The Great Escape Chapter 14, Part 2 of 11

The Great Escape
Chapter 14, Part 2 of 11

"I'm listening."

"I'd like to look through your famous store of old-Earth technology, especially your medical technology."

"Is that all?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm happy to show you around. Shall we go when you've finished your tea?"

Ezra was startled. He almost dropped the teacup. He'd expected Gloria to say No and was prepared to bargain.

"Yes, of course," he said. "Thank you."

He hadn't touched his tea. He quickly put the cup to his lips and began sipping.

"Gloria," the Lawspeaker said in warning tones. Her voice was low-pitched and slightly rasping. "Aren't you curious why Ezra Goldrick wants to see our technology store and medical equipment?"

"I'm sure he has a good reason," Gloria said, unconcerned. "Or do you fear he might learn our secrets?"

"Of course not; we have no secrets, yet I want to know his purpose."

"You're free to ask him when we return, Madam," she said, getting up. "Are you ready, Ezra Goldrick of the Three Tribes?"

He quickly downed his tea and bent over to put the cup on the ground when he found it being collected by one of the girls who had served the drinks, kneeling daintily beside him. He gave her the cup with thanks and got up to follow Gloria. The Cloner women also rose as their chief did.

"No, sit down," she said, "finish your tea."

Under the surprised gaze of Mirselene and Calliope, though not Solange, who was never fazed by anything, Gloria led Ezra out of the tent, through the market, and across the broad field to the Cloner City.

As they walked, a crowd of women and girls followed them through the fair at a respectful distance, keen to see anything new and exciting. The women nattered among themselves, and the hubbub made Ezra turn around.

"Don't turn," Gloria warned, "you'll just encourage them," and she picked up the pace a little.

Behind them, the hubbub gradually died down until only one voice was clear, the slightly rasping tones of the Lawspeaker, demanding Gloria and Ezra be left alone, and the women go about their proper business.

Soon, there was no train following them. They were alone as they crossed the boundary of the City.

The Cloner City

The word 'City' was a magnificent exaggeration for the settlement of tiny pre-fabricated houses plonked haphazardly on the flat grassy floor of a well-watered and comfortable valley.

The houses were separate units surrounded by gardens adorned with fruit bushes. Every house had wooden shutters protecting its west-facing windows. Palms lined the wider paths and stood sentry at the city borders.

A broad avenue crisscrossed by muddy footpaths led to the central Hall, the only two-storey building.

As they walked, Ezra addressed his hostess:

"Madam Gloria, I'm happy to tell you why I want to see your medical equipment."

"No need," she assured him. "Save it until you meet the whole council. Whatever your reason is, we will benefit if you can make any of our old-Earth technology work. That's what I'm mainly interested in."

"Besides," she paused, "the Lawspeaker is an old fusspot who likes the sound of her voice. I enjoyed cutting her off. I rarely get the chance."

She added: "I don't think she likes you."

"I didn't notice."

"Trust me. However, Madam Recorder likes you. Did you see her eyes twinkling?"

"I didn't notice anything."

"Am I being indiscreet?" she asked.

"Wonderfully."

"Good. Can you tell me why?"

"Girlish mayhem?"

She laughed.

"I knew you'd understand," she said. "How do you know about girlish mayhem?"

"I have a younger sister. She went through a stage when all she wanted to do was break things."

Gloria laughed again.

"That's exactly the feeling! I never went through the breaking things stage. I was too well-behaved and studious. So my mayhem leaks out occasionally at council meetings. ... Have you no questions for me?"

"Only one for now. Why do you have servants?"

"Servants? Oh, you mean the 'Juniors.' I suppose they are like servants, though it's only a temporary appointment and more like a rite of passage."

"When our girls reach eighteen, regardless of what work they studied for, they spend a year as a Junior. They live in a dormitory in the Hall and do mostly menial tasks, such as cleaning the Council Chamber, making the councilors' beds, waiting on us at mealtimes, and running messages. Some of the councilors get the girls to wash and dress them. Mostly, they stand around, getting bored and waiting for orders. Sometimes, the girls are bullied. We think it's character-building."

"You don't think so?" he observed.

"I suppose doing menial work is a good lesson, though I hated washing Aunt Dolly."

"Aunt Dolly?"

"Dolores Leanesdaughter Cloner - Madam Lawspeaker, you know - is my mother's sister, so I always called her Aunt Dolly. Being her Junior certainly formed my character: I've never asked the Juniors to wash or dress me - and I try to keep a lid on the bullying."

She was disarmingly open, just as Solange had been when he first met her. Yet it seemed inevitable that she was playing a deep game, just as he suspected of Solange. He admired her nonetheless.

"I'm surprised you've allowed the institution to survive," he observed.

"You live with the Woodlanders, and you're surprised about the power of custom?"

It seemed to him that Gloria knew everything that happened to Samothea,

"You're right. So why are Juniors bullied?"

"Well, doubtless, some councilors remember being bullied themselves and think it does the girls well, or maybe they think it's their turn now. Or perhaps the Juniors make too much of a few minor upsets. After all, they are teenage girls," she added nonchalantly. "At that age, everything's a matter of life and death. Here we are."

They'd reached the large central building, which she called the Hall. It was made of the same cubic units as the houses, but they were double-high and set in a rectangle three cubes wide and five cubes deep. A half-cylinder of translucent green metallo-plastic roofed over the area inside the rectangle.

"I'll show you the Council Chamber first, then the classrooms, our scriptorium, and the maternity room, where most of the medical equipment is.

