The Watch Below (17 page)

XVII
Deslann was succeeded by Haynor, who was succeeded by his son of the
same name, who was succeeded by Helltag the Mad, who was killed by the
third Haynor. The population of the Unthan flagship had stabilized at
forty to fifty people, the larger proportion of which were female. This
was a troublesome situation, both potential and actual, but a minor one
compared with the terrible problem of inbreeding. A significant increase
in the incidence of male sterility had been expected and planned for,
also certain physical deformities and weakening of the intellect. They
did not expect the large-headed throwbacks to presapient times, who had
to be restrained long before they reached maturity because of their
predatory habits, nor did they foresee the birth of outwardly normal
offspring whose minds grew more monstrous and twisted than the bodies
of their unfortunate brothers and who were still intelligent enough to
conceal their mental abnormalities as had Captain Helltag.
The third Haynor was not above average in physical or mental ability
and he was not even a trainee captain -- of the five young engineering
pupils in training at that time, he rated number four. But he was on
watch in the control room with his engineer tutor when Captain Helltag,
in a perfectly normal tone of voice, said, "Nothing ever happens in
this place," and unlocked the Fleet Landing Board. Before the other
two realized what he was doing, more than thirty units of the fleet --
the main fleet, that is, not just the food vessels in the vanguard --
had been given random changes of attitude thrust of random duration
applied through their main drives.
Shouting at Helltag about the hundreds of cold-sleeping colonists in
each of those misdirected ships, the engineer darted towards the captain
to restrain him by force, since it was obvious now that Helltag was no
longer rational. But Haynor's tutor was much older than Helltag and his
attempt to knock the captain away from the control board only made the
other turn vicious as well as irrational. A sudden dark fog grew around
the old officer's body. Helltag was using his teeth. . . .
Haynor joined the struggle then, trying to get a hold on Helltag behind
the dorsal and baring his own teeth. One of the trainee healers had told
him about a weak spot which, when firmly pressed by the teeth or other
small, firm object, caused temporary paralysis and loss of consciousness.
Haynor found the spot all right, but just as he was applying pressure
to it Helltag twisted toward him suddenly and Haynor's teeth punctured
the captain's skin and tore the area deeply.
Helltag went violently out of control then, tried to tie his body into
a physically impossible knot, and died.
Because he was a trainee engineer, and not a very promising one at that,
Haynor had very little knowledge or appreciation of the tremendous amount
of responsibility devolving upon the flagship's commander. But he had stopped
Helltag from killing the aging engineer and from wreaking even greater havoc
among the fleet. After all, the safety of their thousands of cold-sleeping
charges -- the last survivors of Untha's past and the only hope of her future
-- was something taught early and often, so that Haynor found himself
promoted to captain for reasons which were purely emotional. Despite
this Haynor made a very good captain. During his reign he was able to
inspire the astrogation and computer departments into correcting the
courses of the ships Helltag had sent astray -- a job requiring close
to two decades of time and an order of fine computation of which the
great Gerrol himself would have been proud.
The appointment of Haynor, however, good in itself as everyone agreed at
the time, set dangerous precedents: The precedent of promotion across
the lines of specialty and training. Promotion based on psychological
factors of an emotional and personal nature rather than. on technical
ability. And the solution of problems, or the resolution of difficult
situations, by physical violence.
For the flagship civil war was not many generations away.
From the sweating bulkheads of Number One to the Commander's Ladder in
Twelve, and from Richard's Hole in the bilges to Richard's Rooms under
the poop deck, a philosophical war was brewing. On one side were the
old people and the majority of the women, all of whom believed that the
material handed down through the years by way of the Game was fact, solid,
immutable fact containing precisely the same degree of reality as, say,
the recollection of the first stumbling words of one's own child only a
few years away in time. Some of these people were so fanatical in their
beliefs that there were times when they confused remembered fiction
with remembered fact. But the other side went to the opposite extreme,
being fanatically cynical about practically everything. Somewhere in
the middle was Dr. Kimball Bush Dickson.
It was his professional duty to be neutral, of course, but his neutrality
was further assured by the fact that in matters outside his profession
he was very easily swayed.
At the present time, however, the doctor was alone and his opinions
were all his own. Striding briskly through the absolute darkness of the
midships tanks on his way to Richard's Rooms, he thought they would all
have been better advised to worry about the increasing corrosion and
dampness in the tanks, the mounting number of mechanical and electrical
failures, and the diminishing supply of canned food, light bulbs, and
material suitable for clothing. But to be perfectly fair, the doctor
knew that they did worry, especially the younger people, and very often
they tried to do something about these problems. The trouble was that
they tended to be a little cynical about the effects of external water
pressure and the behavior of electric current, which meant that there
were periodic power failures and that in winter the air was so damp
that it was difficult to keep warm even following a turn on one of the
generators, and so the incidence of death from respiratory diseases
in the very young and old was increasing as well. Maybe if they
all
listened a little more carefully to each other and worked together on
these problems something could be done. Again, maybe not.
He was at a loss to understand the reason for the split in the first place.
It was nothing so simple as impetuous youth fighting senile decay. Because
of the necessity for conserving food, water, and to a lesser extent air,
there was nothing to do all day except exercise one's brain, so that
physical methods of self-expression were discouraged by young and old
alike. Fighting among themselves, a closed community in such a harsh
environment, was unthinkable. And while the youths might be mentally
impetuous the oldsters were not mentally senile. On Gulf Trader there
was no such condition.
His hereditary medical knowledge, the doctor had good reason to believe,
had reached him subject to less change over the years than some material
he could think of -- the discipline of his specialized, traditionally
unmarried predecessors had been strict. Doctor Radford, the First,
had stated that their hair and teeth might fall out, but the Game had
trained their minds to such a fine pitch that they need never fear
becoming dotards.
