by John Brunner
“Why—yes!”
“That’s Kramer’s place,” Ken said to his companions. Gustav nodded.
“It is well known?” I said. “I never came here before—”
“That’s obvious!” snapped Marijane. “We all know there are bastardly serfs like you, but we don’t like our noses rubbed in it! If you get let out of here, and if you pluck up enough nerve to come back, stuff that perditious shield first, and don’t wave it around the Acre.”
She looked at Ken. “You’re not going to just let him loose in the Acre!” she challenged. “He might be lying—he might have sold out all the way!”
Gustav nodded. “I agree with Marijane,” he said in his rather soft, pleasant voice. “Since we got hold of him, it’s up to us to clear him with, the folks on top.”
“That’s settled, then.” Ken gestured sharply along the alley. “Move, you! And go exactly where we say, hear?”
CHAPTER IV
I WAS EAGER enough to cooperate and do what I could to set the record straight after my idiotically clumsy entry into the Acre for the first time. But I had no choice anyway. Gustav kept the knife in his hand.
Belatedly I thought of my shield, and fumbled it off my forearm to bundle it up in my cloak.
“That’s better,” Marijane said scornfully when she saw what I was doing, and I felt slightly more cheerful.
There was none of the random bustle I had seen outside in the rest of the city. Here in the Acre people moved with a purpose, and not very many of them were moving. We traversed several blocks and saw perhaps a dozen people, not counting some toddling children. What had been shops on the ground level of the ramshackle houses seemed in general to have been turned into workshops; at any rate, as we passed by there was a hum of machinery from many doors and windows. Of course, the human community couldn’t support itself without some basic services; there were shops here and there, such as barber shops and one or two grocery stores, but fewer than I would have thought necessary to support the supposed thousands of Earthly inhabitants.
I didn’t ask questions, though.
We had been walking for perhaps five or ten minutes, following a twisted path, when we came to a house finer than most of the others, facing the broadest street traversing the Acre—125. Already my consternation at the way I had been treated was yielded to relief at once more being among human people: taller and thinner than most Vorra, with skins of familiar Earthly shades from blond through tan to chocolate, instead of the eternal sallow-brick of the Vorra; speaking Earthly languages, and signing their shops with Earthly lettering. But this fine house I was brought to was a shock.
It had large glass windows at street level, without shutters, and on these windows was painstakingly written in gold leaf or something similar, the words CENTRAL EARTHLY BANK AND EXCHANGE.
At the door a man of about my own age, smartly dressed by comparison with my companions—who didn’t look as if they worried much about their clothes—challenged us. Ken spoke for the others.
“Serf. First time in the Acre. Claims he’s on innocent business. But you never know with serfs.”
The doorkeeper nodded. “So you brought him round for a check?”
“That’s right.”
“Go on in, then. Wait till you’re sent for. Wait on the seats at the right of the hall.”
They took my arms and steered me inside.
Now this was nothing like anything I’d seen on Qallavarra before. It was a hall, rather dark, with a curving stairway rising to the upper floors from opposite the entrance. There were pictures of Earth on the walls—one of a city I didn’t recognize, two of hills and forests. There were benchlike seats, hard, plain, probably hand-carpentered from local wood, but indisputably of Earthly rather than Vorrish design. On the floor was a bluish plastic finish, and the walls were red and gray.
That was a jab at the Vorra, though it wasn’t likely many of them were ever in a position to appreciate it. Red, blue and gray together was a combination of colors reserved for the high nobility, and anyone else using it was apt to suffer.
The guard came in with us, spoke to a hard-eyed man in a black suit, received a curt grunt of agreement, and turned to Ken.
“You’ll have a few minutes to wait; they’re engaged with a visitor. But he says things are going well and you won’t have long to hang about.” “Fair enough.”
