by Daniel Six
It was time to act on her accumulated experience in the City, time for a different kind of maneuvering. Every additional person in her company would neutralize a degree of freedom available to herself alone.
She stepped out of the apartment into its adjoining lot and walked to Dean’s long green convertible, nodding unsuggestively to a couple of his friends as they fumbled for some pretext to flirt.
Ione had brought clothes for the various requirements of the City, including a conservative blue dress that would satisfy even the most stringent expectations of the mannermen. She used the privacy of the rear seating to change, witnessed only by the blue-eyed gnome lounging there, glad she was not obliged to effect this increasingly self-conscious transition in public.
Seating herself up front she pumped the hydraulic mechanism that actuated the roof, watched its articulated steel shell fold into the far rear of the vehicle. The horror of the desert had given way to her endless dim memories of the subterranean world and she wanted to be in the open air today.
She punched the go gnome’s left nipple and reversed out of the parking space with a nuanced effort at the pedals, rounded onto the hill’s spiraling avenue to competently merge with a bustling flow of traffic going down.
“Hey beautiful!” called a short guy from another convertible as she squeezed past him onto a faster lane. She was by now used to the gawking attention of other drivers and uncynically utilized any hesitation or deference shown to quicken her way, confident of her insulation from any sudden reprisal.
Her gaze found Manassa’s lavish form three circuits below, a lingerie-clad spectacle of muliebrity trailing a dox or trix of clandestine admirers. Her gaily colored bag was crammed with casual clothing she would be wearing by the bottom of the hill and formal apparel for beyond, little of it sufficient to gird her outrageous curves. Ione knew the reasonable thing to do would be to offer her a ride—it was a long walk down to the park—but she didn’t have Emma’s easy facility for conversation with the bigger woman. Manassa had mentioned at the Club she might be able to gain status working at a clothing boutique, but it wasn’t clear what was involved or what would come of it. She likely didn’t know herself; there was some sort of orientation to attend first.
Ione reached the streets and left the foothills of the Dowser’s domain, proceeding along a major thoroughfare toward the center of the City. She cut a wide circle around the park, shaded by the broad knot of cloud permanently lodged on its misty updraft, bypassed intersections watched by burly mannermen lurking where traffic stopped for the red glare of glow gnomes. Where they could not be avoided she was preserved from notice by her elaborately concealing clothes, which was a fortunate thing; she had no idea what she would do if called out in front of traffic to display her lingerie. Ione hated them for the dissonance they generated in her self-image—she had no problem with either nudity or modesty as a consistent standard.
Her route neared the long morning shadow of the Gnomon’s Tower, draped solemnly across buildings and traffic, and her gaze was drawn inevitably to its lofty source; her present destination, a glittering round phenomenon of blue-tinted glass and chrome that so far surpassed its neighbors in altitude as to impose a helpless reckoning on them. It vaulted up to meet the sun and boldly resolved its compass, marking each moment in time as its shadow swept about the City.
Ione resorted to an embarrassingly simple means of navigation, simply turning as needed to keep herself within the Tower’s broad umbral alley. The go gnome cranking next to her acquired a subtly intimidating aura, but she was used to that by now. Looking back she noticed the effect was even more pronounced on her silent passenger, which Dean called the Metrognome. It was a musician’s tool apparently.
As she passed the facades of progressively larger buildings she saw whole communities of men and women at work, a sight that had fascinated her yesterday, eventually prompting her to leave the convertible with Mark. Venturing forth in their best clothes—he looked marvelous in a steel-blue suit, she had to admit—they elbowed among busy citizens, accessing the pedestrian experience.
After they had explored the City on foot for a while she chose an imposing edifice guarded by level-eyed doormen, and was shortly being subjected to a verbal test conducted by a personnel manager in a smart beige tunic. But her unerring response to his questions, mostly propositions of logic, obligated the increasingly intimidated functionary to refer Ione to the Tower of the Gnomon, where all employment screening above a certain level was administered.
And so she was returning to the mirrored skyscraper today. This required a considerable commitment in time; the City was unthinkably intricate, and her journey spanned almost the whole length of the valley in which it lay. But she loved driving, felt a novel relaxation gradually steal over her senses as she wove through the dense agglomeration of buildings that marked the Gnomon’s sphere of influence. Was it the concentrating geometry of the streets—spokes radiating from her destination—or the cloud-baffled sunlight and humid air sweeping the hypethral vault of the metropolis? Perhaps… But Ione realized the abhorrent clanging of the Dowser’s bucket could not be heard this far, or the lingering subsonic hum of the giant cavity in his hill.
As she drew close to the Gnomon’s stronghold Ione saw that a wide plaza surrounding the building was ornamented with a circular arrangement of blue-flowered planters, figurative “hash marks” that allowed for a precise reckoning of time as its silhouette swung about. Looking up she could not differentiate the Tower’s distal tip from the sky, instantly disorienting her. Blinking away the sight, she pulled onto a ramp leading underneath, wishing Mark had come after all, or everyone better yet. They should not have become separated like this. Not so quickly. So casually. But she was already here, and nothing alarming had happened yet…
The chill atmosphere of the subterranean lot instantly dispelled the City from consideration, and she followed glow gnomes blinking this way and that to get her vehicle parked. Everyone was naked here, and Ione pumped the top back in place to undress in the privacy of the convertible’s rear seating. Walkways were crowded with a unidirectional flow of employees. Stepping out, Ione was shortly among them.
