“Mr. Lanning speaks of a Task, Miss Holmes,” he resumed at length. “Have you any idea what it is?”
It was extraordinary how animation suddenly took hold of the girl. Colour mounted into her smooth cheeks and brightness came into her grey eyes. Peter noticed her long, slender hands clenched with sudden emotion in her lap.
“Of course I know what the Task is, Excellence! It is the sacred duty that Ijax has assigned to us. All of us, throughout the world.”
“Ijax?” Peter frowned. “Who—or what—is Ijax?”
The girl hesitated. “You—you don’t know, then? Mr. Lanning did not tell you?”
As Peter shook his head the girl felt inside her robe and from an inner pocket produced a small idol. It stood perhaps four inches high, a delicately carved, squatting figure with folded arms, the face square and expressionless. The stomach was distended and the head apparently bald. Vaguely it reminded him of photographs he had seen of Buddha.
He looked at the image in wonder, lifted it up, turned it over, then set it down on the table. The sunshine gleamed through the thing as though it was made of green glass.
“You see,” Alza said, with a touch of reverence, “everybody in the world has an Ijax. And we all listen to him too, once every four weeks, usually about midnight. It is he who gives us instructions about the Task.”
She picked the idol up, smiled at ut in a fascinated kind of way, then returned it inside her robe.
“Seems odd to me,” Peter said, rubbing his chin, “I mean it savours of idolatory, and that’s the last thing I can reconcile with a city like this whose science has reached such a development.”
“There are Temples of Ijax all over the world,” the girl said, after a pause. “Into them, every month, go the devotees of Ijax to receive their latest orders concerning the Task.... Tonight, for instance, happens to be the time of meeting for this month. If your Excellence would care to go with me and see for yourself—?”
“You bet I would!” Peter declared readily. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll go on a sightseeing tour most of the day, drop in somewhere for meals, and then go to this Temple tonight. How’s that?”
“Admirable. Since it is your command,” Alza agreed, getting to her feet. “Would you care to make the journey by plane? I rather think it would be best, in your high position.”
“By plane it is,” Peter assented, getting up. “Where do we start from?”
“Right here, Excellence. The robots will take us to the airport.”
The girl walked across to the switchboard and pressed the requisite buttons, then he stood waiting as a robot glided towards her. Calmly she settled in the six supporting arms. Peter allowed the same thing to happen to him, then he waited in rather uneasy wonder as whirring helicopter screws suddenly sprouted from the heads of the things and Alza Holmes and he were lifted into the air and borne like thistledown across the great room.
As they intercepted an actuating photoelectric beam the centre window opened and they floated out over the thousand-foot canyon of street. Peter closed his eyes and felt himself sweating. When he dared to look again they were soaring high over the giant buildings and the girl was looking at him in polite amusement, the warm summer wind streaming the blonde hair out behind her head.
“Is there something the matter. Excellence?” she enquired gravely, still lounging with perfect assurance in the robot’s arms.
“I—I feel like a witch on a broomstick,” Peter muttered, trying to grin. “Besides, I suffer from astrophobia—fear of heights, that is.”
“Oh?” Alza looked down casually into the yawning gulf and then shrugged. “I am sure that must be unpleasant. I seem to remember it was a disease of the ancient races....” She coloured very slightly in embarrassment. “I am sorry Excellence, I didn’t mean to imply— My words were ill chosen.”
“That’s all right,” Peter assured her. “Compared with your standards, Alza, I am ancient.... And don’t mind me using your first name, will you? I like to be sociable.”
Wonder was in the grey eyes but the girl made no comment. So, closing his eyes and wishing his stomach would stop turning over Peter clung to the robot arms tightly until at last the girl and he were set down gently in a vast airport on top of a building. He stood up, staggered momentarily, then gazed about him on flying machines of all sizes, wingless and utterly unlike those of seven centuries—or was it seven hours?—ago.
