"Shall we go on the Dodgems then, Chrissa?" asked the one with close-cropped black hair and a wonder-hungry face.
"Without Frank? - You must be mad! I haven't the reactions. We'd be off in two minutes - phut! Nasty mess!"
"The Big Wheel, then?"
"Well, what-the-hell, why not?"
As Chrissa walked, the tension of high energy spoke through her movement. She was well aware of the attendant's interest, but chose not to acknowledge it for the moment.
"Two for the wheel, love? Expensive? Experience of a life-time! A real Friday pay-day treat! Danke - oops a daisy..."
Side by side in a creaking, fragile chair that rose a fraction then stopped, to allow the next couple to board, and Chrissa linked the safety chain across her lap.
"Mine's broken!" Mandy exclaimed. "Should I call down? It's not safe!"
"Don't be daft. You paid to get on and it's a free country. They won't stop now: not for you, not for me, not for any Free Citizen."
She seemed totally unconcerned, but softened to Mandy's distress:
"Look, love, these things happen, you know. But you're new here, so I'll give you some advice. Hold on tight to the arm and the back of the chair. Like this, see, one with each hand, and don't let go for an instant 'til the ride's over -"
Slowly they moved up and to the peak; hung for a moment; over and round again; bathed in the yellow light and the music playing; faster round and round...
Mandy took time to look at the view, which was indeed spectacular: Newton on one side, Cowley on the other, and ahead on a hill, with spires black against the sky, Old Oxford.
A jerk - slowing - a series of judders, pulling at arms and wet, slippery hands. Then at last the true halt.
"The safety belt's broken," she told the man in charge.
"Is it? So what? You see the notice!"
If she had been able to read, the small metal plate would have informed her that "By the act of 1989 the management bears no responsibility for the safety of their patrons. In accordance with sub-section 20, no minors admitted."
"C'mon. Let's have a drink."
"You can have another. I haven't had one yet."
"C'mon, Mandy, I'll treat you to a Choke."
Chokes were cheap and non-alcoholic, but contained a hallucinogen and a stimulant. This was Chrissa's third that evening - not that either of them needed stimulation. They had worked seven hours a day; danced; to greater or lesser degrees - greater in Chrissa's case - indulged in amorous adventures; and slept perhaps eighteen hours in the whole week: still they burned with energy. Others came in. The juke was set up, lights flashed, and Mandy blessed her luck in living, when death had marked her seat on the Big Wheel.
Horrifyingly slowly, through whirling forms of illusion, darkness closed in.
It had been the Chokes, of course. Faulty manufacture of the hallucinogens. Most of those who had been dancing in the bar were dead, including Chrissa.
"Still, it wouldn't have made much odds to a girl like she was." was the nurse's obituary, "She wouldn't have lasted another six-month anyway - tissues all stopped up and worn out. Good-time girls!"
"What do you mean?"
"Dumkopf! You're all the same - ignore the rules, have fun!"
"But you hardly get anything otherwise. It's all piece work and the gloves are so clammy and hot. All the girls do it."
"'Course they do. Don't look so shocked, girl, you can't be that naive! What did you think they gave you the protective gear for to begin with? Fun? - No! Dust in the air, chemicals from what you make. It's cheaper to let it fly loose that way than seal the machines. Where did you s'pose you got all your go from?"
"I didn't think -"
"That's right. After a year or so you find yourselves in here again, finished... Maybe you think then, but it's too late. Your choice, only yourself to blame. No, your friend wouldn't have lasted long and you won't either!"
Mandy tried to remember what Chrissa would have said.
"You're just a jealous old bag of crumguts!"
The nurse shook her head and turned away in an elaborate pantomime of sorrowful wisdom, scorned.
Nevertheless Mandy did not return to the factory, but divided her time, apathetic and weary, between a cheap hostel and long walks through the city streets and underground warrens. Her illness and her body's reaction after a month's high-level stimulant absorption took their toll, and only her poverty combined with a lack of knowledge of helpful, if dangerous, beverages saved her during this time from re-addiction. She could no longer bring herself to drink Choke.
More or less by chance her wanderings one day took her towards the Old City. Motor vehicles were not allowed in the city centre, except late at night, and no-one else seemed to be walking that way; for a moment she faltered. Then, coming out of the Iffley Road just ahead of her, appeared another woman: slender, well-dressed, with shoes that tapped the pavement in confident rhythm. Her own sandaled feet moving in time with that beat carried Mandy after her, onto Magdalen Bridge and into the High.
"One moment, Miss, if you please -"
Ignoring the first girl, a bizarre thing on rubber treads, until now unnoticed and still in a bay of the bridge, rolled forward and authoritatively addressed Mandy. She recognised it as a police-model robot, but its metal body was clad in the traditional proctorial costume, including a bowler hat.
