by Andre Norton
Kristie shivered. Lew was not usually like this; he made her feel so alone now.
“Why, Kristie?” he repeated, his voice louder and sharper.
“The gate,” she said, knowing that she must answer, even if she could not make him understand. “I wanted to find the gate—Outside.”
“What about the gate?”
“I wanted to see—to know—what was Outside.”
Lew shook his head as if he could not understand. “But you do know, Kristie. I've told you over and over. There's nothing Outside. The world is dead. I guess I've been to blame. I should never have let you use the readers. You believed those tapes. And they aren't true—now they're just stories, Kristie, made-up stories.” He thumped his knee with his fist at every word, as if by such hammering he could make her believe him. “All stories, Kristie.”
“Not in the old days,” she held to her small dream. “And nobody really knows even now. Nobody's been Outside for a long time.”
“Nobody will ever be again,” Lew got up. “And you—Kristie, you could have been—” he stopped abruptly. Then he continued, “You must stay in the street here and never go away without me or Fanna or some other Big with you. Not again.”
“All right,” Kristie agreed in a small voice. She knew he was right. She had gone by herself and there had been nothing to discover after all, nothing but a sealed gate and a dead place full of rats. Kristie shivered.
She must do as Lew said. Lew was always right.
3
* * *
* * *
Reddy
Kristie had bad dreams. Then, too, there was the day Meg came to see her and brought the fur pillow which was Meg's comfort in times of trouble. Only when Kristie touched it, she could see one of the rats jumping at her. She screamed and Fanna came running.
Kristie felt very ashamed of herself when she tried to explain. She was almost a Big and should not be afraid of any old pillow just because it felt soft and furry. Meg had gotten mad at her. She had marched away holding her pillow close and saying that it was not a rat, and if Kristie called it that she was crazy!
“Maybe I am crazy,” Kristie hiccupped to Fanna. “Of course the pillow is not a rat. But it is furry and black, which makes me think, even see in my mind, the rats slipping in and out of shadows.”
As she choked out her words, Kristie began to shake, her hands clutching tightly at the covers. Fanna gathered her close and held her until she felt warm again inside.
That evening Lew brought her Reddy. Perhaps Fanna had asked him to find something to make the dreams go away. Or maybe he knew what Kristie needed without being told.
The ever-glow lights were turned up when he came in holding a full shoulder tote as if he had been looting. Eagerly Kristie sat up in bed, hoping he had some treat for her.
However, when he shook the tote and the object it held fell on the bed, she shrank back.
Lew did not reach out to comfort her as Fanna had done. He stood still and watched Kristie stare at what he had brought. She began to shiver again and pulled herself up higher on the pillows to get away from that—that thing!
Then Lew moved. He took her hand in his. Though Kristie struggled, she did not have the strength to pull away from him. Then he drew her fingers down to touch the animal that sat there watching her with knowing black eyes.
“This is Reddy,” Lew said with authority in his voice. “You remember Reddy from the story tapes.”
Kristie's mouth felt dry, making it hard for her to answer. Lew continued to hold her hand firmly down on the head of the stuffed toy. It was hard for her to believe it was not alive, since Reddy looked exactly like those animals she had seen on one of her favorite story tapes.
“Reddy—” she repeated the name in a very low voice, which quavered a little. “Reddy, the fox.”
Foxes once lived Outside, just as did all the other animals she so longed to see: the deer, bears, cats, dogs, and rabbits. Why, she could sit right here and name maybe fifty animals she had learned about from the tapes.
But Reddy, this Reddy, must be alive! He was so exactly like the pictures. His fur was soft under her fingers which Lew still held against Reddy's head. And he did not look like a rat in the least.
“He could kill those old rats!” Kristie said.
Lew nodded. “He sure could, or the real Reddy could. But this Reddy is yours, Kristie. And he will keep those dream rats away.” Lew took away his hand, leaving hers free. Now she had no desire to snatch her fingers from the fur.