She followed the crowd to a brightly lit hallway that inclined up into a bustling foyer. There she was directed by an alert functionary into a reception area painted an adventurous cerulean hue. A woman with short black hair and intelligent eyes looked her up and down with something more than functional interest, then formally registered her intention to seek employment. Ione was given a number; ”one-two-three-six”, and told to wait with a multitude of earnest-looking applicants in a grid of interlocked tubular chrome chairs arrayed under a high-intensity glow gnome.
She was intimidated by the number of people she was competing with; there was no one like Dean around to put her on a fast track to success here. But her apposite recollection of Emma’s evaluative term at the Dowser’s Club quickly reassured her. She dwelt on the affairs of the pervious evening to pass the time, chuckling quietly. Nothing so bizarre or demeaning would transpire in the eminently sensible establishment of the Gnomon.
Her number came up. She was directed to a chamber nearby and subjected to another intelligence test, much harder than yesterday’s challenge. The clerk graded her answers with an increasingly respectful air.
“Well done. Your score qualifies you for the Gnomon’s challenge,” she stated at last, regarding Ione speculatively.
“I, uh… what does that involve?” she hesitated.
“It involves following me,” said the clerk. It was almost a rude response, but under the stolid performance of her role Ione sensed the plainer woman’s interest, weightlessly indirect next to last night’s drunken flirtation.
“Okay.”
She was led deeper within the Tower to a doormanned arch bordering a great circular atrium at the center of the structure. Its floor was occupied by an underlit well from which a gleaming metal shaft rose to an indefinite height. Ione watched a round p
latform glide down this beam toward them. It arrived with a sibilant gurgle.
Her guide nodded and they stepped onto it with a crowd of people waiting at the perimeter. A so far moderate hum of interaction expanded here to the brisk mingling of many voices, an unexpectedly upbeat sound. The platform was many paces in diameter, capacious enough to serve the needs of the whole Tower, simultaneously transporting a sen of employees and several dox of heavy carts loaded with materials. Ione noted the way the elevator reprised the sundial motif of the Tower; by a contrivance of lighting the shadow of the shaft ranged the incremented lip of the platform, mirroring the building’s exterior time-keeping.
In a transparent housing at the center a flow gnome was visible, the mechanism’s hydraulic unit, the clean lines of its jaw opened wide to embrace an enormous hose. Ione considered the muscular form of the handsome, blue-toned creature. It was identical in appearance to every other gnome she had seen, but this one was endowed with an almost inconceivable power. If it could casually loft the platform they were on then it could drain the Lap reservoir in a day.
“That’s the Flowgnome,” the clerk explained, noting her interest. “Mightiest of its kind. The Gnomon’s most potent creation.” Ione stared wonderingly at its compact physique, no larger than Emma’s body.
The last riders stepped onto the elevator and her lips parted in helpless astonishment as they smoothly ascended from the lobby, passed level after level, steadily losing and recovering passengers at the edge. Various floor-spanning ecologies reared into momentary visibility; lounges and dormitories, recreation halls where various court and table sports were indulged, design studios and product showrooms, technical facilities glittering with specialized tools, and manufacturing zones labyrinthed with gnomes and machines they powered. Ione was hopelessly in awe of it all, listened avidly to the clerk’s untiring recitation of place and purpose.
Each floor had a doorman who could halt the platform, but they had stopped only once to acquire a gnome-driven cargo cart loaded with freshly forged metal primitives; bars and tubes and plates scheduled for immediate welding and shaping.
“Does anyone ever jump instead of waiting for the elevator?” she wondered after a sen of levels had come and gone from view.
“It’s considered bad etiquette,” the other woman shrugged. “But it happens. I fell from mid-tower once,” she confided. “It was an accident, of course. Not a drunken, metaphoric gesture to a former lover,” she insisted, trying on a coy look. Ione smothered a grin at her artless flirtation.
The passengers thinned somewhat as they rose further, then her guide stepped to the edge of the platform when a totally concealed level swept into view. “You exit here. See you around?”
Ione nodded noncommittally and strode off the elevator as bidden, carefully timing her departure to effect a graceful deceleration into a small vestibule where another functionary sat behind a podium. He looked up in surprise, apparently unaccustomed to visitors, scrutinized her with interest.
“I’m here for the Gnomon’s challenge,” she hesitantly explained.
“That’s the purpose of this floor,” he laconically acknowledged, then nodded to a solemn archway with sliding doors behind him.
“I’m the test proctor. When I indicate, you will enter there. Within you will have but one task, and that is to exit as quickly as possible. Are you ready?”
