The Currents of Space

by Isaac Asimov

  "Not's far's I know," admitted Jencus.

  "Then why should we pay? Find out who he belongs to. Let his town pay."

  "How we going to find out? Tell me that."

  The foreman considered. His tongue licked out and played with the coarse reddish foliage of his upper lip. He said, "Then we'll just have to get rid of him. Like the patroller said."

  Terens interrupted. "Look here. What do you mean by that?"

  The foreman said, "He might as well be dead. It would be a mercy."

  Terens said, "You can't kill a living person."

  "Suppose you tell me what to do then."

  "Can't one of the townpeople take care of him?"

  "Who'd want to? Would you?"

  Terens ignored the openly insolent attitude. "I've got other work to do."

  "So have all the folk. I can't have anyone neglecting mill work to take care of this crazy thing."

  Terens sighed, and said without rancor, "Now, Foreman, let's be reasonable. If you don't make quota this quarter I might suppose it's because one of your workers is taking care of this poor fellow, and I'll speak up for you to the Squires. Otherwise I'll just say that I don't know of any reason you couldn't make quota, in case you don't make it."

  The foreman glowered. The Townman had only been here a month, and already he was interfering with men who had lived in town all their lives. Still, he had a card marked with Squire's marks. It wouldn't do to stand too openly against him too long.

  He said, "But who'd take him?" A horrible suspicion smote him. "I can't I got three kids of my own and my wife ain't well."

  "I didn't suggest that you should."

  Terens looked out the window. Now that the patrollers had left, the squirming, Whispering crowd had gathered closer about the Townman's house. Most were youngsters, too young to be working, others were farm hands from the nearer farms. A few were millworkers, away from their shifts.

  Terens saw the big girl at the very edge of the crowd. He had noticed her often in the past month. Strong, competent, and hard-working. Good natural intelligence hidden under that unhappy expression. If she were a man she might have been chosen for Townman's training. But she was a woman; parents dead, and plain enough she was to preclude romantic side interests. A lone woman, in other words, and likely to remain so.

  He said, "What about her?"

  The foreman looked, then roared "Damn it She ought to be at work."

  "All right," soothed Terens. "What's her name?"

  "That's Valona March."

  "That's right. I remember now. Call her in."

  From that moment Terens had made himself an unofficial guardian of the pair. He had done what he could to obtain additional food rations for her, extra clothing coupons and whatever else was required to allow two adults (one unregistered) to live on the income of one. He had been instrumental in helping her obtain training for Rik at the kyrt mills. He had intervened to prevent greater punishment on the occasion of Valona's quarrel with a section head. The death of the City doctor had made it unnecessary for him to attempt further action there than he had taken, but he had been ready.

  It was natural for Valona to come to him in all her troubles, and he was waiting now for her to answer his question.

  Valona was still hesitating. Finally she said, "He says everyone in the world will die."

  Terens looked startled. "Does he say how?"

  "He says he doesn't know how. He just says he remembers that from before he was like, you know, like he is. And he says he remembers he had an important job, but I don't understand what it is,"

  "How does he describe it?"

  "He says be an - analyzes Nothing with a capital N."

  Valona waited for comment, then hastened, to explain, "Analyze means taking something apart like-"

  "I know what it means, girl." Terens remained lost.

  Valona watched him anxiously. "Do you know what he means, Townman?"

  "Perhaps, Valona."

  "But, Townman, how can anyone do anything to Nothing?"

  Terens got to his feet. He smiled briefly. "Why, Valona, don't you know that everything in all the Galaxy is mostly Nothing?"

  No light of understanding dawned on Valona, but she accepted that The Townman was a very educated man. With an unexpected twinge of pride, she was suddenly certain that her Rik was even more educated.

  "Come." Terens was holding his hand out to her.

  She said, "Where are we going?"

  "Well, Where's Rik?"

  "Home," she said. "Sleeping."

  "Good. I'll take you there. Do you want the patrollers to find you on the street alone?"

