The Secret City

by Carol Emshwiller

  Except maybe my people won’t let anybody come back anymore. Maybe they want everybody safely home. Maybe they only let the rescuers come. But Allush could put herself on a rescuing team and keep snatching people back until she found me. Then, if she says come home with her, I would because she’d have seen both worlds by then.

  That’s my daydream—my wishful thinking.

  Youpas won’t talk to me in the native language nor to Jack in our language though Jack tries to get him to. That’s a relief. I don’t want them plotting things behind my back.

  When Emily rides back to meet us, I see her sizing us up. She’s been thinking. She talks to Corwin. Whatever she’s trying to convince him of, I can see she fails. He’s a down-to-earth kind of person. He won’t believe anything as unreasonable as what she might be thinking about us.

  Now everybody’s angry or upset except Jack. He’s as if a child, smiling out at everybody, hoping to change our mood. He’s enjoying himself in spite of us and in spite of his sore legs.

  A coyote sits in the grass and calmly watches the whole herd of us go by. It’s a real beauty—one of those with markings on his face sort of like some malamutes. Jack looks back at me. I nod and make the OK sign and he makes it back at me. My mood does lift as I look at everything as though through his eyes.

  We get back to Corwin’s late the next day. We three sleep in the barn again. We’ll move the cows to the far pasture in the morning and then get paid and leave. Youpas is in such a state I can’t tell what he’ll do. I don’t think he knows himself. He’s still not eating though Corwin coaxed him into drinking some coffee. Corwin is like Mollish, good to everybody even though he still thinks Youpas should be arrested.

  I don’t keep Youpas tied up except at night. I tell him we’ll go back. We’ll find her. I tell him we’ll follow our own tracks back. I say I’m not sure I’ll be good at that but he must be, he’s the mountain man. I tell him the beacons at the Secret City are the only hope for Jack to go home and for Allush to come back.

  Emily goes off to school next morning. She hugs me and Jack. Tells us to come back. “Please, please, please!” Jack understands, more or less, that this is good-bye. She says, “Say, I will, Jack. Say, I’ll come back.” And he says it. Then she tips her cowboy hat low and at an angle, yells, “Ay Yaa!” and off she goes. Strides off in her best boots. Too bad, because she was the one made Jack learn fast. But maybe he’s still motivated. Maybe he thinks we’ll soon be back.

  Then the three of us start up into the mountains, me with our useless (and generous) three hundred dollars. Meanwhile my shoes are falling apart, the soles worn through. I’ve already put cardboard in. I’m jealous of Jack’s new boots. My feet will be sopping, not only every time we cross a stream, but even in slightly marshy spots. And it’s getting colder. I’ll be in real trouble pretty soon.

  This first part of the trail is easy. We hike back beyond the wealthy houses, then the road … (I’d stop and steal boots, but I don’t want to do that yet again and I keep thinking Allush will make me moccasins like hers. I know that’s crazy but it pleases me to think it. It even pleases me to be uncomfortable until she makes them for me.) … then the dirt road. It’s afterwards, from the cliff on—from where I punched Jack—that I’ll lose the way. I was watching Allush so intently I didn’t pay much attention to anything.

  I lead through this first part. Jack limps but he’s pretty much OK. Corwin did a good job of binding him up. I found myself a stout stick for a new cane. Youpas lags behind. He doesn’t care where we go. He stops to rest any time he feels like it. We keep having to go back for him. He’s so depressed I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t deliberately try to get us all lost. Or lose me and Jack and then go on and get lost by himself. I guess he doesn’t think Allush has come back. He’s heard her say too often how she wanted to go home.

  But now even Jack looks depressed. I never thought he would. But I don’t blame him. Not only has he had to say good-bye to Emily, but here he is hiking back into the mountains, sleeping on the ground again. I try to tell him about the Secret City. I’d ask Youpas to do it, but I don’t like them talking to each other when I can’t tell what they’re saying. Not that Youpas would perk up enough to do it anyway.

