J. Ballard - The Complete Short Stories

The car bore.

$6 x 10.

5th Day: West 270’ .17th Greater Federation.

At a kiosk on the station Franz bought a clip of razor blades and glanced at the brochure put out by the local chamber of commerce.

‘12,000 levels, 98 cents a foot, unique Elm Drive, fire safety records unequalled…’

He went back to the train, shaved, and counted the thirty dollars left. He was now ninety-five million Great-Miles from the suburban station on 984th Street and he knew he could not delay his return much longer. Next time he would save up a couple of thousand.

$7 x 10127.

7th Day: West 2700. 212th Metropolitan Empire.

Franz peered at the indicator.

‘Aren’t we stopping here?’ he asked a man three seats away. ‘I wanted to find out the market average.’

‘Varies. Anything from fifty cents a—’

‘Fifty!’ Franz shot back, jumping up. ‘When’s the next stop? I’ve got to get off!’

‘Not here, son.’ He put out a restraining hand. ‘This is Night Town. You in real estate?’

Franz nodded, holding himself back. ‘I thought…’

‘Relax.’ He came and sat opposite Franz. ‘It’s just one big slum. Dead areas. In places it goes as low as five cents. There are no services, no power.’

It took them two days to pass through.

‘City Authority are starting to seal it off,’ the man told him. ‘Huge blocks. It’s the only thing they can do. What happens to the people inside I hate to think.’ He chewed on a sandwich. ‘Strange, but there are a lot of these black areas. You don’t hear about them, but they’re growing. Starts in a back street in some ordinary dollar neighbourhood; a bottleneck in the sewage disposal system, not enough ash cans, and before you know it a million cubic miles have gone back to jungle. They try a relief scheme, pump in a little cyanide, and then — brick it up. Once they do that they’re closed for good.’

Franz nodded, listening to the dull humming air.

‘Eventually there’ll be nothing left but these black areas. The City will be one huge cemetery!’

10th Day: East 900 .755th Greater Metropolitan — ‘Wait!’ Franz leapt out of his seat and stared at the indicator panel.

‘What’s the matter?’ someone opposite asked.

‘East!’ Franz shouted. He banged the panel sharply with his hand but the lights held. ‘Has this train changed direction?’

‘No, it’s eastbound,’ another of the passengers told him. ‘Are you on the wrong train?’

‘It should be heading west,’ Franz insisted. ‘It has been for the last ten days.’

‘Ten days!’ the man exclaimed. ‘Have you been on this sleeper for ten days?’

Franz went forward and found the car attendant. ‘Which way is this train going? West?’

The attendant shook his head. ‘East, sir. It’s always been going east.’

‘You’re crazy,’ Franz snapped. ‘I want to see the pilot’s log.’

‘I’m afraid that isn’t possible. May I see your ticket, sir?’

‘Listen,’ Franz said weakly, all the accumulated frustration of the last twenty years mounting inside him. ‘I’ve been on this..

He stopped and went back to his seat.

The five other passengers watched him carefully.

‘Ten days,’ one of them was still repeating in an awed voice.

Two minutes later someone came and asked Franz for his ticket.

‘And of course it was completely in order,’ the police surgeon commented. ‘Strangely enough there’s no regulation to prevent anyone else doing the same thing. I used to go for free rides myself when I was younger, though I never tried anything like your journey.’

He went back to the desk. ‘We’ll drop the charge,’ he said. ‘You’re not a vagrant in any indictable sense, and the transport authorities can do nothing against you. How this curvature was built into the system they can’t explain, it seems to be some inherent feature of the City itself. Now about yourself. Are you going to continue this search?’

‘I want to build a flying machine,’ M. said carefully. ‘There must be free space somewhere. I don’t know… perhaps on the lower levels.’

The surgeon stood up. ‘I’ll see the sergeant and get him to hand you over to one of our psychiatrists. He’ll be able to help you with your dreams!’

The surgeon hesitated before opening the door. ‘Look,’ he began to explain, ‘you can’t get out of time, can you? Subjectively it’s a plastic dimension, but whatever you do to yourself you’ll never be able to stop that clock’- he pointed to the one on the desk — ‘or make it run backwards. In exactly the same way you can’t get out of the City.’

‘The analogy doesn’t hold,’ M. said. He gestured at the walls around them and the lights in the street outside. ‘All this was built by us. The question nobody can answer is: what was here before we built it?’

‘It’s always been here,’ the surgeon said. ‘Not these particular bricks and girders, but others before them. You accept that time has no beginning and no end. The City is as old as time and continuous with it.’

‘The first bricks were laid by someone,’ M. insisted. ‘There was the Foundation.’

‘A myth. Only the scientists believe in that, and even they don’t try to make too much of it. Most of them privately admit that the Foundation Stone is nothing more than a superstition. We pay it lip service out of convenience, and because it gives us a sense of tradition. Obviously there can’t have been a first brick. If there was, how can you explain who laid it and, even more difficult, where they came from?’

‘There must be free space somewhere,’ M. said doggedly. ‘The City must have bounds.’

‘Why?’ the surgeon asked. ‘It can’t be floating in the middle of nowhere. Or is that what you’re trying to believe?’

M. sank back limply. ‘No.’

The surgeon watched M. silently for a few minutes and paced back to the desk. ‘This peculiar fixation of yours puzzles me. You’re caught between what the psychiatrists call paradoxical faces. I suppose you haven’t misinterpreted something you’ve heard about the Wall?’

M. looked up. ‘Which wall?’

The surgeon nodded to himself. ‘Some advanced opinion maintains that there’s a wall around the City, through which it’s impossible to penetrate. I don’t pretend to understand the theory myself. It’s far too abstract and sophisticated. Anyway I suspect they’ve confused this Wall with the bricked-up black areas you passed through on the Sleeper. I prefer the accepted view that the City stretches out in all directions without limits.’

He went over to the door. ‘Wait here, and I’ll see about getting you a probationary release. Don’t worry, the psychiatrists will straighten everything out for you.’

When the surgeon had left M. stared at the floor, too exhausted to feel relieved. He stood up and stretched himself, walking unsteadily round the room.

Outside the last pilot lights were going out and the patrolman on the catwalk under the roof was using his torch. A police car roared down one of the avenues crossing the street, its rails screaming. Three lights snapped on along the street and then one by one went off again.

M. wondered why Gregson hadn’t come down to the station. Then the calendar on the desk riveted his attention. The date exposed on the fly leaf was 12 August. That was the day he had started off on his journey — exactly three weeks ago.

Today!

Take a westbound Green to 298th Street, cross over at the intersection and get a Red elevator up to Level 237. Walk down to the station on Route 175, change to a 438 suburban and go down to 795th Street. Take a Blue line to the Plaza, get off at 4th and 275th, turn left at the roundabout and You’re back where you first started from. $Hell x ion.