I didn’t form a complete picture of the city as I trailed Falvi. All I got were flashes, like the way a moving light slipped along one of the overhead causeways, the luminous jewelry some of the people wore, men and women both, and a flutter of confetti that blew past me down the street. One coil wrapped itself around my neck and as I pulled it free I saw lettering on the paper—COME TO THE BATH OF THE DIVINE WATER—it said in Malescan.
Well, that was what I meant to do if I could find the place.
A FEW aspects of the city stood out even above my preoccupation and the odd confused mingling of impressions you get in your first half hour in a strange place.
One was the curious attitude of the populace toward the priests. The first time a man stepped off the sidewalk into the gutter and bowed to me with a touch of masochistic abasement in the gesture I almost stopped in my tracks.
My first thought was that he’d seen through my disguise and was staging some elaborate joke before he hit me over the head and dragged me back to my doom. Then I saw he meant it. But what was expected of me in response I had no idea.
I looked ahead at Falvi. All I could see was the top of his head bobbing along in a straight hasty course. If this were happening to me, maybe it was happening to him too and he seemed to pay no attention. I took a chance and stalked haughtily by the bowing man. I didn’t dare look back to see what his reaction was. Nothing happened, so that was all right too. And luckily not every person passed felt quite that pious.
But they did get out of my way with respectful glances. I began after awhile to check on the expression they turned on me, trying to figure out what was going on. Most of them looked just respectful—stupid and awed. Some glowered but stood aside. Some gave me looks of sheer hatred.
Now and then somebody would all but throw himself at my feet in the same abject deference the first man had shown. Maybe it was consciousness of sin. Maybe these men had some guilt on their minds they thought I could read in their faces and were showing penitence by groveling in the gutter when I passed.
I didn’t like it, and I didn’t like the idea of a priesthood that would encourage such an attitude, but, after all, Malesco wasn’t my responsibility. All I wanted was to get out of it, and take Lorna with me if I could find her.
I can’t begin to tell you all the mystifying things I saw in that quick walk through the streets of Malesco. It wasn’t like our cities. If it wasn’t a place out of the Arabian Nights, neither was it the equivalent of New York and Chicago. There were shops, but their displays were mostly hidden and what I could see was arranged in ways that didn’t make sense to me.
There were vehicles in the streets but they didn’t make much sense either beyond the fact that they moved, carried passengers and seemed to obey traffic laws of a sort. Once in a while I saw moving lights in the sky and remembered the aircraft I’d already encountered.
There were no newspapers. You’d be surprised how you can miss commonplace things like that. Until you do miss them you don’t realize what a big part newspapers play in normal city life. There was no litter of torn printed pages in the gutter, no noisy newsboys yelling on corners, no stands of magazines and dailies, nobody with a folded paper under his arm.
But what I did see, which as I later learned was the equivalent, was a long rack against buildings every few blocks which held on slanting shelves rows of big looseleaf paper volumes about the size of the average tabloid. Each rack had several people reading with their elbows on the shelf, turning the pages.
You paid a penny and read your daily news right out in public. I wished for time to stop and see what was new in Malesco myself but Falvi was moving fast ahead of me and there was no time to do more than steal a glance as I passed the stands, earning a look of resentment from the penny collector when I did so.
If I had known my rights as a priest I could simply have put one of the volumes under my arm and walked off and nobody would have dared to complain. But I didn’t know that and I hadn’t time then anyhow.
I went on after Falvi.
Strange things continued to happen all around me. I was getting used to the looks of awe, hatred or abject deference on the faces I passed but I had a lot of other things to get used to, too. For instance, a voice suddenly and urgently whispered in my ear, “Listen!”
I halted where I was. I looked around over my shoulder but there was no one near me. The only suspicious sight was a man in the priestly robe and headdress across the street, hurrying in the same direction that I was. But he was too far away to be the—
“Listen!” the whisper came again. “It’s important! Your life may depend on it!”
