Damon Knight - Beyond the Barrier

They were carrying things, moving this way and that on errands, their faces expressionless. Some of the brightly dressed people were self-propelled, like himself and Liss-Yani; but others were being moved from one place to another by Uglies or by robots. All of them wore garments like Prell’s that seemed to hide stunted or atrophied legs.

Naismith and the girl rounded a huge, complex spray-shape of glittering golden material, through the branches of which tiny fish-shaped robots swam. On the further side, past a throng of floating people, Naismith caught sight of another huge object, this one as hideous as the other was beautiful.

It was the torso of a female Ugly, magnified to the size of a ten-story building. Gigantic and grotesque, it loomed over the glittering throng like a human body surrounded by mayflies.

Its arms were secured behind its back; its skin was pierced here and there by long needles, from which drops of dark blood were slowly oozing. Through the echoing talk and laughter, Naismith suddenly heard a hoarse bawling sound—a groan, immensely amplified, that seemed to come from where the Ugly’s head should be. The talk died away for a moment, then there was a scattering of laughter, and the hum of conversation began again.

Naismith felt sickened. “What’s that?” he demanded.

“A solid,” the girl answered indifferently. “That’s one of the rebel Uglies they captured. They made a big solid of her so everyone can watch. Look over there.”

Naismith turned his head, saw a girl of Liss-Yani’s caste entwined in a sexual embrace with a slender, muscular man.

There was a little ring of spectators around them, and some languid applause.

“No, not them,” the girl said impatiently. “Look farther up.”

Naismith did so, and saw nothing of interest except still another woman of the Entertainer class—dressed, this one, in long gossamer robes—drifting across the room with an entourage of young men and women. Her face was noble and sad; she looked straight ahead, without expression.

“That’s Thera-Yani,” said the girl in a muted voice. “Isn’t she wonderful!”

“I don’t see it,” Naismith said. “Why wonderful?”

“She was the best-loved Yani in the City until last month, when the new mutations were released and the fashion changed.

Now there is nothing left for her. She took twenty-day poison, and she is saying her farewells to the City.”

Naismith snorted, unimpressed. Up ahead, a greenskinned female servant was pushing a tremendously fat old woman across the air by the small of her back. The Ugly, Naismith noticed, was wearing a bright metal collar around her neck; he now recalled seeing similar collars on other greenskins, A fragment of speech drifted back: “But why must all the Uglies die, Mistress? Haven’t I always been good, haven’t I always—”

“Oh, don’t be tiresome, Menda. I explained to you before, I can’t do anything about it. It’s something to do with science.

Don’t let me hear…”

Now they were approaching the center of the enormous room, where the largest and most tightly packed mass of people floated. The shrill hum of conversation grew louder. Naismith’s nerves prickled; the closeness of all these people was subtly unpleasant.

Up ahead, a raucous female voice was screaming, like an articulate parrot’s: the words were not distinguishable. Naismith and the girl moved nearer, threading their way patiently through the press, sometimes horizontally, sometimes in the vertical plane.

At last Naismith could make out the screaming woman. She hung in the middle of a little group of gaudily dressed people.

She was hugely, obscenely fat in her puffed and ornamented garment of white and scarlet. When she swung around, Naismith could see her body quake like a jelly inside the fabric.

Her face was sallow and lined, the eyes bright with madness.

“… come in here and tell me, who do you think you are, be silent and listen, I tell you I will not have any disrespect, why don’t you observe the rules, don’t talk to me, I tell you, listen…”

“Highborn, if you please,” said a fat man in brown, with ruffles around his worried baby-pink face.

“… never in three hundred years have I been treated like this, be quiet, Truglen, I wasn’t speaking to you, how can I bear these constant interruptions, Regg! Regg! where is the creature, Regg!”

“Yes, Highborn,” said a greenskinned man, floating up beside her.

“Give me a pickup, can’t you see the state I’m in?”

“Highborn,” said another man, almost as fat as the first,

“try to be calm. You may want to wait a little before you have another of those, recall that you’ve already had ten this period…”

“Don’t tell me how many I’ve had, how dare you!” She choked apoplectically, took something the greenskin was holding out, swallowed it and glared, speechless for a moment. The servant handed her a tube leading to a flask of reddish fluid, and she sucked at it, her old face hollowing deeply and her mad eyes bulging.

Liss-Yani spoke to a robot, which glided forward and said politely, “Highborn, here is the Shefth you sent for.”

Her head swiveled; she glared, spat out the drinking tube.

“And high time, too! Why can’t I get any obedience any more, why do you all make things so difficult for me, do you want to kill me, is that it? Come forward, you, what’s your name?”

Unwillingly, Naismith floated toward her. “Naismith,” he told her.

“That’s not a name, are you making a joke of me? What is his name, I say, what is this Shefth’s name?”

“He does not know his name, Highborn,” said the robot.

“He is to be referred to as ‘that man.’”

“Be quiet!” screamed the fat woman. “You, are you a Shefth?”

“As you see, Highborn,” said Naismith. A globe of watchers, most of them hugely fat, was beginning to form around them.

“Impertinence! When have I ever had to bear such insults!

Do you know how to kill a Zug, answer me directly, and mind your manners!”

“I don’t know,” said Naismith.

“He is the only Shefth we have, Highborn,” said the baby-pink fat man, bending near.

“Well, I don’t like him! Go back and get another one at once, do you hear me, take this one away, I won’t have him, I won’t!”

“Highborn, there is not enough time—” said the fat man.

“Time, tune, don’t we manufacture time, how can you be so cruel and thoughtless, don’t contradict me, I say, go and get another!”

Two or three of the men around the fat woman exchanged glances.

“Well, what’s wrong with you all, are you deaf or paralysed, why can’t I get a simple order obeyed in Mind’s name, oh, why are you all…”

A chime sounded nearby; heads turned. “One moment,” said the pink man anxiously. “Highborn, the message.”

The woman fell silent, gaping and blinking. There was a movement in the globe of people as the pink man drifted back.

Now Naismith could see a yellow box-shaped machine with a lighted face, suspended in a transparent globe. The chime came again. The pink man tilted himself nearer, staring at the face of the machine. Naismith could see words forming in threads of white light, one, then a gap, two more, another gap…

” ‘Danger… Zug alive… send Shefth.’” The pink man paused, then straightened. He sighed. “That’s all. Almost the same as last time.”

“Well, it’s clear enough, isn’t it?” the woman screamed.

“Danger, send Shefth—to kill the Zug, that’s clear, isn’t it, what more do you want?”

“But the words left out, Highborn,” the pink man said despairingly.

“Never mind, you’re only trying to confuse me! They want a Shefth to kill the Zug—we want a Shefth, up there in the future, that’s clear, isn’t it? Well, then, what’s the matter?”