There was silence after that. Gustav took a whetstone from his pocket and began to hone the already razor-sharp edge of his knife. Ken and Marijane just watched me—the former with expressionless calm, the latter with distaste. I tried to say something to excuse myself a couple of times, but they merely ignored me.
I began to feel indignant eventually. What right did they have to treat a fellow-Earthman this way?
Before my impatience boiled to a head however, there was a commotion at the head of the stairs. A door slammed back on its hinges. There was a trampling of heavy feet on the landing, and the sound of voices raised in anger.
I looked up, craning my neck, and saw a Vorrish noble come stamping down the stairs.
Sheer reflex brought me to my feet when I recognized who it was. I had barely stood up when I was violently hauled back into my seat and my cloak was flung around my head suffocatingly.
“What the hell do you think you’re playing at?” hissed Marijane’s voice from close to my ear. “You’re in the Acre. Hasn’t that dented your thick skull yet? When one of the perditious Vorra goes by, you ignore him, catch?”
The heavy footsteps crashed across the hall and out of the door; I couldn’t see, but I heard perfectly because everything was done with the slam-bang lack of control stemming from pure rage.
“All right, take him upstairs,” I heard someone say.
When the cloak was dragged off my head again, I looked about me apologetically. “I didn’t mean to stand up,” I said. “I was just so shaken to see who it was.”
“What do you mean?” Gustav demanded.
“That was—uh—my employer. Pwill.”
“Don’t hang around!” That was the hard-eyed man the guard had spoken to when I was brought in, leaning over the balustrade of the landing above the stairs. Ken and Gustav hustled me roughly forward.
“His Honor Judge Olafsson,” Ken said to me out of the side of his mouth as I was escorted into the office. “He matters around here—not Pwill or anyone else.”
Olafsson looked up from behind his rough wooden desk. He was a man of great height, even when sitting. I guessed him to be about sixty, but he wasn’t old. His face was firm and unlined, and his eyes were bright, the lids unwrinkled. He was going bald on top of his high forehead. When he spoke, he revealed a resonant baritone voice.
“I gather this is a serf who’s come to the Acre for the first time—correct?’’
“That’s right, your honor.” Ken and Gustav spoke together.
“What’s your name?” Olafsson jabbed his index finger towards me.
“Shaw,” I said. “Gareth Shaw—uh—your honor.”
His expression didn’t change, but the tone of his voice did. ‘Whose service are you in?” he barked.
“The House of Pwill,” I said, blinking.
Olafsson’s frosty glare swept my companions. “Out!” he said. “And don’t mention this again, in the Acre or out of it. Understand?”
Completely baffled, my escort stuttered objections. Olafsson cut them short.
“Out!” he repeated crisply.
When they had gone, leaving only myself, Olafsson, and the hard-eyed man who stood at Olafsson’s right and seemed like some kind of personal assistant, the judge indicated a chair. I sat down gratefully, because my flight from the mob, my fall over the barrel and my rough treatment at the hands of Ken and Gustav had left me aching all over.
Tm sorry to have caused so much trouble, your honor,” I said. “I’ve never been to the Acre before, and I made the mistake—uh—of not taking off my house shield before—”
“How long have you
been on Qallavarra?” Olafsson didn’t appear to have heard what I just said.
“Seven months, about,” I said, swallowing.
Olafsson half-turned and cocked an eyebrow at the hard-eyed man. “What do you make of that, Sessions?” he said.
The hard-eyed man shrugged fractionally.
“Why is this the first time you’ve been to the Acre?” Olafsson went on, turning back to face me.
I couldn’t think of an answer I wasn’t ashamed of. I said nothing.
“Very well. Shaw. In service with Pwill. How did you manage to get this cushy post? I suppose it must be cushy, or we’d have seen you before.”
I said, “I was—uh—back home I was tutor to Pwill Heir Apparent.”
Sessions grunted. I didn’t like his expression at all.
“I see. So yours is a pretty responsible post? A position of trust?” Olafsson folded his huge hands on his desk.
