Truckers (7 page)

“Yes?” he said politely.

The stranger sighed. “You're supposed to shake it,” he said.

“I am? Why?”

“It's traditional. My name's Dorcas del Icatessen.” The stranger gave Masklin a lopsided grin. “Do you know yours?” he said.

Masklin ignored this. “What do you mean, you watch humans?” he said.

“I watch humans. Study them, you know. It's what I do. You can learn a lot about the future by watching humans.”

“A bit like the weather, you mean?” said Masklin.

“Weather! Of course, weather!” The nome grinned hugely. “You'd know all about the weather. Powerful stuff, weather?”

“You've heard of it?” said Masklin.

“Only the old stories. Hmm.” Dorcas looked him up and down. “I reckoned Outsiders'd have to be a different shape, though. Life, but not as we know it. You just come along with me. I'll show you what I mean.”

Masklin looked slowly around the dusty space between the floors. This was just about it. He'd had just about enough of it. It was too warm and too dry and everyone treated him like a fool, and now they thought he was the wrong shape.

“Well—” he began, and under his arm the Thing said,
“We need this person.”

“My word,” said Dorcas. “What a tiny radio. They get smaller all the time, don't they?”

Where Dorcas led them was just a hole. Big, square, deep, and dark. A few cables, fatter than a nome, disappeared down into the depths.

“You live down here?” asked Grimma.

Dorcas fumbled in the darkness. There was a click. Far above, something went bang and there was a distant roaring sound.

“Hmm? Oh, no,” he said. “Took me ages to sort out, did this. It's a sort of floor on a rope. It goes up and down, you know. With humans in it. So I thought, I'm not getting any younger, all those stairs were playing havoc with my legs, so I had a look at the way it worked. Perfectly simple. It'd have to be, o' course, otherwise humans wouldn't know how to use it. Stand back, please.”

Something huge and black came down the shaft and stopped a few inches above their heads. There were clangs and thumps and the now-familiar sound of clumsy humans walking about.

There was also, slung under the elevator's floor, a small wire basket tied on with bits of string.

“If you think,” said Granny Morkie, “that I'm going to get into a, a wire nest on a string, then you've got another—”

“Is it safe?” said Masklin.

“More or less, more or less,” said Dorcas, stepping across the gap and fumbling with another little bundle of switches. “Hurry up, please. This way, madam.”

“Er, how much more than less?” asked Masklin as Granny, astonished at being called madam, got aboard.

“Well,
my
bit I'm sure is safe,” said Dorcas. “The bit above us was put together by humans, though, and you never can tell. Hold tight, please. Going
up
!”

There was a clang above them and a slight jerk as they began to rise.

“Good, isn't it,” said Dorcas. “Took me ages to bypass all the switches. You'd have thought they'd notice, wouldn't you? They press the button to go down, but if I want to go up, we go up. I used to worry that the humans would think it odd that these lifts seemed to go up and down by themselves, but they seem powerful dense. Here we are.”

The elevator stopped with another jerk, leaving the nome's basket level with another underfloor gap.

“Electrical and Domestic Appliances,” said Dorcas. “Just a little place I call my own. No one bothers me here, not even the Abbot. I'm the only one who knows how things work, see.”

It was a place of wires. They ran under the floor in every direction, great bundles of the things. A few young nomes were taking something to pieces in the middle of it all.

“Radio,” said Dorcas. “Amazing thing. Trying to figure out how it talks.” He rummaged among piles of thick paper, pulled out a sheet, and sheepishly passed it to Masklin.

It showed a small pinkish cone, with a little tuft of hair on top.

The nomes had never seen a limpet. If they had, they'd have known that this drawing looked exactly like one. Except for the hair.

“Very nice,” said Masklin, uncertainly. “What is it?”

“Um. It was my idea of what an Outsider would look like, you see,” said Dorcas.

“What, with pointy heads?”

“The Rain, you see. In the old legends of the time before the Store. Rain. Water dropping out of the sky all the time. It'd need to run off. And the sloping sides are so the Wind won't keep knocking it over. I only had the old stories to go on, you see.”

“It hasn't even got any eyes!”

Dorcas pointed. “Yes, it has. Tiny ones. Tucked in under the hair so they won't get blinded by the Sun. That's a big bright light in the sky,” Dorcas added helpfully.

“We've seen it,” said Masklin.

“What's he sayin'?” said Torrit.

“He's saying you ought to of looked like that,” said Granny Morkie sarcastically.

“My head ain't that sharp!”

“You're right there, you,” said Granny.

“I think you've got it a bit wrong,” said Masklin slowly. “It's not like that at all. Hasn't anyone been to
look
?”

“I saw the big door open once,” said Dorcas. “The one down in the garage, I mean. But there was just a blinding white light outside.”

“I expect it would seem like it, if you spend all your time in this gloom,” said Masklin.

Dorcas pulled up an empty cotton reel. “You must tell me about it,” he said. “Everything you can remember about the Outside.”

In Torrit's lap, the Thing began to flash another green light.

