She merely stared at him, with very large eyes.
“Now, you know what I mean,” said Feliz, gently but firmly.
"Oh!" Her face suddenly lit up. "Oh, nobody’s ever paid any real attention to hallucinations. . .” Her voice faltered a little and she looked away from him. “Except sometimes the little children—”
“The children?”
“Oh, well, when you’re very young, of course, you see hallucinations all the time. But when you grow up, they disappear. Except in my case.” She looked almost ready to melt into tears again.
“How long,” asked Feliz quickly, “have the children been seeing them?”
“Why,” said Kai Miri, “ever since the world began. For hundreds of thousands of years, I suppose.”
“Hundreds—” Feliz did a little staring himself. “Don’t you even know your own history?”
“Of course I know my own history. The world is millions of years old. If you knew any geology you’d realize that yourself. Really,” said Kai Miri, “you’re quite ignorant, you know. When I first met you, I thought you knew a great deal. But I find I know more about almost anything than you do.”
“Ignorant,” said Feliz. He drew a calming breath. “It is true enough,” he said, “that the world we are now standing on is about three billions years old. But the human race, to which we belong, did not set foot upon its surface until something over three hundred years ago!"
"Oh, don’t be silly. How could we reach such a high level of civilization in a mere three hundred years?”
“Who, in the name of all that’s natural,” roared Feliz, losing his temper after all, “said you’d reached a high level of civilization?”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!”
“Who’s ridiculous?”
“Well, you could just look around you. This city. And actually, we’ve gone far beyond it and the mechanical civilization it represents. We have returned to nature on a higher plane. So there! We don’t need clumsy, material, things any longer.”
“Oh, no?” said Feliz. He reached out and grabbed a handful of her tunic. “Look at this. Cast plastic. The same material my clothes are made of. The same material that’s gone into the uniforms of these monkeys in black.”
She went white at his last sentence. She stopped abruptly, swayed, and would actually have collapsed if he had not caught her.
“Here,” said Feliz. “What’s the matter?” He added gruffly, “Stand up!” With an effort she got herself upright, but she clung to his arm and he could feel her trembling.
“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” she whispered.
“Why not?”
"It—it just makes me go sick all over when I hear it, that’s all. It isn’t true. You know it isn’t true. Their clothes aren’t like ours. They aren’t anything like us. They ’re just hallucinations.”
“You know better than that—hey!” said Feliz, as she all but collapsed again. "What gets into you whenever you face that fact?”
“I don’t know,” she whimpered.
They walked along in silence for a while. After about half a block she let go of his arm, patted her hair into position, and walked ahead with her eyebrows raised indifferently. She hummed a little, and glanced about the buildings as she went.
Meanwhile, Feliz’s thoughts had |one off in another direction.
“Hey! ” he shouted, turning and beckoning to Upi Havo, who approached at a run and circled Feliz like a bird dog to end up at Feliz’s right.
“Windward as ordered, sir!” he said, saluting.
“Good,” said Feliz. “Uh—your name is Upi Havo?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, well,” Feliz said. “That’s a fine old name.”
“Do you think so, sir?” said Upi thoughtfully. “I invented it myself when name-choosing time came around."
“Oh?” said Feliz. “Oh. Well, well—a good choice, I’d say. What time do they choose names around here?”
“The usual time, sir. Twelve years old.”
“And before that, you’re in school, I suppose. Learning things.”
“Yes, indeed, sir.” replied Upi, and began to sing, to the tune of Little Brown Jug:
All hail to the con-troll-er,
Whoever he may be-e-ee;
And hail, too, to the beautiful black,
Only color I can see-e-ee!
“Little nonsense rhymes like that, sir,” said Upi, dropping back into prose. “They don’t make sense. I mean, everybody knows there’s no color but black anyway; so how could you see any other: But we play games and dance to them. It improves our co-ordination.”
“I’ll bet you had the best co-ordination in your class,” said Feliz.
