فصل 8

Eight

The Pyramid of Beauty

When I had just about abandoned hope of getting any useful information out of the Master, he solved the problem for me himself. His work, whatever it was, took place in a squat pyramid about half a mile from the one in which he lived. I had to drive him there in the carriage, and stay in the communal place with the other slaves until he was ready to return. This would be after two periods (just over five human hours), and I used the time, as the other slaves did, to rest, and if possible sleep. One learned early in one’s life in the City the overwhelming importance of conserving energy to the maximum degree possible. There were couches provided in this communal place. They were hard, and there were not enough to go around, but it was a luxury which was far from being universal, and I was grateful for it.

On this occasion I had been lucky enough to get a couch, and was lying on it drifting into sleep, when my arm was shaken. I asked hazily what was the matter, and was told that my number was flashing on the call-box, indicating that I was wanted. My first thought was that it was a trick to get me off the couch, which the other slave probably wanted for himself, and I said as much. But he insisted that it was true, and at last I roused myself to look, and saw that it was.

As I got my mask and prepared to put it on, I said, “I don’t see how the Master can want me. It’s only been three ninths. There must be a mistake.” The other had taken my place on the couch and was lying there prone. He said, “It may be the Sickness.”

“What sickness?”

“It is something that happens with the Masters from time to time. They stay at home for two or three days, or even longer. It is more common with those like your Master who have brown in their skins.” I remembered that I had thought, that morning, that his skin was darker than usual. When I went to him in the outer room and made the customary deep bow of respect, I noticed that it was very much darker, the brown more pronounced and that his tentacles, even though at rest, were quivering slightly. He told me to drive him home, and I obeyed.

I thought, remembering human sickness, that he might want to go to bed, and realized that I had not yet changed his moss. He did not do that, though, but instead went into the pool in the window-room and squatted there, motionless and silent. I asked him if there was anything he needed, and he did not answer. So I went to the bedroom and got on with my work. I had just finished, and was putting the old moss into the cupboard in which it could be destroyed, when the bell rang for me.

He was still in the pool. He said, “Boy, bring me a gas bubble.”

I did as I was told, and watched him place it between mouth and nose and press on it with a tentacle. The reddish-brown mist oozed out, like a liquid almost, and rose up. The Master breathed in deeply. This went on, with him taking breaths of it at intervals, until the bubble was empty. He tossed it away, for me to pick up, and called for another. This was unusual. He used it, and had me bring him a third. He started talking not long afterward.

It did not make much sense at first. I gathered he was talking about the Sickness. He spoke of the Curse of the Skloodzi, which seemed to be the name of his family or his race, or perhaps it was the name the Masters gave themselves. There was a lot about wickedness—I was not sure whether he meant his own or that of the Masters in general—but although he bemoaned it, I could not help feeling that he did so with a certain amount of satisfaction. The Sickness was a punishment for wickedness, and therefore had to be endured with stoicism. He flicked away the third empty gas bubble with his central tentacle, and told me to get a fourth, and to move faster this time.

The gas bubbles were in the room where the food was kept. I went to bring one, but when I returned to the window-room he was out of the pool. He said, his voice more distorted than usual, “I ordered you to move faster, boy.” Two of the tentacles gripped me, and held me in mid-air as easily as I might have held a kitten. He had not touched me since that first meeting in the Choosing Place, and I was more shocked than anything else. But shock was rapidly replaced by pain. The third tentacle whipped through the air and lashed my back. It was like being hit by a heavy length of rope. I jerked against the tentacles that held me, but it did no good. The lash came down again, and again. Now it felt more like a sapling than a rope that was striking me. I thought it would break my ribs, even perhaps my spine. Fritz had said that he cried out because he realized his Master wanted him to cry out. I supposed I ought to do the same, but I would not. I gritted my teeth, crushing a fold of skin between them and sending hot salty blood flowing inside my mouth. The beating went on. I had given up counting the blows; there were too many of them. And then there was a roaring in my ears, and oblivion.

• • •

I recovered to find myself lying on the floor. I moved slightly, and there was pain again: my body seemed to be one long bruise. I forced myself to get up. As far as I could tell, no bones were broken. I looked for the Master, and saw him squatting, silent and motionless, in the pool.