Reddy had been made to sit on his haunches, his bush of a tail curling around the side of his body. His head was cocked a little to one side, as if he watched something very interesting and was figuring out in his mind just what was to be done.
Kristie grabbed him close and with her forefinger traced his upturned ears, his button of a black nose, the sharp angle of his muzzle. He was a lovely burnished reddish brown color except for some darker spots and the white tip on the generous fluff of his tail. And, though Kristie had no way of guessing, he was life-size. She knew that he was indeed big enough to vanquish any rat which tried to face him.
“I wish—I wish he was real!” she said longingly.
Lew smiled but shook his head slowly. “Not anymore, Kristie. But you can pretend he is real.”
She gathered Reddy into the crook of her arm, no longer aware of the bad memories any touch of fur brought. Reddy was the nicest thing Lew had ever given her.
“Where did you find him?” she asked. Lew was smart; he was a good looter. But he had never brought back anything as satisfying to the eye, as soft and comforting to the touch, as Reddy.
“In a store, sitting ‘way up on a top shelf—” Lew gestured to show how high the shelf must have been. “He gave me a big surprise, he looked so real, just sitting there as if he were watching me.”
“He was, you know,” Kristie smoothed Reddy's fur. “Maybe he knew you wanted to find someone like him. He made you turn and look up to right where he was—”
Lew laughed. “Kristie, your imagination is just too big.” Then the happy lights went out of his eyes as he gazed down at her. Now he was stern and serious. “You remember your promise, Kristie?”
She nodded. “I'm not to go away from the street without a Big. But the gate's no good anyway, Lew. I know that and I wouldn't try to go again. Only—” Deep down inside her the old discontent stirred again. “I wish we could know, really know what it is like Outside. I wish there were a window in the dome somewhere and we could look through it to see for ourselves.”
“Kristie!” his tone was very sharp. “You promised!”
“I know. I won't go hunting any window, Lew, truly I won't. Only—don't you wish sometimes that you could see, too? The tapes—”
Lew shook his head. “No. I've seen the last tapes showing what was Outside when the gates were finally closed. You saw those too, Kristie. Everything is dead out there, poisoned. There's nothing left but bad air we cannot breathe and dead ground.”
“Yes,” Kristie agreed doubtfully. But one part of her still wanted to know. Even Lew admitted those tapes were old. Could Outside have changed any? Well, she supposed there was no way of ever finding out. Now there were only picture tapes to pretend by. And she had Reddy, who was very important indeed.
Lew was called out of the room. Kristie lay back on her pillows, her face turned admiringly towards Reddy. Why had someone made Reddy look so alive? Was it because the maker missed the Outside and wanted to remember animals like foxes? Just as she, Lew, and the others watched the picture tapes?
Were there other Outside things, other animals, to be found in the city if one looked closely enough? Perhaps she could persuade Fanna, or one of the other Bigs, to go hunting with her when her leg was well.
Kristie knew that Fanna had worried about the bite. The Big girl had gone looting for medicine and now the pain was no longer a steady throb. Kristie just noticed it if she moved her leg too quickly without thinking. The gla
ss cuts on her hands were already so well healed that she did not have to wear bandages over them anymore. But she could see the pink scars as she patted and smoothed Reddy.
Suddenly her attention was drawn away from Lew's gift as she overheard raised voices in the next room.
“First three Littles gone. Then that girl Bet who was in charge and with her two more—” The voice was a strange one. Kristie listened more closely. She even crawled to the other end of the bed to hear. Her door was ajar but not far enough to let her see who the stranger was.
“I give it to you straight,” his angry voice continued, “that guy's out to get us all. And I don't think he's pill-happy either. At least, from what I've been able to pick up, he doesn't act that way. Also, any hip doesn't care about collecting Littles. They're so sunk in their private whirl-worlds they don't care about anything real anymore. No, I don't know where this Rhyming Man comes from or what his game is, but we've got to stop him. And we did trail him through those back alleys into your territory.”
