He ran through the woods, clamor of pursuit close behind. He headed
straight for the lake, remembered he had moved the boat, changed
direction. He twisted and turned, hoping to deceive them; they stayed
on his heels, gaining, gaining. He reached the shore and plunged into
the water. He was not a good swimmer but the current carried him to
the beach where the boat was while the pursuers had to turn inland to
bypass a thick copse.
* * * * *
He splashed inshore, reaching the boat barely ahead of them. They
swarmed at him as he stumbled, pushed the boat into the water with a
violent shove and clung to the bow's protection against the rocks they
hurled. The missiles splashed close but soon the current took him out
of range. With immense difficulty he got himself aboard, and rowed to
the opposite shore with his eyes fixed on the island.
It occurred to him that he must be headed directly for the swamp where
he had seen the yellow swans. He changed direction; after pulling
steadily at the oars, the keel grated on something hard and unyielding.
He shivered at the coldness of the air and saw he had grounded at the
mouth of a small glacier embedded between rocky hills. He dressed;
leaving the boat high on the gravel bordering the ice, he began walking
along the shore. The island was far, far away, mistily lilac in the
distance, lost and irretrievable.
His shoes, so unaccustomed, spurned and slipped on the gravel and the
rocks, floundered in the sand. The chilling wind from the glacier
slapped at his back. Ahead trees--stunted, thick-growing, crowded by
underbrush--came down to the water's edge. He pushed through touching
branches into still denser thickets, forcing his way against increasing
resistance, being forced in turn further and further inland.
Where the tangled growth ended abruptly there was no grass, only stony
shale interrupted by ragged shrubs, scanty snowdrifts, bent, leafless
trees. Inconstant winds eddied around him, stinging his face, pulling
at his clothes, tearing loose twigs from the trees, dead leaves and
chaff from the ground, whirling them upward, driving them before it,
allowing them to settle only to scatter them again for new torments. He
trudged on, head down, walled from the lake--not a glimpse, a fleeting
glimpse of the island--climbing, descending, detouring, making he knew
not what scant advance.
Advance to where, to what? In an unknown direction to an unknown
destination. Nothing could be more stupid; the intelligent thing to do
was stop, refuse to go farther. But stop himself, he couldn't.
He stumbled into a valley between gloomy cliffs. There was no
vegetation here save sinewy creepers which seemed to spring directly
from the harsh ground, their roots mercifully hidden. They wound and
tangled, twisting and untwisting, ever seeking something to climb. He
tripped on them, righted himself hastily, fearful that if he fell they
would choke him, hold him fast before he could rise. Small dun-colored
birds fluttered through them, pecking haphazardly at unseen insects,
rose in unsteady, uncertain flight only to settle again a few yards
away. He fell; terrified, he scrambled up, shaking himself loose, not
really believing the vines had let him go.
He looked up at the far-off peaks. What had they to offer him? Romantic
towers, magic fastnesses, mystic havens? Cold, craggy, misery. He trod
carefully between the vines; perhaps he could reach the next hill
before they tripped him once again.
He heard an angry, outraged, murderous squealing and grunting as a
horde of wild boars, tiny eyes half-closed, tusks glinting with saliva,
shaggy bristles standing out, charged with pounding hooves. He was
directly in their path, there was no shelter he could take, and it was
clearly useless to run.
He waited, quaking, as they came closer. The foremost animal, the
leader, the most ferocious, became enmeshed in the loose vines and
began struggling and jerking. His companions shouldered, shoved,
worried and bit him; those behind attacked the ones in front. They fell
upon their stupefied leader, tore him to pieces and devoured him. Then
those who chanced to be bitten or slashed were treated the same way,
finally those who had merely been bloodspattered.
* * * * *
Lampley ran from the scene and splashed through a wide stream he hoped
would at least deter the frantic beasts. He climbed over sticky clayish
plants with long, tongue-like petals pulling and sucking at his shoes,
and bloated grass whose watery blades split apart under his weight,
giving out vile fumes to make him sick and giddy. On a rise he looked
back at the boars, milling in directionless knots. Far beyond he caught
brief, elusive sight of the lake and island. Reluctantly he started up
a spur bare of all vegetation, grim and desolate.
