Tripods 02 - The City of Gold and Lead Page 10

  These were small rubbery spheres that could be stuck to the Master's skin, below the nose opening. When they were pressed by one of the Master's tentacles, a reddish brown mist came out and rose slowly upward, encircling the Master's head.

  I said, "He has one a day, sometimes two, when he is in the pool in the window room."

  "I think it does to them what strong drink does to men. Mine beats me harder after he has sniffed a gas bubble. Maybe yours will talk more. Take him another while he is in the pool."

  I said, "I doubt if it will work."

  "Try, anyway."

  Fritz looked ill and exhausted. The weals on his back were bleeding slightly. I said, "I'll try tomorrow."

  And I did, but the Master waved me away. He asked me how many calves cows bore, and then mentioned that the pooshlu had stroolglooped. I did not seem to be getting very far.

  8 -- The Pyramid of Beauty

  When I had just about abandoned hope of getting any useful information out of the Master he solved the problem for me himself. His work, whatever it was, took place in a squat pyramid about half a mile from the one in which he lived. I had to drive him there in the carriage and stay in the communal place with the other slaves until he was ready to return. This would be after two periods (just over five human hours), and I used the time, as the other slaves did, to rest and, if possible, sleep. One learned early in one's life in the City the overwhelming importance of conserving energy to the maximum degree possible. There were couches provided in this communal place. They were hard, and there were not enough to go round, but it was a luxury far from being universal, and I was grateful for it.

  On this occasion I had been lucky enough to get a couch, and was lying on it, drifting into sleep, when my arm was shaken. I asked hazily what was the matter, and was told that my number was flashing on the call box, indicating that I was wanted. My first thought was that it was a trick to get me off the couch, which the other slave probably wanted for himself, and I said as much. But he insisted that it was true. At last I roused myself to look, and saw that it was.

  As I got my mask and prepared to put it on, I said, "I don't see how the Master can want me. It's only been three ninths, There must be a mistake."

  The other had taken my place on the couch, and was lying there prone. He said, "It may be the Sickness."

  "What sickness?"

  "It is something that happens with the Masters from time to time. They stay at home for two or three days, or even longer. It is more likely with those like your Master, who have brown in their skins."

  I remembered that I had thought, that morning, that his skin was darker than usual. When I went to him in the outer room and made the customary deep bow of respect, I noticed that it was very much darker, the brown more pronounced and that his tentacles, even though at rest, were quivering slightly. He told me to drive him home, and I obeyed.

  I thought, remembering human sickness, that he might want to go to bed, and realized that I had not yet changed his moss. He did not do that, though, but instead went into the pool in the window room and squatted there, motionless and silent. I asked him if there was anything he needed, and he did not answer. So I went to the bedroom and got on with my work. I had just finished, and was putting the old moss into the cupboard in which it would be destroyed, when the bell rang for me.

  He was still in the pool. He said, "Boy, bring me a gas bubble."

  I did as I was told, and watched him place it between his mouth and nose and press on it with a tentacle. The reddish brown mist oozed out, almost like a liquid, and rose up. The Master breathed in deeply. This went on, with him taking breaths of it at intervals, until the bubble was empty. He tossed it away for me to pick up, and called for another. This was unusual. He used it and had me bring him a third. He started talking not long afterward.

  It did not make sense at first. I gathered he was talking about the Sickness. He spoke of the Curse of the Skloodzi, which seemed to be the name of his family or his race, or perhaps it was the name the Masters gave themselves. There was a lot about wickedness -- I was not sure whether he meant his own or that of the Masters in general -- but although he bemoaned it, I could not help feeling that he did so with a certain amount of satisfaction. The Sickness was a punishment for wickedness and therefore had to be endured with stoicism. He flicked away the third empty gas bubble with his central tentacle, and told me to get a fourth, and to move faster this time.

  The gas bubbles were in the room where the food was kept. I went to bring one, but when I returned to the window room he was out of the pool. He said, his voice even more distorted than usual, "I ordered you to move faster, boy."

  Two of the tentacles gripped me and held me in midair as easily as I might hold a kitten. He had not touched me since that first meeting in the Choosing Place, and I was more shocked than anything else. But shock was rapidly replaced by pain. The third tentacle whipped through the air and lashed my back. It was like being hit by a heavy length of rope. I jerked against the tentacles that held me, but it did no good. The lash came down again and again. Now it felt more like a sapling than a rope that was striking me. I thought it would break my ribs, even perhaps my spine. Fritz had said that he cried out because he realized his Master wanted him to. I supposed I ought to do the same, but I would not. I gritted my teeth, crushing a fold of skin between them and sending hot salty blood flowing inside my mouth. The beating went on. I had given up counting the blows; there were too many of them. And then there was a roaring in my ears, and oblivion.

  I recovered to find myself lying on the floor. I moved slightly, and there was pain again. My body seemed to be one long bruise. I forced myself to get up. As far as I could tell, no bones were broken. I looked for the Master, and saw him squatting, silent and motionless, in the pool.

