The Bromeliad 1 - Truckers

by Terry Pratchett

  'He's not himself; you can see that,' said Grimma. 'Come on,' she added, in a horribly cheerful voice. 'Upsydaisy.' She lifted him up bodily and helped him towards the rope of clips. Masklin followed them, walking backwards with his eye on the door.

  He thought: he has seen the light. It should be dark in here now, and he has seen the light. But I'll never get it off in time and anyway, it won't make any difference. I don't believe in any demon called Prices Slashed and now, here he comes. What a strange world.

  He sidled into the shade of a pile of paper, and waited.

  He could hear Gurder's feeble protests, down around floor level, suddenly stop. Perhaps Grimma had hit him with something. She had a way of taking obvious action in a crisis.

  The door drifted open, very slowly. There was a figure there. It looked like a human in a blue suit. Masklin wasn't much of a judge of human expressions, but the man didn't look very happy. In one hand he held a metal tube. Light shone out of one end. His terrible light, Masklin thought.

  The figure came closer, in that slow-motion, sleep-walking way that humans had. Masklin peered around the paper, fascinated despite him­self. He looked up into a round, red face, felt the breath, saw the peaked hat.

  He'd learned that humans in the Store had their names on little badges, because he'd been told -they were so stupid they wouldn't remember them otherwise. This man had his name on his hat. Masklin squinted and made out the shape of the letters: S... E .... ....... R...... T ..Y. He had a white moustache.

  The man straightened up and started to walk around the room. They're not stupid, Masklin told himself. He's bright enough to know there shouldn't be a light on, and he wants to find out why. He's bound to see the others if he just looks in the right place. Even a human could see them.

  He gripped his spear. The eyes, he thought, I'd have to go for the eyes...

  Security drifted dreamily around the room, examining cupboards and looking in corners. Then he headed back towards the door.

  Masklin dared to breathe and, at that moment, Gurder's hysterical voice came from somewhere below him.

  'It is Prices Slashed! Oh, Bargains Galore, save us! We're all mmphmmphmmph-' Security stopped. He turned back, a look of puzzlement spreading across his face as slowly as treacle.

  Masklin shrunk further back into the shadows. This is it, then, he thought. If I can get a good run at him.

  Something outside the door started to roar. It was almost a lorry noise. It didn't seem to worry the man, who just pulled the door open and looked out.

  There was a human woman in the passage. She looked quite elderly, as far as Masklin was any judge, with a pink apron with flowers on it and carpet slippers on her feet. She held a duster in one hand, and with the other she was...

  Well, it looked as though she was holding back a sort of roaring thing, like a bag on wheels. It kept rushing forward across the carpet, but she kept one hand on its stick and kept pulling it back.

  While Masklin watched she gave the thing a kick. The roaring died away as Security started to talk to her. To Masklin the conversation sounded like a couple of foghorns having a fight.

  Masklin ran to the edge of the desk and half climbed, half fell down the chain of clips. The other two were waiting in the shadow of the desk. Gurder's eyes were rolling; Grimma had one hand clamped firmly over his mouth.

  'Let's get out of here while he's not looking!' said Masklin.

  'How?' said Grimma. 'There's only the doorway.' 'Mmphmmph.' Well, let's at least get somewhere better than this.' Masklin stared around across the rolling acres of dark carpet. 'There's a cupboard thing over there,' he said.

  'Mmphmmph!' 'What are we going to do with him?' 'Look,' said Masklin to Gurder's frightened face. 'You're not going to go on about doom, doom again, are you? Otherwise we'll have to gag you. Sorry.' 'Mmph.' Promise?' 'Mmph.' 'Okay, you can take your hand away.' 'It was Bargains Galore!' hissed Gurder excit­edly.

  Grimma looked up at Masklin. 'Shall I shut him up again?' she said.

  'He can say what he likes as long as he keeps quiet,' said Masklin. 'It probably makes him feel better. He's had a bit of a shock.' 'Bargains Galore came to protect us! With her great roaring Soul-Sucker...' Gurder's brow wrinkled in puzzlement.

