II. But it was old and broken and dying.
III. And the Mark of the Dragon was on it.
IV. And the Mark was Big John.
From The Book of Nome,
Big John Chap. 1, v. I–IV
BIG JOHN.
Big John was his. His little secret. His big secret, really. No one else knew about Big John, not even Dorcas’s assistants.
He’d been pottering around in the big old half-ruined sheds on the other side of the quarry, one day back in the summer. He hadn’t really had any aim in mind, except perhaps the possibility of finding a useful bit of wire or something.
So he’d rummaged around in the shadows, straightened up, glanced above him and there Big John was.
With his mouth open.
It had been a terrible few seconds until Dorcas’s eyes adjusted to the distance.
After that, he’d spent a lot of time with Big John, poking around, finding out about it. Or him. Big John was definitely a him. A terrible him, perhaps, and old and wounded, like a dragon that had come here for one last final sleep. Or perhaps it was like one of those big animals Grimma had showed him in a book once. Diner soars.
But Big John didn’t grumble, and he didn’t keep on asking Dorcas why he hadn’t got around to inventing radio yet. Dorcas had spent many a peaceful hour getting to know Big John. He was someone to talk to. He was the best kind of person to talk to, in fact, because you didn’t have to listen to him back.
Dorcas shook his head. There was no time for that sort of thing now. Everything was going wrong.
Instead, he went to find Grimma. She seemed to have her head screwed on right, even if she was a girl.
The school hole was under the floor of the old shed with Canteen on the door. It was Grimma’s personal world. She’d invented schools for children, on the basis that since reading and writing were quite difficult, it was best to get them over with early.
The library was also kept there.
In those last hectic hours, the nomes had managed to rescue about thirty books from the Store. Some were very useful—Gardening All the Year Round was well thumbed, and Dorcas knew Essential Theory for the Amateur Engineer almost by heart—but some were, well, difficult, and not opened much.
Grimma was standing in front of one of these when he wandered in. She was biting her thumb, which she always did when she was concentrating.
He had to admire the way she read. Not only was Grimma the best reader among the nomes, she also had an amazing ability to understand what she was reading.
“Nisodemus is causing trouble,” he said, sitting down on a bench.
“I know,” said Grimma vaguely. “I’ve heard.” She grabbed the edge of the page in both hands and turned it over with a grunt of effort.
“I don’t know what he’s got to gain,” said Dorcas.
“Power,” said Grimma. “We’ve got a power vacuum, you see.”
“I don’t think we have,” said Dorcas uncertainly. “I’ve never seen one here. There were plenty in the Store. Sixty-Nine Ninety-Five With Range Of Attachments For Round-The-House Cleanliness,” he added, remembering with a sigh the familiar signs.
“No, it’s not a thing like that,” said Grimma. “It’s what you get when no one’s in charge. I’ve been reading about them.”
“I’m in charge, aren’t I?” said Dorcas plaintively.
“No,” said Grimma, “because no one really listens to you.”
“Oh. Thank you very much.”
“It’s not your fault. People like Masklin and Angalo and Gurder can make people listen to them, but you don’t seem to keep their attention.”
“Oh.”
“But you can make nuts and bolts listen to you. Not everyone can do that.”
Dorcas thought about this. He would never have put it like that himself. Was it a compliment? He decided it probably was.
“When people are faced with lots of troubles and they don’t know what to do, there’s always someone ready to say anything, just to get some power,” said Grimma.
“Never mind. When the others get back, I’m sure they’ll sort it all out,” said Dorcas, more cheerfully than he felt.
“Yes, they’ll—” Grimma began, and then stopped. After a while Dorcas realized that her shoulders were shaking.
“Is there anything the matter?” he said.
“It’s been more than three whole days!” sobbed Grimma. “No one’s ever been away that long before! Something must have happened to them!”
