The Hollow Lands

  And now, because he might be killed forever, before he could see Mrs. Amelia Underwood again, he was filled by panic. It was a new emotion and part of his mind took an objective curiosity in it. He began to run. He was careless of the branches which struck his face. He ran on and on, through darkness, away from the sounds and the destruction. Danger was a wall which seemed to surround him, in escaping one source he encountered another. Once he bumped against someone in the dark and was about to speak when they said, "Ferkit!" He moved away as quietly as possible and heard a blood-chilling shriek from somewhere else.

  He ran, he fell, he crawled, got up and ran again. His chest was painful and his brain was useless. He thought that he might be sobbing and he knew that the next time he would fall and not have the will to rise.

  He tripped. He lost his balance. He was reconciled to Death. He went sprawling down the sides of an old pit, bits of earth and rock falling with him, and was about to congratulate himself that he might after all have found relative safety when the bottom of the pit gave way and he was sliding down something which was smooth and plainly built for this purpose. Down and down he slid on the metal chute, feeling sick with the speed of his descent, unable to reach his power rings, unable to slow himself, until he must have been almost a mile underground. Then, at last, the chute came to an end and he landed, winded and dazed, on what appeared to be a pile of mildewed quilts.

  The light was dim and it was artificial. After a while he sat up, feeling tenderly over his body for broken bones, but there were none. A peculiar sense of well-being filled him and he lay back upon the quilts with a yawn, hoping that his friends had managed to get back to the landau. He would rest and then consider the best method of joining them. A power ring would doubtless bore a tunnel upwards for him, then he could drift to the surface by means of counter-gravity. He felt extremely sleepy. He could hardly believe in the events which had just taken place. He was about to close his eyes when he heard a small, lisping voice saying:

  "Welcome, sir, to Wonderland!"

  He looked round. A small girl stood there. She had large blue eyes and blonde curly hair. Her expression was demure.

  "You're very well made," said Jherek admiringly. "What are you, exactly?"

  The small girl's expression was now one of disgust. "I'm a little girl, of course. Aren't I?"

  8

  The Children of the Pit

  Jherek stood up and dusted at his white draperies, saying kindly: "Little girls have been extinct for thousands of years. You're probably a robot or a toy. What are you doing down here?"

  "Playing," said the robot or toy; then it stepped forward and kicked his ankle, "And I know what I am. And I know what you are. Nurse said we had to be careful of grown-ups — they're dangerous."

  "So are little girls," said Jherek feelingly, rubbing an already battered leg. "Where is your Nurse, my child?"

  He had to admit he was surprised at how lifelike the creature was, but it could not be a child or he would have heard about it. Save for himself and Werther de Goethe, children had not been born on Earth for millennia. People were created, as the Duke of Queens had created Sweet Orb Mace, or recreated themselves, as King Rook had become Bishop Castle. Having children, after all, was rather a responsibility. Creating mature adults was difficult enough!

  "Come on," said the being, taking his hand. She led him down a tunnel of pink marble which, to Jherek's eye, had something in common with the style and materials of the ancient cities, though the tunnel seemed relatively new. The tunnel opened into a large room crammed with beautiful reproductions of antiques, some of which Jherek recognized as miniature whizz-mobiles, rocking horses, furry partridges, seasores, coloured quasimodos and erector sets. "This is one of our play-rooms," she told him. "The school room is through there. Nurse should be out soon with the others. I'm playing truant," she added proudly.

  Jherek admired his surroundings. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to reproduce an old nursery. He wondered if this, like the wood above, could be attributed to Lord Jagged. It certainly showed his finesse.

  Suddenly a door opened and into the room poured a score of boys and girls, all of about the same apparent age, the boys in shirts and shorts, the girls in frilly dresses and aprons. They were shouting and laughing, but they stopped when they saw Jherek Carnelian. Their eyes widened, their mouths hung open.

  "It's an adult," said the self-styled child. "I caught it in one of the corridors. It fell through the roof."

  "Do you think it's a Producer?" asked one of the boys, stepping up to Jherek and looking him over.

  "They're fatter than that," another girl said. "Here comes Nurse, anyway. She'll know."

