Earthworks

by Brian W Aldiss

  “Aren’t we going to the coast?” I asked.

  He shook his head. With prompting, he described the shore that I had never seen, and the sea beating endlessly against a margin endlessly bound by concrete and plastic and metal — for the old beaches had all been eaten away in the manufacture of artificial soil.

  He snuggled down to sleep. Tired though I was, I remained awake until long after the daylight insinuated itself through a hundred cracks into our shelter.

  Over the days that followed, I learnt more about the travelling life. Though I admired it, some sort of fear kept me from feeling myself part of it.

  Jess himself never made any attempt to extend his liberty, however much he helped others. He lived his desperate life in the heart of the enemy. The same held for his more faithful followers. Some of the men — now that their faces became individualized and less strange to me, I saw they numbered about twenty-five — told me that it was fairly simple to remain at liberty as long as one kept away from the villages and did not venture on to the roads, all of which were well patrolled by robots.

  “Besides, robots are fools,” one of the women said. “By relying so heavily on their machines, the Farmers don’t realize what liberty they give us.”

  “But what sort of liberty is it, after all?” the man next to her growled. “The liberty to die far from a doctor, and to starve ragged in the winter! Why, a couple of winters ago I spent two months lying in a village north of here within the shadow of death. How I pulled through, it was a miracle! But for Nan, I’d be a gonner. I tell you, it’s well enough to be a Traveller at this time of year, when you see the sun through the stinking mists, but when the frosts come — ah, the winter’s a cruel time. Every summer, I spoil the bright days thinking of the cold ones what’s in store.”

  “When it’s spring again, you forget,” Jess said. “Somehow the birds always return, no matter how much the madmen try to kill ’em, flying back over here from Russia and Africa and Scandinavia. And all these beastly weed killers they put down, what make the toughest cabbage wilt, aren’t able to choke off the primrose and the nettle and the buttercup. We’re real men then, the Travellers, when we hear our first cuckoo, aren’t we, lads?”

  This woman, Nan, attracted me. She was younger than the man she slept with, cleaner than most of them, and with wonderful wide blue eyes. I used to make a point of lying on the ground near her, so that I could watch her. I used to feast my eyes as if they were starving on the sweep of her legs, their almost straight line to the front, the cunning and varied curve of her calf. Sometimes I glimpsed also the fine width of her thighs. She took care of her legs, and she saw me looking at them. She and Tess made me want to become a Traveller; but I still dreamed of escape, for freedom meant very little to me — their kind of freedom, I mean.

  Nan talked to me. On the night we handed over the men who were trying for Africa, we met with another group of Travellers in underground warrens that had been carved out of an old mine. There we felt safe, and celebrated. I took Nan to one side, into a shallow gallery where we were alone and the lights of their lanterns hardly reached us. It smelt of earth cleaner than any we smelt above ground.

  There, I slid my hands over those legs I so admired, I felt her generous body, and thrust my tongue between her lips. She allowed it for a while, let me do what I would, helped, and then drew back.

  “You can’t, Knowle, you know you can’t! You’re not a Traveller!”

  We argued. At last she explained what she meant. There was a ritual of acceptance in becoming a Traveller. When you were trusted, you were sterilized and then were a fully fledged member of the band. Then you might have a woman, but not otherwise. In their hazardous way of life, babies were too much of a handicap to the Travellers. A pregnancy was as good as a death sentence to a travelling woman.

  It was the sourest example I ever knew of the fact that everything entails sacrifice.

  The shock of this disclosure sent me that day into a hallucination. When I woke, Garry and Jess were kneeling by me, swabbing my face. A bandage was tied round my mouth; I had been screaming so loudly that even down the mine they became alarmed.

  Weakly, I got up and accepted soup. They were on the move again, and we were to go back the way we had come. It was that time in autumn when the leaves are falling but the trees still have a cover to them. The nights through which we travelled were crisp and chill, and always I knew that I could never be a Traveller.