“Er,” said Dorcas, “well, they were going to look for Grandson Richard, 39, and we can’t be sure that—”
“And I was so nasty to him before he went! I told him about the frogs and all he could think of was socks!”
Dorcas couldn’t quite see how frogs had got involved. When he sat and talked to Big John, frogs were never dragged into the conversation.
“Er?” he said.
Grimma, in between sobs, told him about the frogs.
“And I’m sure he didn’t even begin to understand what I meant,” she mumbled. “And you won’t either.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Dorcas. “You mean that the world was once so simple, and suddenly it’s full of amazingly interesting things that you’ll never ever get to the end of as long as you live. Like biology. Or climatology. I mean, before all you Outsiders came, I was just tinkering with things and I really didn’t know anything about the world.”
He stared at his feet. “I’m still very ignorant,” he said, “but at least I’m ignorant about really important things. Like what the sun is, and why it rains. That’s what you’re talking about.”
She sniffed and smiled a bit, but not too much, because if there is one thing worse than someone who doesn’t understand you, it’s someone who understands perfectly, before you’ve had a chance to have a good pout about not being understood.
“The thing is,” she said, “that he still thinks I’m the person he used to know when we all lived in the old hole in the bank. You know, running around. Cooking things. Bandaging up people when they’d been hur-hur-hur—”
“Now then, now then,” said Dorcas. He was always at a loss when people acted like this. When machines went funny, you just oiled them or prodded them or, if nothing else worked, hit them with a hammer. Nomes didn’t respond well to this treatment.
“Supposing he never comes back?” she said, dabbing at her eyes.
“Of course he’ll come back,” said Dorcas reassuringly. “What could have happened to him, after all?”
“He could have been eaten or run over or trodden on or blown away or fallen down a hole or trapped,” said Grimma.
“Er, yes,” said Dorcas. “Apart from that, I meant.”
“But I shall pull myself together,” said Grimma, sticking out her chin. “When he does come back, he won’t be able to say, ‘Oh, I see everything’s gone to pieces while I’ve been away.’”
“Jolly good,” said Dorcas. “That’s the spirit. Keep yourself occupied, that’s what I always say. What’s the book called?”
“It’s A Treasury of Proverbs and Quotations,” said Grimma.
“Oh. Anything useful in it?”
“That,” said Grimma distantly, “depends.”
“Oh. What’s ‘Proverbs’ mean?”
“Not sure. Some of them don’t make much sense. Do you know, humans think the world was made by a sort of big human?”
“Get out!”
“It took a week.”
“I expect it had some help, then,” said Dorcas. “You know. With the heavy stuff.” Dorcas thought of Big John. You could do a lot in a week, with Big John helping.
“No. All by himself, apparently.”
“Hmm.” Dorcas considered this. Certainly bits of the world were rough, and things like grass seemed simple enough. But from what he’d heard, it all broke down every year and had to be started up again in the spring, and—“I don’t know,” he said. “Only humans could believe something like that. Ther
e’s a good few months’ work, if I’m any judge.”
Grimma turned the page. “Masklin used to believe—I mean, Masklin believes—that humans are much brighter than we think.” She looked thoughtful. “I really wish we could study them properly,” she said. “I’m sure we could learn a—”
For the second time, the alarm bell rang out across the quarry.
This time, the hand on the switch belonged to Nisodemus.
7
II. And Nisodemus said, You are betrayed, People of the Store;
III. Falsely you were led into This Outside of Rain and Cold and Sleet and Humans and Order, and Yet it Will become Worse;
IV. For there will be Sleet and Snow, and Hunger in the Land;
V. And There will come Robins;
VI. Um.
VII. Yet those who brought you here, where are they Now?
VIII. They said, We go to seek Grandson Richard, 39, but tribulation abounds on every side and no help comes. You are betrayed into the hands of Winter.
IX. It is time to put aside things of the Outside. . . .
From The Book of Nome,
Complaints v. II–IX
“YES. WELL. THAT’S hard to do, isn’t it?” said a nome uneasily. “I mean, we are Outside.”