I was humiliated and angry, and aching all over. I limped from the room and took the passage round to my refuge. Once inside, I stripped off my mask, dried the sweat from my neck and shoulders, and hauled myself up the ladder to my bed. I realized as I did so that I had omitted the customary bow of reverence to the Master when I left the window-room. I had certainly not felt reverential toward him, but that was not the point. The essential thing was in every way to imitate the behavior of the truly Capped. It had been a slip, and could be a dangerous one. As I was thinking of this, the ringing of the bell hammered my nerve endings. My Master wanted me again.

Wearily I descended, put on my mask, and left the refuge. My mind was confused, and I did not know what to expect. The thought of another beating was uppermost, and I did not know how I was to endure it: it hurt even to walk. I was entirely unprepared for what did happen when I returned to the window-room. The Master was no longer in the pool but standing near the entrance. A tentacle seized me and lifted me. But instead of the lash for which I was vainly trying to prepare myself, there came, from the second tentacle, a gentle stroking gesture, a snake’s soft writhing along my battered ribs. I was a kitten being cuddled now, after it had been chastised.

The Master said, “You are a strange one, boy.”

I said nothing. I was being held awkwardly, with my head slightly lower than my body. The Master went on, “You did not make loud noises as the others have done. There is a difference in you. I saw it that first day in the Choosing Room.” What he said petrified me. I had not realized, though I suppose I should have done, that the natural reaction of the Capped to being beaten would be to howl like children. Fritz had sensed this and behaved accordingly, but I had stupidly resisted through pride. And then had failed to make the bow of reverence afterward. I was terrified that the Master’s next move would be to probe the Cap with the tip of his tentacle through the softer part of the mask. If he did, he would soon realize the difference between mine and the true Caps, which knit in with the living flesh. And then . . .

But instead he put me down. Belatedly I made the bow of reverence and, because of my soreness and stiffness, nearly overbalanced while doing it. The Master steadied me, and said, “What is friendship, boy?” “Friendship, Master?”

“There is an archive in the City where those things your people call books are kept. I have studied some of them, being interested in your race. Some of the books are lies, but lies which seem like truth. Friendship is one of the things of which they tell. A closeness between two entities . . . that is a strange business to us Masters. Tell me, boy—in your life before you were chosen to serve, did you have such a thing? A friend?” I hesitated, and said, “Yes, Master.”

“Speak of him.”

I talked of my cousin Jack, who had been my closest friend until he was taken to be Capped. I changed the details to the life I was supposed to have led, in the mountainous Tirol, but I described the way we had done things together, and the den which we had made outside the village. The Master listened attentively. He said finally: “There was a link between you and this other human—a link that was voluntary, not forced by circumstances . . . so that you desired to be together, to talk with each other. Is this right?” “Yes, Master.”

“And it happens much with your people?”

“Yes, Master. It is a common thing.”

He fell into a silence. It lasted a long time, and in the end I wondered whether he had forgotten about me, as sometimes happened, and whether I should take my leave, being careful to remember to bow. But as I was contemplating this, the Master spoke again.

“A dog. That is a small animal that lives with men?”

“Some do, Master. Some are wild.”

“It has been stated, in one of the books that I saw, ‘His only friend was his dog.’ Can this be true, or is it one of the lies?”

“It can be true, Master.”

“Yes,” he said, “that is what I have thought.” His tentacles described a small movement in the air which I had come to recognize as expressing satisfaction. Then one of them wrapped itself, but not roughly, around my waist.

“Boy,” said the Master, “you will be my friend.”

I was almost too astonished to think. I had got it wrong, I saw. I was not a kitten, after all, in the Master’s eyes. I was his puppy!

• • •

When I saw Fritz, and was able to tell him of what had happened, I expected him to find it funny, but he did not. He said seriously, “This is a wonderful thing, Will.” “What’s wonderful about it?”

“The Masters seemed all alike at first, but I suppose men would to them. In fact, they differ a great deal. Mine is strange in one way, yours in another. But the strangeness of yours may help us to learn things about them, while with mine”—he forced a grin—“it is merely painful.” “I still dare not ask him things that the Capped would not ask.”