  The village seemed empty of life in the night time. The lights along the single street that split the area of workers' cabins in two gleamed without glare. There was a hint of rain in the air, but only of that light warm rain that fell almost every night. There was no need to take special precautions against it.

  Valona had never been out so late on a working evening and it was frightening. She tried to shrink away from the sound of her own footsteps, while listening for the possible distant step of the patrollers.

  Terens said, "Stop trying to tiptoe, Valona. I'm with you."

  His voice boomed in the quiet and Valona jumped She hurried forward in response to his urging.

  Valona's hut was as dark as the rest and they stepped in gingerly. Terens had been born and brought up in just such a hut and though he had since lived on Sark and now occupied a house with three rooms and plumbing, there was still something of a nostalgia about the barrenness of its interior. One room was all that was required, a bed, a chest of drawers, two chairs, a smooth poured-cement floor, a closet in one corner.

  There was no need for kitchen facilities, since all meals were eaten at the mill, nor for a bathroom, since a line of community outhouses and shower cells ran along the space behind the houses. In the mild, unvarying climate, windows were not adapted for protection against cold and rain. All four walls were pierced by screened openings and eaves above were sufficient ward against the nightly windless sprinkles.

  In the flare of a little pocket light which he held cupped in one palm, Terens noted that one corner of the room was marked off by a battered screen. He remembered getting it for Valona rather recently when Rik had become too little of a child or too much of a man. He could hear the regular breathing of sleep behind it.

  He nodded his head in that direction. "Wake him, Valona."

  Valona tapped on the screen. "Rik! Rik, baby!" There was a little cry.

  "It's only Lona," said Valona. They rounded the screen and Terens played his little light upon their own faces, then upon Rik.

  Rik threw an arm up against the glare. "What's the matter?"

  Terens sat down on the edge of the bed. Rik slept in the standard cottage bed, he noted. He had obtained for Valona an old, rather rickety cot at the very first, but she had reserved that for herself.

  "Rik," he said, "Valona says you're beginning to remember things."

  "Yes, Townman." Rik was always very humble before the Townman, who was the most important man he had ever seen. Even the mill superintendent was polite to the Town-man. Rik repeated the scraps his mind had gathered during the day.

  Terens said, "Have you remembered anything else since you told this to Valona?"

  "Nothing else, Townman."

  Terens kneaded the fingers of one hand with those of the other. "All right, Rik. Go back to sleep."

  Valona followed him out the house. She was trying hard to keep her face from twisting and the back of one rough hand slid across her eyes. "Will he have to leave me, Townman?"

  Terens took her hands and said gravely, "You must be a grown woman, Valona. He will have to come with me for just a short while but I'll bring him back."

  "And after that?"

  "I don't know. You must understand, Valona. Right now it is the most important thing in all the world that we find out more about Rik's memories."

  Valona sa
id suddenly, "You mean everybody on Fiorina might die, the way he says?"

  Terens' grip tightened. "Don't ever say that to anyone, Valona, or the patrollers may take Rik away forever. I mean that."

  He turned away and walked slowly and thoughtfully back to his house without really noticing that his hands were trembling. He tried futilely to sleep and after an hour of that he adjusted the narco-field. It was one of the few pieces of Sark he had brought with him when he first returned to Fiorina to become Townman. It fitted about his skull like a thin black felt cap. He adjusted the controls to five hours and closed contact.

  He had time to adjust himself comfortably in bed before the delayed response shorted the conscious centres of his cerebrum and blanketed him into instantaneous, dreamless sleep.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE LIBRARIAN

  They left the diamagnetic scooter in a scooter-cubby outside the city limits. Scooters were rare in the City and Terens had no wish to attract unnecessary attention. He thought for a savage moment of those of the Upper City with their diamagnetic ground-cars and anti-grav gyros. But that was the Upper City. It was different.

  Rik waited for Terens to lock the cubby and fingerprint-seal it. He was dressed in a new one-piece suit and felt a little uncomfortable. Somewhat reluctantly he followed the Town-man under the first of the tall bridgelike structures that supported the Upper City.

