The Secret City by Carol Emshwiller Read Free Book Online Page B

the blood. It’s my floor.”
    It’s just a packed earth floor. I don’t know why she cares about it so much and why right now, but I scrape off the bloody layer and put it on the trash. Maybe she just doesn’t want me to watch or get in the way.
    When she’s almost done she says, “Well, shall I leave the beacon?”
    “I don’t know if he wants to go home or not.”
    “You want to.”
    “Of course I do. Isn’t that why we’re waiting here?”
    She says one of her dirty words. She knows them in lots of languages. There aren’t any in our own language. That says something about us being better than the natives. We never needed words like those.
    I say, “It’s better on our home world. Well isn’t it?” But I know she was a servant of some sort when she came over. For her it was different. Except she got to be the most important one up here because of her wisdom and her nursing.
    She says, “Some used to say so. They wanted things I didn’t care about.”
    “We’d better not take it out. We’d better wait till we can ask him. “
    “It’s now or now. If he wants it he can keep it in his pocket. And he’ll have to leave here anyway. I have enough to do without looking after him and trying to keep him from getting shot again.”
    If he goes, I hope it’s to the Down and that he’ll take me with him.
    Mollish hands me the beacon. “Get rid of that right away if he doesn’t want it, or better yet give it to me and I’ll lock it in the vault with the others.”
    “I’ll get rid of it.”
    I put it in my inside pocket and button it in. I’m going to keep it. I like having one all to myself instead of depending on the vault. Having one, means I won’t have to stay here in the city to get taken home. I won’t tell Lorpas and I especially won’t tell Mollish.

    LORPAS
    I WAKE TO A GREAT CREAKING AND GROANING . T HE whole room is shaking. Bits of earth trickle down the walls. The ceiling is low and slants inwards, corbelled. The walls are earth and stones. Tree roots grow down them. I’m underground. The trees above must be waving in the wind. It must be storming.
    There are two narrow dirty windows, high on the walls. A low door is cut into the roots on one side. There’s a small stove opposite. Its chimney goes up the wall, across the ceiling, and into the wall above the door. Probably to heat a room beyond.
    The ceiling is too low. I wonder if I can stand up. I wonder if I can squeeze out that little door. It’s too warm. I start to sweat. I’m breathless. I can’t stay here. I get up off the pallet. I’m dizzy, but I have to get out of here.
    The door sticks. Or did they lock me in? I kick at it. Both my shoulders hurt, but I can’t stand this place one second more. I bounce my whole weight against the door. It breaks. I rush into the next room.
    Allush and that other woman are there, cross-legged on the floor. It’s a bigger room and has a higher ceiling, but even so I have to get out. I rush at the door in front of me. No, that’s a closet or is it a vestibule? I push at the back.
    Allush yells, “This way, this way.” And shows me another door. I rush up stone steps and out, lift my face into the hail and wind, and can breathe again.
    That older woman (one of the old ones, still alive!) stands in the doorway. “What? What’s wrong? Is he crazy?”
    I collapse down on a boulder. I’m pelted with hail but glad to be out of there.
    Allush pulls at me. “Come back. You’re not well.”
    “I can’t stay underground.”
    “Where should I put you? You’ll get shot again.”
    She pulls me under a tumbledown roof not far from the … what to call it, the burrow? Sits beside me. The wind is blowing the hail sideways. The old one comes out with a tarp for us to huddle under and then goes back in. She doesn’t approve of me. I can see it on her face.
    “Are you all against me?”
    “
I’m
not.”
    “How many are here?”
    “We haven’t counted up. The old ones kept track, but we