Superior Saturday(41)

Leaf propped the doors open and ran back to get her first bed-load. As she pushed the bed back to the theatre complex, she wondered what on earth she was going to do. There was no way she could bring all the sleepers down here on beds. Even loading them up was very hard for her, given that nearly all of them were bigger than her, some of them weighed at least twice what she did, and their rigidity just added to the level of difficulty. She would be exhausted before she transported a dozen of them, even if she could do that before time restarted for everyone else.

I’ll have to just pick out the smallest, she thought. And do my best.

‘What have you got me into now, Arthur?’ she said aloud. ‘And where have you gone?’





FOURTEEN





ARTHUR DIDN’T FEEL a sudden shock of pain as he was mangled by the rising chain, and Alyse was still holding his hand, so he flipped back the peak of his cap and shook his head to get the water out of his eyes.

‘Careful!’ said Alyse. ‘No sudden moves. Grab hold of the ring, there.’

They were standing in the chain link that was rapidly rising up through the middle of the stacked office units. Arthur grabbed the ring welded into the link’s left inner wall, and Alyse let go of his hand to nonchalantly step over and hold the ring on the other side.

‘Good view of one of the Drasils coming up,’ Alyse pointed out. ‘Or as good a view as you can get with the rain. Level 6222 is always empty, so you can see through it.’

‘Why is it empty?’ asked Arthur. ‘And what’s a Drasil?’

He was still wondering what the Will had tried to say, and why it had only spoken to him at that moment, and for such a brief time, so he forgot to put on the vacant, gormless expression of the recently washed-between-the-ears.

Alyse looked at him sharply before answering, but Arthur’s mind was still on the Will and he didn’t notice.

‘Dunno why they’re empty. There’s empty offices from 6222 to 6300, at 6733 to 6800, and I’ve heard there’s a bunch just below the top as well, whatever the top is now. It’s probably near 61700, or something like that.’

‘Sixty-one thousand seven hundred levels?’ Arthur was paying attention now. ‘But each of the office cubes is about ten feet high, which would make the tower six hundred thousand feet high—’

‘Nah, the levels just have a six in front for some reason. They start at sixty-one,’ said Alyse. ‘Tradition, I suppose. Depending on where the top has got to this week, it’ll be about seventeen thousand feet. I’d love to see up there.’

‘We don’t go up that far?’ asked Arthur, somewhat reassured.

‘Not yet, we haven’t,’ said Alyse. ‘Other gangs do a bit up there. Most of the top construction work is done by automatons. Hey, triple two’s coming up. Look that way.’

Arthur stared out at the offices flashing by, blurred images of green lamps and different-coloured umbrellas and Denizens in black or dark-grey coats hunched over identical desks.

Then that view suddenly disappeared. Arthur could see the skeleton of the tower, empty office units that were just cubes of wrought iron, with exposed horizontal and vertical driving chains here and there, and the network of pneumatic message pipes. The view was broken in places by closed vertical shafts or walled-off rooms, but for the most part he could see through and out of the tower to the rain-swept sky beyond.

Far off in the distance, there was something he thought was another tower – a dark, vertical smudge on the horizon that went up and up until it disappeared into the sky.

‘Good view of that Drasil today,’ said Alyse. ‘I wouldn’t mind climbing one of them too, if it weren’t for the insects.’

‘Insects?’ Arthur didn’t like the sound of that. He wanted to ask more about what a Drasil was, but he had finally noticed that Alyse was looking at him suspiciously, and he was wondering if he had pushed the washed-out memory excuse too far.

‘Yes, Sunday’s guard insects that patrol the Drasils. And the trees defend themselves too, I’ve heard. You know, now that you’re clean, Ray, you don’t look much like a Piper’s child.’

‘I don’t?’ asked Arthur. The cascade of water had taken all the mud off his face.

‘Nope.’ Alyse had her hand on her wrench, and her eyes behind her rain-washed goggles were very cold.

Arthur let his hand fall onto his own wrench, and he tensed a little, ready to draw.

‘I reckon you must be some sort of short Denizen spy for the Big Boss. It’s bad enough having the Sorcerous Supernumeraries following us about, without a spy among us. So it’s time for you to—’