Riders of the Purple Wage Page 10

  So, the man was a Muslim. That thought overrode for a moment the prediction of the cataclysm. Francesco started to ask a question, but the man continued.

  “They did not know this would happen until immediately after they had transported you. Their…” He paused, then said, “You would not understand the word. Their…thinking machine…gave a false result because of a slight mathematical error put into the machine by the operator. Slight but reverberating greatly…swelling. To prevent an explosion of any degree, they must send you back. Not only you but all that came with you. That is impossible, but the effect may be considerably reduced if they send back not only you but a mass approximating that which was brought along with you. You will have to estimate that mass for them, describe what did come in with you.”

  The man stepped into the street and held a hand up. A black vehicle skidded to a stop a few inches before the man. He went to the front left-side window and spoke to the man seated there. A very angry-1ooking man and woman got out of the back seat a minute later. The green-turbaned man gestured to Francesco to come quickly. Francesco got into the back seat next to him. The vehicle’s wheels screamed as it leaped like a rabbit that had just seen a fox. The man spoke a few short words of what had to be English into the small case strapped to his wrist. Numbers flashed on its top.

  “There will be no more time travel experiments,” the man said. “The data…the information…has been sent secretly to the government of this country and to those of all nations. The populaces will not be informed until after the explosion, if then. Notifying the people of this city would only cause a panic, and the city could not possibly be evacuated. Even if it could be, the people could not get far enough away unless they went in an airplane…a flying machine. And only a few could get away in time. The people in the project are staying. They will work until the explosion comes, and they hope that its effects will be considerably reduced, as I said, by sending you back.”

  Francesco, clinging to a strap above the door, said, “Are you telling me that I have somehow been plucked by satanic powers from my time to a future time?”

  “Yes, though the powers are not satanic. Their effect may be, though.”

  The man pointed out the window by Francesco at a building Francesco could see dimly. But he could make out a tall structure with many spires on the upper half of which was a gigantic panel. Its upper third flashed orange letters, one forming FRANCIS. The lower two-thirds displayed a bright and strange figure, a six-winged and crucified seraph surrounded by roiling light-purple clouds, which in turn were surrounded by swirling, fast-changing, and many-colored geometric figures. Then the vehicle was past it.

  “A Catholic church, SAINT FRANCIS OF THE POOR. Attended mainly by the rich.” The man chuckled, and he said, “Dedicated to you, Francesco Bernardone of Assisi.”

  Francesco, who had always felt at ease when events were going too swiftly for others to comprehend, was now numb.

  “I was canonized?”

  “Yes, but your order started to depart from your ideals, to decay, as it were, before your corpse was cold. Or so it was said.”

  Francesco bit his lower lip until the blood came, and he dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands until they felt like iron nails being driven in.

  “I will not change.”

  “Because you know this? No, you will not.”

  “When did I die?”

  “It would be wise for you not to know.”

  “But I am going back. Otherwise…”

  “Obviously. But what happens here after you do…that is another matter. The force of the explosion caused by the interaction of matter and temporal energy will be proportional to the amount left here of the matter you brought with you. If, for example, you had held your breath during the transit, then expelled after arriving here, the amount of expelled air—if confined to a small area, and it won’t be—would be enough to blow up that church and several blocks around it. What the project people need to know is just how much matter you did bring with you.”

  Francesco told him what had come in with him and what had happened to it.

  “Your sandals, the urine you’ve pissed out, the dirt surrounding you, the plants and insects in the dirt, the body of the ass left after the butchering, the pieces of meat cooking on the barrels, the smoke from them, and the meat in the bodies of the men who ate it should go back with you. But, of course, they can’t. You’ll have to estimate an equivalent mass from your memory. The mass can’t be exact, but if it’s anything near that which was brought in, it will help cancel some of the effects of the mass-temporal energy explosion.”

  The man thought for a moment. He said, “After I deliver you, I will leave this area. Even I…no time for that now. The northeastern coast will be destroyed and much of the interior country. Many millions will die. But the world will go on.”

  Francesco said. “You seem to know so much. Why didn’t you stop them? At least, warn them.”

  “I knew no more than they did what would happen. There is only One who is all-wise. I had nothing to do with the project, though I was well informed about it. I was not supposed to be, which is why they were so outraged and furious when I called in and told them I would search for you. They will try to arrest me when I bring you in, though that is stupid because I would be blown to bits along with them. They will not be able to hold me, and you will go back. The world knows when you died. So it is written that you return to your time.”

  “Not without the ass…an ass,” Francesco said.

  “What?”

  Francesco told him of his promise to Giovanni, the charcoal-burner. “And there must be a load of charcoal, too.”

  The man spoke again to the case on his wrist, listened, spoke again, listened, then said. “They find it hard to believe that you would rather let the east coast blow up than go back without the donkey. I told them that I doubted that, but it would go easier and faster if they did what you want.”

  “Is it difficult to obtain an ass and charcoal?”

