Authors: Andre Norton
OUTSIDE
1
Inside
T
he city was very large. When Kristie had been one of the real Littles, she used to make herself dizzy by lying on her back and looking up. Far overhead was the dome, sealing in all the buildings. But it was so high above the broken-down wiggle-walk that Kristie only saw it as a dull mist.
Under the dome, the city was widespread. Kristie had never known anyone who had gone clear to either end where there were supposed to be gates to the Outside. Not even one of the Bigs as tall and brave as her brother Lew had seen the gates. There was too much Inside.
Also, the gates were of no use. Long ago, years and years before Kristie had been born and before all the Olds had died of
the fever, the gates had been fastened tight and were to stay that way forever. Everyone said Outside was bad. You could not breathe because of the poisoned air. There was nothing left alive anymore.
Once Outside must have been wonderful! Some of the Bigs said that the story tapes about Outside were all lies. They were sure it was different from what the readers showed. But Lew said that this wasn't true. All had been just as the tapes said, only very long ago, before the dome had been put over the city.
Lew liked reading tapes more than most of the Bigs. When Kristie had been little, he had taken her with him to the teaching center where there were tapes for Littles, too. And Lew had run one of the readers just for her while he watched another.
The story tapes were all made up. Lew had explained carefully to her about the difference between a made-up story and what had once been real but was not now. Sometimes Kristie wondered how Lew could be so sure that Outside was gone. If no one had even tried to find the gates or to look out, then how could one be sure? Kristie had her own
ideas about what might be there though she never told anyone.
The Olds had all died with the fever. Lew was nine years old when it happened, and Kristie was just a baby. There were only a few Crowds left now—Lew's and Brad's and a couple more Kristie had heard the Bigs talk about.
Each Crowd had their street of homes and their own looting places. Sometimes they visited. But mostly they kept to their own streets. The wiggle-walks, which used to carry people across the city, did not run anymore. And in some places the breathers had broken down, so there was only stale, bad air.
Kristie knew their street and she knew the way to the teaching center very well. She had gone looting twice with Fanna, Peggy and Lew. They hunted canned food and clothing, which proved that the Bigs thought Kristie was not a real Little anymore.
But what lay beyond their own territory? Kristie was not even sure which way one would go to get to a gate and maybe see Outside. However, just the night before she'd had an idea. Now she sat on the stalled wiggle-walk while she waited for Lew and thought about it.
There were so many tapes in the teaching center. Fanna went there often because she wanted to learn from the tapes how to make sick people well. Lew looked at tapes about how to run old machines and what life used to be like in the city.
Most of the Bigs and Littles of the Crowd did not care much about learning things. They would rather loot or sit around listening to music packs. Lew said they were dummies.
But Kristie was not a dummy. Today she was going to prove it. Somewhere among all the tapes there ought to be one about the city. Perhaps it would show how one could travel from place to place without getting lost. Such a guide must show the gates. If she could learn how to reach one of the gates, then she would go there.
She had to know—she just had to—whether Outside was as Lew said, a place where no one could breathe or live. Or whether it was as the tapes showed—all green, with water running out in the open over the ground. There might be colored flowers, bright as the pieces of cloth the looters found, and furry things—furry things that could be alive!
Kristie could hardly believe the wonder of that, though Lew told her it had once been true. The only furry things alive Inside were rats.
She shivered when she thought of them. Horrid things! The Bigs shot them with stunners whenever they could. But the furry animals on the tapes were not a bit like rats, not in the least.
“Kristie? Ready to go?”
She jumped eagerly to her feet. Lew stood there alone, so she guessed that Fanna was not going today. Lew was growing so tall that, even though he was a Big, he looked like some of the Olds on the tapes. No one could remember just how many birthdays anyone had had. Kristie wasn't even sure she was nine years old, but she did know Lew was a lot older than she.
He had a nice face and he smiled a lot. And the other Bigs listened to him when there was something important to be
decided. Lew was the leader of the Crowd, which made him an important person. He wore a stunner and a beam-light on his belt. Today he had on a new shirt, too, which they had found looting. It was red and Kristie thought red was just right for Lew with his dark hair.
Together they went along the wiggle-walk. Kristie could just remember when it was still running. You did not walk then; you did not have to. The wiggle-walk moved and you just stood, or sat in one of the seats scattered along it, and let it carry you. But it had not run for a long time.
“Lew,” Kristie gave a skip to catch up with her brother. Sometimes Lew walked too fast, as if he forgot that a person with shorter legs was with him. He must be thinking about something, probably something he wanted to learn more about from one of the tapes. “Lew, why doesn't the wiggle-walk run anymore? Or the elevators go up and down?”
He was frowning, not at her, but because he did not want to think about a problem.
“Because the machines that ran them all broke down,” he explained. “And we don't know how to fix them.” Then he began to whistle and Kristie knew he did not want to talk about it anymore.
She could guess why. Inside was run by machines. The breathers were machines, too. And the breathers, Kristie shivered—what if all the breathers broke? What would become of the Crowd then? She did not want to think about it; she would not let herself. No, she would think about her plan because, if Outside was not as Lew thought, then they could go
there. And they would not have to worry about any old machines breaking down ever again!
Kristie began to sing softly to herself; her words matched Lew's whistling. He never liked music from the bing-bong tapes. Instead he learned tunes from the reading machines, just as she did. This was a nice one. She skip-hopped in time to it as she sang:
“
London Bridge is falling down
,Falling down, falling down
—”
Lew looked at her and laughed. “Like that one, do you?” Kristie nodded but did not stop her singing:
“
London Bridge is falling down,My fair lady!"
Lew reached down and swung her lightly to another wiggle-walk that ran off to the side, a little below the one from their own street. Then he jumped down beside her.
