_The Golden City_
The thing that struck Tommy first of all was the scarcity of men in
the city, compared to its size. The next thing was the entire absence
of women. The roar of machines smote upon his consciousness as a bad
third, though they made din enough. Perhaps he ignored the machine
noises because the ornithopter on which they had arrived made such a
racket itself.
They landed on a paved space perhaps a hundred yards by two hundred,
three sides of which were walled off by soaring towers. The fourth
gave off on empty space, and he realized that he was still at least a
hundred feet above the ground. The ornithopter landed with a certain
skilful precision and its wings ceased to beat. Behind it, the two
fixed-wing machines soared down, leveled, hovered, and settled upon
amazingly inadequate wheels. Their pilots got out and began to push
them toward one side of the landing area. Tommy noticed it, of course.
He was noticing everything, just now. He said amazedly:
"Evelyn! They launch these planes with catapults like those our
battleships use! They don't take off under their own power!"
The six men on the ornithopter put their shoulders to their machine
and trundled it out of the way. Tommy blinked at the sight.
"No field attendants!" He gazed out across the open portion of the
land area and saw an elevated thoroughfare below. Some sort of
vehicle, gleaming like gold, moved swiftly on two wheels. There was a
walkway in the center of the street with room for a multitude. But
only two men were in sight upon it. "Lord!" said Tommy. "Where are the
people?"
There was brief talk among the crew of the ornithopter. Two of them
picked up Tommy's weapons, and the pilot he had wounded made a gesture
indicating that he should follow. He led the way to an arched door in
the nearest tower. A little two-wheeled car was waiting. They got into
it and the pilot fumbled with the controls. As he worked at it--rather
clumsily on account of his arm--the rest of the ornithopter's crew
came in. They wheeled out another vehicle, climbed into it, and shot
away down a sloping passage.
* * * * *
Their own vehicle followed and emerged upon the paved and nearly empty
thoroughfare. Tall buildings rose all about them, with curved walls
soaring dizzily skyward. There was every sign of a populous city,
including the dull drumming roar of many machines, but the streets
were empty. The little machine moved swiftly for minutes. Twice it
swung aside and entered a sloping incline. Once it went up. The other
time it dived down seventy feet on a four-hundred-foot ramp. Then it
swung sharply to the right, meandered into a street-level way leading
into the heart of a monster building, and stopped. And in all its
travel it had not passed fifty people.
The pilot-turned-chauffeur turned and grinned amiably, and led the way
again. Steps--twenty or thirty of them. Then they emerged suddenly
into a vast room. It must have been a hundred and fifty feet long,
fifty wide, and nearly as high. It was floored with alternate blocks
of what seemed to be an iron-hard black wood and the omnipresent
golden metal. Columns and pilasters about the place gave forth the
same subdued deep golden glow. Light streamed from panels inset in the
wall and ceiling--a curious saffron-red light. There was a massive
table of the hard black wood. Chairs with curiously designed backs
were ranged about it. They were benches, really, but they served the
purpose of chairs. Each was too narrow to hold more than one person.
The room was empty.
They waited. After a long time a man in a blue tunic came into the
room and sat down on one of the benches. A long time later, another
man came in, in red; and another and another, until there were a dozen
in all. They regarded Tommy and Evelyn with a weary suspicion. One of
them--an old man with a white beard--asked questions. The pilot
answered them. At a word, the two men with Tommy's weapons placed them
on the table. They were inspected casually, as familiar things. They
probably were, since some of Jacaro's gunmen had been killed in a
fight in this city. Another question.
The pilot explained briefly and offered Tommy the black-metal pad
again. It still contained the incomplete map of a hemisphere, and was
obviously a repetition of the question of where he came from.
* * * * *
Tommy took it, frowning thoughtfully. Then an idea struck him. He
found the little stud which, pressed by the pad's owner, had erased
the previous drawings. He pressed it and the lines disappeared. And
Tommy drew, crudely enough, that complicated diagram which is supposed
to represent a cube which is a cube in four dimensions: a tesseract.
Upon one surface of the cube he indicated the curving towers of the
Golden City. Upon a surface representing a plane beyond the three
dimensions of normal experience, he repeated the angular tower
structures of New York. He shrugged rather hopelessly as he passed it
over, but to his amazement it was understood at once.
The little black pad passed from hand to hand and an animated
discussion took place. One rather hard-faced man was the most animated
of all. The bearded old man demurred. The hard-faced man insisted.
Tommy could see that his pilot's expression was becoming uneasy. But
then a compromise seemed to be arrived at. The bearded man spoke a
single, ceremonial phrase and the twelve men rose. They moved toward
various doors and one by one left, until the room was empty.
But the pilot looked relieved. He grinned cheerfully at Tommy and led
the way back to the two-wheeled vehicle. The two men with Tommy's
weapons vanished. And again there was a swift, cyclonelike passage
along empty ways with the throbbing of machinery audible everywhere.