  Jack is still asking the names of things and practicing the words he knows. Some actual phrases. “That up in there is blue. This down in here is all green and there is green, too. What is that color over there? Rainbow. Rainbow. Wow! Where water is it? Outta sight. We have it. Betasha.”

  We camp that first night just beyond the houses in the same spot Jack and I did, hidden in the trees a few yards from the stream. I tie up Youpas’ hands. He doesn’t care.

  I wake up smelling coffee and bacon. We hadn’t brought any bacon and no real coffee, only instant. There’s a whinny and the thumping of a hobbled horse. At first I think I’m back with Corwin, bringing down the cows. Then I wake up enough to know that can’t be. I struggle out of my sleeping bag. Trying to hurry makes it all the slower.

  And here, yet again and more of a surprise than ever, is Emily.

  I force myself to slow down, put on my pants and shoes. I walk over and squat down beside her. I accept a cup. I sit and sip. I feel just as resigned and silent as her father was. How get out of this mess? What to say? Thanks for the bacon? Thanks for breakfast?

  I say, “Does your father know you’re here?”

  “Of course not. Well, maybe by now. At least he knows I’m somewhere I’m not supposed to be.”

  She caught up with us easily because she has her pony. She actually went through a whole day of school before following us. She’s still in her school clothes, that flowery blouse and jeans. Jack already made a fuss about that blouse. She actually has her homework with her. It’s on the ground beside her. She must have been working on it before she made breakfast.

  Jack can’t stop smiling. Youpas is horrified. I’m worried. I told Corwin I could keep things in line, but now I’m not so sure I can.

  Youpas leans close to me and says, “We have to get rid of her. We can’t go anywhere near the Secret City with one of them.”

  He’s right of course, but I decide I’ll just sit down and enjoy this next half hour, bacon and decent coffee. There’s nothing else to do.

  ALLUSH

  I CAN’T BELIEVE HERE I AM, NOT ONLY LOOKING FOR two lost … I mean now just one lost man and Lorpas … but also looking for Youpas. He’s a wealthy man. Definitely one of the “right kind.” I can’t imagine our Secret City butcher owning one of those towers. If he’s the right kind I’m not eager to be it.

  I wonder if Mollish could have been my real mother? I’ve heard that our people handed babies around like that more than most natives here do, though they say the Chinese used to do it. Mollish did treat me as her child but I sure didn’t treat her as my mother. Actually I didn’t treat my mother as my mother either. But that Mollish is my real mother is the only reason I can think that they wouldn’t know what kind I was. Is that another reason I shouldn’t go back to our world?

  But there’s another reason that Youpas should go back. Here, he’s killed three archeologists. If they ever find out who did it, he’ll be WANTED.

  But wouldn’t that be nice … to have Mollish as your mother? I look like her, too.

  I feel worse again—that I can’t talk to her about it. I wrap the scarf close around my neck and shoulders. I tell it I’m sorry—sorry, sorry.

  But I don’t think I’ll ever figure out why I’m not the right kind. I’ve thought and thought about how the people looked there. Back at that fancy dinner, everybody looked the same, the waiters, the dancers, and yet everybody seemed to know about me right away. Did Olowpas dress me some special way? Wrong kind of clothes? Or did he make some gestures I didn’t understand?

  Will they look at Youpas and know right away that he’s the right kind?

  The waiter stepped on my toe surreptitiously. Spilled things on me. Well, only water. Probably ruined that blouse, but
I’m not one to care much about clothes. Sitting right there, listening to that screeching, I was wishing I was back here and up in one of my trees.

  But I don’t want to be any kind of a kind. How come our parents never said a word about it? They must have been ashamed that there was an underclass. Maybe nobody ever talked about it. But why didn’t Mollish tell me? She wasn’t afraid to say anything. I think she was the wrong kind, but up there in the Secret City she got to be the most important one of all of us. Her death is the worst thing. Lorpas thought she was the last of the old ones. Maybe she didn’t tell me about untouchables because I was one, too, and she didn’t want me to feel bad, but I wouldn’t have cared. I didn’t even care if I was the wrong kind when I was there.

