The Secret City by Carol Emshwiller

rooms must be pretty small in these towers, and the higher, the smaller. I’m glad they didn’t put me any higher. I wanted to ask them: Is this all just for looks so the towers will all be alike or what? But I didn’t.
    One says, “Go on loosen up. We’ll take you to a….” And another word I don’t know. “You’ll meet a Special.” I think that’s what he said.
    Then they leave. I wouldn’t know how to escape if I wanted to, or even how to go down and take a walk. And I want to … at least I want to take a walk. I want to be on my own, wandering the city, but I’d be lost in five minutes.
    Everything that happens makes me wish for Lorpas. With him, I’d laugh. Or maybe we’d discover how to go take a walk.
    Except it
is
beautiful. From here I can look at all these other spires—as far as you can see, nothing but spires. And the moons. My parents talked of them every time there was a starry night back there, as if two moons was always better than the stars. I try to see those twirling bird things but I guess they’re only out in the daytime.
    I haven’t been to any kind of town since I was a child. The Secret City isn’t really a city. We were living like cavemen. Or rather like moles in our burrows.
    I’m thirsty and I don’t know how to get a drink. I don’t even know where they pee. There are buttons for everything but I don’t dare push them because the one I did push turned on bright lights, but then wouldn’t turn them back off.
    I dare to pee into a depression in the floor. I hope that’s not where breakfast will appear.
    I lie down on the bed. This one is different from the cot in that gray cell. You sink in more than you want to. At first I jump up because I think the bed is going to swallow me, but there’s no place else except the floor. And would they really try to eat me? I lie down again. There are no blankets so nothing to hide under to block out the light. The bed seems warm, but I still don’t like how it curls up around you. Lorpas would hate it even more than I do, what with his claustrophobia.
    To think it was just last night I slept next to him, his hand on my arm. There was the sound of the stream and crickets. Why didn’t we kiss then, when we had the chance?
    But everything is making me so tired I don’t find it hard to sleep … that is, after a time of letting tears drip down. At least the bed has no fancy scary way of drying them. But then my hair is a bother. It’s stiff and uncomfortable. I don’t know what to do about it. Maybe you’re supposed to wash it out every night but I can’t even get myself a drink. But I do fall asleep soon and sleep soundly.

    LORPAS
    T HE BOTTOM OF THE SCREE IS F ULL OF BOULDERS . I find the man first. He’s dead. That’s a bad sign for Mollish. I’m hoping…. I need her…. She was such a wonderfully tough and wise lady. She’s the only old one I’ve seen for a long time and she was so unlike all the others in loving this world more than her own. Allush said she’d been a servant and that was why she liked it better here. Makes me wonder about my world. There were things our parents wouldn’t talk about. Mother thought she was a cut above even our own people. I’d try to argue with her but she always said there was nothing to say about it, why should she argue? She just was, and if I couldn’t see it, it didn’t matter to her. She said it wasn’t the sort of thing nice people talked about.
    At first I can’t find Mollish. That’s because she’s farther up on the steep slide of scree and partly covered up with gravel. When I see her, I think she might be all right—she didn’t have that far to fall. I have a hard time getting up to her. I slide down almost as much as I crawl up.
    But she’s dead. Not a mark on her that I can see. Maybe she was just too old for a fall and a fight.
    I dig in my heels and prop myself beside her. It’s hard to sit there without sliding.
    I sit a long time. I hold her hand. I think how