by Ben Bova
After the first half-dozen words of SEN’s speech, THX began walking slowly outward, away from the beds. In the direction opposite the one he had taken last time.
SEN finally noticed that THX was leaving, cut his speech short, and hurried after him. But after only a few steps he dashed back to his bed, tore off the mattress, pulled out a double armful of food cubes and started after THX, he raised one hand in a victory sign to the other prisoners, dropping some food cubes in the process. He nearly tripped over them.
“The new alignment!” he shouted, and then ran after THX.
“Incredible,” said PTO.
Chapter 16
Hurrying as fast as he could, food cubes slipping out from his arms and leaving a Hansel- Gretel trail behind him, SEN called after THX:
“Wait! Hold up… give me a chance…”
THX looked back and slowed slightly so that SEN could catch up with him.
“Just the thing to put them on their feet,” SEN chortled. “Show them who their leaders are. When we go back, they’ll be right there!” He held out the palm of his right hand, dropping three more cubes.
“There’s no question about it,” he said. “Even old PTO was taken aback.” He turned and looked back. “How long before they can’t see us anymore?”
THX didn’t answer. He merely kept walking.
SEN began to stuff his remaining food cubes into the pockets and waistband of his clothes.
“You’re sure this isn’t far enough? Maybe we’d better stop here and rest a minute.”
But THX kept right on. They walked in silence for quite a while. At last SEN stopped and looked back in the direction they had come in. He raised a hand to shade his eyes from the glareless, even light.
“I can’t see them anymore… all we have to do is wait here for a while and then head back.”
SEN looked backward again, and suddenly realized that he wasn’t sure of their direction back. There was nothing to be seen.
“Back,” he muttered. Then, to THX, “Did… did you come this far last time?”
THX didn’t answer. He started walking again. With eyes widening in sudden understanding, SEN scrambled after him and asked, “You didn’t believe all that nonsense about escaping, did you? You can’t escape. No one can escape.”
“We can try.”
“No! No, don’t you see? The authorities… the State… they wouldn’t permit it. They wouldn’t have built this elaborate prison in such a way that it could be escaped from. Escape is just a hope, a carrot dangling before the fools back there, to keep them in line.”
THX said, “The State doesn’t always do things right. Machines don’t work, computers break down. Maybe this prison isn’t escape-proof. We’ll never know if we don’t try.”
With mounting fear, SEN babbled, “You’ll be killed! You’ll be stopped. Why do you think no one has ever done it? There’s no place to go…”
“How do you know no one’s ever done it? Do you think they’d tell you about it?”
“But… but… but… we don’t have enough food.”
THX shook his head and kept walking.
“Here… stop.” SEN rummaged through his pockets and came up with a brown food cube. He trotted up to THX, who had kept going at his steady pace, and offered the food to him.
THX refused it with a brisk wave of his hand. SEN gnawed on it himself for a while. Then he realized something.
“LUH!”
That stopped THX.
“You’re going after LUH, aren’t you?” He saw the answer in THX’s pain-filled eyes. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Be careful what you say,” THX told him severely. He resumed walking.
SEN had to hurry to keep pace beside him. “Listen, stop. I knew there was something I’d been meaning to tell you. Stop, will you? LUH, the other LUH, the one who came to our group… he said he saw her!”
THX looked at him without slowing down.
A little breathless, SEN went on, “Yes. He saw her before he came to our group. She’s going to be coming here, too. Yes.”
“How is she?” THX asked.
“Fine, fine. Very good health. Just as you left her.”
“You’re lying.”
“No, I’m not. I’m not…”
THX pushed him away and kept walking. Staggering slightly, SEN called, “You’re a fool. You’ll never find her and you’ll never know…”
SEN stood there, alone, watching THX plod onward. He turned back, but could see nothing. Spinning around, looking in every direction, he could see nothing but whiteness. Except for the dwindling figure of THX.
“You can’t…” he shouted. “You can’t do it!”
THX’s figure was getting smaller and smaller. Soon it would disappear altogether.
“Wait!” SEN screamed. “Don’t leave me alone! Wait for me!”
They walked, with SEN usually trailing THX. Most of the time they were both silent. Occasionally they rested, and SEN would pull out a food cube and share it with THX, wordlessly. SEN seemed stunned, morose, afraid. THX didn’t know what he felt—he thought about LUH but realized that probably SEN was right. He’d never see her again, never know. But I’ll never go back to their prison, he told himself. Never!
When they walked, SEN’s comments grew rarer and rarer. But he was trying different tacks now.
“The air is getting thinner,” he said at one point. “Or the pressure’s getting greater. It’s the pressure. How do you feel?”
“Fine.”
“My ears feel funny… Are you sure this is the right direction?”
“No one’s stopped us yet.”
They kept walking, but SEN dragged farther and farther behind. Finally he sank to his knees and just fell over on his side. He gasped out, “Uhh…”
THX stopped and looked back, then went to him.
“It’s the air,” SEN said weakly as THX bent over him. “It’s closing in. I can’t stand it any longer. There’s no room… no air.”
