The City of Gold and Lead (The Tripods)

by Christopher, John

  But it was not yet over. Fritz had vanished into the next patch of darkness, and the Master disappeared in turn. I made my way after them. Light faded, leaving nothing but the distant glow. This brightened again. I could see the globe of the lamp, lifted on its long angular arm. And just beyond it . . .

  The Master was there, and so was Fritz. They stood together, the Master towering over Fritz. I heard a distant sound of speech.

  I wanted to turn back into the shadows, but that might attract his attention. I had to go forward, whatever happened. And retreat would mean abandoning Fritz. I marched on. If he were in trouble . . . I did not think much of my chances of landing another sucker punch like the one that had killed my own Master. I found myself trembling, with fear and resolution. Then, with a second flush of relief, I saw the Master move on and Fritz, more slowly, follow.

  He waited for me in the next shadows. I said, “What was it? What did he want to know?”

  Fritz shook his head. “Nothing. He thought he recognized me as the slave of someone he knew. I think he had a message to give. But I was not the one he wanted, so he went on.”

  I drew a deep breath into the mask. “I thought we were sunk.”

  “So did I.”

  I could not see him in the darkness, but I could hear a tremor in his voice. I said:

  “Do you want to rest?”

  “No. We must press on.”

  • • •

  An hour later, we did rest. There was an open place with a large triangular garden pool, to one side of which trees—something like weeping willows only on a massive scale—drooped their branches down to the ground beside the pool, screening us, once we were inside their shelter, from the view of anyone who passed. Though in fact we had seen no one on the streets or ramps for some time now, and there was no sign of a Master in or near the pool. We stretched out, under the ropy fronds that, although there was no wind or breeze in the City, from time to time brushed lightly against us. The ground pulled us down still, but it was bliss not to fight it, to lie flat and motionless. I would have liked to clear the inside of my mask of sweat, but of course that was impossible.

  I said, “Have you been in this part of the City before, Fritz?”

  “Once only. We are not far from the edge.”

  “And opposite where the river comes in?”

  “Roughly opposite.”

  “So when we find the Wall, we can start looking for the outflow.”

  “Yes. We shall have to be more careful from now on. It is late to be on a night errand, and we are reaching the part where the Masters who have no slaves live. We must go more warily.”

  “They don’t seem to travel about at night, either.”

  “No. That’s lucky. But we can’t be absolutely sure of it. Do you feel thirsty?”

  “A bit. Not too badly.”

  “I do. It does no good to think about it, though. Since there are no slaves in this part of the City, there will be no communal places.” He rose slowly to his feet. “I think we had better get on, Will.”

  • • •

  We saw strange things in our search. One of these was a vast pit, a triangle a hundred yards along each side, where, far down, green light gleamed on a seething viscous liquid in which, at intervals, bubbles slowly rose and popped. In another place there was a complicated structure of metal rods and catwalks, looming up into the dark night, pointing, it seemed, to lights that flashed high above our heads. Once, turning a corner ahead of me, Fritz stopped, but beckoned me to come up with him. I did so quietly, and together we stared at the scene. It was a small garden pool, with only a few low-lying plants. In it were two of the Masters, the first we had seen since coming into this sector. They were locked together in what looked like deadly combat, tentacles interlocked, heaving against each other, the water turbulent with their struggling and rolling. We watched for a moment or two and then, making nothing of it, turned silently and went another way.

  In due course we reached the Wall. We came down a ramp between two small pyramids, and it was there. It stretched away on either side, golden even in the dim greenish light of the lamps, curving inward slightly as it was lost in the distance. The surface was smooth and hard and unbroken, offering not even a toehold, and upward as well as to the sides it showed no interruption as far as the eye could see. It was discouraging to look at it.

  I said, “Do you think we are near where the river ought to be?”

  I saw Fritz’s thin ribs rise and fall in the lamplight. I was exhausted, but he much more so. He said, “We should be. But the river would be below ground.”

  “Will there be a way of getting down to it?”

  “We must hope there is.”

  I looked at the featureless wall. “Which way do we go?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Left. Do you hear anything?”

  “What?”

  “The sound of water.”

  I listened intently. “No.”

  “Nor do I.” He shook his head, as though to rouse himself. “Left will do.”

  Thirst began to attack me soon after. I tried to dismiss the thought, but it came back insistently. We were searching for water, after all. I thought of it, cold, crystal clear, like the streams that ran down below the White Mountains. The picture was a torment, but I could not put it out of my head.

  Wherever there was a ramp leading down, we investigated it. We found ourselves in weird labyrinths, some piled high with crates, drums, metal spheres, others packed with machinery that whined and hummed and sometimes sparked. Most of it was untended, but in a few places there were two or three of the Masters doing things at boards covered with little holes and pimples. We were treading warily, and they did not see us. In one great cavern, gas bubbles were being made. They rolled out of the jaws of a machine down a sloping V-shaped channel and dropped into boxes, which, as they were full, closed themselves and were automatically moved away. In another place, even bigger, food was being manufactured, and I recognized it, by the color and shape of the bag, as being a kind of which my Master was especially fond. Had been fond, I corrected myself. The thought provided a twinge of panic. Had the body been found yet? Were they already looking for his missing slave?

