The letters flickered in red, in green and violet, and when they became red again, they were suddenly switched off, and I saw the nearest domes intensify their colours.
‘They’re coming this way. And they will drop nice flakes, mium, mium.’ The
‘mium’ was a marital borrowing from Leeds. September always welcomed the sight of approaching domes, for she thought and dreamt of food since the days of her pregnancy.
‘They look pointed and sharp: I said to Rain, expecting that she would be able to explain.’
‘They are coming down: Rain answered. ‘No, they’re going up again.’
‘It’s a new attack on us. Leeds went to report, he’s their informer.’
‘No, Dover, they are informed all the time. They don’t need Leeds. The domes won’t attack us.’
‘And why not, Rain?’
‘Because they’re coming to destroy my trees.’
At this moment the pointed edge of the green dome stood at the height of the cedar. It could cut off its crown in one slicing motion.
‘Rain, the cedar!’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Let’s make the cedar one of us. He is one of us.’
And we encircled the tree and moved around it, faster and faster. Then Rain told us to jump whenever we completed a new circle. We jumped and ran, and both motions created a dance. Our arms felt shorter as the trunk thickened, but our ears heard better and higher, up to the thudding noise at the top of the tree.
With one big knock, the cedar pierced the green dome and it burst, not into pieces, but into colours. They seemed to cascade through the twigs and the needles. When the broken colours dispersed or melted on the ground, I heard birds. The dome like a huge cage released them into the clouds. Then we saw a monkey shape on a thick bough. It could speak, however, and said peevishly:
‘What a brutish tree! It nearly split my bottom.’ And by his bottom we recognized him at once.
Cousin Leeds was climbing down.
3
‘Poetically speaking’—this was certainly a new beginning for Leeds—‘this is the cat of heaven. No, September dear, you shouldn’t call him the skycat, it’s not seemly. I mean once you’ve been up there. Puss, puss, puss. Here he is.’
‘Come to me, cat,’ Rain said and the cat sat on her foot. It was black, sleepy and purring with luck.
The cat must have climbed down after the birds or after Leeds, who was dotted with their droppings. For us the cat was indeed a fabulous creature, an exile from heaven.
I observed Leeds while he talked: much of his prodigious belly had subsided. Either this was the result of his mislodged complaint or he had slimmed rapidly during his climb down.
‘Did you see the skymen, Leeds? And, Leeds, what did they look like?’
September had a wife’s right to question an absentee husband.
‘Well. . . .’ I knew that ‘well’ of Leeds followed by a thoughtful pause. He was going to be statistically evasive; figures, percentages, differentials, but nothing concrete.
‘Well, you might ask whether likeness, any likeness, comes into your question to start with. Like, but like what? what being our operative differential. Is, for instance, number two like two in two thousand and twenty-two, or is it rather unlike two in the two-two-two context? Incidentally, what I am about to say may be of some relevance: there are two skies. Strange that I should have been going on like that about two and twos. Yes, the second sky can roughly be described as a sky above or below the first sky. It depends on how you apply the optical calculus. On the average, a middle-aged inhabitant of this island—and middle-aged we all are for obvious reasons—well—as I was saying. . . .’
‘Leeds,’ I interrupted him, ‘reality precedes similarity. Do the skymen exist at all?
Answer yes or no.’
‘They do and they don’t, you see. It’s the way the surface people think of them in these overcrowded conditions. I’ve heard rumours, though.’
‘What rumours, Leeds?’ I wouldn’t let him wriggle out.
‘Well—it is tentatively suggested that there are three skymen only: one with a beard, the other some kind of bird, and the third is beardless and birdless, a skywoman probably.’
‘To whom did you present your complaint?’
‘My complaint! Oh, that. I went to Durham, got a lift up to the sky, and there I pressed first a button, then a knob, then a button on a knob, and finally a magnetic rail whisked me a few miles to a spot where I had to speak into a microphone. I recorded my complaint, got a receipt, heard it played back, liked the recording very much, and that was that.’
‘Leeds,’ I said, ‘there is no such place as Durham.’