“No, not very.” I was glad to seize the opportunity to explain. “You see, Pwill Heir Apparent was absolutely impossible to teach and on returning to Qallavarra they took me off that job. I just sort of act as steward and supervise household affairs and—”
Olafsson grunted. “So you have a lot of free time?”
“Not much, no.”
“Some?’
“Well-yes.”
“And this is your first visit to the Acre. Well, well. Tell me, Shaw, what did you come to Qallavarra for?”
I felt miserably like a naughty schoolboy being told off by a stern grandfather. I had to lick my lips before I could speak.
“To-*o see it for myself and—and the job is well paid and not very demanding really, and—”
Sessions put on an expression the twin of the one Marijane had worn when she first spotted my house shield on my arm.
Olafsson, though, seemed quite calm. He said, “And you’re well treated? Comfortable? What are your quarters like?”
“Quite well treated. UK—I have a room with water and heating and I have it to myself.”
Olafsson got to his feet. He towered over Sessions and myself; he must have been nearly two meters tall, I judged. He beckoned me as he went to the window.
“See that?” he said, pointing. “That’s the Acre out there. Fourteen thousand people in a few square blocks. There may be someone here who has a room with water and heating to himself; I don’t know of anybody. Water you hump in two-gallon cans from one of the six wells in the Acre. Food you get by trade with the few merchants on the fringes of the Acre who’ve not been intimidated out of trading with us. But Vorrish food lacks a few vitamins and has a few of its own we’re allergic to. How do you make out?”
I looked at the floor, “They brought some Earthly vegetables for me—I use a few of them I tend myself.”
“There’s no garden space in the Acre. We have to rely on pills.” Olafsson made it a fact, without hostility. “Now you have a piece of the picture. On the other side, we’re our own masters here; when your boss Pwill comes to see me he comes alone, without retainers, and likes it.”
“What for?”
“One of his family acquired some Earthly tastes during his spell as governor of Earth,” Olafsson said. “And they’re expensive here.”
“I-see.”
“Now we’re straight on the background. Why did you come to the Acre today?”
I repeated the explanation I’d given before, in detail.
Olafsson made no comment beyond glancing at Sessions and cocking his eyebrow again. He went back to his desk, apparently through with me.
“Well, carry on with your little errand,” he said. “I trust you’ll call on your less prosperous cousins occasionally in ‘tie future, before you retire to your country estate or whatever you’ll be rich enough to buy when you go home.”
Appalled at myself, I said, “Is there anything I can—can do? Like maybe bring in my vegetables, or something?”
“You seem to be doing very nicely,” Olafsson grunted. “A comfortable, responsible position with one of the great houses—what more could you want? Outl I’ve got business to attend to!”
CHAPTER V
THANKFULLY I beat a retreat down the stairs and back into the street. The guard on duty by the door gave me a curious look, but said nothing. Trying to seem composed, I walked till I found a corner where the streets were numbered so that I could work out where I had to head for now.
There seemed to be more people out and about than when I arrived; I checked my watch and figured that it was probably the midday break in work. Everyone seemed peaky and shabby, especially the young people, but there was a spring in their walk and a keenness in their faces which contrasted with the manner of the Vorra I had lived among so long.
I found my landmarks and started off towards—what was the name they had given to the man I was going to see? Kramer, Ken had said. I wanted now to finish my errand and get the hell out, and come back when I’d recovered from my shock.
I hadn’t gone very far, though, when I felt that someone was coming close behind me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw I was being dogged. I looked round.
“Keep walking!” instructed the now-familiar voice of Marijane. “Olafsson said not to talk to anyone about you. But he didn’t say one of your new friends shouldn’t come along and make sure you don’t miss your way.”
Her sarcasm was biting. I said, “Look, I know you don’t like me because I’m what you call a serf. All right, I understand that. But what the hell makes you so suspicious of me? I came here to do just what I said—want I should take oath on it, or something?”
