The City of Gold and Lead (The Tripods)

by Christopher, John

  When, on the journey to the White Mountains, they had put the button under my arm by which the Tripods afterward tracked us, and Henry had said that I must have known it was there, Beanpole had spoken of the man in the circus who could make people go to sleep and then obey his commands. I had once seen such a man with a traveling fair that came to Wherton. This sort of thing, and much, much more, was known to the Masters. They could, quite easily, put men to sleep and make them, even without the Caps, obey commands—for a time at least. But the problem still remained of getting men into a position where their power could be used. It is no good being able to make a rabbit pie, unless you can first catch your rabbit.

  And they caught their rabbits with the ancients’ own marvel: the distance-pictures. These pictures were sent out on invisible rays through the air, and turned back into pictures in millions on millions of homes all over the world. The Masters found a means of suppressing those rays at their source, and sending out in their place rays which made the pictures they wanted. There went with them other rays that made men’s minds receptive. So they watched the pictures, and the pictures told them to go to sleep, and when they had gone to sleep, the pictures gave them their orders.

  This control, as I have said, would wear off eventually, but it lasted for days, and the Masters made good use of the time. A hundred small ships landed, and men flocked to them as they had been told, and the Caps were put on their heads—by Masters at first, but later by men who had already been Capped. It was a process which grew as it went on. All that was needed was that there should be enough Caps, and there were. The plans had been well laid.

  By the time those who had not watched the pictures realized something of what was happening, it was almost too late to do anything about it. They were separate, isolated, while the others were working under the orders of the Masters, united in one purpose. And by the time the effect of the commands given by the distance-pictures wore off, enough men had been Capped to ensure that the Masters would not have any but scattered and ineffective opposition to face: one of the first things the Capped had done was to take control of the mighty weapons of the ancients. So it was possible for the parent-ship to come down to earth, and the first occupation base to be set up.

  That was not quite the end, my Master told me. Some resistance continued. There were great ships on the sea, and ships that traveled under the sea; and some of these remained free for a time, and had weapons with which they could strike from half a world away. The Masters had to track them down, to destroy them, and one of the undersea ships survived for more than a year, and at the end of that time somehow located the main base, and sent one of the giant eggs through the air, to miss its target only by a narrow margin. In the attack though, it revealed its own position, so that the Masters could use a similar weapon of their own, and sink it.

  On land, there was sporadic fighting for years, though steadily diminishing because all the time the number of the Capped grew while the number of the free diminished. The Tripods stalked the earth, guiding and helping their followers against bands of men whose weapons were puny, or nonexistent. In the end, there was peace.

  I said, “So now all men are happy, having the Masters to rule and help them, and no more wars and wickedness.”

  It was an expected comment, and I tried to put as much enthusiasm as possible into it. The Master said, “Not quite all. Last year, a Tripod was attacked and the Masters in it killed when the poisonous air broke in on them.”

  I said, shocked, “Who could do that?”

  One of his tentacles splashed water over him from the pool. He said, “Before you were Capped, boy, did you love the Masters as you do now?”

  “Of course, Master.” I hesitated. “Perhaps not quite as much. The Cap helps.”

  He moved a tentacle in a gesture which I knew to be a sign of agreement. He said, “The Caps are put on when the skull is near the end of its growing. There are some Masters who think now that it should be done earlier, because some humans, in the year or two before they are Capped, become rebellious and act against the Masters. This was known, but not thought important, because the Cap makes them good again. But it was boys like these who found old weapons that still had power, and used them in such a way that four of the Masters were killed.”

  Making a note of the fact that four was presumably a standard crew for a Tripod, I feigned a great shudder of horror, and said passionately, “Then of course boys must be Capped earlier!”

  “Yes,” the Master said. “I think that will happen. It means that the Capped will die sooner, and have pains in their heads because the Caps grip their skulls more tightly, but it is unwise to take risks, even small risks.”

