Prisoners of Tomorrow

by James P. Hogan

“Oh?”

  Charlie Chan shook, barely able to contain himself. “A Russian from Moscow goes into a Yakut’s hut on the tundra and sees a glove hanging from the ceiling. He says, ‘What’s that?’ And the Yakut replies, ‘A cow’s udder.’”

  “Go on.”

  “That’s it. A cow’s udder!”

  Chan collapsed onto his bunk, where he lay shrieking and writhing with mirth. McCain walked on, shaking his head. He still hadn’t managed to fathom Charlie Chan’s weird humor. Maybe it was a glimpse of how it had all begun, he mused—the first dazzling insight to metaphor, back in the winter gloom of some Neanderthal cave, which had evolved down through the ages from those beginnings through the court jester and the music hall, to Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, the banana peel and the custard pie.

  “I know another one just as good,” Charlie Chan’s voice offered behind him as he reached the front section.

  “Tomorrow,” McCain called back. “I couldn’t stand it.”

  Mungabo was sitting on the top bunk, sewing a tear in his pants, and Rashazzi and Haber were debating something abstruse at the center table. Scanlon and Koh were sitting on opposite bunks in the bay on the far side, and seemed to be talking about the evolution of cultures again. McCain wandered around the table behind the two scientists and sat down next to Koh. “Smovak tells me we’re going to be getting some visitors,” McCain said.

  Koh nodded. “So it appears. I’ve also heard a rumor of amnesties being granted—part of the public-relations spectaculars. They plan on making this a big event.”

  “Does that mean we’re all going home?”

  “I wouldn’t hold my breath. If there’s anything to it at all, it probably only applies to the privs.”

  The talking and the activity among the occupants of the billet’s front section were to cover their underlying tension in the time left before lights-out. For tonight was when they would make their first attempt at breaking through into the underfloor space.

  “Koh was just saying some fascinating things about history,” Scanlon told McCain. “And isn’t that something you’re always talking about yourself?”

  “It was one of my majors, sure,” McCain replied.

  Koh nodded. “We were discussing the European Renaissance.”

  “Except that the man’s saying it wasn’t a Renaissance at all,” Scanlon said.

  “The term is a misnomer.” Koh settled himself more comfortably on the bunk. “It was the birth of a new culture, not a rebirth of anything.” McCain remembered hearing this before. But on the last occasion, Koh had been smoking his herbal mixture and had become incoherent before he could get any further. Koh went on, “Teachers and professors like to think that their subjects are part of a glorious legacy that spans down through the ages in an unbroken succession from the distant past. It gives them a feeling of noble pedigree. So they present architecture, or art, or mathematics, or whatever as a continuum and divide it into periods that they call Classical, Medieval, Modern, and so on. But the continuity they see is an illusion. Each culture possesses its own unique way of conceptualizing reality—a collective mindset that determines how the world is perceived. And everything which a culture creates—its art, its technology, its political and economic system—is unavoidably part of an expression of its unique worldview. Oh, it’s true that a culture might adopt some things it finds useful from others that went before, but that doesn’t constitute a lineage. The splendor of Rome was the voice of the Roman worldview; the New York skyline spoke of America. They were products of different minds and perceptions. There was no line of descent from one to the other.”

  The ceiling lights blinked three times to signal five minutes to lights-out. Haber and Rashazzi got up from the table and came over. McCain moved his legs to make room for Haber to sit down. Rashazzi stepped up to the top bunk and turned to sit with his legs dangling over the side.

