And figures, robed, walked among booths garishly draped under the fieldside floods. He stared, recognizing them as Others, or invisibles, there for trade.
He knew that invisibles somehow pilfered by night in the port market, where citizens of Kierkegaard traded by day, disdaining any robed intruders out of their time, but there was no mention that this went on by night, organized, booths manned—if they were men—-money changing hands from opened cashboxes . . . .
He walked farther, facing fear, because it was there, as he would have faced down Waden or Keye or anyone else fit to rival him. Fear ran the aisles, skipped along almost visibly in the rippling shadows of robes which should have been invisible to his trained perceptions; but it was night, and robes cast shadows, and shadows were everywhere. There was no one like himself, a citizen. Pilfered goods disappeared and no one cared to complain, because had the invisibles been a problem, something would have been done about it, the solution so often proposed and never, because they did not care for the untidiness, carried out.
To kill them all, some had argued in University, would remove a blight. And whoever proposed the solution stood self-consciously admitting that they existed.
And who knows how many there are? another had proposed. Or how we should track them all? They do no harm.
In point of fact, no one knew . . . how many there were, who had gone mad. No one knew how many ahnit there were, or how many robes here might conceal one or the other. The invisibles had stopped being human.
Perhaps they bred, making more invisibles. If so they were quiet about it, and perhaps the offspring, lacking proper care, died; no one asked. No one noticed. It was not good health to take overmuch thought in the matter.
As for ahnit, they were not even in basic question. They were a separate rationality. The proper study of man is man, the maxim ran.
Who had proposed such a thing, when their ancestors had been merchants, or at least merchants had been among their ancestors? Who had made the decisions, when they found this perfect world that was Freedom and laid down the Reality which existed here? A Jenks?
But once . . . all their ancestors had been up, out there, far away.
Once . . . .
He cancelled that reality, preferring to start time over again. It was his Reality, his option. He smiled self confidently, walked up to a booth manned by an invisible and found the meat pastry there attractive. He gathered up two of the hot pies, not seeing the invisible who sat there watching him, and humorously walked away, eating the invisible pie and quite pleased with the taste of it. Men could pilfer under the same law as invisibles. No one was going to ask him for payment. No one dared, because they did not want to be noticed.
Much more savory than what was served in the Fellows' Hall. He recalled an old saying about stolen fruit and, finishing one pie, sought a beer amongst the booths.
Quite a different reality, he thought, intrigued now that the disturbance of the day had been settled—food was what he had evidently needed to settle his stomach and his metaphysics. He was fascinated by the swirl of no-color and no-substance against the powerful glare of the port lights where the shuttle had gone back to the invisible ship and its invisible threat. Quite, quite fascinating, this walk through an invisible's dream of reality, where madmen went about commerce and no-men stalked about on their own inscrutable business.
There must be a certain economy to allow it to function. Sane farmers grew crops, which invisibles pilfered, which in turn he pilfered, and it all somehow balanced, because what was pilfered was sold, turnabout day and night, and his small consumption merely fed the engine that was Kierkegaard and Sartre itself, which fed this mass as well as the daylight trade.
And how did the ahnit fit in? Some of the goods in the booths—the clothes—the robes which ahnit and men wore . . . ahnit robes. Ahnit Jewelry. He paused and took a piece, turned it in his hand, found it, with its convolute patterns, of passing skill. He pinned it to his collar, laughing at the conceit. An economy which functioned on universal theft, with sales only among like and like; founded on the principle that no one stole, just pilfered. He walked on, saw one of the University stamped hammers for sale, doubtless pilfered from Jenks Square, from his work. Amazing. He declined to repossess it. It was a minor item and heavy to be carrying about Let them have it.
He found his drink in a brightly draped booth which passed out an assortment of mugs. He appropriated what was destined for another hand, right from under the invisible's reach, and walked his way, consuming his second pie, tasting cool beer and dazzled by amazements right and left.
When he had done he set the mug down, reckoning it would be pilfered back along the circuitous route, likely back to the very same booth from which he had taken it. Nothing could get lost in the labyrinthine system. He had lived within it all his life and had never quite seen it so clearly delineated, so vividly exercised . . . for even in Law's Valley things had vanished, to turn up again in market in Camus, and it was not good form to question.
Kill the invisibles? He wondered. How would civilization survive if not for them? Where would be the humor in that?
Not to go searching the market for a lost plowshare? Not to have the confidence it would turn up again? No one ever hungered because of it. And a good many times were never missed, or were missed with gratitude, and discovered by another with pleasure, whenever some citizen bought it back again. This was somewhat like the country markets, indeed it was, and the few new-goods warehouses in town were dull by comparison. Only in Camus there had been just the Place, where goods tended to appear, and remain, and perhaps—he had never wondered—there was also this nighttime activity.
By day, simple citizens; by night, invisibles. The same merchandise.
A balance, indeed.
He had quite shed his fear and walked now in utter abandon.
An ahnit set itself in his path, and from within the hood a glitter of eyes regarded him with such directness that he forgot himself, and stopped, and then had to recover his self-possession and walk around the obstacle, instead of employing that graceful sidestep one used when the obstacle was expected. He was shaken. It was deliberate. It was very near aggression. The thought occurred to him that if a citizen should ever be found dead in Kierkegaard—and it happened—the inquiry did not extend beyond citizens and natural causes.
He kept going in his chosen path, which took him again to the gate, and to Port Street.
He looked back. For the first time in his adult life he committed such an indiscretion, and there was an ahnit there.
A shadow, a robed shadow on the street, beneath the lights by the gate. It had followed.
He had looked—and never meant to again—but this one time he had looked, simply to prove himself wrong. His apprehension had been correct, and thereafter, alone or in public, whenever beset with the temptation to yield to the urge to look behind him, whenever insecure in his own reality he would remember . . . once . . . there had been something there. He shivered. He hurried.
The University doors received him, solid wood, carved, safe and sturdy. They closed behind him and he walked down the corridors toward Fellows' Hall, hearing the slight boisterousness from it long before he reached it. He sought the familiar, the banal, desperately.