Somehow David got me away. “It will be all right,” he kept repeating. “It doesn’t mean anything. See, here is our store.”
Bewildered, I allowed him to lead me toward the entrance of a large building, before which a woman sat within a cage of crystal.
“Change pieces!” she cried at intervals, in a high-pitched voice. “Change pieces or show brasses!”
“We change our money here,” David explained. “Purchases of more than half a hektone are made on the credit system. Our brasses are identification checks. The district clearing-house keeps the complete record of each citizen’s financial status.”
I had expected to see all the products of the world spread out within. I found, instead, only a single sample of each kind of merchandise, the goods themselves being stored in warehouses. Seeing an excellent blue overcoat of fine cheviot, I paid thirty ones for it, and David ordered a similar coat to be sent to me at the Strangers’ House.
“Watch the street!” he said, as we emerged.
I perceived the passengers scrambling off the moving portion of the roadway. A moment later the track began to travel in the opposite direction.
“We reverse our streets according to the stream of travel,” said David. “The mechanism is controlled by solar power, transmitted from the Vosges.”
We journeyed for some five and twenty minutes by the new reckoning—what would have been a quarter of an hour. We changed streets frequently, and it seemed to me, although I could not be sure of it, that David purposely selected a roundabout route. At length, we stopped in front of a large building of the uniform height and style. Upon the front was sculptured a man in a laborer’s blouse with a protecting hand laid upon the head of one who cowered before him—presumably the stranger.
“I shall take you in by the basement and internal elevator,” said David, “so as to give you a glimpse of our traffic system.”