Moses didn’t like the way Simple Willie spat out the term hive. He knew how some citizens hated the Big ES, claiming it treated them unfairly. But these were not the Good Citizens, they were the outcasts, the misfits.
Moses looked down at his own feet. “We need some toes, for walking—like now.”
Simple Willie glanced around for Watcher sensors. He smiled knowingly at Moses.
“I agree,” he said placidly. “And the Big ES is really a wonderful place to live. I know. I spent some time Outside experiencing the dangers. It was terrifying. All that open space! I don’t think I could have survived it without my drugs to protect me. And there was weather.” Moses waited for him to continue. They had been over this subject many times before.
“That’s changes in temperature, you know. It was light, then dark. Hot, then cold. The air stood still, then moved fast carrying dust and leaves around. The ground became covered with foam, then dried. Weather!” Willie took another quick sip from the bubbler and started eagerly up the walkway. “Maybe we’ll see some weather if we hurry.”
Moses followed.
Willie realized that his show of enthusiasm was a mistake. Glancing nervously around, he slowed his pace.
“Weather is awful,” he repeated unconvincingly. “So is living Outside. They explained that to me real good when they brought me back into the city. Man was meant to live in cities—not the gardens. The Eyepeople who live In-between the cities are bad. They crush crops, live like animals, reproduce without controls—kill, steal, commit all manner of crime. That was explained to me real good.”
They walked in silence for a time. The sunlight filtering through the shaft cap above began to fade—dusk.
Willie continued: “Of course it is natural for the Eyepeople to live like animals—they are part animal. Some theories place them below us as direct ancestors on the evolutionary tree, but I’m certain we must have descended from a common four-toed ancestor. The five-toed beast is just a blind end—unable to fit into the hive,” he made a gesture of disgust. “Eating human flesh! I think I could forgive them everything but the eating of their own kind. I suppose that is why I am proud of my trophy—I hunted the last of Earth’s carnivores.”
At the rim of the cap they caught a glimpse of a blue sky through the stout metal grill. Willie clutched his chest and sat down facing the blank wall of the spiral.
“I can’t look out.”
Moses gazed through the grill, giving Willie a word picture.
The plum and grape sunset darkened to a star-speckled licorice. They were sitting on a flat featureless platform that encircled the yawning shaft. The grill—a one-inch gauge, six-inch mesh—rose thirty yards to a shaggy green roof. Shaggy greens dangled. A man-sized Agromeck scuttled in from the shadowy fields and disappeared into its garage beneath the platform. Distant plankton towers lit up. White clouds of Agrifoam flowed out over the fields carrying their auxins and nutrients. Rows of shaft caps marched to the horizon, each marked another cyberconduit shaft city.
“Stars?” asked Willie’s plaintive voice.
Moses nodded.
“Bright. Some big like an eye peeking down. Others small and numerous like spilled metallic dust.”
He searched their twinkling patterns for the familiar form of Orion. Shoulders and feet wide apart, narrow belt with sword. Years ago he had noticed it. No one in the Big ES seemed to understand what he was talking about. There was little curiosity about astronomy in the subterranean hive. Sewage, lice and calories were real; but a star was just something in the background on entertainment shows to indicate the time of day. No one saw patterns in them. His search of the stacks didn’t help either—stars were with the occult.
Night passed. In the darkness an Irrigator sucked at its canal and drenched the land. Foam melted away. Orion marched westward until dawn erased him. Moses was confident “he’ would return again. The roof of Outside seemed to have a very stable night pattern.
In the growing light, Moses turned to Willie.
“Willie—do you see things in the stars?” Willie cringed and covered his eyes. Moses carefully reworded the question. “When you were Outside—the stars came out each night, didn’t they? Could you see outlines of things in them? Patterns that came back night after night?”
Willie did not answer immediately. He stood up, careful to avoid looking Outside, and slouched down the ramp. Moses followed. They walked in silence for several quarter-mile turns of the spiral.
Finally Simple Willie spoke: “I don’t remember too good. Stars? I know I must have seen them—but I can’t remember actually looking. There are lots of things about my time on the Outside that are all mixed up. Do you think it could have been the drugs?”
“Maybe—” said Moses sympathetically. “Speed does more than make you go fast, I’m sure. But maybe the Big ES erased some of your memories too—trying to psych you into a better citizen.”
Willie stopped and smiled his relief. “Of course. They put in blocks to keep my nostalgic memories from flooding out of my deep amygdaloid complex. But the blocks are not complete. Memory fragments come through sometimes—”
Willie abruptly sat down, again pressing his forehead against the wall. Sullen, morose and brooding, he mumbled something about the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Moses tried to prod him out of his catatonia, but Willie’s gloom just deepened into stupor. Simple Willie spent much of his time so—Moses was used to seeing him in this condition. All that was missing was the grisly trophy cube…
Moses sat beside him for a half hour, but his eyes remained glassy. His consciousness was being dragged back through painful memories. Neural reflexes, triggered by their discussions, groped for the forbidden memories. The Big ES had placed effective blocks on single-step associations to the Outside, but Willie’s struggled with double and triple associations to get at the memories. Slowly the traumatic memories were assembled to torture him again.
Simple Willie carried a heavy bow in his left hand. Green leaves—large and loose—flapped in a breeze. He saw his quarry—a coweye. Her large eyes and tiny neck and waist gave her an insect-like appearance through the scope. Lifting the bow he set cross hairs on her form. She shook back her yellow mane exposing tiny pink-tipped breasts. Her delicate figure triggered a headache. The images jumped.
He sat naked and tan surrounded by children. There were three little jungle bunnies—all yellow-haired like the coweye. The coweye came laughing and dripping from the canal. She playfully rolled into the group. Children giggled. Sunshine, bright flowers and tasty food. Happiness.
Pain and black shadows. Laughing Hunters held up dripping red trophies. Cold yellow-haired bodies lay scattered about on gory matted grasses. His view shifted and stretched. A head lay on the grass. Just a head. But it spoke to him in a language he couldn’t understand. Then the head opened its mouth wide and a pair of legs protruded. Lifting itself on these legs, the head ran off laughing.
When Willie’s consciousness returned to the spiral walkway, Moses was gone. A pile of food bars—flavored woven protein—were in his lap. Gathering them up, he returned to his cubicle. His trophy cube made him a little nervous. If only there was some way to analyze it to see if it were male or female—if only he could remember if it was really his trophy. Had he actually killed?
Moses put his little class thirteen dispenser to work searching for data on the Outside. Probing through old rusty dusty memory banks of the stacks, the cyber gathered bits of information and printed it out on flimsies. Stars were lost under the occult. Star maps could be found under seasons. Moses wasn’t sure what a season was, but he did see Orion’s familiar pattern under summer.