  On Fiorina, all other cities had names, but this one was simply the "City". The workers and peasants who lived in it and around it were considered lucky by the rest of the planet. In the City there were better doctors and hospitals, more factories and more liquor stores, even a few dribbles of very mild luxury. The inhabitants themselves were somewhat less enthusiastic. They lived in the shadow of the Upper City.

  The Upper City was exactly what the name implied, for the City was double, divided rigidly by a horizontal layer of fifty square miles of cementalloy resting upon some twenty thousand steel-girdered pillars. Below in the shadow were the "natives". Above, in the sun, were the Squires. It was difficult to believe in the Upper City that the planet of its location was Fiorina. The population was almost exclusively Sarkite in nature, together with a sprinkling of patrollers. They were the upper class in all literalness.

  Terens knew his way. He walked quickly, avoiding the stares of passers-by, who surveyed his Townman clothing with a mixture of envy and resentment. Rik's shorter legs made his gait less dignified as he tried to keep up. He did not remember very much from his only other visit to the City. It seemed so different now. Then it had been cloudy. Now the sun was out, pouring through the spaced openings in the cementalloy above to form strips of light that made the intervening space all the darker. They plunged through the bright strips in a rhythmic, almost hypnotic fashion.

  Oldsters sat on wheeled chairs in the strips, absorbing the warmth and moving as the strip moved. Sometimes they fell asleep and would remain behind in the shade, nodding in their chairs until the squeaking of the wheels when they shifted position woke them. Occasionally mothers nearly blocked the strips with their carriaged offspring.

  Terens said, "Now, Rik, stand up straight. We're going up."

  He was standing before a structure that filled the space between four square-placed pillars, and from ground to Upper City.

  Rik said, "I'm scared."

  Rik could guess what the structure was. It was an elevator that lifted to the upper level.

  These were necessary, of course. Production was below, but consumption was above. Basic chemicals and raw food staples were shipped into Lower City, but finished plastic ware and fine meals were matters for Upper City. Excess population spawned below; maids, gardeners, chauffeurs, construction laborers were used above.

  Terens ignored Rik's expression of fright. He was amazed that his own heart beat so violently. Not fright, of course. Rather a fierce satisfaction that he was going up. He would step all over that sacred cementalloy, stamp on it, scuff his dirt upon it. He could do that as a Townman. Of course he was still only a Florinian native to the Squires, but he was a Townman and he could step on the cementalloy whenever he pleased.

  Galaxy, he hated them!

  He stopped himself, drew a firm breath and signaled for the elevator. There was no use thinking hate. He had been on Sark for many years; on Sark itself, the center and breeding place of the Squires. He had learned to bear in silence. He ought not forget what he had learned now. Of all times, not now.

  He heard the whir of the elevator settling at the lower level, and the entire wall facing him dropped into its slot.

  The native Who operated the elevator looked disgusted. "Just two of you."

  "Just two," said Terens, stepping in. Rik followed.

  The operator made no move to restore the fallen wall to its original position. He said, "Seems to me you guys could wait for the two o'clock load and move with it. I ain't supposed to run this thing up and down for no two guys." He spat carefully, making sure that the sputum hit lower-level concrete and not the floor of his elevator.

  He went on, "Where's your employment tickets?"

  Terens said, "I'm a Townman. Can't you see it by my clothes?"

  "Clothes don't mean nothing. Listen, you think I'm risking my job because you maybe picked up some uniform somewheres? Where's your card?"

  Terens, without another word, presented the standard document-folder all natives had to carry at all times; registration number, employment certificate, tax receipts. It was open to the crimson of his Townman's license. The operator scanned it briefly.

  "Well, maybe you picked that up, too, but that's not my business. You got it and I pass you, though Townman's just a fancy name for a native to my way of figgering. What about the other guy?"

  "He's in my charge," said Terens. "He can come with me, or shall we call a patroller and check into the rules?"

