Tripods 02 - The City of Gold and Lead Page 9

  But between this five or six hundred means of communication were extremely limited. There was, apart from the individual refuges for sleeping, eating, and so on, a communal place for slaves in each pyramid where they were kept. In a larger, but still windowless, room it was possible to meet and talk, with a number flashing in a box on the wall to tell you when your Master required your return. One could not go to a communal place in other buildings without running the risk of being absent when the call came. And the risk was never taken, not through fear of punishment, but because, to the Capped, it was unthinkable that they should fail the Master in any way.

  We might meet on the street or be sent on errands by our Masters, but the odds were against that. It soon seemed obvious that the only real chance of discovering each other lay in both our Masters attending the same function, at which (as was true of most) there was a restroom for slaves.

  There were a number of such functions, I discovered. The one of which my Master was fondest was one in which they rooted themselves in a pool inside a pyramid, while in the center a group of them used their tentacles to agitate devices that rippled the water and shook the air and at the same time sent out wild sounds, which my Master found pleasurable but which to me seemed hideous. At another, the Masters spoke to each other in their own language, full of whistling and grunting sounds; in a third, Masters on a raised stage hopped and whirled about in what I supposed was meant to be a dance.

  To all these, at different times, I accompanied my Master, and went eagerly to the restroom to shower and dry myself, and perhaps eat a piece of the monotonous biscuit or, at least, lick one of the salt sticks with which we were provided. And to hunt among the other slaves for Fritz. But again and again I drew a blank, and I began to think it was hopeless. I knew that not all the Masters enjoyed these things, just as there were events to which my Master did not choose to go. It was beginning to seem that we had had the bad luck to be chosen by Masters whose interests were very different.

  In fact, this was true. My Master was fondest of things that stemmed from the mind and imagination; Fritz's of those that exercised and demonstrated the body. Fortunately, though, there was one event that had an almost universal appeal. They called it the Sphere Chase.

  It took place, at regular intervals, in the Sphere Arena. This was a great open space in the shape, naturally, of a triangle, near the center of the City. It was covered with some reddish substance and there were seven posts, perhaps thirty feet high, each with a basket-like contraption at the top. Three of these were set at the points of the triangle, three midway between the points, and the seventh in the center.

  That is as much, really, as I can describe that makes sense. I think that what happened in the arena was a kind of game, but if so it was not like any game that men play. Small Tripods, standing not much more than twenty feet high, issued out from a place below ground behind one point of the triangle, performed a complicated marching about for a time, and then started chasing each other. After a while, in the course of this chase, one or more golden spheres would appear in the air between the probing points of the Tripods tentacles. This was generally greeted by a full booming noise from the Masters, who were watching from all round in terraced seats. The booming would increase as the chase and pursuit continued with the golden ball flashing and tossing between them. At some stage the sphere would be flung over or around one of the baskets on top of the poles, and eventually would light in the basket, when there would be a great coruscating flash, a noise like a clap of thunder, and the booming from the spectators would be punctuated with wails and howls. This was much intensified when it happened to be the center pole's basket that was hit, both as to flash and thunder and (I imagine) applause. Then the chase began all over again, and a new ball was created.

  The small Tripods, I found, were occupied by one or, at the most, two Masters. It seemed that much skill was involved in the Sphere Chase, and those best at it were greatly honored. On that last bit of the trek that Henry and Beanpole and I had made to the White Mountains -- when the two Tripods came across us out in the open but took no notice -- then, too, there had been the golden ball flashing against the blue sky. I realized that the Masters driving those Tripods must have been Sphere Chasers, practicing for the next Chase and too engrossed to concern themselves with anything else. It represented a weakness in the Masters, trivial, perhaps, but any sign of fallibility was something to rejoice at.

  The other good thing was that the Sphere Chase was the means of my finding Fritz, after weeks of fruitless searching. I accompanied my Master to his seat in that side of the triangle reserved for the superior ones, and hurried -- which meant a lumbering rather than a dragging walk -- down to the restroom beneath. It was larger than any other communal room I had seen, but crowded for all that; there must have been a couple of hundred slaves in it. I pulled off my mask, placed it in one of the lockers along the wall near the entrance, and went looking for him. He was at the far end, in the queue for the salt sticks, which we sucked to replace the salt we lost through our continual sweating. He saw me and nodded, and brought two salt sticks over to where I stood, as far removed from the others as possible.

  I was shocked by the sight of him. This was a life, I knew, that would drag anyone down, if only by reason of the relentless clammy heat and the constant drag on bone and muscle. Many of the humans I had met were in a pitiful state, old and enfeebled long before their time. I was conscious in myself that, although I was learning to live with the heat and weight, and to husband my energy, gradually my strength was ebbing. But the change in Fritz was far beyond expectation.