“I am not so sure. You should have howled when he thrashed you, but it was because you didn’t that he became interested in you. He said you were strange before he told you that you were to be his friend. They are not used to seeing free men, remember, and it would never occur to them that a human could be dangerous. I think you can ask him things, as long as the questions are general, and you keep making the bow of reverence at the right time.” “Perhaps you’re right.”

“It would be useful to find the archive where the books are. They had the Capped destroy all the books that held the knowledge of the ancients, but I suppose they would not have destroyed them here.” “I will try to find out.”

“But go carefully,” he warned. He looked at me. “Your task is not an easy one.”

He was thinking, I felt, that he could have carried it out a good deal better than I; and I was inclined to agree with him. Where I had stubbornness and pride, he had a watchful endurance. He was looking ill, and had been badly beaten again that morning. The whip his Master used left marks which faded in about forty-eight hours, and these welts were fresh. He had once or twice been beaten with a tentacle, as I had been, and said that, although one ached for longer afterward, the beating itself was not so bad as with the whisk thing. I hated to think of what that must be like.

Fritz went on to tell me of his own latest discoveries. The most useful of these was that he had found a place where there were walls with pictures of stars at night, and the Masters could make these pictures move. In the same pyramid, there was a globe, almost as high as he was, turning on a spindle, and the globe’s entire surface was a map. He had not wanted to seem too curious, but there was a part he had recognized as depicting the places which we knew: it showed the narrow sea across which Henry and I had come, the White Mountains far to the south, and the great river down which the Erlkönig had sailed. And on the map, at a point which he calculated as being roughly our present location, there was a golden button, which could only be the City.

As far as he could see, there were two other golden buttons on the globe, both well to the south of this one and situated far apart, one on the edge of a great continent to the east, the other on an isthmus between two continents to the west. They must also represent Cities of the Masters, which meant there were three in all, from which the world was ruled. A Master had come into the room at that stage, and Fritz had been forced to move on. But he planned to go back, and get the positions fixed more firmly in his head.

I still had nothing that seemed worthwhile to report. Except that I was to be my Master’s puppy. He had said my task was not easy. In one sense, I saw, he was right. But in every other respect his was incomparably the harder. And he was the only one who seemed to be getting anywhere.

• • •

My Master’s Sickness lasted for several days. He did not go to his place of work, and spent a lot of time squatting in the pool in the window-room. He breathed the gas bubbles a good deal, but did not beat me again. Occasionally he came out of the pool and picked me up and fondled me, and he also talked to me. Some of it was as incomprehensible as when he had talked about his work, but not all. I found one day, when the green dusk outside was fading as the sun, beyond the dome, slanted out of sight in the west, that he was talking about the Masters’ conquest of the earth.

They had come in a vast ship that could move through the emptiness between the worlds, and the greater emptiness between the stars that warmed the worlds circling around them. This ship had been propelled at an unimaginable speed, almost as fast, he told me, as a sunbeam travels, but even so the journey had lasted many long years of time. (The Masters, I now realized, lived immensely longer than we did, for this one—and, I think, all the Masters in the City—had made that journey, and lived here ever since.) Theirs had been an expedition sent out with the purpose of finding worlds that their people could conquer and colonize, and an expedition that had many setbacks and disappointments. Not all stars had planets near them, and where they did these planets were usually unsuitable, for various reasons.

The world from which the Masters came was much larger than the earth, and hotter. Being larger, things on its surface weighed more. The Masters had found some worlds too small and others too big for their purpose, some too cold—being far removed from the central sun—and others too hot. Of the ten worlds circling our sun, ours was the only one that would do, and it had an atmosphere poisonous to them and a gravity too light. All the same, it was thought to be worth conquering.

So the great ship was made to go in a circle around the earth, as the moon does, and the Masters studied the world which they were to seize. It seems that the ancients had marvelous machines by which they could speak and show pictures at a distance, and the Masters were able to listen and watch without needing to come close enough for their ship to be seen. They stayed like this for many years, occasionally sending smaller ships nearer to examine things which were not shown on the distance-pictures, or not in sufficient detail. (Some of the ancients, my Master said, reported seeing these ships, but others did not believe them. This could not have happened with the Masters, but men had this strange thing called lying, in which they told of things that had not occurred, and therefore they did not trust each other.) They recognized that in man they had an enemy who might be formidable. There were all these marvels, like the distance-pictures, there were the great-cities at the height of their glory and power, and there were other things, too. Men had already begun to build ships that would take them across the emptiness. They had nothing like the ships of the Masters, but they had started, and they were learning fast. And they had weapons. One of these, from what he said, was of the nature of the iron eggs Beanpole had found in the Tunnel below the great-city; but as much more powerful as a bull compared to an ant. With one of these giant eggs, the Master told me, an area of land many miles in circumference could be scorched and blasted—one of the great-cities itself completely obliterated.