“But I have a plan,” said Nisodemus.
“Ah,” said the nomes in unison. Plans were the thing. Plans were what was needed. You knew where you were, with a plan.
Grimma and Dorcas, almost the last to arrive, sidled their way into the crowd. The old engineer was going to push his way to the front, but Grimma restrained him.
“Look at the others up there,” she whispered.
There were quite a few nomes behind Nisodemus. Many of them Dorcas recognized as Stationeri, but there were a few others from some of the great departmental families. They weren’t looking at Nisodemus as he spoke, but at the crowd. Their eyes flickered back and forth, as though they were searching for something.
“I don’t like the look of this,” said Grimma quietly. “The big families never used to get on too well with the Stationeri, so why are they up there now?”
“Grubby pieces of work, some of them,” said Dorcas.
Some of the Stationeri had been particularly upset about common, everyday nomes learning to read. They said it gave people ideas, Dorcas gathered, which were not a good thing unless they were the right kind of ideas. And some of the great families hadn’t been too happy about nomes being able to go where they pleased, without having to ask permission.
They’re all up there, he thought. The nomes who haven’t done so well since the Drive. They all lost a little power.
Nisodemus was explaining his plan.
As he listened, Dorcas’s mouth slowly dropped open.
It was magnificent in its way, that plan. It was like a machine where every single bit was perfectly made, but which had been put together by a one-handed nome in the dark. It was crammed full of good ideas that you couldn’t sensibly argue with, but they had been turned upside down. The trouble was, they were still ones you couldn’t sensibly argue with, because the basically good idea was still in there somewhere. . . .
Nisodemus wanted to rebuild the Store.
The nomes stood in horrified admiration as the Stationeri explained that yes, Abbot Gurder had been right: When they left the Store, they had taken Arnold Bros (est. 1905) with them inside their heads. And if they could show him that they really cared about the Store, he would come out again and put a stop to all these problems and reestablish the Store here, in this green unpleasant land.
That was how it all arrived in Dorcas’s head, anyway. He’d long ago decided that if you spent all your time listening to what people actually said, you’d never have time to work out what they meant.
But it wouldn’t mean building the whole Store, said Nisodemus, his eyes shining like two bright black marbles. They could change the quarry in other ways. Go back to living in proper departments instead of any old how all over the place. Put up some signs. Get back to the Good Old Ways. Make Arnold Bros (est. 1905) feel at home. Build the Store inside their heads.
Nomes didn’t often go mad. Dorcas vaguely recalled an elderly nome who had once decided that he was a teapot, but he’d changed his mind after a few days.
Nisodemus, though, had definitely been getting too much fresh air.
It was obvious that one or two other nomes thought so too.
“I don’t quite see,” said one of them, “how Arnold Bros (est. 1905) is going to stop these humans. No offense meant.”
“Did humans interfere with us when we were in the Store?” demanded Nisodemus.
“Well, no, because—”
“Then trust in Arnold Bros (est. 1905)!”
“But that didn’t stop the Store being demolished, did it?” said a voice. “When it came to it, you all trusted Masklin and Gurder and the Truck. And yourselves! Nisodemus is always telling you how clever you are. Try and be clever, then!”
Dorcas realized it was Grimma. He’d never seen anyone so angry.
She pushed her way through the apprehensive nomes until she was face to face, or at least, since Nisodemus was standing on something and she wasn’t, face to chest. He was one of those people who liked standing on things.
“What will actually happen, then?” she shouted. “When you’ve built the Store, what will happen? Humans came into the Store, you know!”
Nisodemus’s mouth opened and shut for a while. Then he said, “But they obeyed the Regulations! Yes! Um! That’s what they did! And things were better then!”
She glared at him.
“You don’t really think people are going to accept that, do you?” she said.
