The physics-wire offprints were there to salve his conscience. The bulk of the papers he stacked on the slopped table of the steamer’s saloon came from an eight-days’ worth of the press of the town and the reach. The local sheet, The Eye on Five, had been first with the story of the Southerners’ communique, which had been picked up a day later by the weighty Kraighor Voice and its popular counterpart, The Day. As he traced the story through the pages, Darvin found none of the reactions he’d have predicted, in part — he had to admit to himself — on the basis of his adolescent reading of engineering tales.
Scepticism hadn’t so much as twitched an eyebrow. All of the papers reported the Southerners’ story as serious and probably true. The Height had made no public comment as yet, but Darvin suspected that an official word had come down. Panic and hysteria had remained in their roosts, with barely a flutter. The news of the alien presence in the system was treated as Ground-shaking and portentous, but as an occasion for sober vigilance rather than alarm. Priests of the cults — who, to Darvin’s exasperation, were quoted as often as scientists — had hailed it as confirmation of the ancient dogmas of life’s plurality and the Queen’s fecundity. He himself was quoted too; having been referenced in the Southerners’ brochure, he could hardly avoid it; he had suffered several interviews, in which he’d presented the facts about his discovery, and no opinions. The government’s secrecy and continued silence on the subject was ascribed to caution and wisdom rather than any sinister purpose. Where worry was expressed, it was about not the aliens but Gevork. No persecution of Southerners had broken out, nor any suspicion fallen on the luckless trudges; at least, none that the press saw fit to report. This was consistent with his own experience, if not with his initial fears: Darvin had heard nothing from Orro, and his handler for the Sight had said nothing untoward at his most recent contact.
The engineering tales were false. That hadn’t stopped the most popular pulp in Five Ravines, Other Worlds, from rushing a special edition into print so fast that the ink still smelled sweet and fresh on the page, like honey-gum. The cover pirated the pictures on the Southern pamphlet and headlined a story whose title, “Invasion from Infinity!” bore witness to a brash disdain of doing right as much as of blithe contempt for having being proved wrong. Darvin noted the depiction of the invaders as giant wingless humanoids. He felt an irritated temptation to draw the Sight’s attention to it as evidence of a security lapse, more for the discomfiture this would inflict on the reckless editor than because it mattered. But he put away the unworthy impulse before he slept.
The ship rounded the eastern headland of Kraighor Bay under a high sun. Airships speckled the sky. His keen first glimpse of the city disappointed Darvin. Between the harbour and the foot of the central Mount most of it lay under a yellowish haze from which only the upper storeys of the taller buildings stood out. The Mount itself rose clear above it, crusted with the Height. The lower levels of that tall, spreading, ramshackle edifice were of stone, the upper and more recent of wood, almost as raw as scaffolding, a structure always growing and never finished, stone replacing wood from below as in a tree that calcified as it grew. The analogy of form and function had been a gift to satirists and a cliche of cartoonists.
As the ship drew closer the smell of waste fumes from the rock-oil distillate that fuelled the numerous motor vehicles became so pervasive that the keenest nose lost all sensitivity to it, and only the throat felt it, like grit. Darvin was so eager to get off the ship that he abandoned his papers and took wing a minute’s flight from the shore. He alighted coughing on the quay, pushed his way through waiting passengers — the ship would continue down the coast, to return the following morning — dodged the importunities of cabdrivers and trudge-handlers, and stalked into the city. He made his way to his destination by several stops of a cable trolley, a flight across a park, and a short walk, following a route he cribbed from a map he’d been told to burn. Where the Sight’s headquarters were he did not know, but he knew that the office to which he’d been directed was not it.
As he walked down a back street towards that address it occurred to him, not for the first time, that he might be heading into trouble: a debriefing with prejudice, as the Sight cant went. But short of turning back, there was nothing to be done. The entrance he sought was above a row of victuallers’ shops, not of the best quality. Flies buzzed in air haunted by the smells of meat that had hung too long, of fruit that was past ripe, and of dried herbs gone damp. Shopkeepers eyed Darvin through drifts of laughterburn, bored. He sprinted his last few steps, rose a few wingbeats, turned and swooped to the door. It opened, as instructed, without a knock.
Inside, he found a broad corridor of fresh-painted wood, whose far end opened on a balcony above a courtyard. He could see daylight and a tree. Along the corridor suspended electric globes every few spans cast a clear cold light. On each side of the corridor were four doors, marked with the names of obscure commercial properties: import-export agencies, brokerages and the like. He knocked on the third left. It opened a little and an elderly woman peered around it.
“Come in,” she said. She had red fur and a dappled chest. “You must be the famous Darvin.”
He nodded. “And you?”
“Arrell,” she said, after a moment’s pause.
The room was long and wide, windowless and brightly lit. Shelves lined its walls. Racks interrupted the aisles between tables, over which the bright lights hung. Eight and two people worked there, most turning great stacks of newspapers and journals into scissored heaps of wastepaper and small neat files of clippings. Others processed letters and notes from (Darvin guessed) informants. Four of the people were middle-aged or older, the rest young. A teleprinter machine clattered in a far corner. Here and there, telephones flashed rather than rang, and were answered at once. Tea braziers smouldered and pots bubbled. It was a place where much leaf was chewed.
“Welcome to the Anomalies Room,” said Arrell. “Tea?”
“Thank you,” said Darvin. He looked around, marvelling. “Has the Sight always done this?”
“You should know better than to ask,” said Arrell, threading her way between tables. “But since you do,” she added over her shoulder, “yes. But not on this scale. This is our new office — with, as you see, some new staff.”
As he followed her Darvin glanced at the words lettered on the open boxes into which the researchers placed their clippings or reports; these he glimpsed: Sky. Water. Weather. Lights. Signs. Ground. Imponderables. Wonders. Powers. Dust. Falls. Foreigners. Monsters. Unusual Acts. Mental.
The system of classification eluded him.
“I regret,” Arrell said, over tea, “that you couldn’t tell us your area of interest.”
“It was something I didn’t want to mention on the phone.”
Arell laughed. “Who but the Sight would be listening?”
“Good question.”
She looked back at him with a minute increment of respect. “True,” she said. “So, what is it?”
“Trudges,” said Darvin. “Unusual behaviour of.”
“See under ‘Monsters,’ ” said Arrell.
She led him to a small table to one side and left, to return with a deep cardboard box, so heavy that he sprang to help her. The thump of box on table made people look up and frown.
“The file has grown,” she said. She reached up and pulled a cord to switch on the table’s overhead light. “Let me know if you need anything.”
The question of the trudges had preyed on Darvin’s mind ever since Lenoen had raised it. He had no one to talk with about it except Kwarive. He didn’t want to talk with anyone else about it. If anything could create the kind of mass panic that the news of aliens hadn’t, it had to be this. He himself had begun to give every trudge he passed a wary glance, and now and again had seen, or imagined he’d seen, a spark of thought or anger in their eyes. One day he looked back at such a trudge, to find that the trudge had turned its head to look back at him. That moment he had decided on the course that had brought him here.