If they had brought their ship down to the earth, and made a bridgehead, that bridgehead would have been destroyed. They had to find a different method. The one they chose lay in a field of knowledge where they were even more advanced than star traveling—the understanding and control of the mind.

When, on the journey to the White Mountains, they had put the button under my arm by which the Tripods afterward tracked us, and Henry had said that I must have known it was there, Beanpole had spoken of the man in the circus who could make people go to sleep and then obey his commands. I had once seen such a man with a traveling fair that came to Wherton. This sort of thing, and much, much more, was known to the Masters. They could, quite easily, put men to sleep and make them, even without the Caps, obey commands—for a time at least. But the problem still remained of getting men into a position where their power could be used. It is no good being able to make a rabbit pie, unless you can first catch your rabbit.

And they caught their rabbits with the ancients’ own marvel: the distance-pictures. These pictures were sent out on invisible rays through the air, and turned back into pictures in millions on millions of homes all over the world. The Masters found a means of suppressing those rays at their source, and sending out in their place rays which made the pictures they wanted. There went with them other rays that made men’s minds receptive. So they watched the pictures, and the pictures told them to go to sleep, and when they had gone to sleep, the pictures gave them their orders.

This control, as I have said, would wear off eventually, but it lasted for days, and the Masters made good use of the time. A hundred small ships landed, and men flocked to them as they had been told, and the Caps were put on their heads—by Masters at first, but later by men who had already been Capped. It was a process which grew as it went on. All that was needed was that there should be enough Caps, and there were. The plans had been well laid.

By the time those who had not watched the pictures realized something of what was happening, it was almost too late to do anything about it. They were separate, isolated, while the others were working under the orders of the Masters, united in one purpose. And by the time the effect of the commands given by the distance-pictures wore off, enough men had been Capped to ensure that the Masters would not have any but scattered and ineffective opposition to face: one of the first things the Capped had done was to take control of the mighty weapons of the ancients. So it was possible for the parent-ship to come down to earth, and the first occupation base to be set up.

That was not quite the end, my Master told me. Some resistance continued. There were great ships on the sea, and ships that traveled under the sea; and some of these remained free for a time, and had weapons with which they could strike from half a world away. The Masters had to track them down, to destroy them, and one of the undersea ships survived for more than a year, and at the end of that time somehow located the main base, and sent one of the giant eggs through the air, to miss its target only by a narrow margin. In the attack though, it revealed its own position, so that the Masters could use a similar weapon of their own, and sink it.

On land, there was sporadic fighting for years, though steadily diminishing because all the time the number of the Capped grew while the number of the free diminished. The Tripods stalked the earth, guiding and helping their followers against bands of men whose weapons were puny, or nonexistent. In the end, there was peace.

I said, “So now all men are happy, having the Masters to rule and help them, and no more wars and wickedness.”

It was an expected comment, and I tried to put as much enthusiasm as possible into it. The Master said, “Not quite all. Last year, a Tripod was attacked and the Masters in it killed when the poisonous air broke in on them.” I said, shocked, “Who could do that?”

One of his tentacles splashed water over him from the pool. He said, “Before you were Capped, boy, did you love the Masters as you do now?” “Of course, Master.” I hesitated. “Perhaps not quite as much. The Cap helps.”

He moved a tentacle in a gesture which I knew to be a sign of agreement. He said, “The Caps are put on when the skull is near the end of its growing. There are some Masters who think now that it should be done earlier, because some humans, in the year or two before they are Capped, become rebellious and act against the Masters. This was known, but not thought important, because the Cap makes them good again. But it was boys like these who found old weapons that still had power, and used them in such a way that four of the Masters were killed.” Making a note of the fact that four was presumably a standard crew for a Tripod, I feigned a great shudder of horror, and said passionately, “Then of course boys must be Capped earlier!” “Yes,” the Master said. “I think that will happen. It means that the Capped will die sooner, and have pains in their heads because the Caps grip their skulls more tightly, but it is unwise to take risks, even small risks.” I said, “The Masters must not be endangered.”