  I was humiliated and angry, and aching all over. I limped from the room and took the passage round to my refuge. Once inside, I stripped off my mask, dried the sweat from my neck and shoulders, and hauled myself up the ladder to my bed. I realized as I did so that I had omitted the customary bow of reverence to the Master when I left the window room. I had certainly not felt reverential toward him, but that was not the point. The essential thing was in every way to imitate the behavior of the truly Capped. It had been a slip, and could be a dangerous one. As I was thinking of this, the ringing of the bell hammered my nerve endings. My Master wanted me again.

  Wearily I descended, put on my mask, and left the refuge. My mind was confused and I did not know what to expect. The thought of another beating was uppermost, and I did not know how I was to endure it; it hurt even to walk. I was entirely unprepared for what did happen when I returned to the window room. The Master was no longer in the pool, but standing near the entrance. A tentacle seized me and lifted me. But instead of the lash for which I was trying to prepare myself, there came, from the second tentacle, a gentle stroking gesture, a snake's soft writhing along my battered ribs. I was a kitten being cuddled after it had been chastised.

  The Master said, "You are a strange one, boy."

  I said nothing. I was being held awkwardly, with my head slightly lower than my body. The Master went on, "You did not make loud noises as the others have done. There is a difference in you. I saw it that first day in the Choosing Room."

  What he said petrified me. I had not realized, though I suppose I should have, that the natural reaction of the Capped to being beaten would be to howl like children. Fritz had sensed this and behaved accordingly, but I had stupidly resisted through pride. And then had failed to make the bow of reverence afterward. I was terrified that the Master's next move would be to probe the Cap with the tip of his tentacle, through the softer part of the mask. If he did, he would soon realize the difference between mine and the true Caps, which knit in with the living flesh. And then...

  But, instead, he put me down. Belatedly I made the bow of reverence and, because of my soreness and stiffness, nearly overbalanced while doing it. The Master steadied me, a
nd said, "What is friendship, boy?"

  "Friendship, Master?"

  "There is an archive in the City where those things your people call books are kept. I have studied some of them, being interested in your race. Some of the books are lies, but lies that seem like truth. Friendship is one of the things of which they tell. A closeness between two entities...that is a strange business to us Masters. Tell me, boy -- in your life before you were chosen to serve, did you have such a thing? A friend?"

  I hesitated, and said, "Yes, Master."

  "Speak of him."

  I talked of my cousin Jack, who had been my closest friend until he was taken to be Capped. I changed the details to the life I was supposed to have led, in the mountainous Tirol, but I described the way we had done things together, and the den we had made outside the village. The Master listened, with apparent attentiveness. He said finally, "There was a link between you and this other human -- a link that was voluntary, not forced by circumstances...so that you desired to be together, to talk with each other. Is this right?"

  "Yes, Master."

  "And it happens much with your people?"

  "Yes, Master. It is a common thing."

  He fell into a silence. It lasted a long time, and in the end I wondered whether he had forgotten about me, as sometimes happened, and whether I should take my leave...being careful to remember to bow. But as I was contemplating this, the Master spoke again.

  "A dog. That is a small animal that lives with men?"

  "Some do, Master. Some are wild."

  "It has been stated in one of the books that I saw, 'His only friend was his dog.' Can this be true, or is it one of the lies?"

  "It can be true, Master."

  "Yes," he said, "that is what I have thought." His tentacles described a small movement in the air that I had come to recognize as expressing satisfaction. Then one of them wrapped itself, but not roughly, round my waist.

  "Boy," said the Master, "you will be my friend."

  I was almost too astonished to think. I had got it wrong, I saw. I was not a kitten, after all, in the Master's eyes. I was his puppy!

  When I saw Fritz, and was able to tell him of what had happened, I expected him to find it funny, but he did not. He said seriously, "This is a wonderful thing, Will."

  "What's wonderful about it?"

  "The Masters seemed all alike at first, as I suppose men would to them also. In fact, they differ a great deal. Mine is strange in one way, yours in another. But the strangeness of yours may help us to learn things about them, while with mine" -- he forced a grin -- "it is merely painful."

  "I still dare not ask him things that the Capped would not ask."

  "I am not so sure. You should have howled when he thrashed you, but it was because you didn't that he became interested in you. He said you were strange before he told you that you were to be his friend. They are not used to seeing free men, remember, and it would never occur to them that a human could be dangerous. I think you can ask him things, as long as the questions are general, and you keep making the bow of reverence at the right time."

  "Perhaps you're right."

  "It would be useful to find the archive where the books are. They had the Capped destroy all the books that held the knowledge of the ancients, but I suppose they would not have destroyed them here."

  "I will try to find out."

  "But go carefully," he warned. He looked at me. "Your task is not an easy one."

