Alyssaunde nodded. “The next sector, Sector Two: Early Industrial New York. But that would mean—”
“Exactly,” Chester agreed. “The barrier was down. The storm must have knocked it out. They never even knew when they crossed the line. As soon as they figured out what must have happened, they went to the nearest Inspector for assistance. They were all promptly arrested.”
“Arrested?” Carl said. “But, what had they done?”
“You know you’re not supposed to cross the barrier,” Chester told him.
“But usually you can’t cross the barrier,” Carl said. “Certainly not on foot. It kind of shimmers in the air in front of you, and if you touch it you get a shock, and if you try to go through it, it kills you. But if the barrier was down, and they didn’t even know where it was . . .”
“Ignorance,” Chester said, “is no excuse under the law. Such law as there is. O’Malley and his companions were tried that afternoon and sentenced that evening. To the factories.”
“The factories?” Carl asked.
“You have been kept in a state of ignorance, haven’t you?” Chester said. “Where do you suppose they make all the good stuff that isn’t made by hand, or by the ‘cottage industries’?”
“What sort of stuff do you mean?” Carl asked.
“What about the armor you knights wear?”
“Some of it’s handmade,” Carl said.
“Out of what?”
“Sheets of iron and steel.”
“From where?”
“They sell it at the PX.”
“Invincible ignorance.” Chester sighed. “Let’s trace the chain down, Carl. Where does the PX get it?”
“I never thought about it,” Carl said.
“And what about the armor that isn’t handmade?”
“Some of it’s issued, the rest is bought at the PX or one of the craft stores.”
“OK, now: where does the PX get its supplies?”
“Like I said,” Carl said, in an irritated voice, “I never thought about it. Are you telling me it’s made at these factories?”
“That’s right,” Chester said. “And these flitterboats, and wristwatches, and all the other goodies except for a few that are imported from off planet, but you or I would never see those. All made at the factories by slave labor.”
“Convict labor,” Alyssaunde corrected.
“It’s the same thing,” Chester said, “when you can get convicted and sent up for walking through the wood after a rain.”
Alyssaunde shook her head angrily. “The laws are made for everyone,” she said, “and they have to be obeyed.”
“Everyone?” Chester asked. “Even for you, Miz Alyssaunde?”
“That’s not the same thing,” Alyssaunde snapped, her face approaching red. “You know it isn’t!”
“You can pass from sector to sector freely, from area to area with impunity. Daily you commit the same act for which my friend here was sentenced to a lifetime of drudgery and incarceration. For Mr. O’Malley it is a crime, for you it is an avocation. But then you fives make the laws, don’t you?”
“It has to be done that way!” Alyssaunde insisted. “That’s the way things work. If it wasn’t done that way, then nobody would have anything.”
“Who told you that?” Chester asked. “You learn it in school?”
“You can’t just have the people from one sector going over to another sector whenever they feel like it,” Alyssaunde insisted. “All the cultures are so different that there’d be no degree of realism at all unless they’re kept separate.”
“And what’s it all for, Miz Alyssaunde, what’s it all for?” Chester asked, smiling grimly at her.
“For the Guests, of course. You know that.”
“Did you?” Chester asked Carl. “Did you know that Earth is all just one big tourist show? That all of the sectors are recreations from Earth’s past? Amusements for the aliens?”
“Not exactly,” Carl said. “I never really thought about it. You know, sometimes I did wonder just what we were fighting about.”
“It was all just a big show—meaningless. What do you think of that?”
Carl shrugged. “It’s one way to make a living,” he said. “No worse than most.”
“You don’t feel used, exploited?” Chester asked.
“Not really,” Carl said. “I do think they could let us travel around. But then, when I become a knight I’ll be able to visit the other sectors. I think that’s true—at least, that’s what they say.”