“Oh, thank you, sir,” said Upi, snuffling with pride. "But I must be honest. There were one or two others ahead of me, sir."
“How about history courses?”
“Oh, yes, sir.” Upi began to recite: “The first controller was named Og Lokmann, and he was kind and generous. The second controller was named Jak Lossu, and he was good, as well as kind and generous. The third controller—"
“That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”
“You don’t mean civics, do you sir?” asked Upi. “ ‘Citizens out after curfew will be shot. This is because sixty years ago an evil citizen by the name of Sey Sessi used to sneak out at night to get drunk on the squeezings from the mash in the controller’s still; and under our thoughtful twelfth controller drunkenness was expressly forbidden except on special order from die controller himself.”
“Not exactly,” said Feliz. “I—”
“The thoughtful twelfth controller so hated drunkenness that he used to order himself to get drunk periodically just to show the citizens what a terrible thing it was.”
“Yes—”
“Personally,” said Upi, “I never drink. I don’t believe you could force a drink down me, sir.”
"I’m not going to. What was your history like before the first controller?” said Feliz, quickly.
“Oh, a terrible time, sir. Chaos.” Upi shuddered.
“Chaos?”
“Yes, sir. The world was then full of aberrant people. Oh, it was a terrible time.”
“Why?”
Upi looked puzzled.
“Why?” he repeated. “Well—er—it must have been terrible, sir. In fact,” he said more strongly, “there can be no doubt about it. History tells us so.”
"Tell me," said Feliz, drawing closer to the little man in a confidential manner. Upi drew back in some apprehension, but Feliz clamped a powerful hand on the small wrist and dragged him close. “Tell me, do you ever see things?”
Beads of sweat burst out on Upi’s forehead and his knees buckled.
“No! No!” he cried, in a high-pitched and terrified voice. “I never see anything. Never! Never!”
“Come now,” growled Feliz, shaking him with the exasperated arm motion of someone determinedly trying to get salt out of a clogged salt shaker. “Tell the truth. I’m not like the rest of you, you know. I know you see things. I see things myself. That’s why I know.”
“No!” screamed Upi. “I don’t see anything. Absolutely nothing. Even when I was a child I never saw people in impossible-colored clothes. The other kids did, but l didn’t. I never have glimpses of anything. I never feel anyone near me. I’m perfectly adjusted! Perfect, I tell you. Perfect!”
“All right,” said Feliz disgustedly. He let go of the man, who staggered, gained his feet and scuttled away toward his rear position in the party. "Well," said Feliz, turning to Kai. “What do you think of that now?”
She was milk pale.
“I don’t know,” she cried suddenly. “Oh, leave me alone!”
Abruptly, she twisted away from him and ran off down one of the side streets. Feliz growled after her. But after a couple of automatic steps in pursuit, he gave up and let her go. He had been giving her a hard time, there was ho doubt of that. But his own safe escape from th
is planetary lunatic asylum might well depend eventually on her facing the fact of her co-dwellers’ reality.
Although, thought Feliz with sudden sourness, things were just wacky enough so that he might end up discovering that he was the one who was not seeing straight after all. The whole world he was on might turn out to be an hallucination of his own. A feverish.nightmare brought on by the fact that he had cracked up on landing and was now pinned in the wreckage of his ship, delirious and dying. . .
“Ridiculous!” snorted Feliz, shrugging off the uncomfortable notion. He began to feel a little guilty about having shaken Upi Havo, however. Perhaps a more gentle approach. . .
“Sir!”
It was Harry, his point guard, now halted in front of the door to a large building up ahead.
“Here’s the equipment warehouse, sir!”
Feliz put on speed, and with Upi Havo at his heels—but not too closely at his heels; out of arm’s reach, in fact—entered the building.
