by Damon Knight
The man in the lead had a sallow face, jowls loose and shapeless, a blob for a nose. There was a dead cigar clenched in his wide, lipless mouth. He did not turn his head, but glanced from side to side as he walked. His little eyes passed incuriously over Dick and Clay; his gloomy expression did not change; he walked on.
The crowd was beginning to flow back into the corridor, “Who was that?” Dick demanded.
Clay gave him a sidelong glance. “You don’t know? That’s right, you’ve never seen him. That was the Boss.”
The crowd flowed along, brilliant, glittering, with a cloud of scent and a murmur of laughter. Here were half a dozen East Indians in turbans, hawk-nosed and dark, with flashing eyes; here came a priest of Eblis and a gypsy mountebank, disputing, arm in arm; there was the famous Mrs. Wray, whose intrigues were the talk of Eagles; here came a work detail and a cart loaded with monstrous slabs of flooring. The corridor boomed, clattered, rippled with echoes: this was life. The owner of all this must be a fortunate man; what more could anyone ask in the world?
But if the end of it was nothing but that gray frog-face, and that expression of settled gloom? …
They passed a doorway guarded by an ape-faced fellow in black; the door had a familiar G and crossbones symbol—a Gismo Room. Dick understood now perfectly well how Eagles was organized, and why it could be no other way. All the Gismos in Eagles belonged to the Boss, just as all the slobs were his; that was an elementary precaution. There was an elite guard that watched the Gismos, and an even more select corps that did nothing but watch the guards, with an elaborate tradition of rivalry and hatred between them.
There were hundreds of Gismos in Eagles, pouring out a wealth of things all day and all night long; but even here, there was a limit to their number. There had to be a quota system—so much for a casual visitor, so much more for a Secretary’s favorite, so much more again for the Secretary himself. That made sense of the whole tumultuous, unrelenting struggle for position that went on in Eagles: position to command more luxuries and pleasures for yourself, and to dispose of them for others. Then there was the danger, too, that made it a game fit for a man to play: with each step up the pyramid, your position became more exposed, there were more people who would like to pull you down. It was danger that put the spice in it, that made eyes sparkle and lips gleam red.
Crossing one of the wide plazas at mid-level, Dick happened to glance up and see a familiar figure leaning over the balcony above. It was only for an instant, then the bright red tunic was gone into the crowd.
“Someone you know?” asked Clay, following his glance.
“Keel, I think. He’s out of sight now.” He and the blond young man had met in the corridors several times since Keel’s ducking, but each time they had only nodded distantly; Keel’s crowd and Dick’s did not mix, and so far there had been no further trouble.
But there had been something in Keel’s expression just now, or the tilt of his head: a hint of that good-humored mockery which was somehow more disturbing than malice ….
“He won’t bother you,” said Clay absently. “No gang feuds; that’s the rule, and the Boss enforces it.”
“He could challenge me,” said Dick, and grinned self-consciously. He had been working out under old Finnegan the stick-master, and his natural aptitude for the stick had so far improved that none of Vivian’s other protégés could stand against him.
“Well, you’re not worried about that, are you? Forget it.”
They had ridden up a ramp and through a doorway where Dick had never gone before; now they were in a long glass-roofed esplanade which paralleled a sunken railway track. Below them, two cars were standing idle, one loaded with sheets of burnished golden metal, the other empty. The tracks dwindled almost to a point; beyond, through the glass, Dick caught sight of a slender peak of metal, bright against the pale sky.
A nervous fellow in the fur jacket and shako of the Household Guard was fussing about on the platform, superintending a small flotilla of chairs, twenty or twenty-five of them, which he had got jammed up against a V-shaped barricade. He came bustling over with a list in his hand: “Clay? Jones? All right, then we can start. Just a moment.” He turned; there was some sort of disturbance up at the point of the V. Standing, Dick saw a red-faced man in the lead chair striking at the face of a slob who was holding the gate closed. The stick rose and fell deliberately; the slob, vainly trying to protect his head, fell out of sight, but another one instantly took his place. There was a muffled roar from the red-faced man, who raised his stick again; but the nervous Guard officer shouted, “All right, open!” The gate swung back; the chairs began to move. The officer pushed by toward a chair of his own, muttering and gnawing his mustache.
