Bart nodded. To himself he had to admit that he had been singularly blind. Of course, a governing class like the Lords would have to worry about their slaves, no matter how well the two classes seemed to get along on the surface.
“So?” said Paolo. “So that means they try to keep watch for any signs of something that might lead to trouble from the slaves, all the time. And it’s not easy. They can put those magic boxes that they talk over and listen over and see each other on all over the place; but slaves can still whisper to each other where they can’t be heard, and make plans. So what do the Lords do? You tell me?” “I’ve got no notion,” said Bart.
“What they’d like to do,” said Paolo, “of course, is send spies in among the slaves. But down here everybody knows everybody else. Sure, they could produce a fresh slave saying he’s just newborn and the slave could really be a spy for them; but where’re they going to get the spy they can trust? The only one they could trust would be a Hybrid; but everybody knows every Hybrid from the time they’re born on up—if they’re let live. So, what do they do?”
“I just said I didn’t have any notion,” answered Bart.
“They just don’t take chances, that’s what they do,” Paolo said. “Any suspicion—any suspicion at all that a slave’s a potential troublemaker—any reason for suspecting anything— and that slave’s gone. I mean dead. Dead and gone down that river they pulled you out of and brought you back to life.”
“Are you trying to tell me,” said Bart, “that the simple fact that people think Emma and I are close would be reason enough for the Lords to have us killed—or do they do their own killing?” “Sometimes,” said Paolo. “Mostly we do it for them, we Steeds. It’s part of our job. You’re going to find there’s a lot of things we do you’d never suspect. But you’re right. That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you. Now, suppose you’re a slave who wants something from the Lords, or who’s about to be in trouble with them himself, or is in trouble with them, already?”
“You mean a slave like that could buy himself out of trouble or get what he wants just by saying Emma and I are getting together to plan a revolt against the Lords, whether it was true or not?”
“If you were a Lord, and slaves as easy to get as they are, would you take the chance of waiting around to see, or checking?” said Paolo.
“Probably not,” said Bart.
“Bart!” said Emma. “Of course you’d check first before you did anything to anyone. You can’t tell me that about yourself.” “If I was a Lord, I might not,” said Bart. “Paolo’s right. Or, maybe not. Paolo, if just being seen together’s good enough to accuse somebody of planning a revolt, how’s it happen you and Lorena are still around?”
“We’ve been here long enough so that we’ve each been given permission,” said Paolo. “Seems like the Lords have some way of deciding you’re not the kind to start a revolt—and I’m not. Neither’s Lorena. Anyway, we’ve both been told, a long time ago, we could make friends or whatever. Not that it’d be exactly safe for even us if we started suddenly meeting with a gang of about a dozen other old hands and whispering to each other so nobody else around could hear.”
“Who do you get permission from?” asked Bart.
“You get it from your Lord, because when he gives it, he takes on the responsibility of you going bad,” said Paolo. “Matter of fact, what happened to me was Chandt put in a good word for me to somebody and it went up and around and came back down to me from my own Lord. Maybe you can deal direct with the Lord Librarian; but you’d better wait awhile. It’s not just him. He’s got to convince the other Two Who Command that it’s a safe bet.” “All right,” said Bart. But he was thinking that very probably he would not be waiting anywhere near as long a time as Paolo had in mind.
“So,” he said, “how do I go about seeing Emma? Only when you two are able to act as chaperones?”
“What’s a chaperone?” asked Paolo. “Never mind, I figure I know what you mean. That’s right, pretty much so for the first few months. Then you can start meeting with just one of us there, and finally, maybe, you can ask your Lord and get permission to meet by yourselves.”
“Hmm,” said Bart.
Emma put a small hand on his arm.
“If we have to be patient, Bart . . .” she said.
He looked sideways and down at her. His heart seemed to move in him, looking at her. She was so small, to be here in this unnatural place. They could not know it—Lords, Hybrids and slaves alike—but any of them who tried to take advantage of that smallness would find Bart’s own hands, which were anything but small, to deal with. After which they would never try to take advantage of anyone or anything again.
“Don’t worry,” he said to her gently, “I’ll go slowly and carefully. Even if it keeps us apart, I won’t rush things.”
“I know you won’t,” said Emma, patting his arm momentarily, like an adult approving a child who had just promised to be good. He smiled at her and she smiled back.
In the end the four of them decided that they would meet on a signal passed by Bart to Paolo, or from Emma to Lorena; and from Lorena to Paolo or vice versa. It was a clumsy arrangement, but even Bart had to admit it was about the only one that could be made under the present circumstances.
Bart looked across the room at the clock again.
“I’ve got to get back to the Library,” he said.
Emma also thought it was time she was leaving and Lorena started to go with her. Paolo, however, wanted to sit and drink for some time yet. His particular Lord was a late riser in the morning, even on those mornings when he did call for Paolo to carry him; and these had grown infrequent as that Lord—who was a good deal older even than Pier—spent more and more of his time in his own quarters. But Paolo did not want to drink alone. With a small sigh, Lorena sat back down in the booth.
