The Secret City (5 page)

I must look as odd to her as she does to me. I need a shave and my mustache needs trimming. My hair has grown out after they shaved my head when I was in jail. (Ruth gave me my latest haircut. Not the best I ever had.) I must look naked to somebody used to a full head of hair and maybe to bearded men.

We stare at each other. I can’t help smiling. She must see how happy I am—must see how I’d like to run to her and hug her. I hope I don’t look too predatory. Hard as I try, I can’t wipe that grin off my face.

Finally I say, “Hello.”

She nods. A quick dip of the head.

“Can you speak?”

She nods.

“I’ll bet your name is Allush.”

Another nod.

“I’ll bet you’ve never seen an
allush
any more than I’ve seen a
lorp.”

Finally a slight smile.

“Allusha. Allusha.” I added the “ah” as if she was my lover. I’m so delighted I couldn’t help it. I’ve never said that to anybody. How can it be on the tip of my tongue?

She flinches. If she wasn’t sitting down, she’d have run away.

“I’m sorry.”

We sit. Silent. I’m finding it hard to just sit when what I want to do is grab her and hug, but I don’t want to scare her.

We’re so quiet ground squirrels rustle right next to us. A jay flies down, landing inches from Allush’s knee. I’ll bet she’s tamed them all.

Then, like an apparition, slowly, delicately, as if on tiptoe … out from the underbrush comes a white mule. She’s like a fairyland creature—as if out of an old tale told by the grandmothers. I almost expect her to have a unicorn horn.

The mule leans down and Allush reaches up, touches…. Tips of fingers to pinkish nose.

For a moment it’s magic, no sound, no rustlings even, and then the mule throws back her head and gives a great hee-haw, hee-haw, hee-haw.

ALLUSH

H
E LOOKS SO HAPPY AT SEEING ME
. I
CAN SEE IT
hurts him to smile but he can’t stop. No one has ever been this glad to see me ever before.

But then Pashty comes, makes a great noise and then trots away.

We laugh and he gets up and reaches towards me and I get up, too. We stare and reach but don’t touch. He’s one of us for sure—those aluminum-colored eyes.

Then we sit on the wall side by side, again carefully not touching. I hadn’t thought he’d feel as shy as I do but he does.

He wants to talk but hardly dares. He keeps starting to say something and then doesn’t. So we just sit.

Then there’s the sound of air, a swish. I know that sound. I shout, “No!” almost before it lands. An arrow. It hits him and he falls over backwards off the wall. I’m thinking he’s dead. I feel awful. Just when there’s a whole new person here, he’s gone already.

I jump down beside him.

He’s flat on his back. Stunned. But he’s not dead. The arrow is stuck in his arm.

There’s not much blood now, but there might be if I try to get it out.

At least down here we’re protected by the wall.

I know who did it. There’s nobody else who would. I wonder if he’ll shoot me, too.

I stand up and yell, “Youpas! Stop!”

Another arrow plinks into the wall beside me as though to warn me. Would he really?

And another.

I duck behind the wall again and huddle next to this new one called Lorpas.

We could crawl along the wall until we come to Mollish’s hut. She’ll know what to do.

“Can you crawl?”

“Wait a minute. Just a minute.”

He lies there, and then, slowly, turns over on hands and knees. I lead the way.

At Mollish’s, I push aside the brush and open the door. Mollish helps me pull him in, but when I tell her Youpas shot him, she’s angry that I would haul in a stranger who’s been shot by one of us. She says she won’t help, and I say I’ll use her things and help him anyway, and she says, “Well, I won’t stop you if that’s what you have to do.” I say, “Youpas always shoots first and then asks who it is.”

First thing, I give Lorpas elderberry liqueur and herbs to chew to put him out while Mollish sits at the table looking cross.

I cut away his shirt and reveal, not only the injury, but the burns on his other shoulder. As I examine his wound I see the home-call.

“Look, he has a beacon. His mother really cared about him. She must have given him hers. She wanted him to go home.” I say those first words in our language we all learned before we could hardly even call our Mamas. “I’m us of one-eighty-nine. Take me home. “

Mollish says, “Home!” as if disgusted with the whole idea.

I pull out the arrow. Suddenly there’s a lot of blood.

Mollish makes a disgusted noise again, kneels beside me and takes over. “Don’t just sit there, start wiping up 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 don’t bother anymore. We’re less and less all the time. It could just be us now, Mollish, Youpas, and me.”

“Are all your houses like that?”

“You’ll freeze out here and you have to hide.”

I turn and flop down so I’m flat on my back.

“Are you feeling all right?”

I’m not. Not at all. Now that I’m out from underground and not feeling claustrophobic, I realize how weak and dizzy and sick I feel.

“You can’t stay here.”

“I’d rather.”

She pulls the tarp up close around me. Says, “I know a place. I’ll go open it. Rest here now, but then you’ll have to walk. It’s across the avenue.”

All the way across the street! I wonder if I’ll have to climb stairs. Maybe I could crawl. I wonder where my cane is. Probably back where I got shot. Plenty of wood for a new cane here, but that one belonged to my friend Ruth.

Then I remember my beacon. I feel at my armpit to see if it’s gone and it is. Finally and thank goodness. They must have taken it out along with the arrow. I hope they took it well away from here.

I listen to hail on the tumbledown roof and the tarp. This had seemed like a paradise. And I could—sort of could—see what Mother meant. There’s a kind of grandeur to the phony buildings different from what the natives have. I want to stay. Maybe with Allush. If she doesn’t mind a disfigured cripple. But if everybody lives underground, and if one of my own kind already hates me enough to shoot me….

I doze. Maybe pass-out. I don’t know how long it takes until they come back. Allush and that woman.

“This is Mollish. She’ll help.”

She’s not dressed all in skins as Allush is. She’s wearing worn out store-bought clothes. A black turtleneck and torn black jeans, faded so as to be almost white in spots. Over them she wears what looks like a rabbitskin vest—several skins all pieced together.

I thought all the old ones would have died by now, but Mollish is still going. Pure white hair. Handsome—in our way, the natives wouldn’t think so. It can’t be easy for an old person to live up here. The ground all around the Secret City is rough and rocky. Even rocky right in the middle of the city. But I can feel how strong she is as they help me, one on each side, across the street and up the steps. They argue about me every slow step of the way. Mollish doesn’t want me around. I ask why not?

“We’re getting along just fine without you.”

The huge, huge door carved out of the granite cliff is open just far enough for us to squeeze in. I don’t think it can open any farther. Inside there’s a cavernous hall. Four small windows near the ceiling. More just holes than windows. An oil lamp burns in the middle of the floor, even so it’s dark. Dust flies about. They’ve brought a pan of broth and a little stove. It’s cold. Much colder than outside. I suppose Allush thought this room would be big enough to be all right for me but it isn’t.

Again… all of a sudden I have the energy. I squeeze out the door and sit down on the steps—again breathless. I can’t imagine anybody, neither us nor the natives, being able to live like that. And I’m not more claustrophobic than most. Or at least not that I knew until this.

Now that I’m out of there I’m cold. The hail has stopped but the wind is still blowing. Trees are still whipping back and forth. Allush and the other one come and stand in the doorway again.

“What will we do with him?”

The old one says, “Take him to where the archeologists camped.”

Allush says, “He’ll never make it that far. Besides, Youpas will shoot at us again.”