  'It was a carpet-cleaner, wasn't it?' he said slowly. 'I always thought it was something magi­cal and it was just a carpet-cleaner. There's lot's of them in Household Appliances. With Extra Suction for Deep-Down Carpet Freshness.' 'Good. That's nice. Now, how do we get out of here?' Some searching behind the fifing cabinets found a crack in the floorboards just big enough to squeeze through with difficulty. Getting back took half a day, partly because Gurder would occasion­ally sit down and burst into tears, but mainly because they had to climb down inside the wall itself. It was hollow and had wires and odd bits of wood in it, tied into place by the Klothians, but it was still a tedious job. They came out under Kid­dies Klothes. Gurder had pulled himself together by then, and haughtily ordered food and an escort.

  And so at last they came back to the Stationery Department.

  Just in time.

  Granny Monkie looked up as they were ushered into the Abbot's bedroom. She was sitting by the bed with her hands on her knees.

  'Don't make any loud noises,' she ordered. 'He's very ill. He says he's dyin'. I suppose he should know.' 'Dying of what?' said Masklin.

  'Dyin' of bein' alive for such a long time,' said Granny.

  The Abbot lay, wrinkled and even smaller than Masklin remembered him, among his pillows. He was clutching the Thing in two thin, claw-like hands.

  He looked at Masklin and, with a great effort, beckoned him to come closer.

  'You'll have to lean oven,' Granny ordered. 'He can't talk above a croak, poor old soul.' The Abbot gently grabbed Masklin's ear and pulled it down to his mouth.

  'A sterling woman,' he whispered. 'Many fine qualities, I am sure. But please send her away before she gives me any more medicine.' Masklin nodded, Granny's remedies, made from simple, honest and generally nearly poisonous herbs and roots, were amazing things. After one dose of stomach-ache jollop, you made sure you never complained of stomach ache ever again. In its way, it was a sort of cure.

  'I can't send,' he said, 'but I can ask.' She went out, shouting instructions, to mix up another batch.

  Gurder knelt down by the bed.

  'You're not going to die, are you, sir?' he said.

  'Of course I am. Everyone is. That's what being alive is all about,' whispered the Abbot. 'Did you see Arnold Bros (est. 1905)?' Well. Er.' Gurder hesitated. 'We found some Writing, sir. It's true, it says the Store will be demolished. That means the end of everything, sir, whatever shall we do?' 'You will have to leave,' said the Abbot.

  Gurder looked horrified.

  'But you've always said that everything outside the Stone could only be a dream!' 'And you never believed me, boy. And maybe I was wrong. That young man with the spear, is he still here? I can't see very well.' Masklin stepped forward.

  'Oh, there you are,' said the old nome. 'This box of yours.' 'Yes?' said Masklin.

  'Told me things. Showed me pictures. Store's a lot bigger than I thought, there's this room they keep the stars in, not just the glittery ones they hang from the ceiling at Christmas Fayre, but hundreds of the damn things. It's called the uni­verse. We used to live in it, it nearly all belonged to us, it was our home. We didn't live under anyone's floor. I think Arnold Bros (est. 1905) is telling us to go back there.' He reached out and his cold white finger gripped Masklin's arm with surprising strength.

  'I don't say you're blessed with brains,' he said. 'In fact I reckon you're the stupid but dutiful kind who gets to be leader when there's no glory in it. You're the kind who sees things through. Take them home. Take them all home.' He slumped back on to the pillows, and shut his eyes.

  'But-leave the Store, sir?' said Gurder. 'There's thousands of us, old people and babies and every­one, where can we go? There's foxes out there, Masklin says, and win
d and hunger and water that drops out of the sky in bits! Sir? Sir?' Grimma leaned over and felt the old nome's wrist.

  'Can he hear me?' said Gurder.

  'Maybe,' said Grimma. 'Perhaps. But he won't be able to answer you, because he's dead.' 'But he can't die! He's always been here!' said Gurder, aghast. 'You've got it wrong. Sir? Sir!' Masklin took the Thing out of the Abbot's unresisting hands as other Stationeri, hearing Gurder's voice, hurried in.

  'Thing?' he said quietly, walking away from the crowd around the bed, 'I hear you.' 'Is he dead?' 'I detect no life functions.' What does that mean?' 'It means "yes".' 'Oh.' Masklin considered this. 'I thought you had to be eaten or squashed first. I didn't think you just sort of stopped.' The Thing didn't volunteer any information.

  'Any idea what I should do now?' said Masklin. 'Gurder was right. They are not going to leave all this warmth and food. I mean, some of the youngsters might, for a lark. But if we're going to survive outside we'll need lots of people. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. And what am I supposed to say to them: Sorry, you've all got to leave it all behind?' The Thing spoke.

