Newman wanted to meet him. He wanted to find out if he was really from Dingley Dell. He wanted to see someone from his home — someone who had once lived the way that he had lived, had once enjoyed all the things that Newman enjoyed and which he now missed deeply. Perhaps the 150-year-old man from Dingley Dell would know a better way for Newman to get home — a way that did not require Newman to retrace his steps through the woodsy, mossy darkness.
“May I come with you?” Newman impulsively asked the boy named Gregory.
“If you have seven dollars. That’s what it costs to get in.”
Newman knew that he had more money in his pocket than seven dollars. He nodded and smiled as his new friend gave him a few more of the sweet chocolaty pellets.
The omnibus was filled, for the most part, by children Newman’s age and perhaps a little younger and a little older. But there were a few adults who had put themselves inside the vehicle as well, including the man who had looked so hard at Newman and who now darted a look in his direction every so often as if he were keeping a permanent fix on him. Each look unsettled Newman, but he pretended to pay them no mind. Some of the children gave him strange looks of their own as he climbed into the omnibus and followed Gregory to a double-seat near the back. But their looks were fleeting in the midst of all the roystering merriment. A woman stood next to the driver of the omnibus counting silently to herself whilst moving her finger up and down. Then she turned and said something to the man in the driving chair. He said something to her in response. She nodded.
“Quiet! Quiet!” commanded the woman, waving her stiff, flat hands up and down. The chattering, chirping voices drew down in volume and then silenced themselves altogether. “Children: we have three extras. You new children, please raise your hands.”
A boy and girl sitting a couple of rows behind Newman put their hands into the air. Newman did not.
“Raise your hand, Newman,” prompted Gregory. “You’re new. They have to put your name down.”
Newman tentatively put his hand into the air and held it there.
“I need your signed permission forms,” said the woman. “New children: please get out your signed permission forms from your parents.”
The boy and girl in the back of the bus obediently held up slips of paper.
“I don’t have a permission form,” said Newman to his new friend Gregory. “What am I to do?”
“Take my extra one,” said Gregory. “My mom already turned one in for me and didn’t tell my dad. He wrote one out for me just in case she forgot.”
Gregory put the required piece of paper into Newman’s hand so stealthily that not a soul detected the transaction.“My parents are divorced,” offered Gregory matter-of-factly as the woman moved down the aisle to collect the permission forms. “It generally sucks except when sometimes I get things done for me twice. I especially like birthdays. Last birthday…”
Newman handed the slip to the woman who gave it a cursory, unstudied glance and continued on her way to the back of the bus.
“…for example,” the voluble Gregory went on, “I got both a microscope and a telescope. I asked for one or the other and I got both! How cool is that?”
Newman smiled and nodded as the omnibus began to move. His heart began to race as he felt the vehicle vibrate beneath him. He could not believe that he was travelling along the road in such a miraculous manner, with not a horse in sight to offer propulsion. His skin tingled and he felt a frisson of joy shoot through him. It was hard for him to concentrate on Gregory’s chittering, but he owed a debt to the boy for keeping him on the omnibus when surely he would have been forced to alight and stand and watch the large boxy yellow carriage roll away without him.
“Which would you have asked for, Newman? A microscope or a telescope?”
Newman thought this over for a moment.“They’re each quite precious and scientifically helpful in their own way.”
“But would you rather study the stars or the microbes? I think microbes for me. In my science class my teacher Mr. Isbell let me prepare all of the slides. I got extra credit.”
“The stars,” said Newman. “I should like to look at the stars.”
Newman thought about the stars and about the night sky. He smiled to himself. It was the very same sky here as that which cowled Dingley Dell. No two places could be as different upon the ground (for why else was the land abroad called the “Terra Incognita”?); yet the sky and the stars and even the clouds that passed from one valley to the next were identical. For a brief moment Newman Trimmers felt slightly less estranged from all the newness that surrounded him. Had he not made a friend — an inquisitive boy just like himself? Was the boy not helping him to get to Clive and Clare’s Reptilarium?
Newman came to a rather profound conclusion about Dingley Dell and the Outland: that people are the same regardless of where they live. There are some who are bad and there are some who are good, and it served him well to find the good ones who would give him succour and avoid the bad ones who would hurt him. It was really no different here than it was in Dingley Dell.
This was something that Newman’s father was soon to learn as well.
Chapter the Thirteenth. Tuesday, June 24, 2003
y brother Gus stood upon the crest of the Northern Ridge, at a spot within sight of the Summit of Exchange. Having never before ventured up to this lofty aerie, Newman’s father didn’t know quite what he should expect to see there. In his fancy, Augustus Trimmers had imagined the place to be a bit more elaborately appointed. He imagined significant architectural detail upon its constituent buildings of trade, and perhaps a flag or two planted in a brace of mutual national comity: the Dingley jack with its stars and broad squiggle (representative respectively of the stellar firmament and the River Thames), and whatever was flown in this portion of the Outland, be it Corea or Italy of the U.S. of A. But in truth there wasn’t much to the Summit at alclass="underline" merely two small warehouse sheds set upon a pavement, and then lodged within a stand of stunted, wind-gnarled trees, a hundred or so yards away, an old and weathered wooden gazebo-pavilion sheltering a few wooden tables and attendant chairs. (Perhaps, thought Augustus, this is where the brokers sit to negociate terms of barter and trade with the Outland tradesmen.)
Situate upon the pavement in a disordered row was a battery of empty barrows and handcarts. Augustus recognised the one- and two-wheeled vehicles from the times he had seen them coming down from the ridge, carrying all the smaller products of the Outland that were required by Dinglians, and even a few that weren’t (designated for that select group of his kinsmen who could afford a taste of luxury in their lives). Augustus remembered that when he was a little boy there had been mules that made the trip, but they had all died during a tetanus outbreak and had never been replaced.
There really was no mystery to the place, and it gave Augustus to wonder if there should be less mystery in the land that lay beyond it. What if the lives of the Beyonders, he mused, turned out to be just as dull and unintriguing as these dilapidated barrows and these tired and sagging buildings implied?
Gus posed the question to himself as he laid his knapsack inside the bed of one of the empty barrows, its ironwork rusting away in flakes, its paint curling up in slow, prolonged detachment from its sideboards.