The yellowish rock on which he trod was smooth and firm underfoot at
first; he climbed over a ridge and began a fairly easy ascent of an
escarpment biting into the mountainside. The hard rock gave way to
brittle, friable material that broke and crushed underfoot. He came
to outcroppings, miniature buttes which crumbled and rolled at a
touch. He found himself walking in a mass of shifting stone, loose and
unpredictable.
Ahead, the slope became a series of shoulder-high cliffs, mounting like
steps. Very carefully he approached the first and put his hands on the
edges to pull himself up. The rock disintegrated under his fingers.
He stretched his arms forward and tried to lever himself up with his
elbows. The entire face broke off to go sliding and tumbling past him.
He was too far up to retreat and seek a less treacherous way, the best
he could do was strike out for the adjoining ridge. He moved cautiously
but the strata seemed to shift so that he was faced by a palisade
high as his head. He reached up to grasp the ledge. It too split and
shattered. He looked in vain for an easier ascent or a crevice where he
could work his way up.
* * * * *
Now the cliff towered over him, far above his reach, menacing, sullen.
He followed it, searching for a place where it was lower. His feet
slipped on the loose stone; it was like walking on marbles. He tried to
run, to defeat the restlessness of the rock by speed. His ankle turned;
pain and weakness fought each other; he became part of a plunging,
toppling, sinking, downward slide, with gravel, debris and boulders
crashing around him. The only way he could keep his feet was to run
with the avalanche, to embrace the illusion that he was surfboard
riding. By a tremendous effort he retained his balance.
He knew it was impossible for him to survive; he must resign himself
to being crushed and buried under the landslide. It was pointless to
protect his head with his arms as he was doing, it was pointless to run
at all. His mind surrendered, only his body continued to fight against
destruction. He could not believe his mind didn't really know fear;
at a point like this communication was cut off; instincts and reflexes
took over.
The roar of the fall became a rumble and then a crackle diminishing
into silence as the last fragments rolled and settled. He was almost at
the mountain's foot, in a sort of natural quarry hemmed in by palisades
on three sides, open only the way he had come down--and this was paved
with loose stones in uneasy disarray. It was impossible to scale the
sheer cliffs; even at the risk of causing another avalanche he had
to go back. Cautiously he began the ascent. Though the rocks turned
and shifted under his feet they did not crumble. Picking his way with
exaggerated lightness he covered perhaps a hundred, a hundred and fifty
feet. He began to hope he might reach a point where he could strike out
and away from the incohesive slope.
With a loud report a rock shot from the palisades behind him, arched
over his head to crash in front and come bounding down toward him. He
jumped aside. It tumbled all the way to the foot of the precipice.
From near where it landed another stone discharged itself to fall just
behind him. While it was still moving, a ragged bombardment from all
three sides began, increasing in intensity till the air was filled
with missiles. Fresh slides were started by their impact; the entire
mountainside seemed to be converging on him with varying speeds,
diving and plunging, lurching and sprawling. He crouched and cowered.
An immense chunk shattered nearby, showering particles and dust.
The palisades erupted in staccato explosions, echoed when the
projectiles hit the slide and increased its velocity. He was shaken to
realize that the rocks were sentient, individually or collectively, and
he was their intended target rather than an endangered spectator. He
was doomed; though they missed him a hundred, a thousand times, on the
hundred and first or the thousand and first, chance would expose him,
make him vulnerable, destroy him. Even if the ground held firm he could
not climb out of range before he was felled. And the ground was not
holding firm.
There was no escape; who could control the unswerving malice of the
rocks? Who indeed? Suddenly he stood erect and held up three fingers in
the sign of the letter Shin, the initial of the name Shaddai.
Instantly the mountainside became still. Birds soared overhead, grass
sprouted through the rubble and in the crevices of the rocks, clear
brooks wound sinuously from the mountaintop, lizards basked on flat
spaces, insects moved speculatively from object to object, sheep
wandered in search of food.
He threw himself down on a bed of ferns, newly sprung into life. The
soft, spiraling ends of the fronds touched his cheeks and hands gently.
