Non-Stop
Authors: Brian Aldiss
Tags: #SciFi-Masterwork, #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #General
R. L. Stephenson
‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’
‘Our ablest SF writer’
Guardian
‘A brilliant treatment of the generation starship and also the theme of conceptual breakthrough; it has become accepted as a classic of the field.’
The Enclyclopedia of Science Fiction
‘Non-Stop offers a number of conventional sf pleasures, but it does more . . . it refuses to resolve itself into a happy, wish-fulfilling ending. The characters discover that they are the victims of a cosmic joke: ironies abound, the struggle goes on’
DAVID PRINGLE
,
Science Ficton: The 100 Best Novels
In affectionate memory of
TED CARNELL
Editor of
New Worlds
and
Science Fantasy
and starter of
Non-Stop
It is safer for a novelist to choose as his
subject something he feels about than
something he knows about.
L. P. HARTLEY
For this new edition of an old favourite, I have made some alterations here and there. These occur on forty-eight pages. The adventure remains the same; the characters remain the same; the theme of an idea gobbling up real life remains the same. Only a few words have been changed.
But of course words make all the difference.
B.W.A.
A community which cannot or will not realise how insignificant a part of the universe it occupies is not truly civilised. That is to say, it contains a fatal ingredient which renders it, to whatever extent, unbalanced. This is the story of one such community.
An idea, which is man-conceived, unlike most of the myriad effects which comprise our universe, is seldom perfectly balanced. Inevitably, it bears the imprint of man’s own frailty; it may fluctuate from the meagre to the grandiose. This is the story of a grandiose idea.
To the community it was more than an idea: it became existence itself. For the idea, as ideas will, had gone wrong and gobbled up their real lives.
QUARTERS
Like a radar echo bounding from a distant object and returning to its source, the sound of Roy Complain’s beating heart seemed to him to fill the clearing. He stood with one hand on the threshold of his compartment, listening to the rage hammering through his arteries.
‘Well, go on out then if you’re going! You said you were going!’
The shrill sarcasm of the voice behind him, Gwenny’s voice, propelled him into the clearing. He slammed the door without looking back, a low growl rasping the back of his throat, and then rubbed his hands together painfully in an attempt to regain control of himself. This was what living with Gwenny meant, the quarrels arising out of nothing and these insane bursts of anger tearing like illness through his being. Nor could it ever be clean anger; it was muddy stuff, and even at its full flood the knowledge was not hidden from him that he would soon be back again, apologizing to her, humiliating himself. Complain needed his woman.
This early in the waking period, several men were about; later, they would be dispersed about their business. A group of them sat on the deck, playing Travel-Up. Complain walked over to them, hands in pockets, and stared moodily down between their ragged heads. The board, painted on the deck, stretched twice as far as the span of a man’s outstretched arms. It was scattered with counters and symbols. One of the players leant forward and moved a pair of his blocks.
‘An outflank on Five,’ he said, with grim triumph, looking up and winking at Complain conspiratorially.
Complain turned away indifferently. For long periods of his
life, this game had exerted an almost uncanny attraction on him. He had played it till his adolescent limbs cracked from squatting and his eyes could hardly focus on the silver tokens. On others too, on nearly all the Greene tribe, Travel-Up cast its spell; it gave them a sense of spaciousness and power lacking in their lives. Now Complain was free of the spell, and missed its touch. To be absorbed in anything again would be good.
He ambled moodily down the clearing, hardly noticing the doors on either hand. Instead, he darted his eyes about among the passers-by, as if seeking a signal. He saw Wantage hurrying along to the barricades, instinctively keeping the deformed left side of his face away from others’ eyes. Wantage never played at the long board: he could not tolerate people on both sides of him. Why had the council spared him as a child? Many deformities were born in the Greene tribe, and only the knife awaited them. As boys, they had called Wantage ‘Slotface’, and tormented him; but he had grown up strong and ferocious, which had decided them to adopt a more tolerant attitude towards him: their jibes now were veiled.
Hardly realizing the change from aimlessness to intent, Complain also headed in the direction of the barricades, following Wantage. The best of the compartments, naturally appropriated for council use, were down here. One of the doors was flung open and Lieutenant Greene himself came out, followed by two of his officers. Although Greene was now an old man, he was still an irritable one, and his jerky gait held something yet of the impetuous stride of his youth. His officers, Patcht and Zilliac, walked haughtily beside him, dazers prominent in their belts.
To Complain’s great pleasure, Wantage was panicked by their sudden appearance into saluting his chief. It was a shameful gesture, almost a bringing of the head to the hand rather than the reverse, which was acknowledged by a ghastly grin from Zilliac. Subservience was the general lot, although pride did not admit the fact.
When Complain’s turn came to pass the trio he did it in the customary manner, turning his head away and scowling. Nobody should think
he
, a hunter, was not the equal of any other man. It was in the Teaching: ‘No man is inferior until he feels the need to show respect for another.’
His spirits now restored, he caught up with Wantage, clapping his hand on the latter’s left shoulder. Spinning in the other direction, Wantage presented a short fencing stick to Complain’s stomach. He had an economical way of moving, like a man closely surrounded by naked blades. His point lodged neatly against Complain’s navel.
‘Easy now, my pretty one. Is that how you always greet a friend?’ Complain asked, turning the point of the stick away.
‘I thought – Expansion, hunter. Why are you not out after meat?’ Wantage asked, sliding his eyes away from Complain.
‘Because I am walking down to the barricades with you. Besides, my pot is full and my dues paid: I have no need of meat.’
They walked in silence, Complain attempting to get on the other’s left side, the other eluding his efforts. Complain was careful not to try him too far, in case Wantage fell on him. Violence and death were pandemic in Quarters, forming a natural balance to the high birth rate, but nobody cheerfully dies for the sake of symmetry.
Near the barricades, the corridor was crowded; Wantage, muttering that he had cleaning work to do, slipped away. He walked close to the wall, narrowly upright, with a sort of bitter dignity in his step.
The leading barricade was a wooden partition with a gate in it which entirely blocked the corridor. Two Guards were posted there continually. There, Quarters ended and the mazes of ponic tangle began. But the barrier was a temporary structure, for the position itself was subject to change.
The Greene tribe was semi-nomadic, forced by its inability to maintain adequate crops or live food to move along on to new ground frequently. This was accomplished by thrusting
forward the leading barricade and moving up the rear ones, at the other end of Quarters, a corresponding distance. Such a move was now in progress. The ponic tangle, attacked and demolished ahead, would be allowed to spring up again behind them: the tribe slowly worked its way through the endless corridors like a maggot through a mushy apple.
Beyond the barricade, men worked vigorously, hacking down the tall ponic stalks, the edible sap, miltex, spurting out above their blades. As they were felled, the stalks were inverted to preserve as much sap as possible. This would be drained off and the hollow poles dried, cut to standard lengths and used eventually for a multitude of purposes. Almost on top of the busy blades, other sections of the plants were also being harvested: the leaves for medicinal use, the young shoots for table delicacies, the seed for various uses, as food, as buttons, as loose ballast in the Quarters’ version of tambourines, as counters for the Travel-Up boards, as toys for babies (into whose all-sampling mouths they were too large to cram).