City Under the Stars

9

ONCE A YEAR, never more, the abbot liked to go off by himself, jug in hand, to the top of a grassy hill overlooking the City of God, where he would get good and drunk and howl at the moon. The first-year friars, idealistic young recruits to a man, were always shocked. But, “Never you mind,” the older friars would say. “He a’n’t hurting nobody, ’specially not you. A man needs to blow off steam every now and then. ’Specially one like old Hanson. He’s been through a lot, that one, but he’s a good man just the same. You wait and see. You’ll learn.”

There was a full moon tonight and the summer breeze was sultry and soft. Hanson let the jug drop with a soft thud and then guided his aged butt down alongside it. He kicked off his sandals so he could dig his toes into the cool grass. He didn’t really see the point of the sandals and the robes and cincture and the bells and the prayers, to tell the truth of it. So far as he could see, it was all just playacting. But it helped to keep the men honest, he supposed. Hanson had had it all explained to him by respectful subordinates so often that he had to wonder, sometimes, why they didn’t just get rid of such a thickheaded, useless old ox as himself in favor of someone smarter.

Still, he was a legend, he supposed, and that counted for a lot. He was the one who had uprooted two-thirds of the City of God and sent it striding out into the world. It was Hanson who had initiated the Age of Miracles in which Utopian devices dug and burrowed and scrubbed and cleaned—undoing the radioactive hot spots from forgotten wars, cleansing the springs and streams and rivers that no one had dared drink from for centuries, healing the soil that now produced astonishing yields of crops the equal of anything from Utopian times. They were still out there somewhere, he supposed, digging and burrowing and scrubbing and cleaning. The world was a large place. It would take a long time for even the most efficient machines to stalk their way around it.

Hanson uncorked the jug and took a swig.

Ahhh. Improve the world all you like, one thing never changed: hooch was hooch and thank God for that. Hanson could feel the tension in his shoulders begin to ease. The friars he was responsible for were decent fellows, on the whole, just as the sisters who answered to Becky—Reverend Mother Rebekah, as she was now called—were, by repute, good women. By mutual agreement he and Becky kept their flocks isolated from one another; hers to one end of the city, his to the other. Still, you couldn’t keep them entirely apart, not when the stepping-plates meant that no two places in the City of God were more than a few hundred paces apart. So there would of necessity be gossip, incidents, unexplained pregnancies, but nothing more than you would expect from honest, backsliding, self-deluding human beings. There was weakness in the best of them. But, so far as he could see, no real malice.

Still, they could be a bothersome lot. Like the two that the Reverend Mother’s people had caught and then written him about, asking for his judgment. As if he had the slightest notion what to do with them! Or self-righteous, like Friar Lorenz, who had come into his office this morning with an indignant expression and a sheath of yellow flimsies that turned out to be requests for seven vortex engines from the Stabilities of Portland. “The insolence of them!” the friar had snapped. “Their messenger made it clear that these are demands, not requests. Demands!”

Hanson studied the papers, pretending to understand them much better than he actually did. “These are for the new seaport they’re building?”

“Yes.”

With a sigh, Hanson handed them back. “Tell the messenger that we only have five available at the moment. He can have the others when they wake up from the nursery.” It was a matter of principle among the guardians of the City that Utopian technology only be shared for peaceful purposes. Had the request had been for anything improper—weapons of war, perhaps, or enhanced means of interrogation for political prisoners—a man as angry as Friar Lorenz would not have failed to mention it. The friar accepted the flimsies with such obvious bad grace that Hanson added, “And Lorenz? Be sure to offer the man a cold drink, a hot meal, and a clean bed. It’s a long ride from Portland; it’s probably put him in a bad mood.”

Caught by surprise, Friar Lorenz swallowed back a guffaw. “You’re the boss.”

“Please,” Hanson said, turning away so the friar wouldn’t see his face. “Never call me that.”

So now here he was on the hillside, with a great big round harvest moon grinning down at him. The Wall surrounding what had formerly been called the City of God but was now merely the City still stood, but he could see three gaps in it from here, and there were many more, all guarded by brothers and sisters who had been trained to be the friendliest, most helpful people on earth—and to let no harmful technology past them on any account. The number of gaps would grow as the two orders of Guardians increased. Someday, the Wall would be gone entirely and cattle would browse beneath the City’s flametrees.

