Urbis

It was a balmy morning, and as Crispin rose from the ground he savoured it, swinging his torso from side to side to limber up.

And then he glimpsed the city. If its nocturnal aspect had been repellant to him, its appearance in the light of day was something yet more abhorrent. It was as if an arbitrary dividing line had been drawn along the foothills of the mountains, on one side of which nature remained unblemished, while on the other mankind had spawned a nightmarish rival creation which was, for its part, untouched by nature. While his senses were reviled by it, Crispin could not take his eyes off it. It was something so undreamt of, so totally foreign to his entire experience, that he felt drawn to it, his curiosity drawing him towards it and propelling his reluctant feet down the hillside.

He was surprised to find that he was, in fact, still at some considerable remove from the city. It seemed so huge and so close that it was surely just over the next hill. Not so, he found.

The woodland he was walking through petered out into open downs. At its fringe he stopped. There were some tree stumps, not hacked as with an axe, but cut cleanly. Crispin recalled the chainsaws. This was their work. He sat down on one of the stumps and chewed some meat. He considered his situation carefully. He was ignorant of every aspect of life in such a place, he would stand out, he knew, he would become a focus of attention. Mystery upon mystery crowded into his head.

He began walking towards the city. His heart was pounding in his chest, seeming to grow more intense with every step. He slipped his hunting knife inside his tunic, assuring himself that it was within easy reach.

In the calm purple twilight he came to the brow of a hill. At the bottom were houses and streets. He followed a well-trodden path down the hill, and at the bottom, at a gap in a hedge, he stepped from earth onto concrete.

He continued walking in the same direction, as far as the tangle of streets would permit him. The streets had trees growing out of holes in the pavements, something Crispin found heartening. While not slackening his pace in the least, he sought to take in as much as he could of his surroundings. The houses all stood in their own adjoining plots of land, surrounded by picket fences, and a good many had fierce dogs that snarled and barked at him as he passed. The houses had a ramshackle look about them, with warped weatherboards, gap-toothed shingles and flaking paintwork. But most of the windows had a warm yellow glow to them, and the sound of voices could be heard from within. One thing which puzzled Crispin was that he thought he could hear the same voice in house after house, speaking in an unbroken flow. He wondered if he was imagining it.

As the evening shadows deepened, the street lights came on, startling him as they flickered into life. He was startled again by a sound behind him, a tinny ringing. He looked around to see a man coming towards him. The man was astride a strange metal construction which was carrying him, and appeared to be propelled by the rotating action of the man’s legs. Crispin jumped out of his path in alarm.

“Evening,” said the man, and pedalled away into the gloom. It was the first word anyone had spoken to him for a week.

The houses with their own plots of land were soon replaced by terraces with front doors opening onto the street. Some had a stoop, but most could not even boast of that.

He stopped by a window, hearing the same voice he had heard before, and saw that it belonged to a man whose disembodied head was visible as a moving picture on one wall of the room. He stared uncomprehendingly at it, trying to make out something of what the man was saying, until a woman appeared on the other side of the window, scowled and shook her fist at him, and pulled down a blind.

He wandered on. At a corner, there was a pub, from which loud music was emanating. Three men stumbled down some steps from it in front of Crispin. Before he could do anything, one of the men had him in a bear hug, pinning his arms to his sides, lifting him off his feet and spinning him around. The man reeked of alcohol. To Crispin’s relief, he was simply being playful, and soon staggered off after his companions.

Further along the same street, a railway bridge passed overhead. Crispin watched as a train edged slowly over it and stopped. He looked up at the people inside it. They looked relaxed, thoroughly at peace with their environment. Why shouldn’t they be, Crispin mused, if they have known no other?

An approaching sound made him jump. He had no way of knowing what it signified, but it had a quality that was alarming, threatening. It pulsed through the night air, a warning. Crispin withdrew into the shadow of a doorway. A car with no wheels, hovering a few centimetres above the road surface, raced past. Crispin saw flashing lights, and glimpsed on its door some strange hieroglyphs which undoubtedly had some meaning to someone.

When it had gone, he hurried away dodging the pools of light cast by the street lamps, melting into the darkness wherever possible.

A short time later he came to a huge black strip - his first freeway. He found himself looking over a railing into a cutting where an eight lane river of bitumen slashed its way through the city, bathed in the faintly sickly orange glow of sodium lamps. The freeway was thick with cars heading in both directions, flying past beneath his feet, soundless, wheelless, driven by superconductivity, lights blazing like the eyes of monsters. He shuddered. He had not imagined anything like this. What could the people be like that controlled such things?

