As I stood staring in astonishment, suddenly I knew what the domed building was. It was St. Paul’s Cathedral; but the cross was gone.
My wonder grew as I watched it. The dome designed by Sir Christopher Wren remained intact; yet it no longer rested on the summit, but seemed to soar, supported on numerous low pillars, and, twenty feet beneath it, on a flat under-roof, was a garden of luxuriating palm trees, and therefore presumably enclosed by invisible crystal walls. I saw the gorgeous coloring of tropical flowers, and scarlet creepers that twined around the trunks of old trees. What a magnificent pleasure-ground for the Council of the Federated Provinces, high up above the London streets in the December weather!
An elderly, bent man in blue, with the sign of a hammer on his shoulder, came slowly toward me.
“Can one obtain a permit to go to the Council garden?” I inquired of him.
He stopped and looked dully at me. “Eh?” he inquired.
“I want to go up and see the aerial garden,” I responded, pointing.
“You want to go up there?” he exclaimed, and then began to chuckle. He slapped first one knee and then the other.
“Ho! Ho!” he roared. “That’s good. But listen! You don’t know who you’re talking to. My daughter lives up there. I’ll never see her again, but I like to walk here and look up and think about my luck. It gives me standing. I’ve got to earn a hektone and a quarter monthly, haven’t I? But I tell you I don’t earn fifty ones a month, and I lay off when I want to, and there’s not a Labor Boss dares say a word to me. And down I go on the register for my hektone and a quarter every month, as sure as the sun rises.”
His hard, shrewd laughter convulsed him again, and he slapped his legs and leered at me. Then he drew closer to me and laid his hand on my arm confidentially.
“You’ve heard of this new freedom the people are whispering about?” he asked, glancing apprehensively about him. “They’re never satisfied, the people aren’t. They want to get back to the old, bad ways of a hundred years ago, when there wasn’t food to go around, and the rich sucked the poor men dry. I’ve read about those days. But the people are forgetting. Sanson will crush them when they’re ready to break out. Do you know what they want? Do you? Do you?