  We had all lost weight, but he, who had been tall and well built, seemed, in proportion, to have lost much more than I. His ribs showed painfully through the flesh of his chest, and his face was gaunt. He had the stooped posture that one saw in those who had been a year or more in the City. I saw something else, too, with horror: a pattern of angry marks across his back. I knew that some of the Masters beat their human servants for carelessness or stupidity, using a thing like a fly whisk, which burned the flesh where it touched. But Fritz was not stupid and would not be careless.

  Giving me the salt stick, he said, in a low voice, "The most important thing is to make arrangements for future meetings. I am at 71 Pyramid 43. It would be better to meet there, if you have an easy Master."

  I said, "Where is that? I still can't find my way about."

  "Near the...No. Tell me where you are."

  "19 Pyramid 15."

  "I can find that. Listen. My Master goes to a garden pool almost every day, regularly at two seven. He stays for a period. I think there's time enough to get to your place. If you can manage to get down to your communal place..."

  "I'll do that, easily."

  "I'll be the slave of a visiting Master."

  I nodded. We used Masters time in the City, not human time. The day was divided into nine periods, and each period was divided into ninths. It was made difficult by the fact that the day started with sunrise, and so changed continually. Two seven was approximately noon. My Master, too, often went to a garden pool around then. Even if he did not, I could keep some small errand until that time.

  "Your Master," I said, " -- is he very bad?"

  Fritz shrugged. "Bad enough, I think. I have nothing to compare with."

  "Your back..."

  "He enjoys that."

  "Enjoys!"

  "Yes. At first I thought it was because I was doing things wrong, but it is not so. He finds reasons. I howl and shriek a lot, which pleases him. I have learned to howl louder, and it does not go on so long. What about your Master? I see that your back is unmarked."

  "I think he is a good one."

  I told Fritz something of my life, of the small signs of consideration I was given. He listened, and nodded. "A very good one, I would say."

  He related a few other things about his own life, from which it was plain that the whippings were far from being the only respect in which he suf
fered worse than I. In every way possible, his Master humiliated, persecuted, and heaped impossible burdens on him. I was almost ashamed to have been so Lucky. He did not dwell on this, though, but said, "Anyway, all that is not important. It is what we find out about the City that matters. We must exchange information with each other, so that what one learns the other knows. You tell me first what you have discovered."

  "Very little so far. Practically nothing." I searched my brain for snippets, and retailed them to him. They were a meager collection. "That's all, I think."

  Fritz had listened gravely. He said, "It all helps. I have found where the great machine is from which they get heat and light, and the means for making the carriages go. For making the City so heavy as well, probably. Ramp g14 leads off Street 11. It goes through a place with garden pools on either side, and then dips down into the earth. The machine is down there somewhere. I have not been able to go down yet -- I am not sure if humans can go there -- but I will try further.

  "Also, I have found the place where water comes into the City. It is in Wall Sector 23. A river comes in below ground and passes through another machine that makes the water suitable for the Masters. I have been there, and will go again. It is a huge place and I cannot understand much about it yet. Then there is the Place of Happy Release."

  "Of Happy Release?"

  I had heard this phrase spoken once or twice by other slaves, but had no clue as to its meaning. Fritz said, "That is not far from here, along Street 4. It is the place where the slaves go when they know they are no longer strong enough to serve the Masters. I followed one, and saw it happen. There is a place where the slave stands, beneath a dome of metal. There is a flashing light, and he drops to the floor, dead. Then the floor on which his body is lying moves. It goes along, and a door opens, and there is a white-hot furnace inside, which burns the body away to nothing."

  He went on to tell me what he had discovered about the human slaves in the City. They did not only come from the Games; in other countries they were selected in different ways, but always for youth and strength. The life in the City, even where the Masters, like mine, were tolerant, possibly kind, was one that killed them, slowly but surely. Some crumpled up and died almost at once; others lasted a year, two years. Fritz had met a slave who had been more than five years in the City, but he was exceptional. When the slave knew that death was on him, he went of his own volition to the Place of Happy Release, and died in the glad assurance that he had served the Masters to the utmost of his ability and the last atom of energy.

  I listened carefully to all this. Now I was really ashamed. I had been thinking my life was hard, and had been treating this as an excuse for not doing anything much. In effect, I had been marking time, hoping to get in touch with Fritz and then think of what to do. He, with so much worse to suffer, had nevertheless been getting on with the task that we shared, and on which man's future might depend.

  I asked him, "How did you manage to find all these things, if you can only get away during the two hours he spends at the garden pool? You could not get to them all in that time, surely."

  "There is another Master with whom he has twice spent a day. He is one of those who disapprove of slaves, and my Master leaves me behind. So I got out and explored."

