Truckers (11 page)

Torrit was choking on his bread while the others slapped him hurriedly on the back. Masklin took the young Stationeri by the arm and quickly walked him away.

“Was it something I said?” said Gurder.

“In a way,” said Masklin. “And now I think the Abbot wants to see us, doesn't he?”

The old man was sitting very still, with the Thing on his lap, staring at nothing.

He paid them no attention when they came in. Once or twice his fingers drummed on the Thing's black surface.

“Sir?” said Gurder after a while.

“Hmm?”

“You wanted to see us, sir?”

“Ah,” said the Abbot vaguely. “Young Gurder, isn't it?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Oh. Good.”

There was silence. Gurder coughed politely.

“You wanted to see us, sir?” he repeated.

“Ah.” The Abbot nodded gently. “Oh. Yes. You, there. The young man with the spear.”

“Me?” said Masklin.

“Yes. Have you spoken to this, this thing?”

“The Thing? Well, in a way. It talks funny, though. It's hard to understand.”

“It has talked to me. It has told me it was made by nomes, a long time ago. It eats electric. It says it can hear electric things. It has said”—he glared at the thing in his lap—“it has said that it has heard Arnold Bros (est. 1905) plans to demolish the Store. It is a mad thing, it talks about stars, it says we came from a star, flying. But . . . there is talk of strange events. I wonder to myself, is this a messenger from the Management, sent to warn us? Or is it a trap set by Prices Slashed? So!” He thumped the Thing with a wrinkled hand. “We must
ask
Arnold Bros (est 1905). We will learn his truth.”

“But, sir!” Gurder burst out. “You're far too—I mean, it wouldn't be right for you to go all the way to the Top again—it's a terrible dangerous journey!”

“Quite so, boy. So you will go instead. You can read Human, and your boisterous friend with the spear can go with you.”

Gurder sagged to his knees. “Sir? All the way to the Top? But I am not worthy . . .” His voice faded away.

The Abbot nodded. “None of us are,” he said. “We are all Shop soiled. Everything Must Go. Now be off, and may Bargains Galore go with you.”

“Who's Bargains Galore?” said Masklin, as they went out.

“She's a servant of the Store,” said Gurder, who was still trembling. “She's the enemy of the dreadful Prices Slashed, who wanders the corridors at night with his terrible shining light, to catch evil nomes!”

“It's a good thing you don't believe in him, then,” said Masklin.

“Of course I don't,” agreed Gurder.

“Your teeth are chattering, though.”

“That's because my
teeth
believe in him. And so do my knees. And my stomach. It's only my head that doesn't, and it's being carried around by a load of superstitious cowards. Excuse me—I'll go and collect my things. It's very important that we set out at once.”

“Why?” said Masklin.

“Because if we wait any longer, I'll be too scared to go.”

The Abbot sat back in his chair.

“Tell me again,” he said, “about how we came here. You mentioned a color. Mauve, wasn't it?”

“Marooned,”
said the Thing.

“Ah, yes. From something that flew.”

“A galactic survey ship,”
said the Thing.

“But it got broken, you said.”

“There was a fault in one of the everywhere engines. It meant we could not return to the main ship. Can it be that this is forgotten? In the early days, we managed to communicate with humans, but the different metabolic rates and time sense eventually made this impossible. It was hoped originally that humans could be taught enough science to build us a new ship, but they were too slow. In the end, we had to teach them the very basic skills, such as metallurgy, in the hope that they might eventually stop fighting one another long enough to take an interest in space travel.”

“Metal Urgy.” The Abbot turned the word over and over. Metal urgy. The urge to use metals. That was humans, all right. He nodded. “What was that other thing you said we taught them? Began with a G.”

The Thing appeared to hesitate, but it was learning how to talk to nomes now.
“Agriculture?”
it said.

“That's right. A Griculture. Important, is it?”

“It is the basis of civilization.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means ‘yes.'”

The Abbot sat back while the Thing went on talking. Strange words washed over him, like
planets
and
electronics
. He didn't know what they meant, but they sounded
right
. Nomes had taught humans. Nomes came from a long way away. From a distant star, apparently.

The Abbot didn't find this astonishing. He didn't get about much these days, but he had seen the stars in his youth. Every year, around the season of Christmas Fayre, stars would appear in most of the departments. Big ones, with lots of pointy bits and glitter on them, and lots of lights. He'd always been very impressed by them. It was quite fitting that they should have belonged to nomes, once. Of course, they weren't out all the time, so presumably there was a big storeroom somewhere where the stars were kept.

The Thing seemed to agree with this. The big room was called the galaxy. It was somewhere above Consumer Accounts.

And then there were these “light years.” The Abbot had seen nearly fifteen years go past, and they had seemed quite heavy at the time—full of problems, swollen with responsibilities. Lighter ones would have been better.

And so he smiled, and nodded, and listened, and fell asleep as the Thing talked and talked and talked. . . .