“Aye,” O’Malley said. “The other sectors in yer own area.” He chucked his food tray into the waste receptacle Chester pointed out to him and glumly watched it disappear down the chute. “When ye’ve made knight ye’re really somebody. They’ll actually allow ye to transfer to sectors where they have more need of ye.”
“This is all very fascinating,” Alyssaunde said. “But I’d just as soon not continue it any longer than necessary. If you gentlemen would tell me where you’d like to be dropped, I shall see about the dropping.”
Chester studied the control board. The locator said 03:02:C/5. “We’re heading the right way,” he said. “There’s a large Outland on the other side of Area Five. You can let us off anywhere in there.”
“But that must be twelve hundred miles,” Alyssaunde said. “It’ll take six hours to get there.”
“I guess we’ll be real friendly at the end of six hours,” Chester said, leaning back. Alyssaunde glared at him, but couldn’t think of anything to say.
The silence stretched on. Carl, still weak from his wounds, closed his eyes and quickly fell asleep. When he woke up, about half an hour later, nothing had changed except that O’Malley was now also stretched out and his eyes closed. Slight snorting noises escaped from his mouth with every breath. Chester A. Arthur was leaning back, completely relaxed, but his eyes were open and watchful. Alyssaunde was staring out the viewport.
Carl looked out the port by his seat. It was pitch dark outside, and he couldn’t see a thing. “What are you looking at?” he asked Alyssaunde.
“My life is passing by underneath the flitter,” she said. “Do you know what I mean?”
“I don’t think so,” Carl said cautiously.
Alyssaunde turned to him and took his hand. “I’ve been taught certain things all my life,” she said. “Just as you have. I’m just as much a prisoner of my training and my environment as you are of yours.”
“I never thought that I was,” Carl said.
Alyssaunde took his hand. “Neither did I,” she said.
“Very touching,” came the harsh voice of Chester A. Arthur from the back of the cabin.
Carl turned to him. “You never told us,” he said. “What happened to make you a renegade? What are you running away from?”
“The same factory that O’Malley graced,” Chester said, “there graced I, also.”
“You escaped together?” Alyssaunde asked.
“That’s right.”
“How did you get there? What did you do?”
“You know,” Chester said, “all my life I used to hear that that was the one question you never asked a prisoner: What did you do? That the information was his to give or keep, and that it was a deadly insult to violate this rule.”
“Oh,” Alyssaunde said. “I didn’t know, I’m sorry.”
“No, that’s not it. The point is that when I got sent up I learned that the first thing any two prisoners talk about when they get together is what each of them did. A guy will walk over to you and say: ‘Hi, my name is John Johnson, and I robbed a blind man in a candy store; what did you do?’ Just the most casual thing in the world.”
“They brag about it?” Alyssaunde asked.
“No, it’s not bragging, it’s more like an identity tag. What you’re in for is just as important as your name, you see. Very curious, if you think about it.”
“So,” Carl said, “what were you in for? And how did you escape?”
Ches
ter considered, staring off into the roof of the flitter.
“If you don’t want to tell, it’s OK,” Alyssaunde said.
“No, it’s not that,” Chester said. “I’m just trying to decide what to say; picking my words, as it were.”
“Oh.”
“I was born and brought up in Sanloo,” Chester said.
“The city!” Carl said. “I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never met anyone from Sanloo before.”
“You’ve never met anyone from anywhere before,” Chester said. “No insult intended, but you’ve led a very sheltered life.”
“I was in my first battle at the age of fourteen,” Carl said. “You call that sheltered?”
“Yes,” Chester said. “And I have a feeling that by the time this night is out, so will you. At any rate, we were a Plebe family, but I was a very bright child, so I quickly rose to the top of the plebe heap. A short climb, but once there I could go no higher.”
“Plebe?” Carl asked.
“Skill in battle,” Chester told him, “is not necessarily a sign of sophistication. It is fair to call you sheltered. Miz Alyssaunde here has never, I warrant, fought a battle in her life, at least not with a sword, and she is far less sheltered than you.”