He moved guardedly, unwilling to crush the tender stems. Raising
himself on his elbows he peered down at the pale, feathery snails, the
stiff, spotted leaves, the hairy stalks. His throat tightened with
wonder and gratitude.
* * * * *
He got up, walked slowly over the solid ground. When he had climbed
higher than the palisades he struck out for a plateau, bare of
vegetation but not desolate. Shallow ponds sparkled, crystal pinnacles
glittered, mounds of quartz reflected the light. Snakes and crocodiles,
strange and nameless reptiles in bright, jeweled colors moved smoothly
out of his path. A tinted mist rose from one of the ponds, taking
the shape of Mattie. All the women he had known showed themselves in
wisps and shreds of vapor. Some were laughing, some wistful, pleading,
tempting; all dissolved as fast as they formed. He fled.
He fled from the plain into a forest where leaves made an umbrella
against the light, through fields where grain was turning black, past
rutted gray roads and decaying rail fences. He passed clumps of berry
bushes, bare of fruit, whose thorns raked his hands and face. He
stumbled over plowed furrows where the dried clods were woven together
with spiderwebs and made his way through harrowed fields where the
exact lines were blurred by rebellious weeds, rooted at random.
The air was cold, colder even than at the glacier, and the light
hazier, as though too far from its source. Weeds were persistent, but
colorless and sickly. His foot came against something harder than
the dry earth; he kicked the weeds aside to reveal a railroad track,
crusted and pimpled with rust. There were two tracks, eight, twelve,
twenty, an inestimable parallel multitude of them, the steel flaking,
the ties rotted, the spikes and plates worked loose. He walked between
them.
* * * * *
The skeleton of a model T Ford stood crosswise on the rails. The body
was gone, and the hood; the brass radiator, capless, had turned green
and brown. A wooden box was athwart the chassis in place of a seat, its
ends sticking out over both sides. The tires were flat and shredded.
Lampley lifted the front end and shifted it so that it headed along the
right-o-way. He turned the ignition key, pulled down the gas lever,
stood in front of the radiator, pulled the choke-wire and twirled the
crank several times. Then he went back and sat on the box, but not
under the steering wheel.
The motor coughed and started, the engine missed in syncopated rhythm,
shaking and rattling the frame, failing and fading, catching again. The
car bumped slowly over the ties. The Governor, satisfied, made no move
to take the wheel. The tracks came together in a series of multiple
switches. The Ford stopped, the motor clanked and quit, steam spouted
up from the radiator.
Lampley got out. The surface of the rails was no longer rusty but
bright with wear. The ties were new, reeking with fresh creosote. They
were too close together for his stride; he walked partly on them,
partly on the roadbed.
The single diesel car panted on a siding, its garish paint flecked and
peeling. He climbed aboard, walked between the rows of plush-covered
seats to the front. The clerk sat in the cab, reading a comic book. He
nodded when he saw Lampley. "Board," he shouted. "Aw-a-booooooard!"
The diesel started smoothly. The Governor sat down just behind the
clerk and looked out the window. They were running through a petrified
forest. Some of the trees were riven down the middle, showing the dark,
livid heart, the gleaming saffron sapwood, the red-brown bark. Fallen
trunks lay in shallow oil, black, broken by lurid rainbows. The car
heeled over slightly as it rounded a curve, then more steeply on the
opposite side as it picked up speed and took another.
The clerk said, "The island under the world, ay? Good or bad?"
"You can't simplify like that," protested the Governor.
"Can't I? Some law?"
"I mean...."
"Of course you do, of course you do. Enjoy the fishing?"
Lampley saw again the brilliant creatures he had pulled from the lake.
"I only caught what was necessary for food," he muttered defensively.
"Necessity is the mother of convention," sighed the clerk; "necessity
is the mother of conception, of prevention. Also correction, election,
protection, vivisection, selection and so forth. Never perfection."
"Ah," said the Governor, thinking of the woman.
The clerk swung a handle, pulled a throttle, pushed a button. The
coach was filled with whirling sparks and balls of fire. "Necessity is
the mother of pretension," he sang operatically. A duststorm gathered
outside the window, grit forced its way in. The car gained further
momentum, swayed and rocked.
