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Walking the Dust

5: A New Beginning

The gate guard almost didn't let us in. He didn't believe that most of had walked all the way from Wosh-Tun, and thought we were just looking for an easy pass into Newbegin.

But there's no such thing as an easy pass into that city. Luckily we had some goods to trade, and some of us even had Wosh-Tun coin left over, so eventually we got through the high city walls and into the city. Disciples of the Watch, the guards call themselves, and at first I thought that was an odd thing to name your city militia. But after a while in Newbegin, it somehow made perfect sense.

Newbegin's an odd city. Like Wosh-Tun, they claim they're the largest city in the world, and both cities are ruled by their Artisians. But that's where the similarities end, in a big way.

Wosh-Tun's built on a flat plain, and Newbegin's on a mesa. Not just on top, but all the way down—following the river outside the city walls down to the valley floor. Walking from the poor regions at the bottom up to the Artisian district at the top takes most of a day, and it's all uphill.

The thing is...you don't have to walk it. Newbegin has these amazing things they call Metalcars—kind of like the 'trucks' the machine caravans ride, except they travel along thick metal poles buried in the ground. For a couple of bucks, you can ride a Metalcar all the way from the bottom to the top of the city, and then right back down again.

I counted at least four Metalcars, each travelling the same route all day long. If you stand at one of the turning platforms at the end of a line you can watch people using them in the morning, mostly workers heading to the mills and city's power farms, then coming back again in the evening. I stood there for a whole afternoon, and I lost count. Hundreds of people use these things.

As I left and walked down to the evening markets, I saw something else amazing. The streets around me suddenly lit up. I thought maybe the Disciples had lit a load of flame torches on poles, then realised all the lights started at the same time. I've been back to Newbegin a couple of times since, and I've never found out just what those 'power farms' are. But I do know they drive more than just the Metalcars...like these lights, that cover about half the city and light up the streets like the sun.

Can you imagine walking around at night, but able to see as much as you can during the day? Most places, come sundown everyone gets inside and to bed. Not Newbegin. The markets are open through the night, the traders are open for business, and even the mills and power farms carry on working.

It's a city that doesn't sleep.

This is all down to the Artisians, and the city's founder—or Lord Founder, as he likes to be called—who somehow still runs the place, despite being about a hundred years old.

And this is where Newbegin gets really weird. As far as his people are concerned, Lord Founder is God. And I don't just mean they like him a lot. Their entire religion is about him. The huge temple in the middle of the city is devoted to him, with priests who talk all day about how great the Lord Founder is, how he built Newbegin so people could live in peace after the ruination of the Big Wet... They call themselves Founder's Children, and as far as I could see they really do think of him as their father. Almost everyone I met was a Founder's Child. Almost.

The rest are a small minority of Sunners. None of the Founder's Children I met had a kind word to say about them. One guy even threatened to have the Disciples arrest me just for asking about them. But they're there, and they're Freemen just like everyone else. Well, most of them.

This is the biggest difference between Newbegin and Wosh-Tun. Wosh-Tun doesn't have any kind of caste system (Newbegin does, but it's pretty simple; Freemen, Freewomen, unmarried women and Artisians), and the main reason for that is because they outlawed slavery years ago.

Newbegin would collapse without its slaves.

There are thousands of them, working on the streets, the Metalcars, in the mills, power farms, everywhere. The lucky ones work as servants for wealthy families. The rest live in compounds like goats in pens. Watching the Disciples march hundreds of slaves back inside at night is something to see.

Almost all of them are Sunners.

I made myself stay and watch, so I could write about it here. But only once.