Collected Short Fiction, page 917
What will I do? Where can I turn?
I may have to flee. The thought of crossing district lines chills me. Is it the peril of death I fear, or only the loss of all that is familiar? Probably both: I have no hunger for dying and no wish to leave Ganfield. Yet I will go, no matter how difficult it will be to find sanctuary if I get safely across the line. If they continue to hold me tainted by Silena’s crime I will have no choice. I think I would rather die at the hands of strangers than perish at those of my own people.
2.
This sweltering night I find myself atop Ganfield Tower, seeking cool breezes and the shelter of darkness. Half the district has had the idea of escaping the heat by coming up here tonight, it seems; to get away from the angry eyes and tightened lips I have climbed to the fifth parapet, where only the bold and the foolish ordinarily go. I am neither, yet here I am.
As I move slowly around the tower’s rim, warily clinging to the old and eroded guardrail, I have a view of our entire district. Ganfield is like a shallow basin in form, gently sloping upward from the central spike that is the tower to a rise on the district perimeter. They say that a broad lake once occupied the site where Ganfield now stands; it was drained and covered over centuries ago, when the need for new living space became extreme. Yesterday I heard that great pumps are used to keep the ancient lake from breaking through into our cellars, and that before very long the pumps will fail or shut themselves down for maintenance, and we will be flooded. Perhaps so. Ganfield once devoured the lake; will the lake now have Ganfield? Will we tumble into the dark waters and be swallowed, with no one to mourn us?
I look out over Ganfield. These tall brick boxes are our dwellings, twenty stories high but dwarfed from my vantage point far above. This sliver of land, black in the smoky moonlight, is our pitiful scrap of community park. These low flat-topped buildings are our shops, a helter-skelter cluster. This is our industrial zone, such that it is. That squat shadow-cloaked bulk just north of the tower is Ganfield Hold, where our crippled computers slip one by one into idleness. I have spent nearly my whole life within this one narrow swing of the compasses that is Ganfield. When I was a boy and affairs were not nearly so harsh between one district and its neighbor, my father took me on holiday to Morton Court, and another time to the Mill. When I was a young man I was sent on business across three districts to Parley Close. I remember those journeys as clearly and vividly as though I had dreamed them. But everything is quite different now and it is twenty years since I last left Ganfield. I am not one of your privileged commuters, gaily making transit from zone to zone. All the world is one great city, so it is said, with the deserts settled and the rivers bridged and all the open places filled, a universal city that has abolished the old boundaries, and yet it is twenty years since I passed from one district to the next. I wonder: are we one city, then, or merely thousands of contentious fragmented tiny states?
Look here, along the perimeter. There are no more boundaries, but what is this? This is our boundary, Ganfield Crescent, that wide curving boulevard surrounding the district. Are you a man of some other zone? Then cross the Crescent at risk of life. Do you see our police machines, blunt-snouted, glossy, formidably powerful, strewn like boulders in the broad avenue? They will interrogate you, and if your answers are uneasy, they may destroy you. Of course they can do no one any harm tonight.
Look outward now, at our horde of brawling neighbors. I see beyond the Crescent to the east the gaunt spires of Conning Town, and on the west, descending stepwise into the jumbled valley, the shabby dark-walled buildings of the Mill, with happy Morton Court on the far side, and somewhere in the smoky distance other places, Folkstone and Budleigh and Hawk Nest and Parley Close and Kingston and Old Grove and all the rest, the districts, the myriad districts, part of the chain that stretches from sea to sea, from shore to shore, spanning our continent paunch by paunch, the districts, the chips of gaudy glass making up the global mosaic, the infinitely numerous communities that are the segments of the all-encompassing world-city. Tonight at the capital they are planning next month’s rainfall patterns for districts that the planners have never seen. District food allocations—inadequate, always inadequate—are being devised by men to whom our appetites are purely abstract entities. Do they believe in our existence, at the capital? Do they really think there is such a place as Ganfield? What if we sent them a delegation of notable citizens to ask for help in replacing our lost program? Would they care? Would they even listen? For that matter, is there a capital at all? How can I who have never seen nearby Old Grove accept, on faith alone, the existence of a far-off governing centre, aloof, inaccessible, shrouded in myth? Maybe it is only a construct of some cunning subterranean machine that is our real ruler. That would not surprise me. Nothing surprises me. There is no capital. There are no central planners. Beyond the horizon everything is mist.
3.
In the office, at least, no one dares show hostility to me. There are no scowls, no glares, no snide references to the missing program. I am, after all, chief deputy to the District Commissioner of Nutrition, and since the commissioner is usually absent, I am in effect in charge of the department. If Silena’s crime does not destroy my career, it might prove to have been unwise for my subordinates to treat me with disdain. In any case we are so busy that there is no time for such gambits. We are responsible for keeping the community properly fed; our tasks have been greatly complicated by the loss of the program, for there is no reliable way now of processing our allocation sheets, and we must requisition and distribute food by guesswork and memory. How many bales of plankton cubes do we consume each week? How many kilos of proteoid mix? How much bread for the shops of Lower Ganfield? What fads of diet are likely to sweep the district this month? If demand and supply fall into imbalance as a result of our miscalculations, there could be widespread acts of violence, forays into neighboring districts, even renewed outbreaks of cannibalism within Ganfield itself. So we must draw up our estimates with the greatest precision. What a terrible spiritual isolation we feel, deciding such things with no computers to guide us!