  'No,' it said.

  Masklin had never seen a funeral before. Come to that, he'd never seen a nome die from being alive too long. Oh, people had been eaten, or had never come back, but no one had simply come to an end.

  Where do you bury your dead?' Gurder had asked. 'Inside badgers and foxes, often,' he'd replied, and hadn't been able to resist adding, 'You know. The handsome and agile hunters?' This was how the nomes said farewell to their dead: The body of the old Abbot was ceremoniously dressed in a green coat and a pointy red hat. His long white beard was carefully combed out and then he lay, peacefully, on his bed as Gurder read the service.

  'Now that it has pleased you, Arnold Bros (est. 1905), to take our brother to your great Gardening Department beyond Consumer Accounts, where there is Ideal Lawn Edging and an Amazing Floral Display and the pool of eternal life in Easy-to-Lay Polythene with Real Crazy-Paving Edging, we will give him the gifts a nome must take on his journey.' The Count de Ironmongri stepped forward. 'I give him,' he said, laying an object beside the nome, 'the Spade Of Honest Toil.' 'And I,' said the Duke de Haberdasheri, 'lay beside him the Fishing Rod of Hope.' Other leading nomes brought other things: the Wheelbarrow of Leadership, the Shopping Basket of Life. Dying in the Store was quite complicated, Masklin gathered.

  Grimma blew her nose as Gurder completed the service and the body was ceremoniously carried away.

  To the sub-basement, they later learned, and the incinerator. Down in the realms of Prices Slashed, the Security, where he sat at night-times, legend said, and drank his horrible tea.

  'That's a bit dreadful, I reckon,' said Granny Morkie, as they stood around aimlessly after­wards. 'In my young day, if a person died, we buried 'em. In the ground.' 'Ground?' said Gurder.

  'Sort of floor,' explained Granny.

  'Then what happened?' said Gurder.

  Granny looked blank. 'What?' she said.

  'Where did they go after that?' said the Stationeri patiently.

  'Go? I don't reckon they went anywhere. Dead people don't get about much.' 'In the Store,' said Gurder slowly, as if he was explaining things to a rather backward child, 'when a nome dies, if he has been a good nome, Arnold Bros (eat. 1905) sends them back to see us before they go to a Better Place.' 'How can-' Granny began.

  'The inner bit of them, I mean,' said Gurder. 'The bit inside you that's really you.' They looked at him politely, waiting for him to make any sort of sense.

  Gurder sighed. 'All right,' he said, 'I'll get some­one to show you.' They were taken to the Gardening Department. It was a strange place, Masklin thought. It was like the world outside but with all the difficult bits taken away. The only light was the faint glow of indoor suns, which stayed on all night. There was no wind, no rain, and there never would be. There was grass, but it was just painted green sacking with bits sticking out of it. There were mountain­ous cliffs of nothing but seeds in packets, each one with a picture that Masklin suspected was quite unreal. They showed flowers, but flowers unlike any he'd ever seen before.

  'Is the Outside like this?' said the young priest who was guiding them. 'They say, they say, er, they say you've been there. They say you've seen it.' He sounded hopeful.

  'There was more green and brown,' said Mask­lin flatly.

  'And flowers?' said the priest.

  'Some flowers,' Masklin agreed. 'But not like these.' 'I seed flowers like these once,' said Torrit and then, unusually for him, fell silent.

  They were led around the bulk of a giant lawnmower and there- -were nomes. Tall, chubby-faced gnomes. Pink­cheeked painted gnomes. Some of them held fishing rods or spades. Some of them were push­ing painted wheelbarrows. And every single one of them was grinning.

  The tribe stood in silence for some time.

  Then Grimma said, very softly, 'How horrible.' 'Oh, no!' said the priest, horrified. 'It's marvel­lous! Arnold Bros (est. 1905) sends you back smart and new, and then you leave the Stone and go to a wonderful place!' 'There's no women,' said Granny. 'That's a mercy, anyway.' 'Ah, well,' said the priest, looking a bit embar­rassed. 'That's always been a bit of a debatable question, we're not sure why but we think-' 'And they don't look like anyone,' said Granny. They all look the same.' Well, you see-' 'Catch me coming back like that,' said Granny. 'If you come back like that, I don't want to go.' The priest was almost in tears.