“All right,” Lew answered. “I'll turn out a search party and we'll go through the alleys but good. You're welcome to bring in all you want of your Crowd to help.”
“Fair enough. When can we start now?”
“As soon as I can round up our guys—”
“No girls,” the other cautioned. “Seems like they can be hypoed, or whatever this guy does, just the same as the Littles.”
“No girls,” Lew agreed. “The trouble is right now we have three looting parties out for supplies. I don't have too many Bigs to call on. But the others can join us when they come back.”
“All I want is to nail this Rhyming Man and nail him good.” To Kristie the stranger's voice sounded not only angry but a little scared. “Maybe then we can make him tell where he took the Littles and our girls. So try to stun him but don't do anything fancy.”
“Right. We'll get to the end of the 450th block as soon as we can muster.”
There was the sound of a door closing. Then Kristie heard Fanna's voice ask:
“What do you think, Lew?”
“I don't know. According to Brad this so-called Rhyming Man comes around singing and he gets Littles to follow him. Then he and they just disappear. Brad's Crowd has lost five Littles and two girls so far. It sounds bad to me. Now Brad thinks this guy is in our territory. You make sure our own Littles stay right in the street. No going beyond.”
“Of course.”
Kristie heard the door close again. Lew must have left. A Rhyming Man who came around singing? Singing what? And where did he go with the Littles and Bigs who followed him?
Once more Kristie shivered as she crawled back to her pillows and huddled down into the covers with Reddy sitting by her shoulder on alert guard. She stroked him, somehow sure that she was not going to have that bad dream about rats again.
Lew did not return until very late at night, though night and day were the same thing in the city, at least out on the street where the glow-lights did not dim.
In the morning Fanna said that Kristie was well enough to get up and brought her new jeans and a shirt to wear. Her shirt was green, which was Kristie's favorite color. The material felt silky as Kristie fingered it. There was still a bandage on her leg but the jeans covered it. So she looked the same as always in Fanna's big mirror.
Reddy looked even brighter red against the green of Kristie's shirt as she cradled him in her arms. He was so real. If he were only alive like the Reddy in the reading tapes!
As Fanna came in with some soup and bread (it was fruit bread out of a loot can), Kristie said,
“Fanna—could you make Reddy come alive?”
She had dreamed while Reddy was on guard by her pillow, a wonderful, happy dream—not one to make her wake shivering with fear. She had been in a place as green as her new shirt. Reddy had been leaping back and forth ahead of her, urging her on to follow him to some exciting discovery. And she was sure that this was the Outside Lew said was dead.
Fanna tossed her heavy hair back over her shoulders. She set the tray down on the table.
“No.” Fanna never talked much, except about the things which mattered most to her—helping any Little or Big who was sick or hurt. She spent almost as much time at the learning center as Lew did. But she did not hunt out tapes about machines. Rather, she was absorbed by those on helping sick people. Once or twice Kristie had seen her angry because the tapes did not teach her enough, or because she could not understand some of the words or how to use all the healing machines. (There were machines to mend broken people just as there were machines to run the city.)
“Reddy is a toy,” she said to Kristie now.
“He looks so real.” Kristie set the fox carefully on the table. She had the strangest feeling that she should offer him some of her food since his intense stare was aimed at her soup bowl.
“I don't know about that.” Fanna shrugged. “But you are no Little to believe he is real Kristie. You are big enough to understand the truth.”
Kristie spooned up the soup. Fanna was good when you were sick or afraid, as she had been about the bad rat dream. Only when you were well again, she sometimes made you feel as if you were wasting her time.
“He looks real," Kristie muttered under her breath.
She could just see him stand up on his four legs, uncurl his tail, and open his mouth.
He could not talk, of course, like the Crowd. How had foxes talked to each other Outside, she wondered? What kind of noises had they made when they asked their own questions? She had never paid particular attention to animal language when she'd watched the tapes; she had always been more interested in how the Outside creatures lived.
