Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss

ready. Youare discontented, your woman is taken: what have you to lose? I strongly advise you to come – for your own sake, of course – although it will suit me to have someone about with a weak will and a hunter’s eye.’
    ‘Who are the four others, Marapper?’
    ‘I will tell you
that
when you say you are coming. If I were betrayed to the Guards, they would slit all our throats – mine especially! – in twenty places.’
    ‘What are we going to do? Where are we going?’
    Marapper rose slowly to his feet and stretched. With long fingers he raked through his hair, making at the same time the most hideous sneer he could devise, twisting the two great slabs of his cheeks, one up, one down, until his mouth coiled between them like knotted rope.
    ‘Go by yourself, Roy, if you so distrust my leadership! Why, you’re like a woman, all bellyache and questioning. I’ll tell you no more, except that my scheme is something too grand for your comprehension. Domination of the ship! That’s it! Nothing less! Complete domination of the ship – you don’t even know what the phrase means.’
    Cowed by the priest’s ferocious visage, Complain merely said, ‘I was not going to refuse to come.’
    ‘You mean you will come?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Marapper gripped his arm fervently, without a word. His cheeks gleamed.
    ‘
Now
tell me who the other four are who come with us,’ Complain said, alarmed the moment he had committed himself.
    Marapper released his arm.
    ‘You know the old saying, Roy: the truth never set anyone free. You will learn soon enough. It is better that I do not tell you now. I plan we shall start early next sleep. Now I shall leave you; I have work still to do. Not a word to anyone.’
    Half out of the door, he paused. Thrusting a hand into his tunic, he pulled something out and waved it triumphantly.Complain recognized it as a looker, the collection of reading matter used by the extinct Giants.
    ‘This is our key to power!’ Marapper said dramatically, thrusting it back into its place of concealment. Then he closed the door behind him.
    Idle as statuary, Complain stood in the centre of the floor, only his head working. And in his head there was only a circle of thought, leading nowhere. But Marapper was the priest, Marapper had knowledge most others could not share, Marapper must lead. Belatedly, Complain went to the door, opened it and peered out.
    The priest had already gone from sight. Nobody was near except Meller, the bearded artist. He was painting a bright fresco on the corridor wall outside his room, dabbing on with shrewdly engrossed face the various dyes he had collected the sleep-wake before. Beneath his hand, a great cat launched itself up the wall. He did not notice Complain.
    It was growing late. Complain went to eat in the almost deserted Mess. He fed in a trance. He returned, and Meller was still painting in a trance. He shut his door and prepared slowly for bed. Gwenny’s grey dress still hung on a hook by the bed; he snatched it down suddenly and flung it out of sight behind a cupboard. Then he lay down and let silence prolong itself.
    Suddenly into the room burst Marapper, bulbously, monumentally out of breath. He slammed the door behind him, gasping and tugging the corner of his cloak which had caught in the jamb.
    ‘Hide me, Roy – quick! Quickly, don’t stare, you fool. Get up, get your knife out. The Guards’ll be here, Zilliac’ll be here. They’re after me. They’d massacre poor old priests as soon as look at them.’
    As he spoke, he ran to Complain’s bunk, swung it out from the wall and began to crouch behind it.
    ‘What have you done?’ Complain demanded. ‘Why are they after you? Why hide here? Why drag me into it?’
    ‘It’s no compliment. You just happened to be near and my legs were never constructed for running. My life’s in danger.’
    While he was talking, Marapper stared wildly about, as if for a better hiding place, and then evidently decided to stay