“Where's London?” Kristie asked.
“Across the sea, if it's still there. When the cities were sealed, it was still one of them,” Lew told her. “But after the fever we never heard from any of the other cities again. The communication center quarters were sealed. Too many people died in there and then the breather blew. We never got back to the big broadcaster again.”
“Across the sea,” Kristie repeated. From the tapes she knew what a sea was. A big lot of water, big enough to swallow up the whole city. Yes, she knew what the sea was,
but it was hard to picture it in her mind. “I wish I could see the sea.”
Lew frowned at her and shook his head. “Never again, Kristie. The cities are all sealed. Outside is poison. There are no breathers there to clean the air, so you would die.”
“Why did the Olds make the air poison?”
Lew shrugged impatiently. “You know why, Kristie. They just didn't care. They let all kinds of bad things get into the air. Then, when they began to worry about what was happening, it was already too late to stop. All they could do was seal the cities. That didn't work too well either. Some breathers got bad. And there were sicknesses like the fever to kill the Olds off.”
He was walking faster, as if he wanted to leave behind the bad things he could remember. Kristie, glancing at his face, did not ask any more questions. Sometimes Lew seemed to be far away, even though he was close enough for her to reach out and touch.
They came to the teaching center before Lew spoke again. As they turned in at the big door, he asked:
“What will it be today, Kristie?”
“I don't know. But I can pick for myself, Lew. You know I can run a reader just as well as you can.” She wanted a chance to follow her own plan.
“All right. But don't go back home without me—” he warned.
Kristie nodded absently. She was wondering just where, among all the stacks of stored tapes, she could find some
about the city. And she was very glad when Lew left her in the lower room and went off to hunt for his own material.
Kristie knew where the history tapes were. She had found some of her Outside ones there. Today she paid no attention to them. Instead she read labels here and there, searching the shelves for tapes about the city itself. And, to her joy, she finally came across a whole section with the proper labeling.
She needed early ones, she was sure. Perhaps she could find one about the sealing of the gates. Kristie made a careful selection, took the early tapes to the nearest reader, and wound the first tape into the machine.
There were three possible tapes but Kristie ran them all to make sure she had the one she wanted. The second one threw a map on the small screen. Kristie pressed the button marked “hold.” She had seen maps before and knew they could be used to guide an explorer.
Now she hunched forward eagerly on the very edge of the reader seat, hunting among the map's lines for a place she already knew. There was no explain talk with the picture. Perhaps those who had taped it had not thought it necessary.
Kristie found her starting point, the very building in which she now sat. With her fingertip touching the screen, she began to trace ways branching out from the learning center. Her excitement grew as she saw that the learning center was not far, at least on the map, from a big red dot on the dome wall where it must touch ground surface.
That dot must surely mark a gate!
Kristie had a suspicion that the distance which seemed so
short on the pictured map might be much farther when one walked the stalled wiggle-walks. So she traced the map's lines in the other direction, back to the Crowd's own street. Then, with her fingers, she carefully measured the two distances and compared them as best she could.
Why it was only a teeny bit farther, just about the length of her fingernail on the map! Kristie had no idea how far a journey it could be but she guessed it was not too long.
She switched off the map after studying the three turns she must make and counting the buildings along each track where they were marked off by tiny squares. When the screen went dark, she made herself think about the map in detail. Then she switched the picture on once more to compare it with her remembered lines and squares. She had been right, recalling every bit of it!
Kristie slid off the reader seat and walked softly down the corridor of stored tapes. She could hear the steady murmur of a reader voice long before she pushed between two tall cases to peer at Lew.
He sat with his back to her, gazing steadily at the lighted screen and its pictures and listening to what seemed to be a very boring explanation about machines. Lately Lew had been more and more interested in such tapes. She wondered if he were trying to learn how to start the stalled machines. Perhaps so. There must be tapes which would tell how to do that.
However, she was more interested in the fact that he had a pile of tapes to be fed into the reader. It was plain he planned
to stay for some time yet. Time enough for her to visit the gate?
Kristie was not sure. Only the longer she stayed here, just watching Lew, the more time she was wasting. So she turned and ran on tiptoe back down the long hall and out into the empty street.
This way! She turned left and hurried along, putting as much distance between herself and the learning center as she could. And as fast as she could. When she turned the second corner she slowed down a little.
It was very quiet here. Even the constant sighing of the breathers sounded faint and far away. Kristie slowed even more. Were the breathers stopped in the section through which she must pass? Well, if they were, she could turn back easily enough.
No, this was her chance to see, truly see, if there was a way Outside, and if Outside was what Lew said—all dead forever and ever.
Squaring her shoulders, Kristie marched ahead, determined to learn the truth for herself.
2
Shadows by the Gate
H
ere it was so lonely, so quiet—so—so—Kristie's chin was firm. No, she was
not
afraid of this strange part of the city. Maybe she had never been alone before between these very tall and silent buildings where the windows looked back at you like great blank eyes. But really, this was just like the street where the Crowd lived. It was!
Only—she licked her lips and clenched her hands into fists. This was silly. Just what a Little would do—believe that now and then something peered down at her from a window, only to flash away when she glanced up. There was no one here!
Her feet made a padding sound on the dusty surface of the dead wiggle-walk. Here was the second corner where she must turn. For a moment Kristie paused and shut her eyes to recall the map picture as fully as she could. The fact that she could call it firmly to mind when she did this was reassuring.
Beyond was another row of tall buildings. But at ground
level were the wide shop windows. Kristie was drawn by the sight of them. Why, these still had things in the windows! Another time she might have gone looting. But she did not have the time now, not if she were to reach the gate place and be back before Lew discovered she was gone.