  I said, “The Masters must not be endangered.”

  “On the other hand, there are some who think it does not matter because at last we are in sight of the Plan being achieved. When that happens, there will be no more need for Caps at all.”

  I waited, but he stayed silent. Greatly daring, I said, “The Plan, Master?”

  He still did not reply, and I dared not press the question further. After perhaps half a minute, he said, “I have a night-feeling sometimes when I think of it. It is probably the Sickness, the Curse of the Skloodzi. What is goodness, boy, and what is wickedness?”

  “Goodness lies in obeying the Masters.”

  “Yes.” He slumped further down in the steaming water of the pool, and wrapped his tentacles around him: I did not know what that gesture meant. “In a way, boy, you are lucky to wear the Cap.”

  I said fervently: “I know I am very lucky, Master.”

  “Yes.” A tentacle unrolled and beckoned. “Come nearer, boy.”

  I went to the edge of the pool. The tentacle, slimy from the water, caressed me, and I did my best to disguise the repulsion I felt. He said, “I am glad of this friendship, boy. It helps with the Sickness, particularly. In this book of which I spoke, the human got things for his dog that his dog liked to have. Is there anything you wish, boy?”

  I hesitated a moment, and said, “I like seeing the wonders of the City, Master. I would be happy to see more of them.”

  “That may be done.” The tentacle, with a final pat, withdrew, and he began rising out of the pool. “Now I desire to eat. Prepare my table.”

  • • •

  The following day the Sickness had abated, and the Master returned to his work. He gave me a thing to wear on my wrist and explained that anywhere in the City this would make a sound like many bees when he wanted me. I was to come to him then, but otherwise I could wander about: it was not necessary, for instance, that I should stay in the communal room of the work place.

  I was surprised that he had remembered my request, and done this, but more was to follow. He actually took me out on sightseeing expeditions. Some of what I saw was uninteresting, and some incomprehensible—there was one small pyramid with nothing in it but colored bubbles that moved in a slow dance up to the apex and down the sloping sides. What the Master said about it made no sense to me at all. And there were several trips to water-gardens, larger versions of the garden pools, which meant a lot of standing and sitting about while he waded through the seething waters. He invited me to admire their beauty, and I dutifully did so. They were quite hideous.

  But he also took me to the place Fritz had spoken of, with the turning globe that was covered with a map, and the walls of bright stars that moved against deep blackness when the Master spoke words, in his own tongue, into a machine. These were star maps, and in one of them he showed me the star from one of whose planets the Masters had set out, long, long ago. I tried as well as I could to memorize its position, though it was hard to see what good that would do.

  And one day he took me to the Pyramid of Beauty.

  • • •

  A thing that had puzzled me since first coming into the City was that all the slaves were boys. Eloise, the daughter of the Comte de la Tour Rouge, had been chosen Queen of the Tournament and had afterward gladly gone, as
she told me, to serve the Tripods in their City. I had thought I might meet her here, and it was something I wanted and did not want at the same time. It would have been terrible to see her worn down like all the other slaves, her beauty crushed under the weight and clammy heat of this place. But I found no girls, and Fritz, when I asked him, said he had seen nothing of them, either. But on this afternoon, dragging myself along beside my Master, the sweat pooling under my chin, I saw them.

  It was not one pyramid that we were approaching, but a series of pyramids which joined together near their bases—half a dozen smaller peaks clustered about a central one. It lay a long way, two ninths (more than half an hour, that is) from the part in which my Master lived, by carriage. I saw many Masters strolling about, a few with attendant slaves. We went into the first pyramid, and I almost cried out at what lay before me: a garden of earthly flowers, with that brightness of reds and blues, yellows and pinks and whites which I had almost forgotten, surrounded by this perpetual green twilight and seeing only the drab, ugly plants of the garden pools.