  Behind them loomed a tall figure, grim of visage, clothed in grey steel, humanoid and stern. A robot, much larger than Jherek, built to resemble a middle-aged woman in the costume of the Late Multitude Cultures. Her voice, when she spoke, was a trifle rusty and her limbs were inclined to creak when they moved. Cold blue eyes glared from the steel face.

  "What's this, Mary Wilde, playing truant again?" Nurse tut-tutted. "And who's this other little boy? Not one of mine by the look of him."

  "We think it's an adult, Nurse," said Mary Wilde.

  "Nonsense, Mary. Your imagination is running away with you again. There are no such things as adults any more."

  "That's what he said about children." Mary Wilde put her hand to her mouth to suppress a giggle.

  "Pull yourself together, Mary," said Nurse. "I can only conclude that this young man has also been playing truant. You will both be punished by having only bread and milk for supper."

  "I assure you that I am an adult, madam," Jherek insisted. "Although I have been a child in my time. My name is Jherek Carnelian."

  "Well, you're reasonably polite at any rate," said Nurse. Her lips clashed as she drew them together. "You had better meet the other little boys and girls. I really can't think why they've sent me an extra child. I'm already two over my quota." The robot seemed a shade on the senile side, unable to accept new information. Jherek had the impression that she had been performing her tasks for a considerable length of time and had, as robots will in such conditions, become set in her ways. He decided, for the moment, to humour her.

  "This is Freddie Fearless," said Nurse, laying a gentle metal hand upon the brown curly locks of the nearest boy. "And this is Danny Daring. Mick Manly and Victor Venture, here. Gary Gritt, Peter Pluck and Ben Bold, there. Kit Courage — Dick Dreadnought — Gavin Gallant. Say hello to your new friend, boys."

  "Hello," they chorused obediently.

  "What did you say your name was, lad?" asked Nurse.

  "Jherek Carnelian, Nurse."

  "A strange, unlikely name."

  "Your children's names all seem to have a certain similarity, if I may say so…"

  "Nonsense. Anyway, we'll call you Jerry — Jerry Jester, Always Playing the Fool, eh?"

  Jherek shrugged.

  "And these are the girls — Mary Wilde, you've already; met. Betty Bold, Ben's sister. Molly Madcap. Nora Noise."

  "I'm the school sneak," announced Nora Noise with undisguised pleasure.

  "Yes, dear, and you're very good at it. This is Gloria Grande. Flora Friendly. Katie Kinde — Harriet Haughtie — Jenny Jolly."

  "I am honoured to meet you all," said Jherek, with something of Lord Jagged's grace. "But perhaps you could tell me what you are doing underground?"

  "We're hiding!" whispered Molly Madcap. "Our parents sent us here to escape the movie."

  "The movie?"

  "Pecking Pa the Eighth's The Great Massacre of the First-Born — that's the working title, anyway," Ben Bold told him.

  "It's a remake about the birth of Christ," said Flora Friendly. "Pecking Pa is going to play Herod himself."

  This name alone meant something to Jherek. He knew that he had met a time traveller once who had fled from this same Pecking Pa, the Last of the Tyrant Producers, when he had been in the process of making another dram
a about the eruption of Krakatoa.

  "But that was thousands of years ago," Jherek said. "You couldn't have been here all that time. Or could you?"

  "We work to a weekly shift here," said Nurse. She turned her eyes towards a chronometer on the wall. "If we don't hurry, I shall be late with the recycling. That's the trouble with the parents — they've no thought for me — they send down another child without ever thinking about my schedules — and then they wonder why the routines are upset."

  "Do you mean you're recycling time?" asked Jherek in amazement. "The same week over and over again."

  "Until the danger's over," said Nurse. "Didn't your parents tell you? We'll have to get you out of those silly clothes. Really, some mothers have peculiar ideas of how to dress children. You're quite a big boy, aren't you. It will mean making a shirt and shorts for a start."

  "I don't want to wear a shirt and shorts, Nurse! I'm not sure they'll suit me."

  "Oh, my goodness! You have been spoiled, Jerry!"