Towards one of the smallest machines the girl led the way. In different parts of the airport mechanics moved keeping a respectful distance, watching the rather queasy Peter as he followed the girl’s graceful figure.
Opening the airlock of the small machine she motioned him inside it. Peter settled down thankfully in a small cabin, relaxing his limbs in an air-pressured chair. Presently the girl got in beside him and he watched her skilful hands operating controls on a dashboard whose complications were quite beyond him.
“We have three methods of flight incorporated in the machine,” she explained. “Rocket-propulsion, radio-beam control, and atomic power. I think the atom motor will be the best for our purpose, Excellence, in that we’ll be free to wander as we will, separated from beam control.”
“Good enough.” Peter muttered, feeling a trifle less dizzy.
Somewhere in the vessel behind them an almost silent motor purred. Shot like a bullet from a gun the machine catapulted up from the roof and climbed with dizzying velocity to 8,000 feet; then the girl levelled out and moved a switch, which opened a floor panel beneath their feet. Below, framed by a four-foot square of warpless glass, lay Metropolita.
Struggling against vertigo Peter looked down and saw the city now in all its massive splendour...the traffic levels, the pedestrian ways, the spacious parks, the gigantic buildings, the radio-beam towers—and presently, as they flew onwards, one particular tower taller than all the rest. He had seen it from his suite, as a matter of fact, and wondered about it. It reared fully four thousand feet, far higher than the buildings. At the summit it tapered to support a giant cradle carrying a gleaming bowl. From this bowl, trailing down within the tower’s metalwork, were what seemed to be heavily insulated cables. Down they went until they were lost to sight in the city below.
“That’s the biggest tower I ever saw,” Peter confessed at last.
“The Grand Tower, Excellence,” Alza replied. “All part of the Task.”
“Fly right over it, slowly,” Peter instructed. “I want a close look at it.”
The girl manoeuvred the machine perfectly and they dived to within twenty-five feet of the Tower, hovering with helicopter screws spinning noiselessly. They were now directly over the colossal bowl in the Tower top. Peter looked down intently, surprised to discover a few figures at work in the bottom of the bowl, mere dots by comparison with their surroundings. Some of them were staring up at the stationary flyer.
“I—I say!” Peter gasped suddenly. “I do believe— Got a pair of binoculars, Alza?” he asked quickly.
“Binoc—?” She looked puzzled for a moment; then comprehending she closed a switch. Automatically a high magnification lens slid over the warpless floor glass and the figures below leapt into bold, pin-sharp relief. Half a dozen men in the usual flowing robes were down there, and among them, looking up, was Mark Lanning!
“The Adviser-Elect himself!” Peter exclaimed, narrowing his eyes. “Well, think of that! All right, Alza, move on....”
She restored the glass to normal and sent the machine forward again. Peter sat thinking for a moment or two and rubbed his chin. “He told me he had important business, but I never guessed it was at the top of a four thousand foot Tower! What’s he up to, Alza? What’s the Grand Tower for anyway?”
“As I understand the Task, the Tower will eventually be used to hold moondust,” the girl answered. “By that I mean the giant bowl at the summit will be filled with moondust.”
“Moondust?” Peter stared at her. “What the devil’s that?”
“I have
no idea, Excellence. That is Mr. Lanning’s particular province. My own part in the Task is quite small—purely three hours supervision of excavating machines every day, when I have finished secretarial duties. Today of course I am with you so my usual work is neglected.”
Peter did not say ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ even though he felt like it. His interest was definitely aroused: for the first time since he had awakened in the fantastic Twenty-Eighth Century he was beginning to feel that everything was not as perfect as it seemed to be, In a word, something was going on!
Thoughtfully he gazed below again. There was something else too now which was puzzling. From the base of the Grand Tower, clearly visible in the unwavering summer air, there radiated six wide channels, like spokes of a wheel, radiating from the hub. They went in perfectly straight lines, carved through the city in six different directions and then onwards and outwards to the flat countryside which surrounded Metropolita. As far as Peter could see they extended, heedless of rise and dip in the landscape, right out of sight over the horizon.