Next door is the cloning lab. I can't let you in because of the risk of contamination, but I can describe everything it has. We'll finish in the technology store. Is that all right?"

"It's more than I hoped for."

"Follow me. This is the Council Chamber."

She led him into a hall about thirty feet across and ninety feet long, with a high ceiling and plain concrete walls. A large table and a set of throne-like chairs stood at one end. Doorways were at each corner and in the middle on both sides.

"This is where we have council meetings, public announcements, and law-court. The Hall is also used for exercise, lessons, dancing, communal dinners, and a place to come when wet."

A row of clay oil lamps on wooden stands lined each wall. Steeples of black smoke stained the concrete walls above them. Smaller oil lamps were on the table.

"We have a kitchen at this end and a crapper at the far end."

She led him out through a side door and across a narrow corridor into a room with a tall lectern at one end and rows of desks facing it.

"This is the main classroom and scriptorium."

"What's a scriptorium?"

"A room for writing books. Take a look."

A large leather-covered book with vellum sheets opened in the middle was on the lectern.

Four similar volumes were on the desks. The text was a list of names, titles, and properties; the students made copies. Many other leather-covered books were lined up on the shelves and stacked on tables in the corners.

"What is it?"

"We call it the Family Name Book. It's what Madam Recorder has memorized."

Gloria ran her hand along the spines of the books on the shelf, talking as she walked.

"After the catastrophe," she said, "we wrote down everything we could remember. All the history, all the science, all the mathematics, all our laws, even stories and poems. That's what our education has become: learning the content of these books and copying them."

"Why do you make so many copies?"

"A set of each volume is intended for every tribe."

"I see," he said. "So why didn't they get them?"

"Much labor goes into making these books, into preparing the vellum and the leather. Hours are spent dictating and writing each page. They are costly items, and, as you can see, we decided to keep them to ourselves and let the other tribes study them as they wish."

She sounded defiant rather than apologetic.

He was going to make a sarcastic comment about the kindness of the Cloners in sharing Samothea's legacy with the other tribes, but something in her manner prevented him. It seemed incredible that this was a woman he'd known barely half an hour, yet he thought he understood her. He thought she couldn't mean what she said that the Cloners couldn't be so greedy.

There was something she was almost telling him, but not quite. He couldn't condemn her until he knew, so he remained silent.

"Come upstairs to the Junior dormitory and the bedrooms," she said.

The corridors on each side of the Hall had concrete stairs. These stairs led up to another corridor with windows so people could see what was going on thirty feet below.

The Junior dormitory was a long room with six good-sized beds and the kind of mess one would expect from teenage girls. Except for the bed nearest the door, which was empty, Ezra had no clue how many Juniors there were.

Next was the bathroom. It had a large shower area but no actual showers. The pumps no longer worked, so the Juniors fetched buckets of water from the rainwater buts on the roof warmed in the sun by mid-day or from one of the nearby canals into which the river was partly diverted to feed the City with fresh water and to take effluent away to the sea. Behind a partition were the crappers.

There were bedrooms on the front of the building and down one side. They fitted out quite well but not lavish, as Ezra could tell from glancing through the open doors.

Last was the west side of the Hall, looking toward the ocean.

"This is where I live," Gloria said. "Come in and have a look."

It was a spacious apartment with three rooms. The living room had a bookcase and small, tasteful carvings on shelves. Comfortable seats were set around a low table. The next room had a large bed and a wardrobe bulging with clothes. The third room was a balcony, open to the elements, with strong wooden shutters to defend the bedroom windows against fierce easterly winds and freezing night rain.

The balcony had water-proof furniture and a tarpaulin roof to protect against the oppressive sun.

Ezra had never seen such comfortable living space in Samothea; few were quite well situated, even on Earth. The view was magnificent. Westward, beyond the City's straggling outliers, the silver river snaked through the muddy delta to the shining blue sea. Leaning over the balcony, one could see the shore stretch in a long crescent southward, with spots of golden dunes standing proudly.

The north also showed the coast: a rockier, wilder shore that blended with the sea and the grassy plain on the misted horizon. To the northeast were the White Mountains, their peaks obscured by clouds, where the three girls had ventured to find the lost Miner tribe.

"What do you think?" Gloria asked.

"It's beautiful," Ezra said. "And now I know why there are no seabirds."

"Why?"

"Guano."

"What?"

"Bird, er, droppings."

"You can say 'shit'. I know the word."

"Well, I guess the Founders planned to live by the sea and knew that, on Earth, their City would be covered in bird shit. There'd be squawking gulls fighting and splattering everywhere, and those mud flats would be covered in noisy, smelly geese."

She laughed. "There are many reasons to be grateful for the Founders' wisdom, as you will see later. Are you ready to visit the technology store?"

He was, so she led him downstairs to the southeast corner of the Hall and stopped in front of a double door.

All the while, Gloria had shown him around Cloner City. He'd surreptitiously glanced at her face, captivated by her big eyes. This time, she met his gaze, clearly understanding his inner motive. Smiling back at him, she knocked on the door.

The small head of a small middle-aged blonde woman eventually popped out.

"Oh, hello, Gloria. What's up?"

"Sally, this is Ezra Goldrick of the Three Tribes. He's come from Earth to see our technology store. Ezra, allow me to introduce Madam Scientist Sarah Wanda's daughter, Cloner."

Sally did a double-take when she saw Ezra behind Gloria, but she recovered quickly.


To be continued