  Going back up a ramp to the surface, Fritz said, “I think left was wrong, perhaps. We have come a long way. We must turn back, and try in the other direction.”

  “Rest first.”

  “For a few minutes.” He sounded discouraged. “We have not much time.”

  So we plodded back along the way we had come, stopping every now and then to listen for the rushing sound of distant water but hearing only the noise of the machines. We reached the point at which we had come to the Wall, and toiled on. I became aware of a difference and looking up saw the blackness of the night behind us faintly tinged with emerald. The night was coming to an end. Dawn was breaking, and we were no nearer to finding a way out, no nearer to the elusive river.

  The day brightened. Thirst overrode hunger, but physical weakness at times seemed greater than either. The green globes winked out. We saw a Master in the distance, out in the street, and hid behind the edge of a garden pool until he had gone. A quarter of an hour later, we had to dodge two more. I said:

  “The streets will be swarming with them soon. We shall have to give it up for now, Fritz, and get back to a place where we can take our masks off and eat and drink.”

  “In a few hours they will find him.”

  “I know. But what else can we do?”

  He shook his head. “I must rest.”

  He lay down, and I lowered myself to lie beside him. I felt giddy with weakness and thirst tore at my throat like a furious animal. Fritz seemed to be in an even worse state. At any rate, we must not stay here. I told him we ought to get up, and he did not answer. I got to my knees, and pulled his arm. Then he said, his voice suddenly kindled with excitement, “I think . . . Listen.”

  I listened, and heard nothing. I told him so. He said, “Lie down, and put your ear
to the ground. Sound travels better that way. Listen!”

  I did and, after a moment, heard it: a thin rushing sound that might be the whisper of distant waters. I pressed my ear closer to the surface of the road, hurting my face against the hardness of the mask. It was there, all right, though far away, a tumultuous torrent. Thirst was sharpened even more by the tantalizing sound, but I felt able to ignore that, too. At last we had found the river. That is to say, we knew approximately where it was. The actual finding could take quite a bit longer.

  • • •

  We systematically tried all the downward ramps in the area, testing them by listening to the ground. Sometimes the noise was louder, sometimes fainter. Once we lost it altogether, and had to cast back on our trail. There were avenues which were deceptively promising but which proved useless, leading to dead ends. More and more often we had to dodge Masters, or lie low till they had passed. One promising ramp led to a huge hall in which a score or more of them did things in front of benches: the river might well be somewhere at the far end, but we dared not go through. And time was passing; above ground we were in full day. Then, quite unexpectedly, we came on it.

  A very steep ramp, on which we found ourselves slipping and in danger of falling, led across a level space and dipped again, curving around on itself. Fritz clutched my arm, and pointed. Ahead lay a cavern with an arched roof, in which there were stacks of crates the height of a man. At the far end, only dimly visible in the light of the lemon-green globes which hung at intervals from the ceiling, water gushed from a huge hole and formed a pool, some fifty feet across.

  “Do you see?” Fritz asked. “The Wall.”

  It was true. At the end of the cavern, beyond the pool, there was the dull gleam of gold, unmistakably the inner surface of the barrier which ringed the City, and on which the great dome rested. The pool frothed against it. The water gushing in was that which had circulated through the City, the waste and overflow of hundreds of garden pools. Steam rose up from it. It filled the pool, and from the pool . . . it must go out, under the Wall: there could be no other explanation.

  Cautiously we made our way along the cavern, between the stacked crates, to the edge of the pool. There were things like vertical nets in the water, we saw, and we saw also that the water only steamed at its entry point. Nearer to the Wall, Fritz reached down and put a hand in it.

  “It is quite cool here. The nets must take the heat out, so it is not lost to the City.” He stared down into the churning depths, green from the lamps hanging over them. “Will, let the current take you. Before you go, I will put sealer on the air vents of your mask. There is enough air inside a mask to give you five minutes’ breathing: I have tried this out.”

  What he called “sealer” was a substance the Masters used for closing containers that had been opened. It came out of a tube liquid, but dried and hardened almost right away.

  I said, “I’ll do yours first.”

  “But I am not coming.”

  I stared at him. “Don’t be silly. You must.”

  “No. They must not suspect anything.”

  “But they’ll do that when they find I’ve gone.”

  “I do not think so. Your Master died, from a fall, an accident. What would a slave do then? I think he might go to the Place of Happy Release, because there is no point in him going on living.”

  I saw the force of the argument, but said dubiously, “They might think that, but we can’t be sure.”

  “We can help them to think it. I know some of the slaves in your pyramid. If I tell one that I saw you, and you said that was where you were going . . .”

  I saw that, too. Fritz had worked things out very well. I said, “If you escaped, and I went back . . .”

  He said patiently, “It would not help, would it? It is your Master that is dead, not mine—you who should go to the Place of Happy Release. If you go back, they will question you. It would be fatal.”