  "If he had returned unexpectedly, or called you..."

  There was a means in each home by which a Master could call his slave to come to him. Fritz said, "I had thought of an excuse. He would beat me, of course, but I am used to it."

  There had been an occasion when I had been left behind. I had spent the day resting, talking in the communal center. Once I had gone out, but the confusion of streets and ramps and pyramids had depressed me, and I had come back. I felt myself flushing.

  We had been talking apart from the others, but more and more had been arriving from the arena above us, and the room was beginning to be crowded. Fritz said, "Enough now. 19 Pyramid 15. The communal place at about two nine. Good-by, Will."

  "Good-by, Fritz."

  Watching him lose himself in the throng of slowly moving slaves, I made a resolve: to play my part more keenly, and with less self-pity.

  The duties I had to perform for my Master were not in themselves particularly onerous. I had to tidy the home, prepare and serve his food, see to his bath, make his bed -- that sort of thing. As far as food was concerned, preparation was easy enough, for it consisted of mixtures of differing texture and color (and flavor, too, I imagine), which came in transparent bubble bags. Some needed to be mixed with water, but many of them were eaten just as they were. Serving was a different matter. Portions of the foods were put on a triangular dish and eaten in a certain order. The placing and the ways in which they were laid out were important. I became good at this quite quickly, and was commended for it. It was a little more difficult than it seems, because there were dozens of patterns that had to be learned.

  He had a bath several times a day, in addition to visits to one of the garden pools and wallowings in the smaller pool in the window room: all the Masters soaked themselves in water as often as they could. His private bath was next to the room in which he slept. Steps led up to it, and the bath itself was a hole in which he could put his body to be wholly submerged. The water was specially hot for this; it welled up from the bottom, boiling. I had to put in powders and oils that colored and scented the water, and lay out a number of strange brush-like devices with which he scrubbed himself.

  The bed was upright, too, and of much the same shape as the bath, but instead of the approach being by steps, it was up a spiral ramp, a fairly steep one, which it made me pant to climb. Inside was placed a sort of damp moss, and each day I had to remove the old and replace it with fresh from the bed cupboard. Although the moss looked light, it was heavy. I suppose this was the hardest of my tasks, as far as labor was concerned.

  But apart from these and other similar duties, there was another function I fulfilled: that of companionship. Except for the occasions on which they joined together to watch the Sphere Chase or other forms of entertainment, the Masters led strangely solitary lives. They visited one another, but not often, and spent a good deal of their time in their homes alone. (Even in the garden pools, I noticed, they did not talk to each other much.) To some, though, this isolation came less easily than to others -- to my own Master, I suspected. A human slave to him was not merely something to do various menial chores around the home, not merely a sign that he was of the rank that qualified him to own such a one, but someone who could listen to him talk. In my village at home, old Mrs. Ash had six cats and spent most of her day talking to one or the other of them. I was my Master's cat.

  With the advantage of being a cat who could talk back. He not only spoke to me of the things that happened to him (I could rarely make any sense out of them, and I never began to understand what work he did), but he asked questions as well. He was curious about me, and about my life before winning at the Games and coming to the City. At first I was suspicious of his interest, but I quickly realized that it was innocent. So I told him all about the way I had lived as the son of a small dairy farmer in the Tirol, how I had driven the cows up to pasture in the high meadows at the beginning of the day and stayed with them until it was time to bring them back for milking in the evening. I invented brothers and sisters, cousins and uncles and aunts, a whole pattern of life that he accepted and seemed to take an interest in. When I was off duty, I used to lie on my bed in my refuge and think of more lies to tell him; it was a way of passing the time.

  Or it had been until I realized how little I had been doing compared with Fritz. But when I said something about it to Fritz the following day when we met again in the communal place of my pyramid, he took a different view. He said, "You have been very lucky with that one. I had no idea any of the Masters spoke to us slaves, except to give orders. Mine does not, certainly. He beat me again this morning, but he did it in silence. I was the one who made a noise. Perhaps you can learn more from this than from exploring the Cit
y."

  "If I asked questions, he would certainly be suspicious. The Capped do not pry into the wonders of the Masters."

  "Not questions, as such. But perhaps you can lead him on. You say he talks about his own life, as well as asking you about life outside?"

  "Sometimes. But it makes no sense. He has to use their words when he talks about his work because there are no human words for the things he is telling me about. A few days ago he was saying that he was feeling unhappy because during the zootleboot a tsutsutsu went into spiwis, and therefore it was not possible to izdool the shuchutu. At least, it sounded something like that. I saw no point in even trying to understand what it meant."

  "If you keep on listening, it may make sense in time."

  "I don't see how it can."

  "It may, though. You must persevere, Will. Encourage him to talk. Does he use the gas bubbles?"