"Do we have to go so fast?" asked Lampley.
"Necessity is the mother of dissension and projection. The faster we
go, the less room for argument."
The car seemed to be skimming above the rails. The clerk pressed all
the buttons in front of him. A pornographic picture was projected on a
three dimensional screen. Lightning flashed all around. The comic book
which the clerk had negligently dropped flamed up and was reduced to
curling char. The wind outside roared with hurricane velocity. There
was nothing to see through the window but the lumps of earth the storm
picked up and held in suspension.
The landscape twinkled into a tunnel, black and close and sooty. The
tunnel spiralled upward; the diesel slowed, barely kept from slipping
back on the grade. The dark sides gave way to illuminated bas-reliefs
showing sphynxes and dragons pursued by hunters with spears and bows,
pyramids on which victims were sacrificed with obsidian knives, battles
between miniature figures in green or red against others in white or
blue while their commanders rode back and forth waving microscopic
swords, tableaus of unearthly quietness where boats were poled up wide,
muddy rivers flowing through empty prairies.
* * * * *
The tunnel became black again; frigid cold swept through the coach.
Icicles formed on the ceiling, frost obscured the windows in flat
withes woven together. Lampley shivered so hard he became slightly sick
to his stomach. He drew his jacket tight, hugging his chest, trying to
control his chattering teeth. The clerk left the cab and built a fire
in the aisle. He ripped out seats and fed them to the blaze. By the
time the coach was bare the frost-ferns were melting from the windows.
The clerk spun a crank; the light inside turned blue. He hauled a
lever back, it changed to green. He jabbed a button; the interior
became dark. Lampley saw they were moving smoothly into a terminal,
with redcaps running alongside on the platforms. "All out," shouted the
clerk. "Change here for North and South, East and West. All out!"
* * * * *
Lampley stood on the platform. "Carry your baggage, sir," asked a
porter.
"Sorry, I don't have any," apologized the Governor.
The porter's dark face showed his disbelief. "Everyone has baggage."
"But I don't," insisted Lampley.
"You're trying to cheat a poor man," said the porter. "You're trying to
cheat society. You're trying to cheat yourself. Even trying to cheat
God."
"Believe me, I'm innocent," cried the Governor.
Loudspeakers bellowed, "Innocent! Innocent!" Far-off cold echoes
sounded stonily, "... cent ahahaha ... cent ahahaha...." Lights winked
on and off. The porter prostrated himself on the platform. An unseen
band blared _The Stars and Stripes Forever_, firecrackers and rockets
went off, a phosphorescent display spelled out KISS ME KID, a barrel
rolled and bumped to a stop, disgorging clowns who began tumbling,
somersaulting, standing on each other's shoulders to form a cluster
reaching to the arched roof where the top man wrote in white chalk on
the smoky vault, DRINK MOXIE.
Lampley stood undecided, then walked briskly to the waitingroom. Its
chrome and plastic benches were empty, the space between them was
filled with robots busily burnishing each other's metal, adjusting each
other's mechanism, screwing and unscrewing visiplates, audio-systems,
sensitizers, olfactometers. He saw no humans. He paused at the
unattended newsstand to look over the tattered, smudged periodicals.
_Journal of Subatomic Medicine._ _The Martian Monthly._ _Space News._
_Androids Review combined with The Magazine for Mechanical Men
Astronomer & Astrogator._ _Time-Travel Tribune._ There was nothing here
to interest him.
Outside the waitingroom he came to the subway stairs, gleaming in white
and nickel. They led to an underpass; he could hear the trains rumbling
and thundering overhead. He followed the passage to the station; the
empty tracks emerged, plunged on into darkness. He sat on a bench; no
train came.
He got up and walked along the platform. It went deeper and deeper into
the tunnel without narrowing to an end. He came to a place where the
tracks were boarded over with heavy planks, flush with the concrete on
which he walked. On the other side of the boardwalk small shops offered
their wares in dusty, ill-lit windows.