  I realized that I could not touch them: they were protected, by the glass-like material, from the atmosphere of the City. But it took me longer to realize something else: that despite the appearance of life, there was only death here. I saw this first when I noticed, on the crimson velvet of a rose, the golden bead of a bee. It did not move. And looking further, I saw other bees, butterflies, all kinds of pretty insects, but all still. And the flowers themselves were stiff and lifeless.

  It was a pageant, a show by which the Masters could see the real life of the world they had conquered. There was even white light, not green, inside, which made the colors shine with a dazzling intensity. Further on there was a forest glade, with squirrels on the branches, birds somehow suspended in space, a rippling stream, and on its bank an otter with a fish between its jaws. But all frozen, dead. It was nothing like the world I had known, once the shock of false recognition had worn off, because the world I had known had been a living and moving one.

  There were dozens of different tableaux, some of them unfamiliar to me. One showed a dark dripping swamp, not unlike some of the Masters’ garden pools, with a couple of strange creatures floating in it that might have been queerly shaped logs, but for their gaping jaws, gleaming with vicious white teeth. Some were being rearranged by Masters with face masks somewhat similar to the ones we slaves wore, and my Master told me that they were all changed in turn. But that merely meant exchanging one dead scene for another.

  The Master had a special objective in view, however, and we passed all these on our way to the central pyramid. There, a ramp moved up in a narrowing spiral, with exits to different floors. I toiled up after him. I was, as always, tired after a quarter of an hour’s walking, and the ramp was quite steep. We did not go out at the first exit. At the second, he led me through a triangular opening, and said, “Look, boy.”

  I looked, and the salt sweat on my face was mixed with the saltier flow of tears—tears not just of grief, but of anger, more anger, I think, than I had ever felt before.

  The Vicar at Wherton had a room he called his study, and in it he had a cabinet of polished wood, with many thin drawers. I was sent to him once, on an errand, and he pulled the drawers out and showed me what they held. Under glass there were rows and rows of butterflies, pinned down, their gay wings outstretched. I thought of that, as I stared at what was exhibited here. For there were rows of caskets, all transparent, and in each casket lay a girl, dressed in her finery.

  The Master said, “These are the female humans who are brought to the City. Your people choose them for their beauty, and they are winnowed out again by those Masters who administer this place. There are discards from time to time as better ones are brought in, but the really beautiful ones will be preserved here forever, to be admired by the Masters. Long after the Plan is completed.”

  I was too full of hate and bitterness even to pay attention to the cryptic remark about the Plan. If only I had one of those iron eggs we had found in the great-city . . . He repeated, “To be admired by the Masters forever. Is that not a fine thing, boy?”

  Choking, I said, “Yes, Master. A fine thing.”

  “It is some time since I looked at them,” the Master said. “This way, boy. There are some fine specimens in this row. At times I doubt the destiny of our race, to spread far out across the galaxy and rule it. But at least we appreciate beauty. We preserve the best of the worlds that we find and colonize.”

  I said, “Yes, Master.”

  I have said that I both wanted and did not want to find Eloise in the City. Now, in this hideous place, the wanting and the not wanting were increased a thousandfold. My eyes searched hungrily for something from which they could only turn away, in sickness and revulsion.

  “Here they all have red hair,” the Master said. “Uncommon in your race. The shades of red are different. Observe that they are arranged from light red to deep. I see that there are two new intermediate shades here since my last visit.”

  It was not red hair my eyes sought, but black—dark hair which I had seen once only, a fuzz growing through the silvery mesh of the Cap, when I had playfully snatched her turban from her in the little garden between the castle and the river.

  “Do you wish to go on, boy, or have you seen enough?”

  “I would like to go on, Master.”

  The Master made a small humming noise, which was a sign that he was pleased. I suppose he was glad to think he was making his slave-friend happy. He led the way, and I followed, and at last I saw her.

