The Secret City (3 page)

When I get back she won’t open the door. Says, “I don’t know any Norman.”

“I brought you groceries. More soup. I said I would. At least open the door and take them in. I’ll stay outside. “

“That’s just a ploy to get in. I’m not stupid.”

“Ruth. I made you chicken soup last night. You said you slept better with me here.”

“No such thing.”

“I’ve got strawberries, eggs. Ruth. I’ve got a cooked chicken. You’re running out of food.”

“Rosemary will bring more on Monday.”

It was Monday yesterday. Nobody came.

“It’s Tuesday. I’m the one bringing your food now. “

“Oh.”

But she doesn’t open up.

“The police said there was an prowler sleeping in my sagebrush.”

“I slept in your daughter’s room, remember? I brought you soup and chicken. “

“Oh.”

Long pause.

“Ruth?”

Just when I’m thinking to go around and in by the window, she opens the door.

S
HE WATCHES ME MAKE CHICKEN SANDWICHES FOR
lunch and, for her, warm milk with vanilla in it.

It’s not too hot yet. I sit her out on the porch so she can watch the quail and ravens. Later I see the cop come. I don’t hear what they say. But he leaves.

Later still, when I turn on the cooler and bring her in, she says, “Rosemary reads to me.”

“What would you like?”

“Something out of
Discover
magazine. The latest issue is in the living room. We were reading about Saturn. I do like Saturn. We have binoculars around here somewhere if you’d like to take a look tonight. “

“I would.”

“I can show you where to look.”

She’s not like Mother. She likes being here.

It seems Rosemary took her out for walks Monday evenings now and then. Do I dare? Well, I will anyway. She shouldn’t sit around all day. When she’s alone I’ll bet she spends most of her time lying on the couch sleeping to those French tapes.

We go after supper when it cools down. There’s several canes by the front door. She picks one. She leads but on the way back she gets lost. Lord knows where we’d have ended up. I warn her never to walk by herself but she insists she’d be fine except she’s glad she has me anyway.

So now I’ve been here six days and nobody has come to help her. Nobody has brought her groceries. I’m wondering about Rosemary and about the old lady’s daughter. I don’t see how she’ll get along without me. I even see some improvement in her awareness in the short time I’ve been here. I think she’s eating better and sleeping better. She’s not so shaky. When we walk in the evenings she seems stronger and she usually knows the way home. The cops come and speak to her every day. She always says things are fine. She doesn’t mention me. Maybe she suspects something about me but likes me even so.

There’s another call from her daughter. They talk a long time. Mostly it’s about her grandchild and mostly the daughter speaks so I don’t hear anything but Ruth’s answers now and then. She says she’s getting along fine. She says she feels better than ever. I’m sure that’s true.

We watch TV every night, and I read to her. I’m enjoying myself more than I have since I lost my family. Actually I enjoy living as one of the natives. Also it reminds me of the last days with Mother, though Mother faded away fast and of course didn’t dare go to any of their doctors, while this old lady is getting stronger every day and less addled.

One day at breakfast, she looks at me … studies me…. I see her thinking. (My mustache is coming back. My hair is growing out.) She says, “Who pays you?”

I don’t know what to say.

“I don’t think anybody does. Where did you come from.”

I guess there’s nothing for it. This is it. I say, “Jail.”

“You escaped.”

“Yes.”

“You’re the one who hid in my yard that first day.”

“Yes.”

She thinks.

“Is your name really Norman?”

“As much as any other. Actually my mother called me Lorpas.”

“Funny name.”

But then we spend the day just as usual. The policeman comes to check on her and she says everything is fine.

Later, on our evening walk, holding tight to my elbow, she says, “Norman, I’m glad you’re here.”

She knows the names of the mountains that loom above the town. She remembers the trails she used to hike and her favorite places up there. She teaches me the names of plants and flowers and birds. If she doesn’t know them we look them up in her books. I find her binoculars and we look at stars. She names the constellations. She looks out from her porch and admires the clouds. Every day she checks on her apricot tree and her apple tree. I’m thinking how nice it would have been to have had her as my mother. After all, I’m here, born here, been here all my life, I should have learned about this place and enjoyed it the way she does.

And she’s funny. She laughs at being old, at her dowager’s hump, and her wrinkled face. She says she used to be six inches taller. That still wouldn’t be very tall.

And then they come, my people—to rescue me. They home in on my underarm implant. First I feel the implant as if it’s burning me. Then I feel my body buzzing and my whole arm hurts. I don’t know how I know, but I know it’s them, my people, finally come to rescue us. Finally what mother was waiting for.