“Oaths are for Vorra,” she answered. She had fallen in step beside me now, striding along with a kind of mannish determination. I couldn’t help looking at her; after all, she was the first Earthly girl I’d seen all these months. I’d hardly noticed any others among the people of the Acre so far; men seemed to be in the majority by four or five to one. Not only the way she walked was mannish. Aside from her loose fair hair and a certain delicacy in her face, and her underdeveloped bosom, she could have been a brother to Ken and Gustav in her coarse shirt—torn on one shoulder-work pants and sandals.
How old could she be? Eighteen?
“Don’t stare at me,” she said curtly.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m much sorrier—for you. I don’t like to have to hate one of my own kind. But get this through your solid skull, will you? Any of us in the Acre, like my own parents here, could be comfortable the way you are. They were pretty special people who carved out this foothold for us on Qallavarra. They had skills and talents the Vorra didn’t, which was why the perditious bastards wanted them here. Difference between them and you—they also had guts. So instead of selling themselves and getting privileged places on comfortable Vorrish estates they stuck it out for years in the Acre, till they got things the way they wanted them. Till the Vorra wanted what they had so bad they were prepared to treat with us on our terms. You got the picture yet?”
I nodded. “I know all this,” I said.
“Yes?” Her Hp curled a little. “Then how come you’re acting as you are?”
A sudden blinding inspiration hit me. I wished I’d thought of it in time to parry Olafsson’s cold disdain of a few minutes before.
“Look!” I said, feigning exasperation. Hasn’t it hit you that not everybody can be on the outside looking in? What’s the ultimate aim? To fix things all over Qallavarra—and back home, what’s more—so they’re the same as in the Acre. So that the Vorra ask our permission; so that we say what goes. How the hell do you think that’s going to come about if none of us sounds out the Vorrish way of living from the inside to know what makes it tick?”
Almost I’d convinced her. She was hesitating over what to say next. I waited.
“Then, if you’re—but what possessed you to walk into the Acre with a shield on?”
“Walk into the Acre?” I exploded. “I didn’t walk—I was chased! I know it was undignified of me to start running, b
ut I’d like to see the man who could stand his ground with a hostile crowd and a squad of eight armed soldiers out for his blood.”
One more push, and I’d won. I hurried on, “And what’s more, how long do you think I’d hold my position of trust with the House of Pwill if I was spending all my spare time in the Acre? The Vorra don’t like having us here; they’re beginning to catch on to what the Acre actually means. Why else do they go to the trouble of making these shows of strength around in the city!? Not to impress their own people, but to stop us from getting ideas.”
My mind was really turning in high gear now. The more I thought about what I was saying, in fact, the more I was sure it wasn’t all comet-dust.
“Well—I’m sorry,” Marijane said at last. “I see what you mean. It can’t be very pleasant to have to pose as a serf, I have to admit. The mere idea turns my guts over. So you’ll forgive me for jumping to conclusions. I thought anyone low enough to be a serf was low enough to sell out his own kind, spy for the Vorra—anything!”
“Well, I’m not that low,” I said curtly. “I wouldn’t have come here if I hadn’t been genuinely sent on a genuine errand. If I’d refused, that would have made worse trouble, though.”
Her eyebrows drew together. There was a trace of black on her forehead as though she’d wiped away perspiration with a grimy hand. With six wells to all these people, probably you didn’t get to wash very much.
I could tell it cost her an effort to throw her original view of me away; still, she did it, and I was grateful. She said, There’s Kramer’s—over there, next block. I won’t bother you any more. Good luck, anyway.”
She was turning to leave. “Just a moment!” I said. “In case things get better, can I know your name, and where to find you?”
“I’m Marijane Lee. Ken’s sister. You’ll usually find me around the alley where you came into the Acre. But for choice I’d rather you didn’t.”
She didn’t have to state a reason in words. I shrugged. “Fair enough. But maybe things will get better, hey?”