  She was dressed in the simple dark blue gown, trimmed with white lace, which she had worn at the tournament, when the forest of swords flashed silver in the sun, and all the knights acclaimed her as Queen. Her brown eyes were closed, but the ivory of the small oval face was delicately flushed with rose. But for the casket, very much like a coffin, and the hundreds of others around her, I could have thought she was sleeping.

  But her head was bare of both crown and turban. Her hair had grown in the weeks that followed that time in the garden. I looked at her close-cropped curls. They covered, but did not quite conceal the one thing she did wear on her head: the Cap which had brought her, joyfully, to this monstrous resting place.

  “Also, a fine specimen,” said the Master. “Have you seen enough, yet, boy?”

  “Yes, Master,” I told him. “I have seen enough.”

  Nine

  I Strike a Desperate Blow

  The days and the weeks went by. There was always the green dusk, but sometimes the twilight was less dim, and then one knew that outside it was a fine summer day, the sun scorching in a high blue heaven. What one saw inside the City was a pale disk, only visible when it was near the zenith, a small circle of lighter green. But the heat did not vary, nor the crushing weight of one’s body. And day by day the heaviness and the hotness drained strength away. Each night I lay down with greater thankfulness on my hard bed; each morning it was a greater effort to rise.

  Matters were not helped by the fact that the Master became more and more obviously attached to me. His fondling of me, occasional at first, became a daily ritual, and I was pressed into doing something of the sort in return. There was a place on his back, above the rear tentacle, which he liked to have rubbed and scratched. He would urge me to do this more vigorously, and direct me to spots a little higher or lower. I wore my fingernails down against his tough abrasive hide, and he still called for more. Finally I found an implement—a thing vaguely like a brush but curiously shaped—which produced the same, or a similar effect. This saved my fingernails, but not the muscles of my right arm, as he continued to prod me to further exertion.

  One afternoon while doing this I slipped and, his body turning round at the same time, the implement brushed lightly against the other side of him, between his nose and his mouth. The result was startling. He gave forth a wild howling noise, and a moment later I was flat on my back, smashed to the ground by a reflex action of two of his ten
tacles. I lay there half-stunned. The tentacles reached for me again, and I was sure that now, at any rate, I was in for another beating. But he lifted me to my feet instead.

  His action, it appeared, had been instinctive, and defensive. That spot between the two openings was, he explained, a most sensitive one in the Masters. I must be careful not to touch it. A Master could be badly hurt by being struck in that place. He hesitated a moment, and then went on: a Master might even be killed by such a blow.

  I looked as chastened and penitent as a devoted slave ought to do under such circumstances. I went on with the rubbing and scratching on the original site, and he was soon soothed. The leathery tentacles wound themselves around me, like a loathsomely affectionate octopus. Half an hour later, I was excused to my refuge, and I hurried there and, tired as I was, before lying down made a note of this important new fact in the journal that I was keeping.

  I had been doing this for some time. As I learned new things, however trivial, I jotted them down. It was better than relying on memory. I still had no idea how I was to get either the journal or myself out of the City, but it was important to go on collecting information. I was proud of my ingenuity over the journal. One of my Master’s favors had been to introduce me to the place where human books were kept, and to allow me to bring some of them back, to read during my rest periods. I had found that a blackish liquid which was used in preparing certain of the Master’s foods would serve as ink, and I had made myself a primitive pen to write with. Writing was not easy, but I was able to scrawl notes on the margins of the pages of a book; in perfect freedom from discovery since my Master could not come into the refuge, being unable to breathe human air.

  • • •

  Apart from the journal, I also, of course, continued to tell Fritz of these things when we met, and he passed any information he picked up on to me. The City was taking a heavy toll of him—the City, and his Master in particular. Once I did not see him for several days. I went twice to his Master’s pyramid, and questioned other slaves in the communal place. The first time, I drew a blank, but on the second I was told that he had been admitted to the slaves’ hospital. I asked where that was, and they told me. It was a long way—too far for me to go just then. I had to wait until my Master’s next work time.