Truckers (5 page)

“So,” he said, “you're from Outside, are you? Do you really expect me to believe you?”

“Father, I—” Angalo began.

“Be quiet! You know the words of Arnold Bros (est. 1905)! Everything Under One Roof.
Everything!
Therefore, there can be no Outside. Therefore, you people are not from it. Therefore, you're from some other part of the Store. Corsetry. Or Young Fashions, maybe. We've never really explored there.”

“No, we're—” Masklin began.

The Duke held up his hands.

“Listen to me,” he said, glaring at Masklin. “I don't blame
you
. My son is an impressionable young lad. I have no doubt he talked you into it. He's altogether too fond of going to look at trucks, and he listens to silly stories and his brain gets overheated. Now I am not an unreasonable nome,” he added, daring them to disagree, “and there is always room for a strong lad like yourself in the Haberdasheri guards. So let us forget this nonsense, shall we?”

“But we really do come from outside,” Masklin persisted.

“There is no Outside
!” said the Duke. “Except of course when a good nome dies, if he has led a proper life.
Then
there is an Outside, where he will live in splendor forever. Come now.” He patted Masklin on the shoulder. “Give up this foolish chatter, and help us in our valiant task.”

“Yes, but what
for
?” said Masklin.

“You wouldn't want the Ironmongri to take our department, would you?” said the Duke. Masklin glanced at Angalo, who shook his head urgently.

“I suppose not,” he said, “but you're all nomes, aren't you? And there's masses for everyone. Spending all your time squabbling seems a bit silly.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Angalo put his head in his hands.

The Duke went red.

“Silly, did you say?”

Masklin leaned backward to get out of his way, but he'd been brought up to be honest. He felt he wasn't bright enough to get away with lies.

“Well—” he began.

“Have you never heard of honor?” said the Duke.

Masklin thought for a while and then shook his head.

“The Ironmongri want to take over the whole Store,” said Angalo hurriedly. “That would be a terrible thing. And the Millineri are nearly as bad.”

“Why?” said Masklin.

“Why?” said the Duke. “Because they have always been our enemies. And now you may go,” he added.

“Where?” said Masklin.

“To the Ironmongri, or the Millineri. Or the Stationeri—they're just the people for you. Or go back Outside, for all I care,” said the Duke sarcastically.

“We want the Thing back,” said Masklin stolidly. The Duke picked it up and threw it at him.

“Sorry,” said Angalo when they had got away. “I should have told you Father has rather a temper.”

“What did you go and upset him for?” asked Grimma irritably. “If we've got to join up with someone, why not with him? What happens to us now?”

“He was very rude,” said Granny Morkie stoutly.

“He'd never heard of the Thing,” said Torrit. “Terrible, that is. Or Outside. Well, I was borned and bred outside. Ain't no dead people there. Not living in any splendor, anyway.”

They started to squabble, which was fairly usual.

Masklin looked at them. Then he looked at his feet. They were walking on a sort of short dry grass that Angalo had said was called
carpet
. Something else stolen from the Store above.

He wanted to say: This is ridiculous. Why is it that as soon as a nome has all he needs to eat and drink, he starts to bicker with other nomes? There must be more to being a nome than this.

And he wanted to say: If humans are so stupid, how is it that they built this Store and all these trucks? If we're that clever, then
they
should be stealing from
us
, not the other way around. They might be big and slow, but they're quite bright, really.

And he wanted to add: I wouldn't be surprised if they're at least as intelligent as rats, say.

But he didn't say any of this, because while he was thinking, his eyes fell on the Thing, clasped in Torrit's arms.

He was aware that there was a thought he ought to be having. He made a space in his head politely and waited patiently to see what it was and then, just as it was about to arrive, Grimma said to Angalo: “What happens to nomes who aren't in a department?”

“They lead very sad lives,” said Angalo. “They just have to get along as best they can.”

He looked as if he were about to cry. “
I
believe you,” he said. “My father says it's wrong to watch the trucks. They can lead you into wrong thoughts, he says. Well, I've watched them for months. Sometimes they come in wet. It's not all a dream Outside—things happen. Look, why don't you sort of hang around, and I'm sure he'll change his mind.”

The Store was big. Masklin had thought the truck was big. The Store was bigger. It went on forever, a maze of floor and walls and long, tiring steps. Nomes hurried or sauntered past them on errands of their own, and there seemed to be no end of them. In fact the word “big” was too small. The Store needed a whole new word.

In a strange way it was even bigger than outside. Outside was so huge, you didn't really see it. It had no edges and no top, so you didn't think of it as having a size at all. It was just
there
. Whereas the Store did have edges and a top, and they were so far away they were, well,
big
.

As they followed Angalo, Masklin made up his mind and decided to tell Grimma first.

“I'm going back,” he said.

She stared at him. “But we've only just arrived! Why on earth—?”

“I don't know. It's all wrong here. It just feels wrong. I keep thinking that if I stay here any longer,
I'll
stop believing there's anything outside, and I was
born
there. When I've got you all settled down, I'm going out again. You can come if you like,” he added, “but you don't have to.”

“But it's warm and there's all this food!”

“I said I couldn't explain. I just feel we're being, well, watched.”

Instinctively she stared upward at the ceiling a few inches above them. Back home anything watching them usually meant something was thinking about lunch. Then she remembered herself and gave a nervous laugh.

