“No ’arm can befall us if we obey the Thing,” said Torrit, patting it carefully.
Masklin stopped. He had, he decided, had enough.
“What does the Thing say, then?” he said sharply. “Exactly? What does it actually tell us to do now? Come on, tell me what it says we should do now!”
Torrit looked a bit desperate.
“Er,” he began, “it, er, is clear that if we pulls together and maintains a proper—”
“You’re just making it up as you go along!”
“How dare you speak to him like that—” Grimma began. Masklin flung down his spear.
“Well, I’m fed up with it!” he muttered. “The Thing says this, the Thing says that, the Thing says every blessed thing except anything that might be useful!”
“The Thing has been handed down from nome to nome for hundreds of years,” said Grimma. “It’s very important.”
“Why?”
Grimma looked at Torrit. He licked his lips.
“It shows us—” he began, white-faced.
“Move me closer to the electricity.”
“The Thing seems to be more important than . . . what are you all looking like that for?” said Masklin.
“Closer to the electricity.”
Torrit, his hands shaking, looked down at the Thing.
Where there had been smooth black surfaces there were now little dancing lights. Hundreds of them. In fact, Masklin thought, feeling slightly proud of knowing what the word meant, there were probably thousands of them.
“Who said that?” said Masklin.
The Thing dropped out of Torrit’s grasp and landed on the floor, where its lights glittered like a thousand highways at night. The nomes watched it in horror.
“The Thing does tell you things . . .” said Masklin. “Gosh!”
Torrit waved his hands frantically. “Not like that! Not like that! It ain’t supposed to talk out loud! It’s ain’t done that before!”
“Closer to the electricity!”
“It wants the electricity,” said Masklin.
“Well, I’m not going to touch it!”
Masklin shrugged and then, using his spear gingerly, pushed the Thing across the floor until it was under the wires.
“How does it speak? It hasn’t got a mouth,” said Grimma.
The Thing whirred. Colored shapes flickered across its surfaces faster than Masklin’s eyes could follow. Most of them were red.
Torrit sank to his knees. “It is angry,” he moaned. “We shouldn’t have eaten rat, we shouldn’t have come here, we shouldn’t—”
Masklin also knelt down. He touched the bright areas, gingerly at first, but they weren’t hot.
He felt that strange feeling again, of his mind wanting to think certain thoughts without having the right words.
“When the Thing has told you things before,” he said slowly, “you know, how we should live proper lives—”
Torrit gave him an agonized expression.
“It never has,” he said.
“But you said—”
“It used to, it used to,” moaned Torrit. “When old Voozel passed it on to me he said it used to, but he said that hundreds and hundreds of years ago it just stopped.”
“What?” said Granny Morkie. “All these years, my good man, you’ve been telling us that the Thing says this and the Thing says that and the Thing says goodness knows what.”
Now Torrit looked like a very frightened, trapped animal.
“Well?” said the old woman, menacingly.
“Ahem,” said Torrit. “Er. What old Voozel said was, think about what the Thing ought to say, and then say it. Keep people on the right path, sort of thing. Help them get to the Heavens. Very important, getting to the Heavens. The Thing can help you get there, he said. Most important thing about it.”
“What?” shouted Granny.
“That’s what he told me to do. It worked, didn’t it?”
Masklin ignored them. The colored lines moved over the Thing in hypnotic patterns. He felt that he ought to know what they meant. He was certain they meant something.
Sometimes, on fine days back in the times when he didn’t have to hunt every day, he’d climb farther along the bank until he could look down on the place where the trucks parked. There was a big blue board there, with little shapes and pictures on it. And in the litter bins the boxes and papers had more shapes and pictures on them; he remembered the long argument they’d had about the chicken boxes with the pictures of the old man with the big whiskers on them. Several nomes had insisted that this was a picture of a chicken, but Masklin had rather felt that humans didn’t go around eating old men. There had to be more to it than that. Perhaps old men made chicken.
The Thing hummed again.
“Fifteen thousand years have passed,” it said.
Masklin looked up at the others.
“You talk to it,” Granny ordered Torrit. The old man backed away.
“Not me! Not me! I dunno what to say!” he said.
“Well, I ain’t!” snapped Granny. “That’s the leader’s job, is that!”
“Fifteen thousand years have passed,” the Thing repeated.
Masklin shrugged. It seemed to be up to him.
“Passed what?” he said.
The Thing gave the impression that it was thinking busily. At last it said: “Do you still know the meaning of the words Flight Navigation and Recording Computer?”
“No,” said Masklin earnestly. “None of them.”
The light pattern moved.
“Do you know anything about interstellar travel?”
“No.”
The box gave Masklin the distinct impression that it was very disappointed in him.
“Do you know you came here from a place far away?” it said.
“Oh, yes. We know that.”
“A place farther than the moon.”
“Er.” Masklin hesitated. The journey had taken a long time. It was always possible that they had gone past the moon. He had often seen it on the horizon, and he was certain that the truck had gone farther than that.
“Yes,” he said. “Probably.”