Into the base of a second building, up endless stairs, past
innumerable doors. It seemed to Tommy that he heard voices behind some
of them, and they were women's voices.
At a private, triple knock a door opened wide, and the pilot led the
way into a room, closed and locked the door behind him, and called. A
woman's voice cried out in astonishment. Through an inner arch a woman
came running eagerly. Her face went blank at sight of Tommy and
Evelyn, and her hand flew to a tiny golden object at her waist. Then,
at the pilot's chuckle, she flushed vividly.
* * * * *
Hours later, Tommy and Evelyn were able to talk it over. They were
alone then, and could look out an oval window upon the Golden City all
about them. It was dark, but saffron-red panels glowed in building
walls all along the thoroughfares, and tiny glowing dots in the
soaring spires of gold told of people within other dwellings like
this.
"As I see it," said Tommy restlessly, "the Council--and it must have
been that in the big room to-day--put us in our friend's hands to
learn the language. He's been working with me four hours, drawing
pictures, and I've been writing down words I've learned. I must have
several hundred of them. But we do our best talking with pictures. And
Evelyn, this city's in a bad fix."
Evelyn said irrelevantly: "Her name is Ahnya, Tommy, and she's a dear.
We got along beautifully. I'll bet I found out things you don't even
guess at."
"You probably have," admitted Tommy, frowning. "Check up on this: our
friend's name is Aten, and he's an air-pilot and also has something to
do with growing foodstuffs in some special towers where they grow
crops by artificial light only. Some of the plants he sketched look
amazingly like wheat, by the way. The name of the town is"--he looked
at his notes--"Yugna. There are some other towns, ten or twelve of
them. Rahn is the nearest, and it's worse off than this one."
"Of course," said Evelyn, smiling. "They use _cuyal_ openly, there!"
"How'd you learn all that?" demanded Tommy.
"Ahnya told me. We made gestures and smiled at each other. We
understood perfectly. She's crazy about her husband, and I--well she
knows I'm going to marry you, so...."
Tommy grunted.
"I suppose she explained with a smile and gestures just how much of a
strain it is, simply keeping the city going?"
"Of course," said Evelyn calmly. "The city's fighting against the
jungle, which grows worse all the time. They used to grow their
foodstuffs in the open fields. Then within the city. Now they use
empty towers and artificial light. I don't know why."
* * * * *
Tommy grunted again.
"This planet's just had, or is having, a change of geologic period,"
he explained, frowning. "The plants people need to live on aren't
adapted to the new climate and new plants fit for food are scarce.
They have to grow food under shelter, now, and their machines take an
abnormal amount of supervision--I don't know why. The air-conditions
for the food plants; the machines that fight back the jungle creepers
which thrive in the new climate and try to crawl into the city to
smother it; the power machines; the clothing machines--a million
machines have to be kept going to keep back the jungle and fight off
starvation and just hold on doggedly to the bare fact of civilization.
And they're short-handed. The law of diminishing returns seems to
operate. They're trying to maintain a civilization higher than their
environment will support. They work until they're ready to drop, just
to stay in the same place. And the monotony and the strain makes some
of them take to _cuyal_ for relief."
He surveyed the city from the oval window, frowning in thought.
"It's a drug which grows wild," he added slowly. "It peps them up. It
makes the monotony and the weariness bearable. And then, suddenly,
they break. They hate the machines and the city and everything they
ever knew or did. It's a sort of delayed-action psychosis which goes
off with a bang. Some of them go amuck in the city, using their
belt-weapons until they're killed. More of them bolt for the jungle.
The city loses better than one per cent of its population a year to
the jungle. And then they're Ragged Men, half mad at all times and
wholly mad as far as the city and its machines are concerned."
Evelyn linked her arm in his.
"Somehow," she told him, smiling, "I think one Thomas Reames is
working out ways and means to help a city named Yugna."
"Not yet," said Tommy grimly. "We have to think of Earth. Not
everybody in the Council approved of us. Aten told me one chap argued
that we ought to be shoved out into the jungle again as compatriots of
Jacaro. And the machines were especially short-handed to-day because
of a diversion of labor to get ready something monstrous and really
deadly to send down the Tube to Earth. We've got to find out what that
is, and stop it."
* * * * *
But on the second day afterward, when he and Evelyn were summoned
before the Council again, he still had not found out. During those two
days he learned many other things, to be sure: that Aten for instance,
was relieved from duty at the machines only because he was wounded;
that the power of the main machines came from a deep bore which
brought up superheated steam from the source of boiling springs long
since built over; that iron was a rare metal, and consequently there
was no dynamo in the city and magnetism was practically an unknown
force; that electrokinetics was a laboratory puzzle--or had been, when
there was leisure for research--while the science of electrostatics
had progressed far past its state on Earth. The little truncheonlike
weapons carried a stored-up static charge measurable only in hundreds
of thousands of volts, which could be released in flashes which were
effective up to a hundred feet or more.