  “No. The ass will come from a nearby zoo…a place where animals are kept. It should arrive soon even if it has to be airlift…brought in a flying machine.” He smiled and said, “I told them they should get the biggest ass possible. I suggested that they might substitute the head of the project if for some reason they couldn’t get one at the zoo. He fits all your qualifications, aside from being bipedal and lacking long ears.”

  “Thank you. However, I do not like to go back without even knowing your name.”

  “Here I am called Kidder.”

  “Elsewhere…it’s not Elijah?”

  “I have many names. Some of them are appropriate.” Francesco wondered why he had seen Kidder’s face during the transit. The forces that had shot him from there to here must have been connected with some psychic—or supernatural—phenomena even if the people who were running the project did not know that. His question, however, was forgotten when the vehicle was caught in slow-moving traffic that did not speed up no matter how long and hard the driver blew the horn. The man talked into his wrist-case again, and, within two minutes, a flying machine appeared at a low altitude above them. It descended, pods on its sides burning at their lower end and emitting a frightening and deafening noise. It landed on a sidewalk, and Francesco and Kidder got into it and were whisked up and away. By then, Francesco was so frozen that he was not scared. The machine landed on top of a high building. He and Kidder got out and were ushered swiftly to an elevator that plunged downwards and stopped suddenly, and then they were hustled along by many white-coated men and women and some uniforms to a great room fílled with many machines with flashing lights and fleeting icons and numbers.

  Francesco was placed in the center of the room inside a circle marked on the floor. An ass with a burden of charcoal, a large handsome beast, so much better than the poor one that had come with him that he would have to tell Giovanni not to ask questions about it, just be grateful and thank God for it, was led in.
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br />   Francesco, his throat dry, said huskily, “Signore Kidder, satisfy my curiosity. What is today’s date?”

  “Seven hundred and eighty years after your birth,” Kidder said. And he was gone, somehow removing himself from the crowd around him and the two uniforms who stood behind him. Francesco cried out to him that he remembered now where he had seen him before the transit. He had been in the camp of Sultan Malik, where Francesco had glimpsed him a few times but had not thought that he was more than one of the Sultan’s court. Kidder probably had not heard him. Even if he had been in the crowd, he would not have caught Francesco’s words. The two uniforms were shouting too loudly as they tried to force their way through the crowd in search of Kidder.

  Then bags of dirt were stacked alongside him and the ass in the center of the circle, and the workers withdrew. The crowd moved back to the walls of the room. They all looked haggard and frightened and white-faced. Francesco felt sorry for them because they knew that they were doomed no matter what happened to him. He blessed them and prayed for them and blessed them again.

  The lights flickered; a terrible whining pierced his ears and skull. A great ball of swirling white light descended from a conelike device in the ceiling. It surrounded him, and, though he cried out, he could not hear his own voice. The tugging sensation that had never left him became stronger. He was once more in that limbo in which he saw dimly, again, the men and women in the building and the turbaned head of Kidder.

  Then he was in rain and thunder, and the ass was braying loudly beside him. Under his feet was a very thin section of the floor inside the circle.

  He no longer felt the tugging, and the world no longer seemed upside down.

  It was not long after this that Francesco saw on Mount Alverno the vision of the six-winged and crucified seraph in the skies and that Francesco was blessed—or cursed—with the marks of the nails in his hands (which he tried to conceal as much as possible). And then, seemingly as swift as that transit of which he never spoke, the time came when he was dying. The brothers and sisters were gathered around him, speaking softly, church bells were ringing, and, outside the hut, the rich and the powerful and the poor were standing, praying for him. His blinded eyes were open as if he could see what the others could not, which indeed he could. He was wondering if the seraph he had seen on the panel on the church front during that wild ride had possibly influenced him, caused him to envision that aweful, painful, yet ecstatic flying figure above the mountain.

  Which had come first? His seeing the seraph on that panel in the far future or the splendor in the sky? He would never know. The mysteries of time were beyond him—at this moment.

  He wondered about Kidder. Could he be that mysterious Green Man Francesco had heard about from some wise men of the East? He was supposed to have been the secret counsellor of Moses and of many others, and he showed up now and then, here and there, when the need for him was great. But that implied…

  That thought faded as another Francesco, an almost transparent Francesco, rose like smoke from his body and stood there looking down at him. Its lips moved, but he could not hear its voice. It kneeled down by him and bent over. Now, he could read the lips.

  “Goodbye, Brother Ass,” he, the other, said. His body, that creature that he had treated so hard, driven so unmercifully, and to which he had apologized more than once for the burdens he had heaped on it, that was leaving him. No, he was leaving it. Now, he was looking down upon his own dead face. He leaned over and kissed its lips and stood up, happy as never before, and he had always been filled with joy even when hungry and wet and cold and longing vainly for others to have his happiness.

  He was ready for whatever might come but hoped that he would have work to do.

  Not like that on Earth.

  The

  Oögenesis

  of Bird City

  The President of the U.S.A. sat at the desk of the mayor of Upper Metropolitan Los Angeles, Level 1. There was no question of where the mayor was to sit. Before the office of mayor could be filled, the electorate had to move into the city.