For a second I dithered like a skeleton hung on wires. There just wasn’t anyone near enough to me to whisper in my ear. And the whisper had a strange fading quality like a voice on the radio when you play with the dial.
“This is the secret,” said the voice, brightening. “Drink Elixir, the refreshing tonic that makes you live longer.” Then it broke into song. “Elixir, Elixir, Mother Ceres’ fixer,” it caroled and changed to a conspiratorial whisper again. “Listen! Listen! It’s important—”
I cursed quietly and took up the trail again. Falvi was just turning a corner. I walked faster, occasionally running into a gust of auditory advertising that seemed to blow invisibly past me like confetti streamers. My first glimpse of Malesco, with the glamorous rose-red city gleaming in the sunset, hadn’t prepared me for the uses of publicity as practised there.
I rounded the corner and there was Falvi, safely ahead. He hadn’t once looked back. He was hurrying along the curving street, moving from dimness to brightness as light from shop-windows irregularly shone on him.
I remembered what I’d seen when I’d looked around a moment ago. I’d seen a priest on the opposite side of the street. It meant nothing, of course, but I couldn’t help glancing around again. And there, turning the corner, was Dio.
HE was dodging a group of adolescents walking arm in arm across half the sidewalk and he didn’t seem to see me looking back at him. He didn’t seem to see the adolescents either except as objects to be avoided. I had a clear view of his face through the pedestrians, and I saw with unpleasant clarity the fierce anticipatory joy he was not even trying to conceal.
I spun back again, remembering Falvi, wondering how much of that, anticipating triumph applied to Falvi and how much to me. The thin priest was just vanishing around a corner ahead and I hurried after him, feeling those concentric rings making a target of my back again. I knew Dio was behind me and I knew he meant me anything but good.
Yet what could I do about it? I couldn’t lose him without losing Falvi and my only hope of reaching a potential friend. And yet I was leading Dio straight to Coriole. I couldn’t get to Coriole at all unless I led Dio too.
And from what I’d overheard I suspected Coriole’s safety depended on secrecy. Coriole discovered might be Coriole liquidated for all I knew. What good would he be to me liquidated? There didn’t seem any way out of the noose I was running my neck into.
So we all trudged on through the rose-red city in our little game of follow-the-leader. I was busily turning over schemes for thwarting Dio, by-passing Falvi and joining forces with Coriole.
The smart thing would have been to warn Falvi about our mutual follower. No doubt he would have some resource at his fingertips for dealing with spies. I could catch up with him easily. I could tap him on the shoulder and say,
“Listen! It’s important! Drink Elix—” No, that was something else entirely. I felt a little drunk. I was not made of the indestructible stuff of heroes. Already I was getting tired, my head ached and I was wondering where my next meal would come from. If I warned Falvi of our mutual follower he could fix Dio easily enough. But first he’d fix me. To the two of us diligently led Dio directly toward Goriole.
After about three turns, Falvi hit a broad thoroughfare that led straight to a familiar sight. Now I could see a sign glowing in colored lights ahead of us that said—B
ATH OF THE DIVINE WATERS—in crawling Malescan letters and I knew I couldn’t miss the place. You could see the Divine Water for miles. It was that huge globe of fiery liquid movement I had first glimpsed from my apartment, the rose-red globe that had formed a background for Lorna’s fall into another world.
Lorna, I thought, Lorna Maxwell, It had to be Lorna I had got myself into Malesco to find—not a beautiful princess dripping with jewels. Not a lovely heiress from an old titled family whose life hung on my dashing accomplishments with sword and pistol. No, I was here to find Lorna Maxwell. It confirmed still further my uneasy suspicion that I was not the hero of this drama.
We were halfway down the thoroughfare to the Baths when a minor miracle happened. A chord of music sounded from nowhere, almost inaudible at first and then swelling upon the air until every other sound of the city was temporarily drowned out. Everybody stopped dead still in the streets. Everybody looked up.