  My parents didn’t know how to do anything for themselves. All they did was take notes on this world so that when they got back they could give programs about it. But the way we lived—they were hardly really on this world at all—isolated up there because this world wasn’t good enough for us. I wonder what they thought they were taking notes on. Maybe just flora and fauna. Though I was the one knew all about those.

  How I’m dressed now … will I look all right for the Down? For sure not my hair. Mollish’s green scarf is nice and warm and wooly, but is a handknit scarf civilized enough? And this weird suit. The shoes are part of the pants. I’d need a pair of scissors to get rid of the shoes and keep the pants. The pants have pockets all down the sides just like Olowpas’ pants did, so they make me look bowlegged. They seemed to like that look back there, but I hope Lorpas never sees me in them.

  Lorpas said, as long as we went east, there was no way we wouldn’t end up on the main road. He told about which town he had to avoid because he’d been in jail there, so at least I know where he isn’t. He told about how nice the old woman he lived with was even though she was a native. He was trying to get me to like it here, but I wonder if I could have stayed if I’d tried. They were so fast. Besides, that’s how Lorpas got burned. If I’d fought they might have burned me, too. I wonder how he is. I don’t think he’s dead, though. Wouldn’t his body be there at the cliff if he was?

  Before I start in any direction at all, I should wash my hair. For sure Lorpas will never recognize me with my hair this short and might not even with the stiffener and the curls and the black are washed out. How am I going to prove I’m me?

  BUT I DON’T START. I SIT THE WAY I DID WHEN I was next to Mollish—to her bones that is. Only when I remind myself that I have her scarf right here, around my neck, do I think: she’s really dead.

  I notice things more than usual. There’s still a lot of little creatures around. Junkos, jays…. Something keeps squawking. That’s exactly how I feel. I imitate it. It doesn’t help. I stop and just stare. The aspen rustle. Right in front of me there are leaves more golden than gold. I pick up a dead pennyroyal seed-head, crush it and hold it to my nose. I rub it on my hands. Then I decide. Nobody wants to be up there in the Secret City in the winter. Even Mollish didn’t want to spend another winter up there. All the more reason not to go there. If I don’t look too odd dressed like this I’ll go down.

  Why, why didn’t our parents let us grow up with the natives! I hardly know anything about either world. And if my parents had lived in the Down with the natives, we’d have had telephone numbers. Maybe Lorpas has a telephone number.

  But I can’t sit here and feel bad all day. I’m going Down.

  LORPAS

  I WATCH JACK WATCHING EMILY. I WATCH HER watching him. Is it a rule that people have to fall in love with the most unsuitable mate? Except I didn’t. I fell in love with the very first suitable woman I met. I fell for Allush because she was my kind. Of course Jack and I grew up completely the opposite, I, surrounded by natives, and Jack, surrounded by only us. I guess it makes sense, the most rare is always the most attractive.

  But Emily is something special—of any kind of person, theirs or ours. Looks like a pale little waif but she’s a tough and competent motherless child. She has that special smile, lips working, as if she thinks she shouldn’t smile. There’s that shy duck of her head. No wonder Jack is so taken. I wonder, though, does he really appreciate her as I do and as one of her own kind would? Or is she just intriguingly odd to him?

  Whatever happens … and it better not … I’ll not let any harm come to her. Besides, I told Corwin I’d take care of things. He trusts me and I promised. He’d have gone to the police if I hadn’t.

  But, for sure, if Emily is here, Corwin will be right behind. It won’t be hard for him to guess where she’s gone. And for sure, Emily knows he’ll follow. For all I know, she left clues all along the trail just to make sure he would. She knows she can count on him for anything and everything.

  Emily wants to talk to me privately. Everybody seems to think I’m in charge. Ever since I was halfway grown-up they always did. Even Mother. Soon as Father died, I was the boss. That is, the boss of everything except for the decision about going home. The rule was, that she should go when they came for us and that I should go back with her whether I wanted to or not.

  Emily and I hike back down the river trail to a pleasant sitting spot. You can hardly tell the sounds of blowing cottonwood leaves from the sound of the stream. Everything rustling. And on top of that, the sounds of birds. Mostly raucous jays. Emily sits with her feet hanging over the grassy bank, almost in the water, and I sit on a rock.