Once past the bottleneck, the chairs spread out into a scattered flock. Dick recognized two or three people he knew slightly, but most of the group seemed to be visitors; there was an elderly lady in a hideous, flowered mantle, two middle-aged couples, a lank young man in a Western hat. The red-faced man was still in the lead; Dick saw his head go back as he tipped up a bottle.
He transferred his attention to the Tower, which became gradually more visible through the glass roof of the passage. As they drew nearer, he could see that its lower stages were cross-hatched with scaffolding, a little like a tower built of matchsticks, from the center of which the metal tip protruded … and it was only with that thought that he began to realize how huge the Tower really was.
The passage was very long, the Tower farther away than it seemed, and the closer they got, the more incredibly, monstrously big it appeared. The huge buttresses began to loom over them; the distant, sunlit tip of the tower grew tiny by comparison, glinting up there like a half-fallen star. Dick felt a curious shrinking of his own person, which he did not like: instead of the Tower growing larger, it was as if he and all the rest of the human beings had grown small—small as grasshoppers.
“We leave the chairs here,” called the nervous officer. He was standing at the end of the passage; beyond him, through the glass doors, they could see a dark space in which trucks moved and loops of cable hung out of vacancy; there was a muffled roar of engines and a clatter of riveting hammers which made the officer’s voice almost inaudible. The guests were getting out of their chairs and converging on him; the boys were wheeling the empty chairs away.
“We are now about to enter the Tower of Eagles, the tallest man-made object in the entire world,” said the officer’s high voice. “One thousand, six hundred feet in height. The Empire State Building in New York was one thousand, two hundred and fifty feet in height, the Great Pyramid at Gizeh was only four hundred and eight-one feet in height when intact. The Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, is nine hundred eighty-four and one-quarter feet high, or less than two-thirds the height of Eagles Tower. The tower has a triangular crosssection and is constructed of a unique ferro-platinum alloy throughout. The engraved plates of the exterior are of fourteen-carat gold, and each represents more than eighty hours of hand labor by skilled craftsmen. Kindly step this way.”
They passed through the doorway into a vast space of confusing shapes and sounds. Near at hand, the interior had a finished appearance and was brightly lighted; farther away, there was a gulf of darkness broken only by shafts of dim sunlight, and the occasional blue flare of a torch. “This,” shouted the officer over the din, “is the Grand Staircase which when completed will rise the entire height of the Tower.” Floodlights illumined the bottom of the distant staircase; it swept in a graceful curve up around a central pillar, and was lost in the darkness of the staging above. Every second step had a niche, in which a ten-foot statue stood. The marble of the steps themselves, as well as the banister, railings and walls, seemed to be intricately carved and inlaid.
“To the left of the Staircase,” the voice went on, “you will observe the Edmond Cenotaph, erected in memory of Edmond Crawford, second Boss of Colorado.” This was an enormous wedding cake of granite and white metal; there was an inscription, which they
were too far away to read, and the whole thing seemed to form a base for what Dick guessed was a heroic figure of some kind, but only the feet were visible.
The group was straggling off to the left, into a large and temporary-looking open elevator. There was room for them all, and to spare; a small truck could have been driven onto the car. With nothing but a flimsy folding gate between them and vacancy, the car jerked and slowly rose.
