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"And you believe that's extraordinary? Waller, please, haven't you ever
taken a good look at your homeland? Or mine?" He raised his
eyebrows quizzically. "Is there much difference between the upstairs and
downstairs here and there?"
Waller sighed. "No, I suppose not."
"Then don't say it doesn't make sense. I'm afraid it does a great
deal of sense^This is the way it's always been, though not, I
hope, the way it always will be."
Waller lapsed into a shamed silence. Perhaps Ahmad was right it wasn't
fair to demand that a future civilization display more sanity than his own
ever had.
Eventually, Norgo appeared with their food: four paper bowls of mush. This
time, though hungry, Waller failed to eat more than half a bowl. The
water provided tasted salty and brackish.
He spat most of it out on the ground.
"Where's Sondra?" he asked.
"Over there." Ahmad waved at a nearby circle of slaves, men and women both.
Sondra sat somewhere in the middle of them.
Ahmad indicated a young man seated beside her. "That's
Coulton, a friend she's made."
Waller noticed that the two of them were laughing together. It struck him as
almost obscene for people to be having such a good time here. The
sight also reminded him that he had not yet spoken to any of the natives.
He asked Ahmad, "How do they understand each other?"
"These people speak English. Not our English, of course, or even
Norgo's, but you'll pick it up rather quickly."
"But what about them?" Sondra and Coulton continued their frantic giggling.
Waller felt his temper rising. "Any idea of what's supposed to be so funny?"
Ahmad shook his head sadly. "Aren't you asking the wrong man? I'm
afraid it's been far too long since I last experienced that emotion.
Young love? No, I'm afraid it's alien to me."
Waller scoffed. "Love? What are you talking about?"
"Call it a close friendship, then."
"I won't call it anything of the kind." Waller started to his feet.
"She doesn't know how to love. She's barely a kid. And him he's a slave."
Ahmad grabbed Waller firmly. "So are you," he said softly.
Waller jerked his arm away. "Keep away from me. I was just going to talk to
her."
"No."
"What do you mean no? Who do you think you're talking to?
You don't go ordering me around."
"I meant just what I said, Waller I meant for you to sit down and shut up.
Right now Sondra is happy. It isn't a condition she has often experienced
recently. I want you to leave her alone."
"And if I don't?"
"I really wish you would."
After a long moment's hesitation, Waller sat stiffly down in the
dirt. The tension between them visibly dispersed. Waller said, "I'm
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sorry I shouldn't have gotten mad."
"Oh, that's quite all right. I do remember what it was like to be jealous."
Waller felt his anger rising up again. "Who's jealous? That has nothing to
do with it. Fraternization with the enemy that's what I'm talking
about."
"Coulton's no enemy."
"In a place like this, everyone is."
Just then the guards blew their whistles, a signal to return to work. Waller
jumped up immediately and be-gan shoving his seeds into the moist
earth. Ahmad, from behind, told him to slow down. "I don't want them
getting the idea you're typical and making the rest of us work harder."
That night, the walls and ceiling glowing as fiercely as ever, they
returned down the elevators to their home floor. Waller's body was so
shot through with pain that he found even walking an arduous process.
Sondra joined them only long enough for dinner. Norgo fetched the
bowls and once more, without being asked, passed hers to Waller. He
hesitated, then accepted it.
Sondra quickly disappeared again. Ahmad confirmed that she had indeed gone to
see Coulton. "But look," he said, "you needn't get upset. I was just
about to suggest you and I go that way ourselves."
"I don't want to meet him. Why should I?"
"I had another man in mind, a very old man, his name is
Landom. His function among these people is that of a breathing, living history
book. Without a written language, it's necessary for them to pass their
knowledge orally from one generation to the next. I think he's worth listening
to."
"Why?"
"He might provide us with some clue as to how to get out of here."
"Then let's go." Waller stood up at once. "Norgo, you ought to come, too."
She looked at him with eyes that seemed incapable of focusing. "No,"
she said, "I will stay here."
"Are you sure? It might be better to move around."
"Why? It's all the same, isn't it?"
He couldn't answer that. Her condition was something he felt helpless to
correct. He had often heard of people who, deprived of their freedom,
simply could not bear the psychological loss.
Such people first died inside, then without, as well.
The best help he could give Norgo was simple reassurance:
"Look, this isn't going to last forever. We're going to get out of here I
promise you that. It may not come in a day or a week but it will happen.
You have to believe that. Don't lose your faith.
There's no use dying until you're dead."
"But how?" she asked. Her voice lacked any trace of its once tremendous
animation. "How can anyone fight all this?" She waved weakly at the
vast chamber surrounding them. "We'll find a way."
"No, Calvin, I do not think so. It is not your fault. This place is just so
much greater than we are."
"You don't have to believe that."
"But I do."
Ahmad drew Waller gently away. "It isn't any use," he explained. "She
won't listen she can't. You'll just have to show her."
"But what if I can't? Look, Ahmad, the Vayash took her as a slave. She wasn't
like this then she didn't give up hope."
"No, but she could still believe in her own abilities there. She was smarter
than the Vayash and knew it. But here how can you expect her to
understand any of this? We can barely comprehend it ourselves. You can't
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expect Norgo to do anything more."
Ahmad led them on a careful path through the crowded floor.
They passed Sondra, who was sitting in a group with Coulton, and
stopped beside a frail old man who sat alone.
Ahmad indicated that Waller should sit. "This is
Landom. Because you've never heard their language, I'll try to translate for
you.
But ask him anything you want anything and I'll relay what you say."
The old man nodded at Waller and smiled amiably. He said
something that sounded like an angry gurgle but then nodded again.
Waller smiled briefly in return, then turned back to Ahmad.
"Ask him this," he said. "Ask him how we get out of here."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The trouble with Landom's reply to Waller's question was that nothing the old
man said ever came out directly. Instead, he had apparently committed great
chunks of raw material to memory and although he could approach and find
any particular large chunk he lacked the ability to draw conclusions
from his own data; the best he could manage was to repeat the
entirety of what he knew.
So, when Waller by way of Ahmad asked how to escape the tower, Landom said,
"This was nine full generations ago."
Ahmad promptly translated, adding by way of explanation that the three towers
had been erected some thirty-one generations in the past. "There lived
then a young man who was called
Coulton." Ahmad explained: "Not this Coulton, of course. The name is
as popular here as Jesus in Latin America and for many of the same reasons."
Landom then went on: "Although a happy and obedient youth, Coulton [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]