  There came the night when again we slept together in the ruinous garage. On the next night’s march, I recognized the landscape. Though it differed very little from the lands we had covered, I knew it because I had worked over it many a time. We were back near my village! Hammer snored not a mile away, snug in Dormitory Five.

  Suppose I broke away — but they would punish me unless I could offer them something of value to them...and at once I knew what that something could be.

  Directly my thoughts had fallen into this way, I was like a man possessed. Either I must act now or not at all. My idiot plan was good for this very strip of earth I plodded over.

  Uttering a brief cry, I fell face down into the soil.

  “Get up, club foot,” Garry said, pausing. I groaned. He bent over me. The two men behind came up and stopped. I went on groaning, developing it, building up the sound, though it made my hair stand on end inside my suit.

  Though I could, of course, see nothing, I could hear that the Travellers were beginning to gather round me. “Spread out, you fools!” a woman said.

  Someone gathered me up roughly and half-rolled me over so that they could peer at my face through the face-plate. I groaned the louder, changing it slowly to a sort of wailing noise that was more easy to keep up.

  “He’s having another of his bloody fits. Better leave him,” someone said. This met with grunts of approval.

  “He’s no Traveller — he’ll be dead by morning,” another voice I recognized as Haagman’s declared. “Leave them a bit of real fertilizer for their farm!”

  They dropped me back on to the ground. Then I heard Jess’ voice.

  “We made the boy join us. He’s one of us — what’s how long he’s been with us to do with the question? Are we rats to leave him lying in this furrow?”

  “Don’t give us that old nonsense, Jess,” Haagman said harshly. “You know we’re rats. And you know he’s not a Traveller yet. Let’s get on.”

  But Nan’s voice came to me out of the darkness. “Knowle’s in pain, Haagman.”

  “Huh, who isn’t? The kid’s dying! Listen at him!”

  “All the more reason not to leave him!” Garry said.

  Jess’ voice came again, sharp and decisive. “Haagman, and you, Garry, get Knowle up between you and let’s get moving. Carry him carefully.”

  When the decision was made, they did not argue. I felt their hands fumble for purchase along my rough suit — and then the lights came on!

  Instantly, I knew that we were discovered. Perhaps my noise had given away our position. Though my blood froze, I was foolish enough not to know whether to be sorry or pleased. But at once something else happened that broke my nerve entirely. The brave and rugged men who called themselves Travellers fell down and screamed in terror. My horror and surprise were so great that I sat up and opened my eyes. I too uttered a strangled cry of fear.

  We were surrounded by a row of devils.

  Six of them stood there. They were metal-clad and shone in the lights carried by their companions. Two horns grew from their heads, their eyes gleamed with a cloudy redness that suggested hell fire.

  In a minute I recognized them. They were the whole of our night patrol, from the village, and the Travellers were unlucky enough to cross their path. They were only machines, machines of a new model introduced only a month before I left. The Travellers had obviously never met with them before; certainly their shock value was great, materializing as they had done out of the night. Behind them stood two human figures, the Guard Commander and his Deput
y. They strode forward with weapons raised.

  “You are all under arrest. Any false move and we shoot to kill.”

  As if to emphasize their words, one of the Travellers sprang to his feet and dashed between two of the devil robots. Both machines blazed fire. The man fell flaming on to his face. We heard him crackle long after he had hit the ground.

  We were made to get to our feet. Covered by the robots, the guards searched us and removed all weapons, unzipping our landsuits to do so. By this time, a whirler was hovering overhead, holding us all in a pool of radiance projected from a light in its belly. It was so bright that the worlds outside the light faded to nothing.

  Then we had to march.

  We did not go to the village, as I had expected. They took us the other way. We marched unbrokenly for four hours — no, not quite unbrokenly, for at one point two of the men tried to escape, one dashing in one direction, one in the other. The devils roasted them instantly.

