The Shockwave Rider (19 page)

Who became uncomfortable. Both of them had overlooked one problem involved in traveling around the paid-avoidance zones, being so used to the devices that in theory could eliminate the need for baggage from the plug-in life-style. At all modern hotels could be found ultrasonic clothing cleansers capable of ridding even the bulkiest garment of its accumulated dust and grime in five minutes, and when the cloth began to give way under repeated applications of this violent treatment, there were other machines that would credit you for the fiber, tease it apart, store it for eventual re-use, and issue another garment the same size but a different style and/or color, debbing the customer for the additional fiber and the work involved. Nothing like that was to be found at Lap-of-the-Gods.

Kate had snatched up toilet gear for them before departure, including an old-fashioned reciprocating-head razor left behind by one of her boyfriends, but neither had thought to bring spare clothing. Consequently they were by now looking, and even more feeling, dirty … and those strange eyes constantly scanning them made them fidget.

But things could have been a great deal worse. In many places people would have felt it their duty to put hostile questions to wanderers whose clothes looked as though they had been slept in and who carried almost no other possessions. Luggage might have dwindled; the list of what people felt to be indispensable had long ago reached the stage where both sexes customarily carried bulky purses when bound for any but their most regular destinations.

Yet until they were almost at the end of their journey no one in the railcar, except the informative driver, addressed anything but a greeting to them.

By then they had been able to look over the neighborhood, which they found impressive. The rich alluvial soil was being efficiently farmed; watered by irrigation channels topped up by wind-driven pumps, orchards and cornfields and half-hectare plots of both leaf and root vegetables shimmered in the sun. That much one could have seen anywhere. Far more remarkable were the buildings. They were virtually invisible. Like partridges hiding among rough grass, some of them eluded the eye altogether until a change of angle revealed a line too straight to be other than artificial, or a flash of sunlight on the black glass of a solar energy collector. The contrast with a typical modern farm, a factory-like place where standard barns and silos prefabricated out of concrete and aluminum were dumped all anyhow, was astonishing.

In a low voice he said to Kate, “I’d like to know who designed these farms. This isn’t junk cobbled together by refugees in panic. This is the sort of landscaping a misanthropic millionaire might crave but not afford! Seen anything as good anywhere else?”

She shook her head. “Not even at Protempore, much as I liked it. I guess maybe what the refugees originally botched up didn’t last. When it fell to bits they were calm enough to get it right on the second try.”

“But this is more than just
right.
This is
magnificent.
The town itself can’t possibly live up to the same standard. Are we in sight of it yet, by the way?”

Kate craned to look past the driver. Noticing, a middle-aged woman in blue seated on the opposite side of the car inquired, “You haven’t been to Precipice before?”

“Ah … No, we haven’t.”

“Thought I didn’t recognize you. Planning to stay, or just passing through?”

“Can people stay? I thought you had a population limit.”

“Oh, sure, but we’re two hundred under at the moment. And in spite of anything you may have heard”—a broad grin accompanied the remark—“we like to have company drop in. Tolerable company, that is. My name’s Polly, by the way.”

“I’m Kate, and—”

Swiftly inserted: “I’m Alexander—Sandy! Say, I was just wondering who laid out these farms. I never saw buildings that fit so beautifully into a landscape.”

“Ah! Matter of fact, I was about to tell you, go see the man who does almost all our building. That’s Ted Horovitz. He’s the sheriff, too. You get off at Mean Free Path and walk south until you hit Root Mean Square and then just ask for Ted. If he’s not around, talk to the mayor—that’s Suzy Dellinger. Got that? Fine. Well, nice to have met you, hope to see you around, this is where I get off.”

She headed for the door.

Involuntarily Kate said, “Mean Free Path? Root Mean Square? Is that some kind of joke?”

There were four other passengers at this stage of the journey. All of them chuckled. The driver said over his shoulder, “Sure, the place is littered with jokes. Didn’t you know?”