“Don't be silly,” she said.

“I just don't feel safe,” he said wretchedly.

“You mean you don't feel wanted,” said Grimma quietly.

“What?”

“Well, isn't that true? You spend all your time scrimping and scraping for everyone, and then you don't need to anymore. It's a funny feeling, isn't it.”

She swept away.

Masklin stood and fiddled with the binding on his spear. Odd, he thought. I never thought anyone else would think like that. He had a few dim recollections of Grimma in the hole, always doing laundry or organizing the old women or trying to cook whatever it was he managed to drag home. Odd. Fancy missing something like that.

He became aware that the rest of them had stopped. The underfloor stretched away ahead of them, lit dimly by small lights fixed to the wood here and there. Ironmongri charged highly for the lights, Angalo said, and wouldn't let anyone else into the secret of controlling the electricity. It was one of the things that made the Ironmongri so powerful.

“This is the edge of Haberdasheri territory at the moment,” he said. “Over there is Millineri country. We're a bit cool with them at the moment. Er. You're bound to find some department to take you in. . . .” He looked at Grimma.

“Er,” he said.

“We're going to stay together,” said Granny Morkie. She looked hard at Masklin, and then turned back imperiously and waved her hand at Angalo.

“Go away, young man,” she said. “Masklin, stand up straight. Now . . . forward.”

“Who're you, saying forward?” said Torrit. “I'm the leader, I am. It's my job, givin' orders.”

“All right,” said Granny Morkie. “Give 'em, then.”

Torrit's mouth worked soundlessly. “Right,” he managed. “Forward.”

Masklin's jaw dropped.

“Where to?” he asked, as the old woman shooed them along the dim space.

“We will find somewhere. I lived through the Great Winter of 1999, I did,” said Granny Morkie haughtily. “The cheek of that silly old Duke man! I nearly spoke up. He wouldn't of lasted long in the Great Winter, I can tell you.”

“No 'arm can befall us if we obey the Thing,” said Torrit, patting it carefully.

Masklin stopped. He had, he decided, had enough.

“What does the Thing say, then?” he said sharply. “Exactly? What does it actually tell us to do now? Come on, tell me what it says we should do now!”

Torrit looked a bit desperate.

“Er,” he began, “it, er, is clear that if we pulls together and maintains a proper—”

“You're just making it up as you go along!”

“How dare you speak to him like that—” Grimma began. Masklin flung down his spear.

“Well, I'm fed up with it!” he muttered. “The Thing says this, the Thing says that, the Thing says every blessed thing except anything that might be useful!”

“The Thing has been handed down from nome to nome for hundreds of years,” said Grimma. “It's very important.”

“Why?”

Grimma looked at Torrit. He licked his lips.

“It shows us—” he began, white-faced.

“Move me closer to the electricity.”

“The Thing seems to be more important than . . . what are you all looking like that for?” said Masklin.

“Closer to the electricity.”

Torrit, his hands shaking, looked down at the Thing.

Where there had been smooth black surfaces there were now little dancing lights. Hundreds of them. In fact, Masklin thought, feeling slightly proud of knowing what the word meant, there were probably thousands of them.

“Who said that?” said Masklin.

The Thing dropped out of Torrit's grasp and landed on the floor, where its lights glittered like a thousand highways at night. The nomes watched it in horror.

“The Thing
does
tell you things . . .” said Masklin. “Gosh!”

Torrit waved his hands frantically. “Not like that! Not like that! It ain't supposed to talk out loud! It's ain't done that before!”

“Closer to the electricity
!”

“It wants the electricity,” said Masklin.

“Well,
I'm
not going to touch it!”

Masklin shrugged and then, using his spear gingerly, pushed the Thing across the floor until it was under the wires.

“How does it speak? It hasn't got a mouth,” said Grimma.

The Thing whirred. Colored shapes flickered across its surfaces faster than Masklin's eyes could follow. Most of them were red.

Torrit sank to his knees. “It is angry,” he moaned. “We shouldn't have eaten rat, we shouldn't have come here, we shouldn't—”

Masklin also knelt down. He touched the bright areas, gingerly at first, but they weren't hot.

He felt that strange feeling again, of his mind wanting to think certain thoughts without having the right words.

“When the Thing has told you things before,” he said slowly, “you know, how we should live proper lives—”

Torrit gave him an agonized expression.

“It never has,” he said.

“But you said—”

“It
used
to, it
used
to,” moaned Torrit. “When old Voozel passed it on to me he said it
used
to, but he said that hundreds and hundreds of years ago it just stopped.”

“What?” said Granny Morkie. “All these years, my good man, you've been telling us that the Thing says this and the Thing says that and the Thing says goodness knows what.”

Now Torrit looked like a very frightened, trapped animal.

“Well?” said the old woman, menacingly.

“Ahem,” said Torrit. “Er. What old Voozel said was, think about what the Thing
ought
to say, and then say it. Keep people on the right path, sort of thing. Help them get to the Heavens. Very important, getting to the Heavens. The Thing can help you get there, he said. Most important thing about it.”

“What?”
shouted Granny.

“That's what he told me to do. It worked, didn't it?”

Masklin ignored them. The colored lines moved over the Thing in hypnotic patterns. He felt that he ought to know what they meant. He was certain they meant
something
.