‘There was, my dear fellow, look at some old map.’
‘Who gave you a lift to the sky then?’
‘A lift, of course. Don’t you know what a lift is! A thing whizzing up, on rails too, but fixed vertically. It’s all quite easy, really.’
‘And the traffic shadows we used to see through the domes! Tell us about them.’
September was curious and willing to believe everything Leeds chose to say.
‘Rails, my dear, magnetic rails, and they cling to your feet while they transport you from knob to knob. Amazing how simply that sky-zone is run, I mean the other side of the domes. Nothing but knobs. A few birds here and there, and. . . .’ He paused and scratched his neck.
‘And the cat,’ Rain whispered for him.
‘He was miaowing, though, all the time, miaowing to be let out. You know what cats are.’ Then he quickly changed the subject. ‘I must tell you, cousins, I was appointed interim supervisor of emergency evacuation, should such an emergency arise. Again it’s this frightful overcrowding, you know, especially now that the Safety Zones have had to be considerably widened. Why, you may ask. Because of these blasted trees. They make the place look rather dark, don’t they? So unhygienic, too.’ Leeds sniffed the air, wrinkled his nose with disapproval and surveyed the white clouds above the cedar.
‘Have you seen my Joker anywhere?’ September asked.
‘A brave lad, but somewhat reckless. Fancy plunging into the Underground at a time when it was being flooded. Which reminds me. Down there they’ve already had an emergency evacuation. At least twenty train-loads of adolescents, all senior age group fortunately, had to be surfaced in a hurry. I saw the mess and the bulge. From the lift.
You couldn’t squeeze in your little finger anywhere between Durham and Dundee. A population bulge at the rate of seven surfacing heads per second. Poor Joker, he probably got stuck half-way down when the big pushup started.’
From the direction of the sea came a boy with dark hair, and Leeds, much intrigued, put on the airs of an interim supervisor. He gave the boy an eyeful of attention.
‘Too young to be here. They surfaced him by mistake. What is he holding in his hands?’
‘Fish,’ said the boy. And September echoed him with the gayest childlike laughter I ever heard from her lips.
‘What’s so funny?’ Leeds stopped being an interim supervisor.
‘You, Leeds. It’s our child. He grew up so fast in the first week that I had to feed him with stalks, roots, bulbs, anything which the earth was growing at the same time.’
‘Still, he’s much too young to be here.’ Then Leeds muttered half-hopefully:
‘He’s called after me, I presume?’
‘No, Leeds,’ I said. ‘His name is Sky because he was the first to be born under the open sky.’ I sounded more solemn than I intended.
‘Really, Dover, you should have waited for my return. Anyway, he’s far too young to have a name of his own. A temporary number would have done just as well.
Really, Dover, I am surprised at you.’
My turn to be surprised at Leeds came a week later. He said he didn’t feel very well. He had run out of the emergency supply of flakes, the sea air didn’t agree with him, he was putting on weight, and each tree shade annoyed him with a chill or a draught. No, he couldn’t
possibly stay with us. As for September, she had become impossible with her demands, Leeds said, nothing but copulation and birth, no other interests, so boring for a man who had big emergencies entrusted to him.
Sky had tried to play with his father on the beach and told him a few things about fishing, but Leeds couldn’t concentrate, the smell of fish turned his stomach, and not once did he use Sky’s name.
‘Not a very bright boy, I must confess,’ Leeds said to me.
‘Are you going to lodge a complaint with September or with me!’ I teased him when he had grumbled himself into silence.
‘Oh, Dover, my good man, you wouldn’t understand.’
I left him reclined on the ground outside the cedar’s shade and the next time I saw him he was on all fours, fiddling with a washed-out piece of wood. Then he took out a short black tube, placed it under his eyebrow, and after a while inky lettering appeared on the board. It said: No exit. Closed until further notice.
‘What’s that!’
Leeds looked up startled, and said:
‘One of the emergency regulations, my dear chap.’
