The Currents of Space Read Online Free PDF

says you’re beginning to remember things.”
    “Yes, Townman.” Rik was always very humble before the Townman, who was the most important man he had ever seen. Even the mill superintendent was polite to the Townman. Rik repeated the scraps his mind had gathered during the day.
    Terens said, “Have you remembered anything else since you told this to Valona?”
    “Nothing else, Townman.”
    Terens kneaded the fingers of one hand with those of the other. “All right, Rik. Go back to sleep.”
    Valona followed him out of the house. She was trying hard to keep her face from twisting and the back of one rough hand slid across her eyes. “Will he have to leave me, Townman?”
    Terens took her hands and said gravely, “You must be a grown woman, Valona. He will have to come with me for just a short while but I’ll bring him back.”
    “And after that?”
    “I don’t know. You must understand, Valona. Right now it is the most important thing in all the world that we find out more about Rik’s memories.”
    Valona said suddenly, “You mean everybody on Florina might die, the way he says?”
    Terens’ grip tightened. “Don’t ever say that to anyone, Valona, or the patrollers may take Rik away forever. I mean that.”
    He turned away and walked slowly and thoughtfully back to his house without really noticing that his hands were trembling. He tried futilely to sleep and after an hour of that he adjustedthe narco-field. It was one of the few pieces of Sark he had brought with him when he first returned to Florina to become Townman. It fitted about his skull like a thin black felt cap. He adjusted the controls to five hours and closed contact.
    He had time to adjust himself comfortably in bed before the delayed response shorted the conscious centers of his cerebrum and blanketed him into instantaneous, dreamless sleep.

3. THE LIBRARIAN
     
     
     
     
     
     
    They left the diamagnetic scooter in a scooter-cubby outside the City limits. Scooters were rare in the City and Terens had no wish to attract unnecessary attention. He thought for a savage moment of those of the Upper City with their diamagnetic ground-cars and anti-grav gyros. But that was the Upper City. It was different.
    Rik waited for Terens to lock the cubby and fingerprint-seal it. He was dressed in a new one-piece suit and felt a little uncomfortable. Somewhat reluctantly he followed the Townman under the first of the tall bridgelike structures that supported the Upper City.
    On Florina, all other cities had names, but this one was simply the “City.” The workers and peasants who lived in it and around it were considered lucky by the rest of the planet. In the City there were better doctors and hospitals, more factories and more liquor stores, even a few dribbles of very mild luxury. The inhabitants themselves were somewhat less enthusiastic. They lived in the shadow of the Upper City.
    The Upper City was exactly what the name implied, for the City was double, divided rigidly by a horizontal layer of fifty square miles of cementalloy resting upon some twenty thousand steel-girdered pillars. Below in the shadow were the “natives.”Above, in the sun, were the Squires. It was difficult to believe in the Upper City that the planet of its location was Florina. The population was almost exclusively Sarkite in nature, together with a sprinkling of patrollers. They were the upper class in all literalness.
    Terens knew his way. He walked quickly, avoiding the stares of passersby, who surveyed his Townman clothing with a mixture of envy and resentment. Rik’s shorter legs made his gait less dignified as he tried to keep up. He did not remember very much from his only other visit to the City. It seemed so different now. Then it had been cloudy. Now the sun was out, pouring through the spaced openings in the cementalloy above to form strips of light that made the intervening space all the darker. They plunged through the bright strips in a rhythmic, almost