The nearest displayed boots and shoes, sandals, clogs, getas, slippers,
moccasins, greaves, buskins, gaiters, spats, wellingtons, overlapping
damascene plates to protect the feet of the well-shod knight. All were
in sets of threes: right, left, interpediate. The Governor entered; the
salesman, dressed in black, hurried to him, rubbing his black-gloved
hands together. "Why are all your shoes in triples?" Lampley asked.
The salesman opened his eyes in surprise. "How else would they be?"
"In pairs, naturally."
"But my dear sir, there's nothing natural about that. Of course there
are poor afflicted creatures with only two feet; for them we recommend
a very fine prosthetic craftsman who also supplies artificial ears
and natural-looking uvulas. But normal persons will find themselves
well-served here, I assure you. Well-served indeed." He pursed his
mouth and looked at Lampley with a combination of severity and
servility.
"It--it's all relative, then?" faltered the Governor.
The salesman shrieked. "You monster, you fiend, you horror! Begone!
Begone, I say!"
Lampley closed the door behind him. The next shop was a
tobacconist-stationery-novelty store. In the showcase were giant pipes,
twists of burley, packages of latakia and perique, warped boxes of
dried-out cigars, false mustaches, lapel flowers to spray water in
startled eyes, puzzles, cryptograms, tiny spheres fitting endlessly
inside of each other, moldering reams of paper, flyspecked envelopes,
faded typewriter ribbons, filing indices in cyrillic. The Governor was
not surprised to see the storekeeper was the legless sailor-juggler.
"Come in, lad; a hearty welcome to you," he said. "Been traveling in
strange parts, I see. How are the women?"
"Small," said the Governor.
* * * * *
The juggler smacked his thigh with a big hand. He laughed till he
coughed. He strapped on a pair of aluminum legs and danced a hornpipe.
He took a gallon jug from behind the counter and tilted it against his
lips. "Small ay? Small and naked and full of bile?"
The Governor nodded.
"Then you're poisoned, lad," said the juggler heartily. "You'll never
be happy with the other kind again. O the lovelies, the darlings, the
dainty morsels: they'll cut out your heart, eat your liver, pluck your
eyeballs from your skull, bless them."
"But," said Lampley, distressed, "surely it doesn't have to be that
way?"
"Surely, surely," said the juggler.
Lampley bit his lip. "How does one get out of here?"
"Hush," cautioned the juggler. "I have a map. It was traced by the
seventh son of a seventh son and lent me under the strictest pledge of
secrecy, sealed in black goat's blood. Come along with me." He led
the way to the back of the store, through a passage papered in bright
orange, the sheets curling apart at the edges where the glue had dried.
It was barely wide enough to squeeze through sideways.
The room was triangular, with a pile of brass cogwheels in the
narrowest corner. A set of bookshelves sagged against one wall.
Calf-bound folios leaned on spiral-backed notebooks. In disorder on top
was a collection of papers. The juggler reached among them and took out
a thick roll tied with withered pink tape. "Here," he whispered. "Read
it and memorize it. Never say who showed it to you."
* * * * *
The Governor unrolled the map. It showed an unfamiliar, an unlikely,
a visionary coast. Mermaids and dolphins frisked in the seas; the
shoreline was blank, labelled _Terra incognita inferioris_.
"Guess that will fix you up, ay lad?" boomed the juggler. "It's not
everybody I'd show it to."
"I'm sure of that," said Lampley. "Thank you."
"Just don't let on to anybody," cautioned the juggler. "Not even if
they torture you for it."
"I won't," promised Lampley.
"Think of me," begged the juggler. "Pray for me."
The Governor did not investigate the third shop. He walked past it to
the ramp leading to the street. Outside the station the roof of the
city pressed down so close buildings of four stories barely cleared
it. The street was wide and paved with cobblestones; brilliant copper
trolleywires ran overhead.
The city was familiar to Lampley, he had lived in it, knew the names
of its quarters and districts. He began walking toward the harbor, the
picture of it forming before him, the dark olive water, the black ships
suddenly looming up, the tiny figures on the docks, the slowly creaking
pilings. The harbor was miles away; miles and miles and miles away.