I looked up too in time to see an expanding circle of light dawn like a ghostly sun upon a cloud straight overhead. It was full dark by now and there was no moon but the sky was full of stars, though I could see only the brightest of them because the city’s illumination drowned out all the rest.
I was a little startled to see the Dipper, practically the only constellation I know. Things hadn’t changed as much as I’d thought if the stars were still in their familiar places over Malesco.
Then a face began to take shape in the luminous sun that glowed upon the cloud. An enormous sigh breathed up from the city, almost inaudible, a breath from every man and woman of all these thousands around me in the streets. The face grew clearer. It took on familiar features.
Another few seconds and Lorna Maxwell Was smiling down at me from the clouds, a vast luminous Lorna idealized like the poster I’d seen on the side of a building. She looked lovely. She looked tender and sweet. Her smile was exquisite. She just couldn’t be Lorna Maxwell.
The smile faded slowly. This was no poster, it was a reflection on the cloud of the woman herself, whoever she was. The vast, shining blue eyes, each as large as a good-sized swimming pool, beamed softly down upon Malesco. The music fell silent and the lovely lips on the cloud parted. Lorna’s voice spoke to the breathless city.
It was Lorna, all right. The voice, like the face, was idealized almost out of all recognition but not quite. Just enough of the old Lorna’s inflection and tonal qualities remained to make me sure I knew her. Down from the sky the gentle music of the voice floated softly.
“It is the hour for my withdrawal now,” Lorna informed the city. “Now I go to my meditation and all of you, my faithful friends, go out to your evening’s pastimes. Go with my blessing, Malescans. Remember your priests and their teachings.
“Drop your tithe without fail into the temple box when you pay your entrance fees tonight. Be virtuous, be happy. Ensure your reincarnation into higher callings by your conduct tonight and every night. I will await you in Paradise, my friends. I will await you in the sacred pathways of New York.”
I heard a tremendous breath of murmured response all around me as the image began to fade. I couldn’t believe what the words were that every man and woman within hearing said as Lorna grew dimmer upon the cloud. And yet I couldn’t mistake it. What everyone in the city was murmuring in hushed devout accents was an echo of Lorna’s last words.
“New York! New York!” all Malesco whispered and the light faded from overhead.
CHAPTER VII
Jimmerton
FALVI hurried up the broad steps under the dome of the Baths. The colored lights that said BATH OF THE DIVINE WATERS cast changing reflections on the street and shimmered in the glass of the change-maker’s booth beside the entrance. I saw Falvi drop a coin in the. glass bowl on the side of the booth and the man at the door clicked a turnstile and let him in.
In a daze I followed him up the steps, fumbling for the “grain” Dio had lent me. I felt both bewildered and heartened by what I had seen in the sky. It still made no sense but I felt much more important than I had fifteen minutes earlier.
It didn’t add up, of course. One person fell through into Malesco from Earth and was given some sort of super-beauty treatment and enthroned as a goddess mouthing what I couldn’t help regarding as rather chauvinistic gibberish from the clouds. Another person fell through—me—and was instantly set upon by priests and. hounded like a criminal through the streets.
The New York angle of this very materialistic religion I wouldn’t let myself think about. It was too entirely impossible. Later, maybe someone would explain it to me. Until then I couldn’t allow myself to speculate. I would pretend it never happened. The sacred pathways of New York!
The effect of that vision on the clouds had been enormous. When it faded the city had buzzed with awed murmurings and even now the normal noises of crowds and traffic were not yet back to their previous volume. I overheard enough on the streets to realize that Lorna’s visitation was accepted as something like a miracle. Nobody understood or attempted to understand how such a thing could be achieved mechanically.
This confused me still more. A city of the technological level that Malesco seemed to enjoy ought not to be rendered speechless with awe at the projection of a television image or the broadcasting of a human voice.
Naturally I didn’t know how the priests had done the job. Maybe by drawing a pentagram and working black magic. But I knew how it could be done, so the only awe I felt was amazement at the change in Lorna.
