The Merlin Conspiracy (21 page)

He seemed quite friendly. He went on sewing away and said, “Ask away, lad,” in what sounded like a strong country accent.

“Then, is the radiation from the planes in the airfield?” I said.

“No, no, that's from the sun,” he said, and bit off his blue-green yarn and threaded his needle with more, all in one movement like a conjuring trick.

He bent to the embroidery again, and a woman just beyond, sewing at the same cloth—only she was using golden green—said, “You shouldn't really be up here before sunset, my dear.” She had a growth, too, an oozy one, on her sewing arm.

“Yes, but they arrested me for a vagrant,” I said.

“Ah, they do that,” someone else said, from the flower embroidery on my other side. “They're always needing workers to make cloth for us.”

By this time everybody seemed friendly. A lot of children who weren't fetching things at that moment came scampering along the edge of the cliff and balanced by the top of the stairs to stare at me. “Where are you from?” a girl asked me.

“Earth,” I said.

They all laughed. “Silly!” said the girl. “
This
is Earth, and you're not from here!”

“Yes, but,” I said, “there are a lot of Earths. I think I've been on at least three lately.”

“Ooh!” said a little one right behind me. “You mean, like Romanov?”

That made me jump. I came out in gooseflesh with excitement. “Romanov?” I said. “Has
Romanov
been here?”

“Yes, indeed,” said the old man beside my leg. “He was here earlier today. He comes through quite often, you know—to gain altitude, he says. In the other worlds he goes to, the ground is higher than Level Eleven, so he comes in at Eleven and leaves from here.”

“Romanov's been very good to us,” said the woman with the growth on her arm.

“Surely has,” the old man agreed. “He brings a new sunshield spell for us every time he comes by. My grandchildren can grow up without getting something like this.” He left off sewing for an instant and tapped at the growth on his face. It sounded like someone patting a crusty loaf. “A good man, Romanov. Do you know him well?”

“I only met him this morning,” I said. “At least—I
think
it was morning, but it may have been yesterday. I'm trying to find him again. Do you know where he went?”

The old man shrugged as he sewed. “Back home by now, I'd think. You want to go back down to Eleven and go from there.”

“You should go back down anyway, dear,” the woman with the bad arm said. “The sun's doing you no good, even low as it is.”

“You can do
ten minutes
!” the girl balancing beside me asserted. “Romanov
told
me.”

Ten minutes, I thought. I want to find out everything I can in those ten minutes. I pointed up at the wire fence. “How do they manage up in the airfield, if the radiation's that bad?”

A chuckle ran round everyone near. “They come up through trapdoors in fat white suits!” someone called out, three embroideries over.

“They do most of the flying by night,” someone else said. “Loggia people do a lot by night. It's safest.”

I looked over at the bright speck of the plane in the distance. It was coming down to land near the shiny things. “Brave pilot,” I said.

“Oh, no. The planes are all protected,” the old man said. “Prayermasters put spells on them.”

“Oh,” I said. “And what's that shiny place over there where the plane went?”

“Those are called xanadus,” a kid behind me said.

“Though don't ask us why,” the old man added. “They're the domes where they grow all the vegetables and suchlike.”

“Nipling?” I asked.

Everyone laughed and groaned. “That stuff!”

While we were laughing, the sun went down. Just like that, it was blue dark. Lights came on the next second, fixed to the houses. To my surprise, everyone bent over the embroidery and went on sewing as if nothing had happened, including the old man, who was laughing so hard that the growth on his face jiggled. It looked like a rat clinging to him.

A second or so later hooters sounded from below, all over the city, lots of loud, howling noises like a herd of unhappy cows. That's it! I thought. I'm illegal now.

“That nipling!” the old man said, speaking through the howling. I could tell he was so used to the hooters that he hardly noticed them. “I tell you, they have a hard job
stopping
nipling growing! Comes up all over in their flower pots, whatever they do. They keep trying to give it away. But we won't have it, workers won't touch it. I heard they feed it to the prisoners these days.”

I shuddered. I could still taste the stuff. I thought of jail under the railways and a diet of nipling, and I suddenly felt very anxious indeed. “What do you think I should do?” I said. “You said I'd need to go down to Level Eleven, but I'll be arrested now the hooters have gone.”

“They give you half an hour's grace,” the woman with the bad arm said.

The old man chuckled again. “Didn't tell you that, did they? They like to keep you frightened in Public Works. But you'd be surprised how many curfew people seem to get held up on the stairs, getting back to their workhouses. I've known some who get delayed for whole nights.” He raised his head for a moment. I
think
he was winking, but he did it with the eye that was mixed up with the growth and I wasn't sure.

“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks for telling me.”

“You're welcome,” he said. “But before you go, do you mind if we ask
you
a question—me and my sons and daughters?” His hand went out, with the needle in it, and he wasn't sewing, for a wonder; he was pointing to the six other people round the green embroidery, including the woman with the bad arm.

“Fine,” I said. “Go ahead.”

I supposed he was going to ask me what I was doing here. I told you, I'm very self-centered. But he said, “This big square we're doing, it's a new idea of mine. It's not finished yet, but take a look at it. Think of yourself as a very rich man, and tell me if you'd want to spend good money on it, and why.”

Actually, I am pretty rich.
Very
rich, really. But I was ashamed to tell him, and I didn't think he'd have believed me anyway. I looked down at the square. I'd been admiring it out of the corner of my eye even before the sun set. Now the lights were on it, it was like something alive and growing, all greens and golds and coils that seemed almost to move. There were still white patches all over it where they hadn't embroidered yet, but I could see the main design, and it was
fabulous
.