  "I think the danger is over, Nurse," said Jherek desperately, backing away. "The Age of the Tyrant Producers has long since past. We're now very close to the End of Time itself."

  "Well, dear, that won't affect us here, will it? We operate a neat closed system. It doesn't matter what happens in the rest of the universe, we just go round and round through the same period. I do it all myself, you know, with no help from anyone else."

  "I think you've become a little fixed in your habits, Nurse. Have you considered limbering up your circuits?"

  "Now, Jerry, I'll assume you're not being deliberately rude, because you're new here, but I'm afraid that if I hear any more talk like that from you I'll have to take strong measures. I'm kind, Jerry, but I'm firm."

  The great robot rumbled forward on her tracks, reaching out her huge metal arms towards him. "Next, we'll undress you."

  Jherek bowed. "I think I'll go now, Nurse. But as soon as I can I'll return. After all, these children can begin to grow up, the danger being over. They'll want to see the outside world."

  "Language, boy!" bellowed Nurse fiercely. "Language!"

  "I didn't mean to…" Jherek turned and bolted.

  "Soldiers of the Guard!" roared Nurse.

  Jherek found his way blocked by huge mechanical toy soldiers. They had expressionless faces and were not anything like as sophisticated as Nurse, but their metal bodies effectively blocked his escape.

  Jherek yelped as he felt Nurse's strong hands fall on him. He was yanked into the air and flung over a cold steel knee. A metal hand rose and fell six times on his bottom and then he was upright again and Nurse was patting his head.

  "I don't like to punish boys, Jerry," said Nurse. "But it is for their own good that they do not leave the nursery. When you are older you will understand that."

  "But I am older," said Jherek.

  "That's impossible." Nurse began to strip his clothes from him and moments later he stood before her wearing the same kind of shirt and shorts and knee-socks as Kit Courage, Freddie Fearless and the others. "There," she said in satisfaction, "now you're not so much of an odd boy out. I know how children hate to be different."

  Jherek, twice the height of his new chums, knew then that he was in the power of a moron.

  9

  Nurse's Sense of Duty

  Jherek Carnelian sat at the far end of the dormitory, a bowl of bread and milk in his lap, an expression of hopeless misery upon his face, while Nurse stood by the door saying goodnight.

  "I really should point out, Nurse, that, since your closed environment has been entered by an outsider, a variety of temporal paradoxes are likely to take place. They are sure to disrupt your way of life and mine probably much more than we should want."

  "Sleepy time now," said Nurse firmly, for the sixth time since Jherek had arrived. "Lights out, my little men!"

  Jherek knew that it was useless to get up once he had gone to bed. Nurse would detect him immediately and put him back again. At least it was easy to know how long he had been here. Each day measured exactly twenty-four hours and each hour had sixty-minutes — it was all on the old non-malleable reckonings. The Age of the Tyrant Producers would have been one of the last to use them. Jherek knew that Nurse must have been programmed to act upon new information and to deal with it intelligently, but she had become sluggish over the centuries. His only hope was to keep insisting on what was self-evident truth, but it could take months. He wondered how the Iron Orchid and the others had fared on the surface. With any luck, when he was able to escape, he would find the Lat weapons neutralized (it was quite easy to do and had been done on several previous occasions) and the aliens returned to space.

  "I think you should consider a re-programming, Nurse!" Jherek called into the darkness.

  "Now, now, Jerry, you know I disapprove of cheeky children." The door closed. Nurse rolled away down the corridor.

  Jherek wondered if he had been right in believing that he had detected a faint uncertainty's in Nurse's voice tonight.

  Freddie Fearless said admiringly from the next bed. "You can certainly keep it up, can't you Jerry? I don't know why the old girl lets you get away with it."

  "Perhaps, in her subconscious, she realizes that I'm an adult and doesn't like to admit it," Jherek suggested.

  This drew a ripple of laughter from the boys.

  "That's Jerry Jester," said Dick Dreadnought, "always playing the fool! Life wouldn't be nearly so much fun without you, Jerry." Like the others, he had accepted Jherek immediately and seemed to have forgotten that he had only recently entered the nursery.