“Language changes over the years,” said the Thing thoughtfully.
“Does it?” said Masklin politely.
“What do you call this planet?”
“I don’t know what planet means, either,” said Masklin.
“An astronomical body.”
Masklin looked blank.
“What is your name for this place?”
“It’s called . . . the Store.”
“Thestore.” The lights moved, as if the Thing were thinking again.
“Young man, I don’t want to stand here all day exchanging nonsense with the Thing,” said Granny Morkie. “What we need to do now is sort out where we’re going and what we’re going to do.”
“That’s right,” said Torrit defiantly.
“Do you even remember that you are shipwrecked?”
“I’m Masklin,” said Masklin. “I don’t know who Shipwrecked is.”
The lights changed again. Later, when he got to know the Thing better, Masklin always thought that particular pattern was its way of sighing deeply.
“My purpose is to serve you and guide you,” said the Thing.
“See?” said Torrit, who was feeling a bit out of things. “We was right about that!”
Masklin prodded the box. “You’ve been keeping a bit quiet about it lately, then,” he said.
The Thing hummed. “This was to maintain internal power. However, I can now use ambient electricity.”
“That’s nice,” said Grimma.
“You mean you sort of drink up the lights?” said Masklin.
“That will suffice as an explanation for now.”
“Why didn’t you talk before, then?” said Masklin.
“I was listening.”
“Oh.”
“And now I await instructions.”
“In where?” said Gr
imma.
“I think it wants us to tell it what to do,” said Masklin. He sat back on his heels and watched the lights.
“What can you do?” he said.
“I can translate, calculate, triangulate, assimilate, correlate, and extrapolate.”
“I don’t think we want anything like that,” said Masklin. “Do we want anything like that?” he asked the others.
Granny Morkie appeared to think about it. “No,” she said eventually, “I don’t think we wants any of that stuff. Another banana’d be nice, mind.”
“I think all we really want is to go home and be safe,” said Masklin.
“Go home.”
“That’s right.”
“And be safe.”
“Yes.”
Later on, those five words became one of the most famous quotations in nome history. They got taught in schools. They got carved in stone. And it’s sad, therefore, that at the time no one thought they were particularly important.
All that happened was that the Thing said, “Computing.”
Then all its lights died, except a small green one, which began to flash.
“Thank goodness for that,” said Grimma. “What a horrible voice. What shall we do now?”
“According to that Angalo boy,” said Granny, “we have to live very sad lives.”
3
I. For they did not know it, but they had brought with them the Thing, which awoke in the presence of Electricity, and it alone knew their History;
II. For nomes have memories of Flesh and Blood, while the Thing had a memory of Silicon, which is Stone and perisheth not, whereas the memory of nomes blows away like dust;
III. And they gave it Instructions, but knew it not.
IV. It is, they said, a Box with a Funny Voice.
V. But the Thing began to Compute the task of keeping all nomes safe.
VI. And the Thing also began to Compute the task of taking all nomes home.
VII. All the way Home.
From The Book of Nome, Mezzanine v. I–VII
IT WAS EASY to get lost under the floor. It took no effort at all. It was a maze of walls and cables, with drifts of dust away from the paths. In fact, as Torrit said, they weren’t exactly lost, more mislaid; there were paths all over the place, between the joists and walls, but no indication of where they led to. Sometimes a nome would hurry past on an errand of its own and pay them no attention.
They dozed in an alcove formed by two huge wooden walls and woke up to light as dim as ever. There didn’t seem to be any night or day in the Store. It did seem noisier, though. There was a distant, all-pervading hubbub.
A few more lights were flashing on the Thing, and it had grown a little, cup-shaped, smaller thing that went round and round very slowly.
“Should we look for the Food Hall again?” asked Torrit hopefully.
“I think you have to be a member of a department,” said Masklin. “But it can’t be the only place with food, can it?”
“It wasn’t as noisy as this when we came here,” said Granny. “What a din!”
Masklin looked around. There was a space between the woodwork, and a distant gleam of very bright light. He edged toward it and stuck his eye to the crack.
“Oh,” he said weakly.
“What is it?” Grimma called out.
“It’s humans. More humans than you’ve ever seen before.”
The crack was where the ceiling joined the wall of a room nearly as big as the truck nest and it was, indeed, full of humans. The Store had opened.
The nomes had always known that humans lived very slowly. Masklin had almost walked into humans once or twice, when he was hunting, and knew that even before one of their huge stupid faces could swivel its eyes, he could be off the path and hiding behind a clump of something.
The space below was crowded with them, walking their great slow clumping walk and booming at each other in their vague, deep voices.
The nomes watched, fascinated, for some time.
“What are those things they’re holding?” said Grimma. “They look a bit like the Thing.”
“Dunno,” said Masklin.
“Look, they pick them up and then give something to the other human, and then it’s put in a bag, and they go away. They almost look, well, as if they mean what they’re doing.”
“No, it’s like ants,” said Torrit authoritatively. “They seems intelligent, I’ll grant you, but when you looks closely, there’s nothing really clever about them.”
