Delos 2 - Futureworld

by John Ryder Hall

  What Chuck saw now was a long country road, a dirt road through empty plains, with a few gnarled oaks along the roadway.

  “Why the strange color?” he asked.

  “It’s her favorite,” the technician replied.

  “I’ll be damned!”

  Tracy was driving down the road at great speed, wind blowing her hair, handling the car skillfully through the turns. The car, Chuck noted, was beautiful and very, very, expensive. He smiled at her taste and agreed with it. It’s a high-budget dream, he thought—and why not?

  The technician said, “Pain-pleasure gradient, please.”

  Chuck’s eyes moved to the side, where two glowing lines at ninety degrees to each other popped into view on a small screen. A colored dot moved up and down on the vertical line. At the moment it was reading slightly above the mid-line. Chuck decided Tracy was enjoying the drive; but considering the range of the graph, it was a fairly low-level pleasure. He looked back at the main screen.

  Tracy drove with carefree abandon, her eyes slitted almost shut against the windstream, her hair whipping about her ears. Chuck wondered for a moment why they were not seeing Tracy’s dream directly from her point of view. Are we all conditioned by movies and television to see outside ourselves? he wondered. But a sudden movement from Tracy brought his attention back quickly.

  She had turned to look to the side of the road, and after a blurred transition he saw what she was seeing/dreaming.

  A black-clad gunslinger with vivid, rather unhuman eyes was riding a beautiful horse in dreamy slow motion by the side of the roadway, pacing the swift sports car easily. He stared at Tracy with a fixed, insolent audacity as he galloped easily along.

  She turned her head and urged more speed from her car.

  She looked again at the dream rider and her face registered a confused set of desires.

  The rider had moved in close, and was easily competing with her fast car. He stared at her, a half-smile on his face. The light glinted off tiny spots of metal on his gunbelt and clothing.

  Tracy stared back at him . . . then ahead at the road streaking by. For a moment Chuck saw the road as she saw it and it was obvious that the car was at top speed. But when she turned her head back, the dream rider was pacing her easily. She looked again at the road . . . The trees rushed by . . . Then she looked back at the rider—

  He was gone. Only the trees blurred past.

  She frowned, then her head turned again, staring ahead almost dreamily—

  Her eyes widened.

  She threw up her hands and let go of the steering wheel!

  As in a dream, the car moved toward the black-clad rider, who was just ahead, sideways to the path of the onrushing car. The car was almost upon him! The horse reared!

  Tracy was running down the road as hard as she could—on foot now—her hair streaming behind her. The gunslinger was catching up with her, walking now, but in his deadly and determined stalking stride. He came closer and closer, although she was running and he was walking.

  Tracy was going as hard as she could, and only occasionally glancing back; but the gunman was closing in. As she looked back, the screen filled with his face and his eyes glistened.

  The technician spoke. “I’m getting some degradation.” Chuck tore his eyes away to look at the pain-pleasure readout. The glowing dot had dropped below the mid-line. “Switch to Alpha Line Five,” the technician said crisply. “Beta Omicron Six, switch to Reinforcement Level Two.”

  “We are on Alpha Line Five, and tracking,” came the reply.

  “Transition to Reinforcement Level Two complete.”

  The technician hit two more switches.

  Chuck was locked into the screen, ignoring everything else, utterly captivated by the dream fantasy that was unfolding before him. Vaguely, and with some unease, he wondered if he was going to be shown—and in what manner—and how he would feel if he were not to show up in her dream fantasy . . .

  Seven horseman road over brown, featureless hills toward the screen. They were dressed in scarlet “clean suits,” which stirred something vaguely in the back of Chuck’s mind, but his attention went to the leader, who was carrying a bound-up Tracy across his saddle. They rode over the harsh, bleak landscape toward a scarlet-painted Victorian house that also seemed familiar to Chuck, but he recognized it as a house he had seen earlier in her dream, in one of the fragments that had streaked passed.

  Then the image on the screen blurred with speed as it streaked toward a distant horse and rider on a bare brown hilltop. The screen zoomed into a closeup, of the earlier, black-clothed gunfighter’s face. Following this came a blurred transition to an upshot of the scarlet Victorian house. For a moment, during the transition, the windows of the house became the guttering eyes of the gunfighter.

