By Brian W. Aldiss
Chapter One
The eastern sky glittered over the city and the sun came up.
Robin Hedging wasn’t one of the superstitious kind who thought you would die within twenty-four hours of seeing the morning sun through glass. Nevertheless, he lowered the window of the bus to stare Out at it. This was always a good moment for him, when the rain ration had stopped falling and the sun rose before you got to work.
The city stood high on piers above the plain. The plain as yet would be dark. That was what gave Robin the thrill: the thought of that grim black land where no humans went, where terrors dwelt. Covertly, he circled himself.
* * * *
His father looked up from beside him, catching the gesture.
‘What’s the matter, son? You thinking something you shouldn’t do?’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘You worrying about seeing the sun through glass? You don’t have to. You’re wearing your spectacles - that makes two lots of glass. The superstition says you only die if you see the sun through one bit of glass.’
‘That means I’m going to die, Father. I opened the window and saw it through my spectacles alone.’ Robin spoke with as much of a sneer as he could muster, but a pang tore at his heart. He had not thought enough. But he’d seen the sun through one thickness of glass before and not died . . . Only maybe then there’d been some extenuating circumstances ... Maybe he’d seen a robot before seven...
His father’s pouchy face shook.
‘You’re a careless young fool, Robin. You’ll cost me my job yet.’
‘You know what happens to people who voice their greatest fear?’
That was a remark to provide a row in any company, but a man sitting behind the Hedgings leaned forward and tapped Robin on the shoulder.
‘Don’t mind me butting in, young H, but I could hear what you and your dad were saying. I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about. The saying is that you mustn’t see the sun through a pane of glass. Now you wouldn’t count your specs as a pane of glass would you, so you’re okay.’
Old Sam Hedging dug his son hard in the ribs, and with a downward droop to his mouth indicated he was to say as little as possible. He then turned to look at the intruder.
Ovine was a sad baggy man with a square face on which the patina of old eczema papules was partly concealed below a straggling moustache. His one-piece suit was new, and of course sharp blue. Both Hedgings dreaded his presence, on the bus or in the Distributive Point, but were afraid to say so.
‘What are spectacles if they aren’t panes of glass?’ Sam asked.
‘I’m only trying to help the boy.’
‘Well, I’m asking you, O, what are spectacles if they aren’t panes of glass?’
‘I suppose you’re right.’ Ovine turned his face away, and then, struck by a sudden thought, said, ‘But in that case they are two panes of glass, so your son’s all right.’
‘I’m the best judge of that—’
Robin tried not to listen to the argument. He liked the journey to work, but these older men always spoilt it with their tiny arguments. This third deck of the bus was full of men, mostly in working one-pieces, haggling over little things. Well, you took your choice: you haggled over little things, or you kept quiet. There did not seem to be any other alternatives.
* * * *
They were passing over Dunshinnan Bridge now. Robin braced himself. As the great lighted palace of the bus trundled forward at its statutory twenty miles an hour, he looked down into the canyon. Yes, night was still down there, impervious to the lights on the bridge, night and the ancestral earth. He thought he saw something white crawl down there - but it would have been a sheet of paper if it was anything.
Though the population was held steady now, the government had deemed it necessary to expand the city. That had been over four - or was it five? - centuries ago, but Robin had studied urbography during his year at school. He still recalled some of the details.
The new sector, Dunshinnan, had been built up on piles to join the rest of the city. But an error had been made. Always there were errors, in government, in engineering, in life. One understood that. The cybos and robos were no more effective at dealing with error than were humans. Dunshinnan had been constructed with its base a metre lower than the main city and with a gulf of a hundred and thirty metres separating the two sections. It was a large error; but bridges were built to span the gulf, no harm was done - and every morning Robin got his stomach-wrenching view of midnight.
The first stop over the bridge was where the Hedgings and Ovine and one or two others - the pallid Farven, the choleric Claysbank - got off. They climbed down on to the walk, old Sam Hedgings and Ovine still joined in grumbling talk. It was not far to the edge of the Dunshinnan, but high walls prevented one looking over. At first, before the walls had been erected, people had thrown themselves over the railings into the drop. There was still a mystique about it. Particularly on Kennedy and Vareller Days, dedicated parties would scale the walls and sacrifice themselves over the drop. You heard about it in whispers.
Robin checked himself at Distributive Point D2’s door. Farven laid a hand on his arm.
‘You’re dreaming again, young H,’ he said, smiling with a nervy twitch. ‘F’s go before H’s under a threshold, or they used to when I was a boy.’
Robin apologized and stepped back. The little group went in in alphabetical order, those who knew their alphabet helping the others. This was an important juncture, the beginning of work, when obviously one had to be careful. Demons were most active in the early morning.
The lights came on in D2. Supervisor stood there awaiting the men. He was the only cybo who remained switched on during the night, a large and immobile bulk of a machine. His sides and the containers on his sides had become plastered with notices, way-bills, delivery slips, and chalked figures. It was considered unlucky to remove these until Renovation Day.
‘Come in, humans. Equality and happiness in your day’s w-w-work.’
Supervisor had developed a slight stammer with his w’s. Farven, the mech, was unable to remedy it; when the robo-mech arrived on his bi-monthly inspection of the point, he would repair it.
Robin followed his father up to Supervisor. They asked the traditional question, ‘Is there any special w-w-work you require of us today?’ It was reckoned judicious to imitate the speech of Supervisor, thus gathering for oneself some of his power.
As always, the answer was negative.
