Human inefficiency and the bitter Nebraska winter saved him. When he was discharged from Decon Center and shipped to the main Headquarters complex, two of the survey team’s seven members had not yet arrived. They were finishing an assignment for Bonvissuto. Five more days, the others were told. But five days grew to two weeks, and it was not until the morning of the seventeenth day that word came from the missing two. Their job was done at last. They promised to be on their way that night from the far west of Xanadu.
Before they could leave, the weather played its part. A February ice storm raged in from the northeast and set its lock on the Tandy, dropping three feet of dry snow, halting all business, stopping all outside movement. The temperature dropped fifty degrees in eight hours. It was five more days before roads became passable and the missing two could be delivered to Headquarters.
Job had hidden away in the little underground room assigned to him, eating and drinking as much as he could stand, nursing his sores, keeping a low profile. By the time that the last two team members arrived he could walk up a flight of stairs—just. A meeting had been scheduled for the same afternoon. With the help of crutches Job struggled to the second floor, leaned panting against the wall outside the meeting room, and felt the tendons of his legs quivering like bowstrings.
As he had planned, he was the first person to arrive. When his heart had settled in his chest he hid his crutches behind the door, sat at the end of the long table, and adjusted his head dressing. Nothing could make him appear well, but if he appeared too sick they would not let him be part of the survey. The other team members appeared one by one and gave him a nod and a casual glance. If they thought he looked strange, they said nothing. Job made his own inspections and was not impressed. The two men and four women were healthy enough, but there was a dullness and a placidity to their eyes. The position of survey team member was not a coveted one. Maybe any smart Headquarters staff member would do what Skip had done, and find a substitute.
As soon as the team members were in position, three blue-clad men entered and went to chairs placed by the window. They were an odd trio, one Nordic, one darkly Latin, and one Oriental. They did not look at the survey team, and they did not speak. They sat, scribe recorders and notebooks on their laps, until Gormish, Pyle, and Bonvissuto bustled into the room, talking to each other in the odd version of chachara-calle that was unique to the Nebraska Tandy. Job had seen the Big Three at mealtimes from his corner in the Headquarters food center, but it had been a distant and a hurried look from behind the partitions—he wanted to draw no attention to himself. The new closeup view was not reassuring. Gormish was a short, gray-haired woman with a heavy build and a thin-lipped, determined mouth. She gave Job no more than a passing glance, but he was sure that she had read his physical condition exactly. Pyle was snake-thin and sinewy, with a lantern jaw, hooked nose, and deep-set unreadable eyes. His black hair was thinning in front, but at the back it was grown long and tied into a short pony tail. He constantly fiddled with his hands, cracking the knuckles, picking at the nails, chewing the loose skin at their edges, but his eyes were everywhere.
At first sight, Bonvissuto was much the most congenial of the three. He was chubby and full-faced, with laughter lines at his mouth and around his brown eyes. He reminded Job of Colonel della Porta. His voice was just as cheerful, bubbling over with energy and good humor as he came into the room and greeted the seated team members. It was hard to dislike him, but Job had heard the rumors around the training center: behind that bonhomie was a deadly efficiency and coldness; to reach his position as one of the three rulers of Xanadu, Bonvissuto had set a Tandyman onto his own brother and dropped him alive into the Tandy’s main acid dump.
The seats for the Big Three were on the window side of the long table, in front of their scribes. There was silence as they took their places. All three glanced briefly at each team member, then turned to gaze steadily—at Job. He tried not to panic. It was natural that they should look at him, they knew every other member of the team from previous contacts. Yet his heart began to pound in his chest, harder than when he arrived at the top of the stairs.
“Job Salk, is it not?” Pyle, seated in the middle, spoke first and in fluent German. “Your record when you came here showed a gift for languages, and we heard the same thing from a friend of yours. I hope for your sake that it is not exaggerated.”
Job’s chances to speak German had been limited to conversations with a couple of street basura, almost four years ago, and their accent differed slightly from Pyle’s. He wondered at the man’s birthplace and heritage—Pyle was certainly not a German name—as he replied, “I don’t think that it is exaggerated, but in this language I am certainly a bit rusty. And my mouth is sore from the radiation, so it is not easy to enunciate well. Give me two or three days with others who speak German, though, and I will sound a good deal better than this.”
It was clear to Job that no one but Pyle and his scribe had any idea what he was saying. Gormish and Bonvissuto were staring questioningly at the saturnine man between them. He shrugged, frowned, and finally nodded to Gormish. “Good enough. Your turn.”
She turned to Job. “You have been in Xanadu for almost four months. Tell me what you have done since you came here, and what you expect to do during this survey.”
She spoke in Russian, fluently enough, but Job knew that it was not her native language. It had been learned, probably when she was in her early teens, and although she spoke it well there were still small errors in grammar and pronunciation. He made sure that his reply was delivered a little slower than his usual speech, and he avoided long words and difficult constructions.
By the time that he had finished and Gormish was nodding her satisfaction to the other two, Job was more relaxed and almost enjoying himself. Bonvissuto’s switch to rapid and graceful Italian came as no surprise. Job replied with the same speed and elegance, made a joke at the end of his explanation of how he had come to be hurt, and was rewarded with Bonvissuto’s broad grin.