“What’s the idea of the channels?” he asked the girl, but she only shook her blonde head.
“I don’t know, Excellence. I excavate in them, and at times even dig, but I don’t know their exact purpose.”
“You...you dig in them? A girl like you?”
Her full lips smiled as she glanced at him. “Why not? I enjoy my part in the Task. And I am strong—very strong. I have Class A Woman’s Certificate for health. My parents were Class A with distinction.”
Peter sighed and raised his eyebrows; then he gave more orders.
“Fly low over that channel straight ahead.”
Alza obeyed without question and crawled at a mere twenty-five feet over one of the vast gouges in the landscape outside the city. This channel, as far as Peter could tell, travelled due north. Within it, as the girl piloted the machine onwards, he saw men and women at work, some with a homely pick and shovel and others operating mechanical excavators and electric drills. In other parts of the channel, nearer the Tower base, something of dull coppery shade was being packed into the channel with infinite care.
All along the line, for three hundred miles and more, the men and women toiled, the greatest scene of activity being where the channel had yet to be made across rough, uncultivated landscape.
“If they keep on going,” Peter said musingly, “they’ll encircle the Earth.”
“Yes, Excellence,” the girl agreed. “That is the idea. Even under the ocean beds.”
“But damnit, why? Haven’t the people anything better to do than this?”
“What else is there when science does everything for one?”
The words brought back Mark Lanning’s own statement. Peter hesitated, then said no more for a while. The memory of the word ‘Moondust’ returned to him. He had heard of it somewhere—not here in the twenty-eight century but somewhere at home in the days of Judith and Michael. Michael had mentioned it once, casually, during a conversation on science. Peter sighed as the memory refused to come fully into the open.
“Turn around, Alza,” he said finally. “We’ll get back to the city for dinner. I’m getting hungry.”
“Yes, Excellence.”
“And,” he added, looking at her half shyly, “don’t keep calling me ‘Excellence’! Before I got here I was a very commonplace sort of guy and I’d like to stay that way if I can. You’ve let me call you ‘Alza’ so I insist you call me Peter!”
The girl’s eyes went wide. “B...but the liberty...!”
“I order you to! At least when nobody else is with us,”
“Very well—Peter,” she said, and Peter sat back with a vaguely satisfied grin as she swung the machine round and streaked back towards Metropolita.
CHAPTER FOUR
MOONDUST
It was noon when Alza settled the flyer in the lower levels of the city, parking it in a public airport.
“You are sure you wish to take the risk of the people seeing you?” she asked Peter, as she switched on the motor.
“How are they to know the difference? I’m dressed the same as any other man as far as I can see.”
“Except for that.” Alza nodded to a curious pentagon design on his sleeve. He looked at it in surprise, noticing it for the first time. “It represents the highest rank in the world,” the girl explained.
Peter grinned, pulling the loose sleeve round so that the outside was nearly inside between his arm and body.
“That settles that!” he said. “If anybody asks, I’ve got a stiff arm or something. Now let’s go.”
Alza looked at him curiously then she climbed out of the cabin and he followed her. He gazed round the airport and upon the gigantic buildings looming far above them on every side.
“There’s an automat a little distance off,” Alza said. “If you will follow me, Excel... I mean Peter?”
“I’m not going to follow you; I’ll walk with you. Believe it or not I find your company most enjoyable.”
“I’m glad,” the girl murmured. “I try to be helpful.”
Side by side they walked along the pedestrian way, passing by men and women who gave them no more than a glance. Peter could see no difference in the types despite the passage of seven centuries. There were tall ones and short ones, dark and fair, fat and thin, the only difference being that every one walked with complete erectness and in the bloom of health. There was no stooped shoulders, no signs of consumption, no maimed. The one thing Peter did not like was the identical clothing worn by both men and women—ankle length robes for the men and knee length for the women. At a distance he would never have been able to distinguish Alza Holmes from a million other young women. Gone completely was individuality....