They’re wearing our usual: bright shirts and baseball caps, mustaches…. There are three. I recognize them right away. They have the tubes to send me home. Mother told me about those little silver tubes that can send you home or burn you depending on the trigger used.

Ruth and I are on the porch. We were watching strange red clouds. No doubt that was them.

They’re clearly odd … alien. Barrel-chested, as am I.

We stand up and Ruth grabs my elbow. She says, “Who are you people?”

But they haven’t bothered to learn our language. They babble out my kind of talk, but I’ve forgotten everything except the phrase Mother made us memorize. But that was: I’m one of the people of one eighty nine, and, take me home.

I’m ashamed of them. They look flabby and pale and ridiculous. How could anyone have taken us for tourists?

Ruth says, “What do you want?”

I move in front of her. I say, “No!”

Two grab me. Ruth pulls me back. They talk but I can’t tell what they’re saying. Their voices are guttural. Mine is, too, but I seldom think about it. Plenty of people here have voices like mine.

Ruth is trying to protect me, as I am her. She’s pushing at them. Punching them. We get in each other’s way.

They laugh. They don’t realize how strong they are compared to these people and especially compared to an old lady. They pull her away and I hear her arm crack. I hear her cry out.

How can they do that?

I use the freeze. I use it as if I’d always used it—had practiced it on more than just one mouse. As if it was my first instinct instead of what I’d always kept myself from doing.

They pause. It’s working. Except I can only hold one at a time. They’re laughing again. Even more. I think they’ll fall down from laughing.

I go crazy just like Mother was always afraid I’d do. I yell. I fight. I’m in better shape than they are. Also I know how to fight and they don’t. I hit and kickbox. I use all the strength I never dared use. As they fall, they disappear, back where they came from I suppose. Except the third one. Before I can get to him, he turns a tube on me and on Ruth. Then he disappears.

I’m burned, but not too badly. Ruth is…. I see right away she can’t be alive. I suppose they thought… I
know
they thought, as Mother would have: It’s just one of
them
, she doesn’t matter.

Where they stood are three man-shaped clouds. They dissipate quickly.

I carry Ruth inside and put her on the couch. I straighten her arm. She hardly looks like Ruth anymore. I cover her with the afghan she made. The days are hot, but the nights are cold. I touch her burned cheek with my lips. It’s not Ruth.

I gather up food into the little backpack that’s by the door. I take a poncho. I take a cane. I open the door and let the cat go free. “Come on, Red. We’re on our own.” She heads for her favorite tree, while I head up the road that goes toward the trail. I’m not lost now. I take Ruth’s favorite hike. She said, “Walk up steeply for a mile from the trailhead, and after that there’ll be a cliff, pass under it, take the rocky switchbacks up the far side. Soon there’ll be a lovely hanging valley with glittery pebbles full of mica. Farther on, cross the stream on the stepping stones, after that, the lake called Long. On the way down the other side, you’ll round a corner and it will suddenly open out to a view of snowy mountains all in a row. It’ll be so beautiful you’ll shout.”

THE SECRET CITY

IT’S HIGH AND FAR AND LONELY AND SECRET AND
LOST
…
around every corner a blank wall or a cliff, streets that end up against a rock face, or that curve and curve and come back on themselves. Trees grow from the middle of the avenues, and from the roofs of houses. They have to for camouflage. Every wall is covered with vines, every roof collapsed or covered with bushes. There are entrances, tall as three men and wide as six, that lead nowhere, or into narrow hallways that end in cul-de-sacs in which one may find a packrat’s nest. Why make it as if thousands of years old, cover it with moss and vines, tumble it into ruins? Why build a park and playground in the center of the city where there’s a jungle gym for the children, but one can’t tell it from the jungle around it? Even standing right on the main square, you’d not guess there was a city here
.

Deer and foxes walk down the streets more often than people and don’t know they’re streets. Wild goats jump from roof to roof, pediment to pediment, and see no difference here than jumping from their cliffs. Owls hoot all night or scream
.

But the animals depicted over the doorways and along the pediments are none of these, they’re of a kind never seen on this world. Birds that have no feet and look like fish with wings, feathered creatures with five eyes. There’s an animal that’s all mouth and hardly any body. There’s an animal that looks like a flower but with teeth and six long leafy legs
.

