My eyes shot halfway open without my having to try. The sun glinted off a set of brass and glass instruments, all little cogs and swiveling shiny rods, arranged in front of Important and all pointed at me. He was not drumming his fingers. He was tapping away at brass knobs and reading things off dials.
I knew I should be really alarmed, but I was still too sleepy. I simply sank back into my zombie state and concentrated on being only half awake. If his instruments were registering the way I am when I’ve just woken up, I wasn’t going to interfere. Important’s irritable face was coming clearer to me now. He was the one with the mustache. It was a huge, bushy one.
“Recent ritual barely shows,” Important said. “This is completely inconclusive, damn it!”
“So we go with the vagrancy charge for now?” the other policeman asked.
“Seems like it,” said Important. He started booming at me again. “You! Stand straight while I talk to you!” I did my best. I sort of reslouched. “Better,” he said, “but not much. Public Works will soon teach you proper behavior. You’ve been lucky, very lucky. The honored Prayermaster you attacked said he wouldn’t prefer charges and your witch readings are only high enough to be suspicious. One notch more and you’d be above the legal limit. You’d be on your way to jail by now. As it is, I’m only detaining you on a charge of vagrancy. This is what happens to anyone we pick up who’s not carrying a Loggia entry permit or Loggia currency. You’re under curfew from this moment, understand? Are you listening?”
I nodded.
“Curfew,” he said. “That means you must report to the Clerk of Public Works on Level Fourteen before sunset. Their office will assign you work in the cloth factories and give you somewhere to sleep. If you’re found wandering any time after that, you get an automatic prison sentence. Understand?”
I nodded again.
“Right,” he said. “I’m legally obliged to hand you this token. Here it is. Come on. Take it.”
I put out my hand, and he passed me a big round disk of some kind. I didn’t look at it. I was staring at him and wondering if he ever breathed that mustache of his in. It was so big and fluffy, he could suffocate in his sleep. I wondered if I hoped he did. He was only doing his job, I supposed.
“This token entitles you to one free meal and one free night’s sleep,” he said. “After that you’ll have to work for a living like the rest of us do. Take him to the steps, Wright, and send him on his way.”
“Don’t I get my money and my key back?” I said.
“No,” he said. “All vagrant property is forfeit to the city. Get going. You’ve only got an hour before sunset.”
And I love you, too! I thought as the other policeman grabbed my arm and pulled me away to the outer door.
Outside, under the arches, the low sun glared in my eyes quite painfully from just above the opposite cliff. There seemed to be far fewer people around. Those who were around all looked fastidiously away as the policeman hauled me the few yards to the corner, where the massive tower was with the stairs and the lifts in it. The light was dim enough under it for me to be able to focus on the big fancy notices on its walls. LEVEL ELEVEN, one said. HAVE PASSES READY AT ALL TIMES, said the next. And the rest had arrows pointing to Lifts, Stairs, Main Shopping Arcade, Cloth Fair.
“Can I use the lift?” I asked the policeman.
“Lifts cost money,” he said, and pushed me toward Stairs. “Get climbing. All the eateries on Fourteen will take your token, but you’ll only have time to eat if you hurry. When the sun sets, you’ll hear a hooter. If you haven’t got to the PW office by then, you’ll be liable to arrest.”
A train came in down in the depths while he was talking, with a rush and a rumble and a wave of warm, smelly air. I thought how it must feel to be in a prison cell under those trains. I started climbing.
They were wide, elegant, cleanly cut stone steps, lit by fancy lamps overhead. I went up and up until I was sure that my feet would be out of sight of the policeman—if he bothered to wait and watch, that was—and then I stopped under a light and looked at the token. It was a big white enamel circle with blue enamel lettering on it. On one side it said “Loggia City Public Works,” and when I turned it over, it said “1 standard meal, sleep 1.”
This is all it takes to make you an official vagrant, I thought. I put the disk in my pocket and went on climbing to the next level. Fairly naturally, I expected it to be Level Twelve.
Not a bit of it. The next notice I came to said LEVEL ELEVEN A ? Residences 69–10042, pointing to even grander stairs on the right, and the one farther up after that pointed off to the left, saying ? LEVEL ELEVEN B House of Prayer for Holy Jazepta, College of High Prayermaster. The steps to this bit were brightly whitewashed, while the ordinary steps climbed on, straight ahead. It looked as if the levels were staggered up the cliff, not in straight rows as I’d thought. Level Twelve was quite a long climb farther up and nothing like so exclusive. The stairs had hollows from people climbing them, and the notice there just said ? Shops ?.
My legs ached by then—you know how they do when you’re short on sleep—so I wandered out on Twelve to take a rest. It was all small shops as far as I could see, spilled out like stalls into the arcade, very well lit and cheerful and busy. I could see jewelry and veg, books and clothes, toys and bread. After that the pillars got in the way. It was so cheerful there that I stood staring until I began to shiver. My clothes were still quite damp, and I noticed the chill when I wasn’t moving. I thought of dungeons under the railway and went back to the stairs.
I think Twelve A and Twelve B just said Houses and numbers, and Thirteen the same, though I was in a blur of climbing by then and didn’t pay much attention, except to notice that the steps were much more worn and dirty by then and the lights on the ceiling weaker. But I snapped to attention at Thirteen B. The notices there said ? Sex and Drugs ?.
“That’s frank, at least!” I panted. I wanted to stop and take a look, both ways, but I seemed to have been climbing for ages by then, and I was starving hungry. With the luck I’d been having in this place, I knew someone was just going to have served me up my One Standard Meal when the sunset hooter would go and I wouldn’t have time to eat it. So I put on speed, up really grotty steps that were cracked and crooked and filthy, with rubbish piled in the corners, and got up to Level Fourteen at last.
The first thing I saw there was a red-and-white enamel notice over the stairs to the next level. CAUTION, it said, HIGH
LEVELS OF RADIATION BEYOND THIS POINT.
“Oh, fun!” I said, and I was glad I didn’t have to go up there. The notices pointing each way along Level Fourteen said a whole list of factories, and the one pointing to the right added at the bottom, PUBLIC WORKS OFFICE, OPEN SUNRISE–SUNSET. “Right,” I said, and went that way. I could smell food along there, too.
The arcade there was much lower and narrower, and it was held up by big square pillars that I could see were just meant to support radioactive Level Fifteen and the rest and nothing to do with being pretty. The floor was black and sort of tarry. But the first thing I came to was a whole row of little caffs, crammed in together under the pillars, and those were all I could attend to by then. It was hours since those scarmbled eggs. I went along the row, looking.
That policeman had lied to me. Some of the caffs had menus in the windows saying FRESH SCOPPINS, 3 TOKES or 5 BINDALS, 4 TOKES and several had stacks of colored stickers showing you which factory they took tokens from, but only one had a notice saying PW TOKES TAKEN HERE. So I had to go into that one.
It was a really depressing greasy spoon, one of those places where the windows are running with sweat from the cooking and lighted with raw greenish strips that don’t give any light. People were queueing for food at a glassed-in counter at the far end, where a dreary, fat woman in an apron was slapping food on plates and calling out things like “You need another toke for bindals,” and “Peslow’s run out now.” When they’d got their plates, the people sat wearily down at worn plastic tables to eat it. The only thing that seemed to be free was the drink people kept fetching from a spigot in the wall. It looked yellowish and a little fizzy.