He passed block after block of gray stone, massive, empty somber
buildings. A skeleton came out of one and thrust a dented tin cup
before him. The Governor dropped in a coin. It went through the cup
and rolled into a gutter running with chaff-flecked dirty water. The
skeleton got down on its hands and knee bones to search for it.
A streetcar, royal blue, creaked and whined by. Lampley knew it was
headed for the docks also, its passengers stevedores and sailors. A
green trolley passed it going in the opposite direction. The motormen
saluted each other by clanging their bells in the beat of _Old Black
Joe_.
Lampley passed under a gray stone arch spanning the street from
building to building. Atop the arch were severed heads of a bear,
camel, dog, elephant, ox, weasel. He dropped a coin in the slot
and twirled a prayerwheel set up here to help speed the decapitated
creatures to a new incarnation.
Beyond the arch, kleiglights focussed on a supermarket. Like the
street, it was deserted. The endless shelves held empty cans, their
ragged lids sticking cockily upward. The refrigerators were crowded
with milk and pop bottles with nothing in them. Unattended cash
registers rang NO SALE over and over. Vegetable bins contained carrot
tops, potato peels, orange skins, apple cores, cherry stones, peach
pits, bean strings, pea-pods, squash seeds, melon rinds. At the butcher
counter cellophane bags of fat, gristle, bones and sinews were neatly
stacked between trays of clamshells, fish scales, frogs' heads, chicken
beaks. Lampley walked on.
He came to a cross-street with an arc-lamp on each corner--white,
violet, gray, reaching into the blackness. He knew it was always night
in this city, and he thought of the hundreds of thousands of its
inhabitants who worked by day, condemned to a bedridden, insomniac
existence. A red streetcar clattered through the intersection, the
wires overhead throwing long, shattering sparks as the trolleywheel hit
the break, reconnected, glided on.
In the next block there was a cellar with a sign COAL & ICE. The cellar
was lit. The Governor peered down at a griffin, its wings folded neatly
back, its arrowhead tail tucked away, shoveling crushed ice into a
roaring furnace, pausing only to fill a refrigerator with dusty lumps
of coal. The building which housed the cellar was divided by a lane
which descended in long, shallow, stone-flagged steps. This arcade was
lined with booths, small and open. Some contained iron white enameled
beds with coverlets thrown back to show wrinkled sheets and indented
pillows, barberchairs adjusted for immediate occupancy, office desks
with letters and forms lying on them, bar stools drawn cosily up to
bamboo counters, mechanical pants-pressers steaming, open and ready
to crease a pair of trousers. There were booths of sheepskins and
parchments with the laureate's name blank, certifying every known
degree and honor. There were others containing family bibles and
photograph albums, dining tables set with silver and napery, bathtubs
full of hot water on whose surface floated cakes of soap and scrubbing
brushes.
* * * * *
He came to the end of the arcade and stood at another wide street,
listening to the night noises of the city. A yellow streetcar stopped
beside him. The Governor climbed aboard. There was no conductor, no
passengers, no motorman. The straw seats were misshapen, cracked and
bristly but the brasswork on them and the doors and windows was all
fresh and polished. He walked to the front of the car. The sign above
his head read .VA TTAW AIV YAWOAT :OWT He jerked the control knob over
the graduated notches. The car bucketed along the street.
* * * * *
The street became two streets, encircling a great, round building whose
hundreds of mean and mocking windows were heavily barred. In front of
the building was an imposing statue, carved in the same gray stone used
throughout the city. Inside the prison were thousands of wretches,
dirty, scabby, verminous, starving; thousands of convicts pacing,
twitching, planning, calculating, remembering; thousands of convicts
behind bland walls, condemned to smell their own bodies and the caustic
chemicals, to feed on themselves and refuse, on hate, despair, foolish
slyness.
The Governor left the car and beat his hands against the prison. He
shouted defiance at the warden, the guards, turnkeys, stoolpigeons,
trustys within. He picked up a piece of chalk and tried to write on the
impervious, rugged stone. The chalk crumbled before he got beyond FR.