I didn’t wish to assert my authority. Even less did I want to quarrel. Besides, a real splashing rain would soon obliterate the sign. Those clever inscriptions weren’t indelible, we had learnt recently. Let him enjoy his illusions; I was, in fact, the man who supervised the new Safety Zone. Neither my first nor my second wife bothered to read Leeds’s fixture. They ignored old warning signs and remnants of boxes, and anything else that belonged to the artificial, dome-protected existence. Things growing, things smelling of the sea and rain water, things flapping in the trees—these absorbed their curiosity.
I couldn’t sleep that night. The trees kept me awake. A few hours later, the cat of heaven, as Leeds called him, started miaowing. I went to search for him. I found Leeds pulling the cat by its tail. A transparent wall seemed to be resting on his turret of a neck, and behind him on the other side of the wall, Sky struggled with a sack or a net. A strange bubbly light like a foam both illuminated the boy from below and seemed to suck him into itself. A large metal disc lay near by. Leeds was forcing Sky to go underground.
Too late, I thought, I couldn’t get through to rescue him. But the cat bit Leeds and managed to free himself. Leeds howled as the cat of heaven burrowed the earth to escape under the closing wall. Now I knew why the wall came that far down. It was, in fact, a dome of such enormous dimensions that it could seal off the middle of the island, and keep the multiplying trees, plants, mushrooms and us, of course, outside in the open. No exits for those under the cupola. Closed until further notice. That’s what Leeds meant by his emergency. But he had sinews of steel in that neck of his to support the wall before it finally touched the ground.
‘Leeds, have you no pity? It’s your child.’
‘He’s contaminated with life.’ He answered through the chink under that plastic weight. ‘I’m trying to save him. He must be cleansed. Your real rain does, in fact, stain.
Remember, Dover, remember, next time you lie on September.’ He laughed horribly, a monstrous Atlas carrying the dome on his neck. ‘Did you say Atlas?’ Leeds spat with each word at my thought.
If I were Rain, I would have prayed then to the child tree; if I believed that the skymen were at least on the side of justice, I would have implored them to be just; if I were then told that the cat had the luck of heaven on his black fur, I would have invoked the cat’s name. All I could do and feel was to stare with hatred at that treacherous invader of my circle.
The foaming light rose higher and lost its liquid thickness. I saw the boy Sky half propped up, then something pushed him away from the luminous foam. A wig-like mop of hair emerged. crinkling inside the same substance and a voice snorted out of it. It was the best impatient snort ever produced by Joker, my true brother, my brother-in-law, my brother under the domes and the real sky.
‘What the hell is it?’ A bubble bath or something. Couldn’t get out of that stinking tunnel.’
‘Joker, take care! Joker, the wall!’ I shouted, now crouching to get hold of the descending dome.
‘Ah, cousin Leeds! He’s a bloody awful cousin if you ask me. And who’s that!’
Sky grabbed Joker’s thigh and helped himself to stand on his feet.
‘It’s the boy Sky.’
‘What, a young skyman in the flesh? Blimey!’
‘Help him, Joker.’
‘He’ll sure help me, if he’s a real boy skyman.’
And they helped each other. Joker bashed Leeds on the head. ‘That’s for pushing Sailor into the water,’ I heard, and another bash followed. Meanwhile Sky was pushing a boulder into the space between the dome and the hard, flat ground. What strength he had; all that stupendous quick growth must have wound coils of energy in his arms and legs.
Then they both dragged Leeds to the tunnel. The job was done when they put the metal lid over the opening. The foam of light disappeared under the disc together with cousin Leeds.
‘That’s not the end of him,’ I muttered with a prophet’s customary caution.
As soon as Joker and Sky had crawled out of the cupola, the final stampede began. People pushed, hit and trampled one another, they were carried, trailed, held under the arms, held upside-down; some sat astride necks or linked arms, a few mounted the wretches who were on all fours and tried to ride on them. The commotion ended flatly, the foreheads, the noses, the palms of the hands pressing against the translucent obstacle.