Hanson took another swig from the jug—a long one—savoring the burning sensation of the alcohol as it flowed down his throat. Those two lovers that Becky had thrown up her hands in the air about, what should he recommend be done with them? If they were really and truly in love with each other, the answer would be simple: release them from their vows, give them enough money to make a new start in life (money was easy for Hanson to come by nowadays; of all the changes he had seen come to the world, this was the one he was least able to get used to), and encourage them to get married, make more brats, and be happy. But there seemed to be some doubt as to how they felt about each other. The Reverend Mother had written that she doubted they themselves knew. In which case, Hanson judged, forcing them into wedlock might well be the worst possible thing he could do to them.

It was a poser.

Sometime later, Hanson saw that there was somebody walking up the hill and realized that it was a woman. For a panicked instant, he thought it might be Becky, despite all her promises and assurances, come to see him in person, and half rose to his feet in alarm. Then she stumbled and recovered herself in way that told him that, no, this woman was never Becky but a stranger, and with mingled relief and apprehension, he settled back down onto the grass to await her arrival. It took a while, but at last she stood before him, looking nervous, as people who met Hanson for the first time tended to be. That was the disadvantage of being a legend; people reacted not to who you were but to who they imagined you to be.

The woman was young and lovely. There was a time when Hanson would have looked upon her with yearning. Now, however, what he felt was nostalgia. “Hello,” she said. “Pardon me for interrupting you. They said not to. But my term of service here is over and I’m leaving in the morning, so…”

Hanson leaned over far to one side and patted the ground. “Have a seat.”

The woman sat. “I hope you don’t mind my clothing,” she said, looking down at her loose, mannish trousers.

Hanson plucked at his robes. “Well, I never expected to find myself wearing a dress, neither. So I guess we’re even, ai? What’s your name?”

“Dr. Tyler. Mirriam. I’m from the South.” She said this last almost defiantly, though the twin orders of Guardians had made it known that the citizens of all nations were welcome here. “Is there enough in that jug to share?”

“More’n enough, I reckon.” Hanson passed it over.

Dr. Mirriam Tyler swiped her hand over the mouth, flipped the jug around so that it rested in the crook of her elbow, and took a swig. She gagged. “Oh, that is vile stuff!”

“If you don’t want it…”

“I didn’t say that.” She took a second swig and, after a fit of coughing, handed it back. “Kind of grows on you.”

“Ai.” They sat in companionable silence for a while, neither willing to spoil the moment with words. When Hanson, who had been watching her closely out of the corner of his eye and every now and then taking another small sip of grain whiskey, judged that Dr. Tyler was stirring herself to speak at last, he said, “You’re one of that group of scientists that’s been studying the Cathedral, I s’pose.”

“Scientists! Jumped-up mechanics is more like it. We ask questions, it answers us politely, we scratch our heads, we write it all down. Then we start over again. It’s the scientific method, they tell me. Day after day after day, over and over, the exact same thing.”

“I had a job like that once. Only ’stead of asking questions, I shoveled coal into a hole.” Hanson leaned back on his arms, staring up at the cold, distant moon, more sensing than seeing Dr. Tyler looking at him quizzically as she tried to figure out if he were joking or not. He could have told her it was no joke but something dead serious. But if he started telling her his story now, it would be morning before he was half done with it. Meanwhile, he had some serious drinking to do. “You came here to ask me something, I s’pect.”

“Oh! Yes. Yes, I did. I wanted to ask you…” Dr. Tyler was unaccountably flustered. Hanson wondered briefly if it was his renown or his office or something else. Then he realized that he didn’t much care and downed another mouthful of alcohol. He’d been a legend back in the factory, too, in his youth, for how much work he could do; and that had been a much harder status to earn and a far more honest one. “You see, we’re making such slow progress… and you only allow so many people in at a time… and there’s so much to learn…” Her hesitant words suddenly coming together all in a rush, she said, “We don’t take anything out but knowledge, which I’ll grant you can be even more dangerous than Utopian technology, only it doesn’t have to be, don’t you see? We don’t have to misuse knowledge, we can put it to good use. Oh, I’m making a mess of this! I had such good arguments lined up and now I can’t think of a one.”

