I couldn't cope with any of this. I just couldn't handle it. I said did he really mean years?
He said he did. He said the difference between us was the difference between people and dogs in the world above. He said people above lived seven times longer than dogs. But people in Egon lived over seven times longer than people above. He said they lived to seven or eight hundred. They developed more slowly. There was more of them to develop. They had bigger brains. He said their baby already had a brain bigger than any professor's above. But they wouldn't start training its brain for another thirty years yet, because it still had a lot of developing to do.
He told me more about brains and how you trained them, but he did it while we were in the shower, and the shower was so fantastic, I hardly heard him.
It was there in the room. It was a grill in the floor, six feet square. You stood on the grill, and jets rose and lifted you. You could lie or roll or sit in the air, as you wanted. The water was slippery at first and you “soaped” with it; then it changed to ordinary water, and you sluiced off.
The shower went on a few minutes and then lowered you to the grill and switched off; and if you wanted another you pressed on the grill and it started again. It was so great I had another. But he yelled at me to hurry; so I stood on the drying grill for a second, and joined him.
He'd yelled from another room; his walk-in wardrobe. He had fifty or sixty sets of persongs in there, on hangers. He had racks of tights and shoes. He said in the evening you wore tights and shoes. He chose a silver persong for himself with green tights, and a yellow one for me with blue tights; and shoes for us both with silver buckles.
I thought I looked crazy. But the whole evening was crazy. It was the first time I went out in Egon. It was the first time I saw how they lived, or tasted their food. It was the first time I hit anyone of ninety-nine.
13. I Walk Round Me
All of that night I was dazed. Wherever I went I was pinching myself to be sure I wasn't fast asleep and dreaming. They were treating me like a trained monkey. I had to punch a kid's nose for him. The kid was astonished. They were all astonished. His nose bled, and he dabbed it, and looked at the blood, and couldn't think why I'd done it. (They don't fight in Egon. Because they have no pain they can't hurt each other.) He saw I was angry, and he saw the blood coming from his nose, but he couldn't connect the two. It made as much sense to him as if I'd gone and hit the wall.
But I was angry before then.
The parties were all for students of Dido's group, and he was chuckling as we drove to the first. He said we'd give them a surprise.
We got to the first, and he told the giant on the door not to announce us, and we went in the hall, and heard where the party was, and sneaked in.
There were twenty or thirty kids in the room, but half a dozen in the centre were causing most of the noise, and the rest were laughing at them.
Nobody noticed us at first. Then Dido gave a cough, and a girl who was drinking tigra looked round and saw him. Then she saw me, and dropped the tigra. She dropped it on a kid who was sitting on the floor, and the tigra went frothing and curling all over him, and everyone looked round.
Dido broke out laughing at their expressions. Then the kids in the middle of the room vanished, and everyone almost collapsed at my expression.
I was looking for the ones who'd vanished.
“Which ones?” Dido said.
“There were five or six of them. They were here,” I said. I walked to where they'd been.
“Here?” he said.
“Right here. Didn't you see them?”
He winked and stepped aside, and I was standing next to myself. I was standing right beside myself. “There were five or six of them. They were here,” I said. (At least, the other kid, who was me, said it.)
“Here?” Dido's voice said.
“Right here. Didn't you see them?” this other me said, and suddenly froze there with his mouth open, and I realized it was a full-size image of me, and that someone had recorded it; also that the kids I'd seen before had been in a recording. The other me was still standing there. I walked all round him. I saw a back view of me. I put out a hand and it went right through me. Then the other me vanished, and I was left there with my hand in the air, looking a fool, and everyone was curled up laughing. So I laughed, too. But it started then. I had an idea then I'd be punching someone's nose.
Also they started touching my head, so that I had a series of the stinging headaches. And after it, they spoke English. Some did it better than others; and Dido did it best of all. He had done, right from the start.
Then they were all round me, asking questions, and this kid asked if I'd ever had a tail, and I punched his nose for him.
He didn't make a row. Nobody made a row, and I said I was sorry, and he said he was.
I was just dazed. I was confused the whole night. There was so much going on. They could do everything. They could play any musical instrument. There was a game where they had to give clues in pictures, and they painted the pictures. They painted quickly and fabulously. They could do all kinds of tricks, like hopping on one hand. They could do anything any Olympics champion could do, or any musician or any artist or dancer. I felt like an animal. I felt dumb and stupid with them.
And there was the food and drink. They were drinking tigra everywhere, and I didn't explain it before.
It's silver. It's the colour of a silver cachou, with maroon stripes inside like raspberry ripple, except they move the whole time inside the silver. The drink swirls in the glass and it swirls in your mouth, and it tastes like a tigra forest smells. It's delicate, silvery, but better than that. You can't stop drinking it. It coats your stomach silver, and acts on your brain. It makes you want to do things.
And stardew; fantastic stardew!