One of the young nomes brought some food after a while. And they talked, and argued, and often contradicted one another, while Dorcas listened, and asked questions.

He was, he told them, an inventor. Especially of things to do with electricity. Back in the early days, when the nomes first began to tap into the Store's wiring, a good many had been killed. They'd found safer ways to do it now, but it was still a bit of a mystery and there weren't many who were keen to get close to it. That's why the leaders of the big families, and even the Abbot of the Stationeri himself, left him alone. It was always a good idea, he said, to be good at something other people couldn't or didn't want to do. So they put up with him sometimes wondering, out loud, about the Outside. Provided he wasn't
too
loud.

“I shan't remember it all,” he sighed. “What was the other light, the one that you get at Closing Time? Sorry, I mean bite.”

“Night,” corrected Masklin. “It's called the moon.”

“Moon,” said Dorcas, rolling the word around his mouth. “But it's not as bright as the sun? Strange, really. It's be more sensible to have the brightest light at night, not during the day, when you can see anyway. I suppose you've no idea why, have you?”

“It just happens,” said Masklin.

“I'd give anything to see for myself. I used to go and watch the trucks when I was a lad, but I never had the courage to get on one.” He leaned closer.

“I reckon,” he said, “that Arnold Bros (est. 1905) put us in the Store to find out things. To learn about it. Otherwise, why have we got brains? What do you think?”

Masklin was rather flattered at being asked, but he was interrupted as soon as he opened his mouth. “People keep talking about Arnold Bros (est. 1905),” said Grimma. “No one actually says who he is, though.”

Dorcas leaned back. “Oh, he created the Store. In 1905, you know. The Bargain Basement, Consumer Accounts, and everything between. I can't deny it. I mean,
someone
must have done it. But I keep telling people, that doesn't mean we shouldn't think about—”

The green light on the Thing went off. Its little spinning cup vanished. It made a faint whirring sound, such as a machine would make to clear its throat.

“I am monitoring telephonic communications,”
it said.

The nomes looked at one another.

“Well, that's nice,” said Grimma. “Isn't that nice, Masklin?”

“I have urgent information to impart to the leaders of this community. Are you aware that you are living in a constructed entity with a limited life?”

“Fascinating,” said Dorcas. “All those words. You could imagine you could almost understand what it's saying. There's things up there”— he jerked his thumb to the floorboards above them—“that're just like that. Radios, they're called. With pictures, too. Amazing.”

“Vitally important I communicate information of utmost significance to community leaders, concerning imminent destruction of this artifact,”
intoned the Thing.

“I'm sorry,” said Masklin. “Could you try that again?”

“You do not comprehend?”

“I don't know what ‘comprehend' means.”

“Evidently language has changed in ways I do not understand.”

Masklin tried to look helpful.

“I will endeavor to clarify my statement,”
said the Thing. A few lights flashed.

“Jolly good,” said Masklin.

“Big-fella Store him go Bang along plenty soon enough chop-chop?”
said the Thing, hopefully.

The nomes watched one another's faces. There didn't seem to be any light dawning.

The Thing cleared its throat again.
“Do you know the meaning of the word ‘destroyed'?”
it said.

“Oh, yes,” said Dorcas.

“That's what is going to happen to the Store. In twenty-one days.”

I. Woe unto you, Ironmongri and Haberdasheri; woe unto you, Millineri and Del Icatessen; woe unto you, Young Fashions, and unto you, you bandits of Corsetry. And even unto to you, Stationeri
.

II. For the Store is but a Place inside the Outside
.

III. Woe unto you, for Arnold Bros (est. 1905) has opened the Last Sale. Everything Must Go
.

IV. But they mocked him and said, You are an Outsider, You don't even Exist
.

From
The Book of Nome, Goods Inward v. I–IV

O
VERHEAD THE HUMANS
plodded through their slow and incomprehensible lives. Below, so that that the din was muffled by carpet and floorboards into a distant rumbling, the nomes straggled hurriedly along their dusty passageways.

“It couldn't of meant it,” said Granny Morkie. “This place is too big. Place as big as this can't be destroyed. Stands to reason.”

“I
tole
you, dint I?” panted Torrit, who always cheered up immensely at any news of devastation and terror. “They always said the Thing knows things. And don't you go tellin' me to shut up, you.”

“Why do we have to run?” said Masklin. “I mean, twenty-one days is a long time.”

“Not in politics,” said Dorcas grimly.

“I thought this was the Store?”

Dorcas stopped so suddenly that Granny Morkie cannoned into the back of him.

“Look,” he said, with impatient patience, “what do you think nomes should do, eh, if the Store is destroyed?”

“Go outside, of—” Masklin began.

“But most of them don't even believe the Outside really exists! Even I'm not quite sure about it, and I have an extremely intelligent and questioning mind!
There isn't anywhere to go
. Do you understand me?”

“There's masses of outside—”

“Only if you believe in it!”

“No, it's really there!”

“I'm afraid people are more complicated than you think. But we ought to see the Abbot, anyway. Dreadful old tyrant, of course, but quite bright in his way. It's just a rather stuffy way.” He looked hard at them.