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Collecting Center #55 was located in a valley and was visible from distant hilltops as a
white gash an the otherwise unscarred forest landscape. It was a conglomeration of huge
warehouses: flat roofed, rectangular boxes with reinforced concrete walls, white like the
dust on which they stood. The warehouses were all uninhabited places. They lacked
windows and their few entrances were all securely sealed. They were grouped around a
central square and separated by avenues one of which, the main street, was much wider
than the others. All routes into the Collecting Center converged on the main street and
were designed so that a visitor, once he was in the valley would see little sign of the
Center until he was almost on top of it. Though a graded dirt surface commenced well out
into the forest, not until the corner of the first huge box was already towering over the
approaching visitor did the broad extent of the main street become apparent.
In normal times it was an eerie and awesome place, an empty avenue leading only to the
forest at the other end. And here the hunters and seekers arrived with their carcasses of
meat or their loads of tribute, stalking the white street, naked and exposed, often afraid to
walk down the center, creeping along the walls. Half-way down the main street the central square opened up to the right and beyond that the streets was blocked, as were all other openings between the boxes, by simple red wooden barricades. The 'Men Apart' knew that the staff of the Collecting Center lived beyond the barricades on the main street. They rarely saw these men. They left their taxes and did their business in the square and never crossed the barricades. Why should they? The square was a quite different and wonderful place. It contained a series of huts, accessible to those with the tokens you obtained when you paid your tribute, which provided life's basic amenities and much more: places to clean oneself, machines which distributed the most delicious foods and drinks like nectar. There were machines which showed pictures, played fascinating games and even told tall stories of their own. The Collecting Center square was the 'Men Apart's' best kept secret. There were more incentives in them to bring your tribute than simply the fear of retribution if you didn't pay your taxes. Naturally, the settled people of the town had heard rumors of this wondrous place but like all the stories of the 'Men Apart' they had always been half-disbelieved. However, on the march, as they struggled ever more painfully along the track, they became buoyed up by their expectations and the stories of those few 'Men Apart' who, on the instructions of the Pastor, had been placed at the front to guide them in. Thus when the leading contingent arrived at the crest of a hill and saw the valley spread before them and the white gash of the Collecting Center within it, a rousing cheer spread quickly back broken only at the point where the Company of the 'Men Apart' were lagging far behind again. There were less than two miles to go and with feelings of relief and anticipation, the people surged on down the hill. But Collecting Center #55 was not the place it used to be. The four thousand souls of the Drummerton Brigade were there; present also waste brigade of Hadley Bridge, seven thousand strong; Brigades from Coopersville and Potterton made up five thousand more each. With the Dentonsville Brigade more than twenty-seven thousand people would be trying to use facilities designed to accommodate no more than one percent of that number. And such Brigades had been passing though for weeks now and at no time in the last ten months had the population fallen below ten thousand so that the squalor, particularly in the main square, was incredible. As the Dentonsville Brigade approached the Collecting Center few of the settled people of the town had ever encountered an individual from another place. Yet, just after noon as they hastened around the last bend, already apprehensive at the sight of the huge warehouse walls above them, they were confronted by a chasm filled with thousands of people, as terrified as they, with empty unfamiliar faces, with a wall of noise from loudspeakers and floodlights and lighted banners with directions strung across the street so bright that, even though it was broad daylight, everything appeared pink. A Pastors voice, audible without distortion and very loud, blared repetitively over the loudspeakers. 'Welcome to Collecting Center #55. Keep moving forward! Do not leave gaps. Do not turn back. Personnel of all Brigades must form in line beneath the signs on the left. You must stay in line at all times. Those requiring food or water may go, three persons from each company at a time. Follow the instructions of your Corporals! For food or water proceed to the right. Follow the marked pathway to the square. When you have eaten what you need, return immediately to your place. People! Get in line! Remain in line until you are registered. Keep moving towards the front. Do not leave gaps. Do not turn back.' To the Dentonsville peasants this was the world's edge, the boundary of a previously unsuspected human sea and those that plunged in unawares were wont to drown. Some would never answer to their names again. |
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