“On the other hand, there are some who think it does not matter because at last we are in sight of the Plan being achieved. When that happens, there will be no more need for Caps at all.” I waited, but he stayed silent. Greatly daring, I said, “The Plan, Master?”

He still did not reply, and I dared not press the question further. After perhaps half a minute, he said, “I have a night-feeling sometimes when I think of it. It is probably the Sickness, the Curse of the Skloodzi. What is goodness, boy, and what is wickedness?” “Goodness lies in obeying the Masters.”

“Yes.” He slumped further down in the steaming water of the pool, and wrapped his tentacles around him: I did not know what that gesture meant. “In a way, boy, you are lucky to wear the Cap.” I said fervently: “I know I am very lucky, Master.”

“Yes.” A tentacle unrolled and beckoned. “Come nearer, boy.”

I went to the edge of the pool. The tentacle, slimy from the water, caressed me, and I did my best to disguise the repulsion I felt. He said, “I am glad of this friendship, boy. It helps with the Sickness, particularly. In this book of which I spoke, the human got things for his dog that his dog liked to have. Is there anything you wish, boy?” I hesitated a moment, and said, “I like seeing the wonders of the City, Master. I would be happy to see more of them.”

“That may be done.” The tentacle, with a final pat, withdrew, and he began rising out of the pool. “Now I desire to eat. Prepare my table.” • • •

The following day the Sickness had abated, and the Master returned to his work. He gave me a thing to wear on my wrist and explained that anywhere in the City this would make a sound like many bees when he wanted me. I was to come to him then, but otherwise I could wander about: it was not necessary, for instance, that I should stay in the communal room of the work place.

I was surprised that he had remembered my request, and done this, but more was to follow. He actually took me out on sightseeing expeditions. Some of what I saw was uninteresting, and some incomprehensible—there was one small pyramid with nothing in it but colored bubbles that moved in a slow dance up to the apex and down the sloping sides. What the Master said about it made no sense to me at all. And there were several trips to water-gardens, larger versions of the garden pools, which meant a lot of standing and sitting about while he waded through the seething waters. He invited me to admire their beauty, and I dutifully did so. They were quite hideous.

But he also took me to the place Fritz had spoken of, with the turning globe that was covered with a map, and the walls of bright stars that moved against deep blackness when the Master spoke words, in his own tongue, into a machine. These were star maps, and in one of them he showed me the star from one of whose planets the Masters had set out, long, long ago. I tried as well as I could to memorize its position, though it was hard to see what good that would do.

And one day he took me to the Pyramid of Beauty.

• • •

A thing that had puzzled me since first coming into the City was that all the slaves were boys. Eloise, the daughter of the Comte de la Tour Rouge, had been chosen Queen of the Tournament and had afterward gladly gone, as she told me, to serve the Tripods in their City. I had thought I might meet her here, and it was something I wanted and did not want at the same time. It would have been terrible to see her worn down like all the other slaves, her beauty crushed under the weight and clammy heat of this place. But I found no girls, and Fritz, when I asked him, said he had seen nothing of them, either. But on this afternoon, dragging myself along beside my Master, the sweat pooling under my chin, I saw them.

It was not one pyramid that we were approaching, but a series of pyramids which joined together near their bases—half a dozen smaller peaks clustered about a central one. It lay a long way, two ninths (more than half an hour, that is) from the part in which my Master lived, by carriage. I saw many Masters strolling about, a few with attendant slaves. We went into the first pyramid, and I almost cried out at what lay before me: a garden of earthly flowers, with that brightness of reds and blues, yellows and pinks and whites which I had almost forgotten, surrounded by this perpetual green twilight and seeing only the drab, ugly plants of the garden pools.

I realized that I could not touch them: they were protected, by the glass-like material, from the atmosphere of the City. But it took me longer to realize something else: that despite the appearance of life, there was only death here. I saw this first when I noticed, on the crimson velvet of a rose, the golden bead of a bee. It did not move. And looking further, I saw other bees, butterflies, all kinds of pretty insects, but all still. And the flowers themselves were stiff and lifeless.