Falvi vanished under the great arched entrance above me. He was certainly an inefficient conspirator. It seemed to me anybody who glanced at him would know without looking twice that here was a spy on the way to plot with a master-mind ringleader for the overthrow of the government.
The way he kept. looking nervously over his shoulder was in itself a. complete giveaway. He glanced again without seeing me—even that showed what a failure he was as a secret agent—and then disappeared into the building.
I wasn’t any too sure of myself. My trouser cuffs and shoes showing under the priestly robes made me nervous. If they’d been lit up with neons I couldn’t have felt any more conspicuous. I was afraid of losing Falvi but I just didn’t dare walk up to that booth and try to bluff my way in.
So I waited until a group of five or six men came along, just cheerful enough to be careless, and fell in behind them as they climbed the steps. One of the men threw several coins in the glass bowl beside the booth.
They started to file in through the turnstile and the man in the booth called something after them that I didn’t hear very clearly. But the head man looked back, grinned sheepishly, then threw another coin into a box on the wall.
The temple box, I thought—the priestly jackpot that Lorna had plugged in her commercial from the clouds. I wondered wildly how much was due bowl and box. Then I remembered that Falvi hadn’t contributed to the box. The flapping of my headdress against my cheek reminded me why. I was a priest too. We didn’t have to contribute to our own support.
I tossed a coin at random into the glass bowl and shoved through the turnstile after the party ahead. Nobody stopped me. Nobody paid me any attention. I couldn’t help looking back as I passed the turnstile and, sure enough, Dio was just starting up the steps from the street.
When I got into the vast rotunda inside Falvi was nowhere in sight. I had lost him.
It seemed unnecessarily ironic. I had managed to keep him in sight from the moment of my entrance into Malesco, only to lose him about five minutes short of Coriole. The big hall was full of people, all of them in the brightly colored tunics and short cloaks which the well-dressed man was wearing in Malesco that night. If there were women here they must have had a separate entrance. This crowd was exclusively male.
BECAUSE I had no alternative I let myself drift with them. The newcomers seemed to be making in a steady stream for a row of arches on the far side of the room. Hoping Falvi had gone that way too, I drifted with them. Under easier circumstances I’d have en
joyed the experience.
The big room was cool and pleasant. Music was floating through the air from some Malescan version of Muzak, colored lights made layers of rose and green and violet above us, sinking on what looked like drifts of fog in the air overhead.
Row upon row of balconies climbed the high dome of the rotunda and laughter and music and the clink of dishes and glasses drifted down from above. Now and then a slow shower of the advertising confetti sprinkled down through the air or streamers of coiling serpentine spiraled gently downward among the colored mists.
I wondered why my uncle had never told me about the Baths of the Divine Water. The outer shell of it I remembered from his bedtime tales. Maybe he had never been here. Maybe the Baths were new since his time, though the outer globe of shining fire was not.
Again I wondered, with consuming curiosity, just what had been his part in Malescan history, whether he’d really entered the place. It was rather like walking through Wonderland and looking for a handkerchief Alice had dropped seventy years ago on the print of her foot on the path through the woods where the Cheshire Cat sat waiting in a tree.
The Baths were enormous. I knew it was going to be hopeless to run across Falvi by accident or to find Coriole without being actually led up to him and introduced. All I could do was stroll with the crowd and try to ignore the occasional curious glance cast my way.
A streamer of purple paper wound round my face and commanded me to CALL FOR ALIETTE IN THE CRYSTAL GROTTO. I wondered if Aliette were a girl, a drink, a song or something completely Malescan and strange to me.
Beyond the arches was a long narrow hall which looked glamorous for a moment and then on second glance turned into a fairly commonplace locker room. The lockers were a wall of shining green stone checkered with white squares and instead of benches there were rows of individual padded stools. As I stood hesitating the crowd parted for a moment and there, halfway down the room, I saw a familiar flapped headdress and Falvi’s anxious thin nose in profile.
Collected Fiction Page 683