  Koh continued, “Rome was an expression of Classical Man who never mastered the concept of infinity, but shrank from it at every encounter. Look at his pictures and vase paintings. They show only foregrounds, never any background. You see—they avoid the challenges of distance and limitless extent. His temples were dominated by frontages that denied and suppressed inner space. He shunned the open ocean and seldom sailed out of sight of land. His world was timeless: its past lay hidden in an obscure, unchanging realm of gods, and he made no plans or provision for any future. . . . In other words, everything that Classical Man created expressed the same thing: perception of a world that was finite and bounded. Even his mathematics confined itself to the study of finite, static objects: geometric figures bounded by lines; solids bounded by planes. Time was never recognized as a dynamic variable—that was what confounded Zeno and led to insoluble paradoxes. And Classical Man’s number system contained no negatives and no irrationals—not because he was intellectually incapable of dealing with them, but simply because his worldview encompassed nothing that such entities were needed to describe. In a finite, tangible world, numbers merely enumerate finite, tangible objects. And it was perfectly natural that the form of art that dominated his culture should be sculptures: static, finite objects bounded by surfaces.”

  Rashazzi seemed about to say something, then rubbed his chin thoughtfully and nodded, evidently deciding not to interrupt. The sound of Smovak bellowing about something came from farther along the billet.

  “But Classical Man died, and Europe stagnated through the centuries of its Dark Ages before Western Man appeared. That’s the way every new culture arises: nothing significant happens for thousands of years, and then, suddenly, a new breed of Man with a new worldview bursts forth in a frenzy of creativity that sweeps the old order away. Western Man appeared out of the wreckage when European feudalism collapsed—not as a reincarnation of Classical Man, who was gone forever, but born in his own right, from his own beginnings.

  “Western Man not only comprehended change and infinity, he delighted in them—with a restless, thrusting energy, the like of which the world had never seen. After the stagnation of the Dark Ages, everything that spoke for him was an exultation of the newfound freedoms that they symbolized. The calculus of Newton and Leibnitz was the language of a universe no longer static and bounded, but dynamic and unlimited, to be explored through the scientific passion for discovery and the voyages of the global navigators. His mastery of perspective and soaring Gothic arches rejoiced in the experience of boundless, endless space. And what was his dominant form of art, which reached its zenith of expression along with the high point of his culture in the eighteenth century? Music, of course. For what else is the music of Mozart and Beethoven than flute and strings exploring vast, orchestra-created voids—the flourishes of baroque porticoes and the curves of the infinitesimal calculus, the commitment to reason and the power of intellect—set to sound?”

  Koh paused and stared solemnly into the space opposite him. His voice took on an edge of regret. “But, like Classical Man before him—in fact, any organism that is born lives out its span and dies—he was not immortal. And like Classical Man he balked before realities that his nature was unable to assimilate. The problems that have plagued him since are the consequences.”

  “You mean the problems we’re in right now, today?” Rashazzi said.

  “Yes. Whereas Classical Man couldn’t come to terms with infinities of space and time, what confounded Western Man was the confrontation with physical infinities: the infinity of potential growth and achievement that is implicit in the evolutionary process itself and in the creative power of the intelligent mind. For although free of the tyranny of feudalism, Western Man is essentially Malthusian in his worldview: always bounded by the currently perceived limits and possibilities. He extended his vision to the horizon, but not beyond it. As the continuous functions of his mathematics aptly symbolize, his is a world that changes smoothly, an orderly, civilized world, unable to accommodate to sudden leaps. Was it mere coincidence, then, that the world of Western Man fell apart at th
e end of the nineteenth century, when it came face-to-face with the discontinuities of relativity, quantum mechanics, evolution, and the implications of industrialized economic growth? He couldn’t cope with phase changes. Oh, some individuals played with the concepts academically in the same way that Zeno played with mathematical infinities; but the collective mind-set of Western Man was unable to feel what the concepts meant. And so, he has foundered into his own, cultureless, Dark Age.”

  The lights-out warning flashed. “Time to break it up, you lot at the end,” Smovak’s voice called out. “Let’s have some quiet.”

  “Oskar, you make more noise than all of those guys put together,” Mungabo shot back from the far side of the table. The group dispersed back to their own bunks.

  “’Tis a small part we are of everything, when ye think about it, and that’s the truth,” Scanlon said from across the aisle as McCain climbed into bed.

  “What makes you so interested in all that stuff of Koh’s?” McCain asked.