It's so powerful, nobody knew its effect on me. It's a mountain flower. It's a deep violet, with a white centre, the cup. During the night a drop of “dew” comes up from the plant into the cup. It evaporates after dawn so they have to get it before then. They freeze it right away and mix it with petals into a violet gum. It takes hundreds of flowers to make a portion of gum. You have it ice-cold, wrapped in stardew leaves. It's so cold you can hardly taste it.
They were all watching me while I tasted it. I unwrapped the leaves and licked the gum, and couldn't taste anything, so I licked it again. I still couldn't taste anything but the roof of my mouth seemed to rise suddenly. It seemed to rise into a huge vaulted arch like a cathedral. It was a cathedral full of violets. I was walking down long corridors with soaring stone pillars, breathing and drinking violets. An organ was playing violet music.
I was aware they'd sat me down, and that I was swaying dizzily. I could see their grinning faces outlined in violet. They were feeling my head and getting all my sensations.
They chewed up their own gum, and I don't know who had mine. I didn't try any more. They thought it might blow my brain. And that's how it went on.
I don't know how many parties we went to. I know the main topic at all of them was Plum Lake. Wherever we went they talked about it. They said it was the most terrific fun you could have anywhere. And I know I was a sensation everywhere; that they couldn't stop looking at me and touching me and asking questions. But it's gone from me now. It's all just a mix-up now.
Dido made a speech wherever we went, and then we were back at the palace. I remember him telling me about places he was going to take me to instead of Plum Lake. He was going to take me to a famous river with a famous waterfall.
They'd put an extra bed for me in his room, and I must have been in it when his father came. I don't remember that properly, either. (Perhaps he erased the visit. Perhaps Dido just told me about it.)
But he came. And what he said changed the plans about the famous river and the waterfall. He said he'd thought again and made arrangements, and Dido could take me to Plum Lake; except instead of having a whole week for himself he could have just two days with me. In two days I had to be
out of Egon.
The only other thing I remember is Dido talking about it. He talked for hours. But he could only use words that were in my head, and I didn't have many for the kind of things at Plum Lake.
As for what was under it, he said nothing. He knew I had no words at all for that. And where am I to find them now? I'd died by then. I died there.
Part Three: Under Plum Lake
14. The Lake
It's twelve miles long and three miles wide, and it's the finest place on Earth. This is what they say, and they know all the places on Earth. It's shaped like a plum, and surrounded by ragusa plum trees. The roots of the trees are in the water, and the water is the same colour as the plums — a deep purple blue. It's just wonderful. It's marvellous.
It's the only place ragusas grow. It's the only place you can get them. They don't keep. They only last an hour after they're picked. They send them round twice a day to all the hotels and guest houses; they send the exact number, one for each person booked in.
You see the lake first from two miles up. You turn a corner on the mountain road, and there it is, deep in the cleft of the valley. It's very warm there.
All down the valley, rooftops peep out of the trees, and at the bottom is the brilliant purple blue of the lake. But what I saw first were the kites. The air over the lake was full of kites. Then I saw there were people in the kites.
All of the drive so far had been fantastic. We'd gone through mountains. Now for the last couple of miles we went slowly. The road was like a corkscrew and people were strolling down it. I saw the gardens of the hotels on all sides. I saw the children's hotels, with the hammocks. I saw the pleasure dromes.
We drove to the far side of the lake, to a children's hotel that was almost on the water. The hammocks were slung between trees all over the garden.
We booked in and he signed for things: power slopes, sky-diving, jubal-racing. I'll do all that. I'll do it later. Right now I'll do the place.
The first thing is the air. The air is different everywhere in Egon. It smells different in different places. Here, it's from the ragusas. The trees give off a gas. It's a kind of laughing gas. You go about as if you're walking on air. (When you leave a pleasure drome, you are walking on air: your feet are just off the ground.)
The trees get the gas from the water, and the water gets it from the springs in the lake. The water is unbelievable. You wash in it. You drink it. It tastes of flowers; it tastes of grapes.
The place holds 200,000 people, and there are over 1,000 hotels and guest houses, but you rarely see them. They're tucked into gardens.
People get just ten weeks here during their whole lives. They don't have to take a week at a time. They can take two days or three. They say a week here is like three months anywhere else. The reason is, you don't sleep. You take five-minute naps between activities. A nap is like a whole night's sleep, though old people sleep longer.
(It took me some time to spot old people. They're over 700 years old, but they don't look it. They don't move slowly, or get ill. They can do anything anyone else can. They just have no eyebrows and their hair is thinner; it's the only way you can tell them.)
All round the lake is a promenade, nearly thirty miles long, with various pleasure gardens; and there are quays and jetties jutting out into the lake. You can eat where you want. You can do almost anything you want. Everything is free.
The one thing you've got to do is be on the ground at ragusa time. You can miss it if you want, but you'd be crazy. It takes up to an hour to eat a ragusa. The fastest you could do it is twenty minutes, but there's no sense in eating it fast. The slower you eat, the more you have.