Kristie wished that there had been a window at the gate so she could have seen for sure that there was nothing left Outside.
“The Olds made a lot of things which looked real but weren't,” Fanna said. It sounded a little as if she did not like the idea of real-unreal things.
Then she spoke directly to Kristie. “I have to go see Ella now. You can go down to the street if you want to, Kristie. But remember what you promised Lew.”
“I know. And I won't—leave the street, I mean.” Kristie watched Reddy rather than Fanna, who was putting some small bottles into a bag. Kristie knew Ella was often ill. That was one reason Fanna read the tapes about healing. She hoped to find answers in them to help Ella. Fanna and Ella had been Littles together, and Fanna worried a lot about her.
Kristie finished her soup and ate all the bread, which was a real treat. The Crowd did not find much bread anymore. She washed her bowl and spoon in the sink under a slow trickle of water. The water seemed to run more slowly every time she ran it. Lew worried about the water a lot.
As she set the bowl on a shelf, Kristie wondered what would happen if the water stopped running altogether. What would they drink then, and how could they wash? Lew said some parts of the city were already dead. Maybe the Crowd would have to move to another part of the city if the water failed.
Kristie gathered up Reddy and went down to the street. Bill and Meg were there and some of the real Littles. Kathie had the twins sitting by her and was telling them a story. There were only three real Littles anymore. Lew said they had been born just at the end of the plague time. After they grew up, there would be no more Littles.
The Bigs would grow to be Olds and she and the other Littles would grow to be Bigs. Kristie sat down on the edge of the dead wiggle-walk and for the first time wondered what would happen to them all in the future. Another plague? Or would the whole city just stop?
She felt cold when her mind made those pictures. If parts of Inside were dead now, how long would it take for everything to stop? No water, no food, no breathers. Kristie began to feel just as she had when she had seen the rats moving in on her—as if she wanted to run away screaming, and yet could not move. This was a very bad feeling; it made her sick and giddy.
4
* * *
* * *
London Bri
dge Is Falling Down
Hi!”
Bill was running down the wiggle-walk, bouncing a ball ahead of him. Now he paused by Kristie.
She looked up warily. Bill teased a lot. Sometimes he was really mean. She was not sure she even liked Bill.
“Hi,” she answered.
“What you got there?” He leaned over her, eyeing Reddy with interest.
Kristie laced her fingers protectively around Reddy.
“A fox.” She made her answer as brief as she could. She wished he would go away.
Bill grinned. “A fox?” He tossed his ball from one dirty hand to the other. “Where'd you get it?”
“Lew brought it.”
“Let's see it—” He stuffed his ball in his pocket, reached out—
Kristie dodged. “No, Reddy's mine.” Suddenly she was afraid again.
Bill was wearing his going-to-be-mean look.
“I just want to see it.” He advanced on her. “I won't hurt your old fox. Give us a look now—”
“No!” Kristie tried to stand up. But she was still shaky from being sick and her leg hurt as she jerked away, trying to evade Bill's grabbing hands.
Then she caught her toe on the edge of the wiggle-walk and sprawled forward. Reddy fell out of her grasp. She could not squirm around in time to prevent Bill's scooping up the fox.
To Kristie's horror, Bill tossed Reddy up in the air and yelled: “Flying fox! See the flying fox!”
Kristie scrambled up and rushed at him. But he had already caught Reddy once more and was swinging the fox behind his back. Now he twisted and turned as he danced backward just beyond Kristie's reach.
“Give it to me!” She was so mad she was nearly crying. “Bill, you give me Reddy!”
“Yeah, come and get him!” Bill yelled back. “If you want this old fox, you've got to get him.”
He turned. Holding Reddy tightly against his chest, he began to run down the wiggle-walk. Kristie limped after him. She doubted she could catch up with Bill. And even if she did, he was bigger and stronger than she. But she must try as hard as she could to get Reddy back.