“Kind of rarefied jokes, aren’t they?”

“I guess maybe. But they’re a monument to how Precipice got started. Of all the people who got drove south by the Bay Quake, the ones who came here were the luckiest. Ever hear mention of Claes College?”

Kate exploded just as he began to say he hadn’t.

“You mean
this
was ‘Disasterville U.S.A.’?” She was half out of her seat with excitement, peering eagerly along the curved track toward the town that was now coming into view. Even at first glance, it promised that indeed it did maintain the standard set by the outlying farms; at any rate, there was none of the halfhearted disorganization found at the edge of so many modern communities, but a real sense of border: here, rural; there, urban. No, not after all a sharp division. A—a—

An ancient phrase came to mind:
dissolving view.

But there was no chance to sort out his confused initial impressions; Kate was saying urgently, “Sandy, you must have heard of Claes, surely … ? No? Oh, that’s terrible!”

She dropped back into her seat and gave him a rapid-fire lecture.

“Claes College was founded about 1981 to revive the medieval sense of the name, a community of scholars sharing knowledge regardless of arbitrary boundaries between disciplines. It didn’t last; it faded away after only a few years. But the people involved left one important memorial. When the Bay Quake let go, they dropped everything and moved
en masse
to help with relief work, and someone hit on the idea of undertaking a study of the social forces at work in the post-catastrophe period so that if it ever happened again the worst tragedies could be avoided. The result was a series of monographs under the title ‘Disaster ville U.S.A.’ I’m amazed you never heard of it.”

She rounded on the driver. “Practically nobody has heard of it! I must have mentioned it a hundred times and always drawn a blank. But it’s not only important—it’s unique.”

Dryly the driver said, “You didn’t mention it at Precipice, that’s for sure. We grow up on it in school. Ask Brad Compton the librarian to show you our first edition.”

He applied the brakes. “Coming up to Mean Free now!”

Mean Free Path was indeed a path, winding among shrubs, trees and—houses? They had to be. But they were something else, too. Yes, they had roofs (although the roofs were never four-square) and walls (what one could see of them through masses of creeper) and doubtless doors, none of which happened to be visible from where they had left the railcar … already out of sight and sound despite its leisurely pace, lost in a tunnel of greenery.

“They are like the farms,” Kate breathed.

“No.” He snapped his fingers. “There’s a difference, and I just figured out what it is. The farms—they’re factors in landscape. But these houses
are
landscape.”

“That’s right,” Kate said. Her voice was tinged with awe. “I have the most ridiculous feeling. I’m instantly ready to believe that an architect who could do this …” The words trailed away.

“An architect who could do this could design a planet,” he said briefly, and took her arm to urge her onward.

Though the path wound, it was level enough to ride a cycle or draw a cart along, paved with slabs of rock conformable to the contour of the land. Shortly they passed a green lawn tinted gold by slanting sunshine. She pointed at it.

“Not a garden,” she said. “But a glade.”

“Exactly!” He put his hand to his forehead, seeming dizzy. Alarmed, she clutched at him.

“Sandy, is something the matter?”

“No—yes—no … I don’t know. But I’m okay.” Dropping his arm, he blinked this way, then that. “It just hit me. This is
town
—yes? But it doesn’t feel like it. I simply know it must be, because …” He swallowed hard. “Seeing it from the railcar, could you have mistaken this place for anything else?”

“Never in a million years. Hmm!” Her eyes rounded in wonder. “That’s a hell of a trick, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and if I didn’t realize it was therapeutic I could well be angry. People don’t enjoy being fooled, do they?”

“Therapeutic?” She frowned. “I don’t follow you.”

