The Secret City (8 page)

But those pills….

…
AND HERE I AM, COMING-TO
.

I’m alone. They’ve cleaned me up, cut my hair short and put something on it to make it stiff. They’ve taken away my clothes. I wonder if they destroyed them. I made those myself and decorated them with red and green thread which was hard to get up there at the city.

They’ve dressed me in a kind of smock, greenish, sprinkled randomly with a few red dots of different sizes. There’s writing on the front. I recognize it as writing because it’s the same kind that was carved on the walls of the Secret City. I never got that good at reading it. I’ve no idea what it says. Maybe Watch Out For This Wild Barbarian or maybe Smelly Foreigner, Don’t Breathe.

There’s no mirror. I’ve no idea what I look like with my hair all cut off. How will Lorpas know who I am?

There’s a little table that wasn’t here before. On it, a cup of faintly reddish liquid, and beside that, a dish of what must be something to eat, also reddish and with little black specks in it. I sit on the low stool and sip at the red stuff. It tastes so odd I wonder if they’re trying to knock me out again, but I’m so thirsty I drink it anyway. People used to get sick just going from one country to another. What about going from one world to another? I do feel a little queasy. I wonder about all those pills.

I take about half a bite of the food. It tastes so bad I start to laugh, and then I find tears are rolling down my cheeks. I’ve never been a person who cries much but I cry now. It starts off with the horrible taste and then I think how things would be if Lorpas had come with me. We’d both be laughing at this odd food. I wouldn’t feel so lonely and scared if he were here. I know he didn’t want to leave there, but I thought he’d go wherever I went. If he’d had time to think, he would have come. I suppose he didn’t have time to do anything but act. And then he already got burned once before trying to stay there. I wonder if he’s all right this time. Maybe he’s burned again and needs help. Of course Mollish is there. Or is she burned, too?

Maybe we’d have come together if we’d been holding hands when they snatched me. We did hold hands now and then. That’s as far as we went. We never even kissed. But there wasn’t room on the ledge for holding hands.

I wish we hadn’t been so shy. You’d think, at our age, we wouldn’t have been. He said I was the first of our kind he’d seen in years. He said when he first saw me he couldn’t believe I existed, especially since I’d jumped down from the trees right in front of him. He said, “What better way to meet somebody?” That was when we lay close to each other, wrapped tight in our sleeping bags. I was watching his profile with the stars behind it. Even then I wanted to kiss him but I didn’t dare. There were times I could see in his eyes that he wanted to kiss me, too. Youpas used to look at me with a kind of glare, accusing me of not loving him. Youpas would have kissed. In fact he tried every now and then, but I wouldn’t let him. Lorpas was the opposite. He always looked at me with a shy glance full of a sort of slow kindness. As if there was all the time in the world to enjoy getting to know each other. But there wasn’t.

I used to wish that our Neanderthalish faces were like the natives. I wanted a small sharp nose and thinner eyebrows. I wanted fuller, more shapely lips. I wanted to be willowy. I especially wanted a less lumpy forehead, but when I first looked at Lorpas, lying there sleeping at the edge of the Secret City, right away I changed my mind.

I should feel good here where everybody looks like us. I mean their faces. Nothing else about them does, what with those crazy clothes, though I haven’t seen much. I wonder if I’ll miss the natives’ faces, though once we got up to the Secret City I hardly saw them anymore except in picture books. In the beginning we had old movies too, but they got worn out. For a while we could run the projectors, and we could recharge batteries by hand or foot pumps, but that all gave out.

F
INALLY THE TWO MEN COME
F
OR ME
. (I
KEEP
thinking men, but I’m not sure. The clothes don’t give me any signals I know of and everybody looks so soft and chubby.) I guess I’m presentable. By now it’s darker out. Of course there’s the glow of the dust. I know from my parents that it never gets really dark. Maybe I’m not as presentable as I think, since they waited till this twilight time to take me out.

We get onto one of those wobbly porches hanging from nothing, and swing off slowly. In a way I’m scared and in a way I’m not because everything is so fascinating. Besides, would they really put me in danger after they took all the trouble to get me back? I hardly pay attention to my fear except to hang on tight. I stare at the buildings. They’re all exactly the same. When I look out over them from the high point of the porch’s swing, it makes me think of a field of huge shiny blades of grass. As we start down I stare at the ground where a few people stroll. Not a single one walks fast. There are no streetlights. They’re not needed. Nothing is lit except inside the windows. The dust rings and the moons—both at the half-moon stage—are enough so that no lights are needed.

The blue one looks to be a lot farther away than the red. Or is it just smaller? And does one always follow the other like it seems to now?

We touch down a few minutes later.

So far the men haven’t talked to me—just to themselves. I think the language has changed some since our parents left fifty years ago, but I understand a lot of it. They’re not talking about me but about the colors of something—colors of music, I think they said.

For sure these are males, their voices are gravely. I wonder if they’re the ones undressed me and dressed me when I was drugged.

They take me to one of those slim towers. They say, “This is where you’ll….” Something or other. Seemed like “collide” or “fall down.” Maybe, “crash.”

The room is on the twelfth floor. I think twelfth. I’m not sure of our numbers. The elevator comes up the middle so that when we get out there are windows on all sides. I know they have elevators back there, too, but last time I was in one I was eight years old so it’s as scary as the porch. All the rooms must be pretty small in these towers, and the higher, the smaller. I’m glad they didn’t put me any higher. I wanted to ask them: Is this all just for looks so the towers will all be alike or what? But I didn’t.

One says, “Go on loosen up. We’ll take you to a….” And another word I don’t know. “You’ll meet a Special.” I think that’s what he said.