"Are you aware that Oxford City is a Reserved Residential Area for Minors and Charter Holders?"
"No - I'm sorry. I was just going for a walk. I didn't mean to do any harm."
And she would have turned away, not understanding that she was not obliged to, that the question asked only if she knew that, officially, she could never live there. She was quite overawed by its authority, as the machine's programmers had intended intruders such as she should be, and misled by what was not said.
"Just a moment -" The woman ahead had stopped and listened to the interchange. "You don't have to go, you know - the roads are open to all. The only thing you can't do is go into a College uninvited. It has no right to turn you back."
Mandy glanced covertly at the robot. It made no motion, said nothing. The woman turned again and went on walking up the High. After only a moment's hesitation Mandy followed.
The street was incredibly quiet and grey, lacking the noise of motors, the bright paint and plastic of Cowley, and the extravagance of the Fair. The sweep of the road showed only more grey stone facades, rotting wood sills, small dusty windows. To her left and on a lower level was a small rose-garden, bare bushes now, no flowers in bloom. Through a wrought-iron gate beyond she could see a large expanse of green, formal walks, and a fountain. But the gates were closed and she did not know her way in. Nonetheless for an instant she lingered. The woman was now almost out of sight, beyond the bend in the road. The robot moved back into the shade of the trees, camouflaged, waiting. She walked on further, briskly now, to hide her own awkwardness. The road merged with another at the Heath Memorial, standing in lonely grandeur in the centre of Carfax crossroad. Its huge eye staring from a frame of hands, impressionistic in the 20th Century style, seemed to transfix her, making a choice between left, right, or straight ahead seem momentous.
"At the cross roads of political thought... founder of the Conservative Rationalist movement... twice P.M., in office a total of twenty years... member of this university... fell to the assassin's bullet"
The inscription stood out in chiselled letters, though of course Mandy could not read it. Only the eye looked right at her. She escaped into an open doorway on her right. The smell of coffee - genuine, fresh ground - was heavy in the air. Only once, one Christmas at home years ago, had she known such a scent, exotic and reassuring at once.
The restaurant was not full, but no table was entirely unoccupied. People sat quietly in ones and twos, with here and there a larger group, laughing and talking loudly. Mandy took the nearest vacant seat, her back to the window, looking at the strange faces.
Nearly all were young, most looked no more than a few years older than herself. Not children, by any means. In Cowley any one of them would have appeared ill-dressed and shabby, but already Mandy was beginning to see them in a different way; natural fibres cost more, felt better, and now, as she was beginning to appreciate, had the additional attraction of signalling high status. For although these young people were well over the age of minority all wore, in some form of jewellery, the identifying tag of a minor.
The waiter stood impatiently. He had curtly demanded what she wanted, but had to wait while she pretended to read the menu. Slightly flustered, she ordered coffee.
"Thank you Miss. May I see your card?"
"Card? I'm sorry, what card?"
"Your academic credit card, Miss."
"I'm not an academic. I thought this was a public restaurant. I'm sorry. I'll go away."
The boy opposite looked up from his news-sheet: "It is. He must serve you if you pay in cash."
The waiter showed his disapproval by a stony non-reaction. For a second time Mandy was encouraged to take a step beyond the line sketched by authority.
"All right. I'll do that."
"Cash in advance on money orders."
"How much?" - her purse was in her hand. The waiter named an exorbitantly high sum, and determination turned to distress.
"Have a Choke," her table companion suggested, "they're quarter the price."
"Oh no! Not a Choke! Never! I'll go." She stood up.
Her vehemence surprised him, and he looked at her properly for the first time: cheeks attractively flushed, neat-waisted, and not too tall - he himself was of medium height and liked a girl to look up at him.
"Sit down - you can have your coffee from my allowance. Why don't you like Choke?"
He pushed the yellow plastic card that had been resting on the table by his own Choke to the waiter, who accepted it sulkily, returning it some minutes later with a scalding-hot cup of coffee. Mandy talked all that time.
"Well, you needn't have worried that anything like that might happen here: this is a safe-area for minors - so no risks."
"The money - how can I pay you back?"
"It's all right. I've got plenty of food-credit left. The money prices here are disproportionately high. To keep people like you out."
"Then I shouldn't be here?"
"It's a free country. Pay your way and go where you please."
The coffee was still too hot to drink quickly, and she could not leave now without finishing it. But it was stronger flavoured than she had expected, bitter, even unpleasant. She was very aware that her companion was covertly studying her, but when she tried to meet his eyes he looked away. His face was of a sort that promised to be handsome if it firmed as he grew older. He had clear skin, blue eyes, fair hair: all the ingredients for an ideal. But now it was plump and round, with a hint of prettiness, and none of the strength. And there was something strange about the shape of his head.
