The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1. Adam Thirlwell

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СКАЧАТЬ half a million people like flies in a concertina, but the enormous gulf of emptiness still stunned his imagination.

      All around him, standing and sitting on the jutting terraces of girders, a silent throng stared down.

      ‘They say they’re going to build gardens and parks for us,’ an elderly man at Franz’s elbow remarked in a patient voice. ‘I even heard they might be able to get a tree. It’ll be the only tree in the whole county.’

      A man in a frayed sweat-shirt spat over the rail. ‘That’s what they always say. At a dollar a foot promises are all they can waste space on.’

      Below them a woman who had been looking out into the air started to simper nervously. Two bystanders took her by the arms and tried to lead her away. The woman began to thresh about and an F.P. came over and pulled her away roughly.

      ‘Poor fool,’ the man in the sweat-shirt commented. ‘She probably lived out there somewhere. They gave her ninety cents a foot when they took it away from her. She doesn’t know yet she’ll have to pay a dollar ten to get it back. Now they’re going to start charging five cents an hour just to sit up here and watch.’

      Franz looked out over the railing for a couple of hours and then bought a postcard from one of the vendors and walked back to the elevator.

      He called in to see Gregson before returning to the student dormitory. The Gregsons lived in the West millions on 985th Avenue, in a top three-room flat right under the roof. Franz had known them since his parents’ death, but Gregson’s mother still regarded him with a mixture of sympathy and suspicion. As she let him in with her customary smile of welcome he noticed her glancing at the detector mounted in the hall.

      Gregson was in his room, happily cutting out frames of paper and pasting them on to a great rickety construction that vaguely resembled Franz’s model.

      ‘Hullo, Franz. What was it like?’

      Franz shrugged. ‘Just a development. Worth seeing.’

      Gregson pointed to his construction. ‘Do you think we can try it out there?’

      ‘We could do.’ Franz sat down on the bed. He picked up a paper dart lying beside him and tossed it out of the window. It swam into the street, lazed down in a wide spiral and vanished into the open mouth of the ventilator shaft.

      ‘When are you going to build another model?’ Gregson asked.

      ‘I’m not.’

      Gregson looked up. ‘Why? You’ve proved your theory.’

      ‘That’s not what I’m after.’

      ‘I don’t get you, Franz. What are you after?’

      ‘Free space.’

      ‘Free?’ Gregson repeated.

      Franz nodded. ‘In both senses.’

      Gregson shook his head sadly and snipped out another paper panel. ‘Franz, you’re mad.’

      Franz stood up. ‘Take this room,’ he said. ‘It’s twenty feet by fifteen by ten. Extend its dimensions infinitely. What do you find?’

      ‘A development.’

       ‘Infinitely!’

      ‘Non-functional space.’

      ‘Well?’ Franz asked patiently.

      ‘The concept’s absurd.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because it couldn’t exist.’

      Franz pounded his forehead in despair. ‘Why couldn’t it?’

      Gregson gestured with the scissors. ‘It’s self-contradictory. Like the statement “I am lying”. Just a verbal freak. Interesting theoretically, but it’s pointless to press it for meaning.’ He tossed the scissors on to the table. ‘And anyway, do you know how much free space would cost?’

      Franz went over to the bookshelf and pulled out one of the volumes. ‘Let’s have a look at your street atlas.’ He turned to the index. ‘This gives a thousand levels. KNI County, one hundred thousand cubic miles, population 30 million.’

      Gregson nodded.

      Franz closed the atlas. ‘Two hundred and fifty counties, including KNI, together form the 493rd Sector, and an association of 1,500 adjacent sectors comprise the 298th Local Union.’ He broke off and looked at Gregson. ‘As a matter of interest, ever heard of it?’

      Gregson shook his head. ‘No. How did –’

      Franz slapped the atlas on to the table. ‘Roughly 4 × 10¹⁵ cubic Great-Miles.’ He leaned on the window-ledge. ‘Now tell me: what lies beyond the 298th Local Union?’

      ‘Other unions, I suppose,’ Gregson said. ‘I don’t see your difficulty.’

      ‘And beyond those?’

      ‘Farther ones. Why not?’

      ‘For ever?’ Franz pressed.

      ‘Well, as far as for ever is.’

      ‘The great street directory in the old Treasury Library on 247th Street is the largest in the county,’ Franz said. ‘I went down there this morning. It occupies three complete levels. Millions of volumes. But it doesn’t extend beyond the 598th Local Union. No one there had any idea what lay farther out. Why not?’

      ‘Why should they?’ Gregson asked. ‘Franz, what are you driving at?’

      Franz walked across to the door. ‘Come down to the Bio-History Museum. I’ll show you.’

      

      The birds perched on humps of rock or waddled about the sandy paths between the water pools.

      ‘“Archaeopteryx”,’ Franz read off one of the cage indicators. The bird, lean and mildewed, uttered a painful croak when he fed a handful of beans to it.

      ‘Some of these birds have the remnants of a pectoral girdle,’ Franz said. ‘Minute fragments of bone embedded in the tissues around their rib cages.’

      ‘Wings?’

      ‘Dr McGhee thinks so.’

      They walked out between the lines of cages.

      ‘When does he think they were flying?’

      ‘Before the Foundation,’ Franz said. ‘Three million years ago.’

      When they were outside the museum they started down 859th Avenue. Halfway down the street a dense crowd had gathered and people were packed into the windows and balconies above the elevated, watching a squad of Fire Police break their way into a house.

      The bulkheads at either end of the block had been closed and heavy steel traps sealed off СКАЧАТЬ