“But far more sheltered than I had thought, apparently,” Alyssaunde said.
“A plebe,” Chester told Carl, “is a member of the serving class. Born in the know but not in the nobility. Born to serve the fives and the Guests. Plebes are servants in the fives’ houses, and staff the hotels, and service the machines, and keep everything running. The Inspectors are high-class plebes.”
“What do the fives do?” Carl asked.
“They are the administrators,” Alyssaunde said, somewhat more sharply than she intended. “They make all the decisions. They shoulder the responsibilities. Without them to supply the grease and the direction, the whole machine would fall apart in a month!”
“That’s one way to look at it,” Chester said.
“How do you look at it?” Carl asked.
“I don’t want to hear,” Alyssaunde said.
“Cover your ears,” Chester instructed her. He turned to Carl. “They give the orders. They sign the papers. They make the money.”
“That’s not fair!” Alyssaunde insisted. “Someone has to give the orders.”
O’Malley opened his right eye and raised his right hand. “I volunteer,” he said. Then he closed his eye and began snoring softly again.
“At any rate,” Chester said, “putting aside this philosophical discussion for now, I became a historian, a very important job on this planet. For a five, you understand, it would be a profession, but for me it was merely a job. I worked for a five named Cappa Neb-Ogallala. He was a chief historian. That meant that I did all the work, while he signed his name to all the documents we produced. I did all the research in the back stacks of the Earth Artifacts Library and the Government House Library, but whenever I wanted a book, he had to sign it out.”
“And this embittered you,” Alyssaunde said, “you doing all the work, and Neb-Ogallala getting all the credit?”
“No,” Chester told her. “It’s funny, but it didn’t. It does now, when I look back on it, but at the time I thought I was one of the luckiest men on Earth to have my job. I really enjoyed it, you see. And as for Neb-Ogallala signing all the papers, well, I just thought that’s the way things were.”
“You read books all day,” Carl said wonderingly, “and this was your job? And sometimes you wrote things, and they paid you for that?”
“It’s better than beating at strangers with swords,” Chester A. Arthur said.
Carl sniffed. “Is not,” he said. “An ancient and honorable profession, soldiering.”
Chester thought it over. “That’s true,” he said. “And it’s certainly not your fault that your soldiering is done in a less than noble cause.”
“What is the function of all this history studying?” Carl asked.
“We keep the sectors on line,” Chester told him. “Whenever there is a question from one of the sectors about whether something is an anachronism or not, we research it and file a report. On the basis of our research, the Council decides whether to allow whatever it is.”
“It must have been fascinating work,” Alyssaunde said.
Chester smiled at her. “The best sort of thing a plebe could ever hope to do.”
“Listen,” Alyssaunde said, “you overdo this inequality bit, you know. The work you did would absolutely fascinate me; I’ve spent a good bit of time reading about the history of Earth and studying what texts were available. But I could never get the job, or the five analogue of it, because I’m a woman. A five perhaps, but still a woman, and unsuited for any sort of work involving anything more complex than breaking an egg into a dish.”
“No doubt,” Chester said, nodding his head. “I never claimed to have an exclusive franchise on prejudice. Everyone suffers from it to some extent or another. We are all bound by the artificial fetters of our culture and our laws. Some of us merely have silken cords instead of rough hemp ropes.”
“How did you end up in the factory?” Carl asked.
“I made a discovery,” Chester said. “At first I was doubtful, and thought I must be mistaken. But the more I researched, the more all sorts of threads came into place and made it clear that I was right. An exceptionally startling discovery that would upset much that we believe. I told this discovery to Neb-Ogallala. He demanded proof. I gave him proof. He forbade me from ever mentioning it to anyone again. I insisted that it be brought before the Council. I was arrested within the week.”
“What did you discover?” Carl asked.
“I don’t think I should tell you now,” Chester said. “It would serve no purpose, and would cause you nothing but trouble whether you believed me or not. Someday, perhaps, I will see that the word gets out, but not now.”