He passed over a slender footbridge which crossed the freeway in a graceful arc, running his hand wonderingly along its smooth chrome handrail.

Beyond the freeway, he found himself in an area crowded with people, nocturnal ramblers strolling through streets filled with noise and light. He walked through them as through an incoming tide, overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught on his senses. A man staggered from a door on his left, lurched towards the wall and vomited, coughing and spitting, then ambled away down a dark alley.

The people around him were more bizarre in their appearance than he could ever have dreamed, and seemed to be competing with each other in their outrageousness. Every colour, pattern and texture was evident: leather, lace and feathers adorned men and women alike. Both sexes had either multicoloured hair or none, each sported weird tattoos on every exposed portion of their anatomy, some wearing exotic looking makeup accentuating eyes and lips. The women were also adorned in gaudy jewellery that flashed and sparkled from ears, noses, throats, fingers, wrists, breasts, waists and ankles, and this appeared to be the only form of display that their male counterparts did not indulge in. A considerable proportion of the men, however, showed absurdly swollen bulges at their groin, strutting like peacocks to show off these patently false appendages.

Crispin caught a few of them eyeing him disinterestedly. In a place where abnormality was the norm, it was impossible for him to be out of place. He could not know that much of the dress of those around him carried subtle social and sexual messages, and that in being looked over he was being examined for such messages.

He drifted across a broad piazza towards a floodlit fountain that stood in the centre. The fountain had as its centrepiece a statue representing four glistening black nudes - two males and two females - and the sculptor had accentuated their sex organs to the limits of credibility. As if inspired by this, a man and a woman were copulating on the flagstones at the base of the fountain. Crispin walked around them and continued across the piazza.

He thought of Tana. She was here somewhere, in this mad place, being used...

He reached the far side of the piazza, where bright lights beckoned. Shop windows blurted sex paraphernalia at him. Other windows displayed explicit pictures, with signs inviting the spectator to enter to experience illicit delights.

“Like to come upstairs, darling?”

He swung round in alarm and found he was staring at a pasty-faced blonde woman. Two red plastic dishes held together by little silver chains partially covered her capacious bosom, and a micro-skirt of the same red plastic clung to her hips. Other than that, she was wearing only red stiletto heeled shoes. There were goose bumps all over her skin.

She smiled, carmine bee sting lips parting momentarily to flash pearly teeth at him. “Sorry. Did I make you jump?” Her accent sounded harsh to Crispin’s ears.

“N-no,” he stammered. “No.”

“Well, how about it? I’ll give you a good time. You look like you could use one.”

She leaned close, conspiratorially. Crispin smelled a mixture of body odour and stale perfume. She winked. “Any special requests, I’ll be happy to oblige.”

“No.” Crispin took to his heels, loping away through the crowds, anxious to put as much distance as he could between himself and the woman. Glancing nervously over his shoulder, he collided with two beefy men.

“Watch where you’re going, pal!”

The two men were wearing greenish uniforms emblazoned with the word `Security’.

“S-sorry,” said Crispin, his nerves shredded.

The two men pushed him roughly aside and continued walking.

“Bloody Security,” said a man close to him when the uniformed figures had been swallowed by the crowd and were out of earshot. “Act like they own the place.”

“They probably do,” volunteered another at his side.

Crispin was on the verge of asking about the “Security men”, but decided not to give himself away. He simply smiled and nodded at the two men and walked on.

The city he seemed endless. He made his way through narrow thoroughfares lined with stalls displaying pornographic books and much else that was totally mysterious to him. He gave the scantily clad women loitering in doorways a wide berth and ignored their blandishments. Finally the crowds of people grew thinner, the lights less bright.

Smells of cooking reminded him that he was hungry, and that the provisions in his bag had run out. He started to think about ways of obtaining food and otherwise surviving in the metropolis. People sat at dimly lit tables inside a building. They seemed to be different from the men and women walking the streets. They were more restrained somehow, their clothes not so garish in appearance.

He moved on. A sleek car cruised past him and came to a halt a few metres away. Six men, all smartly dressed, got out of the car and disappeared up a flight of stairs. They had a furtive air about them, and the last one shot Crispin a suspicious glance as he vanished into the building.

Crispin’s feet were hurting him. He found a dark corner in an alley in which to sit down, and in a matter of moments he was asleep.