  He was thinking, I felt, that he could have carried it out a good deal better than I; and I was inclined to agree with him. Where I had stubbornness and pride, he had a watchful endurance. He was looking ill, and had been badly beaten again that morning. The whip his Master used left marks that faded in about forty-eight hours, and these weals were fresh. He had once or twice been beaten with a tentacle, as I had been, and said that, although one ached for longer afterward, the beating itself was not so bad as with the whisk thing. I hated to think of what that must be like.

  Fritz went on to tell me of his own latest discoveries. The most useful of these was that he had found a place where there were walls with pictures of stars at night, and the Masters could make these pictures move. In the same pyramid there was a globe, almost as high as he was, turning on a spindle, and the globe was covered with maps. He had not wanted to seem too curious, but there was a part he had recognized as a map of the places we knew: it showed the narrow sea across which Henry and I had come, the White Mountains far to the south, and the great river down which the Erlkönig had sailed. And on the map, at a point that he calculated as being roughly our present location, was a golden button, which could only be the City.

  As far as he could see, there were two other golden buttons on the globe, both well to the south of this one and situated far apart, one on the edge of a great continent to the east, the other on an isthmus between two continents to the west. They must also represent Cities of the Masters, which meant there were three in all from which the world was ruled. A Master had come into the room at that stage, and Fritz had been forced to move on, acting as though he were on an errand of some kind. But he planned to go back and get the details of the positions more firmly in his head.

  I still had nothing that seemed worthwhile to report. Except that I was to be my Master's puppy. He had said my task was not easy. In one sense, I saw, he was right. But in every other respect his was incomparably the harder. And he was the only one who seemed to be getting anywhere.

  My Master's Sickness lasted for several days. He did not go to his place of work and spent a lot of time squatting in the pool in the window room. He breathed the gas bubbles a good deal, but did not beat me again. Occasionally he came out of the pool and picked me up and fondled me, and he also talked to me. Some of it was as incomprehensible as when he had talked about his work, but not all. I found out one day, when the green dusk outside was fading as the sun, behind the dome, slanted out of sight in the west, that he was talking about the Masters' conquest of the earth.

  They had come in a vast ship that could move through the emptiness between the worlds and the greater emptiness between the stars that warmed the worlds circling round them. This ship had been propelled at an unimaginable, speed, almost as fast, he told me, as a sunbeam travels, but even so the journey had lasted many long years of time. (The Masters, I now realized, lived immensely longer than we did, for this one -- and, I think, all the Masters in the City -- had made that journey and lived here ever since.) Theirs had been an expedition sent out with the purpose of finding worlds that their people could conquer and colonize, an expedition that had many setbacks and disappointments. Not all stars had planets near them, and where they did these planets were usually unsuitable, for various reasons.

  The world from which the Masters came was much larger than the earth, and hotter. Being larger, things on its surface weighed more. The Masters had found some worlds too small and others too big for their purpose, some too cold -- being far removed from the central sun -- and others too hot. Of the ten worlds circling our sun, ours was the only one that would do, but it had an atmosphere poisonous to them and a gravity too light. All the same, it was thought to be worth conquering.

  So the great ship was made to go in a circle round the earth, as the moon does, and the Masters studied the world they were to seize. It seems that the ancients had marvelous machines by which they could speak and show pictures at a distance, and the Masters were able to listen and watch without needing to come close enough for their ship to be seen. They stayed like this for many years, occasionally sending smaller ships in close to examine things that were not shown on the distance-pictures, or not in sufficient detail. Some of the ancients, my Master said, reported seeing these ships, but others did not believe them. This could not have happened with the Masters, but men had this strange thing called lying, in which they told of things that had not occurred, and therefore they did not trust each other.

  They recognized that in man they had an enemy who might be
formidable. There were all these marvels, like the distance-pictures, the great-cities at the height of their glory and power, and other things, too. Men had already begun to build ships that would take them across the emptiness. They had nothing like the ships of the Masters, but they had started, and they were learning fast. And they had weapons. One of these, I gathered, was of the nature of the iron eggs Beanpole had found in the tunnel below the great-city, but as much more powerful as a bull compared to an ant. With one of these giant eggs, the Master told me, many square miles of land could be scorched and blasted -- one of the great-cities itself completely obliterated.

  If they had brought their ship down to the earth, and made a bridgehead, that bridgehead would have been destroyed. They had to find a different method. The one they chose lay in a field of knowledge in which they were even more advanced than in star traveling -- the understanding and control of the mind.

  When, on the journey to the White Mountains, they had put the button under my arm by which the Tripods afterward tracked us, and Henry had said that I must have known it was there, Beanpole had spoken of the man in the circus who could make people go to sleep and then obey his commands. I had once seen such a man with a traveling fair that came to Wherton. This sort of thing, and much much more, was known to the Masters. They could, quite easily, put men to sleep and make them, even without the Caps, obey commands -- for a time, at least. But the problem still remained of getting men into a position where their power could be used. It is no good being able to make a rabbit pie unless you can first catch your rabbit.