He moved on quickly. A purple radiance played among the ripe forest, shed by a big patch of raw worldwall which stretched beside a shiny lake, far across the world. Thoughts of the city possessed him, ideas of how to track his father, and so he forgot the time storm.
At first he felt a wrenching in the pit of his stomach. Then the humid air warped, perverting perspectives, and confusion rode the winds.
His feet refused to land where he directed them unless he kept constant attention, his narrowed eyes holding the errant limbs continually in view. Cordwood-heavy, his arms gained and lost weight as they swung. To turn his head without planning was to risk a fall. He labored on, panting. Hours oozed past. He ate, napped, kept on. The air sucked strength from muscles and sent itchy traceries playing on his skin.
The whispering tendrils of stupefaction left him as he angled toward the city. He sagged with fatigue. Three spires remained ahead, whitewash-bright, the most palatial place he had ever seen. Houses of pale polished wood were lined up neat and sure beside rock-roads laid arrow-straight with even the slate slabs cut square and true.
These streets thronged with more people than John could count. Ladies in finery stepping gingerly over horse dung, coarse frolickers lurching against walls, tradesmen elephantine and jolly, foul-witted quarrelers, prodigious braggarts, red-faced hawkers of everything from sweets to saws. All swarming like busybody insects and abuzz with talk.
To John it was like trying to take a drink from a waterfall. He wandered the gridded streets unnoticed, acutely conscious of his ragged clothes and slouch hat. He sought the one thing he did know, the river.
Along the big stone quay men loafed in the rising, insect-thronged heat. They slouched in split-bottomed chairs tilted back to the point of seeming dynamical impossibility, chins on chests, hats tipped down over drowsy eyes. A six-legged sow and her brood grunted by, doing a good business in droppings from split crates.
Beyond this slow scene lay the river, half-shadowed by the fitful radiance of three overhead worldwall patches, shining richly where the light struck it sure. John took off his pack and sat on a wharf railing and looked at the river’s ceaseless undulation, broken by shards of raw silver which broke the surface, fumed, and were gone.
“Lookin’ for work?”
The voice was rough. It belonged to a boy somewhat older than John but bigger, broad shoulders bursting his crosshatched shirt. But the eyes were dreamy, warm.
“Might be.” He would need money here.
“Got some unloadin’ to do. Never ’nuff hands.” The young man held out a broad palm. They shook. “Name’s Stan.”
“Mine’s John. Heavy stuff?”
“Moderate. We got droners to help.”
Stan jabbed a thumb at a line of five slumped figures seated along the jetty. John had seen these before, only upriver they were called Zoms. They all sat the same way, legs sprawled out in front, arms slack, weight on the lower spine at a steep angle. No man could sit in that manner for long. Zoms didn’t seem to mind. Just about anything seemed better than being dead.
“You new?” Stan asked, squatting down beside John and scribbling something on a clipboard with a pencil stub.
“Just came in.”
“Raft?”
“Skiff. Landed up above that storm.”
Stan whistled. “And walked around? Long way. That ripple knock you flat?”
“Tried to.”
“Be a lotta trouble to get back to your skiff.”
“I might just push on down.”
“Really?” Stan brightened. “How far you come?”
“I don’t know.”
“Angel’s Point? Rockport?”
“I heard of them. Saw Alberts but it was foggy.”
“You’re from above Rockport? And just a kid?”
“I’m older than I look,” John said stiffly.
“You do have a funny accent.”
John gritted his teeth. “So do you, to my ear.”
“I thought, comin’ this far downtime, you’d get sick, go crazy, or something.” Stan seemed truly impressed, his eyes wide.
“I didn’t just shoot down.” That was a dumb mistake, even a boy knew that. “I stopped some to … explore.”
“For what?”
John shifted uneasily. He shouldn’t have said anything. The less people knew about you, the less they could use. “Treasure.”
“Like hydrogen? Big market for hydrogen chunks here.”
“No, more like—” John struggled to think of something that made sense. “Jewels. Ancient rubies and all.”
“No foolin’? I’ve never seen any.”
“They’re rare. Left over from the olden lords and ladies.”
Stan opened his mouth and stuck his tongue up into his front teeth in an expression of intense thought. “Uh … Who were they?”
“Primeval people. Ones from waaay uptime. They were so rich then, ‘cause there were so few of them, that the sapphires and gold just dripped off their wrists and necks.”
Wide-eyed now. “Earnest?”
“They had so much, it was like the dust in the road to them. Sometimes when they got bored, the ladies’d snatch up a whole gob of jewels, their very finest, all glittery and ripe, and they’d stick them all over some of those big hats they wore. Come a flood, people would drown and those jewel-fat hats would come downtime.”
“Hats?” Open-mouthed wonder.
An airy wave of his hand. “Not the slouch hats we wear down here. I’m talkin’ big boomer hats, made of, well, hydrogen itself.”
“Hydro—” Stan stopped, a look of puzzlement washing across his face, and John saw that he had to cover that one.
“See, those prehistoric days, hydrogen was even lighter than it is today. So they wore it. The very finest of people weaved it into fancy vests and collars and hats.”
A doubtful scowl. “I never saw anybody …”
“Well, see now, that’s just the thing. My point exactly. Those olden ladies and gents, they wore out all the hydrogen. That’s why it’s worth so much today.”
Stan’s mouth made an awe-struck O. “That’s wondrous, plain wondrous. I mean, I knew hydrogen was the lightest metal. Strongest, too. No puzzlement it’s what every big contractor and engine-builder wants, only can’t get. But”—he looked sharply at John—“how come you know?”
“How come a kid knows?” Might as well feed him back that remark. “Because uptime, we’re closer to the archaic ages. We look out for those hydrogen hats that came down the river and washed up.”
Stan frowned. “Then why’d you come down here?”
For an instant John had the sick feeling that he was caught out. The whole story was going to blow up on him. He would lose this job and go hungry tonight.
Then he blinked and said, “Uptime people already got the hats that came ashore there. It’s the ones that got past them that I’m after.”
“Aaahhh …” Stan liked this and at once began to shoot out questions about the grand hats and treasure hunting, how John did it, what he’d found, and so on. It was a relief when somebody called, “Induction ship!” and the sleepy quay came to life.
The big white ship seemed to John to snap into existence, trim and sharp as it bore down upon them. It cut the river, curling water like a foamy shield, sending gobbets of iron-grey liquid metal spraying before it.
It was a three-decker with gingerbread railings and a pyramid-shaped pilot house perched atop. Large, thick disks dominated each side, humming loudly as it decelerated. Only these induction disks, which had to cast their field lines deep into the river and thrust the great boat forward, were untouched by the eternal habit of ornamentation. Curlicues trickled down each stanchion. Pillars had to be crowned with ancient scroll-work, the flybridge carried sculptures of succoring angels, davits and booms and mastheads wore stubby golden helmets.