Inner Circle Read Free Page A

this box and it’s not the other. Can’t look over too many heads, it sends my eyes to sleep.’

    ‘Look again, Sailor.’ But this time I could hear the voice, each word magnified by the air. It seemed to resound against the domes and come down through their purple and golden haloes.

    ‘Listen—listen to the good tidings! A tree—a true tree—was born in the West under the open sky—and it is alive. It will bear fruit-and the fruit will multiply. And believe me—no storm from inside the sea—no fire from beyond the sky roof will prevail-against the tree!’

    I strained my neck and my eyes, and saw head after head turn towards the voice.
    The third box, Rain cried, the third from us; she couldn’t possibly have seen it, she was shorter than September, but I believed her and stood on tiptoes. Yes, there was a man on the top of a box, the third in the distance after the one to which Leeds had clung for weeks. The man seemed much older than any of us, he was in fact a strange exception to the age rule which bound us here to a communal identity, similar habits and health.

    ‘Why has he forgotten to die?’ September said. Like Rain, she saw the man without using her eyes.

    I noticed that we had stopped circling. There was a hush over us and over those unaccountable people facing the box from which the man had spoken.

    ‘We hear thunder.’ Joker was nudging Sailor, who couldn’t hear a thing because he had fallen asleep. ‘They’re coming!’ a woman shrieked behind the box nearest to us.

    Metal discs started popping up everywhere, tubes gushed out from the earth and swayed like snakes before collapsing into the loosened clods. There was suddenly dust at the level of our ankles, thickening as it rose.

    Before the panic seized the people by their knees and necks and threw them down in heaps, I saw the old man on the box stagger and disappear through the roof as if it had a trap panel. And immediately another female cry reached me from the whirlpool of dust.

    ‘They’re crushing everything! They are here!’

    My circle was broken. Joker and Sailor had jumped into the nearest box and slammed the door behind them. I grabbed my wives and somehow managed to push their small hands through the hooks on my belt, then I fell to the ground, pulling them down.
    My arms were trying to embrace the corner of the box. The stampede was already upon us. I received a knock on my head and back, I felt a stinging pain all down my right leg.
    Oh, we were too healthy on this island to cheat pain by losing consciousness. Thunder after thunder convulsed the surface.

    Then I felt a soothing coldness on my neck. It spread and was followed by a different hush than that before the stampede.

    ‘It’s rain,’ said my first wife.

    ‘It’s the greatest rain I ever thought of,’ said my second wife. And the rain was rinsing our hair, sparking off pebbles from the ground, whizzing over the grit in the hollows.

    ‘They’ve sent it down to stop the panic.’ I meant the skymen.

    ‘Nice to see you again, Dover,’ I heard a voice bending over me. ‘I couldn’t think of any faster means of transport to reach you at this very same spot. Get up, Dover, you’re quite all right. My stampede was not as bad as it sounded.’

    I looked up and saw his condescending neck.

    ‘You need another pair of hands in your circle, Dover. The five of you couldn’t hold out.’ Leeds lifted me up and clasped my hand. ‘Where are those brothers of yours?’

    And then we witnessed a sight in the half-opened skies. A rainbow hung there, reflecting a small tree. Raindrops shimmered all over the reflection, as if the tree wore a robe for this annunciation.

    3

    ‘Shut the door,’ said Joker, ‘we can’t hear a thing.’ I squeezed myself in and smelt the familiar odour of disinfectants, then perfume, both quickening the desire to touch, watch and recollect. ‘That’s where we come from, I think.’ Sailor was pointing at the underground