The Bromeliad Trilogy Read online

  Some of the shelves were empty.

  Masklin wasn't too familiar with the subtleties of human behavior. Humans were humans, in the same way that cows were just cows. Obviously there was some way that other cows or humans told them apart, but he'd never been able to spot it. If there was any sense in anything they did, he'd never been able to work it out.

  'Everything Must Go'," he said.

  "Yes, but not go," said Gurder. "Not actually go. You don't really think it means actually go, do you? I'm sure Arnold Bros (est. 1905) wouldn't allow it. Would he?"

  "Couldn't rightly say," said Masklin. "Never heard of him till we came here."

  "Oh, yes," said Gurder, in a meek voice. "From Outside, you said. It sounded very interesting. And nice."

  Grimma took Masklin's hand and squeezed it gently.

  "It's nice here, too," she said. He looked surprised.

  "Well, it is," she said defiantly. "You know the others think so, too. It's warm and there's amazing food, even if they have funny ideas about women's brains." She turned back to Gurder. "Why can't you ask Arnold Bros (est. 1905) what is going on?"

  "Oh, I don't think we should do that!" said Gurder hurriedly.

  "Why not? Make's sense, if he's in charge," said Masklin. "Have you ever even seen Arnold Bros (est.1905)?"

  "The Abbot did, once. When he was young he climbed all the way up to Consumer Accounts. He doesn't talk about it, though."

  Masklin thought hard about this as they walked back. There had never been any religion or politics back home. The world was just too big to worry about things like that. But he had serious doubts about Arnold Bros (est. 1905). After all, if he had built the Store for nomes, why hadn't he made it nome-sized? But, he thought, it was probably not the time to ask questions like that.

  If you thought hard enough, he'd always considered, you could work out everything. The wind, for example. It had always puzzled him until the day he'd realized that it was caused by all the trees waving about.

  They found the rest of the group near the Abbot's quarters. Food had been brought up for them. Granny Morkie was explaining to a couple of baffled Stationeri that the pineapples weren't a patch on the ones she used to catch at home.

  Torrit looked up from a hunk of bread.

  "Everyone's been looking for you two," he said. "The Abbot fellow wants you. This bread's soft. You don't have to spit on it like the bread we had at ho –"

  "Never you mind going on about that!" snapped Granny, suddenly full of loyalty for the old hole.

  "Well, it's true," muttered Torrit. "We never had stuff like this. I mean, all these sausages and meat in big lumps, not stuff you have to kill, no ferreting around in dirty bins..."

  He saw the others glaring at him, and lapsed into shame-faced muttering.

  "Shut up, you daft old fool," said Granny.

  "Well, we dint have no foxes, I expect?" said Torrit. "Like Mrs. Coom and my old mate Mert, they never –"

  Her furious glare finally worked. His face went white.

  "It just wasn't all sunshine," he whispered, shaking his head. "Not all sunshine, that's all I'm saying."

  "What does he mean?" said Gurder, brightly. "He don't mean nothing," snapped Granny.

  "Oh." Gurder turned to Masklin. "I know what a fox is," he said. "I can read Human books, you know. Quite well. I read a book called –" he hesitated "– Our Furry Friends, I think it was. A handsome and agile hunter, the red fox scavenges carrion, fruit and small rodents. It – I'm sorry, is something wrong?"

  Torrit was choking on his bread while the others slapped him hurriedly on the back. Masklin took the young Stationeri by the arm and quickly walked him away.

  "Was it something I said?" said Gurder.

  "In a way," said Masklin. "And now I think the Abbot wants to see us, doesn't he?"

  The old man was sitting very still, with the Thing on his lap, staring at nothing.

  He paid them no attention when they came in. Once or twice his fingers drummed on the Thing's black surface.

  "Sir?" said Gurder, after a while.

  "Hmm?"

  "You wanted to see us, sir?"

  "Ah," said the Abbot vaguely. "Young Gurder, isn't it?"

  "Yes, sir!"

  "Oh. Good."

  There was silence. Gurder coughed politely. "You wanted to see us, sir?" he repeated. "Ah." The Abbot nodded gently. "Oh. Yes. You, there. The young man with the spear."

  "Me?" said Masklin.

  "Yes. Have you spoken to this, this thing?" The Thing? Well, in a way. It talks funny, though. It's hard to understand."

  "It has talked to me. It has told me it was made by nomes, a long time ago. It eats electric. It says it can hear electric things. It has said –" he glared at the thing in his lap "– it has said that it has heard Arnold Bros (est. 1905) plans to demolish the Store. It is a mad thing, it talks about stars, it says we came from a star, flying. But... there is talk of strange events. I wonder to myself, is this a messenger from the Management, sent to warn us? Or is it a trap set by Prices Slashed? So!" He thumped the Thing with a wrinkled hand. "We must ask Arnold Bros (est. 1905). We will learn his truth."