Squatting beside him, THX felt like an impatient teacher with a balky child. “I haven’t got time. You can stay here if you want.”
He got up and started off again.
“No!”
SEN scrambled to his feet. He ran, stumbling slightly, after THX.
Hours later, SEN was mumbling, “It shouldn’t be this far.”
But he walked alongside THX. Suddenly THX stopped short.
“What? What is it?”
“Look!” THX said.
There was something out there in the white blankness. A spot, a pinpoint, a landmark against the emptiness.
“Oh, no,” SEN murmured.
THX squinted hard, trying to make it out.
“It doesn’t seem to be moving,” he said.
“It’s an optical illusion,” SEN said.
“Or maybe a policeman.”
SEN’s eyes went round with fright. “You don’t think…”
THX laughed at him. “What can they do to us? Put us in prison? Kill us?”
They started out in the direction of the spot. After a long while, it began to take on dimensions. It was a human form.
“Look… he’s waving. It’s a man and he’s waving to us. A police robot wouldn’t wave, would it?”
THX didn’t answer. Soon they were close enough to see that it was a black man, tall and muscular, with thick arms and a strong handsome face.
“Hello, hello…” he called to them. “I’m SRT 5555.”
“THX 1138,” THX answered, “and this is SEN 5241.”
They were close enough to grasp hands now. SEN hung back a little, though.
“Hey, where’d you come from?” SRT asked.
“Back there… someplace.”
“Prison? Doesn’t make any difference, I guess. Do you have any food? I’m starving.”
THX turned to SEN, who said nothing. He took a step toward SEN. “Give him some.”
SEN looked from THX’s face to SRT’s, then reached into a trouser pocket an
d pulled out a small piece of a food cube. SRT reached for it.
“Thanks. Thanks a lot. I haven’t had anything to eat for… well, it’s been a long time.”
As the black man gobbled at the brown cube, THX asked, “What are you doing here?”
“I was lost,” he said through the food, showing lots of teeth.
“You’re not lost now?”
“No, I…”
“You know the way out?” SEN asked, brightening.
Chewing, SRT nodded vigorously. “Um hmm.”
“Which way?” THX asked.
“It’s around here somewhere.”
“What is? What?” SEN demanded.
Swallowing the last of the cube, SRT said, “The entrance. I came through it a couple days ago… flashing lights around it.”
THX said, “Then you’re not a prisoner… a convict?”
“Me? Naw… I’m a hologram… an actor. You must’ve seen me on the Mannequin Hour — - most popular holoshow in the city, according to last month’s polls.”
“He’s lying,” SEN whispered to THX. “Or insane.”
SRT heard him and laughed. “No, I’m not either. My show was dropped. Canceled. Damned computer made an error and placed the Mannequin Hour last on the ratings instead of first. Moved all the other shows up a notch. So everybody on the show was told not to come in till they got the mess straightened out. I was just walking around the city when I stumbled in here.”
“Impossible!” SEN snapped.
Shaking his head, SRT said, “Well, there’s a doorway with flashing lights all around it somewhere around here. You can believe it or not, take your pick. But I’m looking for it. Thanks for the food.”
He started walking away.
“Wait,” THX called out. “Let’s go together. Maybe the three of us can find it together.”
SRT shrugged. “Okay.”
“But he’s going back the way we came,” SEN complained.
“Maybe you were traveling in circles. I’m pretty sure that’s the way to the door.”
SEN grabbed THX’s arm and stood tiptoe to whisper into his ear, “He’s a spy. From the police. He’s trying to lead us away from the barrier and back to the others. It’s a trap.”
THX kept his eyes on the black man. He looked friendly enough, although he seemed a little impatient to get going and slightly exasperated at SEN’s behavior.
“Look, if you don’t want to come with me, I’ll go by myself. It’s okay.”
“No,” THX said, more on instinct than anything else. “We’ll go with you.”
SEN mumbled to himself and glared at the two of them as they walked through the empty whiteness.
Within an hour, SRT stopped short and pointed. “There it is!” he shouted.
THX strained his eyes peering in the direction that the black man’s hand pointed. He saw nothing.
“There’s nothing there,” SEN said matter-of-factly. “He’s insane.”
But SRT was already loping ahead, as if he really saw something worth running toward. THX hesitated a moment.
“Come on, here it is!” SRT called out.
Though he tried as hard as he knew how, THX saw nothing. He wanted to see a door with flashing lights. But nothing was there.
“It’s a trap, I tell you,” SEN muttered.
“Maybe,” THX said. Then, with a shrug, he started toward SRT, off in the distance. If its a trap, that’s the end of it, he thought At least it will be over.
Chapter 17
Something funny was happening to his eyes. As THX approached the black man, saw him looming larger, grinning, hands on hips, the whiteness seemed to fray, to wrinkle and fade and turn gray.
The whole blank background of nothingness seemed to change as a camera changes focus, bringing objects that were blurred into invisibility suddenly into clear, sharp view.