“According to my staff he has equal command of all the major languages favored in Xanadu,” said Gormish. “Well? More questions, or are we ready to proceed?”
The conversation turned to the survey. Job sank back in his chair and drew a long, painful breath. The test was over; he had passed it. Unless he were called on to speak again he would keep quiet, and concentrate on listening to the others.
An hour of haggling, questioning, and harsh comment confirmed what Job already suspected: the other members of the survey team were nothing but dullards, given the job because they were trusted by Gormish, Pyle, and Bonvissuto. Or rather—Job could see how the lines were drawn—two were trusted by Gormish, two were Pyle’s people, and the other two belonged to Bonvissuto. Job was the odd man out, the person who had no allegiance but happened to be needed. One scribe also belonged to each of the Big Three, and they fulfilled roles as more than simple recorders; occasionally one would lean forward and whisper into the ear of his boss. From the few words that Job could catch he knew that Gormish’s assistant was speaking in Mandarin Chinese; Gormish herself, from the look of it, was no mean linguist.
By the end of the second hour of the meeting Job was coming to another conclusion. The Big Three of Xanadu certainly had their differences. They argued and grumbled about many things; but in one area they were totally in agreement. Whenever the outside world was mentioned, whether it was the air drops, or the influx of new prisoners, or even something as uncontrollable and impersonal as the ice storm that had recently swept in from the north, the bitterness and hatred in each voice could not be missed. Even Bonvissuto’s joviality took on a chill edge when he spoke of “Outside,” the world beyond the Tandies.
It was not surprising—Job could see the scars of old radiation ulcers on each face at the table, and his own weeping sores were too commonplace to remark. What was surprising was the sense of approaching revenge, of a long-awaited reprisal soon to be delivered. But little was said explicitly.
“The survey is expensive of personnel resources.” That was Gormish, talking to Pyle. “But we will have an exact measure of our strength, and that measure is necessary. We are talking of the management of a very large area, though admittedly a sparsely populated one.”
She could not be referring to the Tandy; the Big Three already governed that, and it was not large or sparsely peopled. Job found his thoughts straying to Wilfred Dell. That sinister cherub could be called many bad names, but he could never be called a fool. He had been convinced that something was going on within the Nebraska Tandy; something that might also affect life in the Mall Compound, otherwise he would have had no interest in the matter. For the first time, Job found himself agreeing with Dell. But what was going on? He could no more put his finger on it, here at the center of things, than Dell had been able to do with his space-based observations from three hundred miles up. Some central piece of information was missing.
At the end of the meeting that piece was still absent. The team was dismissed and told to prepare themselves for their next-morning departure. There was no proviso of “weather permitting.” Gormish and Pyle blamed Bonvissuto for the delay so far, and they were not willing to see it continued.
Job intended his main preparation to be sleep, as much as he could manage. He waited until the others had left, then went to stare out of the southern window. Across the frozen wastes of the Tandy, less than a mile away, he could see the outer fence of Xanadu and the beginning of the outside world. But that world could not be reached, by people or machines. The guarding lasers made it as inaccessible as the surface of the Moon.
We are talking of managing a very large area…That sounded as though it referred to the country beyond Xanadu. But what could Gormish and her colleagues have in mind that might conquer or even threaten a world that they could not reach?…though admittedly a sparsely populated one. With its four hundred million people, the country beyond Xanadu was far from sparsely populated.
It was all mystery. Job retrieved his crutches and made his way slowly back downstairs. He had not eaten since breakfast, but he was exhausted and had no appetite. On the way he stopped at the dining area and forced himself to spoon down a bowl of thick corn soup. It made him even more weary. He descended to the basement level and his own little room, lay on the bed, and waited for sleep.
When at last it came it was shallow and unsatisfying, full of disturbing dreams. Wilfred Dell was sitting next to Job. It was night, and they were squeezed together inside the driver compartment of a Tandyman, riding through towering mountains of glowing trash. “Do you want to see the world population double—again?” Dell was saying. “That’s what it might do, if we could eat cellulose. It’s nice to have plenty of young and poor, to look after the needs of the old and wealthy, but the biggest threat to all of us is change.”
“Change.” Job awoke on the final word. There was someone in his room, leaning over him and examining the ID badge on his chest. The man’s touch was light but he had accidentally brushed against Job’s arm, where the weeping sores were still exquisitely tender.
It was the blue-clad Oriental, the scribe and aide to Gormish. Job began to sit up, but already the man was hurrying away, out of the room.
Job felt for his chest. The plastic badge was still there, apparently untouched. When he went across to the light and examined the ID it appeared exactly as it had always been.
He lay back on his bed. Why should anyone come in and look at his ID? If they thought there was something wrong with it, why not check it openly, in the meeting or after it?
As Job fell asleep again he decided that today he had learned one thing of paramount importance: there were levels within levels at Xanadu, subtleties and interplays and cross-tensions of which Skip Tolson, and perhaps most others at Headquarters, understood nothing.