“Better go out separately,” Paolo told Bart and Emma. “You first, Bart.”
Bart got up regretfully.
“Be careful, Emma,” he said. “Good night.”
“I will. You too. Goodnight, dear,” said Emma.
Bart got up from the booth, but just as he was about to turn, a question occurred to him.
“By the way,” he asked. “Lorena, what work do you do?”
“Her?” Paolo answered for her, even as he was looking across the room to flag down the server for another drink. “She scrubs floors—things like that.”
“I’ll see you by tomorrow evening,” said Bart and left the Recreation Center.
In the past few days of exploring during the free daytime hours his work for Pier afforded him, he had been able to fill out his mental map of the Inner World. The place consisted, he now knew, of an outer ring of excavations or caverns which were, as’ one went around in a circle, living quarters for slaves, Hybrids, and finally for the Lordly class itself.
Within that ring were the recreational centers for the various classes, storerooms, offices, machine shops and other working areas, which in turn surrounded a core area of special workrooms, which seemed populated almost exclusively by Hybrids, Lords and Ladies at incomprehensible work in what seemed to be laboratories and workrooms.
This last area, because he had seen so few slaves in it, he had barely penetrated. Since slaves were so scarce there, he had suspected that his own presence might be particularly noticeable. But the urge to explore it further itched in him; and he reasoned that, at this time of the evening, when the corridors around him were filled with slaves, Hybrids and even Lords out on recreational purposes, he should find the labs and workrooms fairly deserted.
Also, his most direct route back to the Library would lie right through the center of this core area.
He gave in to the impulse and headed down the corridor toward it, automatically giving way to the Hybrids and Lords he encountered, and hardly noticing that most of the other slaves who were not Steeds gave way to him.
However, when he reached the core area, he was surprised to find the w
orkrooms apparently nearly as full of busy people as they had been in the daytime. It was finally beginning to sink into him that, whatever else the Hybrids, Lords and Ladies might be, they were not idle. Having committed himself to explore, however, he continued down the corridors, which all seemed like the spokes of a wheel radiating from some central spot in the core area.
It was an exploration with all of his nerves alert for any contingency. More than a few of those he passed in the corridors, or near the open doors of the workrooms, glanced at him. Still, as long as Bart kept walking down the corridors with a reasonable speed and a purposeful air, no one offered to question what he was doing there. He had purposely not donned a shirt for his evening with Paolo in the Recreational Center, and so he was now dressed as was appropriate for a Steed on some duty.
But as soon as he slowed and tried to get a longer look in some doorway or other, someone in that room was almost certain to turn and look at him inquisitively. Little by little, he was moving toward the exact center of the core—the center of the Inner World itself.
Up until now, he had neither been questioned nor stopped. But he came at last to the end of a final corridor, which was almost taken up by a pair of very large doors, wide enough to let six people through abreast. The doors were closed, however, and before them stood a man who was obviously a Steed, though not one of Bart’s dormitory. He was wearing a uniform-like red jacket and kilt. He had obviously been chosen in part for his size and impressiveness; for he stood close to six and a half feet in height, at Bart’s estimate. And he was carrying a weapon.
This armed guard stood before the doors, barring entrance with something that looked rather like a lumpy rifle, with a miniature half-moon-shaped axehead affixed at its muzzle end where a bayonet might have been fitted on a military long gun.
The impression was reinforced when, as he got closer, the man swung the object down into horizontal position, aimed at Bart; for the small axehead glinted like silver in the overhead lights of the corridor. Bart stopped with what was clearly a razor-sharp end-edge as well as bottom edge a foot from his chest.
“I’m Bart Dybig, slave to the Lord Librarian,” he said to the man. “I’ve got an imperative message to him from his Lady.”
The weapon, however, stayed pointed at him. The guard frowned.
“You can’t go in here,” he said. “No human passes this door unless one of the Lords lakes him in. Who’d you say you were?”
“A slave of the Lord Librarian,” repeated Bart. He was beginning to feel the first twinges of regret that he had identified himself so readily. Still, Pier had said Bart should use the Librarian’s name as a passport and Pier was one of the Three Who Command. “Let me through or I’ll have to report you to my Lord.”
“Report all you want!” said the big man. His voice, surprisingly, was a reedy harsh tenor that seemed at once threatening and too small for the rest of him. “My orders are my orders and you can’t go through here without a Lord taking you.”
“All right,” said Bart. He was just as glad to make his escape without further trouble. He turned and started back the way he had come.
“Wait a minute!” called the guard. “Wait, I say!”
Bart, however, reasoning that part of the man’s orders must be that he was not to leave his post at the door under any circumstances, merely increased his speed, and soon lost himself among the people passing to and fro from the other rooms and the intersecting corridors, farther out.
He turned left at the first cross tunnel encountered, heading back toward the Library.
As he went, he tried to puzzle out what lay behind the doors the guard had stopped him from passing. His one point of reference was his mental map of the Inner World—that, at least, should give him some idea of the size of the room behind those great double ! doors.