“Just make your request,” Hanson suggested gently. “Then I’ll see what I can do.”

“Let us bring more people in. Let us stay longer. Let us actually learn from the City of God.”

For a time Hanson was silent. Then he said, “I’ve got a problem of my own. Maybe you can help me with it.” He noted the sharp, involuntary nod Dr. Tyler gave when he said that and for a second wondered if she were a fool. She was young, though, and sure of herself; in her world there were no problems without solutions, only those to which not enough thought had been applied. His world was exactly the opposite, and he wondered which of them was wrong. He hoped it was himself. “It’s a tough one. The Reverend Mother Rebekah caught two young fools enthusiastically breaking their vows of celibacy. You understand what I’m saying, ai?” Dr. Tyler nodded. “Good. Now the situation can be handled one of two ways. If they’re in love, they can be set free from their vows and given a little help finding a new place in life. But if they’re not, well, they can be given the choice of leaving their orders or else staying but being made invisible to each other. We’ve got a device that will do that. We don’t use it much, though.

“The problem is that the Reverend Mother doesn’t know if they love each other. They don’t know themselves. I for sure don’t know. So how am I to choose the proper way of dealing with them, ai? You tell me that.” By the time Hanson was done speaking, he could see that Dr. Tyler was quivering in her eagerness to share her answer with him. They were all so sure of themselves, these young people! Again, he wondered why he was in charge and not they. But that was a question to be pondered on another day. “Yes?”

“Let them decide for themselves!” Dr. Tyler said. “Explain to them about the treatment to make them invisible to each other. Then tell them that they’ll have ten minutes of privacy in which to say goodbye. Put them in a room together and go away. Leave the back door unlocked. They’ll find out if they love each other fast enough. Open the door when your ten minutes is up, and you’ll know too.”

Hanson laughed. “That a’n’t half bad!” He thought about it and slapped his knee. “Not half bad at all! Let the young people sort it out for themselves. Maybe they’ll make a hash of it, maybe not. Either way, it’ll be their decision to make—not mine.” He paused, made up his mind, and said, “So that’s my answer to your question as well.”

“How do you mean?”

“Nobody ever thought I could sit here forever, lording over who gets Utopian technology and who doesn’t. I sure as hell didn’t! But I figured if I could just slow down the way it oozed out, share it out equally, make sure that nobody got the upper hand over anybody else for long enough, there’d come a day when I wasn’t needed anymore. Maybe that day’s today.”

All in a flash, Dr. Tyler was up on her feet, then down on her knees before Hanson. She seized his hands and would have kissed them if, embarrassed, he hadn’t snatched them away from her. Reddening, he said, “You got your answer. Tell the boys below that from now on, as many scientists who want to come to the City, they can. So long as they don’t take out anything more’n they can carry in their heads and notebooks. I’ll write to Becky tomorrow, and if she agrees, as I s’pect she will, it’ll be official.”

The doctor, given more than she could possibly have expected, was grinning ecstatically, almost glowing with joy. So, before she could say anything more to embarrass him, Hanson said, “It’s time for you to go now.”

Dr. Tyler nodded wordlessly and turned away. Three steps down the hill, she spun about and said, “I want you to know how romantic it is, you and the Reverend Mother, working together but never meeting. Like Abelard and Heloise.”

“I don’t know who those are,” Hanson said. Then, when Dr. Tyler had told him the entire story, “Well, I’ve grown as plump and harmless as a capon, so maybe that fits. Only, Becky was a’ways the smarter one of us two, so that don’t. Also, she really a’n’t Becky, you know. She does such of good job of being Becky that people forget that. But I can’t.” He lurched to his feet. “But right now, Doctor, I’m going to shoo you away. I’ve got a lot of serious drinking to do. Plus, I’ve got to warn you that when I’ve poured enough alky into me, I start to singing, which by itself I reckon is a’right, my singing voice is good enough. But then I strip out of my robe and start to dance.

“And nobody wants to see an old fat man like me, dancing and singing naked in the moonlight.”