The Winds of Limbo

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS a vast cavern. Part of it was natural, part of it had been hollowed out by the machines of men. Some parts were deep in dancing shadows and others were brilliantly illuminated by a great blazing mass-a roaring, crackling miniature replica of the sun itself, that hung, constantly quivering and erupting, near the high roof.

Beneath this blazing orb a tall column rose up as if to meet it, and arms akimbo upon a platform at the top stood a gross figure, clad in ragged, harlequin costume. A soft, floppy, conical hat was jammed over his lank, yellow hair; his fat-rounded face was painted white, his eyes and mouth adorned with smears of red, yellow and black, and on the ragged red jerkin stretched taut upon his great belly was a vivid yellow sunburst.

Below this gross harlequin the dense crowd surrounding the column ceased its movement as he raised an orange hand that seemed to shoot from his torn sleeve like fingers of flame.

He laughed. It was as if the sun had voiced unearthly humor.

"Speak to us!" the crowd pleaded. "Fireclown! Speak to us!"

He ceased his laughing and looked down at them with a peculiar expression moving behind the paint. At length he bellowed:

"I am the Fireclown!"

"Speak to us!"

"I am the Fireclown, equipped for your salvation. I am the gift bearer, alive with the Fire of Life, from which the Earth itself was formed! I am the Earth's brother…"

A woman in a padded dress representing the body of a lion cried shrilly: "And what are we?"

"You are maggots feeding off your mother. When you mate it is like corpses coupling. When you laugh it is the sound of the winds of limbo!"

"Why? Why?" shouted a young man with a lean, mean face and a pointed chin that could pierce a throat. He leaped exuberantly while his eyes glinted and looked.

"You have shunned the natural life and worshipped the artificial. But you are not lost-not yet!"

"What shall we do?" sobbed a government official, sweating in the purple jacket and purple pantaloons of his rank, caught by the ritual enough to fidget and forget to stay in the shadows. His cry was echoed by the crowd.

"What shall we do?"

"Follow me! I will reinstate you as Children of the Sun and Brothers of the Earth. Spurn me-and you perish in your artificiality, renounced by Nature on whom you have turned your proud backs."

And again the clown broke into a laugh. He breathed heavily and roared his insane and enigmatic humor at the cavern roof. Flames from the suspended miniature sun leaped, stretched and shot out, as if to kiss the Fireclown's acolytes who laughed and shouted, surging about him, applauding him.

The Fireclown looked down as he laughed, drinking in their adoration.

In a shadow cast by the dais, detached from the milling crowd, a gaunt Negro stood as if petrified, his eyelids painted in checks of red and white, his mouth colored green. He wore an extravagant yellow cut-away coat and scarlet tights.

He looked up at the Fireclown and there were tears of hunger in his eyes. The Negro's name was Junnar.

The faces of the crowd were lashed and slashed by the leaping fire, some eyes dull, some bright, some eyes blind and some hot, overloaded with heat.

Many of the figures wore masks molded in plastic to caricature their own faces-long noses, no noses, slit eyes, cow eyes, lipless mouths, gaping mouths.

Some were painted in gaudy colors, others were naked and some wore padded clothes representing animals or plants.

Here they gathered around the dais. Many hundreds of them, loving the man who capered like a jester above them, lashing them with his wriggling rhetoric, laughing, laughing. Scientists, pickpockets, spacemen, explorers, musicians, confidence tricksters, blackmailers, poets, doctors, whores, murderers, clerks, perverts, government officials, spies, policemen, social workers, beggars, actors, politicians, riff-raff.

Here they all were. And they shouted. And as they shouted the gross Fool capered yet more wildly and the flame responded frenetically to his dancing and his own wordless cries.

"The Fireclown!" they sobbed.

"The Fireclown!" they bellowed.

"The Fireclown! The Fireclown!" they howled and laughed.

"The Fireclown!" He giggled and he danced like a madman's puppet upon his dais and sang his mirth.

All this, in the lowest level of the multi-storied labyrinth that was the City of Switzerland.

With a great effort the Negro Junnar turned his eyes away from the Fireclown, stumbled backwards, wrenched his body round and ran for one of the back exits, bent on leaving before he was completely trapped by the Fireclown's spell.

Behind him, the sound of the maddened crowd diminished as he ran along fusty, ill-smelling corridors until he could no longer hear it. Then he began to walk up ramps and stairs until he came to an escalator. He stepped on to the escalator and let himself be taken up to the top, a hundred feet from the bottom. This corridor was also deserted, but better lighted and cleaner that those he had left. He looked up and found a sign at an intersection:

NINTH LEVEL (Mechanics) Hogarth Lane-Leading to Divebomber Street and Orangeblossom Road (Elevators to Forty Levels) He made for Orangeblossom Road, an old residential corridor but very sparsely inhabited these days, found the elevators at the end, pressed a button and waited impatiently for five minutes before one arrived. He entered it and rose non-stop to the forty-ninth level. Outside he crossed the bright, bustling corridor and got into a crowded lift bound for the sixty-fifth-the topmost-level.