It was a pageant, a show by which the Masters could see the real life of the world they had conquered. There was even white light, not green, inside, which made the colors shine with a dazzling intensity. Further on there was a forest glade, with squirrels on the branches, birds somehow suspended in space, a rippling stream, and on its bank an otter with a fish between its jaws. But all frozen, dead. It was nothing like the world I had known, once the shock of false recognition had worn off, because the world I had known had been a living and moving one.

There were dozens of different tableaux, some of them unfamiliar to me. One showed a dark dripping swamp, not unlike some of the Masters’ garden pools, with a couple of strange creatures floating in it that might have been queerly shaped logs, but for their gaping jaws, gleaming with vicious white teeth. Some were being rearranged by Masters with face masks somewhat similar to the ones we slaves wore, and my Master told me that they were all changed in turn. But that merely meant exchanging one dead scene for another.

The Master had a special objective in view, however, and we passed all these on our way to the central pyramid. There, a ramp moved up in a narrowing spiral, with exits to different floors. I toiled up after him. I was, as always, tired after a quarter of an hour’s walking, and the ramp was quite steep. We did not go out at the first exit. At the second, he led me through a triangular opening, and said, “Look, boy.” I looked, and the salt sweat on my face was mixed with the saltier flow of tears—tears not just of grief, but of anger, more anger, I think, than I had ever felt before.

The Vicar at Wherton had a room he called his study, and in it he had a cabinet of polished wood, with many thin drawers. I was sent to him once, on an errand, and he pulled the drawers out and showed me what they held. Under glass there were rows and rows of butterflies, pinned down, their gay wings outstretched. I thought of that, as I stared at what was exhibited here. For there were rows of caskets, all transparent, and in each casket lay a girl, dressed in her finery.

The Master said, “These are the female humans who are brought to the City. Your people choose them for their beauty, and they are winnowed out again by those Masters who administer this place. There are discards from time to time as better ones are brought in, but the really beautiful ones will be preserved here forever, to be admired by the Masters. Long after the Plan is completed.” I was too full of hate and bitterness even to pay attention to the cryptic remark about the Plan. If only I had one of those iron eggs we had found in the great-city . . . He repeated, “To be admired by the Masters forever. Is that not a fine thing, boy?” Choking, I said, “Yes, Master. A fine thing.”

“It is some time since I looked at them,” the Master said. “This way, boy. There are some fine specimens in this row. At times I doubt the destiny of our race, to spread far out across the galaxy and rule it. But at least we appreciate beauty. We preserve the best of the worlds that we find and colonize.” I said, “Yes, Master.”

I have said that I both wanted and did not want to find Eloise in the City. Now, in this hideous place, the wanting and the not wanting were increased a thousandfold. My eyes searched hungrily for something from which they could only turn away, in sickness and revulsion.

“Here they all have red hair,” the Master said. “Uncommon in your race. The shades of red are different. Observe that they are arranged from light red to deep. I see that there are two new intermediate shades here since my last visit.” It was not red hair my eyes sought, but black—dark hair which I had seen once only, a fuzz growing through the silvery mesh of the Cap, when I had playfully snatched her turban from her in the little garden between the castle and the river.

“Do you wish to go on, boy, or have you seen enough?”

“I would like to go on, Master.”

The Master made a small humming noise, which was a sign that he was pleased. I suppose he was glad to think he was making his slave-friend happy. He led the way, and I followed, and at last I saw her.

She was dressed in the simple dark blue gown, trimmed with white lace, which she had worn at the tournament, when the forest of swords flashed silver in the sun, and all the knights acclaimed her as Queen. Her brown eyes were closed, but the ivory of the small oval face was delicately flushed with rose. But for the casket, very much like a coffin, and the hundreds of others around her, I could have thought she was sleeping.

But her head was bare of both crown and turban. Her hair had grown in the weeks that followed that time in the garden. I looked at her close-cropped curls. They covered, but did not quite conceal the one thing she did wear on her head: the Cap which had brought her, joyfully, to this monstrous resting place.

“Also, a fine specimen,” said the Master. “Have you seen enough, yet, boy?”

“Yes, Master,” I told him. “I have seen enough.”