The doctor walked across the floor of Number Twelve and began climbing
the ladder, still without putting a hand or a foot wrong. It was not until
he ascended to Richard's Rooms and the absolute darkness gave way to the
dim, bluish light from the portholes that he began to trip and stumble,
and that was because he was using his eyes to judge distances instead of
relying on memory to tell him the exact positions of things. Greeting
the five young people who were sitting cross-legged around the cabin,
he picked his way between them to stand at the port. While the others
resumed talking he looked out and up through the scummy glass.
The outlines of the navigation bridge and deck fittings and the towering
precipice of the reef on the port side had an intensity of blackness
almost frightening, as if the gray light filtering down from the surface
was being absorbed hungrily and sucked away into some other continuum,
never to escape again as a highlight or reflection. When an occasional
phosphorescent creature blew past in the current, it seemed almost
dazzling against those inky shadows.
It was a moonlit night up there, with little if any cloud. Clouds were
shapeless collections of water vapor at a great height which could totally
obscure the Moon but could not do the same with the light of the Sun,
and which under certain conditions released water over a large area --
but slowly, as if a ceiling had sprung hundreds of tiny leaks. The Moon
was an arid, airless body of near-planetary dimensions circling the Earth
at a distance of approximately 238,000 miles and shone by the reflected
light of the Sun, a G-type star situated near the rim of the parent
galaxy. . . .
Or so the older people would have said. And if asked -- or even if they
had not been asked -- they would have added a mind-staggering weight of
astronomical detail. But the younger people sitting around him, especially
the thirteen-year-old Arthur Sullivan Wallis, might have said that the
people on the surface were operating their standby generator while checking
the wiring of the big one, just as they did on the ship. The doctor knew
that the people for'rard believed in their G-type sun, but that ASW did
not wholly believe in his stupendous topside generator which probably
needed thousands of people to work its pedals. Arthur Sullivan Wallis
did not wholly believe in anything.
At the moment, however, there was nothing wild or heretical about the
things he was saying. The doctor turned from the porthole to listen.
". . . So the food can't last forever even if we agree to drastically
reduce the future population," Arthur was saying. "Everybody agrees to
this measure, particularly when they have just become parents for the
first time and realize what a dangerous and painful thing childbirth
is in this place. But usually it isn't until the second time that they
do anything about it. In any case the population is going down due to
worsening living conditions. It hasn't been as low as twelve since -- "
"We could grow more food," said his sister, Irene MacDougall Wallis.
"That would help with the clothing problem, too," said her cousin, Bing
Churchill Dickson. "Plant fiber material can't be made into an overall,
it comes apart too easily and it can't be washed at all. But it's warm
and if we had more growing plants -- "
"I agree," said Randolph Brutus Dickson, the fourth member of the group.
"Even though shredded beanstalks itch like blazes, I prefer them to going
around raw like this. I haven't felt warm since I was a baby."
The fifth member of the party laughed. She was Elizabeth Graves Wallis
and she laughed at everything. When she wasn't laughing she smiled
silently and played with her fingers, and she was without doubt the
happiest person in the ship.
"Extending the garden won't work," Arthur resumed patiently, "because we
haven't the necessary wiring or light bulbs. At the rate we're blowing
them they won't outlast the food supply, and increasing the number of
lighting points will use them up that much quicker. No bulbs means no
light, no beans, and no air. As I see it there is no solution to the
problem within the ship, which means that we must work towards rescue."
At that point the doctor began to feel a little bit disappointed in ASW.
Methods of attracting the attention of the people on the surface were
always being tried, although much less frequently of late, from simple
banging on the hull in Morse to running lights into Richard's Rooms
and flashing them through the portholes at night. But the attempts had
served only to make everyone unhappy for months afterwards, and now they
were actively discouraged. Thinking about rescue was like thinking about
girls, a phase of youth.
"My idea was to use the Rooms here," Arthur went on, "to get one of us to
the surface. The door to the weather deck is rusted solid and the same
goes for the portholes, but I was thinking of smashing the glass and
squeezing through, or being pushed through by an adult, and swimming
to the surface. To get through the port it would have to be a seven-
or eight-year-old. Or ten, maybe, if be was thin enough.
"He would have to be well briefed on what to say to the people up there,"
ASW went on, "and would carry something -- a message and the lieutenant
commander's identity card, perhaps -- so that if he didn't make it to
the shore alive, or his verbal report was not believed at first, they
would still know we were here. . . ."
"J-just a Imnute!" the doctor broke in aghast. "You can't do that! The port
would be a tight squeeze even for a skinny eight-year-old, and there would
be jagged edges of glass around the rim. You couldn't be sure of breaking
all of them away with the water pouring in. The kid would be cut to ribbons
on the way out!"
"The adult," said Arthur seriously, "would be a volunteer who knew that
he was going to die, so he would not panic. He would be tied in position
so that the inrush of water would not sweep him away from the port,
and while the boy kept his head in the air for as long as possible and
hyperventilated the adult would knock all of the loose glass from the
rim of the port. When the water rose above the top edge of the port the
air trapped in the upper part of the room would slow the influx of water
and allow plenty of time for the boy to be assisted through the port -- "
"No!"
This time it was Irene who objected, and she sounded personally afraid
rather than shocked at the idea as she went on, "It would mean losing the
Rooms and making the ship
blind
! I don't think I could stand that. Our
parents might -- they don't like coming here because they can see out
and that makes them uncomfortable. But I want to know that there is
somewhere else besides the ship, something else besides rusting metal
walls and damp bedding and this everlasting cold and stench.
"I'd like to live up here," she added vehemently, "and look out at the light
all the time. No matter what it is that makes it."