“Set-destruction. We use sets constantly instead of seeing what’s there—or feeling or tasting it, come to that. We have a set ‘town,’ another ‘city,’ another ‘village’ … and we often forget there’s a reality the sets were originally based on. We’re in too much of a hurry. If this effect is typical of Precipice, I’m not surprised it gets so little space in the guidebook. Tourists would find a massive dose of double-take indigestible. I look forward to meeting this poker Horovitz. As well as being a builder and a sheriff I think he must be a …”

“A what?”

“A something else. Maybe something I don’t know a word for.”

The path had been a path. The square proved not to be a square, more a deformed cyclic quadrilateral, but it implied all the necessary elements of a public urban space. It was a great deal bigger than one might have guessed. They found this out by crossing it. Part of it, currently deserted, was paved and ornamented with flower-filled urns; part was park-like, though miniaturized, a severe formal garden; part sloped down to a body of water, less a lake than a pond, some three or four meters below the general level of the land, from whose banks steps rose in elegant curves. Here there were people: old folk on benches in the sun, two games of fencing in progress amid the inevitable cluster of kibitzers, while down by the water—under the indulgent but watchful eyes of a couple of teeners—some naked children were splashing merrily about in pursuit of a huge light ball bigger than any two of their heads.

And enclosing this square were buildings of various heights linked together by slanting roofs and pierced by alleyways but for which they would have composed a solid terrace. As it was, every alley was bridged at first-story level and every bridge was ornamented with delicate carvings in wood or stone.

“My God,” Kate said under her breath. “It’s incredible. Not town. Not here. This is
village.
”

“And yet it’s got the city implicit in it—the Grand’ Place, the Plaza Mayor, Old London Bridge … Oh, it’s fantastic! And look a bit more closely at the houses. They’re ecofast, aren’t they? Every last one of them! I wouldn’t be surprised to find they’re running off ground heat!”

She paled a little. “You’re right! I hadn’t noticed. One thinks of an ecofast house as being—well, kind of one cell for a honeycomb, factory-made. There are ecofast communities around KC, you know, and they have no more character than an anthill!”

“Let’s track down the sheriff at once. I can stand just so many unanswered questions at one go. Excuse me!” He approached the group around the fencing tables.

“Where do we find Ted Horovitz?”

“Through that alley,” one of the watchers said, pointing. “First door on your right. If he’s not there, try the mayor’s office. I think he has business with Suzy today.”

Again, as they moved away, they felt many curious eyes on them. As though visitors were a rarity at Precipice. But why weren’t there thousands of them, millions? Why wasn’t this little town famous the world around?

“Though of course if it were famous—”

“Did you say something?”

“Not exactly. This must be the door. Mr. Horovitz?”

“Come right in!”

They entered, and found themselves in an extraordinary room at least ten meters long. Conventionally enough furnished, with chairs and a desk and sundry cases crammed with books and cassettes, it was more like a forest clearing bright with ferns or a cave behind a waterfall hung with strands of glistening vegetation than anybody’s office. Greenish light, reflected from wind-wavered panels outside irregular windows, flickered on flock-sprayed surfaces as soft as moss.

Turning to greet them from a carpenter’s bench that had seen long service was a stocky man in canvas pants with big pockets full of tools, laying aside a wooden object whose outline was at first elusive, then suddenly familiar: a dulcimer.

In the same moment something moved, emerging from shadow beside the workbench. A dog. A vast, slow-moving graceful dog whose ancestry might have included Great Dane, Irish wolfhound, possibly husky or Chinook … plus something else, something strange, for its skull was improbably high-domed and its eyes, deep-set, looked disturbingly uncanine.

Kate’s fingers clamped vise-tight on his arm. He heard her gasp.

“No need to be alarmed,” the man rumbled in a voice half an octave nearer the bass than might have been guessed from his size. “Never met a dog like this before? You’re in for an educational experience. His name is Natty Bumppo. Hold still a moment while he reads you. Sorry, but this is S.O.P. for any visitor. Nat, how do they rate? Any hard drugs—excessive liquor—anything apart from being a bit scared?”