The location of the Nebraska Tandy had been chosen thirty years earlier, when disposal of toxic materials became a major public concern.
The site selection had been made with care. An ideal dumping ground for toxic and nuclear waste would be totally isolated. That was impossible, but at least the flow of water, on the surface and below, should be into a Tandy and not away from it. That meant a self-contained catchment basin, admitting runoff from outside but never discharging to it.
Those same facts now decided the Xanadu population pattern. A settlement close to the outer boundary enjoyed lower toxin and radioactivity levels, as far as possible from the lethal central dumps. Water supplies, draining in from outside, were most pure at the outer perimeter. Thus the towns and villages of Xanadu were set within an annulus, no more than a couple of miles from the circular outer boundary.
The survey team would proceed clockwise from Headquarters, visiting one or two settlements each day. According to the catalog of facilities provided to Job, that should bring them to the fenced installation that interested Wilfred Dell late on the third afternoon.
They started out an hour after dawn, in cold so intense that the truck’s engine had to be kept ticking over even when they were not moving. Freezing air gnawed at Job’s weak lungs and provided exquisite pain to any inch of his exposed and ulcerated skin. He wore multiple layers of clothing, a face mask that left only small eye-holes, and triple pairs of gloves and socks. As he waddled through the snow to the waiting truck he stared straight up into the cloudless blue sky. According to Wilfred Dell there was daily monitoring of Xanadu by the orbital imaging systems; if Job were outside for an hour, he would be spotted.
Maybe. Job was skeptical. He might be seen, but the chance that he would be recognized in his mask and present swaddling garb was negligible.
The more he thought of his escape mode from Xanadu, the more terrifying it became. When he decided to leave he was supposed to lie down outside, flat on the ground with arms and legs splayed, for at least an hour. He would be seen by the orbiting observation posts, identification would be made, and orders passed to the Tandy perimeter defense. That same night, between eight P.M. and two A.M., the defensive lasers would be turned off on the road at the eastern boundary of Xanadu. In that six-hour period Job must pass through the outer fence.
But suppose that the observation system was out of action for a while—it had happened before—and he was not seen? Or suppose that he was seen, but in his hairless and wasted condition he was not recognized by the imaging systems interpreters? Or what if the information were not passed on to the perimeter defense system? Or Job arrived early or late at the fence, when the lasers were in operation?
It could even be that Dell had already solved his problem in some other way, and no longer needed Job at all. (Job had no illusions about smiling Wilfred’s magnanimity.)
He forced himself to stop. He could imagine a dozen other snags; if he allowed himself to accept any one of them he would never dare to leave Xanadu. He climbed into the waiting truck and settled himself delicately on the hard seat.
The first stop proved to Job that Skip Tolson had made a wise decision. Work assignments in the Tandy were on the basis of experience and competence, but the residents chose to live as ethnic groups. This community was ninety-nine percent Filipino. While the questions of the survey team were asked and grudgingly answered in the Tandy’s own version of chachara-calle, the comments and conversation all around them went on in rapid Tagalog. Job, listening but rarely speaking, found out ten times as much about the community’s real feelings as the rest of the survey team combined. People here were concerned that they did not receive their fair share of the new materials sorted out from the air drops. They did not like the foods grown in their area of the Tandy, and they would like permission to make changes. They thought that the quality of road repair was poorest in their region. Most of all, they worried because the community population was growing while resources were not; worried, not for themselves but for their children.
Job wondered if they understood the idea of a survey. He switched to Tagalog and began to explain, but he was soon interrupted.
“We know,” said a man with two infants in his lap. He was totally bald from radiation. “We were told, and we approve. The survey is needed for preparation. This place is enough for us, but these”—he smiled down at the children—“they cannot live here forever. We need freedom for them.”
Job felt excitement in the air at those words, a sense of expectancy. He knew that this community was loyal to Bonvissuto, and it must be his promises, vague but glorious, that Job was hearing now. But he could not understand Bonvissuto’s motive. The jovial fat man was presenting himself to his followers as a Moses, ready to lead them to the promised land—yet that land was unattainable, guarded by a wall of fire.
But it was not just Bonvissuto. The next day the team came to a community of a thousand people, all of Chinese origin. Their main allegiance was to Gormish, not Bonvissuto, their practical worries were different from the previous day, and yet their expectations were the same. The routine of the survey plodded on, statistics and census data and complaints, but all around it, invisible to anyone who did not speak their language, the people revealed their dreams. “It is all right for us”—the speaker’s gesture was inclusive, sweeping Job into her circle of seated Chinese—“we can live in the Tandy as we live now, and then die. But what of the children? The little ones must not suffer shortened lives. They must have freedom.”
Freedom. That word again.
They spoke readily to Job when they realized that he was fluent in their tongue. His weeping radiation sores were an added credential. He was one of them, tested and tried by the gods of Xanadu. One woman brought him her newborn, so that he could touch its head for good luck. He reached out with one tentative finger, while the rest of the survey team looked on in amazement. He was amazed himself. How long since he had touched a baby, or held an infant? Years and years. He put his forefinger to the tiny, scowling forehead, and was rewarded with a shriek of rage. Everyone in the group burst out laughing.
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