“Um, yeah. I guess…” The conspicuous simplicity of the challenge shrank her confidence.
The proctor spun a flywheel and the arch parted onto a caliginous void that breathed warm vapor at her feet.
“Your test begins… now.” He turned behind him to note the time on the departing elevator, which was also represented underneath the platform.
Ione stepped into a dimensionless space, blank but for her own faint penumbra thrown dumbly forth. It sharpened focally as the doors slid shut then vanished into utter darkness. A dense humidity flooded her nostrils, put an instant sheen of moisture on her brow.
Anything could be in this room, she realized, fighting a sudden undertow of paranoia. It was perfectly silent. She felt no sense of the City around her, suffered an immediate compulsion to restore its ambience. She sought for the door, fingers sweeping anxiously about, but found the wall featureless. This unwitnessed cowardice was enough to goad a cynical courage back into operation, though; Ione knew she would never have reacted so fearfully under observation.
She turned around and collected herself, carefully considering what she knew. The object of the test was speed, the one thing she couldn’t manage in the dark like this, canceling the value of her rare athletic prowess. So it was a mental test, maybe. For that she needed data.
Ione ventured cautiously forth. She whistled experimentally after a few steps but could make no sense of the queerly gyring echoes that returned. Moisture accumulated on her chest to sweat distractingly from her nipples.
Was that… She blinked, trying to resolve something faintly glimmering at the limit of perception. A head-high bloom of light… it was a glow gnome! She raced to confront this lonely creature, realizing the dense mist reduced her sight to a dox or trix of paces.
As with all gnomes, its only visible distinction was its context. Ione circled the muscular form, almost a head shorter than her own, touched its smooth, angular jawline, traced down the chest to brush its limp penis. Abruptly conscious of the time elapsing she peered about the darkness, but nothing else lay in view.
If the gnome was her only clue then she had to work with it. Did it tell her anything? It seemed to offer no guidance beyond physical orientation. So she would use that. Sighting along its gaze Ione strode hesitantly forth to discern another glow gnome, distant enough that she would lose sight of the first to reach it.
That was it! It would point her to another one, then another, and it was just a matter of speed from there. Her body tensed, readying for a furious effort.
Ione didn’t move, forced herself to relax. There was no way the test could be so simple, though she could easily imagine a less sophisticated applicant falling for the ruse. She might have been fooled into a pointlessly physical performance herself by subconscious pride in her footspeed—but the Gnomon probably wasn’t that concerned with an employee’s ability to sprint. This was a predominantly cognitive challenge, disguised as something physical. She needed more data for any further conclusions.
The first gnome was out of sight now, so she aimed herself where the second was staring and paced toward the next one, stopping midway where the glow of both creatures was in view. She decided this third gnome stood slightly to the left of a perfectly linear route between the two she had passed. This established an arc.
A circle! Of course. Without thinking it through she would have been tricked into running circles—a good joke. But what did this new form suggest? It had to be something easily derived from the geometry…
The gnomes circumscribed something at their center! Taking her best estimate of the path tangent to their bodies, she was about to assay a careful journey inward when she realized it would be impossible to maintain a straight course for long in the dark. She would wander. The arc established a circle of very large circumference, so she needed some means to ensure her path would bear straight to its center.
Here was a use for her athleticism finally; speed. She would deviate least from an established line by maintaining a high velocity. Momentum would guide her. Backing up, Ione calibrated her tangency to the gnomes at either side. With a deep breath, she sprinted forward at top speed.
There was nothing. No light whatsoever, no sound but her own feet whispering on the floor. She consciously cultivated her inertia, surrendering as little as possible to lateral deviation.
She almost failed despite her careful bisection of the area. In the distance far to her right something briefly wavered into visibility, noticed only because she was aware of the potential error that had accumulated. With a skidding correction to her route she raced off to examine it.
&nb
sp; Her breath caught as she emerged into a surreal tableau, lit softly from within. Gathered about a round, waist-high median of soft grass were three more glow gnomes standing in apparently random poses. Ione circled them, fascinated but fretfully conscious of the time elapsing. There was no obvious logic to the scene, no clear indication of what was required, though she sensed a potent context in operation.
What were they doing, standing here like this? Perhaps it was a choice of some kind, but she couldn’t imagine what it might represent. She summoned her entire reservoir of intellect to the problem, frantically deconstructing their lonely little society.
But they weren’t exactly alone, Ione realized. She was now present; the missing piece of context. And with that intuition she could appreciate what was actually before her.
One gnome was leaning back against the median, looking expectantly down as if waiting for fellatio. Another was postured belly-in, hands planted wide for support as it performed vaginal penetration on an imaginary partner lying in the grass. The last was standing slightly away from the median, facing it. Its low gaze suggested anal copulation with a back-bent woman.
Without thinking she pushed the nipple of the last creature and its penis swung staunchly erect, lightly sheened with oil. Only the Metrognome had displayed this capability before now. Ione turned apprehensively to regard the dark, verifying her solitude. Was she prepared to do what context suggested? There was no time to deliberate.