  “I don’t like it,” I said.

  “It doesn’t matter what you like, or I like. One of us must get away, to take the news of what we have learned back to Julius. It is safer if it is you.” He squeezed my arm. “I will get out. It is easy now I know where the river is. In three days, I will tell the other slaves in my pyramid that I am too sick to work, and therefore have chosen the Happy Release. I will hide out of the way, and come down here at night.”

  I said, “I will wait for you outside.”

  “Wait three days, no longer. You must get back to the White Mountains before winter sets in. And now you must hurry.” He forced a smile. “The sooner you dive, the sooner I can get back, and have a drink of water.”

  He spread the sealer on the air vents of my mask, after first telling me to take a deep breath. In a few seconds he nodded, indicating the seal was hard. He pressed my arm again, and said, “Good luck.” The sound was fainter, more muffled than usual.

  I dared delay no longer. The surface of the pool was about six feet below the top of the low containing wall. I climbed up on this and dived down, deep down, into the swirling waters.

  Eleven

  Two Go Home

  Down, down, into darkness. The current tugged me, and I went with it, pulling myself through the water in a crude and feeble attempt at swimming. I swam forward as well as down. My hand touched something and, as my shoulder banged painfully against it, I knew I was at the Wall. But still unbroken, with no sign of an opening, and the current still dragging down.

  Possibilities and fears crowded in on me. The water might flow out through gratings, which I would be unable to remove. Or there might be more nets, and I would tangle myself in them. There was a pressure of air in my lungs, the beginning of a roaring in my head. I breathed out a little, and drew a small breath of air in. Five minutes, Fritz had said. How long had I been under already? I realized that I had no idea—it might be ten seconds, or ten times that. Panic, the fear of drowning, clutched me, and I wanted to turn and swim back up, against the pull of water, up to the surface where I had left Fritz.

  I swam on and down, trying to blank my mind to everything but the need to hold on. If I abandoned the attempt now, we were lost, anyway. And we must not lose. One of us had to get through. Far above me there was a dim green radiance, but darkness was all around and below me, and I was diving deeper and deeper into it. I took another shallow breath, to ease my aching lungs. I wondered if already I were past the point of no return. Then there was turbulence, the current breaking up and changing direction. I reached forward, and there was still an impassable solidity. Down, down . . . to an edge, an opening. The tide took me into it and I realized that now, finally, I was committed. The current was stronger, more closely channeled. I had to go on, because there was no hope of getting back.

  So I swam and was carried along, in utter blackness. I took shallow breaths when I felt I must. Time, as it passed, became more and more immeasurable. There was a sense of having been hours down here, not minutes. Occasionally I bumped my head against the hard surface above me; if I pushed down a foot or two I could touch the bottom. Once my outstretched hand brushed against a side wall. The conduit was about five feet across.

  Shallow breaths were no longer enough: I had to inhale more deeply. And this did not help, either. I was breathing in my own exhaled breath. I felt a hammering inside my head. A blackness was growing there, to match the blackness of the water. I was in a trap with no way out. I was finished in fact; and so was Fritz, and those we had left behind in the White Mountains—all mankind. I might as well give up, stop struggling. And yet . . .

  It was the faintest of glimmerings at first, something that only inextinguishable optimism could read as light. But I flailed on with weary arms, and it grew. Brightness filtering through—white light, not green. It must be the end of the tunnel. The pain in my chest was savage, but I found I could ignore it. Nearer, brighter, but still out of reach. Another stroke, I told myself, and another, and another. The brightness was right over me, and I kicked and fought my way
up to it. Brighter and brighter, and a bursting through to the eye-piercing brilliance of the open sky.

  The sky, but not the air for which my tortured lungs were crying out. The sealed mask held me. I tried to release the buckle of the belt, but my fingers were too feeble. I was being carried downriver, the mask buoying me up. Buoying, and also suffocating. I tried again, and failed again. What a terrible irony, I thought, that I should have got so far, only to choke to death in freedom. I clawed at the mask ineffectually. I was filled with a sense of failure, and shame, and anger and then the blackness, for so long barely held at bay, swooped down and swallowed me.

  • • •

  My name first being spoken, but from a long way off.

  “Will . . .”

  There was something wrong about that, I thought drowsily. It was my name, but . . . pronounced in the English fashion, not with the initial “V” to which I had grown accustomed since we had been speaking German. Was I dead, I wondered? In Heaven, perhaps?

  “Are you all right, Will?”

  Did they speak English in Heaven? But it was English with an accent—a voice I remembered. Beanpole! Was Beanpole in Heaven, too?

  I opened my eyes, and saw him kneeling above me, on the river’s muddy bank. He said, with relief, “You are all right.”

  “Yes.” I gathered my scattered senses. A bright autumn morning—the river flowing beside us—the sun, from which my unaccustomed eyes automatically turned away—and, farther off . . . There was the great rampart, topped by the vast green crystal bubble. I really was outside the City. I stared at him.