Гарднер Дозуа - City Under the Stars

Annoyed, Hanson flicked his fingers in a dismissive gesture, one that, though he had no thought of it at the time, echoed that with which Overton used to dismiss him from their “conversations,” as he called them. “They’re dead and we’re alive. I’d say we got the better of the deal.”

“Not dead,” Becky said. “Transformed.”

“I don’t know what she means by that, Hanson,” Delgardo said, boyishly, transparently eager to move the focus of conversation back to himself, “though I asked a great many questions. The cogent point here is that they left behind a City that was built to serve people. What could it do? Welcome in more? But in very little time, the new City-dwellers would grow as decadent as the Utopians were. So it conceived the idea of an order of caretakers. People who would have control over the City’s resources but only share them with the worthy. Incorruptible guardians who would ensure that the City’s power was never misused. So Becky—the key—was sent out to find someone who could found that order.” It was obvious from his smug demeanor who Delgardo thought that Someone should be.

“It sounds good,” Hanson said, shaking his head like an ox. “I mean, it sounds good. But…” He thought of all the bosses he had known—perfectly decent men, some of them, before they’d been given the position, coworkers you’d be proud to share a drink with; others, of course, not—and what power over others had done to them. It turned them cruel, petty, erratic, vindictive. Remove the worst of bosses and replace him with the best of laborers and, within the year, their own mothers wouldn’t be able distinguish the new boss from the old. “Who guards us from the guardians?”

Becky laid a loving hand on his shoulder. Her eyes glowed. “You do.”

Delgardo shot to his feet, outraged. “No! Not him—not this oafish, blundering fool! He couldn’t be trusted to—”

“Mother?” Becky said. “We don’t need this one anymore.”

Golden tentacles arose from the floor, the walls, the ceiling, wrapping themselves about Delgardo, pinning his arms, holding his legs motionless, gagging his mouth. They were not burning hot, as when Hanson had walked through the Cathedral’s substance. But Delgardo was clearly helpless within their grip. His eyes were wide with fear.

Becky stood, pulling Hanson to his feet after her. “What do you want done with him? He can’t be allowed to live, obviously. Do you want him to die quickly, without pain—or slowly, in great agony?”

“He’s a bad man,” Hanson said, “and I don’t s’pose that he deserves to live. But I’ve killed two men in my time and that’s stain enough for a lifetime. Just… let him go, a’right? Out into the City to find his way home alone. That can be his punishment, I guess. Maybe he’ll learn better someday.”

Becky’s face melted into a look of purest joy. “You choose mercy! You’ve passed the final test.”

Then she nodded, and the tentacles contracted, soundlessly squeezing all the life from Delgardo’s body.

ONCE A YEAR, never more, the abbot liked to go off by himself, jug in hand, to the top of a grassy hill overlooking the City of God, where he would get good and drunk and howl at the moon. The first-year friars, idealistic young recruits to a man, were always shocked. But, “Never you mind,” the older friars would say. “He a’n’t hurting nobody, ’specially not you. A man needs to blow off steam every now and then. ’Specially one like old Hanson. He’s been through a lot, that one, but he’s a good man just the same. You wait and see. You’ll learn.”

There was a full moon tonight and the summer breeze was sultry and soft. Hanson let the jug drop with a soft thud and then guided his aged butt down alongside it. He kicked off his sandals so he could dig his toes into the cool grass. He didn’t really see the point of the sandals and the robes and cincture and the bells and the prayers, to tell the truth of it. So far as he could see, it was all just playacting. But it helped to keep the men honest, he supposed. Hanson had had it all explained to him by respectful subordinates so often that he had to wonder, sometimes, why they didn’t just get rid of such a thickheaded, useless old ox as himself in favor of someone smarter.

Still, he was a legend, he supposed, and that counted for a lot. He was the one who had uprooted two-thirds of the City of God and sent it striding out into the world. It was Hanson who had initiated the Age of Miracles in which Utopian devices dug and burrowed and scrubbed and cleaned—undoing the radioactive hot spots from forgotten wars, cleansing the springs and streams and rivers that no one had dared drink from for centuries, healing the soil that now produced astonishing yields of crops the equal of anything from Utopian times. They were still out there somewhere, he supposed, digging and burrowing and scrubbing and cleaning. The world was a large place. It would take a long time for even the most efficient machines to stalk their way around it.

Hanson uncorked the jug and took a swig.

Ahhh. Improve the world all you like, one thing never changed: hooch was hooch and thank God for that. Hanson could feel the tension in his shoulders begin to ease. The friars he was responsible for were decent fellows, on the whole, just as the sisters who answered to Becky—Reverend Mother Rebekah, as she was now called—were, by repute, good women. By mutual agreement he and Becky kept their flocks isolated from one another; hers to one end of the city, his to the other. Still, you couldn’t keep them entirely apart, not when the stepping-plates meant that no two places in the City of God were more than a few hundred paces apart. So there would of necessity be gossip, incidents, unexplained pregnancies, but nothing more than you would expect from honest, backsliding, self-deluding human beings. There was weakness in the best of them. But, so far as he could see, no real malice.

Still, they could be a bothersome lot. Like the two that the Reverend Mother’s people had caught and then written him about, asking for his judgment. As if he had the slightest notion what to do with them! Or self-righteous, like Friar Lorenz, who had come into his office this morning with an indignant expression and a sheath of yellow flimsies that turned out to be requests for seven vortex engines from the Stabilities of Portland. “The insolence of them!” the friar had snapped. “Their messenger made it clear that these are demands, not requests. Demands!”

Hanson studied the papers, pretending to understand them much better than he actually did. “These are for the new seaport they’re building?”

“Yes.”

With a sigh, Hanson handed them back. “Tell the messenger that we only have five available at the moment. He can have the others when they wake up from the nursery.” It was a matter of principle among the guardians of the City that Utopian technology only be shared for peaceful purposes. Had the request had been for anything improper—weapons of war, perhaps, or enhanced means of interrogation for political prisoners—a man as angry as Friar Lorenz would not have failed to mention it. The friar accepted the flimsies with such obvious bad grace that Hanson added, “And Lorenz? Be sure to offer the man a cold drink, a hot meal, and a clean bed. It’s a long ride from Portland; it’s probably put him in a bad mood.”

Caught by surprise, Friar Lorenz swallowed back a guffaw. “You’re the boss.”

“Please,” Hanson said, turning away so the friar wouldn’t see his face. “Never call me that.”

So now here he was on the hillside, with a great big round harvest moon grinning down at him. The Wall surrounding what had formerly been called the City of God but was now merely the City still stood, but he could see three gaps in it from here, and there were many more, all guarded by brothers and sisters who had been trained to be the friendliest, most helpful people on earth—and to let no harmful technology past them on any account. The number of gaps would grow as the two orders of Guardians increased. Someday, the Wall would be gone entirely and cattle would browse beneath the City’s flametrees.