There was silence.
“You’ve got to admit,” said an elderly nome, very slowly, “things were better then.”
The nomes shuffled their feet.
That was all you could hear.
Just people, shuffling their feet.
“They just accepted it!” said Grimma. “Just like that! No one’s bothered about the Council anymore! They just do what he tells them!”
Now she was in Dorcas’s workspace under a bench in the old quarry garage. My little sanctuary, he always called it. My little nook. Bits of wire and tin were scattered everywhere. The wall was covered with scrawls done with a bit of pencil lead.
Dorcas sat and twiddled a bit of wire aimlessly.
“You’re being hard on people,” he said quietly. “You shouldn’t yell at them like that. They’ve been through a lot. They get all confused if you shout at them. The Council was all right for when times were good—” He shrugged. “And without Masklin and Gurder and Angalo, well, it hardly seems worthwhile.”
“But after all that’s happened!” She waved her arms. “To act so stupidly, just because he’s offered them—”
“A bit of comfort,” said Dorcas. He shook his head. You couldn’t explain things like this to people like Grimma. Nice girl, bright head on her, but she kept thinking that everyone else was as passionate about things as she was. All people really wanted, Dorcas considered, was to be left alone. The world was quite difficult enough as it was without people going around trying to make it better all the time.
Masklin had understood that. He knew the way to make people do what you wanted was to make them think it was their idea. If there was one thing that got right up a nome’s nose, it was someone saying, “Here is a really sensible idea. Why are you too stupid to understand?”
It wasn’t that people were stupid. It was just that people were people.
“Come on,” he said wearily. “Let’s go and see how the signs are getting on.”
The whole of the floor of one of the big sheds had been turned over to the making of the signs. Or rather, the Signs. Another thing Nisodemus was good at was giving words capital letters. You could hear him doing it.
Dorcas had to admit that the Signs were a pretty good idea, though. He felt guilty about thinking this.
He’d thought that when Nisodemus had summoned him and asked if there was any paint in the quarry, only now the quarry was being called the New Store.
“Um,” Dorcas had said, “there’s some old cans. White and red, mainly. Under one of the benches. We might be able to lever the tops off.”
“Then do it. It is very important. Um. We must make Signs,” said the Stationeri.
“Signs. Right,” said Dorcas. “Cheer the place up a bit, you mean?”
“No!”
“Sorry, sorry, I just thought—”
“Signs for the gate!”
Dorcas scratched his chin. “The gate?” he said.
“Humans obey Signs,” said Nisodemus, calming down. “We know that. Did they not obey the Signs in the Store?”
“Most of ’em,” agreed Dorcas. Dogs and Strollers Must Be Carried had always puzzled him. Lots of humans didn’t carry either of them.
“Signs make humans do things,” said Nisodemus, “or stop doing things. So get to work, good Dorcas. Signs. Um. Signs that say No.”
Dorcas had given this a lot of thought as teams of nomes sweated to pry the lids off the paint-streaked cans. They still had The High Way Code from the Truck, and there were plenty of signs in there. And he could remember some of the signs from the Store.
Then there was a stroke of luck. Normally the nomes stayed at floor level, but Dorcas had taken to sending his young assistants onto the big desk in the manager’s office occasionally, where there were useful scraps of paper. Now he needed to work out what the signs should say.
Sacco and Nooty came back with the news.
They’d found more signs. A great big grubby notice pinned to the wall, covered with signs.
“Masses of them,” Sacco said, coming back out of breath. “And you know what, sir? You know what? I read what it said on the notice, and it said, Health And Safety At Work, it said, Obey These Signs, it said, and it said, They Are There For Your Protection.”
“That’s what it said?” said Dorcas.
“For Your Protection,” Sacco repeated.
“Can you get it down?”
“There’s a coat hook next to it,” said Nooty enthusiastically. “I bet we could sling a hook up and then pull it over toward the window, and then—”
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