"What will you do now?" he asked after a long interval of silence.
"I don't know. Try and find something safe. Weisse nicht."
"Did you ever think of working in a college?"
"What could I do? I can't read."
"Cleaning, bed-making, washing up: that sort of thing. Literacy not required. No risk beyond the absolute unavoidable minimum, as you're in a safe area, dealing with minors. Good job - there's lots of competition for it."
"... then how could I...?"
"Come back to my rooms and we'll talk about it there. This is too public. I happen to know there's going to be a vacancy on my staircase for an under-scout. I might be able to help you -"
His stratagem seemed excessively obvious. But in the sad, gay weeks after her arrival in this country her attitudes had rapidly changed from the unquestioned puritanism of her class in a Contract-bound commune to conform with the self-centred hedonistic amorality of her companions and their lives. Chrissa had been a `good-time girl' but no prostitute: whatever she did, she did primarily for pleasure.
And it would be so pleasant to be secure, to be in a town where the dazzling lights did not shine, where there was no lethal traffic to kill directly by impact or indirectly by exhaust fumes, and the tough stone had stood so long, unchanging, solid.
His name was Tristan and his uncle was the Dean. What difficulty could there be? The position was hers.
Winter set in, grey and cold. In the early mornings, when Mandy walked over the bridge from Cowley in the grey before dawn, heavy mist from the river and low-lying areas on either side swirled around the street lights and cloaked the plastic trees' high branches overhanging the road. Sometimes she could not see the proctor, standing always in the same place, until his movement towards her gave her eye a point of focus, though now he never spoke, but simply identified her and fell back. Then as she walked up the High the mist would thin until the college entrance was bold ahead. She always arrived at the same time, always early, and heard the hour a good five minutes after starting work on the cleaning. Hallways and bathrooms were dealt with first before the young gentlemen were awake. Breakfast was with the other college servants at 9.30 a.m., lunch at 2.00 p.m. after the serving in hall. Then a further two hours washing up, and she was free to go to Tristan's room, where she sat by the fire as the afternoon drew in; prepared tea for him and any of his friends who called; listened as they talked; was silent when they went if he had to work; spoke if she was spoken to.
Occasionally, when he went out and left her alone, she looked at the illustrations in his books, but most of them were dull, or made little sense to her, and soon she returned her attention to the moving pictures in the flames of the coal fire - a luxury rarely seen now by ordinary citizens.
She did not leave until late in the evening for the dark walk back to Cowley. He said that he would come as far as the bridge if she really wanted him to, but being a minor he would not be allowed any further, could not leave the `Safe Area', and it seemed rather pointless, really, for both to get cold.
Sometimes, for no reason that she could ascertain, Tristan was morose and ill-tempered. On one such day Mandy left later than usual for the walk back to the hostel. She was tired, and decided to take the bus already standing at the last stop in the Plain before Old Oxford, which motor vehicles could not enter. But before she could reach it, it moved off. Rather than wait in the cold, she continued to walk.
Ahead, the bus careened onto the pavement and through the wall of a terrace house, whose upper storeys slowly collapsed, falling like a playing-card house. Noise splintered the air. There was a small explosion. Amazingly, a few survivors staggered from the wreck of the vehicle. A man in the house next door stupidly stared out from his bed, now standing in a three-walled room.
The robot on the bridge must have heard the disturbance even if it was beyond his scanners, but he reacted not at all. Cowley and its residents were beyond his concern. To reach her lodgings, Mandy would have to walk past the wreckage, the bodies, the injured. She could not do it. Instead she turned and ran back to Old Oxford and the college. It was not yet late enough for the porter to have locked the gates and she went in without comment. By the time she reached Tristan she was crying.
"There, there," he said, "don't cry - if you can't face going back you'd better stay here, with me."
It was a comfortable arrangement for both of them, and Mandy went back to Cowley only to collect her few belongings.
One day there was a knock on the door - not unusual at that time. Mandy was engaged in washing up the coffee cups that Tristan had accumulated during the day, and so Tristan himself took the time to raise his head from the paper and shout "Come in!"
"Hallo - it's me! I've just had the most de-energising class," gasping for tea, "when I realised I hadn't seen you all term!"
The newcomer flopped heavily in the room's second armchair.
"Mandy was just going to make a pot - I kept meaning to get in touch with you. Did you have a good summer?"
"Mmm - really wunderbar. I went down to North Africa. The climate-transfer results are really beginning to show now: they say it's greener than it has been since before Roman times. But the storms are tremendous! And the communities are fascinating sociologically - they're trying out variations on the extended family, forming tribes rather than communes as they have in the Far North settlements."
"Did they use the original inhabitants? Arabs, weren't they?"
