6
Muub arrived at the Reception Gallery shortly before the start of the Grand Tribute. He moved to the front of the Gallery, so that he could see down the full depth of Pall Mall, and selected a body-cocoon close to Vice-Chair Hork’s customary place. A servant drifted around him for a few moments, adjusting the cocoon so it fit snugly, and offered him drinks and other refreshments. Muub, unable to shake off weariness, found the harmless little man as irritating as an itch, and he chased him away.
Muub looked down. Pall Mall was the City’s main avenue. Broad and light-filled, it was a rectangular corridor cut vertically through the complex heart of Parz — from the elaborate superstructure of the Palace buildings at the topmost Upside, down through hundreds of dwelling levels, all the way to the Market, the vast, open forum at the center of the City. The Reception Gallery was poised at the head of Pall Mall, just below the Palace buildings themselves; Muub, trying to relax in his cocoon, was bathed in the subtly shaded light filtering down through the Palace’s lush gardens, and was able to survey, it seemed, the whole of the City as if it were laid open before him. Pall Mall itself glowed with light from the Air-shafts and wood-lamps which lined its perforated walls; threads of the shafts, glowing green and yellow, converged toward the Market itself, the City’s dusty heart. The great avenue — normally thronged with traffic — was deserted today, but Muub could make out spectators peering from doors and viewing-balconies: ordinary little faces turned up toward him like so many flowers. And in the Market itself — all of five thousand mansheights below the Palace — the Tribute procession was almost assembled, as thousands of common citizens gathered to present the finest fruit of this quarter’s labor to the Committee. No cocoons down there, of course; instead the Market was crisscrossed by ropes and bars to which people clung with their hands or legs, or hauled themselves along in search of vantage points. To Muub, staring down at the swarming activity, it was like gazing into a huge net full of young piglets.
The Gallery itself was laced with ropes of brushed leather — to guide those Committee members and courtiers, Muub thought sourly, too poor to be simply carried to their cocoons. The Gallery’s cool, piped Air was scented with fine Crust-flowers. Vice-Chair Hork was already in his place close to Muub, alongside the vacant cocoon reserved for his father, Hork IV. Hork glared ahead, sullen and silent in his bulk and glowering through his beard. Perhaps half the courtiers were in their places; but they had congregated toward the rear of the Gallery, evidently sensing, in their dim, self-seeking way, that today was not a good day to attract the attention of the mercurial Vice-Chair.
So already the elaborate social jostling had begun. It would be a long day.
In fact — thanks to the recent Glitch — it had already been a long day for Muub. The latest in a series of long days. He was principal Physician to the First Family, but he also had a hospital to run — indeed, the retention of his responsibilities at the Hospital of the Common Good had been a condition of his acceptance of his appointment to Hork’s court — and the burden placed on his staff by the Glitch had still to unravel. He studied the vapid, pretty, aging faces of the courtiers as they preened in their finery, and wondered how many more ravaged bodies he would have to tend before sleep claimed him.
Vice-Chair Hork seemed to notice him at last. Hork nodded to him. Hork was a bulky man whose size gave him an appearance of slowness of wit — a deceptive appearance, as more than one courtier had found to his cost. Under his extravagant beard — extravagantly manufactured, actually, Muub reflected wryly — Hork’s face had something of the angular nobility of his father’s, with those piercing, deep black eyecups and angular nose; but the features tended to be lost in the sheer bulk of the younger Hork’s fleshy face, so that whereas the Chair of the Central Committee had an appearance of gentle, rather bruised nobility, his son and heir appeared hard, tough and coarse, the refined elements of his looks serving only to accentuate his inherent violence. Today, though, Hork seemed calm. “So, Muub,” he called. “You’ve decided to join me. I was fearful of being shunned.”
Muub sighed as he worked his way deeper into his cocoon. “You glower too much, sir,” he said. “You frighten them all away.”
Hork snorted. “Then through the Ring with them,” he said, the ancient obscenity coming easily to his lips. “And how are you, Physician? You’re looking a little subdued yourself.”
Muub smiled. “I’m afraid I’m getting a little old for my burden of work. I’ve spent most of the last few days in the Hospital. We’re — very busy, sir.”
“Glitch injuries?”
“Yes, sir.” Muub rubbed a hand over his shaven scalp. “Of course we should have seen the worst now… or rather, the more serious cases we have not yet reached must, sadly, be beyond our care. But there remains a steady stream of lesser injuries which…”
“Minor?”
“Lesser,” Muub corrected him firmly. “Which is very different. Not life-threatening, but still, perhaps, disabling. Most of them patients from the central districts, of course. When Longitude I failed…”
“I know,” Hork said, chewing his lip. “You don’t need to tell me about it.”
Longitude I was an anchor-band, one of four superconducting toroids wrapped around the City to maintain the structure’s position over the South Pole. Longitudes I and II were aligned vertically, while their twins Latitudes I and II were placed horizontally, so that the toroids crisscrossed around the City.
The Glitch had largely spared the Polar regions, the City itself. But at the height of the Glitch, with vortex lines tangling around the City, Longitude I had failed. The City had rattled in its superconducting cage like a trapped Air-pig. The anchor-band’s current had been restored quickly, and the effects on the external parts of the structure — such as the Spine and the Committee Palace — had been minimal. But it had been in the hidden interior of the City, where thousands of clerks and artisans toiled their lives away, that the most serious injuries had been incurred.
“Do we have any figures on the casualties yet?”
Muub looked at the Vice-Chair. “I’m surprised you’re asking me. I’m your father’s Physician, but I’m really just one Hospital Administrator — one of twelve in all of Parz.”
Hork waved fat fingers. “I know that. All right, forget I asked. I just wanted your view. The trouble is that the agencies which gather statistics like that for us are precisely those which were wrecked by the Glitch itself.” He shook his head, the jowls wobbling angrily. “People think gathering information is a joke — unnecessary. A luxury. I suspect even my highly intelligent father shares that view.” The last few words were spat out, venomously. “But the fact is, without such data a government can scarcely operate. I’ve tried to justify this to my father often enough. You see, Doctor, without central government functions, the state is like a body without a head. We can’t even raise tithes successfully, let alone allocate expenditure.” Hork grimaced. “It makes today’s Grand Tribute look a little pointless, doesn’t it, Physician?”
Muub nodded. “I understand, sir.”
“I tell you, Muub,” Hork said, still nervously chewing on his bearded underlip, “one more Glitch like that and we could be done for.”
Muub frowned. “Who are ‘we’? The government, the Committee?”
Hork shrugged. “There are plenty of hotheads, out in the ceiling-farms, in the dynamo sheds, in the Harbor… There seems no way of rooting such vermin out. Even Breaking them on the Wheel serves only to create martyrs.”