  Chuck saw Tracy on the ground before the house, surrounded by the seven men in scarlet hoods. Her hands were bound. The men began to close in around her. They held large silver hypodermics in their hands, much as a knife is held.

  Chuck’s mouth felt dry.

  “Approaching the upset point,” the technician murmured. “Switch to manual, Cee Em, please.”

  The black-clad gunslinger rode up to the scarlet house, dismounted in a smooth, practiced, effortless move and started toward the grouping of red-cloaked figures surrounding Tracy.

  The men in scarlet turned away from the recumbent figure of Tracy, reacting to the oncoming gunfighter. They ran at him, their silvery hypodermic needles raised high as weapons. But the gunslinger drew as he moved, his gun firing, the sound of the explosions booming and distant, echoing and fading.

  The men in red jerked and twisted under the impact of the bullets, falling away from him. She turned and began to run, but the gunman’s weapon continued to fire, inexorably taking its toll. He moved through the growing white mist, stalking Tracy with the same sort of inevitable movement that he had on his horse—effortless, smooth . . .

  The mist swirled and Chuck now saw Tracy on the floor of a white bedroom. Mist heavily obscured the outer edges of the image, but the gunslinger strode in and pulled the wide-eyed video reporter to her feet. A hand on her waist, his other hand unraveled the knot of the scarlet cord that bound her wrists. Throwing the cord from him contemptuously, he pulled Tracy to him and kissed her hard. But she broke away, backing toward the white bed.

  He wheeled toward her, his dark figure blurring into merely an abstraction of motion, a dark stream across the Mind Flowing screen.

  Tracy, too, was only a blur across the screen, indistinct . . . uncertain . . . turning . . . turning . . .

  It’s like a dance, Chuck thought, a blurred, swirling movement of lovers seeking each other through a misty pastel fog . . .

  They came together in slow motion . . . embracing . . . melding . . . The bed was beneath them . . . Their kisses became deeper and increasingly passionate . . .

  Chuck looked at the pain-pleasure readout screen. The glowing dot was at the optimum pleasure mode. He was not pleased. Reluctantly, he looked back at the Mind Flow screen.

  Tracy’s face filled it, flushed with sexual pleasure.

  “We’re losing it,” the technician said to him “She’s waking up.”

  Chuck straightened; his jaw clamped shut. He turned away toward the fantasy chamber and followed Duffy to the airlock door.

  Duffy opened it and a sigh of air ruffled his hair. He glanced back at Chuck. “Better give her a moment.” He smiled softly. “Real life is a shock after that.”

  Chuck nodded. “I’ll bet,” he said quietly.

  Duffy pulled the airlock hatch open farther and entered the chamber himself.

  Chuck blinked and looked around. No one was watching him. He moved off quickly, hurrying to a set of iron steps which, he guessed, must lead down below the round chamber. He trotted down the steps none too quietly, and entered a wide subterranean space. Overhead, to one side, the rounded bottom of the fantasy chamber bulged downward. Breaking into a run, he scampered around the cur
ving wall until he found a dark tunnel entrance. He paused only a moment before bolting down the gloomy passage.

  • • •

  “How do you feel?” Duffy asked Tracy solicitously, as he helped her out the airlock door.

  She laughed self-consciously. “I feel as if I’ve been sleeping for hours.” Then she looked around. “Where’s Chuck?”

  Duffy turned, too, a frown deepening on his bland face. “I don’t know. He was right here.”

  The video reporter shrugged, for it had just occurred to her Chuck was off hunting. “He probably went back to the suite,” she said lightly. “He said he might.” She turned to Duffy with animation. “Listen, how do you ever do that?” she asked, waving at the fantasy chamber. “You’ve go to explain this to me!”

  Duffy looked uncertain, his eyes probing the dark space around the big room. But Tracy took his arm and pulled him toward the control consoles.

  “Now explain it again, Mr. Duffy. You reach into my mind, like telepathy? Or is it something like an advanced E.E.G., reading the electrical impulses? My science isn’t very good, so if you’d go over it again . . . ?”