Above the first stage, the interior of the Tower revealed itself as a dim, hollow shell of scaffolding in which tiny figures were at work like bees in a honeycomb. Some portions of the inward-sloping framework had been covered with great arabesques of wrought-metal, intricate figures that curved and looped back upon themselves; others were being faced with what looked like enamel or ceramic tiles. “Each and every square inch of the Tower,” said their guide, “inside and out, at completion will be ornamented with unique works of art by Eagles craftsmen gathered from all over the world. Here you see one of the fifty cineramas which will be set in motion throughout the Tower.” This was a floating platform, almost invisibly suspended, on which gigantic bright-colored automatons knelt stiffly—a man and two boys, all with jointed snakes wrapped around them. “Mythological scenes are represented,” the guide added.
At the next stage the car came to a half, and they all trooped out across a clattering floor to another and smaller elevator. This took them into twilit gulfs above, where the sounds of labor echoed but dimly, and then into a sudden and dazzling glow of light. They had risen above the area of scaffolding into the sun again, and in rows of tall windows they could sec the sky.
The second elevator also stopped short of the summit, and they climbed a narrow echoing stair, beyond which the wind whistled, to reach a triangular platform under a domed roof.
Dick paused at the nearest window and looked down. He could not see the base of the Tower, but down there, directly below, lay Eagles like a many-colored carpet dropped on the mountain top. From this giddy height the mountain itself dropped away into distance; the window frame trembled under his hand to the wind’s buffeting, and the wall seemed about to tilt over into emptiness.
Clay’s hand at his elbow roused him. “Come on, don’t daydream or you’ll miss it.”
The rest of the group was crowding around the center of the platform, where a railing surrounded a circular open shaft. This must be the central pillar around which the stairway was built, Dick realized; for some reason, it was hollow, He found a place next to Clay and peered down.
The shaft was about ten feet across, perfectly circular and smooth, and dropped straight down until the successive rings of light from recessed lamps melted into one. The bottom was a dot, a mere mathematical point. A cool air breathed up the shaft, carrying a faint, unpleasant odor. Dick found himself trembling.
“Sixteen hundred feet down,” said Clay, beside him. He took out a handkerchief, tied a knot in it, and dropped it over the rail. The winged, white shape floated downward, drifted, diminishing, crawled endlessly toward the center of light, and was gone.
“No metal objects, please,” said the guide. Across the shaft, the red-faced man was about to drop a metal flask. “Cloth, paper or wooden objects may be dropped,” the guide said, “but you are asked not to drop metal, glass or plastic.”
The red-faced man dropped his flask in. It struck something protruding from the wall of the shaft with a sharp tink, glanced off and receded, whirling.
“Mister,” said the guide, advancing, “I asked you not to drop metal objects.”
The red-faced man turned unsteadily, fishing a cigar lighter out of his pocket. “Don’t tell me,” he said, and threw the lighter in. He scowled into the officer’s face. “Are you a man, or are you a slob?” he demanded. “Don’t no slob tell me what to do, by God. Here—” He struggled to get something out of his pocket.
The officer signed to the two guards, who were hurrying up. They seized the red-faced man by the elbows and started to manhandle him toward the stair. He resisted, shouting obscenities, and managed to kick a middle-aged lady in the hip as he passed. The lady fell with a shriek; the officer, biting his mustache, stepped up and hit the red-faced man on the temple with a little, leather-covered blackjack.
The blow did not look hard, but the red-faced man slumped instantly and was carried off like dead meat. After a moment, the rest of the crowd began to straggle after; the injured lady was helped to her feet and left with the rest.
Following, Dick stumbled against a stack of paper bags, heavy and solid; a dusting of white came off on his shoe. Curiously, he paused and bent to read the label, half obsecured by white powder: UNSLAKED LIME.
He caught up with Clay halfway down the stair. “That Guard officer is a slob,” he said. “I saw his mark. But he hit a man—hit him hard.”
Clay nodded. “He had his orders.”
“But you can’t have slobs hitting people,” Dick said. “What’s going to happen to him now?”
Clay glanced at him with a faint smile. “What do you think?”
