Walter Tevis - Mockingbird

For some reason I shouted, “Is anybody home?” It was a phrase I had learned from films.

There was not even an echo. I thought sadly of those men in the film drinking from large glasses and laughing. Only the mockingbird sings at the edge of the woods . I left. Biff was waiting for me, and I picked her up in my arms.

We headed for the obelisk. As we got closer the path became wider, easier to walk, and we came to the near-clearing of two big buildings and the obelisk more quickly than I had expected.

The obelisk was whiter than the bone white of all the buildings. It was about sixty feet wide at its base and rose about two hundred feet into the air, resembling the Washington Monument that I had seen in so many books and films and that was all that remained of the city of Washington, D.C.

There was a glass double door, only partly overgrown by blue morning glories, at the base of it, and as I walked around I saw that each of the four faces of the structure had a huge door. And on the fourth side I saw, up high and in large, raised letters, these words:

I read it over twice. Was the “shield” the obelisk itself? Or was it within the doors?

I set Biff down and began trying the doors. The third one slid open with no effort.

Inside was a lobby, lit by the light through the glass doors. Two broad staircases, descending, were on either side of me. Another, narrower staircase went up. I hesitated only a minute and then began to go down the stairs on my left. After six or seven steps down, just as it was beginning to get dim, a soft light began to come from the yellow walls on either side of me, and on one wall were written these words:

And then, six or eight steps further down, other soft lights came on and I saw these words on the wall, which at this level was of a different color—gray:

And when I came to the bottom of the staircase I found myself in a huge, long, wide hallway with glass chandeliers of soft pink that came on gently at my approach and signs on each side of me that glowed:

And then, astonishingly, there began the sound of soft music, light and airy, of flutes and oboes; and, about fifty yards ahead of me, a great spray of water began to rise from a broad pool, and varicolored lights—blue and green and yellow—began to play over it and there came the sound of the water falling, the sound of the fountain.

I walked toward the fountain, marveling. Biff jumped from my arms and ran ahead of me and, without hesitating, perched herself on the edge of the pool, put her head down, and began to drink.

I came up slowly to her, bent down, cupped my hands with the cool, fresh water, raised it to my hot and dry face, and smelled it. It was clean and pure. I drank handfuls of it, and then washed my face in it.

The pool’s sides were made of thousands of little squares of silver tiles, with white lines of mortar between them, and in the bottom of the pool, under the water, was a giant mosaic, in black and gray and white tiles, of a humpbacked whale with its back arched and its flukes spread.

The water of the fountain jetted up from between a group of three dolphins, curved and vertical, carved in black. I had seen something like it in a picture book called The Fountains of Rome . I stood back and stared at it, at the silver rim of the pool, the great picture of the whale, the dolphins, the great upward jet of water, feeling fine spray from the water on my face and body, hearing the music of flutes, and the hairs on my arms and the hairs on the back of my neck seemed to raise themselves and a fine tingle, almost painful, spread through my body.

It was like seeing the birds at the edge of the sea turning in flight, or a storm on the gray ocean, or the great ape Kong in his slow and graceful falling.

Beyond the fountain the great hallway ended at the top of a “T,” with huge double doors going to the right and to the left. Over the doors to the left were the words:

and over the other door was simply:

This door opened automatically as I approached it and I found myself in another long, wide, tiled hallway. On either side of this were store entrances, far more of them than I had ever seen in my life. I have seen windows with merchandise displayed in them in New York and in the university where I live and teach; but I had never seen anything on a scale like this, and with such abundance.

The nearest store to me was called Sears; in its huge, curved windows was an array of merchandise that was almost beyond belief. More than half of it consisted of things I did not recognize. Some of them I was familiar with. But there were colored balls and electronic devices and mysterious bright-colored things that could have been either weapons or toys, for all I knew.

I slid the door open and walked inside, dazed. I was in a part of the huge store that had clothing in it. All of it looked new, fresh, wrapped in some kind of clear plastic that must have kept it sealed for hundreds of years.

My own clothes were worn and frayed, and I began to find myself new ones.

And then, when I was trying to determine how to take the plastic covering off a blue jacket that seemed as though it would fit me, I happened to look at the tiled floor at my feet.

There were muddy footprints all over the tile, and they looked fresh.

I kneeled and reached out my hand and touched the mud. It was slightly damp.

I found myself standing up and looking all around me. But I saw nothing but the racks upon racks of clothing and beyond them shelves of brightly colored goods of all descriptions—shelves after shelves as far as I could see. But nothing moved. Then I looked down at the floor again and saw that the footprints were everywhere—some fresh, some old. And they had been made by different-sized shoes and had different shapes.

Biff had wandered off somewhere and I called for her, but she did not come. I began looking, walking down aisles with apprehension. What if the makers of the footprints were still about? But, then, what did I have to fear from another human being? Or from a robot, for that matter, since none had followed me from prison and there had been no sign of any Detector or anything else searching for me. Still, I was afraid—or “spooked,” as the Dictionary of American Slang would have it.

I found Biff eventually, greedily eating from a box of dried beans that had been opened and left on a counter top alongside hundreds of similar but unopened boxes. Biff was purring mightily and I could hear her teeth crunching into the beans. I picked up one of the unopened boxes from next to her; she did not even bother to look up at me. The box—unlike food boxes I had known before—had writing on it:

There was a picture of a steaming plate of beans, with a slice of bacon on top of them, on the side of the box. But the beans Biff was still devoting her entire attention to looked dry, withered, and unappetizing. I reached into her box and took a small handful. Biff looked up at me and bared her teeth for a moment, but turned her attention back to the eating. I put one of the beans into my mouth and chewed it. It was not really bad, and I was hungry. I popped the rest of the handful into my mouth and, chewing, studied one of the sealed boxes, trying to determine how to get it open. There were directions at the top, about pressing a white dot and then pulling on a red tab, while twisting. I tried all the combinations I could think of, but the box wouldn’t open. By this time I had finished the beans I had, and Biff’s were all gone too. My appetite had been aroused and I was becoming furious with the apparently unopenable box. Here I was, the only man on earth able to read the directions for opening a box of beans, and it was no help.