Untitled, p.13
Untitled, page 13
I looked to right and left as I moved past the first corridor junction. To the right, I saw Israt. He was talking to a uniformed man - I took him for police. Israt saw me and shouted. I realized that I had been in Mercator’s suite for more than half an hour, and Thunderpeck had gone.
Only for a moment did I hesitate. They were moving towards me, and it prompted my thinking marvellously. I turned into the restaurant. The four dignitaries were still there. They had reached the coffee and brandy stage of their meal, and were grinning widely at each other, except for the half-caste, who sat shrunken in his chair, toying with a glass of water. I nodded to them as I turned into the men’s room.
In a minute, Mercator’s men would be after me. This time it would be an affair of bullets, not words. These people were here to assassinate the President of Africa! They had told me their mad secret, and I could not be trusted - I was a hated pleb! No doubt Justine, the fair, the fatal, had revealed the truth only out of piqued pride; it was enough that she had told me. I guessed it would seal my fate.
Seizing one of the decorator’s planks that lay at the far side of the room, I wedged it with one end behind the side of a wash-basin and the other behind a hot-air drier, so that it lay across the door, stopping it from opening. That would keep them out for a brief minute; there was no lock on the simple spring door. Crossing to the coats that I had previously robbed, I lifted down the half-caste’s anti-gravity kit. At the same time, someone thudded violently against the door.
I saw plaster fall under the wash-basin. Damn them for building so badly! There was no time to adjust the harness and strap the unit on properly. I ran to the window with it hanging from one shoulder, flung the window open, and climbed up on to the sill.
Nausea and extreme panic overtook me immediately, as I saw the streets far below. Remember, I had never tried one of these units before; at that date, they were still novelties. But it was too late to turn back now. The blows at the door came again, and the wash-basin squeaked in its socket. Grasping the starting-knob of the unit, I wrenched it over to the “On” position, and jumped clear of the building.
The streets at once began to whirl up at me. Everything in that instant was presented in extreme clarity. I realized that many people were now filling the streets, I even saw jet liners circling by the horizon, as if bringing in more people for tomorrow’s ceremony. And by then some terrible thing invaded my mind; there seemed to be strange smells and odours, and I realized that the unit was not working. I extended my hands, I yelled amid splendid music! Roofs, pavements, whirled up at me - and I hit ground!
* * * *
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Had I believed in hell before, in purgatory? Had I believed in an afterlife in which my smashed body might go on suffering?
There it was, believe it or not, and those potent symbols of dismay from which, when they obtruded in my lifetime, I had been so easily able to turn away, now stood before me in undeniable form. Even as I ran from them, I could not tell what form it was they took, but at one moment I thought they were skeletons and, at the next, devils dressed in shining armour and bearing great lights that burnt me where they touched.
The place I was in - but it seemed not to have dimensions! A beetle crushed against a badly folded cloth could have formed a better idea of his surroundings than I, for though it might be said that I was surrounded with streets and buildings of all kinds, they were always too close, pressing against my eyes, in fact.
If dimension had gone wrong, that was because my brain had gone wrong. Most of it had not survived the fall. Too much of it had been entirely lost for me even to guess what had been there before, but I was filled with a desire - no, a mania would be a better word, a mania to establish what the world had been like that I had left. I could recall nothing about that world, except that it was unlike the one I found myself in.
This mania tortured me. What had the world been? What was the world? And what had I been, what manner of being? What was the essential “I” - why had I never ascertained that when I had the chance?
The mania propelled me down a street. More accurate: the mania brought me into a sort of being a street that flowed past me. I flung up my hands to let it slip under my arms.
There were beings on the street, beings much like me. There was also a rigid etiquette that forbade my speaking to certain people, however desperately I needed help, however close I might be to - but in the old world (that I did remember, piercingly sharp!) we had death to drive us; here there was only mania...
I try to put it down calmly, clearly. Of course it won’t go. Some foods you can’t digest, only spit out. Some poisons don’t kill; they embalm you in a living mummification, where the mind glazes over and becomes a distorting mirror.
Out and out the street rolled. It rattled off a round building that spun like a great drum releasing ribbon - but all the while it was my arms that did it. I understood then, though I don’t now. At last the mania drove me to a man who sat over a small fire in the street so that his face was obscured by smoke. The etiquette allowed me to speak to him before he went by because his eyes were hidden.
As we were carried along by the street, I called to him: “What was the world like that I left? I must know to be set free.”
He said: “You do not know about the sheep and the goats then? I can tell you only about the sheep. You must find another who will tell you about the goats.”
All this I could hardly understand, for we seemed to be moving along at a grinding rate. Perhaps at this point I was hitting him, but I never saw his face for smoke, and without waiting for an answer, he began to tell me about the sheep, in an automatic manner that suggested that throughout the ages he had had to suffer an endless retelling of his tale.