And he learned that the thermit-throwers actually spat out in normal
operation tiny droplets of matter Aten could not describe clearly, but
which seemed to be radioactive with a period of five minutes or less;
that in Rahn, the nearest other city, _cuyal_ was taken openly, and
the jungle was growing into the town with no one to hold it back; that
two generations since there had been twenty cities like this one, but
that a bare dozen still survived; that there was a tradition that
human beings had come upon this planet from another world where other
human beings had harried them, and that in that other world there were
divers races of humanity, of different colors, whereas in the world of
the Golden City all mankind was one race; that Tommy's declaration
that he came from another group of dimensions had been debated and, on
re-examination of Jacaro's Tube, accepted, and that there was keen
argument going on as to the measures to be taken concerning it.
* * * * *
These things Tommy had learned, and he and Evelyn went to their second
interrogation by the city's Council armed with written vocabularies of
nearly a thousand words, which they had sorted out and made ready for
use. But they were still ignorant of the weapons the Golden City might
use against Earth.
The Council meeting took place in the same hall, with its alternating
black-and-gold flooring and the saffron-red lighting panels casting a
soft light everywhere. This was a scheduled meeting, foreseen and
arranged for. The twelve chairs above the heavy table were all
occupied from the first. But Tommy realized that the table had been
intended to seat a large number of councilors. There were guards
stationed formally behind the chairs. There were spectators, auditors
of the deliberations of the Council. They were dressed in a myriad
colors, and they talked quietly among themselves; but it seemed to
Tommy that nowhere had he seen weariness, as an ingrained expression,
upon so many faces.
Tommy and Evelyn were led to the foot of the Council table. The
bearded old man in blue began the questioning. As Keeper of
Foodstuffs--according to Aten--he was a sort of presiding officer.
Tommy answered the questions crisply. He had known what they would be,
and he had developed a vocabulary to answer them. He told them of
Earth, of Professor Denham, of his and the professor's experiments. He
outlined the first experiment with the Fifth-Dimension catapult and
the result of it--when the Golden City had sent the Death Mist to wipe
out a band of Ragged Men who had captured a citizen, and after him
Evelyn and her father.
* * * * *
This they remembered. Nods went around the table. Tommy told them of
Jacaro, stressing the fact that Jacaro was an outlaw, a criminal upon
Earth. He explained the theft of the model Tube, and how it was that
their first contact with Earth had been with the dregs of Earth
humanity. On behalf of his countrymen he offered reparation for all
the damage Jacaro and his men had done. He proposed a peaceful
commerce between worlds, to the infinite benefit of both.
There was silence until he finished. The faces before him were
immobile. But a hawk-faced man in brown asked dry questions. Were
there more races than one upon Earth? Were they of diverse colors? Did
they ever war among themselves? At Tommy's answers the atmosphere
seemed to change. And the hawk-faced man rose to speak.
Tommy and Evelyn, he conceded caustically, had certainly come from
another world. Their own most ancient legends described just such a
world as his: a world of many races of many colors, who fought many
wars among themselves. Their ancestors had fled from such a world,
according to legend through a twisting cavern which they had sealed
behind them. The conditions Tommy described had been the cause of
their ancestors' flight. They, the people of Yugna, would do well to
follow the example of their forebears: strip these Earth folk of their
weapons, exile them to the jungles, destroy the Tube through which the
Mist of Many Colors had been sent. All should be as in past ages.
* * * * *
Tommy opened his mouth to answer, but another man sprang to his feet.
His face alone was not weary and worn. As he stood up, Aten murmured
"_Cuyal!_" and Tommy understood that this man used the drug which was
destroying the city's citizens, but gave a transient energy to its
victims. He spoke in fiery phrases, urging action which would be
drastic and certain. He spoke confidently, persuasively. There was a
rustling among those who watched and listened to the debate. He had
caught at their imagination.
Evelyn, exerting every faculty to understand, saw Tommy's lips set
grimly.
"What--what is it?" she whispered. "I--I don't understand...."
Tommy spoke in a savage growl.
"He says," he told her bitterly, "that in one blow they can defeat
both the jungle and the invaders from Earth. In past ages their
ancestors were faced by enemies they could not defeat. They fled to
this world. Now they are faced by jungles they cannot defeat. He
proposes that they flee to our world. The Death Mist is a toy, he
reminds them, compared with gases they know. There is a gas of which
one part in ten hundred million is fatal! In a hundred of their days
they can make and send through the Tube enough of it to kill every
living thing on Earth. They've figures on the Earth's size and
atmosphere from me, damn 'em! And he reminds them that that deadly gas
changes of itself into a harmless substance. He urges them to gas
Earth humanity out of existence, call upon the other cities of this
world, and presently move through the Tube to Earth. They'll carry
their food-plants, rebuild their cities, and abandon this planet to
the jungles and the Ragged Men. And the hell of it is, they can do
it!"
A sudden approving buzz went through the Council hall.