With a clarity that made him jump, the voice of the Steegmaster spoke inside his chest.
“Tell him about the Fortress.”
For a moment, Niall’s mind was a blank. He asked in bewilderment: “Fortress?” He had already forgotten what the word meant. But even as he spoke, the tingling sensation faded. He stared down at the rod, confused and disappointed, and wondering whether he should try to renew the contact. At that moment, he heard the sound of Doggins’ voice in the corridor and pressed the button that made it contract. As Doggins came into the room, he dropped the rod into his pocket.
Doggins looked unexpectedly impressive. Instead of the shabby yellow smock, he wore a black toga, with a gold chain round the waist. The leather sandals were also black, and on his head, in place of the battered green eyeshade, he wore a black peaked hood which gave him a monkish appearance.
“Ready? We”d better get a move on.”
Outside in the corridor, the women and children were waiting, all dressed in gaily coloured clothes. The only exception was Lucretia, who wore a black linen toga, evidently to emphasise her position as wife number one. As Doggins and Niall marched out into the sunlight, the family walked behind in an orderly crocodile, the tallest at the front, the smallest in the rear.
They crossed the green in front of the town hall and turned into the extension of the main avenue. Every inhabitant of the town seemed to be going in the same direction, the emerald-backed beetles with their bright yellow heads towering above their human servants and conversing among themselves in sibilant squeaks. The humans were excited and boisterous, and if noisy children occasionally cannoned into the legs of the beetles, no one seemed to mind. Niall was struck by the friendly and easygoing relations that seemed to exist between the beetles and the humans; unlike the spiders, these huge, armour-plated creatures seemed to inspire neither fear nor veneration; only affectionate familiarity.
As they left the square, Niall suddenly remembered the word he had been trying to recall. He asked Doggins:
“What’s a barracks?”
“It’s a place where soldiers live. Why?”
“I saw the word on an old map.”
Doggins glanced at him quickly. “Of the spider city?”
“Yes.”
Doggins asked casually: “It wasn’t called the Fortress, by any chance?”
“Yes, it was. How did you know?”
Doggins shrugged. “I’ve heard rumours about it. Do you think you could describe where it is?”
“I think so. It’s in the slave quarter.”
They had reached the outskirts of the town, and Niall was interested to see that one of the red towers was under construction, and that a large cloud of golden insects was swarming and buzzing over the unfinished walls. He asked: “What are they doing?”
“Building it.”
Niall asked in amazement: “The insects?”
“That’s right. They’re called glue flies.”
As they came level with the truncated tower, the buzzing noise was deafening. Niall shouted above the din: “Are they building it for themselves?”
“Oh no.” Doggins halted and his retinue of wives and children also came to a stop. “They live in nests made of leaves stuck together with glue.”
“Then how do you make them build houses?”
“They’re specially trained. Watch.” He twisted his face into a scowl, wrinkled his forehead and glowered at the swarming golden insects through narrowed eyes. After a moment, they began to settle on the walls; at the end of thirty seconds, the buzzing noise had ceased, and the insects were crawling over one another’s backs. Drops of sweat were standing out on Doggins’ face. He gave a gasp and relaxed; instantly, the insects were in flight again. Doggins looked pleased with himself.
“How did you do that?”
“They’re trained to respond to mental orders. Why don’t you try it?”
Niall stared at the glue flies and concentrated his attention. He was instantly aware of the presence of each individual insect as if they had become a part of his own body, like his fingers or toes. He was even aware of their precise number: eighteen thousand, seven hundred and eighteen. But as he was about to transmit the mental order for them to settle, he recalled his earlier resolve to avoid flamboyant gestures, and changed his mind.
“I’m afraid I don’t seem to be able to do it.”
Doggins smiled sympathetically, but with a trace of satisfaction. “No, it takes a lot of practice.”
And now, as they walked on, Niall became aware that the moment of empathy with the glue flies had established a sense of contact with the stream of life that flowed around him. It was astonishingly different from the feeling he had experienced that morning, standing in the square among the slaves. Then he had been conscious of a kind of mindless wellbeing. Now he was aware of being amongst others like himself, human beings with the same power to think and control their own lives. There was only one difference: they were not aware that they possessed this power.
He asked Doggins casually: “How did you learn to control the glue flies?”
“Oh, it’s not difficult. They’re used to being controlled by the beetles. I’ve been with the beetles so long that I suppose I’m on the same mental wavelength, so I can do it too. . .”
He was wrong, of course. It was nothing to do with mental wavelength; it was purely a matter of will-force. For a moment, Niall felt tempted to explain, then decided that this was neither the time nor place.
Half a mile beyond the edge of the town, the road turned a corner, and Niall suddenly found himself looking down into an immense hole in the earth. It must have been a mile wide and a quarter of a mile deep. The drop made him feel dizzy.
“What is this?”
“An old marble quarry.”
“But what made it?”
Doggins grinned.”Human beings.”
In its sheer sides, Niall could see the layered geological strata, the broadest of which was the same colour as the road under their feet. This was obviously the source of the road-building material.
The road descended into the quarry in the form of a gentle ramp; bombardier beetles and human beings poured down it in a gaily coloured stream. On the floor of the quarry he could see dozens of coloured tents, one of which — striped in green and white — was far larger than the rest. He could also hear a sound that made his heart lift in sudden gaiety: the noise of brass musical instruments played in unison.
It took them nearly half an hour to descend to the bottom. There were still many large pools of water from last night’s rain, and children ran barefoot through these and shrieked with laughter as they splashed one another; other children were gathered around a Punch and Judy show. Pleasant smells of cooking and burnt caramel blew towards them from the coloured tents and booths. The members of the brass band, dressed in bright red togas with yellow sashes, stood on a platform of natural rock, and an amphitheatre behind them amplified their sounds like a powerful loudspeaker.
This end of the quarry was dominated by a grandstand with perhaps a thousand seats and covered by a transparent dome like a green-tinted bubble.
Doggins said: “If you want a good view of the show, try and get a seat on the top row. It starts in about half an hour. Now I’m going to leave you — I’ve things to do.”
“Thank you.” Niall was looking forward to exploring the sideshows.
But a moment later, Doggins was back. He said quietly: “Trouble.”
Niall followed the direction of his gaze and felt his heart sink. Among the crowds descending the ramp was a group of bare-breasted women; he recognised them immediately as commanders. For a moment he experienced panic.
“Do you think they’re looking for me?”
“No. They often come here on Boomday.”
“What shall I do?”
“Don’t worry. I don’t think they’ll recognise you. To them, you’re just another slave. But you’d better keep out of sight.”
He pointed to the striped marquee which faced the grandstand. “You’ll find the slaves working in there. You already know Mostig — he’s the bald-headed man you met this morning. Go and ask him if there’s anything you can do.”
Niall entered the marquee and found it a chaos of activity. Most of the floor space was taken up by an elaborate stage set, which represented an island covered with trees. There was a ship at anchor on imitation blue waves, and nearby a creek ran into the sea. The beach was covered with native straw huts, and a witch doctor with a necklace of skulls was dancing round a cooking pot that contained an unhappy-looking sailor. On closer examination, Niall discovered that the witch doctor, like the island itself, was made of wood and papier mâché, much of it still being painted by the stage hands.