The warehouse was just that—a lofty building well filled with military rank on rank of machines and construction equipment. Feliz strolled down one of the corridors between ranks, inspecting and trying to make up his mind what he could use—that is, provided he could make some of this stuff run. It had been well stored away at one time, but that time must have been at least half a century previously. It occurred to him there might be help available.
“Harry,” he said, turning to the tall man, “you’ve gotmachinists and machine operators, haven’t you?”
“Sir?” said Harry.
“People who know how to run these machines?”
“Oh, no, sir.”
Feliz stared at him.
“You must have somebody!”
"I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know whose fault it is, sir. I don’t have anything to do with—” Harry was beginning to sweat and shake slightly at the knees. “We’ve just got barely enough people to run the food machine and the clothing unit, sir. Nobody was ever trained on these things. Please—”
“Oh, shut up!” said Feliz.
“Yes, sir. Thank you.” Harry saluted and backed away.
Feliz turned and stumped back through the battalions of machines. No machinists. No machine operators. No skilled workers of any kind. No wonder the city looked like something out of a horror story. And there was no use hoping that Kai’s people had done any better. If the whole world was like this . . .
Which brought him once more to the old question of how in the name of even elemental reason a planet and a divided people in this sort of amusement-park funhouse condition could have continued to exist in the heart of Malvar empire. Was there a master-mind somewhere, holding the aliens at bay even while he saw to it that the ordinary humans here continued to scrape along?
Unlikely, Feliz grunted to himself. Any master-mind in this situation was undoubtedly cutting out paper dollies by this time and sticking straws in his hair. Perhaps he would have to move over and let Feliz join him. What was more likely was that the whole setup was a secret weapon of the Malvar, designed to conquer humanity—and he was the first guinea pig to be tested in the device.
“How about the other cities?” said Feliz to the two who were timidly following him. “Could we borrow some machine operators?”
“Sir?” said Harry. “Oh, no, I don’t think so, sir. We never have anything to do with any placfe else, except to send our taxes once a year to support the planetary defenses.”
“Planetary defenses!” said Feliz, stopping dead.
"Oh, yes, sir,” said Harry. "We always pay our planetary defense tax, to the defense controller in New Paris.”
“Do you now,” said Feliz. He drew close to the man, smiling ingratiatingly. “That’s very interesting. Tell me all about these planetary defenses.”
“All, sir? It’s a highly complicated subject.”
“Take your time,” said Feliz. He pushed the other into a sitting position on a post-hole digger. “Take all the time you want. Who did you say handles these planetary defenses?”
"The controller of New Paris, sir,” said Harry, expanding under the effects of kind treatment. “You see, that’s where the field is.”
“Oh? The defenses take off from a field?”
“Well, not exactly.” Harry frowned. “I mean, they’re always up there. You just have to have a field—I mean, fields go with planetary defenses. Of course,” he added suddenly, “the men who man the defenses—they take off from the field.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, sir. They get in a shuttle ground-to-space boat, and go up every two weeks to relieve the six men already on duty. The transfer is effected by space suit through the lock in the defenses; and as soon as the new men have taken over, they run a complete six-hour check drill. Since the defenses are in a free-fall orbit about the world, this enables them to make a complete scan of local space.” He stopped and looked at Feliz with a touch of superiority.
“Go on,” said Feliz. “And then what do they do for the rest of their tour of duty?”
“Do? Do, sir?” Harry winkled his brow.
“What do they do with their time? Now that they’re up there?”
“Why, they’re busy every minute,” said Harry. “Shooting down goblins. Everybody knows that, sir.”
Feliz blinked.
“Goblins?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Space is full of goblins. The crew shoots down between two and three thousand on every tour of duty.”
"These goblins ...” Feliz cleared his throat. "What do they look like?”
“You’ve never seen a goblin, sir? Oh, I have—lots of times. All of us have, haven’t we, Upi?”
"Lots of times," said Upi. "I just pull the covers over my head.”
“Of course there ’re witches up there, too, that they have to shoot down."