  “I’m not sure. It’s a new way of looking at things.” Scanlon paused. “I suppose a man likes to think that what he is and what he does will add a little to something that matters. Like them stones that Koh talks about . . . Wouldn’t anyone rather think that what he did would be built into something worthwhile than be left in the rubble?” McCain turned his head and looked across at him. Scanlon was staring up at the ceiling, deep in thought. Then the lights went out.

  A half hour later, McCain was lying in the dark, waiting for his senses to register the pattern of stillness that would tell him that the billet had settled down for the night. It was possible that the surveillance might include infrared sensors capable of tracking body movements in the darkness or other devices that Rashazzi had failed to detect—but there had to be some risks.

  “Okay?” he breathed into the darkness when he judged the time to be right.

  “Okay,” Scanlon’s voice whispered back.

  “On your way,” Mungabo muttered above.

  McCain raised his head and whistled quietly through his teeth. A similar signal acknowledged from the far side, which meant Rashazzi agreed. McCain lifted his blanket aside and rolled noiselessly onto the floor. He slid the drawer out from underneath his bunk and placed it on top, then turned and removed Scanlon’s drawer also, lifting it up on top of his own. Then he moved out between his and Scanlon’s bunks toward the center space of the billet. The black-clad shape of Rashazzi was already wriggling along the floor on the far side of the table to meet him. McCain reached under the table and grasped the ends of the wires that Rashazzi pushed through for him. Then he crawled back between the bunks, passed one wire to Scanlon, and drew the other into the space underneath his own bunk, where the drawer had been.

  The “gesture of good faith” that Koh had brought for McCain from the escape committee had turned out to be a set of wiring diagrams showing the layout of heating, lighting, and security circuits, which were standardized and the same for every billet. In particular, they showed the locations of the conducting strips on the backs of the structural panels, and their connection points to the alarm wiring. The information would make it possible to bore holes in just the right places to attach jumper leads for bypassing the breaks, without having to disturb any panels beforehand. Then, with luck, they would be able to lift the bypassed floorpanel and explore the recesses beneath without triggering the alarm system. That was the purpose of the night’s experiment.

  Apparently the escape committee had obtained the diagrams through bribery followed by blackmail from a Russian electrician. Exactly who the committee were, or at least which of them were responsible for this particular venture, Koh hadn’t said. Their problem was that they were in a billet on the upper level, and going down from there would simply have brought them through the ceiling of the billets below. Hence they needed the cooperation of people who were already on the lower level.

  McCain and Scanlon had spent much of the previous night taking turns to lie in the narrow space between the bunks, laboriously cutting two saucer-size holes through the soft-alloy floorplates in the positions indicated on the diagrams. McCain removed the disk on his side, which had been resealed with a compound of aluminum dust and a nonsetting goo that Rashazzi had concocted, and felt beneath the floorplate for the low-voltage cable running beneath the hole. He scraped an inch of the cable bare and attached the wire that Rashazzi had passed from across the room, securing it with adhesive tape. Meanwhile Scanlon had done the same on his side, hanging his arm around the edge of his bunk. There was nothing more for them to do now until Rashazzi completed the more complicated connections on the far side of the room. When that was done, they would have constructed a bridge circuit across the end of the billet, bypassing the pattern of contact strips beneath the floor. While Rashazzi worked on the wiring, Haber and Koh, working from the bunks on either side, should already have taken the heads off the remaining rivets holding down the panel.

  “How are we doing?” Scanlon’s voice whispered from the darkness close to McCain’s ear.

  “It’s attached. I’m waiting for Razz.” Rashazzi would be measuring resistances and voltages before he risked breaking the circuit.

  “Any bets on what’s downstairs?”

  “Probably bilgewater.” Only McCain and Rashazzi would actually be going. There was no need for a circus.

  At last, the wire in McCain’s fingers jerked three times. He acknowledged. “That’s it,” he told Scanlon. “They’ve got the plate up. I guess this is it.”