  'No, but-' 'I saw one like these once.' It was old Torrit again. He looked very grey in the face and was trembling.

  'You shut up, you,' said Granny. 'You never saw nothing.' 'I did too,' said Torrit. 'When I was a little lad.

  Grandpa Dimpo took some of us right across the fields, right through the wood, and there was all these big stone houses where humans lived and they had little fields in front full of flowers like what they got here, and grass all short, and ponds with orange fish, and we saw one of these. It was sitting on a stone toadstool by one of these ponds.' 'It never was,' said Granny, automatically.

  'It was an' all,' said Torrit, levelly. 'And I mind Grandpa sayin', "That ain't no life, out there in all weathers, birds doing their wossname on your hat and dogs widdlin' all over you." He tole us it was a giant nome who got turned to stone on account of sitting there for so long and never catching no fish. And he said, "Wot a way to go, that ain't for me, lads, I want to go sudden like," and then a cat jumped out on him. Talk about laugh.' What happened?' said Masklin.

  'Oh, we gave it a good seeing-to with our spears and picked him up and we all run like bu - run very fast,' said Torrit, watching Granny's stern expression.

  'No, no!' wailed the priest. 'It's not like that at all!' and then he started to sob.

  Granny hesitated for a moment, and then patted him gently on the back.

  'There, there,' she said. 'Don't you worry about it. Daft old fool says any old thing that comes into his head.' 'I don't-.-' Torrit began. Granny's warning look stopped him.

  They went back slowly, trying to put the terrible stone images out of their minds. Torrit trailed along behind, grumbling like a worn-out thunderstorm.

  'I did see it, I'm telling you,' he whispered.

  'Damn great grinning thing, it were, sitting on a spotty stone mushroom. I did see it. Never went back there, though. Better safe than sorry, I always said. But I did see it.' It seemed taken for granted by everyone that Gurder was going to be the new Abbot. The old Abbot had left strict instructions. There didn't seem to be any argument.

  The only one against the idea, in fact, was Gurder.

  'Why me?' he said. 'I never wanted to lead any­one! Anyway ... you know ...' He lowered his voice. 'I have Doubts, sometimes. The old Abbot knew it, I'm sure, I can't imagine why he'd think I'd be any good.' Masklin said nothing. It occurred to him that the Abbot might have had a very definite aim in mind. Perhaps it was time for a little doubt. Per­haps it was time to look at Arnold Bros (est.1905) in a different way.

  Th
ey were off to one side in the big underfloor area the Stationeri used for important meetings; it was the one place in the Store, apart from the Food Hall, where fighting was strictly forbidden. The heads of the families, rulers of departments and sub-departments, were milling around out there. They might not be allowed to bear weapons, but they were cutting one another dead at every opportunity.

  Getting them to even think of working together would be impossible without the Stationeri. It was odd, really. The Stationeni had no real power at all, but all the families needed them and none of them feared them and so they survived and, in a strange sort of way, led. A Haberdasheri wouldn't listen even to common sense from an Irorimongri, on general principles, but they would if the speaker was a Stationeri because everyone knew the Stationeri didn't take sides.

  He turned to Gurder.

  'We need to talk to someone in the Ironmongri. They control the electric, don't they? And the lorry nest.' 'That's the Count de Ironinongri over there,' said Gurder, pointing. 'Thin fellow with the mous­tache. Not very religious. Doesn't know much about electric, though.' 'I thought you told me-' 'Oh, the Ironmongri do. The underlings and servants and whatnot. But not people like the Count. Good heavens,' Gurder smiled. 'You don't think the Duke de Haberdasheri ever touches a pair of scissors, do you, or Baroness del Icatessen goes and cuts up food her actual self?' He looked sideways at Masklin.

  'You've got a plan, haven't you?' he said.

  'Yes. Sort of.' What are you going to tell them, then?' Masklin picked absently at the tip of his spear. 'The truth. I'm going to tell them they can leave the Store and take it all with them. I think it should be possible.' Gurder rubbed his chin. 'Hmm,' he said. 'I sup­pose it's possible. If everyone carries as much food and stuff as they can. But it'll soon run out and, anyway, you can't carry electric. It lives in wires, you know.' 'How many Stationeri can read Human?' said Masklin, ignoring him.

  'All of us can read a bit, of course,' said Gurder.