  Duffy allowed her to pull him toward the control center, but he looked continuously over his shoulder, his face suspicious and sullen.

  • • •

  Harry pushed some chips into the center of the table. He peered up at his robot Clark and held his cards close to his chest. “I’ll call,” he said. “What d’ya got?”

  The salvaged robot sat expressionless as always, not moving, holding his cards. Harry leaned toward him. “I said, I call!” Nothing. “Now damnit, show me your cards . . .” Harry squinted his eyes at the motionless robot; then he grunted in dismay. “Oh, hell!”

  Reaching into his tool belt, he pulled out a screwdriver, then leaned over and delicately inserted the tip of it into Clark’s face and turned something within. A tiny lightbulb buried within the headful of circuits glowed brightly.

  Harry leaned back, slipped the tool into his belt with a practiced movement, and spoke loudly. “Now! What do you have?”

  Slowly Clark put down his cards, one by one. Harry watched in growing apoplectic dismay.

  “Four kings!” He slapped the table. “Now, damn all, you can’t have no four kings.” He leaned forward and snarled at the robot, “You’ve been cheating again, that’s what!” The blue-clad repairman leaned back in disgust. “Damn all hunks of iron!” He hit the table again and threw down his cards. “I don’t know why I bother with you, anyways.”

  Clark raked in the chips.

  Harry snatched at the scattered cards angrily. “It’s my deal . . .” Tapping them into a neat stack, he swiftly shuffled them. “Five card stud, Jacks or better to open,” he said nastily. “And if you—” He stopped, his head tipping toward one of his two entrances. “Who’s that?” he demanded suspiciously.

  There was a scrape, and Chuck dropped down into Harry’s hidden corner, ducking under the pipes. “Harry . . .” he said.

  After a doubtful glare at Chuck, the workman began to deal out the cards. He was not friendly.

  “No, sir,” he responded, shaking his head. “No, sir, you get out of here. I’m in all the trouble I ever want to have cuz of you.” He plunked down the cards with loud snaps.

  Chuck stepped to the table and handed him a photograph. “Is that Frenchy?”

  Harry stopped dealing. Slowly the hand with the deck sank to the tabletop. For once Harry’s eyes opened wide from their habitual squint. “My God! What happened to him?” He took the picture and examined it.

  “Somebody killed him.”

  The Delos workman shook his head, denying the reality of it. “I don’t know why they would do that. He never hurt anybody.” A sob rose in his voice and he rubbed the back of his hand across his nose.

  “What was Frenchy’s job here?” Chuck asked, sinking into a dilapidated chair.

  Harry gulped, rubbed at his nose again, staring at the photo. Frenchy had the deflated, slack, motionless look of death. Human death, not the non-functioning “death” of the lifelike robots.

  “He worked same as me,” he said slowly. “Then he had a run-in with that Dr. Schneider one day and he up and quit. Or he got fired. I never did know which it was.”

  Chuck tapped the table. “He called me before he was killed. Said he had a big story about Delos. Do you know what he was talking about?”

  Harry nibbled at his lips. His eyes slithered from the photo to Chuck, then back again. He put down the photograph with careful fingers and smoothed it on the tabletop.

  “Do you?” Chuck persisted.

  “Maybe . . .” Harry mumbled.

  “What?”

  Harry did not answer. He ran his fingers over the edges of the photograph, smoothing the print.

  “Harry,” Chuck said intently, “do you think they’ll treat you any better . . . ?”

  Without looking up, Harry began: “Clark, get me my binoculars.” He shoved back from the table and stood. He bit at his lip, his eyes still on the morgue photo of Frenchy. “I . . . I guess this could cost me my job.” He was silent a moment and Chuck gave him time. The bearded workman sighed. “But the way things are, it don’t look like I have much of a future, anyways. Come on.” He gestured at the reporter and reached for the binoculars Clark was holding out to him. “Come on,” he repeated, walking under the pipes toward the concrete tunnel. He mumbled to Chuck, “I got something to show you.”

  Then Harry paused, and squinted back at Clark. “Don’t you touch them cards!” he admonished.