* * * *
The Hedgings climbed into their gallery; already the first deliveries of goods were arriving. Claysbank waddled round, switching on the auxiliary robos. The first one he activated rolled behind him, clattering to itself as it checked the output of its fellows, recharging them from its own power supplies if necessary. As more and more machines came alive, the hall filled with noise and light.
For Robin, it was a cheering noise. This was life. No ill omens; everything working with as much efficiency as could be humanly expected. He followed his father into their little hut up on the catwalk. Already they had a light on then-switchboard. It was a sign of plenty. The spirits were harmless.
Old Hedging acknowledged the signal, settling himself down into their battered chair as he did so.
‘Grocery consignment One. DP D2. One thousand two hundred sixty-five nine-ounce cans marrow soup.’
Down on the floor, they could see the robotruck that had announced itself. It had drawn in to the first bay, where one of the point’s loaders hauled off its freight with padded metal hands, stacking the cans with its auxiliary hands so that they stood separately on the conveyor belt behind it and were carried one by one into the distance.
In response to the announcement, Sam shifted a bead along a thin wire. Supervisor would be keeping exact details of the entry; Sam’s was just a rough double-check.
‘Grocery consignment Two. DP D2. Five hundred twenty-eight twenty-ounce cans marycake pudding, two hundred nine ten-ounce cans marycake pudding.’
‘Milk consignment. DP D2. Two hundred nine-ounce containers Grade A milk. Six hundred sixty-two eighteen-ounce containers Grade A milk. Three hundred ninety-three twenty-eight-ounce containers Grade A milk.’
Laconically Sam moved two more beads across the wire. Business was warming up. More robotrucks were arriving with more of the day’s supplies for Dunshinnan Second District. They called their orders methodically as they entered. The automatic cop jockeyed them into place, his hand-sized fliers leading them to allotted bays, where they were unloaded. The big hall was humming and stuttering with the activity of robots and humans.
The whole city was humming with activity. It was the same sort of activity, did Robin but know it, that characterized a chicken’s rushing around when its head is cut off. The mechanical business of city life ground on, mindlessly.
No conscious government was left. Men capable of governing died or were killed or shot themselves or escaped centuries ago. The machinery of government ground on with no human hand to steer it. In the steel palm of the city, life crawled thoughtlessly, and obeyed the laws of a metal jungle. A million witless robos kept the system going, and each year became a little more entangled with the system.
From his vantage point, Sam saw the newscart trundle in. It was a red vehicle with auto tracks on either side, and very noticeable among the subdued colours of the other vehicles.
‘I’m going down on to the floor, Robin. Do you think you can manage?’
‘Of course, Father. Luck!’
‘And you, boy.’
They both circled themselves with inpointing forefingers, and Sam moved along the catwalk and down to the floor.
Moving carefully so as not to touch any of the robos - with good reason, for it was considered a sign of forthcoming injury if you touched one of them while they were at work - he reached the red vehicle just as it was announcing its consignment.
‘Newspost consignment. DP D2. Four hundred seventy copies City. Three hundred eighty-three copies City and Star. Three hundred fifty-two copies Tidings. Seventy copies Dunshinnan Light.’
Dexterously, Sam picked copies of three of the four news-digests off the racks before they were tossed on to the conveyor. Claysbank arrived and began to do the same thing. Smiling, Sam signalled a thumbs-up sign at his son, watching through the cabin window.
Someone in DD D2 went short of their morning news every morning. No system is perfect. The men in the point were careful to see that it was a different house that missed out each time.
* * * *
Chapter Two
Putting the tablets in his pocket, old Hedging strolled to the far end of the bay. Always, if the day had begun well, he liked this little exercise, liked to see that everything was going smoothly, liked to smell the sweet oil and warm metal and the occasional tang of bad food, where something had fallen off the conveyor belt and eluded the sweep of the cybocleaner. You couldn’t have a better job than in the Distributive Point -except in Government, of course. But that was not for the likes of the Hedgings. He felt happy that he had inherited this job, and comfortable to think that he would hand it down to Robin.
His reverie faded. Ovine was watching him. Not watching him openly, but standing behind a stanchion and spying, for all the world like a banshee in a cartoon. He pretended to look the other way when he saw Sam’s eye on him.
Ovine’s job was one of the rare kind that machines did less efficiently than a man of average ability.
He was a floor retriever. Of the material that fell to the floor, not all was rubbish to be swept into the metal maws of the cleaners; much of it was perfectly good food and such like, which had tumbled off the conveyor and could still be used. For some reason - probably a design flaw - the cleaners found difficulty in distinguishing such articles from genuine trash. But Ovine could, so Ovine had a genuinely functional job, and was therefore regarded by supers like the Hedgings and Farven with suspicion and contempt, and the fear that went with suspicion and contempt. A retriever’s job, boasting no particular pitch of its own, was non-inheritable. Ovine had arrived to take up the job only last month. He was not a good acquisition.
‘You looking for something?’ Sam asked him.
‘No, Mr Hedging,’ Ovine said.
* * * *
It was a deadly insult. Only if they had been eating together would it have been propitious for Ovine to have used anything but Sam’s initial when addressing him. To have one’s name spoken out loud like this was asking for trouble.
Angrily, Sam lumbered forward. Ovine backed away in alarm, but before he could get away, Sam broke one of his tablets between them. The printed circuits lay on the floor in a scatter of glass. The misfortune had been handed back to its instigator.
Although Ovine had been defeated, Sam was unsettled by the incident. He strolled round the floor, grumbling to the other men, with whom Ovine was just an unpleasant newcomer. Soothed by the sympathy he gained, Sam returned to the little cabin up in the roof.