Checking his memory now, he suddenly realized that the space beyond the double doors could only occupy the space at the end of the room, one end of which he had carried Pier through on that first day Bart had worn the chair—the room with the pipes running its length from the even farther end of the room where the great shiny column had risen from some lower level.
There could be no doubt about this, since he and Pier had stepped almost directly from that pipe-filled room into the Library; and from where he had faced the guard just now the Library was on a direct line—ignoring stone walls and other obstacles—no more than three hundred feet away. His way to it now was longer than that only because he had to take a circuitous route to it through the corridors.
But of course, he remembered, the pipe-filled room was one level up from the general level of the Inner World, since the ordinary main floor of the Library, on which Pier had his office back to the side of stacks, was also one level up. That meant the Library stacks must share the wall behind them with the great chamber where the massive column had been visible—that room the guard would not let him into just now.
He was abruptly reminded of how the slaves talked about some great weapon with which the Lordly class was intending to destroy the surface world and all of humankind. He still could not believe in such a weapon; but he had been impressed in spite of himself by the lighting and the ventilation down here, the means of talking, listening and sending animated pictures of themselves back and forth over distances, used by the Lords and Hybrids—as well as a host of other things that as far as Bart knew were unknown in the world above.
The weapon talk had to be nonsense—but something had to be going on here that explained the very existence of such a place.
He began to climb the stairs leading to the main entrance of the Library.
The first maxim his father had impressed on Bart’s young mind, r from the moment Bart had come to live with Lionel after leaving f the Cree encampment on his mother’s death, had been “find the reason!”
There was, Lionel had explained, always a reason behind every situation and every human action. Look for it, find it, he had told Bart; and you’ll find you have a better grasp of the problem than those who’re themselves involved in it and who’ve studied it hard and long for a solution.
The most difficult part of finding the reason, his father had explained to Bart, was to find the right question to ask oneself. Once that much was done, often the answer came quickly.
In this case, Bart already had the question formulated in his mind. It was—why should something such as this Inner World exist in the first place? Its existence made no sense; and the explanations he had been given for its creation were flatly unbelievable.
So—why the Lords, why the Hybrids, why the slaves and the organization of the community to which they belonged? If he could uncover the answer to that Why? he felt he would be more than halfway to understanding the whole situation he and Emma faced.
The Lords, themselves, Bart thought, must know the true answer. But, on second thought, if they did, how could a community like this endure this long, develop these kinds of mechanical marvels, and make this kind of progress, without some Lord, in one of the generations that must have gone by since the community was begun, giving away the secret?
Was it possible that the Lords themselves were the dupes of a plan made many generations before this present one?
But that could not be. No such secret plan could exist without someone along the descending stairs of the generations breaking the code of silence and letting the secret out into the world at large. Whether they had come from some world beyond the moon—and he did not for a moment believe such a wild story—or not, they were human enough to make children with human partners; and in other ways human enough so that the secret would have been bound to be given away by some one of them for personal or other reasons.
All right, he said to himself, trying to think as his father had taught him to think—if they can’t but they do, there has to be a third choice, somewhere. There had to be a secret. Who would know it? Perhaps only some of them knew—perhaps only one in each generation?
Of course�
�the Emperor. He would be the one to know; and his position and power would depend upon his keeping the secret . . ..
Maybe.
It was not beyond the bounds of possibility that somewhere along the line an altruistic Emperor would be elected, who would refuse to carry on with the lie.
On the other hand, it was not impossible that no such Emperor had cropped up—at least, yet.
But now he was guessing. And guessing was not the way to solve problems—another maxim of his father’s.
Nonetheless, he had come up with a third alternative; and it Was one that showed more possibilities than the self-canceling other two possibilities he had been going back and forth between, a moment before.
Someone, or some several ones—but in the case of secret-keeping it was usually better the smaller number who knew, so one was the most likely possibility—in the Inner World must know the reason this place was created and to what end it was aimed. A hiding place for small people was too simple an answer; particularly when you considered that the small people were mechanical wizards and must control enormous wealth, piled up over a period of generations.
■He had reached the Library’s main entrance. Now, he made his I way back through the stacks to the door of Pier’s office. Putting the key Pier had given him into the lock, he turned it halfway.
Immediately, a small panel above it glowed with an amber light. That would be a signal that Pier was in there, but that he had no objection to Bart entering at this time.
Bart turned his key the rest of the way and opened the door. Pier was seated at his desk, immersed in what looked like the pages of I an enormous ledger. He paid no attention to Bart. Closing the door softly behind him, Bart made his way silently across the carpet into his own alcove. Pier’s head did not lift to look at him as he passed.
Bart sat down in his chair before the desk. Facing the walls on three sides of him, it was possible to feel himself private and apart. The silence in which Pier worked reinforced that feeling. Bart frowned at the comer ahead of his desk where the two original walls of Pier’s office came together.
The Earth Lords Page 18