone in the eye. As he scanned them, his expression never changed. They might have been blocks of wood; he might have been a block of wood; the blood relationship meant nothing to him.
‘You’ve come officially from Forwards?’ he finally asked his younger brother.
‘Yes,’ Complain said.
‘You didn’t take long to get yourself into their favours, did you?’
‘What do you know of that?’ Complain challenged. The surly independence of his brother had, from all appearances, grown stronger since his violent withdrawal from Quarters long ago.
‘I know a lot of what goes on in Deadways,’ Gregg said. ‘I’m captain of Deadways, if nowhere else. I knew you were heading for Forwards. How I knew, never mind — let’s get down to business. What did you bring a woman with you for? To wipe your nose?’
‘As you said, let’s get down to business,’ Complain said sharply.
‘I suppose she’s come to keep an eye on you to see you behave yourself,’ Gregg muttered. ‘That seems a likely Forwards arrangement. You’d better follow me; there’s too much moaning going on in here… Hawl, you come too. Davies, you’re in charge here now — keep ’em quiet if you can.’
Following Gregg’s burly back, Complain and Vyann were led into a room of indescribable chaos. All over its scanty furnishings, bloody rags and clothes had been tossed; red-soaked bandages lay over the floor like so many broken jam rolls. A remnant of manners still lurked in Gregg, for seeing the look of distaste on Vyann’s face, he apologized for the muddle.
‘My woman was killed in the fight last night,’ he said. ‘She was torn to bits — ugh, you never heard such screams! I couldn’t get to her. I just couldn’t get to her. She’d have cleaned this muck up by now. Perhaps you’d like to do it for me?’
‘We will discuss your proposals and then leave as soon as possible,’ Vyann said tightly.
‘What was it about this fight that has scared you so, Gregg?’ Complain asked.
‘“Captain” to you,’ his brother said. ‘Nobody calls me Gregg to my face. And understand, I’m not scared: nothing’s ever scared me yet. I’m only thinking of my tribe. If we stay here we’ll be killed, sure as shame. We’ve got to move, and Forwards is as safe a place as any to move to. So –’ he sat wearily on the bed and waved to his brother to do the same — ‘It’s not safe here any more. Men we can fight, but not rats.’
‘Rats?’ Vyann echoed.
‘Rats, yes, my beauty,’ Gregg said, baring his fangs for emphasis. ‘Great big dirty rats, that can think and plan and organize like men. Do you know what I’m talking about, Roy?’
Complain was pale.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve had them running over me. They signal to each other, and dress in rags, and capture other animals.’
‘Oh, you know them, do you? Surprising… You know more than I credited you with. They’re the menace, the rat packs, the biggest menace on the ship. They’ve learnt to co-operate and attack in formation — that’s what they did last sleep when they fought us — that’s why we’re getting out. We wouldn’t be able to beat them off again if they came in strength.’
‘This is extraordinary!’ Vyann exclaimed. ‘We’ve had no such attacks in Forwards.’
‘Maybe not. Forwards is not the world,’ Gregg said grimly. He told them his theory, that the rat packs kept to Deadways because there they found the solitary humans whom they could attack and destroy without interference. Their latest raid was partly evidence of increasing organization, partly an accident because they had not at the outset realized the strength of Gregg’s band. Deciding he had said enough, Gregg changed the subject abruptly.
His plans for coming into Forwards were simple, he said. He would retain his group, numbering about fifty, as an autonomous unit which would not mix with the people of Forwards; they would spend their wakes as they spent them now, skirmishing through Deadways, returning only for sleeps. They would be responsible for the guarding of Forwards from Outsiders, Giants, rats and other raiders.
‘And in return?’ Complain asked.
‘In return, I must keep the right to punish my own folk,’ Gregg said. ‘And everyone must address me as Captain.’
‘Surely rather a childish stipulation?’
‘You think so? You never knew what was good for you. I’ve got here in my possession an old diary which proves that I — and you, of course — are descended from a Captain of this ship. His name was Captain Complain — Captain Gregory Complain. He owned the whole ship. Imagine that if you can…’
Gregg’s face was suddenly lit with wonder, then the curtain of surliness fell again. Behind it was a glimpse of a human trying to come to terms with the world. Then he was once more a scruffy brute, sitting on bandages. When Vyann asked him how old the diary was, he shrugged his shoulders, said he did not know, said he had never scanned more than the title page of the thing — and that, Complain guessed shrewdly, would have taken him some while.
‘The diary’s in the locker behind you,’ Gregg said. ‘I’ll show it you some time — if we come to terms. Have you decided about that?’
‘You really offer us little to make the bargain attractive, Brother,’ Complain replied. ‘This rat menace, for instance — for your own motives you are over-estimating it.’
‘You think so?’ Gregg stood up. ‘Then come and have a look here. Hawl, you stay and keep an eye on the lady — what we’re going to see is no sight for her.’
He led Complain along a desolate muddle of corridor, saying as they went how sorry he was to have to leave this hideout. The ancient explosion and a chance arrangement of closed inter-deck doors had given his band a fortress only approachable through the gashed roof by which Complain and Vyann had entered. Still talking — and now beyond his habitual surliness were tokens that he felt some pleasure at the sight of his brother — Gregg burst into a cupboard-like room.
‘Here’s an old pal for you,’ he said, with a sweeping gesture of introduction.
The announcement left Complain unprepared for what he saw. On a rough and dirty couch lay Ern Roffery, the valuer. He was barely recognizable. Three fingers were missing, and half the flesh of his face; one eye was gone. Most of the superb moustache had been chewed away. It needed nobody to tell Complain that this was the work of the rats — he could see their teeth-marks on a protruding cheek bone. The valuer did not move.