There was a door, flanked on both sides by flashing varicolored lights! And it was set into a metal bulkhead, with steel ribs protruding from it and rivets in the ribs. THX put out a hand to feel its reality.
“What… what… how can it be?” He heard SEN breathless behind him.
“They must have done something to the way we see,” THX said uncertainly. “They did something to our eyes…”
“Or maybe the food cubes were drugged,” SEN suggested.
“Or hypnosis.”
SRT was grinning hugely. “I told you there was a door. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
He yanked the door open and an explosion of noise staggered THX. On the other side of the door was a main pedestrian thoroughfare, with torrents of people racing by on slideways or walking, scurrying like mice through an experimenter’s cage.
“Please move briskly. Do not stop or block the passageway.”
“Please hold the handrail and stand on the right; if you wish to pass, pass on the left.”
“Save time, save lives.”
“The level 6421 intermural stadium will have an open day on series 621TD.”
“Today only, hypo-credit may be transferred with a green optimal card.”
After the quiet and vastness of the prison, this pounding noise and rushing mass of faceless humanity was overpowering… frightening. SEN covered his face with his hands. THX hung on to the edge of the hatch, swaying weak-kneed, almost tempted to retreat back to the placidity of prison.
Where am I going, anyway? he asked himself. And the answer came back immediately. He knew. He was surprised that he had needed to ask.
“All right,” he shouted over the deafening roar of the masses, “let’s head for that door, across the corridor.”
He saw that SEN was standing rock-still, wide-eyed with terror. THX shook him. “Come on, we’re out of it.”
“No… we shouldn’t…”
Putting his mouth next to SEN’s ear, he shouted, “Do you want to stay in prison until the policemen come for you?”
SEN jerked once, involuntarily, then bolted through the hatchway with a keening, whimpering shriek in his throat. Immediately the crowd swallowed him up, bore him away like a scrap of paper in a flood tide.
THX jumped into the crowd after him, with SRT right behind.
“We’ve lost him!” THX yelled over his shoulder.
“What?”
A million voices were babbling, cackling, jabbering over theirs. The loudspeakers were droning their endless orders and instructions.
“Help reduce critical noise levels in this area. Be sure to report all decibel surges in excess of one point five.”
“Control twelve please.”
“Cybers call in; 6442 gate five, pick up on fourteen.”
“Agency for internal development moves forward two malthusian units. This is a new high for this series.”
The tide of humanity was sweeping THX and SRT along, pushing, elbowing, carrying them down the corridor. Like a mindless panicked stampede, the people who were so silent and obedient in tram cars, so docile and sedated on their jobs, so glazed and passive in their apartments, were snarling wild-eyed frenzied herd animals here in the high density pedestrian corridors of the shopping level. Shopping in the commercial plazas was their one true sport; stampeding through the corridors their only adventure.
“Lost SEN!” THX hollered to SRT. “He’ll never find us!”
SRT yelled back, “Too late… stay close.”
They struggled and battled sideways along the crowd’s main flow and made their way to the side wall of the corridor, hundreds of meters downstream from where they had entered the corridor. Panting, bruised, head aching from the noise, THX flattened himself along the corridor’s metal wall. It was warm from the reflected heat of surging human bodies. SRT lounged beside him, looking just as tired but less frightened.
After a few minutes, THX craned his neck for a look at where they were. No direction signs were in sight, and the color markers in this corridor were strange to him.
But there was a lift tube entrance down the wall a few meters, flanked by pra
yer booths. THX nodded toward the tube.
“Where you going?” SRT shouted.
Without answering, THX started for the tube.
The observer sat at his post, watching his fifty view-screens, earphones buzzing with the normal traffic of the busy city.
“I have a seal break. Vacuum debris repectacle 444. Entrance on con 65. Send investigator. Subject appears to be suicide victim.”
“Two inmates have fled detention block R, Habot 92. Missing since 3:32.16. 1138 prefix THX and 5241 prefix SEN. Recovery operation budgeted and scheduled. Report to Control when felons are in custody.”
“We have an accident in module dispersal center…”
The observer’s trained eye flicked to a viewscreen far up to his right. The interior of a lift tube cell. Numbers flashed across the screen showed it was heading upward from the commercial level toward the main computer filing center.
He transferred the picture to one of his four main screens. Yes, one of the two men in the lift cell wasn’t wearing a badge!
“I have a violation here,” the observer said crisply into his lip mike. “Lift tube cell 0848, heading for level four. Badgeless male Caucasian. Trespassing.”
“Checking.”
“Reference police records on badgeless individual.”
The observer ticked out a police query on his keyboard. Instantly, THX’s picture and record appeared on a viewscreen at his elbow.
“Criminal record indicated.”
But the observer squinted hard at the picture of THX and SRT in the lift cell. The cameras in those little cells were especially bad, the picture was distorted severely. The computer might have made a mismatch.
With a shrug, he muttered, “Not my decision to make. If the computer says it’s the felon THX 1138, it’s Mercicontrol’s fault if there’s a mistake.”
The observer touched the special stud on his keyboard that linked him with Control.