"Some - but of course it's contract work. Most went into the cities. They brought in a lot of debtors, who had no alternative, but now it's mainly second generation."
"Much wastage?"
"No - they're only peasants, quite illiterate. A few go to the cities, but usually the shiftless who weren't wanted anyway."
Mandy had come back into the room halfway through this conversation, and was puzzling over where she had heard that voice before, seen that face, when she remembered the girl on the bridge the first morning she had come to Old Oxford. Memory brought the scene back vividly.
"You're a student, aren't you? Why aren't you a minor?" she asked suddenly. Tristan frowned at the interruption, but the girl suddenly seemed to see Mandy for the first time, and smiled before answering.
"I am not a minor because I renounced minority status. If you're asking why I renounced it, it's because of the limitations it imposes: never being allowed outside the safe areas, isolated entirely from life outside. I couldn't have gone to Africa if I'd been a minor - no assurance of safety. I'm an individual adult with a right to make my own decisions, to live where I please and go where I like."
Mandy's immediate admiration for this often repeated speech must have shown in her face, for Tristan replied more emphatically than his placid temperament generally allowed: "Now be fair! You're in an unusual position with the best of both worlds, a safe house to go to and freedom. If I became a Free Citizen I'd have to live in Cowley or Newton - really live, no safe home to go to and no mother to look after me. You see, Mandy, her father's a Charter Holder, and her mother, since she's only separated from him, not divorced, carries his status. That means she lives where she likes, but the police make sure her home's safe and she is told of any risks. Marge lives with her mother in a house off Iffley Road, within walking distance of Oxford Safe Area."
"It's true, I don't take risks for the fun of it. I want to stay alive, like anyone else. But I hope I would have had the courage to reject elite minority status anyway."
"Feminine irrationality! If we're a minority elite it's not for our good but the country's. Intellectual capital is too valuable to waste."
As often when nervous or over-wrought, his hand moved in an unconscious gesture through the lank hair hardly disguising his high-ridged skull.
"Equality of opportunity for privilege - but some parents can weigh the dice in favour of their children!"
"And why not? It was an expensive process, if they wanted to spend their money that way why not, when it benefits the country too?"
"I hope you'll do as much for your child, then?"
"If I ever have one, yes..." - then he saw Marge's glance towards Mandy: "You don't mean? - Mandy!"
Mandy turned her head away, did not speak.
"You hadn't noticed?" Marge exclaimed incredulously, "And that means you didn't intend? - you must be the most insensitive person I've ever known!"
"I thought she knew enough to look after herself. Anyway, she was a good-time girl at the chemicals place, and their work makes them sterile!"
"But when did she last work? Bill told me a month ago you had her here. You'll have to marry her to get on the Special Treatment list - you've the money left you by your parents to manage that."
"I can't! A peasant turned good-timer! They wouldn't give me permission!"
"Then give up minority status and marry her anyway!"
"It'd ruin my career! And there's no need. The state'll look after her while she's carrying and the child can go into a nursery after that. Most children do. She can go on staying here as long as she wants to. - D'you understand, Mandy?"
He suddenly turned towards her. She nodded submissively.
"Well then, be a good girl and stop crying. It's a bit late for that now. Put the kettle on - we'll have that tea."
Mandy picked up the kettle and they heard her fill it from the tap on the landing and put it to boil, and then the bedroom door opened. After what seemed a long time the alarm shrilled.
"Mandy! Kettle's boiling!"
There was no reply. The heater switched itself off, and the whistle petulantly stumbled to a halt. Tristan hauled himself out of the chair and pushed open the bedroom door. He shrugged: she'd left her things behind, she'd be sure to be back. Then he fetched the kettle and made tea for Marge.
We found her work in a nursery in a safe area. She washed dishes, did light cleaning, and earned only her food and lodging. She became content. Freedom had not benefited her, and to have her life arranged for her became a blessing.
When her son was born he did not resemble his father, whose face she could now barely remember. She named him Peter after her own father.
After the end of two weeks, Peter was taken into a creche to allow her to return to work. She did not object, since she could see him every afternoon and on rest days. It was very similar to the way she herself had been brought up.
But when she went back to the creche after her first day in the kitchens, he was not there.
"Ah, no dear. It's good news, though you may not think so now. Doctor came this morning and administered the capacity test, and your Peter's gone for special upbringing: one of the clever ones. He'll be a Charter Holder one day, one of the managers..."
And that was that.
When her service contract was through, she returned to Cowley, to her work in the factory, to full, happy days and nights in gay company, spending money as fast as she earned it, riding the Big Wheel, the High Dodgems, drinking and dancing in the galleries and bistros, and never looking towards Old Oxford 'til the not-far-away day she died.