  “Good luck, Lew.”

  McCain crawled back to the center space and stopped to listen, but could detect nothing abnormal. Moving slowly and soundlessly, he crossed the center between the end of the table and the door, and then moved toward the space between the two opposite bunks.

  He found the edge of the hole with his fingers. Rashazzi had already gone down. Haber reached out in the darkness and handed him a purloined flashlight and a cloth bag containing tools, some nylon rope, and other items that might come in useful. McCain patted the German’s arm, and then lowered himself full-length down into the opening between the bunks. He felt hard protrusions and structural beams around him, all the more constricting and entombing in the total darkness now pressing in from every side. Then he heard the floorplate being replaced above him.

  Light appeared ahead, silhouetting Rashazzi’s form against a clutter of supporting members, pipework, and cabling. There was little clearance, and McCain’s first thought was to wonder if the expedition might have ended already, right there. They began examining the surroundings methodically inch by inch, shifting their flashlights to opposite hands and rolling over to study first one side, then the other. Rashazzi spent some time on his back, examining the conduction strips from the underside. One of the tasks for tonight would be to install a second bypass circuit below the floor, so that in future they’d be able to lift the plate up again without repeating the whole procedure every time. They found no sign of surveillance devices in the below-floor space. Then Rashazzi began worming his way forward. McCain could see nothing of what lay ahead, since Rashazzi’s body was between him and the light.

  After he had progressed eight feet or so, Rashazzi stopped and began moving the light around to reconnoiter. McCain moved up behind him. It was a tight squeeze. Than, as Rashazzi continued angling his lamp this way and that, a glint of light caught McCain’s eye for an instant, reflecting off something below. He pointed his own lamp down between two of the metal ribs he was lying on, and brought his face close to peer along the beam. There was a much roomier space down there, with glimpses of machinery. Suddenly McCain realized that he and Rashazzi were not truly in the below-floor space at all. They were lying in a shallow frame carrying pipes and cables immediately beneath the flooring; the true interdeck compartment was still beneath them. He tapped Rashazzi’s leg, and light blinded him as Rashazzi aimed his lamp back to look over his shoulder. McCain pointed at the metal work beneath them and jabbed his finger
up and down several times. Rashazzi understood and probed the darkness beneath with his beam, but from where they were, there was no way down. Rashazzi continued wriggling forward, stopping after another ten feet or so to let McCain catch up.

  By now they were well under the next billet, if not beyond, with a steady background of humming and throbbing coming from the darkness beneath. Rashazzi shone his lamp ahead to check the next stretch. Then he emitted a soft “Ahah!” and resumed crawling. McCain followed and saw that a large pipe that had been walling them in on the right made a sudden turn away, leaving a gap in the side of the frame large enough to squeeze through. Rashazzi was already lowering himself down. Then he provided the light while McCain joined him.

  They were in a space barely high enough to stoop in, standing on a metal floor. Around them were runs of ducting, blowers and other machinery, pillars and braces supporting the deck above, and a maze of pipework. Shining their lights upward, they could see the frame they’d been crawling inside. They spent some time checking again for surveillance devices, but could find nothing. “It looks clean,” Rashazzi whispered, finally. “You know, I think we might just have done it—a place where we can avoid surveillance, without having to get out of Zamork.”

  “Maybe,” McCain replied. “Let’s check out some more of it.”

  They had already agreed that to get as far from the known parts of Zamork as they could, they would continue exploring downward rather than laterally if they did get below the billet, and accordingly they set to work examining the floor. It consisted of reinforced metal plates secured by spotwelds. Rashazzi had made a hand-operated trepan-like device for cutting sheet metal away around such welds, but it would be tedious and time-consuming. Rather than commit themselves to such a task, they moved along to the next panel, but found the same thing. And with the next; and the next. But the one after that was different: it was secured not by welds, but by snap fasteners.

  “Considerate,” McCain grunted. “Must be removable for maintenance or something.”