“And pirates. They don’t run into pirates too often though, sir. Maybe once or twice in a tour of duty. And tourists. Tourists are the worst kind. And—”
“Just a minute,” Feliz finally found his voice. “What do these planetary defenses look like?”
“Why, it looks sort of like a house,” said Harry. “Only there’s nothing underneath it, of course, because it’s up in space. That’s because it’s in free fall. The clever first controller of New Paris invented free fall just so we could have planetary defenses.”
Feliz closed his eyes. Printed large against his lids was the remembered image of the impossible-looking space station full of howling maniacs who had damaged his ship in the first place with solid shot from an old-fashioned explosive weapon. He wondered what he had been reported as—goblin, witch, pirate, or tourist. Possibly, considering the actual underpopulated situation of space, he had rated as a tourist.
He opened his eyes again, took one look at the machines about him, and reluctantly dismissed any hope of ever putting them to use.
“You do have shovels?” he said to Harry.
“Yes, indeed, sir,” said Harry proudly.
“Well then,” said Feliz. “We’re all set.”
Chapter IX
“Young man,” said the mayor, El Hoska, “your attitude grieves me deeply.”
It was the following day. El Hoska, having taken a day and a night to recover from his migraine headache, had gone in search of Feliz the following morning and had been agreeably surprised to find him already tearing up the center of the square to make room for the fountain El Hoska had suggested be built. The mayor had observed for a while, then gone off about his duties, only to return in the afternoon for another session of observation. It was following about twenty minutes of this that he had been moved to comment about Feliz’s attitude.
“Swing those shovels faster!” shouted Feliz. He climbed up out of the hole. “Keep ’em at it, Harry.” He turned to the mayor. "What’s that you said?" El Hoska looked at him with benign sorrow. For some reason the expression reminded Feliz of Kai Miri, whom he had not seen since she had run off the day before. Feliz frowned at the memory. It was
, of course, nothing to him what she did; but it was only natural to expect her to at least put in an appearance to prove that she hadn’t fallen down a well or something. That was, after all, only common courtesy to someone who had fed you, and more or less rescued you, and so forth.
He was halfway tempted to hunt around and find her, if for no other reason than to say a few pertinent words to her on the subject of common courtesy. In fact, if it were not for the fact that two separate sets of observers were keeping him pretty steadily in their sights, he would have taken a stroll around to look for her before this.
“Beg your pardon,” he said now to El Hoska. “I didn’t catch what you said the second time, either.”
“I am,” said El Hoska, repeating himself gently and without impatience, “concerned over this.” He waved a hand to indicate the fountain pit where Feliz had his black-clad shovelers at work.
"Why? What about it?" Feliz braced himself suspiciously for some new and unexpected demand.
"Come, my boy. Come," said El Hoska, linking a skinny arm through a gorilla-like limb of Feliz’s. “This machinery you’re using.”
“Machinery?” Feliz blinked at the sweating (but fully-clad) laborers.
El Hoska chuckled and dug him considerately in the ribs with a sharp thumb.
“Of course, the machinery,” he chuckled. “You didn’t think I was getting so dim-eyed in my old age that transparent plastic would fool me into thinking there was nothing there? It’s a little hard to see it with the sun on it this way; but after all, a pool for a fountain just doesn’t excavate itself, does it? No, no. But that wasn’t the aspect of your using machinery that I wanted to discuss with you. It’s die moral element that concerns me.”
“The moral element?”
“What else?” inquired El Hoska, drawing him cozily aside. “Oh, I’ll admit that the machinery does the work faster, and possibly more efficiently. But do you realize what you ’re missing? Do you know how thoroughly you’re blunting your sensitivity, your innate self-identification with the good earth, by avoiding contact with it? How much better, now, would it be for you to get down there and labor directly with your own two hands. You could then feel the good rich soil crumble under your eager fingers; and the living hunger for action of your straining muscles finally being satisfied.”
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