Untitled

Outside, the city was lurching into stunned awareness. The clockwork began to turn, motors gasped like asthmatics, and smoke dribbled into the sky. People appeared on the streets as though propelled from cuckoo clocks, only to be packed into subway cars like cans on a conveyor belt.

Through this turmoil trotted Danny, as unconcerned as a hound free of its leash. He moved along board fences plastered with posters and curses, and came to a rail line which he followed over a canal of oily water by means of a blackened steel bridge.

This brought him to a section of the city composed of puffing factories and battered warehouses, and then to a suburb of row after row of grimy houses.

All day he walked, until at length the skyline rose behind him and the impatient grunting of autos diminished.