Outraged past bearing, he turned away, brushed by the statue. The
figure was two stories high. On the base the letters stood out,
shadowed by the street lights. GOVERNOR ALMON LAMPLEY. He ran back
to the car as though pursued, his heart beating anxiously. He
swung the knob; the car rattled between empty warehouses, lonesome
flats, deserted homes. The arc-lights here were a deeper violet, the
pavingstones took on a greenish tinge.
He entered the quarter where the foreign consulates were, each with its
coat-of-arms carefully emblazoned above the doorway, the flagstaffs
bare, windowpanes shattered and broken. After them came professional
offices in houses hesitating between being homes or not-homes:
dentists, pimps, doctors, mediums, occultists, fortune-tellers,
literary agents, optometrists, dowsers, narcotics peddlers, osteopaths,
contest-promoters, burglars, chiropractors, librarians, counterfeiters,
attorneys, tea-tasters, educators, graphologists, architects,
lapidaries, phrenologists.
He came to where narrow shops hunched against each other, none with
entrances, each with a window for their shop-worn, mildewed goods:
the folds of cloth faded and dingy, the hardware corroded and rusty,
the books brittle and dogseared, the bottles fallen and crazed. He
passed theaters where marquees, caught between changes, spelled out
unintelligible attractions, created hermaphrodite stars. He passed
filling-stations with hoseless pumps, radio-towers without antennae.
He took the trolley through quiet, quiet streets where all the houses
spoke with assurance of sleepers within, of babies fed and diapered,
dry and unprotesting, of adolescents on their stomachs and young girls
curled into knots, of lovers lying face to face and married couples
back to back. He passed shuttered houses, and those with the front door
opened in welcome; houses with the porchlight left on for the expected
visitor, and houses heavy with gloom and repulse. He passed open
spaces: vacant lots, cramped parks, areas being excavated.
The street entered a more modern part of the city. The buildings were
still of gray stone but here it was more smoothly, more fashionably
dressed. There was not one which didn't reach to the roof of the
city or embody the horizontal lines of the currently popular style.
He halted the car before the department store which alone thrust its
height through the city's enclosing shell and rose, who knew how many
stories above it.
It had been remodelled over and over again yet it was still familiar
to Lampley as the rest of the city: gray, massive, frowning. Oil lamps
with dented reflectors behind them illuminated the show-windows. The
Governor reached up and wound the route sign till it read, .HTUOM
HTOMMAM-MUTOT XOV :TIAW. He lifted the control handle from its square
nut and stuck it in the conductor's coinbox. He swung down the steps
and stood under the portico of the store, gazing into each window in
turn.
One displayed a single egg on a pedestal draped in black velvet
that had turned green and purple. Another contained burred screws,
threadless bolts, spectacles and eyeglasses with important parts
lacking. In the next, women washed clothes in galvanized tubs,
scrubbing them against metal washboards, ironing them with sadirons.
One of them, stringy gray hair lank on fat shoulders, came forward and
pressed her open mouth, like a pig's snout, against the glass. Her
teeth were long and jagged, her tongue pale and coated, the inside of
her lips spotted with sores. She pulled up her draggled skirt to reveal
bunion-shaped shoes and wrinkled black stockings, dancing with bumps
and grinds.
* * * * *
He moved slowly past the window crammed with foxed lithographs, broken
crockery, disabled bedsprings, a garbage can where a banana lolled
from under the lid like a dog's tongue, to the window where a dentist,
aided by an ingenious arrangement of mirrors, drilled his own teeth. At
intervals he paused, drew a hypodermic needle from his pantspocket and
squirted at a canvas on an easel. The artist who stood idly beating a
mahl-stick against an open palm, leapt to the easel, working furiously
until the paint discharged from the syringe was used up, then sank
back into lethargy till the act was repeated and he had a fresh batch
of color to use. He was painting a picture of Almon Lampley in track
clothes, running for office.
* * * * *
Instead of a revolving door at the entrance there was a merry-go-round.
The Governor stepped aboard and bestrode one of the horses, thrusting
his feet into stirrups which were too short and brought his knees
too high. The wooden steed, instead of moving gracefully up and down
in time to the music of the calliope, bucked and reared. Lampley was
glad to dismount and cling to a brass pole. A figure in motorman's
uniform--the Governor knew it was his yellow streetcar he had
driven--climbed aboard briskly and began collecting fares. He wore a
monocle in his left eye on which was etched the island under the earth
as seen from the farther shore.