Then they leave. I wouldn’t know how to escape if I wanted to, or even how to go down and take a walk. And I want to … at least I want to take a walk. I want to be on my own, wandering the city, but I’d be lost in five minutes.

Everything that happens makes me wish for Lorpas. With him, I’d laugh. Or maybe we’d discover how to go take a walk.

Except it
is
beautiful. From here I can look at all these other spires—as far as you can see, nothing but spires. And the moons. My parents talked of them every time there was a starry night back there, as if two moons was always better than the stars. I try to see those twirling bird things but I guess they’re only out in the daytime.

I haven’t been to any kind of town since I was a child. The Secret City isn’t really a city. We were living like cavemen. Or rather like moles in our burrows.

I’m thirsty and I don’t know how to get a drink. I don’t even know where they pee. There are buttons for everything but I don’t dare push them because the one I did push turned on bright lights, but then wouldn’t turn them back off.

I dare to pee into a depression in the floor. I hope that’s not where breakfast will appear.

I lie down on the bed. This one is different from the cot in that gray cell. You sink in more than you want to. At first I jump up because I think the bed is going to swallow me, but there’s no place else except the floor. And would they really try to eat me? I lie down again. There are no blankets so nothing to hide under to block out the light. The bed seems warm, but I still don’t like how it curls up around you. Lorpas would hate it even more than I do, what with his claustrophobia.

To think it was just last night I slept next to him, his hand on my arm. There was the sound of the stream and crickets. Why didn’t we kiss then, when we had the chance?

But everything is making me so tired I don’t find it hard to sleep … that is, after a time of letting tears drip down. At least the bed has no fancy scary way of drying them. But then my hair is a bother. It’s stiff and uncomfortable. I don’t know what to do about it. Maybe you’re supposed to wash it out every night but I can’t even get myself a drink. But I do fall asleep soon and sleep soundly.

LORPAS

T
HE BOTTOM OF THE SCREE IS
F
ULL OF BOULDERS
. I find the man first. He’s dead. That’s a bad sign for Mollish. I’m hoping…. I need her…. She was such a wonderfully tough and wise lady. She’s the only old one I’ve seen for a long time and she was so unlike all the others in loving this world more than her own. Allush said she’d been a servant and that was why she liked it better here. Makes me wonder about my world. There were things our parents wouldn’t talk about. Mother thought she was a cut above even our own people. I’d try to argue with her but she always said there was nothing to say about it, why should she argue? She just was, and if I couldn’t see it, it didn’t matter to her. She said it wasn’t the sort of thing nice people talked about.

At first I can’t find Mollish. That’s because she’s farther up on the steep slide of scree and partly covered up with gravel. When I see her, I think she might be all right—she didn’t have that far to fall. I have a hard time getting up to her. I slide down almost as much as I crawl up.

But she’s dead. Not a mark on her that I can see. Maybe she was just too old for a fall and a fight.

I dig in my heels and prop myself beside her. It’s hard to sit there without sliding.

I sit a long time. I hold her hand. I think how we both liked it here. How she was an old one who could see through all the jingoistic bullshit of our parents. All the more reason, then, that I’m right in wanting to stay. Why didn’t I talk to her more? My God, the things I could have found out that my parents never would have told me, but all I did was pay attention to Allush.

I miss her, Allush, Allusha, but I keep telling myself, she got what she wanted. At least that. I hope she’s happy there. I hope she can come back if she doesn’t like it.

I’ve no idea how long I sit there—it seems I’m mostly not thinking at all, I just sit—empty—then I see the sun is getting low. If I don’t hurry back to the trail, I’ll have to sit here all night. I can’t climb up in the dark and I left my flashlight back in my pack. And I completely forgot about that man I knocked out. I wonder what mischief he’s gotten himself into.

When I take Mollish’s backpack and bedroll, she slides the rest of the way down the scree slope. As do I. Her backpack was what was holding her up. I leave her there next to the man. I walk beyond the scree and climb back to my backpack. I sling both packs … one on each sore shoulder … and go back to check on the man. I may be sorry, but if he’s stuck here he won’t know what to do. He’ll need me.

H
E’S SITTING WITH HIS BACK AGAINST THE HIGH
side of the trail shivering. He’s dressed unsuitably for the side of a mountain in high altitudes and in this season. I unroll Mollish’s bedroll and lay it over his shoulders.

I remember that odd jerk of the head, as if to throw back long hair. It means thanks. Mollish did that, too. All the old ones did.

He says something. Though that was my first language, I don’t understand. I shake my head, no, but all my gestures are from here, he won’t know what that means.

I sit beside him and get out some of our dried food and a canteen of Mollish’s tea. He tastes the meat and gags as I would do after half a bite of caterpillar. But he drinks the tea as if he doesn’t dare but is too thirsty not to. I don’t blame him his fear.

Odd though, that they never bothered to learn one of these languages just in case of getting stuck here. Even when our parents first came they never thought it was important to know more than a few words of English or Spanish. Of course these men have no role but to snatch people back.

I’d climb down and get the tubes I threw over and give them back to him if thought it would help him go home, but I’m afraid he’ll snatch me back with him or burn me if I won’t come. They all seem to think we’d be better off home whether we want to go or not. I suppose because it’s so much more civilized there, but I would have been happy up in the Secret City where it’s even less civilized … as long as I didn’t have to live underground. I was all set to stay up there. Maybe I would have except for Youpas.

But strange how it was so empty—that I only saw those three people in all my wandering around. I wonder if there are any more of us up there, or if they dwindled away and died or maybe got bored like Allush was and left for the Down or got lost trying to find it. No wonder Youpas was upset that Allush was so taken with me, she’s his only hope for a mate, too. For sure, when he finds out we’re not there, he’ll follow us down, but he doesn’t know Allush has gone back to the homeworld. He’ll blame me for that.