“There was this big field of sheep,” he said. “Many of the sheep had lambs, and they were all vacantly happy. They had no sort of worries, financial, matrimonial, moral, or religious, and the grazing was good.
“The only thing that bothered them was the railway. Running along the side of the field where they preferred to lie was an embankment, along the top of which diesel trains ran.
“Every day, twelve diesel trains ran along the top of the embankment. They never stopped, for there was nothing to stop for, and they never sounded their hooters, for there was nothing to sound their hooters for. But they sped by very fast and noisily.
“Every time one of the trains rushed by, the sheep and the lambs were compelled to get up and run away from the embankment to the far side of their field, because they were afraid the trains might catch them. It was always a long while after the train had gone before they could settle down to their grazing again.
“One of the oldest sheep in the field was considerably wiser than the rest. When they had all stampeded across the field for the twelfth time one day, she addressed the rest of the flock.
“‘My friends,’ she said, ‘I have studied carefully the path that these horrid metal monsters take when they charge through our pasture. I have observed that they never come down from the embankment. We have always prided ourselves, with some justification, that we have run away so fast that the horrid metal monsters could not catch us. But I want you to consider an entirely new theory, based on my observations. Friends, suppose the horrid metal monsters cannot come down from the embankment?”
At this, there was some derisive laughter, particularly from the fleet of foot. Undismayed the old sheep continued.
“‘Observe what follows if my theory is correct. If the horrid metal monsters cannot come down from the embankment, then they are not chasing us. In fact, my friends, their perceptions may be so alien they are not even aware of us as they clatter by.”
“This was so startlingly novel that everyone began bleating at once. As several sheep pointed out, were this hypothesis true, it would imply that the pasture and they themselves were not central to the scheme of things ; which was an intolerable heresy and should be punished. The fleetest lamb contradicted this, saying that people should be free to think what they liked, provided they kept it to themselves. Where the hypothesis was dangerous was that belief in it would clearly mean nobody would bother to run very fast when the horrid metal monsters came, and in no time the flock would become decadent and unable to run at all.
“When they had all had their say, the wise old sheep spoke again.
“‘Fortunately, my theory can be tested empirically,’ she said. ‘In the morning, when the first horrid metal monster comes, we will not run away. We will lie by the embankment, and you will see that the horrid metal monster flashes by without being aware of us.’
“They greeted this proposal with bleats of horror: it was an insult to common sense. But as night fell, such was the enlightenment of the flock, it became apparent that the wise old sheep would have her way, and that in the morning they would co-operate in this dangerous experiment.
“When the wise old sheep perceived this, she began to have qualms. Supposing she were mistaken, and they were all killed by the horrid metal monsters?
“The rest of the flock fell asleep at last, and she decided she must go alone to the top of the embankment and study the enemy territory. If she saw anything to alarm her, she could then call off the experiment.
“To get to the top of the embankment was more difficult than she had expected. There was wire to be negotiated, a steep slope to be climbed, gorse bushes to be pushed through. The wise old sheep was unused to such exertions. As she gained the top of the embankment, she suffered a heart attack and died.
“The flock woke in the morning and soon observed the hindquarters of the wise old sheep on the top of the embankment. A council was held. It was generally agreed that to honour her memory they must undertake her experiment.
“So when the first horrid metal monster was heard approaching, every one of the sheep sat tight where she was. The horrid metal monster roared down the line, struck the body of the wise old sheep, plunged over the embankment, and killed all the sheep without exception.
This story baffled me. “What happened?” I asked the faceless man.
“The grass grew tall in the field again.”
I left him, or I let the road whirl him away. Now the buildings were moving past more rapidly. The effect was not as if I was running forward, for I was being dragged back with them, but at a slower rate than they.
The mania had me savagely again, and impelled me to speak to an old woman who stood with a stick to support her. Her eyes were closed, or it may be that she had lids with no pupils underneath, but in either case, she never looked at me in the time I was before her.
“I understand nothing,” I said. “I only know that there is suffering. Why do we suffer, old woman? “
“I will tell you a story,” she said. Though we were both whirling away, she spoke softly, so that I could hardly catch her crazy words.
“When the Devil was a child, he was kept well away from all knowledge of the bitter things of the world. Only the happy things were allowed into his presence. Sin, unhappiness, ugliness, illness, age, all were secret from him.
“One day, the Devil escaped from his nanny and climbed over the garden wall. He walked down the road, full of excitement, until he met an old man bent double with age. The Devil stopped and looked at him.
“‘Why do you stare at me?’ said the old man. ‘Anyone would think you had never seen an old man before.’
