Read Online The Prince in Waiting by John Christopher - Free Book Online

found a pony for him in the palace stables—and fished for trout and explored the country for miles beyond the city boundaries. Once, deep in a wood, we found a dozen cherry trees laden with fruit. The fruits were so big and juicy, for all the long neglect of the trees, that we thought they might be polymuf cherries, but we ate them no less heartily for that and with no worse result than an ordinary griping that evening from having gorged ourselves.
    We had one falling out. It happened in our den under the Ruins. We had arranged to meet there and I was late. I found him reading a book by candlelight. He looked up and greeted me. I asked him:
    â€œWhat’s that you’ve got?”
    Books were rare things—few of the common people could read and not all the nobles—and this one looked strange. Its covers were not stiff but limp, and the shape was odd: higher and wider than usual, but thin. There had been a picture on the front which damp had turned into a meaningless mess of colors, but I could read words across the top: POPULAR MECHANIX . “Popular” I knew, but “Mechanix” meant nothing to me.
    Martin said: “I was digging in the rubble at the back of Clegg’s.” That was the baker’s shop in the High Street. “I saw the corner of an old cupboard—I suppose the quake moved whatever was on top of it—and I thought I’d see if there was anything inside. There were only books. Most of them were rotten but this one wasn’t too bad.
    There was a strangeness in his manner—part excitement, part something else. I went round behind him to have a look. There was a picture on the page where he had the book open. Because it had faded I could not tell what it was at first. Then I saw and knew what the something else was. It was guilt. The book was a relic from olden days: the picture was a picture of a machine.
    I could not tell what kind of machine it was and did not want to. I put my hand over his shoulder, sweeping the book from his grasp. It fell closed on the floor and I put my foot on it.
    He said, sharply for Martin: “Don’t do that!”
    â€œA forbidden thing . . .”
    â€œI was only looking at it.”
    â€œThat makes no difference. You know it doesn’t. Seeing is thinking and thinking is as bad as doing. Have you forgotten old Palmer?”
    He had lived in a cottage outside the city walls, a long way from the road. A peddler, desperate to sell his goods, had called there one day and later reported what he had seen: this man, neither farrier nor armorer nor metalworker, was brazing metal and building something from it. The soldiers rode out of the Prince’s command and took him. He was tried and found guilty and hanged. For a week his body hung on the gibbet outside the North Gate.
    Martin said: “He was making a machine. And in his cottage, where anyone might find out. We are the only ones who know this place. I have not shown the book to anyone else and will not. I will hide it; not even in here. Under rubble, outside.”
    â€œBut it is a forbidden thing! Whether you are discovered or not, that is true.”
    â€œBut why forbidden?”
    â€œYou do not need to ask that. Because our ancestors made machines and the machines destroyed the earth, causing earthquakes and volcanoes that killed men by the hundreds of thousands. That is why the Spirits decreed that the making of machines was an abomination.”
    â€œI suppose there were bad machines. But there may have been others as well. This one—I cannot follow the details properly—but it is about something that cuts grass. How could that cause earthquakes and volcanoes?”
    â€œI tell you the Spirits condemn machines. All machines.”
    â€œThe Spirits, or the Seers?”
    â€œThe Seers are the servants of the Spirits.”
    â€œOr their masters.”
    â€œYou must be mad! No man can rule the Spirits, who are