Thousands of human insects, with limbs intertwined or broken, squealed and buzzed on the enclosed jewel of a land, unable to leave its surface by sliding off into the sea or flying up to the clouds. Through the wall they could see the trees against the sky and our horrified eyes, distant and safe, hiding in the greenery. There wasn’t any point in calling to them: they wouldn’t even hear our uneasy sympathy.
‘We’ll be afloat any minute now,’ Joker said. ‘Our surface, you know, was protected below by a huge disc the size of this whole ruddy island, and they’ve just removed it to flood or maybe to save the Underground, one never knows what those skymen are up to. Your guess is as good as mine, Dover.’
I didn’t attempt a guess. The island was already moving, slowly, smoothly, probing the depth with musical echoes. We joined our hands, ten hands in all, as in the beginning of my circle. And Joker was telling us what he had seen in the Underground.
The air on our faces grew warmer and the colours in the clouds changed from grey to yellow, green and blue. Rain’s lips moved as she was shaping silent words.
Perhaps she had some secrets to tell her cedar. The circle veered down the sandy slope towards the sea. Joker told Sky to peer into the water. He wouldn’t do it himself. And Sky put his head down, clutching the edge of the land.
‘It’s a floating island all right, isn’t it, Sky? Just like the raft Sailor and I wanted to build.’ And Joker became silent and gloomy.
Now Sky was talking:
‘I can see roots under our island, red, violet, very beautiful and so long.’
‘Those are Rain’s trees, Sky,’ said September. ‘They will keep the balance and steer the island for us.’
‘And I can see another sky, mother. A sky in the water.’
‘It’s you, my child. You are reflected in the second sky.’
It was Rain who first noticed the sudden change inside the cupola. It became completely dark, a huge black diamond surrounded with a green and yellow strip.
‘He’s switched off the lights for the emergency.’ Nobody asked me whom I meant, and I didn’t want to speculate whether the closed dome was already empty or filled to the top, choking in the final solution. For how long was this monster to keep us dark company while we floated away, from the future into the sky?
‘Rain,’ I whispered, ‘pray for the safety of our voyage.’
She didn’t reply. I only heard Joker calling the sun patches which swayed like rafts on the waves.
‘Sailor, Sailor! ahoy!’
Underground
1
And there he was, gaily striding along the King’s Road in his new bowler hat, with a Siamese cat on his shoulder, one day Patrick, another day Boris, it didn’t matter which, for his numerous chums knew both his names and called him hello Patrick! Boris, how are you? hi, Boris Patrick! He was, in fact, a well-known character, not only in the King’s Road and Fulham Road, but also within a one-mile radius of the Albert Memorial.
Naturally, the cat attracted most attention, and children would always try to pull the silk leash which dangled at the level of Patrick’s knees. They soiled his trousers with ice cream and chocolate. The bowler hat gave him the air of a young man doing rather well in the City, a bit eccentric perhaps, but he could afford that as much as the hours spent away from his office. To maintain his prosperous panache he bought himself a new bowler every other month and as often changed the style of wearing it to baffle the ignorant clerks.
Then one chum said near the fountain nude in Sloane Square:
‘Patrick, you should have blue eyes to match your Siamese.’ This set him thinking. Naturally, he couldn’t change the colour of his eyes to please friends, but he did the next best thing. He dyed his hair blue, Bulgarian blue to be precise, after his first mum, bless her operatic lungs. The bowler had to go, of course; never mind the City, he wasn’t all that attached to the idea of big lolly.
Patrick’s blue hair, however, achieved far more than he intended: now people stared at him first, next they noticed the cat, finally the silk leash. Even children seemed less keen on pulling the leash, because the hair made them say ‘golly!’ and run away.
Policeman never said golly or anything like that, but they were rather nasty, looking him up and down. Once when Patrick was carrying an empty case to have the lock mended, a policewoman asked him to open it in the street. He nearly refused as the street happened to be in the World’s End where he and his dad were quite well known. She found nothing inside, apologized for the inconvenience, and excused herself by saying:
‘I thought you were Lady Pauline. She’s a famous shop-lifter and was caught at Peter Jones wearing a blue wig.’
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