It was after eleven when we booked in, so we got our ragusas right away. Just while we were booking in, twenty or thirty kids turned up for theirs, and I saw some from the night before. They yelled with surprise to see us, and we all went out and ate ragusas in our hammocks.
A ragusa is a giant plum, eight inches long. You hold it by a stalk at one end and peel off the point at the other. You peel it like a banana. Inside, the fruit is crisp like a pineapple, but chewy. It's as chewy as toffee. As you chew it, the part you've eaten grows back in place. It's the gas inside. It keeps replacing what you've eaten. It does it for sixty minutes, and then the gas goes and it melts.
It's juicy and sweet like a plum, except no one would come down from sky-diving just for a plum.
It's the laughing gas. It's the floating feeling.
You swing in your hammock, and watch the ragusa grow, and you can't stop laughing. You tell jokes.
We did that, and later we ate.
Then we went up to the power slopes.
He hadn't told me it was the most dangerous sport in the world. He hadn't told me the things that could go wrong. I was just scared out of my life. I was so scared I knew I couldn't bear it.
15. The Power Slopes
You wear ski clothes up there. You wear snow goggles. It's the top of Mount Julas, and the light is blinding. We went up on the fast cable, and he gave me a ski practice. They have a practice slope for beginners. I'd never done any skiing. He put my skis on and attached the sticks, and I fell over right away.
It's power skiing. The controls are in the sticks. There's a switch in each handle, with three positions.
With the switch up, the power is off, which means you ski normally, on the ground.
In the middle position, power is on the skis, and they lift off the ground. They lift about four inches off.
In the bottom position power is in your suit as well as your skis, which means you can't touch ground, either.
It's very tricky. You can't hit ground, but you can overbalance and go tumbling in the air with your skis flying.
He gave me a practice with everything switched on, so I could get my balance. I toppled a few times, but I got it.
Then we did a few with just the skis switched on. It's dangerous, because you can go downhill fast — faster than on snow — so if you fall you're dragged fast. I didn't manage that so well.
With everything switched off, I couldn't manage at all. I just went sliding and falling.
He got impatient and said we'd skip it, because he had to do a run. He said, “We'll do one together later. I'll help you. You can watch for now.”
We went to the starting point, and when I saw the run I nearly fainted.
A girl was just doing it.
I saw her flying through the air.
The run is seven miles long. It starts at Mount Julas, goes steeply downhill for a mile, then you fly over a dip, hit the opposite side, ski about half a mile, do a sharp turn, and race down the long last slope. There are red flags all the way to show the route.
The idea is to race against time. It's faster with skis off the ground because there's no friction with the snow. You can do a hundred miles an hour that way. But when you've got up speed, the idea is to get on the ground. It's more dangerous. You get points for it. You fly as fast as possible in the air, and stay as long as you dare on the ground.
All the way down, instruments show when the skis are touching the ground. By the time you reach the end, they have the result.
Just before he took off he gave me a wink and said, “See you soon.” And when he was half-way down the slope someone told me he was a champion.
They didn't have to tell me.
He went like a jet.
He took off normally, and then seemed to vanish. He didn't so much fly the dip as jump it. He hit the other side at colossal speed, and after that I couldn't see him. All I saw was a spray of snow. It did a sharp wiggle at the bend, and then there was something like a vapour trail on the last long slope, and it stopped.
I heard them yelling and jumping all round me.
He returned on the fast cable, and they all started thumping his back, and he was grinning himself. “Not bad,” he said, “but not my best. Want to have a try now?” he said to me.
“I don't know,” I said.
“We'll do it slowly,
” he said.
I didn't want to do it any way. I couldn't stop trembling. We had to wait some time, and then he had an argument with the starter. The starter said I didn't have enough experience. I thought he was dead right, and I told him I didn't have any. But Dido said he'd hold me and that I was keen to do it, so the starter said okay and we did it.
“If you wobble, hang on,” Dido said.
“Okay,” I said.
“You'll manage easily. Switch everything on.” He saw that I did. “And remember what I told you. A nice slow start. Bend forward a bit. Everybody's watching. Are you all right?”
“I don't know. I don't think so,” I said.
“Yes you are. You're fine. Bend forward.” He caught me just as I was wobbling back.
Somehow we got off. He was on the ground, and I was up off it. I started leaning against him, which seemed a good idea, except it unbalanced him, and he had to work hard with his sticks. Also we started going too fast.
“Get on the ground,” he said. “Put your switches up!”
I was so terrified I couldn't even feel the switches.
“Up!” he said. “Up! Like this.” He managed to work the switch nearest him.
This brought one ski down and left the other in the air. It also left me hanging round his neck.
“Switch the other one up!” he said. “Get it up! ”
I found the other switch and got it up, and both skis were on the ground, and I went wobbling there and back, hanging on him, and we were still going downhill, quite fast.
I could see he was mainly afraid of making a fool of himself, so I tried hard and listened to everything he yelled, and somehow we got down the slope. I was hanging on to him all the time.
Under Plum Lake Page 5