The beads were piling up on the other side of the wire. Sam took over from his son, gave him the copy of Light and settled to look through the other newsdigests.
Robin turned the pages of the tablet slowly. He liked to watch the pictures struggle slowly into life and colour. Somehow their efforts to perform efficiently always woke a chord of sympathy in him. Their meaning interested him less. These stories, fact and fiction mixed, and told all in picture form, had never meant much to him. He dropped the tablet, exchanged signs with his father and went in his turn for a stroll about the point.
His thoughts were chiefly on Gina Lombard, their new lodger. So beautiful, that girl, so shy and yet so lively, with arms so ripe and soft! It would be good to get back and see her... He caught Ovine looking at him.
‘Are you wanting to speak to me?’ he asked.
‘No - er, no, young H. I was merely thinking how busy we are today,’ Ovine said, fingering his moustache. ‘I am not quite used to the routine yet, being new here.’
‘Where did you work before?’
‘I was on structure maintenance.’
Robin had no desire to talk. He moved away, and went along the other side. Farven popped out of a companionway and laid a hand on his arm; Robin was none too fond of the way Farven clutched arms, but he greeted the old man civilly enough.
‘You don’t want to talk to that O too much, young H,’ Farven said, putting his pale nose up towards Robin’s eyes, as if to peck at them. ‘He’s got the evil eye. He upset your father not ten minutes ago. And see that moustache on his face - isn’t that a sign of Neg?’
‘You are being old-fashioned,’ Robin protested.
‘Am I? Am I now? We shall see. But remember this: tomorrow night is Walpurgis Night ... O may get his name burnt if he isn’t too careful.’
* * * *
Robin sucked in his breath. Something cold tingled down his back. He hated these old men with their relish of the rites; they seemed to see it less as a grim necessity than as a pleasure.
‘He’s new. We must try to make allowances,’ he said, and moved off before Farven could answer. The old man became garrulous and addressed you like a public meeting if he was upset.
Dodging an empty truck rattling towards the exit, Robin climbed down the nearby companionway. This was the section of the point that fascinated him most. The steps wound down for a long way; there were also elevators, but only robos used them.
He emerged into what was known as the Services. The Services had one overriding attraction for him. They were on the ground, the real ground, the Earth, the territory he glimpsed when crossing Dunshinnan Bridge. It lay beyond the concrete walls.
The Services formed a complex series of sub-roads, entirely enclosed, entirely lit by selumce. Robin was careful not to get in the way of the purely automatic traffic that moved by. Its reactions were not always as fast as they should be, which was why everything was geared down to travel at no more than twenty miles an hour. At twenty miles an hour, human and robo reactions work at maximum efficiency together.
A slinker with a large D2 painted on its side moved up and offered itself. Robin jumped into the small cab, grateful to be out of the rancid wind that blew down here. They chugged down the straight road that was D2.
That straight road ran for an uncurving ten and a half miles. Above it was the double row of dwellings, one thousand two hundred and sixty-five of them, that made the D2 Avenue. In Dunshinnan there were four hundred such Services below four hundred such avenues, some longer, some shorter than this. The city proper, of course, was a bigger proposition altogether.
From the roof appeared the conveyor belt that had been loaded in the Distributive Point Robin had just left. It worked to the lower level in steps, feeding its contents on to another and synchronized belt that ran at eye level all along the Services. Cybocheckers fussed at this trouble point. Quick bursts of code flashed up to Supervisor, squatting imperturbably somewhere above.
Chugging further, the slinker moved beneath the houses. Here Robin felt less comfortable, although the gloom they had entered held its own kind of fearful pleasure. This was a region of stretching hands, lit only by the EL of the bulkhead above. As the eye-level belt rumbled down the ten-mile stretch, little photoelectric eyes winked secret signals to the bulkhead above.
A load for House 549 signalled itself to House 549. As it rode beneath the house, autoarms came down, scooping hands lifted the load, bore it up and into chute mouths that gaped open in the bulkhead. Circling himself, Robin watched the process. He had watched it for years. It never ceased to hold him. In the busy feeding movements of the arms and mouths there was a symbol of some colossal and unending greed bigger than a human greed.
The Services maintenance trucks came round less frequently than they should do (in fact some heretics whispered that the city was slowly running to a standstill). The arms and jaws developed minor eccentricities. Some snatched too soon, some almost too late; many squeaked or whined as they did their task - and at this time of day they were kept busy. No 634 had greedy arms that snatched 632’s groceries as well as its own. No 987 regularly broke its fruit juice jars. These foibles were known to the robos, and allowed for where possible.
* * * *
The clatter of falling goods and the buzz of alarmed cybos came to Robin. He called to the slinker to stop, jumped out and looked back down the sombre subway.
‘City sprites, the main supply belt has stopped!’ he exclaimed.
The eye-level belt was still on the move. The belt coming down from above had lurched to a halt. He heard men’s voices shouting, his father’s among them.
A figure appeared, running down the steps of the stopped conveyor belt. It was Ovine. He slipped among rolling cans, threw up his hands and fell on to the moving belt knees first. He buckled and stayed there.
Clattering feet sounded down the companionway. The red-faced Claysbank appeared, brandishing a stick. Farven and Sam Hedging were not far behind him. Above their voices echoed the voice of Supervisor, calling for order.
Although he knew they were not after him, Robin felt alarm. These sudden persecutions were common; whether or not he was their victim, they scared him.
As his pursuers arrived in the Services, Ovine pulled himself up. The belt had carried him some way towards where Robin stood. He got on to his knees, and above him mouths opened and mechanical hands reached down for him. Robin shouted.