  With a sigh, Jherek turned over and tried to operate his power rings, as he had taken to doing every night, but plainly some protective device in the nursery blocked off the source of their energy. He still had the deceptor-gun, but he couldn't think of any use for it at present. He felt under his pillow. It was still there. With a sigh, he tried to go to sleep. It seemed to him that he was in an even more uncomfortable situation than when he had been Snoozer Vines' prisoner in Jone's Kitchen in 1896. He remembered that there, too, they had called him Jerry. Did all gaolers favour that name for him?

  Jherek wakened and was surprised that the lights were not on, as they usually were; also he could not smell breakfast; moreover Nurse was not standing by the door ringing her bell and calling "Wake up, sleepyheads!" as was her wont.

  From somewhere beyond the dormitory, however, there came various noises — yells, explosions, screams and bangs — and suddenly the door had sprung open, admitting light from the corridor.

  "Berchoos ek!" said a familiar voice. "Hoody?"

  And Captain Mubbers, his whiskers bristling, his musical instrument in his hands, stood framed in the doorway. He glared at Jherek.

  "Kroofrudi!" he said in recognition, and a nasty grin appeared on his face.

  Jherek groaned. The Lat had found him and now the children were in danger.

  "Ferkit! Jillip goff var heggo heg, mibix?"

  "I still can't understand you, Captain Mubbers," Jherek told the brigand-musician. "However, I take it you would like me to accompany you and, of course, I shall. Hopefully you will then leave the rest of — I mean — leave the children alone." With as much dignity as he could muster considering he was wearing a jacket and trousers of brightly striped flannel far too small for him, he rose from his bed, his hands in the air, and walked towards the Lat captain.

  Captain Mubbers snorted with mirth. "Shag uk fang dok pist kickle hrunt!" he yelled. His men gathered around him and they, too, joined in their leader's merriment. One even dropped his weapon, but was quick to recover it again. This made Jherek wonder if their own power source came from their spaceship or if the weapons, like his deceptor-gun, had independent cells. He supposed that there wasn't any easy way of finding out. He bore their laughter as manfully as he could.

  Captain Mubbers' bulbous nose fairly glowed with the strain of his laughter. "Uuuungh, k-k-kroofrudi! Uuuuuungh, k-kroofrudi!"

  "What's this? Wh
at's this? More naughty boys from outside!" came Nurse's booming voice from down the corridor. "And during the night, now! This will never do!"

  Captain Mubbers and his men looked at one another with expressions of disbelieving surprise on their faces. Nurse rolled steadily on.

  "You are nasty rough boys and you are disturbing my charges. Haven't you homes to go to?"

  "Kroofrudi!" said Captain Mubbers.

  "Ferkit!" said another.

  "Ugh! Disgusting!" said Nurse. "Where do you pick up such words!"

  Captain Mubbers stepped to the head of his gang and menaced Nurse with his instrument. She ignored it completely. "I have never seen such filthy little boys. And what have you got in your hands? Catapults, no doubt!"

  Captain Mubbers aimed his instrument at Nurse and pulled the trigger. Howling fire left the muzzle and struck Nurse full on her chest. She made a fussy, brushing motion, then one of her arms extended and she snatched the instrument from Captain Mubbers' grasp.

  "Naughty, naughty, naughty, little boy. I will not have such behaviour in the nursery!"

  "Olgo glex mibix?" said Captain Mubbers placatingly. He tried to smile, but his eyes were glassy as he stared up at Nurse whose huge metal head looked down upon him. "Frads kolek goj sako!"

  "I will listen to no more of your nastiness. This is the only way to teach manners to the likes of you, young man."

  With great satisfaction, Jherek watched as Captain Mubbers was snatched yelling into the air, was thrown across Nurse's knee, was divested of his trousers and slapped soundly upon his bare and unlovely backside. Captain Mubbers shouted to his crew to help and they all began kicking at Nurse, tugging at her, swearing at her, to no avail. Sedately she completed the punishment of Captain Mubbers and then, one by one, gave similar treatment to his companions, confiscating their instruments at the same time.

  Chastened, they all stood holding their bottoms, red-faced and tearful, while Jherek and the boys from the dormitory laughed delightedly.