4.
On the fourteenth day of the crisis the district captain summons me. His message comes in late afternoon, when we all are dizzy with fatigue, choked by humidity. For several hours I have been tangled in complex dealings with a high official of the Marine Nutrients Board; this is an arm of the central city government, and I must therefore show the greatest tact, lest Ganfield’s plankton quotas be arbitrarily lowered by a bureaucrat’s sudden pique. Telephone contact is uncertain—the Marine Nutrients Board has its headquarters in Melrose New Port, half a continent away on the southeastern coast—and the line sputters and blurs with distortions that our computers, if the master program were in operation, would normally erase. As we reach a crisis in the negotiation my subdeputy gives me a note: DISTRICT CAPTAIN WANTS TO SEE YOU. “Not now,” I say in silent lip-talk. The haggling proceeds. A few minutes later comes another note: IT’S URGENT. I shake my head, brush the note from my desk. The subdeputy retreats to the outer office, where I see him engaged in frantic discussion with a man in the gray and green uniform of the district captain’s staff. The messenger points vehemently at me. Just then the phone line goes dead. I slam the instrument down and call to the messenger, “What is it?”
“The captain, sir. To his office at once, please.”
“Impossible.”
He displays a warrant bearing the captain’s seal. “He requires your immediate presence.”
“Tell him I have delicate business to complete,” I reply. “Another fifteen minutes, maybe.”
He shakes his head. “I am not empowered to allow a delay.”
“Is this an arrest, then?”
“A summons.”
“But with the force of an arrest?”
“With the force of an arrest, yes,” he tells me.
I shrug and yield. All burdens drop from me. Let the subdeputy deal with the Marine Nutrients Board; let the clerk in the outer office do it, or no one at all; let the whole district starve. I no longer care. I am summoned. My responsibilities are discharged. I give over my desk to the subdeputy and summarize for him, in perhaps a hundred words, my intricate hours of negotiation. All that is someone else’s problem now.
The messenger leads me from the building into the hot, dank street. The sky is dark and heavy with rain, and evidently it has been raining some while, for the sewers are backing up and angry swirls of muddy water run shin-deep through the gutters. The drainage system, too, is controlled from Ganfield Hold, and must now be failing. We hurry across the narrow plaza fronting my office, skirt a gush of sewage-laden outflow, push into a close-packed crowd of irritable workers heading for home. The messenger’s uniform creates an invisible sphere of untouchability for us; the throngs part readily and close again behind us. Wordlessly I am conducted to the stone-faced building of the district captain, and quickly to his office. It is no unfamiliar place to me, but coming here as a prisoner is quite different from attending a meeting of the district council. My shoulders are slumped, my eyes look toward the threadbare carpeting.
The district captain appears. He is a man of sixty, silver-haired, upright, his eyes frank and direct, his features reflecting little of the strain his position must impose. He has governed our district ten years. He greets me by name, but with warmth, and says, “You’ve heard nothing from your woman?”
“I would have reported it if I had.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps. Have you any idea where she is?”
“I know only the common rumors,” I say. “Conning Town, Morton Court, the Mill.”
“She is in none of those places.”
“Are you sure?”
“I have consulted the captains of those districts,” he says. “They deny any knowledge of her. Of course, one has no reason to trust their word, but on the other hand, why would they bother to deceive me?” His eyes fasten on mine. “What part did you play in the stealing of the program?”
“None, sir.”
“She never spoke to you of treasonable things?”
“Never.”
“There is strong feeling in Ganfield that a conspiracy existed.”
“If so, I knew nothing of it.”
He judges me with a piercing look. After a long pause he says heavily, “She has destroyed us, you know. We can function at the present level of order for another six weeks, possibly, without the program—if there is no plague, if we are not flooded, if we are not overrun with bandits from outside. After that the accumulated effects of many minor breakdowns will paralyze us. We will fall into chaos. We will strangle on our own wastes, starve, suffocate, revert to savagery, live like beasts until the end—who knows? Without the master program we are lost. Why did she do this to us?”
“I have no theories,” I say. “She kept her own counsel. Her independence of soul is what attracted me to her.”
“Very well. Let her independence of soul be what attracts you to her now. Find her and bring back the program.”
“Find her? Where?”
“That is for you to discover.”
“I know nothing of the world outside Ganfield!”
“You will learn,” the captain says coolly. “There are those here who would indict you for treason. I see no value in this. How does it help us to punish you? But we can use you. You are a clever and resourceful man; you can make your way through the hostile districts, and you can gather information, and you could well succeed in tracking her. If anyone has influence over her, you do—if you find her, you perhaps can induce her to surrender the program. No one else could hope to accomplish that. Go. We offer you immunity from prosecution in return for your cooperation.”
