The Moving Ways

The first sight of future London is so large that Graham looks upward before he remembers to look down.

The balcony opens onto an immense enclosed avenue curving away in both directions. Buildings rise like cliffs. Great cantilevers meet high overhead, supporting a translucent roof that turns the street into the interior of a continental station.

Cool white globes outshine the weak daylight filtering through girders and cables. Suspension bridges cross the space. Figures move along ledges and disappear through circular openings hundreds of feet above the floor.

One pale-blue worker handles a line high on the opposite structure, then launches himself along a steeply curving cable and vanishes into an opening on Graham's side of the avenue.

The city occupies not only the ground but the air between buildings. Movement happens at every height.

Then Graham notices the roadway.

It is three hundred feet wide and almost none of it is still.

Nearest the buildings, an endless platform rushes past as fast as an express train from Graham's century. Seats and small kiosks are built directly onto it.

Beside that platform runs another, moving in the same direction but slightly slower. Then another. The sequence descends in speed toward a motionless central strip.

On the far side, the pattern repeats in the opposite direction.

A traveller reaches the fastest Way by stepping from one moving platform to the next, each difference in speed small enough to cross safely. The street itself has become continuous public transport.

Thousands of people ride the Ways. Some sit on the fastest platforms, some cross between speeds, and others crowd the stationary centre where stairways descend into lower levels.

At first Graham sees only the engineering. Then the people begin seeing him.

Faces turn upward. Fingers point. A name moves through the crowd faster than any official announcement.

The Sleeper.

Some deny it. Others insist. More and more passengers stand or run against the direction of the platforms to remain opposite the balcony.

The legend is becoming a visible man.

A conflict is already forming below.

Most of the population wears pale blue, the colour Graham has begun associating with ordinary workers. A smaller force in bright red uniforms blocks one of the stairways in the central area.

The red officials work methodically, pushing people away from the descent. Those carried past by the Moving Ways jump between platforms and run back toward the struggle.

Howard shouts that Graham must leave. Graham barely hears him.

The crowd's demands are becoming coherent: stop the Ways. Show us the Sleeper.

Another name rises among the cries.

Ostrog.

Graham has never heard it. The people below speak it as though everyone should know.

The faster platforms empty beyond the balcony and return crowded from the opposite direction as citizens converge on the scene. What began as recognition becomes a mass demonstration within minutes.

Graham responds instinctively. He bows, then raises a hand.

The gesture is small. The reaction is enormous.

The avenue answers with a roar.

To Graham, the response is thrilling and incomprehensible. He has done nothing except wake and appear.

To Howard, the same moment is a political disaster. The guardian seizes him and forces him away from the rail.

Graham resists because he wants to see more, but red-uniformed guards close around him. He is hurried through passages, lifts and bridges while the struggle continues below.

The future has given him his first clear lesson.

He may know almost nothing about this civilisation, but millions of people already believe they know what he represents.

They are not merely curious about a man who slept for 203 years.

They expect the Sleeper to change their world.