  The huge room was filled with U.S. cabinet heads and bureau chiefs, senators, state governors, industrial and educational magnates, union presidents, and several state GIP presidents. Most of them were watching the TV screens covering one part of the curving wall.

  Nobody looked through the big window behind the President, even though this gave a view of half of the city. Outside the municipal building, the sky was blue with a few fleecy clouds. The midsummer sun was just past the zenith, yet the breeze was cool; it was 73°F everywhere in the city. Of the 200,000 visitors, at least one-third were collected around tour-guides. Most of the hand-carried football-sized TV cameras of the reporters were focused at that moment on one man.

  Government spieler: “Ladies ’n gentlemen, you’ve been personally conducted through most of this city and you now know almost as much as if you’d stayed home and watched it on TV. You’ve seen everything but the interior of the houses, the inside of your future homes. You’ve been amazed at what Uncle Sam, and the state of California, built here, a Utopia, an Emerald City of Oz, with you as the Wizard…”

  Heckler (a large black woman with an M.A. in Elementary School Electronic Transference): “The houses look more like the eggs that Dorothy used to frighten the Nome King with!”

  Spieler (managing to glare and smile at the same time); “Lady, you’ve been shooting your mouth off so much, you must be an agent for the Anti-Bodies! You didn’t take the pauper’s oath; you took the peeper’s oath!”

  Heckler (bridling): “I’ll sue you for defamation of character and public ridicule!”

  Spieler (running his gaze up and down her whale-like figure): “Sue, sue, sooie! No wonder you’re so sensitive about eggs, lady.

  There’s something ovoid about you!”

  The crowd laughed. The President snorted disgustedly and spoke into a disc strapped to his wrist. A man in the crowd, the message relayed through his ear plug, spoke into his wrist transmitter, but the spieler gestured as if to say, “This is my show! Jump in the lake if you don’t like it!”

  Spieler: “You’ve seen the artificial lake in the center of the city with the municipal and other buildings around it. The Folk Art Center, the Folk Recreation Center, the hospital, university, research center, and the PANDORA, the people’s all-necessities depot of regulated abundance. You’ve been delighted and amazed with the fairyland of goodies that Uncle Sam, and the State of California, offers you free. Necessities and luxuries, too, since Luxury Is A Necessity, to quote the FBC. You want anything—anything!—you go to the PANDORA, press some buttons, and presto! you’re rich beyond your dreams!”

  Heckler: “When the lid to Pandora’s box was opened, all the evils in the world flew out, and…”

  Spieler: “No interruptions, lady! We’re on a strict time schedule…”

  Heckler: “Why? We’re not going anyplace!”

  Spieler: “I’ll tell you where you can go, lady.”

  Heckler: “But…”

  Spieler: “But me no buts, lady! You know, you ought to go on a diet!”

  Heckler: (struggling to control her temper): “Don’t get personal, big mouth! I’m big, all right, and I got a wallop, too, remember that. Now, Pandora’s box…”

  The spieler made a vulgar remark, at which the crowd laughed. The heckler shouted but could not be heard above the noise.

  The President shifted uneasily. Kingbrook, the 82-year-old senator from New York, harumphed and said. “The things they permit nowadays in public media. Really, it’s disgusting…”

  Some of the screens on the wall of the mayor’s office showed various parts of the interior of the city. One screen displayed a view from a helicopter flying on the oceanside exterior of Upper Metropolitan LA. It was far enough away to get the entire structure in its camera, including the hundred self-adjusting cylinders that supported the Brobdingnagian plastic cube and the telescoping elevator shafts dangling from the central
underbase. Beneath the shadow of box and legs was the central section of the old city and the jagged sprawl of the rest of Los Angeles and surrounding cities.

  The President stabbed towards the screen with a cigarette and said. “Screen 24, gentlemen. The dark past below. The misery of a disrupted ant colony. Above it, the bright complex of the future. The chance for everyone to realize the full potentiality as a human being.”

  Spieler: “Before I conduct you into this house, which is internally just like every other private residence…”

  Heckler: “Infernally, you mean. They all look just alike on the outside, too.”

  Spieler: “Lady, you’re arousing my righteous wrath. Now, folks, you noticed that all the buildings, municipal and private, are constructed like eggs. This futuristic design was adopted because the egg shape, according to the latest theory, is that of the universe. No corners, all curving, infinity within a confined space, if you follow me.”

  Heckler: “I don’t!”

  Spieler: “Take off a little weight, lady, and you’ll be in shape to keep up with the rest of us. The ovoid form gives you a feeling of unbounded space yet of security-closeness. When you get inside…”

  Every house was a great smooth white plastic egg lifted 18.28 meters above the floor of the city by a thick truncated-cone support. (Offscreen commentators explained that 18.18 meters was 20 feet, for the benefit of older viewers who could not adjust to the new system of measurement.) On two sides of the cone were stairs ending at a horizontal door on the lower side of the ovoid. These opened automatically to permit entrance. Also, a door opened in the cone base, and an elevator inside lifted the sick or crippled or, as the spieler put it, “the just plain lazy, everybody’s got a guaranteed right to be lazy.” The hollow base also housed several electrical carts for transportation around the city.