The world spins wildly about me. My skin burns with shock. “Will I have safe conduct through the neighboring districts?” I ask.
“To whatever extent we can arrange. That will not be much, I fear.”
“You’ll give me an escort, then? Two or three men?”
“We feel you will travel more effectively alone. A party of several men takes on the character of an invading force. You would be met with suspicion and worse.”
“Diplomatic credentials, at least?”
“A letter of identification, calling on all captains to honor your mission and treat you with courtesy.”
I know how much value such a letter will have in Hawk Nest or Folkstone.
“This frightens me,” I say.
He nods, not unkindly. “I understand that. Yet someone must seek her, and who else is there but you? We grant you a day to make your preparations. You will depart on the morning after next, and God hasten your return.”
5.
Preparations. How can I prepare myself? What maps should I collect, when my destination is unknown? Returning to the office is unthinkable; I go straight home, and for hours I wander from one room to the other as if I face execution at dawn. At last I gather myself and fix a small meal, but most of it remains on my plate. No friends call; I call no one. Since Silena’s disappearance my friends have fallen away from me. I sleep poorly. During the night there are hoarse shouts and shrill alarms in the street; I learn from the morning newscast that five men of Conning Town, here to loot, had been seized by one of the new vigilante groups that have replaced the police machines and were summarily put to death. I find no cheer in that, thinking that I might be in Conning Town in a day or so.
What clues to Silena’s route? I ask to speak with the guard from whom she wangled entry into Ganfield Hold. He has been a prisoner ever since; the captain is too busy to decide his fate, and he languishes meanwhile. He is a small thick-bodied man with stubbly red hair and a sweaty forehead; his eyes are bright with anger and his nostrils quiver. “What is there to say?” he demands. “I was on duty at the Hold. She came in. I had never seen her before, though I knew she must be high-caste. Her cloak was open. She seemed naked beneath it. She was in a state of excitement.”
“What did she tell you?”
“That she desired me. Those were her first words.” Yes. I could see Silena doing that, though I had difficulty in imagining her long slender form enfolded in that squat little man’s embrace. “She said she knew of me and was eager for me to have her.”
“And then?”
“I sealed the gate. We went to an inner room where there is a cot. It was a quiet time of day, I thought no harm would come. She dropped her cloak. Her body—”
“Never mind her body.” I could see it all too well in the eye of my mind, the sleek thighs, the taut belly, the small high breasts, the cascade of chocolate hair falling to her shoulders. “What did you talk about? Did she say anything of a political kind? Some slogan, some words against the government?”
“Nothing. We lay together naked awhile, only fondling one another. Then she said she had a drug with her, one which would enhance the sensations of love tenfold. It was a dark powder. I drank it in water; she drank it also, or seemed to. Instantly I was asleep. When I awoke, the Hold was in uproar and I was a prisoner.” He glowers at me. “I should have suspected a trick from the start. Such women do not hunger for men like me. How did I ever injure you? Why did you choose me to be the victim of your scheme?”
“Her scheme,” I say. “Not mine. I had no part in it. Her motive is a mystery to me. If I could discover where she has gone, I would seek her and wring answers from her. Any help you could give me might earn you a pardon and your freedom.”
“I know nothing,” he says sullenly. “She came in, she snared me, she drugged me, she stole the program.”
“Think. Not a word? Possibly she mentioned the name of some other district.”
“Nothing.”
A pawn is all he is, innocent, useless. As I leave he cries out to me to intercede for him, but what can I do? “Your woman ruined me!” he roars.
“She may have ruined us all,” I reply.
At my request a district prosecutor accompanies me to Silena’s apartment, which has been under official seal since her disappearance. Its contents have been thoroughly examined, but maybe there is some clue I alone would notice. Entering, I feel a sharp pang of loss, for the sight of Silena’s possessions reminds me of happier times. These things are painfully familiar to me: her neat array of books, her clothing, her furnishings, her bed. I knew her only eleven weeks, she was my month-wife only for two; I had not realized she had come to mean so much to me so quickly. We look around, the prosecutor and I. The books testify to the agility of her restless mind: little light fiction, mainly works of serious history, analyses of social problems, forecasts of conditions to come. Holman, The Era of the World City. Sawtelle, Megalopolis Triumphant. Doxiadis, The New World of Urban Man. Heggebend, Fifty Billion Lives. Marks, Calcutta Is Everywhere. Chasin, The New Community. I take a few of the books down, fondling them as though they were Silena. Many times when I had spent an evening here she reached for one of those books, Sawtelle or Heggebend or Marks or Chasin, to read me a passage that amplified some point she was making. Idly I turn pages. Dozens of paragraphs are underscored with fine, precise lines, and lengthy marginal comments are abundant. “We’ve analyzed all of that for possible significance,” the prosecutor remarks. “The only thing we’ve concluded is that she thinks the world is too crowded for comfort.” A racheting laugh. “As who doesn’t?” He points to a stack of green-bound pamphlets at the end of a lower shelf. “These, on the other hand, may be useful in your search. Do you know anything about them?”