They entered the elevator and rode down in silence. The Guard officer, who was pale, looked straight ahead. The red-faced man hung, breathing heavily, between the two guards who supported him. At the ground floor they propped him in a corner while the officer telephoned; that was the last Dick saw of either of them.
Chapter Ten
Melker’s reception, as usual, was crowded and colorful. Melker himself was there for a wonder, a gnomish, unpleasant little man with a really repulsive beard. His rooms were big but rather shabby; Melker had vague Army connections but was nobody himself, as far as Dick could determine: why everybody seemed to come to his Saturday night receptions, he couldn’t tell; but since everybody did, he went too. The entertainment was good—two accomplished dancers tonight, and a comedian who had once been attached to the Household. Towards eleven o’clock, though, as always, the evening turned unaccountably dull; all the pretty women began to go home, the waiters with the drinks disppeared, some old gasbag like Colonel Rosen would take the floor and start fighting the War of Establishment all over again—people would be yawning all over the suite, and at this point, Dick always drifted out with a gang of acquaintances who were looking for something livelier.
Tonight, however, Clay drew him aside as he was moving toward the door. “Going so soon? Wait a while.”
Dick nodded toward Colonel Rosen, who was holding forth in a parade-ground voice at the other side of the room. “And listen to that? No, thanks.”
Clay didn’t release his arm. “There’s a reason. Wait.”
Puzzled and intrigued, Dick found a seat and watched more alertly. For a while, if anything, the assemblage merely got more desperately dull. Then, after one incoherent drunk was helped out, the atmosphere miraculously changed. Colonel Rosen shut up and poured himself a neat drink; waiters were again moving among the chairs; there was a murmur of talk and laughter; even the lights seemed brighter but less glaring.
Dick looked around him. Most of those present were men in their prime; there was a sprinkling of young men and oldsters, and only three women—two dowagers who had settled themselves close together, each with her own body-servant at hand, and a youngish but very plain woman in the far corner.
Melker, who was seated near the fireplace, now rapped for attention with a wineglass. “Men and ladies,” he said, “the subject for tonight is ‘Slavery.’ Colonel Rosen, will you oblige us by opening with the traditional view?”
Dick groaned, not quite inaudibly. Rosen, a florid, nearly bald man in his fifties, cocked an eyebrow in his direction as he began. “Slavery is an institution of every civilized society, from the most ancient times to the present. Using the term in the broadest sense, there never has been a time when civilized arts and sciences, to such an extent as they existed, have not been founded on forced labor, that is, on slavery. We may distinguish—”
“Objection!” said a vigorous-looking, dark-skinned man, pointing his pipe at Rosen. “Do you maintain
that the peasant of the Middle Ages was a slave?”
“I do, mister.”
“He was not, he was a serf, and there’s an important difference. A serf was attached to the soil—”
(“—Like a pumpkin,” murmured an ironic voice in Dick’s ear.)
“—and could only be sold with the soil, whereas a slave was absolute property and could be sold at any time.”
“The chair rules,” said Melker, “that Colonel Rosen may call the serf a slave if he wishes. Colonel, please continue.”
Dick twisted around; Clay had moved over unobtrusively and was sitting close behind him. “What is all this?” Dick whispered.
“The Philosophers’ Club—shut up and listen, you may learn something.”
“We may distinguish,” Rosen was saying, “between systems of individual slavery, slavery of classes, and mechanical slavery. The last, an invention of the so-called Industrial Revolution, put an end to the formal practice of individual, slavery in Europe and America, but introduced a new form of the slavery of classes, that is, industrial slavery. In more recent times—”
“Just a minute, Colonel,” cried the plain young woman.
“Those people were free. They had a democracy, on this part of the continent—they could move from job to job, just as they wanted.”
“But they had to work?” asked the Colonel.
“Well, if you want to put it that way—under the monetary system they had to work, yes, to get dollars—but they could choose, don’t you see—”