In that moment he was no longer a doubter. He believed to the hilt all the whispers he had ever heard. He knew that the city really belonged to a Higher Power - and that the Higher Power had heart as well as hands of metal.
His scream acted as a warning to Ovine. The retriever looked up in time. As the arms came down, he jumped. He landed almost at Robin’s feet.
‘Don’t let them get me!’
One of the cybos had stepped into the path of the running men, its arms spread. Claysbank hit it across the shoulder. It lost its balance and fell. Something inside it sizzled and flashed.
Robin stood before Ovine. He had no weapon, but he could not let the man be killed without going to his rescue. Gasping, Ovine picked himself up, half-heartedly attempting to explain as he stood behind Robin. Robin was not listening. For the attackers had stopped. Beyond the cybo they stood, staring at its length, and at the smoke curling from it.
* * * *
Chapter Three
All the way home, old Hedging talked of the incident. The smoke issuing from the metal body had formed the sign of the circle. He had seen it, and the others thought they had too. It must mean something.
Whatever it meant, it had stopped their hunt for Ovine. Bit by bit, Robin pieced together what had happened. Ovine, walking carelessly across the floor, had got in the way of a robotruck. The truck had swerved and bowled into another vehicle. Together, the two trucks had jammed into the conveyor belt and stopped it.
‘You know what it means when two robos hit each other,’ Sam said in a fearful undertone. ‘Some human has put them at cross purposes. Who’d do that but Ovine? That’s why we determined to have his blood. Otherwise the spirits might have had ours.’
‘So we should have had him,’ agreed Farven from the seat in front, ‘but for that sign of the circle. What’s it mean? The powers of metal must be on Ovine’s side.’
‘They’re against us right enough,’ Robin agreed. ‘We’ve a thousand man-hours in overtime to do now, to make up the value of that cybo. You shouldn’t have knocked him down.’
Preferring to ignore this assertion, Farven said merely, ‘It’s Walpurgis Night tomorrow. If Ovine is fool enough to show his face tomorrow, we must have his blood.’ His nose was as sharp as a dagger.
He nodded his parting benediction curtly as he moved to leave the bus.
The Hedgings were gloomily silent when they stepped off at Avenue C378. They had some way to walk down the pedestrian path to their home. The city, large though it was, was virtually without architecture. Everything had been spread out, with several low buildings taking the place of the large city blocks that had been the fashion a score of centuries ago, back in the days of improperly mechanized ground cities. The centralization that created the need for big buildings, as well as traffic problems, had also been done away with. Civic centres had been dispersed. The Services supply routes solved the old pressing need for convenient shopping centres. Government itself took place in fully automated hutments. There was no core to the city, only a logic and a finite number of streets.
The front wall of their home was adorned with a motif of coloured geometrical designs, functional as well as decorative, for the motif served as an additional means of identifying the house beside the number. It was said that no two houses in the entire city bore the same pattern. Otherwise they were all alike.
* * * *
They genuflected on the threshold, waited until nobody wearing a black suiting was in sight, and went in. Robin was glad to see that Gina Lombard was in.
‘Hello, L, you are back promptly.’ They were not yet familiar enough to call each other by their first initial.
‘I was arranging your groceries. I hope you don’t mind.’
Their wants for the day had come up through the Services hatch and lay in the delivery baskets. Robin shuddered to think of what would have happened to Ovine if the metal hands had caught him and tried to force him into that two-foot-square hatch. Death was everywhere. He saw how necessary it was to propitiate it.
He lost some of his unease as he talked to Gina. She was beautiful with her trim black hair that came almost to a peak above her eyes; and her conversation, though guarded by formality, had an unusual quality about it that interested Robin. Instinctively he felt she was ‘unsafe’, without knowing quite what he meant by that. He felt nothing but pleasure when his father moodily retired to the sitting room and turned on the illiscop.
Robin and Gina were sitting together on the kitchen bench when Mrs Hedging arrived. She had won herself some reputation as a hag, and spent much of every day going among her neighbours, counselling them. As her popularity spread further afield, her days became longer. Since the morrow was to be a special day, she opened the supper without a word.
Robin felt his account of what happened at the DP die on his lips; though he spoke to Gina, he knew his mother was listening, and feared that she would construe something evil from his tale. Was there not some prohibition about retelling bad events?
In the night, he had a vile dream. People he knew took on a sudden menace and closed in on him. They extended steel claws at him. He fell through the ground. He fell through space. But space had a floor. On the floor stood his parents. He fell towards them. They opened their mouths. The inside of their mouths was pocked and roughened by eczema. As he fell, their tongues—
He woke. In the dark, an abysmal rumble came. The rubbish hatch was emptying automatically into the Services, where it would be collected in the morning. Throughout the city, and Dunshinnan, thousands, millions, of hatches would be vomiting their muck down into the cavernous depths. The fact became part of his nightmare. He could hardly struggle out of it.
Stranded at last on the muddy shore of wakefulness, Robin wiped his brow and gulped for breath. He climbed from his bunk and peered out of the window.
All was utterly quiet, utterly dark - but somewhere across the city he thought a fire burned. He desperately needed the comfort of Gina’s bed, but had not the courage to leave his tiny cabin.
* * * *
At work in the Distributive Point next morning, he remained ill at ease. The omens had set against him.
He told nobody, but he had seen a cloud like a cross in the sky, and his spectacles had misted when he drank his morning beverage - a sure presentiment that there were things hidden from him, awaiting their time. Walking moodily about the floor, behind one of the unpacking bays, he came across Ovine’s vest.
Its sharp blue rendered it instantly identifiable. He shied at it, and looked about to see if anyone was watching.