  "But, sir!" Gurder burst out. "You're far too – I mean, it wouldn't be right for you to go all the way to the Top again, it's a terrible dangerous journey!"

  "Quite so, boy. So you will go instead. You can read Human, and your boisterous friend with the spear can go with you."

  Gurder sagged to his knees. "Sir? All the way to the Top? But I am not worthy –" His voice faded away.

  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 light, 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 color. 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 Klothians were a friendly people who had adapted well to life on a high floor and always welcomed the rare travelers 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 Klothians 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.

  "Wow," he said. It wasn't much, but it was all that he could think of.

  "The Klothians won't go near it," said Gurder. "They think it is haunted by spirits."

  "I don't blame them," said Grimma, shivering. "Oh, it's just superstition," said Gurder. His face was white and there was a tremble in his voice. "There's nothing to be frightened of," he squeaked.

  Masklin peered at him.

  "Have you ever been here before?" he asked.

  "Oh, yes. Millions of times. Often," said Gurder, picking up a fold of his robe and twisting it between his fingers.

  "So what do we do now?"

  Gurder tried to speak slowly but his voice began to go faster and faster of its own accord:

  "You know, the Klothians say that Arnold Bros (est. 1905) waits at the top, you know, and when nomes die –"

  Grimma looked reflectively at the rising stairs, and shivered again. Then she ran forward.

  "What're you doing?" said Masklin.

  "Seeing if they're right!" she snapped. "Otherwise we'll be here all day!"

  Masklin ran after her. Gurder gulped, looked behind him, and scurried after both of them.

  Masklin saw her run towards the rising bulk of a stair, and then the floor below her came up and she was suddenly rising, wobbling as she fought for balance. The floor below him pushed against his feet and he rose after her, one step below.

  "Jump down!" he shouted. You can't trust ground that moves by itself!"

  Her pale face peered over the edge of her stair.

  "What good will that do?" she said.

  "Then we can go and talk about it!"

  She laughed. "Go where? Have you looked down lately?"

  Masklin looked down.

  He was already several stairs up. The distant figure of Gurder, his face just a blob, screwed up his courage and jumped on to a step of his own...

  Arnold Bros (est. 1905) was not waiting at the top.

  It was simply a long brown corridor lined with doors. There were words painted on some of them.

  But Grimma was waiting. Masklin waved a finger at her as he staggered off his stair, which mysteriously folded itself down into the floor.

  "Never, ever, do anything like that again!" he shouted.

  "If I hadn't, you'd still be at the bottom. You could see Gurder was scared out of his wits!" she snapped.

  "But there could have been all sorts of dangers up here!"

  "Like what?" said Grimma haughtily.

  "Well, there could be..." Masklin hesitated. "That's not the point, the point is –"

  At thi
s point Gurder's stair rolled him almost to their feet. They picked him up.

  "There," said Grimma brightly. "We're all here, and everything's perfectly all right, isn't it."

  Gurder stared around him. Then he coughed, and adjusted his clothes.

  "I lost my balance there," he said. "Tricky, these moving stairs. But you get used to them eventually." He coughed again, and looked along the corridor. "Well, we'd better get a move on," he said.

  The three nomes crept forward, past the rows of doors.

  "Does one of these belong to Prices Slashed?" said Grimma. Somehow, the name sounded far worse up here.

  "Um, no," said Gurder. "He dwells among the furnaces in the basement." He squinted up at the nearest door. "This one is called Salaries," he said.

  "Is that good or bad?" said Grimma, staring at the word on the varnished wood.

  "Don't know."

  Masklin brought up the rear, turning slowly to keep all the corridor in view. It was too open. There was no cover, nothing to hide behind.

  He pointed to a row of giant red things hanging halfway up the opposite wall. Gurder whispered that they were buckets.

  "There's pictures of them in Colin and Susan Go to the Seaside," he confided.

  "What's that written on them?"

  Gurder squinted." 'Fire'," he said. "Oh, my. The Abbot was right. Buckets of fire!"

  "Fire in buckets?" said Masklin. "Buckets of fire? I can't see any flames."

  "They must be inside. Perhaps there's a lid. There's beans in bean tins, and jam in jam jars. There should be fire in fire buckets," said Gurder vaguely. "Come on."

  Grimma stared at this word, too. Her lips moved silently as she repeated it to herself. Then she hurried after the other two.

  Eventually they reached the end of the corridor. There was another door there, with glass in the top half.

  Gurder stared up at it.

  "I can see there's words," said Grimma. "Read them out. I'd better not look at them," she added sweetly, "in case my brain goes bang."

  Gurder swallowed. "They say 'Arnold Bros (est. 1905). D.H.K. Butterthwaite, General Manager.' Er."