  At last we came to a long low building I had never seen before. It stood isolated among the crops. It was windowless and had only one low door. Directly I saw it, my heart began to hammer. The very look of the building told me it was there for no fair reason. Every line proclaimed that it existed for a bad purpose.

  Chapter Five

  The irrational terror that sprang on me as we approached the sinister building must have snapped me into another of my unfortunate hallucinations. If so, I am unable to remember the details of it; that was the worst. When I remembered hallucinations, sometimes so clearly that they thenceforth became almost part of my life, it could be painful enough; but when I forgot them, and could recall no detail of them, they seemed to lie undigested in my mind, cold and dreadful.

  Not that the sight I saw when I returned to my normal sense was not dreadful enough.

  Twenty-three of us stood in the interior of the large shed, guarded by the devils and the two guards, and illuminated by powerful lights that shone at us from a barrage of spotlights placed at chest level at one end of the chamber. It was not only the strange positioning of these lamps that contributed to our unease. Oh no! Behind us, the wall was pocked and chipped with bullet marks, roost of them at about the height of a man’s lung.

  We stood motionless. No word was spoken. How long I had stood in my horrible trance, I have no means of knowing. The two guards did not wait as patiently as the devils, and walked now and then to the door. Evidently they were waiting for someone. But we were not allowed to move. If we needed to relieve ourselves, it had to be as we stood. I looked at Nan, but her pale face did not turn in my direction.

  Finally someone arrived. We heard the noise of a hovercar landing outside. An officer in black uniform walked in and surveyed us.

  He was a big man. His face was heavy, and he wore a heavy pair of spectacles. He looked at us without expression. His uniform was trim, and I guessed from his general appearance and from the delay he had caused that he had flown here from the city.

  The guards now showed him some badges. These I recognized as prisoner’s badges of the sort issued to everyone when they became landsmen. No doubt my own was there, taken from me during my fit of unconsciousness. This officer could read, for he checked the badges off against a thick list that he produced. At last he turned to us and addressed us.

  His manner was curt, and what he had to say was brief.

  “You are all landsmen and all of you have escaped. The penalty for escape you all know; it is death. By virtue of the authority invested in me by the central government, I have the power to impose this sentence upon you without further hindrance. Accordingly, I declare that you shall be executed by shooting where you stand.”

  As we drank in this edifying news, one of the guards who had marched us into the execution shed conferred with the officer; he nodded his head and looked serious. The Travellers peered frantically about for a way of escape, but the devil robots gave them absolutely no hope. Brave and hardened men that they were, they showed few signs of the terrible sense of impending dissolution that I felt; one of the women even smiled cynically and spat on the floor when the sentence was pronounced.

  Again the officer came forward.

  “I am told,” he said, “that among you is the notorious gipsy known as Jess, for whose capture a reward is offered. Which of you is Jess? Step forward at once.”

  Nobody moved. I started to turn my head towards where I knew Jess stood, but at once someone dug me sharply in the back, and I stayed petrified. Silence.

  “Come forward, you cowardly dog! We’re going to make an example of you!”

  Still no one moved. I felt my legs tremble.

  “Very well,” the officer barked. “The sentence of execution is stayed. Instead, you will all be taken to the Under-city for questioning. Perhaps some of you know what that means.”

  The Under-city, I should explain, is the considerable area, mainly used for urban services such as the disposal of sewage and rubbish, under the great platform on which a city perches. The police notoriously have their interrogation headquarters there, and there are legends about their methods of questioning.

  “You have one last chance. Jess must step out at once.”

  The threat was effective. Someone moved forward. So did someone else, and another, and another. Every Traveller there took a pace forward, women as well as men. I was carried forward with them.

  The officer went red in the face but controlled himself. He pointed a finger at the Traveller nearest to him. “What is your name?”

  “I am Jess.” In fact it was a man I knew to be called Burgess.