Within the automat Peter naturally expected to find tables—or al least a long self-service counter. To his surprise everybody was reclining full length on air beds, stretched out in lazy comfort and tended by robots moving to and fro across a waste of shining floor.
“There are two beds over there,” Alza said, nodding.
She led the way and reclined with easy grace on the first one while Peter lay down on the second—though scarcely with easy grace. The idea was new to him.
“I shan’t be able to eat lying down,” he protested.
The girl turned her head to look at him. “Yes you will, Peter. You’ll see.”
He did. Service was prompt, Robots arrived and operated something under the beds which tilted the head-end up, and following Alza’s example of complete ease, even to closing of the eyes, Peter allowed himself to be fed with gentle, silvery metal hands. Which in fifteen minutes gave him a meal as perfect as the one he had had in his suite. A kind of wine followed, then the beds were lowered again and he and the girl lay flat once more.
“One certainly does oneself proud in the Twenty-Eighth Century,” Peter murmured dreamily.
“We have learned, Peter, to rest our minds and bodies completely in those periods when no action is called for,” the girl answered.
“Did you pay for our meal?” he asked.
“No. Meals are provided by the State. It will seem a startling innovation to you, but we found out long ago that the root cause of trouble is usually hunger, so the Federation decided that meals for all should be a State concern. It makes things a lot easier.”
“Are you telling me?” Peter exclaimed. “The politicians of my time would go bald at the mere suggestion. But what about money? Don’t you earn a salary as a secretary, for instance?”
“No, It is my chosen vocation. I do it because I like it. Money too was found to be the cause of all wars and economic crises and so was abolished when the new order was formed. Everything now is done by barter.”
Peter became silent, lying perfectly at peace. For a few moments he studied, man-like, the lissome curves of the girl stretched so near to him, her eyes closed, head pillowed on her arm—then he looked beyond her to the other men and women lying down as far as he could see across the great ro
om. Gradually one impression rooted itself in his mind. They all looked the same! Not in appearance, but in expression. He was accustomed to seeing happy faces, moody faces, exasperating faces even—but here there was one expression shared by all alike, except perhaps Alza; a dreamlike look, a vacancy, as though thoughts were far away from the immediate surroundings.
In fact it struck Peter so strongly he had to speak about it.
“It is probably because most people have so little else to think about outside the Task,” Alza said finally. “Everything else is done for them, you see. You do notice it among the great mass of the people, but among the intelligentsia, the circle in which you and I move, there is more individuality.”
“Moonstruck,” Peter muttered. “That’s how I’d describe them. And that reminds me! Moondust! Wish I could think what it means. I’ve heard all about it somewhere, once.”
Alza remained looking at him, her face sideways, a faint smile on her full mouth. Then another question popped into Peter’s mind.
“I suppose there’s no crime?”
“Not any more.”
“There has been, then?” Peter asked.
“Up to five years ago,” Alza replied. “At that time the last great criminal on Earth was brought to justice—one Anton Shaw. I suppose he was about the cleverest and most malignant scientists in history. He did his best to rule the world, anyway. With his departure society resumed its usual crimeless state and has been like that ever since.”
“What happened to him? Was he executed—assuming you still have the death penalty, that is?”
“No, but he was exiled, as far as I remember. I didn’t really pay any great attention at the time.”
“Well, it doesn’t sound to me like a sure way of suppressing a criminal scientist.” Peter sighed; then for a long while he relaxed again, the persistent memory of moondust trying to struggle into his consciousness.
“What’s your impression of Mark Lanning?” the girl asked him after a while.
“Lanning?” Peter stirred lazily. “A bit strange—decent enough under his icy cloak, I suppose. You’ve known him longer than I; what do you think?”
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