The liveried operator recognized him and said deferentially: "Any tips for when the next election's going to be held, Mr. Junnar?"

Junnar, abstracted, tried to smile politely. He shook his head. "Tomorrow, if the RLMs had their way," he said. "But we're not worried. People have faith in the Solrefs." He frowned. He had caught himself using a party slogan again.

Apparently the operator hadn't noticed, but Junnar thought he saw a hint of irony in the man's eyes. He ignored it, frowned again, this time for a different reason. Obviously people were losing faith in the Solar Referendum Party. A sign of the times, he thought.

At length the elevator reached the sixty-fifth level and the operator called out conscientiously: "Sixty-five. Please show appointment cards as you go through the barrier."

The people began to shuffle out, some towards the transport that would take them right across the vast plateau of the Top Level, some towards the distant buildings comprising the Seat of Government, various Ministries and the private accommodations of important statesmen, politicians and civil servants.

Built with the money of frightened businessmen during the war scares of the 1970s, the city had grown upwards and outwards so that it now covered almost two-thirds of what was once the country of Switzerland-one vast building. A warren with mountains embedded in it, it had begun as a warren of super-shelters below the mountains. The war scares had died down, but the city had remained along with the businessmen and, when the World Government was formed in 2005, it seemed the natural place for the capital. In 2031, in a bid to get full rights of citizenship for out-world settlers, the Solar Referendum Party had been formed. Four years later it had risen to power. Its first act had been to declare that from henceforth they were a Solar Government running the affairs of the Federation of Solar Planets.

But since then more than sixty years had passed. The Solrefs had lost much of their original dynamism, having become the most powerfully conservative party in the Solar House.

The official at the barrier knew Junnar and waved him through. Sun poured in through the glass-alloy dome far above his head and the artificially scented air was refreshing after the untainted stuff of the middle levels and the impure air of the lowest.

He walked across the turf-covered plaza, listening to the splashing fountains that at intervals glinted among beds of exotic flowers. He was struck by the contrast between the hot excitement, the smell of sweat and the surge of bodies he had just left, and this cool, well-controlled expanse, artificially maintained yet as beautiful as anything nature could produce.

But he did not pause to savor the view. His pace was hurried compared with the movement of the few other people who sauntered with dignity along the paths. At a distance, the tall white, blue and silver buildings of the ambiguously named Private Level reflected the sun and enhanced the atmosphere of calm and assurance of the Top.

Junnar crossed the plaza and walked up a clean, graveled path towards the wide stone arch that opened on to a shady court. Around this court many windows looked down upon the cool pool in its center. Goldfish glinted in the pool. At the archway, a porter left his lodge and planted himself on the path until Junnar reached him. He was a sour-faced man, dressed in a dark grey blouse and pantaloons; he looked at Junnar with vague disapproval as the flamboyant Negro stopped and produced his pass, sighing: "Here you are, Drew. You're very conscientious today."

"My job is to check all passes, sir."

Junnar smiled at him. "You don't recognize me, is that it."

"I recognize you very well, sir, but it would be more than my job's worth to..

."

"Let me in without checking my pass," Junnar finished for him. "You're an annoying man, Drew."

The porter didn't reply. He was not afraid of incurring Junnar's disapproval since he had a strong union that would be only too ready to take up cudgels on his behalf if he was fired without adequate grounds.

So temporarily disoriented was Junnar that he allowed this tiny conflict to carry him further, and as he went into the court he shrugged and said: "It's better to have friends than enemies, though Drew…"

Immediately he felt foolish.

He took out a pack of proprietary brand marijuanas and lit one as he went through a glass-panelled door into the quiet, deserted hall of the building. The hall was lined with mirrors. He stood staring at himself in one of them, drawing deeply on the sweet smoke, collecting his thoughts and pulling himself together.

This was the third time he had aliened one of the Fireclown's "audiences" and each lime the Clown's magnetism had drawn him closer and the atmosphere of the great cavern had affected him more profoundly. He didn't want his employer to notice that.

After a moment’s contemplation Junnar went to the central glass panel which was on the right and withdrew a small oblong box from his pocket. He put it close to his mouth.

"Junnar," he said.

The panel slid back to reveal a black, empty shaft. There was a peculiar dancing quality about the blackness. Junnar stepped into it and, instantaneously, was opening the inner door of a cabinet. He walked out and the door closed behind him. He was in a corridor lighted by windows that stretched from floor to ceiling and showed in the distance the thick banks of summer cloud far below.

Immediately opposite him was a great door of red-timed chrome. It now opened slightly.

In the big, beautiful room, two men awaited him. One was young, one was old; both showed physical similarities, both appeared impatient.

Junnar entered the room and dropped his cigarette into a disposal column.

"Good afternoon, sir," he said to the old man, and nodded to the young man.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Powys."

The old man spoke, his voice rich and resonant. "Well, Junnar, what’s happening down there now?"