  The officer asked a second and a third. All gave the same reply: “I am Jess.” All were protecting the leader from what they knew would be protracted torture and death.

  Now the officer was icy calm.

  “Very well,” he said. “I shall order the robots to fire at your legs. You will all lie here and die slowly. The only man who shall be spared is the man who comes forward and points out this leader Jess to me.”

  Ah, the shame of it! How many times since then have I asked myself why a man’s whole life should be judged by one minute of it. And then again I ask myself why it should not be so judged.

  And why should it not be so judged indeed, when I am the judge and can select the criteria?

  I ran forward to the officer, crying to him that I would tell, crying that I had no part of the others, that I was not a Traveller, that — it doesn’t matter what I cried.

  They were clever, the Travellers! Though they had been searched, two of them had managed to hide throwing-knives in their clothes. They threw them at me.

  That grim and solid officer had not known when he called for a traitor that he called his own death. For the knives missed me. I was weak in the legs and ankles with fear, and I half-fell as I ran forward. So I heard the knives go by. Both caught the officer in the chest.

  He jerked his hands up, slapping his own face in a wild gesture that sent his spectacles flying. His heavy face crumpled and he fell forward. Almost before he had hit the floor, the quicker of the guards had barked an order to the devil robots. They opened fire immediately on the Travellers. Oh, Nan! Oh, Jess!

  When it was all over, and the last echo had been wrung from under the grim roof, I was marched into the darkness outside. A hovercar waited there with another officer beside it. I remember seeing his face and thinking that he looked more scared than I. My hands were clipped together and I was bundled into the hovercar.

  I cannot recount in detail the madness of the succeeding weeks. I have always thought of them as weeks, though they may in fact have been days or months. In the heart of the Under-city, to which I was taken, it was hard, even under the best conditions, to tell the difference between day and night. I underwent three prolonged interrogations, and was otherwise left alone in a solitary cell. The cell was without windows, although it had a lavatory and a bunk and was heated — just as well, since I was stripped naked and allowed no stitch of clothing. No means that I kn
ow of is so effective in reducing a man’s morale and nerves to pulp. Yet I must have been lucky; I was not tortured.

  They did not torture me. In the circumstances, I was able to do that easily enough for myself, wondering how I had acted the betrayer so casually... There was a pile of pages here I wrote about mind, but we had better keep to body.

  One day, a guard came for me. He threw me a pair of trousers and prodded me immediately out of the cell, so that I had to put the garment on as best I could as I went along. Instead of going to the interrogation room as I had done before, I was marched out of the building and handed over to another guard, who eyed for me — that is, gave up a print of his retinal pattern as was sometimes done in the cities; in an earlier age, he would have signed for me, I suppose.

  He bundled me into the front of a small scooter-thing, which moved off at once. I remember looking up and seeing overhead, instead of sky, a great black and brown shield on which moisture gleamed. At first I mistook it for a lowering storm cloud. My mind was sluggish from misery; it took some while before I realized that this was a view of the city respectable citizens never saw: its mighty metal underbelly. In my low state, the sight completely demoralized me; I was crushed by it.

  I was taken before the Farmer.

  At the time, I thought that this was the most terrible thing that could happen to me. The Farmer was a legend; he was the begetter of all our troubles; he was Evil Incarnate...and I found myself shivering in a small bare office confronting him.

  “Sit down on that chair and stop shaking,” he said.

  What had I imagined he would look like? Had I imagined fangs, a mountainous body? He was small and neat and tense. Although his hair was white, he wore a small black beard, and his eyebrows were also black. His nose was sharp and aquiline and his mouth firm. These features instantly became the characteristics of death in my mind.

  He observed me steadily and then pressed a buzzer under his hand. A woman appeared; he asked her to fetch a blanket. Until she returned, he sat silent, observing me without saying a word. I hung my head and could not meet his gaze. When the blanket came, he stood up and tossed it to me.