  When the sounds of their passage had faded, Clark moved. He shuffled forward and gently lifted one corner of Harry’s hand to sneak a peek. Satisfied, he returned to his former position and remained motionless.

  • • •

  Their shoes made little splashes in the paper-thin pools of water along the concrete tunnel floor; and Harry urged Chuck along at a brisk pace, almost unconcerned for the darkness that hid so many dangerous pipes and projections.

  “You know,” Harry said, “there used to be a couple dozen maintenance men in each world. Watch out for that—”

  “Ow!”

  “—pipe. Now, it’s all machines, except for me and a couple others. Everything changed when they brought out the seven hundreds.”

  “Changed how?” Chuck asked.

  Harry shrugged. “This way,” he said, taking them down a cross-tunnel. “They’re different, that’s all,” he continued. “They think too much.”

  “You don’t mean they . . . think for themselves?”

  Harry shook his head. “Naw. They’re just iron, like the rest of ’em. Watch that valve there. Naw, they don’t go nowhere or do nothing unless they’re programmed to, but . . .” He paused in his words but kept walking.

  “But they worry you,” Chuck finished for him.

  Harry didn’t respond. A few steps farther on, he pointed ahead. “It’s right up here.”

  They reached a ladder that led up into the dark and Harry started climbing at once. His binoculars banged nosily against the steel rungs and he cursed softly, leaning back as he climbed.

  Harry helped pull Chuck out onto a dimly lit area with a short row of windows along one side. The area was a dead space, dark and dusty, but when Harry pointed outside the room, through the grating over one of the windows, Chuck knew why they had come here.

  The area beyond was large, painted black, and with a wide blue door to one side. A strange machine was just coming through the doorway as Chuck pressed himself to the grating. Chuck could see burly Delos guards immediately inside the door, but there appeared to be none outside. The door closed behind the machine.

  “Where are we?” Chuck asked.

  “Used to be dead inventory. I don’t know what it is now.” He pointed at the blue door. “But that’s the only door in Delos I can’t get open. Only ones who get in are seven hundreds.”

  All at once, Harry grabbed at the reporter’s arm, his eyes rolling upward, and Chuc
k heard the sounds of footsteps patrolling on the cement ceiling.

  Evidently there’s a walkway overhead, Chuck guessed.

  The steps moved along and Chuck raised himself up—above the grating—and peered out through an opening in the room’s ceiling. A model-seven-hundred robot was walking down some steps and Chuck realized they must be under some sort of loading dock.

  Harry leaned closely, his hands clasping the binoculars. “Watch!” he whispered. “Write down what I tell you.” He focused the binoculars as Chuck sought a pen and a paper in his pockets.

  Through the field glasses Harry saw clearly the complex lock on the blue door. Something that looked like an oscilloscope was set into the door; below were ten numbered buttons and green, red, and yellow switches. The robot who had walked overhead now reached out and began to punch numbers, which appeared large on the oscilloscope, spelled out in lines of dots.

  “Okay, ready?” Harry breathed. “Seven . . . nine . . . two . . . one . . . one, again . . . nine . . . Um, red . . . green . . . and red.”

  They heard a click, saw a light flash into the face of the robot, followed by a motor’s hum. The door began to open. All of the several robots now left the black-painted room.

  Harry squatted next to Chuck and jerked a thumb toward the door. “You wanna try it later?”

  “Do you want to try it?” Chuck asked in return.

  Harry shrugged. “Hell, I’ve already tried it a dozen times. I just can’t get it open.”

  “One more time?”

  “Well, all right,” Harry answered grimly.

  He pulled out a screwdriver from his belt kit and in a few deft movements had loosened the grating above the window. Jumping up, he slid through with practiced ease, slipping forward for a short distance on his belly.

  Chuck inched out behind him and they both crept along the loading dock to the wall with the blue door. The reporter saw Harry motion to stay low, and then he noticed the tiny, ruby laser beam. They slithered under it and stood up. Afterward, Harry rapidly tiptoed to the door, Chuck directly behind him.

  Chuck pulled out the scrap of paper and read the numbers and colors off to Harry. “Seven . . . nine . . . two . . . one . . . one . . . nine. Red . . . green . . . red That’s it.”