"I'm only trying to get into the store," explained the Governor,
unwilling to pay.
"The store. To be sure," said the motorman, as though he had just
realized what was beyond the carrousel. "History, ethics, philology,
chemistry, geography, heraldry, propaganda, celestial mechanics?
A streamlined, up-to-date, late model, trouble-free, labor-saving
philosophers' stone? How about the small, extravagant pocket-size for
a willion gold moidores? I'm offered a willion; who'll say a stillion,
a crillion--a fillion even? Come now, ladies and gentlemen, horses,
giraffes (camelopards, if you prefer), ostriches and zebras, surely
a fillion moidores is little enough for a love-magnet, a cap of
invisibility, or a bottomless purse? Let me hear a fillion. Going once,
going twice, going up?"
The calliope played, _In the Good Old Summertime_. "Going up," said
Lampley firmly.
"Ah," muttered the motorman, hanging his head. "I was afraid of that."
He removed the monocle and crushed it under his heel. The eye behind it
was glass. The merry-go-round tilted, sliding Lampley off onto a floor
of absorbent cotton sprinkled with tinsel flakes. The calliope switched
to _It Had to Be You_. Two Santa Clauses arrived, lugging a barrel.
They grasped Lampley under his arms and shoved him into the barrel,
jamming his knees against his chest. They rolled the barrel along the
floor and up an incline, then they righted it. The staves opened like
a flower. Lampley stood erect on the bed of a horse-drawn wagon. The
store was full of wax dummies engaged in copulation.
A tophatted, nightshirted man on stilts marched through, carrying a
pickaxe over his shoulder. He attacked a section of the wall with the
pick. After a few strokes water gushed forth, sweeping the dummies
away. The man took a blowtorch from under his hat and froze the water
on the floor. A motion-picture projector threw colored images of fleecy
blue and pink clouds. An organ played _O Promise Me_ (pianissimo) while
handholding couples skated tirelessly over the ice.
The Governor jumped from the wagon, and avoiding the irregular edges of
the ice, walked over to the stationery department. A mahout in turban
and loincloth pecked at the keys of a typewriter with his goad. Each
time the machine came to the end of a line a balloon emerged from the
side, inflated slowly, floated up out of sight. Lampley cleared his
throat. "Could you tell me the way to the elevators?"
The mahout whacked the typewriter with his goad. Balloons issued like
bubbles in an aquarium tank. They clustered together in midair to
spell WHATEVER GOES DOWN COMES UP. Lampley spied a floorwalker doing a
handstand on a cash register. "Could you--" he began.
The floorwalker sprang down nimbly, folding his arms. He took the
carnation from his buttonhole and held it between his teeth. He punched
the keys of the register. Three plums appeared. He punched them again;
four lemons jumped into sight. He rang up, IOUOI. He handed the receipt
slip to the Governor with a low bow. It read, THE AMOUNT OF YOUR
PURCHASE IS $00.00. THANK YOU; YOU ARE ENTITLED TO A REFUND. Lampley
turned it over. On the other side was printed, YOUR WEIGHT IS 181
POUNDS. YOU WILL BE LUCKY IF YOU AVOID.
The Governor dropped the card and went to the bank of elevators. The
doors slammed open, one of the clowns he had seen at the terminal
stuck his head out. "Foreign tongues, quartermelons, odd fish,
rooter-beggars, soft hearts, hot potatoes, proud flesh, birds of a
feather, prime movers, mushrooms, red herrings! Going GUP!"
"Please," said the Governor.
The clown opened his painted mouth and wabbled it. Then he fell out of
the elevator on his face. Lampley stepped around him into the cage.
The clown picked himself up, his feet slipping from under him again,
threatening a pratfall, so that he had to keep his legs whirling to
maintain balance. He sneezed. His mask flew off to uncover the clerk's
face. "You're keeping the doctor waiting; hurry, hurry, hurry." He
closed the door, snapped it open. "Out," he said sternly, threatening
the Governor with one of his clown's flapping shoes.