John Ovine had not arrived that morning. The men had cursed and demanded his address of Supervisor. Supervisor had sent them stonily back to work. The mood in the place was bad. Even up in the cosy little hut on the catwalk, which had been handed down through four generations of Hedgings, tension reigned in every creak of Sam’s swivel chair.
Robin plunged his hand into the breast pocket of Ovine’s garment. He brought out a notebook. He retired to the men’s room to investigate it, making the sign of the circle over it.
The notebook bore stamped initials on its cover, GIB, and beneath it the words for which the initials stood, Government Investigation Bureau.
It fell from Robin’s hands. Trembling, he picked it up again and leafed through it.
The contents were obscure, being mainly in note form, or in words that defied Robin’s simple reading standards. But their intent was clear enough, even to him. Ovine had been watching them for the government, and was making a report on them. He had found all the supers redundant. Of the humans working in the Distributive Point, only the functional job Ovine was temporarily holding - the despised job of floor retriever - had any practical purpose. The list of men who could be dismissed included both Hedgings and the pallid Farven.
‘But - but - we’ve got rights to the job!’
He was standing in the metal cubicle, whispering the words aloud. The job was threatened. There were rumours about what happened to people who could not find jobs, just as there was glum tattle about what happened to the aged who were taken into homes.
His father held documents of inheritance for the checking job, it was true. But the agreement was with the family, had been for over two centuries. If the Distributive Point cancelled the arrangement, there would be nothing they could do about it.
Who owned the DP? He didn’t know - the government presumably. But who was the government? Who owned the Government Investigation Bureau? Obviously, those same faceless people... or powers.
His dream came back to him. The ground was opening beneath him sure enough.
* * * *
Chapter Four
He stuck it in the Distributive until midday. His father and the other men only played on his nerves with their remarks about hunting down Ovine and sacrificing him as a warlock during the night’s revels. He knew how feeble these affairs often were when the evening came, but the talk of blood did him no good. When the rest of them went down to the auto-bar, he slipped out.
Supervisor would not miss him, or if he was missed would not sack him. He was - no, he’d never realized it till now -redundant, as the watching eyes of Ovine had quickly seen. He was a super. It was no term of praise; it probably meant superfluous.
Though Robin was not a perceptive man, a vision came to him. It came in the form of a question: how long ago did the present state of affairs crystallize?
His education in the robo and illiscop classes had been of the most rudimentary during his year at school. He had no concept of history, but after the question came the reflection: things can’t always have been like this.
He did not know what a large mental step he had taken.
First, he needed someone to talk to. He thought of the youths he played football with once a week; there was nobody there he cared to confide in. He thought of Gina and her bright eyes. She would be someone who would be able to think - perhaps more clearly than he could. He did not know where she worked, for there were taboos about inquiring into other people’s jobs, but there might be an address he could find in her room. He caught a bus home.
It was strange, moving round the town at this time of day; he had a sudden breath of unaccustomed freedom that carried him back to his early boyhood before civilization closed in on him. But the clerks talking in the seat behind him reminded him that captivity could not be eluded by a bus ride. They were talking about the Dark Thing that flew over the city on Wellpurging Night. He might have been sitting with his workmates !
As they crawled over Dunshinnan Bridge, he looked down and saw the earth far below. It was in shadow and no features were discernible. On sudden impulse, Robin pulled Ovine’s notebook out of his pocket, flinging it wide of the bus.
Fluttering like a tiny live thing, it fell below the level of the bridge. The parapet cut it from view.
Alighting at C378, he became suddenly cautious. Some of his excitement left him. The last person he wanted to see was his mother. It was unlikely, he thought, that she would be at home, but she would be in the neighbourhood and particularly active on a day like this. Interference from her would be intolerable.
Few people were about. He moved forward fast, not liking to run. People did not run. The two women he passed kept their eyes to themselves. He let himself through the front door.
‘Mother! L!’ he called in a whisper, hearing his heart beat.
Something moved in the kitchen. Swivelling his head, eyes astare, he saw the evenings meal tip out of the hatch into the basket. Smiling limply to himself, he moved upstairs to Gina’s cabin. His nerves were bad. The house held a weird desolation; even the lights and shadows that lay about its floors felt unnatural at this unvisited time of day. A stair creaked under his tread and a rictal jerk took the corner of his mouth.
Cursing himself, making the circle, he went at a run into Gina’s tiny cabin.
* * * *
It was better there. A faint prurient interest strengthened him when he opened her tiny closet and saw her dress there. He touched its fabric.
‘Gina!’ he said, but there was no answer.
She had so few possessions. In her suitcase under the pink face towel he came on the leather notebook with the initials GIB stamped on the cover.
When he had uttered a few broken noises, he opened it. Written inside was her name, and the address of the Government Investigation Bureau. He had seen the same address in Ovine’s notebook, without taking it in.
Now the whole business was on a different footing. Finding Ovine’s notebook had shown him a trap was in operation; finding Gina’s notebook told him the trap was aimed at him and his father.
He hardly took in the few scanty notes in the notebook. Mostly there were symbols - Gina, he could see at a glance, operated on a more sophisticated level than Ovine, for all that they worked for the same organization - though on one page, under his initials, she had scrawled, ‘Good intelligence potential, poor lad, but a savage, just a savage.’
He was making little uncouth sounds to himself, trying to take the shape of these new things. His first impulse was to escape - but there was nowhere to escape to. So he had to go and confront Gina.
A sound came that was not his. Mouth jerking open, he turned. A terrible thing stood just inside the doorway, a thing with an idiot metal face and body of fur, tatty fur that ended in human feet.