  I’m worried though, about leaving Jack and Youpas by themselves. What are they going to think up? Of course I’d never know anyway, whether I was there or not.

  I say, “You know and I know, your father’s right behind you.”

  She ignores me and starts right off with, “Who are you guys? You’re not like us. And you’re not brothers. And your names—I heard you—Jack isn’t even named Jack. You know what you look like to me? Neanderthals. We studied all about you. Did your people hide out someplace and keep on existing? Did you even keep your secret Neanderthal language? I never heard of a language with sniffs. Except you don’t know how to speak it, do you, but Jack does and so does that other one.”

  Better that than the reality. I’ll say, You guessed it. But before I can, she says, “But that’s not what I really, really, really think. I think you came from some other planet.”

  There it is.

  Is she planning to save the world? From us? But it’s us who are afraid of her kind and always have been.

  If we really are from a world where some kind of Neanderthal types survived … not so dumb, by the way … then, if the natives take us over, it won’t be the first time some dexterous, fine boned version of Homo sapiens sapiens has wiped us out.

  What are we supposed to do when a native discovers what we are? We haven’t faced that problem, at least that I know of. Or at least they never told me. Maybe they never told me because what they did was too vicious to contemplate. Would my people do that? And after all their talk about being better—kinder—than the natives? And who was in charge of taking care of that … that disposal? And what if said knowledgeable Homo sapiens sapiens is Emily? Take her along? Show her the Secret City?

  I won’t let any harm come to her if my life depends on it. First Ruth and then this girl. I’ve seldom felt as close to natives as I have with these two. And Corwin, also. The good father.

  But Emily says she did the opposite of leaving a trail. She says, “My dad can’t follow. I laid a trail off to the side. At least it’ll take him a long time to get back on track. Where are you going, anyway? There’s nothing way out here and it’s getting cold.”

  “It is.”

  Best not to confess anything—yet. If ever. Thank goodness she’s a kid and nobody will believe her. “Do you have your sleeping bag?”

  “‘Course. And you know what? I don’t believe Jack is dumb. He’s just as smart as anybody. Maybe smarter. Look how fast he learns things. But, and you know what? He’s never even used a spoon and fork before. He’s never even eaten peas. He didn’t know what they were
. And he ate the whole apple, stem and seeds and all. And how can you not like chocolate?”

  “Emily, can you just keep quiet about this for awhile? Maybe not talk about it even with Corwin?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Please. Just for now.”

  “Maybe.”

  BUT I’VE FORGOTTEN ALL ABOUT YOUPAS AND JACK. On the way back up the path, I suddenly get suspicious. I tell Emily to stay behind me and keep quiet while I creep up on our campsite.

  I come upon them whispering furiously together. Looks like Jack is taking my side. But then Youpas grabs a firebrand. I rush in just as he swings it at Jack.

  There it is again. I’m getting tired of always being, not only the one in charge, but the main target. Though, well, Jack has that scratch across his cheek and a not-so-good ankle. But Youpas doesn’t have a mark on him that I know of. I’d like to change that.

  I sit on Youpas’ legs, catch my breath, and check on the burned arm of my jacket. That old corduroy jacket is looking worse than ever.

  Nobody says a word.

  Jack has found the piece of rope we’ve been tying Youpas with. Emily stands by looking worried, but not for long. Here she is, already back from the stream, with a cold wet cloth for my burns but I don’t have any.

  I wave her away.

  And now, just as I figured but sooner than I thought—sooner than Emily thought, too—here’s Corwin. He rides up on his little blue roan. Quiet, not even a Hello to anybody. Always quiet when he’s angry or upset.

  Youpas, tied and hobbled, but still the butcher, says, “She knows, doesn’t she. You know what to do, and if you can’t do it, I can.”

  I’m sure Corwin is about to say the same thing about Youpas though not quite as drastic as what Youpas wants for Emily. Just the police. I can see it on Corwin’s face as he looks at me. An: I told you so, sort of look, and: I was afraid you couldn’t keep him out of trouble.