“What did they charge you with?” Alyssaunde asked.
“Charge?” Chester said. “Why, they never did charge me with anything. They just locked me away in a holding cell for a few weeks, then transferred me to a factory. I was warned not to continue making seditious remarks, or I couldn’t stay at the factory. I asked the guard what seditious remarks I had made, and where they could send me that was worse than the factory, and he told me that he was merely obeying orders and I’d better just shut up. I asked him to show me my conviction papers, and he told me they knew what to do with troublemakers of my sort. So I shut up.”
“How did you escape?” Alyssaunde asked.
Chester looked at her. “I don’t think I’d better tell you,” he said. “I may have to do it again.” He got up and reached over Alyssaunde’s head. “I’m going to wake O’Malley up now,” he said, “and get some sleep myself. Since Different doesn’t know these flitters at all, I’m going to disconnect the communicator first. Just so you don’t suffer from temptation.”
He opened a panel over the pilot’s seat, removed a slim circuit board, and stuck it in his pocket. Then he shook O’Malley awake.
“Huh?” O’Malley sat up and balled his hands into fists. “Where are ye? What ye want? Stand still!” He yelled, twisting around in his seat. “Oh, it’s ye, Chester.” He relaxed. “My watch, is it?”
“Right,” Chester said. “Wake me after two hours. We should not land, or even turn, during that time. If anything changes that you don’t understand, no matter how trivial, wake me immediately.”
“I surely shall,” O’Malley agreed.
Chester settled back in his chair to sleep, and Carl did likewise. This time he went into a deep, dreamless sleep and did not wake for some time.
Chapter Seven
When Carl awoke dawn was just starting to light up the landscape behind them. He looked over at the control board just in time to see the locator change from 05:01:A/8, to -0:-U:-/T. The other three were awake and silently watching the mountainous scenery passing below.
“We’re there,” Alyssaunde said.
She stretched and then took the controls, moving the flitter closer to the ground.
“Not yet,” Chester told her. “A little bit farther and we’ll be through the mountains, if the map was right. Say about another ten minutes. Then just find a clear spot and let us out. After which you can go about your business, and we’ll go about ours, and sorry to have inconvenienced you.”
Alyssaunde shook her head. “You can’t accomplish anything, you know.”
“There’s a couple of thousand square miles of Outland here to disappear in,” Chester said. “That will buy us enough time to figure out what we want to accomplish; which, after all, is the first job.”
In about six minutes the mountains dropped away to foothills, and then flattened to a beautiful green valley. Alyssaunde guided the flitterboat down to a wide grassland next to a lake and landed. “You realize that I’ll have to report all this immediately,” she said.
“I’m keeping the piece I removed from your communicator,” Chester told her. “The time it takes you to get somewhere and report this will be enough for us to have thoroughly disappeared when they send out a search party. I thank you, Miz Alyssaunde, for your kindness.”
“Let’s take some of them food trays,” O’Malley said.
“A brilliant notion,” Chester agreed. They found a canvas bag in the supply locker, and loaded up the food trays.
Chester palmed the door switch, and the hatch opened and the ramp dropped. “Good-bye, Corporal Allan,” Chester said. “Think over what we’ve discussed. I hope we meet again someday. And you too, Miz Alyssaunde. I hope you don’t regard this as an altogether unfortunate experience.”
“Well,” she said, “it has been an experience, I’ll grant you that.”
Chester A. Arthur and Different O’Malley walked down the ramp and onto the grass, still wet with the morning dew. They had taken no more than ten steps when five black Inspectors’ flitterboats dropped out of the sky, surrounding them.
“Drop your weapons,” an amplified voice boomed from one of the black flitters, “and don’t move! You haven’t a chance.”
Chester and Different looked at each other. O’Malley shrugged. They both dropped their guns and the sack of food trays and raised their hands.
Tomorrow Knight Page 6