He screamed hate and fear at it with all his lungs’ strength as he flung himself upon it. He had the girl’s open suitcase held by the handle. He struck the thing with the corner of it.
The thing shrieked and fell back, striking its head on the doorpost. Then it slid slowly to the floor. The metal mask dropped away as it went, revealing the wizened face of Robin’s mother. Striking the mat, the body twitched, kicked ineffectually at the wall and was silent.
Almost beyond horror, Robin sank to his knees, brushing the stupid mask under the bunk. This was a new Wellpurging costume his mother had on. Once he called to her. Even when the faintest exhalation of breath came to his ears, he could not bring himself to touch her. Suddenly strength came back to his chilled muscle fibre. He up and ran.
* * * *
Chapter Five
All the way to the GIB address, he argued with himself. She’d had no right to come sneaking up to him like that. She should have taken that terrifying mask off, apeing the puissance of robos. His guilt remained, whatever he told himself.
Yet he felt no love or regret. His mother had always been aloof, wrapped in the mysteries of her hagdom. He might have behaved foolishly, but he had had the sense to take a small steak knife from the kitchen as he left. He clutched it in his pocket like a ju-ju.
The GIB stood on a corner of a main trafficway. On the opposite corner was a canteen. Robin entered it, gave his works number and received a plateful of food in exchange for the pledge of an hour’s overtime.
This was a poor move to begin with. The pledge would be sent back to his DP, who would then have a check on his whereabouts. He thought, I need to get away to another city. But how did one go about it? Was it possible?
The meal was welcome. He ate it slowly, his eyes on the GIB building. He realized he was lonely and frightened. He had broken territorial taboos; he had committed matricide; if the Dark Thing flew tonight, it would have a call for him.
People were beginning to leave the building opposite. Robin grew more undecided. At last he rose to go, and at that moment he saw Gina in the street.
She was walking towards the GIB. Hurriedly, Robin removed his spectacles and rubbed them on his shirt before taking another look. It was Gina. Her head was down, and she carried depression in every line of her sleek body. As she entered the modest door of the GIB, Robin crossed the road after her.
In the doorway, a cluster of people leaving work got in his way. They saw him and made the quick gestures of covering themselves. Having no idea what taboo he had offended against, Robin could only conclude that here in a different region of town, and in a different business, people must have different taboos. He pushed past them and went upstairs.
The interior of the GIB was shabby and utilitarian, even by the standards to which the Hedgings were accustomed. A robot stood at the top of the stairs, but it seemed to be out of commission. Doors with glass panels stood open, the rooms beyond for the most part deserted. When he came to a door that was closed, he threw it open.
It was a tiny cabin with one window, giving a view across to the canteen in which he had eaten. It was empty, but over by the window was a closet, the door of which was open. Faint sounds - gasping or weeping - came from it. For a second, skin crawled along Robin’s neck; then he moved forward.
Gina turned and came into his arms. He thrust a hand over her mouth, though fetish objects like lips and teeth touched his palm.
‘I’m not going to hurt you, L. I just want to ask you questions. Calm down!’
* * * *
When she stopped struggling and her eyes looked less wild, he removed his hand.
‘You’re a matricide!’ she said.
She had been back to her room - it must have been almost immediately after Robin had left - and found Mrs Hedging at the foot of the stairs, dead. The hag had lived long enough to drag herself a little way for help. Shocked, Robin sat on Gina’s table and told her what had happened. As he finished, lights came automatically on in the room.
Looking round in surprise, he saw the tawdry little room for the first time. It was recognizable as a room that had been inhabited for centuries; the atmosphere reminded him so much of the Hedging hut in DP2 that he felt a momentary nostalgia. Nodding to the line of ancestors’ skulls on the shelf above the door, he asked, ‘You hold this room by inheritance ?’
‘No. I’m temporary here while the boss is on an investigation elsewhere. Robin, why do you tell me all this? You must see I’m your enemy.’
‘Sometimes you’re closer to your enemies than your friends.’
She walked over and switched the light off, so that the deep blue outside the window turned blankety grey.
‘Robofficers’ll get me unless I do something,’ he said.
‘Robofficers rarely kill humans unless they are sick or aged. Didn’t you observe that? But no - all you people have been carefully trained not to use your powers of observation, not to believe in cause and effect. Instead, you’re indoctrinated into tying your minds up with a tissue of superstitions! Robin, can’t you see how man is lost in this city, ruling himself by fear and mob law and gobbledy-gook?’
Shaking his head as if to avoid her words, he grasped her wrist.
‘You don’t say why you were spying on us. You were working with Ovine, weren’t you?’
‘Let go of me! Listen, never mind what I was doing. Just believe this - I have more reason to suspect you than you me. If you will trust me, I will get you out of here.’
Where was out?
‘You’re Government,’ he said. ‘You’re going to have me dissected.’
‘You savage! Can’t you see there is no government as you understand the term? The people left in this city are incapable of rational thought. Reasoning man opted out of this city over six centuries ago! He began to leave over a thousand years ago, when he first found a machine could do his thinking for him. He made a big error then, thinking his machines were efficient, thinking that he could trust them more than he could trust himself.’
‘And can’t he?’
‘Never, Robin. Even the most complex machine, the computer, is just a sort of special fool. When men shaped themselves to fit into a computerized world, they became fools themselves, they sank back into this sort of urban savagery, this ghastly mixture of automation and ancestral skulls!’
Dazed he groped for an answer. There was, must be an answer. He knew the necessity for ancestral skulls. They insured one’s inheritance, and—
From outside, a shriek came from the drab sky, growing louder fast.
