Damon Knight - Orbit 16

She nodded once, but did not look up.

“Hey, Donovan, tell us a story!”

And what did she see? he thought with questioning bitterness. Was she trying to remember the black street long since colored in red and pink and papered with layers of cloth? Was she trying to bring back that first-day stench of excrement and sweat that too soon faded into the equally meaningless pulp beneath their feet? Or was it the Building that bowed her head?

“Donovan!”

An elderly man had been his post once, too short to see anything, so he had spoken to himself of the street beneath his shuffling, filthy shoes, constantly reconstructing the lives of the people he trod upon. Then he died, was carried along until Donovan saw him slip and heard the man ahead cursing. “Ease,” Donovan had ordered then, and the woman behind him shortened her steps, Donovan slowed and the old man fell. “Done,” Donovan said, and stepped over him.

“For Christ’s sake, Donovan!”

Damn their souls, he thought, why the hell don’t they leave me alone!

And they were moving again, with millions of shuffling feet numbing him into automatic response, with pressure just great enough to keep his arms bent. His eyes stared until they watered (once he thought he was going blind), searching for the traps (he would have been cast aside), the sudden speedups (to die by the road without seeing), the tides of the streets emptying into the Avenue, upsetting the delicate balance between pushing and falling. He saw hair and hats, and one or two faces that whitened before they sank. He called out, demanding, screaming until he was hoarse and lesser men spelled him, though it wasn’t the same. There was an hour and a half and he heard and considered the rumor that the George Washington Bridge had finally collapsed; and it took him only a moment to believe it. There was a panic second when he tripped and refused to look down, only grateful that his post had stiffened in time to save him. Two more hours and he was into the Fiftieth Street flux.

Squeezed. Pressed. Shouting above the din. Raising perilously an arm to mark the way. Kicked. Elbowed. Squeezed. Pressed.

And the passage was done.

For the first time in weeks, he wanted to sit down and rest. But they were cheering him, and it was a rare thing and he wondered, as they eased to let his arms spring up in a V, what the rest of the world made of it.

They moved on; there was a lurch on his right and a vacuum quickly filled but he ignored it, willed himself to forget it until he was able to spare himself a look, and saw a tweedy, sniffling man where Alice had been. God, she must have been tired, he thought.

Then they stopped. There was silence. Heavy breathing. The May wind of summer and winter.

Donovan, shaking off Alice’s defeat (who was she? he wondered), judged this to be the time, lifted his head and intoned, “In the beginning—”

“All right, Donovan!”

“Tell it, Donovan, tell it!”

“A bit louder, Donovan, we got some new people back here can’t hear you!”

“In the beginning, I said, there was a man, a most ordinary man who said: It’s such a beautiful day, I think I’ll take me a walk along the Avenue. And this man he said as much to his friends and neighbors and boss and doorman. Walk with me, he said, aren’t you weary of looking up at lights and buildings and people and just plain things that sneer and leer and laugh at your living? Well, they nodded and looked and puzzled and wondered. I have an inspiration, the man said. For one thin, very ordinary fifty-cent half-a-dollar coin, we can look down on this goddamned world and tell it what we think; a lifetime view to put us in our place.”

A lurch. A scream. Hush. Amen!

“Don’t ask me any more, he said, but by God I’m going to walk, and I’m going to climb. And by God he did.”

A window cracked but the commotion was muffled by the cadence clapping that picked up his words.

“And believe it or not, he was joined by every one of those friends and neighbors and his boss and the doorman. And where do you think he went to get that fifty-cent lifetime view of the whole goddamned world?”

“To the john, you stupid idiot!”

A chorus of laughter one beat later.

“To the movies!”

Jeers now.

“No no no, you benighted heathen, to the Building!”

Cheers now, and applause.

“To that beautiful Building, my Doers. And when they saw what he was doing, they went with him, and before him, and after him. They emptied those air-conditioned buildings, they fled those creepy darkened movie theaters, they streamed from every borough, every town, every state. And by God, as I stand here now, every last one of them was going to the Building!”

There was shouting, incoherent and tumultuous. Donovan grinned and perspired and nodded, and took time out to flex his fingers, touch the pouch.

“Now you won’t believe this, friends, but they came from Frisco and Detroit and L.A. and Dallas. From Mobile and Bismarck and Prescott and Nome. To the Building! Not some fat-assed mountain; not some swollen-bellied plane; but, goddammit, to the biggest, bestest, most King Kong famous Building in the whole goddamned world! That’s what they did, my Doers. By God, that’s what they did.”

“Why?”

There was silence after confusion, stunned and shocked, and the wind turned winter. Donovan glared and did an unexpected thing: he dropped his hands and turned around, showing his face and the eyes that hated. It was his first challenge, and he was too angry to be afraid, and those around him too amazed to close in and crush him. A woman gasped and not a few began to cry. Donovan was furious and it hurt them where they lived.

“Who . . .” He stammered, stuttered, blinked rapidly in anger. “Who’s the son of a bitch who said that?”

“I did, you scrawny misbegotten slob.”

Donovan, slipping in mire, whirled around beneath hysterical arms. “Well, where the hell are you, you coward?”

The crowd, reacting now, called for the man and Donovan turned, facing straight ahead, waiting. When the shouting abated, the voice sneered again and this time Donovan looked up two stories, into the face of a shirtsleeved man, dried blood on his face, his skull more visible than his skin. He leaned forward out of the window and pointed a crooked finger down the Avenue. “Tell me, you addleheaded sap, do you have any idea what they are doing down there at your precious Building? Do you know what you’re heading for?”

Donovan quickly, not thinking, twisted the tarnished gold chain over his head and whirled the pouch into a halo above him. “The View, old man, the View!”

“Why?”

A woman screamed in rage; claws raised; spit to froth.

Donovan replaced the pouch carefully, closed his eyes, trembling with inarticulate rage. Finally he looked up again and shouted, “Why is the sky blue, you coward?”

“What the hell kind of an answer is that?”

“All you deserve, you bum!”

And the crowd cheered. Donovan was heartened.

“What are you trying to do, take a shortcut across the rooftops? What’s the matter, old man, you too damn lazy to do it the right way, the man’s way, the goddamned human way? What the hell are you, old man, a freak?”

The crowd roared.

“I know where I’m going,” Donovan screamed, “do you?”

There was nothing in the history of the Avenue to match it. More noise, more screaming than all the world’s winds. Suddenly a boot flew out of the crowd and struck the man in the face. He staggered, disappeared. They waited. He returned. He wiped blood across his forehead, blinked it from his eyes. Another boot struck the sill and he winced, but didn’t back away.

He addressed the crowd. “The View?”