“They build things,” said Masklin vaguely.
“So do birds, my lad.”
“Yes, but—”
“Humans are a bit like magpies, I’ve always said. They just want things that glitter.”
“Hmm.” Masklin decided not to argue. You couldn’t argue with old Torrit, unless you were Granny Morkie, of course. He had room only for a certain number of ideas in his head, and once one had taken root, you couldn’t budge it. But Masklin wanted to say: If they’re so stupid, why isn’t it them hiding from us?
An idea struck him. He lifted up the Thing.
“Thing?” he said.
There was a pause. Then the tinny little voice said: “Operations on main task suspended. What is it that you require?”
“Do you know what humans are?” said Masklin.
“Yes. Resuming main task.”
Masklin looked blankly at the others.
“Thing?” he said.
“Operations on main task suspended. What is it that you require?”
“I asked you to tell me about humans,” said Masklin.
“This is not the case. You said: Do you know what humans are? My answer was correct in every respect.”
“Well, tell me what humans are!”
“Humans are the indigenous inhabitants of the world you now call Thestore. Resuming main task.”
“There!” said Torrit, nodding wisely. “Told you, didn’t I? They’re indigenous. Clever, yes, but basically just indigenous. Just a lot of indigenouses.” He hesitated. “Indigenice,” he corrected himself.
“Are we indigenous?” said Masklin.
“Main task interrupted. No. Main task resumed.”
“Course not,” said Torrit witheringly. “We’ve got a bit of pride.”
Masklin opened his mouth to ask what indigenous meant. He knew he didn’t know, and he was certain that Torrit didn’t. And after that, he wanted to ask a lot more questions, and before he asked them, he’d have to think about the words he used.
I don’t know enough words, he thought. Some things you can’t think unless you know the right words.
But he didn’t get around to it, because a voice behind him said, “Powerful strange things, ain’t they? And very busy just lately. I wonder what’s got into them?”
It was an elderly, rather stocky nome. And drably dressed, which was unusual in the Store. Most of his clothing was a huge apron, its pockets bulging mysteriously.
“Have you been spying on us?” said Granny Morkie.
The stranger gave a shrug.
“I usually come here to watch humans,” he said. “It’s a good spot. There isn’t usually anyone else here. What department are you?”
“We haven’t got one,” said Masklin.
“We’re just people,” said Granny.
“Not indigenous, either,” Torrit added quickly.
The stranger grinned and slid off the wooden beam he’d been sitting on.
“Fancy that,” he said. “You must be these new things I’ve heard about. Outsiders?”
He held out his hand. Masklin looked at it cautiously.
“Yes?” he said politely.
The stranger sighed. “You’re supposed to shake it,” he said.
“I am? Why?”
“It’s traditional. My name’s Dorcas del Icatessen.” The stranger gave Masklin a lopsided grin. “Do you know yours?” he said.
Masklin ignored this. “What do you mean, you watch humans?” he said.
&nbs
p; “I watch humans. Study them, you know. It’s what I do. You can learn a lot about the future by watching humans.”
“A bit like the weather, you mean?” said Masklin.
“Weather! Of course, weather!” The nome grinned hugely. “You’d know all about the weather. Powerful stuff, weather?”
“You’ve heard of it?” said Masklin.
“Only the old stories. Hmm.” Dorcas looked him up and down. “I reckoned Outsiders’d have to be a different shape, though. Life, but not as we know it. You just come along with me. I’ll show you what I mean.”
Masklin looked slowly around the dusty space between the floors. This was just about it. He’d had just about enough of it. It was too warm and too dry and everyone treated him like a fool, and now they thought he was the wrong shape.
“Well—” he began, and under his arm the Thing said, “We need this person.”
“My word,” said Dorcas. “What a tiny radio. They get smaller all the time, don’t they?”
Where Dorcas led them was just a hole. Big, square, deep, and dark. A few cables, fatter than a nome, disappeared down into the depths.
“You live down here?” asked Grimma.
Dorcas fumbled in the darkness. There was a click. Far above, something went bang and there was a distant roaring sound.
“Hmm? Oh, no,” he said. “Took me ages to sort out, did this. It’s a sort of floor on a rope. It goes up and down, you know. With humans in it. So I thought, I’m not getting any younger, all those stairs were playing havoc with my legs, so I had a look at the way it worked. Perfectly simple. It’d have to be, o’ course, otherwise humans wouldn’t know how to use it. Stand back, please.”
Something huge and black came down the shaft and stopped a few inches above their heads. There were clangs and thumps and the now-familiar sound of clumsy humans walking about.
There was also, slung under the elevator’s floor, a small wire basket tied on with bits of string.
“If you think,” said Granny Morkie, “that I’m going to get into a, a wire nest on a string, then you’ve got another—”
“Is it safe?” said Masklin.
“More or less, more or less,” said Dorcas, stepping across the gap and fumbling with another little bundle of switches. “Hurry up, please. This way, madam.”
“Er, how much more than less?” asked Masklin as Granny, astonished at being called madam, got aboard.
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