All this, not only so the young ones can see something of the world they’re missing, but so they can grow up among their own kind and not be contaminated by the natives. Also so they can wait for rescue together and not be scattered over this whole primitive world
.

The disadvantages of the city are, it’s even more primitive than the natives’ world, and you never see the sun except filtered through the leaves. The advantages are, you never feel the full force of hail or sleet of mountain storms and you’re hidden so well not even a low flying helicopter would guess the city was here
.

ALLUSH

B
ACK WHEN WE WERE CHILDREN, THE WHOLE CITY
was our playground. We still know every crook and cranny. We know where to avoid the bears and wild cats, where to hunt for deer…. My favorite spot is where the fox kits play. I sit, not stone still, just normal, moving if I want to, and the kits come right up to me. Mostly from the back. I make sure not to turn around. They don’t like to be looked at. Funny, it’s the runt that comes up and looks at me from the front. She’s the boldest. Or maybe the stupidest. But she’s my favorite. I love how they sound like cats and look like them, too. Odd how a canine can seem so much like a cat.

But domestic cats don’t last a half hour up here and didn’t even last on the way. We brought some with us when we first came. None of us kids wanted to come so our parents brought along our cats and dogs. By the first week out, coyotes got every single one. We’d brought mine. She was a calico. I found her the very first morning of our trek, with her stomach torn out. Why didn’t our parents know that would happen? They should have known. I know our world is so much better that they didn’t think it was worth while paying attention to this one, but they should have known.

We all thought we’d be gone back to Betasha, the real world, a long time ago. Most of us hate it up here, especially in the winter. It’s boring and cold, and there’s hardly any of us left anymore. Except I always like playing with animals and climbing trees, but I remember movies and TV and radio and books down there in the Down. Not that we don’t have plenty of books. But I remember store-bought clothes and store-bought food—TV dinners all ready to eat. I was only eight when we left, but I could heat up my own supper.

When the old ones got up here they didn’t have anything to do—of course they didn’t and neither did we—so they built the city. They said, for us children, to show us the marvels of the homeworld but I think they were homesick. I wonder that they bothered, what with everything phony, and everything fake overgrown so it wouldn’t be discovered.

Back in the early days here, every now and then they’d go back to the Down to get supplies, but they wouldn’t let us kids come with them. They kept the way secret so we couldn’t ever leave the Secret City without one of them.

I did try to run away one fall. A long time ago. I tried to get back to the Down before winter came. I was tired of this primitive living. I hiked for three days. I was determined. All I found was more mountains. I had to backtrack on my trail to find my way home.

But in the summer it was fun. We were free. There was no crime. Nothing to fear but falling out of a tree or mountain lions though mostly they kept away from our city. We made pets of whatever was around. Sometimes garter snakes. Sometimes horned toads. And there’s my foxes.

Nobody’s gone to the Down for a long time now and there’s only Mollish of the old ones left to show the way. When she dies, nobody will know how to get back. But that’s what the old ones wanted—for us to stay here with the locked-up homing beacons and wait for rescue.

Before we came here and built the city we lived, more or less, with the natives, always in poverty and always waiting to go home. The Secret City is harder and more primitive even than being poor in the Down, but the old ones kept saying, “Can’t you stand it for a few years? Rescue
will
come. Our own people would never leave us stranded on such a backward world. As soon as they can, they’ll pull us home. “

They put all their beacons in a vault in the center of the city, locked up tight. Our people will home in on them and take us back. If we don’t stay near, our people won’t know how to find us.

Everything is better on our homeworld, the technology more advanced, also the views more beautiful, the flowers, the sky, the birds, the two moons…. “Oh, Oh,” they said, “the two moons, one blue of ice, one iron-oxide red. Oh, the sun shining on the sky dust….”

But sometimes, when I go out from under the canopy or if I climb a tree all the way to the top, I see a sunrise that’s so beautiful I think: What could be better? Even though I know on our world everything is. Everybody says so. I can’t wait to get there. I wonder if there will be creatures like foxes and blue jays I can tame.

The old ones thought all these piles of mossy rocks, all these half-standing overgrown walls would make the town harder to find even if approached from the ground. They didn’t think about archeologists. So far those are our only…. We call it eliminations. They thought they’d found a place a thousand years old and of a civilization never known before. They had a GPS. They were so excited they were shouting. Thank goodness cell phones don’t work here in the mountains or they’d have phoned out right away. They were scraping at the lichen and pulling down vines. We didn’t have time to think: Wrong or Right. We had to act fast before word got out that the city exists.