“The Devil saw that his eyes were dim, his mouth slack, his skin full of wrinkles.
“ “What has happened to you?’ he asked.
“ ‘This is what happens to everyone. It is an incurable disease called time.’
“ ‘But what have you done to deserve it?’
“‘Nothing. I have got drunk, I have lied occasionally, I have slept with pretty women, I have worked no more than I had to. But those are not bad things. The punishment is greater than the crime, young man.’
“ ‘When will you get better?’ asked the Devil.
“The old man laughed.
“‘There’s a funeral coming along the road behind me. Have a look! That’s the only way I’ll be cured.’
“The Devil waited where he was, and presently the funeral came up. He climbed into a tree by the roadside, and as the procession passed he looked down into the face of the corpse.
“Although the corpse was that of an old man, he did indeed look more peaceful and less tortured than the old man to whom the Devil had spoken. It seemed as if he was cured, as the old man had said. So the Devil followed the procession to a cemetery to see what would happen next.
“He was surprised to see the body put into a hole and buried. He stayed on the spot until everyone had gone, full of a strange sense of things being wrong. He was still sitting there when one of the servants found him and carried him lovingly home.
“Next day, the Devil escaped over the wall again. He wanted to see if the corpse was properly cured.
“Finding a shovel in the cemetery, he began to dig up the grave. Unfortunately, he had forgotten which was the fresh grave and dug up a lot of older ones. In each hole he found terrible things with very alarming faces full of worms. He decided then that anything was better than the cure called death.
“It was on that day the Devil became sick; on that day, too, he decided what he wanted to be when he grew up.”
I stared at the vile old woman with her closed eyes. Like all the inhabitants of this purgatory, she was beyond my understanding. “And what did the Devil become when he grew up?” I demanded.
She laughed at me. “Why, a townsman!” she said.
The road whirled me on, or else it was the mania in me that pursued me. I seemed to fall down it, and to fall at an increasing rate, so that the other beings there twisted past me like people falling down a cliff. It was confusing, but I felt that I was perhaps asking everyone the wrong questions, or else was making the wrong assumptions, and that this was aggravating my rate of fall.
A small girl was falling beside me, a gaunt child with bright copper locks but a face like parched vellum. I shouted to her above the noise: “How can we find if we are fit for the truth?”
When she smiled at me, she had no teeth, and I took her then for an old dwarf who had dyed her hair.
“There’s a tale about that,” she said. “All about a poor but proud young man who jumped from a hotel window seventeen storeys above the ground. As he was falling, he wondered if his whole life, and the life of almost everyone he knew, was not based upon illusory values. The ground whirled up -”
“Stop! Stop! Don’t tell me how the story ends! That is my story! I shall die if you tell me any more. Now I can see that I still have the power to choose my own ending!”
Even as I spoke these words, I roused partly out of this strange bout of madness. The old hag whirled past me, and I realized that what I had taken for a street was nothing of the kind. These verticals, these ventilation cowls, these rails and windows - formed part of the Trieste Star. For I was done with Africa, and was sailing fast for home in my own vessel, with all my troubles behind.
Until now, I had not realized that my ship was armoured; I saw that the grey of the street was nothing more than the shielding that covered almost everything, rendering us impervious to anything but a nuclear attack. As I clung to the wheel - we drove through the grey waters at a tremendous pace - it was hard to see our course, so thoroughly were the windows shielded.
When the coast of England loomed up, bells sounded, and the crew began to cheer. I gave her a touch of additional speed; she responded like a woman; and we climbed up a steep launching ramp and ashore without difficulty. Until that minute, I had not realized that I captained an amphibious craft.
In no time, we arrived at the biggest city. It sat on top of its miles-wide platform, with starved land stretching all round it - I saw tiny withered things tending rows and rows of wilting plants before we launched ourselves up on to the platform. Moving more slowly now, I steered the ship down one of the streets.
All the ratings were leaning over the rail, cheering and waving. In my heart too surged an enormous relief that we were back home. But in the streets I saw things that I did not wish to see.
First I saw how the city was constructed. I saw how the serviceways that ran below the base platform had eliminated the need for all the distributive and supply and administrative vehicles that might once have crowded such a street; they were all automated, and ran below ground. All private vehicles, too, had long ago been eliminated in deference to an efficient public transport of bus and tube. As a result the traffic was negligible and the streets were narrow.
On either side of the streets ran the homes of the citizens, the plebs. They were more like barracks than flats. They spread all over the city, were the city, for the city had decentralized itself; divided into districts, no one district took precedence over another. All government and public offices were indistinguishable from the plebeian buildings in which the workers lived. It was only here and there that the brute form of a factory or distributive broke the drab uniformity.