XXI. But Arnold Bros (est. 1905) said, This is the Sign I give you:

XXII. If You Do Not See What You Require, Please Ask
.

From
The Book of Nome, Regulations v. XXI–XXII

“S
HE CAN'T COME,”
said Gurder.

“Why not?” said Masklin.

“Well, it's dangerous.”

“So?” Masklin looked at Grimma, who was wearing a defiant expression.

“You shouldn't take girls anywhere dangerous,” said Gurder virtuously.

Once again Masklin got the feeling he'd come to recognize often since he'd arrived in the Store. They were talking, their mouths were opening and shutting, every word by itself was perfectly understandable, but when they were all put together, they made no sense at all. The best thing to do was ignore them. Back home, if women weren't to go anywhere dangerous, they wouldn't go anywhere.

“I'm coming,” said Grimma. “What danger is there, anyway? Only this Price Slasher, and—”

“And Arnold Bros (est. 1905) himself,” said Gurder nervously.

“Well, I'm going to come anyway. People don't need me, and there's nothing to do,” said Grimma. “What can happen, anyway? It's not as if something terrible could happen,” she added sarcastically, “like me reading something and my brain overheating, for example.”

“Now, I'm sure I didn't say—” said Gurder weakly.

“I bet the Stationeri don't do their own washing,” said Grimma. “Or darn their own socks. I bet—”

“All right, all right,” said Gurder, backing away. “But you mustn't lag behind, and you mustn't get in the way. We'll make the decisions, all right?”

He gave Masklin a desperate look.

“You tell her she mustn't get in the way,” he said.

“Me?” said Masklin. “I've never told her anything.”

The journey was less impressive than he'd expected. The old Abbot had told of staircases that moved, fire in buckets, long empty corridors with nowhere to hide.

But since then, of course, Dorcas had put the lifts in. They only went as far as Kiddies Klothes and Toys, but the Klothians were a friendly people who had adapted well to life on a high floor and always welcomed the rare travelers who came with tales of the world below.

“They don't even come down to use the Food Hall,” said Gurder. “They get everything they want from the Staff restroom. They live on tea and biscuits, mainly. And yogurt.”

“How strange,” said Grimma.

“They're very gentle,” said Gurder. “Very thoughtful. Very quiet. A little bit
mystical
, though. It must be all that yogurt and tea.”

“I don't understand about the fire in buckets, though,” said Masklin.

“Er,” said Gurder, “we think that the old Abbot might, er, we think his memory . . . after all, he
is
extremely old . . .”

“You don't have to explain,” said Grimma. “Old Torrit can be a bit like that.”

“It's just that his mind is not as sharp as it was,” said Gurder.

Masklin said nothing. It just seemed to him that if the Abbot's mind was a bit blunt now, it must once have been sharp enough to cut the breeze.

The Klothians gave them a guide to take them through the outlying regions of the underfloor. There were few nomes this high up. Most of them preferred the busy floors below.

It was almost like being outside. Faint breezes blew the dust into gray drifts; there was no light except what filtered through from odd cracks. In the darkest places the guide had to light matches. He was a very small nome who smiled a lot in a shy way and said nothing at all when Grimma tried to talk to him.

“Where are we going?” said Masklin, looking back at their deep footprints.

“To the moving stairs,” said Gurder.

“Move? How do they move? Bits of the Store move
around
?”

Gurder chuckled patronizingly.

“Of course, all this is new to you. You mustn't worry if you don't understand everything,” he said.

“Do they move or don't they?” said Grimma.

“You'll see. It's the only one we use, you know. It's a bit dangerous. You have to be topsides, you see. It's not like the lifts.”

The little Klothian pointed forward, bowed, and hurried away.

Gurder led them up through a narrow crack in the ancient floorboards, into the bright emptiness of a passageway, and there—

—the moving stair.

Masklin watched it hypnotically. Stairs rose out of the floor, squeaking eerily as they did so, and whirred up into the distant heights.

“Wow,” he said. It wasn't much, but it was all that he could think of.

“The Klothians won't go near it,” said Gurder. “They think it is haunted by spirits.”

“I don't blame them,” said Grimma, shivering.

“Oh, it's just superstition,” said Gurder. His face was white and there was a tremble in his voice. “There's nothing to be frightened of,” he squeaked.

Masklin peered at him.

“Have you ever been here before?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. Millions of times. Often,” said Gurder, picking up a fold of his robe and twisting it between his fingers.

“So what do we do now?”

Gurder tried to speak slowly, but his voice began to go faster and faster of its own accord: “You know, the Klothians say that Arnold Bros (est. 1905) waits at the Top, you know, and when nomes die—”

Grimma looked reflectively at the rising stairs and shivered again. Then she ran forward.

“What're you doing?” said Masklin.

“Seeing if they're right!” she snapped. “Otherwise we'll be here all day!”

Masklin ran after her. Gurder gulped, looked behind him, and scurried after both of them.

Masklin saw her run toward the rising bulk of a stair, and then the floor below her came up and she was suddenly rising, wobbling as she fought for balance. The floor below him pushed against his feet and he rose after her, one step below.