Youpas took care of all four of them by himself with bow and arrow. I was afraid of Youpas even before that. I suppose we’re all wild up here—how could we not be, but Youpas is the wildest. He left the Down when he was only six. (I was only two years older.) But the old ones all said the natives were way worse than any of us could ever be. They said we were the civilized ones. If the natives are worse than Youpas, that scares me about being in the Down, but I liked life there more than here even though I know there are bad people and bad things that happen there all the time.

Now that we’re so few left up here, we don’t bother with lookouts anymore. That’s how this man sneaked in without us knowing. He could have been here several days before I realized he was among us. That’s the disadvantage of a place like this, we can hide out here easily, but so can anybody else.

This man must know how to get back to the Down. I hope he didn’t just get lost and end up here by mistake. I wonder if he’d be willing to go back and take me with him or at least show me the way.

I lean close and examine him as he sleeps. How fascinating a whole new person is. I haven’t seen somebody else for a long time. Makes me feel, even more, that I want to go back to the Down. Or, actually, anywhere else but here.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t one of us. He has the eyebrow ridges and the barrel chest, the ruddy complexion, the black hair with reddish streaks. But sometimes some of them do look a lot like us. That’s why the old ones had no trouble coming here as tourists. I wish I could see if his eyes are that aluminum gray ours always are. I wish…. I hope…. But… well, how could he not be us?

His clothes are machine-made. Only his shoes seem to be of leather but they’re finely smoothed. We used to have clothes and shoes like that, but even our hiking boots are worn out by now. His shoes are just regular. They’ll be ruined in no time. One of his heels and the sole, too, is raised on one side. He must be lopsided. And he has a cane.

He’s been burned across one side of his face. It’s raw and blistered. If not for that, he’d be a handsome example of one of us. Of course the natives wouldn’t think him handsome, they like a smoother blander face. I used to think as they do, I didn’t want to be one of us, but I like his looks. A lot.

I spend the night nearby, he on one side of the wall and I on the other. I listen to him snore. It’s like sleeping with a bear. Even though I’m out in the open, I feel safe with that racket going on.

LORPAS

T
HOUGH
I
WAS LOOKING FOR IT, THE
S
ECRET
C
ITY
was so secret I came upon it inadvertently. I actually spent a night camped within its outskirts before I noticed it.

I had walked for days, always taking the paths less traveled. I was in pain from my burns. Every time I crossed a stream I stopped and wet my burned shoulder and face with icy mountain water. Often I was tempted to stay right there and soak myself until I healed but I wanted to get well away from any natives. This time of year they’d be unlikely to be more than a few days out. The knapsack pulled at my burned shoulder so that it bled, but I kept on.

Once, in a grassy meadow, I followed browse trails by mistake—tracks that went back and forth aimlessly. Then I saw that some of the upper tracks converged into a single path and I followed that, over a high pass and then down into a sheltered valley. The path was difficult, one cliff after another. Sometimes I had to sit down and lower myself over boulders or turn around and crawl down backwards, yet it was a clear path. It looked to be used by elk and bears and such, to go from one valley to another when the seasons changed. Two valleys back, I had walked through a group of elk lying on a snowfield chewing their cud.

When, on the sixth day, I climb up and over yet another high pass and see yet another view of snowy peaks and below them, a cozy valley, several rivers rushing down, I think, If my kind wanted to build their secret town what a perfect, hidden spot. They’d have water and a place where planes couldn’t come in low between the cliffs—on one side granite, pink tuff on the other, above that a cone, red with iron oxide, between them an alpine section, with a canopy that not even a low flying helicopter could see under.

But when I finally get down to the valley floor, there’s no sign of my kind—or anybody. I’m disappointed. I had this daydream that the rumor of a secret city was true and this was where it had to be. I wanted to rest up with my own kind, the tourists stranded here. I wanted to be called by my real name for a change, and most of all I wanted somebody to cut away my implant so my kind couldn’t find me and try to rescue me again. Now that they’ve finally found a way to snatch us home, it seems they want us all back and no questions asked.

I’m so tired the moment I’m all the way down into the valley and under the trees, I wrap up in the poncho and drop where I stand.

I dream my people did live here but they, and I also, are all snatched back to our world where we’re strangers and none of us can remember the language or the writing. The air is dense and cloudy and tinged with a silvery mist and we have trouble breathing. I wake suffocating—shouting—jump up in a panic. It’s dawn. I sit back down on a stone to catch my breath.