  It was the last thing Terens wanted but he suggested it with suitable arrogance.

  "Awrright! Y'don't have to get sore." The elevator wall moved up, and with a lurch the elevator climbed. The operator mumbled direfully under his breath.

  Terens smiled tightly. It was almost inevitable. Those who worked directly for the Squires were only too glad to identify themselves with the rulers and make up for their real inferiority by a tighter adherence to the rules of segregation, a harsh and haughty attitude toward their fellows. They were the "uppermen" for whom the other Florinians reserved their particular hate, unalloyed by the carefully taught awe they felt for the Squires.

  The vertical distance traveled was thirty feet, but the door opened again to a new world. Like the native cities of Sark, Upper City was laid out with a particular eye to color. Individual structures, whether dwelling places or public buildings, were inset in an intricate multicolored mosaic which, close at hand, was a meaningless jumble, but at a distance of a hundred yards took on a soft clustering of hues that melted and changed with the angle of view. "Come on, Rik," said Terens.

  Rik was staring wide-eyed. Nothing alive and growing! Just stone and colour in huge masses. He had never known houses could be so huge. Something stirred momentarily in his mind. For a second the hugeness was not so strange... And then the memory closed down again.

  A ground-car flashed by.

  "Are those Squires?" Rik whispered.

  There had been time for only a glance. Hair close-cropped, wide, flaring sleeves of glossy, solid colors ranging from blue to violet, knickers of a velvety appearance and long, sheer hose that gleamed as if it were woven of thin copper wire. They wasted no glance at Rik and Terens.

  "Young ones," said Terens. He had not seen them at such close quarters since he left Sark. On Sark they were bad enough but at least they had been in place. Angels did not fit here, thirty feet over Hell. Again he squirmed to suppress a useless tremble of hatred.

  A two-man flatcar hissed up behind them. It was a new model that had built-in air controls. At the moment it was skimming smoothly two inches above surface, its gleaming flat bottom cur
led upward at all edges to cut air resistance. Still, the slicing of air against its lower surface sufficed to produce the characteristic hiss which meant "patrollers".

  They were large, as all patrollers were; broad-faced, flat-cheeked, long, straight black hair, light brown in complexion. To the natives, all patrollers looked alike. The glossy black of their uniforms, enhanced as they were by the startling silver of strategically placed buckles and ornamental buttons, depressed the importance of the face and encouraged the impression of likeness still more.

  One patroller was at the controls. The other leaped out lightly over the shallow rim of the car.

  He said, "Folder!" stared mechanically and momentarily at it and flipped it back at Terens. "Your business here."

  "I intend consulting the library, Officer. It is my privilege."

  The patroller turned to Rik. "What about you?"

  "I-" began Rik.

  "He is my assistant," interposed Terens.

  "He has no Townman privileges," said the patroller.

  "I'll be responsible for him."

  The patroller shrugged. "It's your lookout. Townmen have privileges, but they're not Squires. Remember that, boy."

  "Yes, Officer. By the way, could you direct me to the library?"

  The patroller directed him, using the thin, deadly barrel of a needle-gun to indicate direction. From their present angle, the library was a blotch of brilliant vermilion deepening into crimson toward the upper stories. As they approached, the crimson crept downward.

  Rik said with sudden vehemence, "I think it's ugly."

  Terens gave him a quick, surprised glance. He had been accustomed to all this on Sark, but he, too, found the garishness of Upper City somewhat vulgar. But then, Upper City was more Sark than Sark itself. On Sark, not all men were aristocrats. There were even poor Sarkites, some scarcely better off than the average Florinian. Here only the top of the pyramid existed, and the library showed that.

  It was larger than all but a few on Sark itself, far larger than Upper City required, which showed the advantage of cheap labor. Terens paused on the curved ramp that led to the main entrance. The color scheme on the ramp gave the illusion of steps, somewhat disconcerting to Rik, who stumbled, but giving the library the proper air of archaism that traditionally accompanied academic structures.