* * * *
It was almost night. It was Wellpurging Night. The few clouds in the sky were dappled with the last stains of sundown. In the north, a thing with spread wings rose. It was black. It travelled unwaveringly, and slowly as if to survey every soul in the city. Two red eyes blinked down. The Dark Thing was in flight.
Robin sank to his knees. Of all the people in the city, he was the one it was after. He had transgressed the most. His heart struggled to break free and rise up to that shape of retribution.
She was tugging his hair and crying to him to get up, smacking his face, twisting his ear, crying. In pain, he hit back, grasped her round the legs, buried his face in her warm thigh. She fell on top of him.
She was half-laughing.
‘Get up, you great savage! Come on, I’ll take you out of here - away from the city.’
He was sober at once. He rose and helped her to her feet.
‘I want to get out of the city,’ he said. It was all he had ever wanted - and it had taken him till now to realize it.
As the Dark Thing shrieked overhead - there were cries from the streets to mark its passage; people would be dying out there - they hurried into the gloom of the passage. A man stood there with a gun.
He flashed a torch in their eyes and they came to a shocked halt.
‘I’ve been listening to everything you said.’ His voice was less steady than his gun. ‘You are both guilty of crime talk. I saw you in the canteen, young H. I saw you through this window when you put your light on. I know just what you are up to.’
Robin recognized the sad and baggy face.
‘Ovine!’ he exclaimed.
‘O to you, thanks. I still believe in the law, if you don’t. Miss L, you must take me with you, out of the city. I want to get away from here. Take me with you or I’ll shoot you both and swear it was my duty.’
‘Turn your torch off,’ she ordered. Her voice was calm. ‘You can’t come, Ovine. Resign yourself to the fact.’
In a humble voice he said, ‘I can’t bear this GIB job, Miss L. I’m no good at it. It’s been in my family over four centuries, but I’m just a failure. Wherever I go to investigate, they always discover me. I’m an outcast. I’m always chased and beaten. I can’t—’
Robin’s blow caught him in the midriff. He doubled up, dropping the torch and slipping to the floor.
Gina seized Robin’s arm and led him along the corridor. ‘My big brave savage!’ she murmured.
‘You were pretty calm, weren’t you?’
“Yes. I happened to know that that gun of his was an old family heirloom, but he had no - shots, or whatever the word is. No fuel for it. Gun fuel isn’t available any more.’
* * * *
They came out of the building. Distantly down the avenue a bonfire burned. Figures danced round it and there was some shouting. The lights of the canteen burned; silhouetted by them was a knot of men. Robin held the girl back. He recognized some of the men. His father was there.
‘I gave my address away to them by eating in the canteen,’ he whispered. ‘They aren’t looking this way. Can we get round the back?’
They investigated a side alley running between the GIB building and the next. It led nowhere. As they worked their way back, Ovine emerged from the building, still clutching his stomach, and staggered out into the road. A cry went up from the group of men as they recognized him.
Ovine turned and ran down the avenue towards the bonfire. With whoops and shrieks, the others gave chase. Sam Hedging and Claysbank were in the lead. Taking advantage of the distraction, Robin and Gina hurried on to the trafficway and jumped aboard a tram.
After a silence, he said, ‘You must have known Ovine well.’
‘No. I told you, I was not permanent there. One day you’ll understand the hopelessness of the network of this city’s life. The GIB was carrying out an investigation to find out how many men in DP2 are redundant. Ovine - had all gone well -would have made his report. You would all have been declared redundant, but nothing would have happened. The report would have been filed in the entrails of some idiotic machine - and next generation the work would have been done all over again, just as it was last generation by Ovine’s father, and the generation before that by his grandfather. You see, the GIB itself is redundant!’
‘But then—’
‘All humans in the city are redundant. They’ve got no meaning and no purpose. The machines just find them little jobs to keep ‘em quiet.’
* * * *
Chapter Six
When they got off the bus, she led the way to a nearby door.
‘Is this a trap, Gina?’
She opened the front door impatiently, stepping aside to let him in before her.
‘You’d better come in and see.’
Annoyed with himself for doubting her, he walked in. Heavy padded hands came up and grasped his head.
In the dark he fought with fear and fury. But the thing was of metal that held him, and had more than one pair of hands. In no time he was hamstrung. They were in utter dark, and then a light filled his eyes. The robo was revealed in outline for a brief second, as a writhing illumination covered it. It relaxed its grip on Robin and fell.
‘I’m terribly sorry about that,’ Gina said, clinging to him. ‘I should have guessed that they’d get after me as well as you when your mother was discovered. I’ve been careless. Since the mindless fools were expecting only me, they sent only one robofficer for me. We’d better move before more come.’
‘What did you do to him?’ Robin asked as they stepped over the metal hulk.
‘A sort of gun that really works. They don’t make them in this city. But they do where I come from.’
‘Hag’s sake, Gina, where do you come from?’
‘Where we’re going to, fast!’
In the kitchen, she shut the door and switched on the light, grumbling because the windows of the city did not have curtains.
Outside, with its blood-separating screech, the Dark Thing sailed over again. It was close, but Robin paid no attention. Gina was opening up her refuse well. Behind the disposal chute the regulation pattern had been altered. The rotor that mashed the refuse as it went down had been removed. A metal ladder hung into the depths. Inside the door, a torch dangled. Gina took it and climbed through the hatch on to the ladder.
‘Follow me, and be sure to close the hatch behind you. There’s a stout bolt on this side.’
‘What are we going down into the Services for?’