“It's fabulous!” I told them. “I'd pay a
lot
. It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.” It came into my mind that Dad would love it. He'd been talking about wanting something to hang on the wall of his study. He said he was sick of staring at a blank wall. If I could have thought of a way to pay for it and get it home, I'd have put in an order for it then and there.

The old man said, “Now, here's our question. If you were this rich man, what would you do with our square when you'd bought it?”

“Hang it on the wall,” I said. “Just have it there and stare at it. It would be different every time I looked at it, I know it would.”

The old man banged his knee delightedly. “There, you
see
!” he said. It was clear they'd had a few family arguments about his new idea. Everyone else sewing on it glanced up at me and beamed, looking relieved.

“Well, it's good to know we're not working for nothing,” the woman with the bad arm said. “I'd hate to think of it cut up for clothing.” Then she called out to the smallest kid balancing beside me. “Sibbie, go down and tell him when there's no one about on Fourteen. But go careful. I don't want you ending up in a factory.”

This made everything much simpler. I waved good-bye and followed Sibbie down the slippery tiled stairs to the bend. When she beckoned from the bottom to show it was all clear, I scudded down and across the tarry floor of Fourteen and went galloping away between the drifts of rubbish on the next lot of stairs.

There were a lot of people on the stairs below those, and more the further down I got. Voices and footsteps and loud music sounded from nearly every level I came to. What they'd told me was true: people did a lot at night here. I suppose it was safer not to come out in the sunlight, even on the lower levels.

When I met the first crowds, around the
Sex, Drugs
level, I was quite scared. But I noticed that there was not a single policeman about on the stairs. If I were them, I'd have patrolled the stairs all the time, but that must have seemed like too much hard work to them in those curly yellow boots. So I kept a look on my face that said, “I'm not important, and I know just what I'm doing,” and went on pushing and galloping my way down. Nobody even looked at me.

I went a bit more cautiously when I got to the
House of Prayer
notice. There was loud, droning chanting coming from there, which gave me a sort of fizzing feeling. Magic being done, I thought. Must be official magic. Go carefully. Anyway, my knees were aching by then. I went down the last flights very sedately and slowed right down when I got near Level Eleven. Easy to do. That last stretch was pretty crowded. I slid slowly down with my back against the wall and looked over people's heads at the Level Eleven archway below.

Before long I saw a couple of policemen parade past down there, parting the crowd like butter. Good. I knew they wouldn't parade back for at least five minutes. I put on speed and hurried out under the massive arch, along the way that I'd been coming from when I'd thought I'd seen Romanov. I
still
couldn't see how I made that stupid mistake.

It was really lively along that arcade. People were laughing, talking, strolling along, listening to a group of musicians, applauding, and rushing in and out of the brightly lit shops. Some of those were still selling embroidered cloth. I saw the identical patterns I'd seen being sewn up on Level Fifteen. But some shops seemed to have turned into dance halls or places to drink, and I had real trouble recognizing the one opposite where I'd first come out. I worked out that it had been a bit along from one of the hoists, and in the end I was sure it must be the one where people were sitting out at tables, pouring drinks from big, fancy teapots and eating sticky cakes.

I looked for the path, sort of sideways on from everything. And there it was, dark and steep and rocky, and glistening faintly with rain. It was just the shop that had changed. I shot into that path like a rat up a drainpipe.

I was in pitch dark the next second and stumbling about on that rocky surface, where I found myself sort of replaying in my mind those last instants before I shot into the darkness. It seemed to me that I had seen some familiar faces staring at me as I went. One was definitely Mizz Jocelyn, only she had changed for the evening from pink and mauve into beige and violent green. Another was a man in a suit embroidered like a flower bed. He had this big, fluffy mustache, and it seemed to me that he could have been Important having an evening out in ordinary clothes—if you could call a bed of dahlias ordinary. There was another one, too, a sharp-faced boy about my own age. I thought he might just have been that Prayermaster's elder son....

But they were there in that mad city, and I was here, now, in the path. I felt my way over to the left-hand wall and kept my hand trailing along the gritty, wet rockface until I felt the promontory that had divided the two branching paths. I swung round into the right-hand fork there in triumph.

Or modified triumph anyway.

It was wet and pitch dark, and I couldn't seem to make another of those blue flames whatever I did. The drunk had only
given
it to me. He hadn't told me how to do it myself. I fumbled my way on, feeling less and less triumphant. I still had two people to help before I could get anywhere, and as soon as I remembered that, I began feeling really tired. I almost lay down on the wet rock and went to sleep. The only thing that stopped me was a strong notion that if I did, I wouldn't get up again. The slitherings and flappings were back again. They sounded hungry to me.

I tried singing, like the drunk. But that came out wavering and scared. So I tried to think about something else. I thought about Loggia City. What a crazy system it was, putting the people who did the embroidery right at the top where the sun would kill them. If they all died, the shops would have nothing to sell! I was really glad that Romanov was giving them sunshield spells. It proved that Romanov was a good thing, and I was not making a mistake trying to find him.

I tried not to think of the way Romanov had despised me.

I thought about the girl, Roddy, instead. If she hadn't wanted me to deal with her politics, I'd have made a real effort to get through to her. She was quite something. I kept getting a sort of jolt every time I remembered the way she had stood balanced on that hillside. But she had looked at me as if I was a sort of tool, and I didn't go for that. And I just couldn't see myself, not ever, doing anything about Kings and Merlins and suchlike. I'd gone out of my way, after all, not to have anything to do with ruling or rulers. No, that would have to wait for a few years.