The Abbot nodded. 'None of us are,' he said. 'We are all Shop-soiled. Everything Must Go. Now be off, and may Bargains Galore go with you.' Who's Bargains Galore?' said Masklin, as they went out.
'She's a servant of the Store,' said Gurder, who was still trembling. 'She's the enemy of the dreadful Prices Slashed, who wanders the corridors at night with his terrible shining l-ight, to catch evil nomes!' 'It's a good job you don't believe in him, then,' said Masklin.
'Of course I don't,' agreed Gurder.
'Your teeth are chattering, though.' 'That's because my teeth believe in him. And so do my knees. And my stomach. It's only my head that doesn't, and it's being carried around by a load of superstitious cowards. Excuse me, I'll go and collect my things. It's very important that we set out at once.' Why?' said Masklin.
'Because, if we. wait any longer, I'll be too scared to go.' The Abbot sat back in his chair.
'Tell me again,' he said, 'about how we came here. You mentioned a colour. Mauve, wasn't it?' 'Marooned,' said the Thing.
'Ah, yes. From something that flew.' 'A galactic survey ship,' said the Thing.
'But it got broken, you said.' 'There was a fault in one of the everywhere-engines. it meant we could not return to the main ship. Can it be that this is forgotten? in the early days we managed to communicate with humans, but the different metabolic rates and time sense eventually made this impossible. It was hoped originally that humans could be taught enough science to build us a new ship, but they were too slow. In the end we had to teach them the very basic skills, such as metallurgy, in the hope that they might eventually stop fighting one another long enough to take an interest in space travel.' 'Metal Urgy.' The Abbot turned the word over and over. Metal urgy. The urge to use metals. That was humans, all right. He nodded. 'What was that other thing you said we taught them? Began with a G.' The Thing appeared to hesitate, but it was learning how to talk to nomes now. 'Agriculture?' it said.
'That's right. A Griculture. Important, is it?' 'it is the basis of civilization.' 'What does that mean?' 'It means "yes".' The Abbot sat back while the Thing went on talking. Strange words washed over him, like planets and electronics. He didn't know what they meant, but they sounded right. Nomes had taught humans. Nomes came from a long way away. From a distant star, apparently. The Abbot didn't find this astonishing. He didn't get about much these days, but he had seen the stars in his youth. Every year, around the season of Christmas Fayre, stars would appear in most of the departments. Big ones, with lots of pointy bits and glitter on them, and lots of lights. He'd always been very impressed by them. It was quite fitting that they should have belonged to nomes, once. Of course, they weren't out all the time, so presumably there was a big store-room somewhere, where the stars were kept.
The Thing seemed to agree with this. The big room was called the galaxy. It was somewhere above Consumer Accounts.
And then there were these 'light years'. The Abbot had seen nearly fifteen years go past, and they had seemed quite heavy at the time - full of problems, swollen with responsibilities. Lighter ones would have been better. And so he smiled, and nodded, and listened, and fell asleep as the Thing talked and talked and talked...
7
xxi. But Arnold Bros (est. 1905) said, This is the Sign I give you: xxii. If You Do Not See What You Require, Please Ask.
From The Book of Nome, Regulations v.XXI -XXII 'She can't come,' said Gurder.
'Why not?' said Masklin.
'Well, it's dangerous." 'So?' Masklin looked at Grimma, who was wearing a defiant expression.
'You shouldn't take girls anywhere dangerous,' said Gurder virtuously.
Once again Masklin got the feeling he'd come to recognize often since he'd arrived in the Store. They were talking, their mouths were opening and shutting, every word by itself was perfectly understandable, but when they were all put together they made no sense at all. The best thing to do was ignore them. Back home, if women weren't to go anywhere dangerous, they wouldn't go anywhere.
'I'm coming,' said Grimma. 'What danger is there, anyway? Only this Price Slasher, and-' 'And Arnold Bros (est. 1905) himself,' said Gurder nervously.
Well, I'm going to come anyway. People don't need me and there's nothing to do,' said Grimma. What can happen, anyway? It's not as if something terrible could happen,' she added sarcastically, 'like me reading something and my brain overheating, for example.' 'Now, I'm sure I didn't say-' said Gurder weakly.
'I bet the Stationeri don't do their own washing,' said Grimma. 'Or darn their own socks. I bet-' 'All right, all right,' said Gurder, backing away. 'But you mustn't lag behind, and you mustn't get in the way. We'll make the decisions, all right?' He gave Masklin a desperate look.
'You tell her she mustn't get in the way,' he said.
'Me?' said Masklin. 'I've never told her anything.' The journey was less impressive than he'd expected. The old Abbot had told of staircases that moved, fire in buckets, long empty corridors with nowhere to hide.
But since then, of course, Dorcas had put the lifts in. They only went as far as Kiddies Klothes and Toys, but the Kiothians were a friendly people who had adapted well to life on a high floor and always welcomed the rare travellers who came with tales of the world below.
'They don't even come down to use the Food Hall,' said Gurder. 'They get everything they want from the Staff rest-room. They live on tea and biscuits, mainly. And yoghurt.' 'How strange,' said Grimma.
They're very gentle,' said Gurder. 'Very thoughtful. Very quiet. A little bit mystical, though. It must be all that yoghurt and tea.' 'I don't understand about the fire in buckets, though,' said Masklin.
'Er,' said Gurder, 'we think that the old Abbot might, er, we think his memory... after all, he is extremely old...' 'You don't have to explain,' said Grimma. 'Old Torrit can be a bit like that.' 'It's just that his mind is not as sharp as it was,' said Gurder.
Masklin said nothing. It just seemed to him that, if the Abbot's mind was a bit blunt now, it must once have been sharp enough to cut the breeze.
The Kiothians gave them a guide to take them through the outlying. regions of the underfloor. There were few nomes this high up. Most of them preferred the busy floors below.
It was almost like being outside. Faint breezes blew the dust into grey drifts; there was no light except what filtered through from odd cracks. In the darkest places the guide had to light matches. He was a very small nome, who smiled a lot in a shy way and said nothing at all when Grimma tried to talk to him.
'Where are we going?' said Masklin, looking back at their deep footprints.
'To the moving stairs,' said Gurder.
'Move? How do they move? Bits of the Store move around?' Gurder chuckled patronizingly.
'Of course, all this is new to you. You mustn't worry if you don't understand everything,' he said.
'Do they move or don't they?' said Grimma. 'You'll see. It's the only one we use, you know. It's a bit dangerous. You have to be topsides, you see. It's not like the lifts.' The little Klothian pointed forward, bowed and hurried away.
Gurder led them up through a narrow crack in the ancient floorboards, into the bright emptiness of a passageway, and there- -the moving stair.
Masklin watched it hypnotically. Stairs rose out of the floor, squeaking eerily as they did so, and whirred up into the distant heights.