‘Oh, hurry, Robin, hurry!’
Reluctantly, he climbed into the well. As he did so, there came a knocking sound at the front door of the house, a knocking that changed into a pounding. As he slammed the hatch to, he heard a door panel splinter. He climbed hurriedly down into the depths, preceded by the jigging circle of Gina’s torchlight.
* * * *
They climbed for a long while. He wondered what had happened to the Services, and realized that the concrete beyond the ladder was new; they had bypassed the Services level. They could only be going to one place.
‘Steady now,’ she cautioned.
He came down and stood beside her as she fumbled with a lock.
‘Wait a moment,’ he said, grasping her hand. She turned to see his face shining with sweat. His chest heaved as he forced the words out, ‘I know where we are - it’s the ground outside, isn’t it? I can’t go out there. I’ll see you out, then I’ll go back upstairs to face—’
She broke in, ‘I can’t leave you now. Get a grip of yourself and come on.’
‘No, you don’t understand! It may be true, all you say about our having been taught a lot of superstition, but you don’t just throw off a lifetime’s habit in one go.’
‘You do if you’re determined enough. Listen, even today the centuries when man was a creature living on the edge of endless forests and jungles is not far enough behind him. We never managed to throw off the superstitions of those times before we took to building our own jungle-substitutes, the cities. So as well as being centres of civilization, they’ve always been centres of ignorance and fear as well. The greatest cities in the world have sheltered more savages than savants. This city has no savants! It’s a stone and steel jungle, and you’re a savage. Choose! Are you going back into the trees or out into the light with me?’
As he stood there, a series of blows sounded from above their heads. The robos were breaking in the kitchen hatch.
Robin laughed hoarsely. ‘It seems I’m on your side.’
Distantly over their heads, a light showed. He knew then how far they had climbed. They would be on the ground now ... A searchlight flashed on from above; at the same time, Gina had the lock open and they tumbled out into darkness.
* * * *
When vision returned to his eyes, Robin saw they were indeed on the ground.
It was not as he had imagined it. The dark made it a terrifying world in two tones of black. Massive pillars and struts and cross girders bit a confusing pattern out of the sky. They stumbled over uneven ground littered with stone and the occasional trench. A wind blew, hooking bits of paper out of the shadow and back, in a lunatic chase. Robin thought of the white things he had seen moving from Dunshinnan Bridge. Instinctively he looked up. The black monster of the city crouched over them, huge and cruel and senseless as an ancient curse.
He tripped and fell.
‘I’ve got a half-track parked where it’s smoother,’ Gina said. ‘Don’t keep falling over.’
He had hurt his shin and was angry. Broken ground was a new experience.
‘Why don’t you put your damned torch on?’
‘Because there’s someone or something ahead.’
They moved round a massive leg of metal. Out in the open, crouched on the rough ground, was a machine, with two robos near it. Gradually, the two humans distinguished between shadow and substance. Robin felt his legs shake.
‘It’s the Dark Thing!’ he whispered. There it lay, its red eyes closed.
‘They’re waiting till it’s time to do another circuit of the city. And they’re in our way. Oh, Robin, and I’ve got lost... I can’t remember where I parked the half-track. Perhaps it was the other side. All this darkness - it’s so confusing!’
She began to weep. He held her, confused and yet gratified by her weakness. Her sobs sounded horribly loud. He stared out at the Dark Thing with a dry mouth, watching to see if the robos had heard anything. Then a stab of light from behind made him turn.
The pursuit had climbed down the well from Gina’s house and was looking for them. One, two, three heavy robos appeared, flashing their lights among the superstructure of city supports.
The robos by the Dark Thing began signalling and calling to the newcomers. There was a swift exchange of calls, and they began to join forces. Making a dash for it, Gina and Robin jumped behind a buttress. A shout rose as they went.
‘They’ve seen us! We’ll never get away,’ Gina said.
Wait!’ He looked cautiously round the buttress. The robos had their backs turned. Their lights shone through a maze of girders on to a vehicle. He pulled Gina up. ‘That’s what they’re shouting about. Is that your car?’
She nodded.
‘There’s a chance, Robin. Follow me.’
She was running out into the open. He followed without hesitation; he had to be with her. They ran out towards the Dark Thing.
He was not afraid. If robos worked it, it was another machine.
* * * *
It was bigger than he had expected. They pulled up together, sheltered under one wing from the robos now examining her vehicle.
‘Can you work this thing?’ he asked. It was half a prayer.
‘Now’s my chance to learn.’
‘Good girl!’
They scrambled into a roomy cabin, sat on unpadded seats before a control board that meant nothing to him. She worked switches. Lights came on. Motors roared, died, burst into full life.
‘Hold tight!’ she called, but they were already tipping upwards. He caught a last glimpse of their pursuers, galloping out towards them. Horribly near, the lip of the city came up, black and ponderous, then they saw the city itself, canting at an angle, a tangle of light and dark, a smaller place than he knew, a place it was very easy to escape from.
She was laughing, and he enjoyed the sight of it.
Above the noise, she shouted, ‘One last scare for them - I can’t switch the banshee siren off!’
‘Why do they need all this spook apparatus?’ he yelled. ‘If they don’t want man, why don’t they - just wipe him out?’
‘They need men! They need us, Robin! They can’t do without us the way we can do without them. We may be redundant in the city, but in the world, they are redundant. You shall see - we’re heading for my city, where robos are back in their proper place.’
She said something else more gently, so that he could not hear for the noise.
‘What did you say?’
Again he missed her shouted reply. Only her smile was clear as they sped over the featureless plain, howling like a banshee all the way.