Prisoners of Tomorrow

by James P. Hogan

  Paula could only shake her head in helpless bewilderment as she watched. Earnshaw straightened up and turned back toward her. “You pick nice friends,” he commented.

  “What is this?” Paula mumbled. “Will somebody tell me what’s going on? How did you know he was a plant?”

  Rashazzi, Haber, and Koh moved back around the table. “He said he went to the hub on one of our missions,” Earnshaw said.

  Paula still hadn’t fully accommodated to what had just happened. “So?”

  “There isn’t any hub,” Rashazzi said.

  Paula shifted her gaze uncertainly from one to another of them, finally letting it come to rest on Earnshaw. His face had an odd, challenging expression. “Suppose we told you that this place we’re in is not Valentina Tereshkova,” he said. “In fact, it isn’t even in space at all.”

  The statement was so preposterous that for a moment it didn’t register and Paula answered mechanically. “That’s crazy. Of course it’s in space. Go to one of the ag sectors and look up through a window. Everyone knows they came here from Earth, don’t they? I know that you and I did.”

  “Do you?” Rashazzi’s quietly reasonable tone broke her stupor and made her look away from Earnshaw. Only now did her face show its first sign of any willingness to try to understand. Rashazzi went on, “You may know that you were taken out to Tereshkova on a transporter from Earth over six months ago, but that’s not quite the same thing. A lot has happened since then.”

  “Just out of curiosity . . .” Earnshaw said. Paula’s head jerked back to face him. “Were you taken sick soon after we were arrested?” Her expression supplied the answer. He nodded. “So was I. And when you came round, did a doctor tell you you’d been out for a couple of days? These guys had similar experiences, too. Now, isn’t that strange? What do you think might have happened during that couple of days?”

  “That’s . . . absurd,” Paula said. This time, however, her voice had lost its earlier conviction. Instead it was asking how what they were saying could be possible.

  Rashazzi stepped over to the table and picked up a pencil. Paula moved forward, while the others closed around. Taking a blank sheet of paper, Rashazzi sketched a shallow, truncated, inverted cone—a circular strip, banked all the way round, like a racetrack.

  “Suppose this were a large platform, miles in circumference, with miniature cities, agricultural sectors, and landscaping on it, all contained in a big, donut-shaped tunnel deep underground somewhere,” he said. “Now support the entire platform on a system of superconducting magnetic fields and rotate it at such speed that the force vectors of gravity and centrifugal force combine into a single resultant perpendicular to the floor. If you want some specific numbers, from the tests we’ve conducted I’d estimate a banking angle of twenty-five degrees and a rotation period of ninety seconds, which implies a radius of a little under a kilometer, or about six tenths of a mile.”

  Paula shook her head in the way of somebody trying to wake up. “It can’t be . . . I mean, adding the vectors like that . . . Everything would weigh more.”

  “By about ten percent, with the figures I’ve just quoted,” Rashazzi agreed. “Which is about the most you could expect people to adjust to reasonably quickly, and why you couldn’t go to a larger banking angle. And in fact, the gravitational acceleration as measured in Zamork is ten percent greater than Earth-normal. A strange way to design a space colony, wouldn’t you think?”

  “And incidentally, the scales they weigh you on in the infirmary are calibrated to read ten percent light,” Haber interjected. “That is very interesting, yes?”

  “Do you remember feeling weak and heavy in the limbs when you woke up?” Earnshaw asked her. “We did, too. It wore off after a few days.”

  Paula was looking at Rashazzi’s sketch with a changed expression, as if she wanted to be convinced. But now the scientist in her asserted itself, searching for the flaws. “Why rotate it at all?” she asked. “If it’s on Earth and in a gravity field to begin with, why bother?”

  “Because of the curvature that can be built into the structure,” Rashazzi answered. “A static platform would have to be flat, like a washer. It could never support the illusion of being the inside of a big hamsterwheel, as it would have to do to look real. But banking it introduces a vertical component of curvature and gives you a floor that does indeed bend upward as it recedes.”

  Paula stared down at Rashazzi’s sketch dubiously. She thought for a while, then took the pencil and on another sheet drew a pair of curves coming inward from the sides as if from behind an observer, and then retreating and converging to one side. It was a representation of Rashazzi’s racetrack as seen by somebody standing on it. She added a series of radial lines sloping down at intervals from its higher, outer edge to the inner, and then some crude human figures at varying distances.

  She inspected the result critically, tipping her head first to one side, then to the other. The others remained silent. Finally she said, “No, I still can’t buy this. However much you try and disguise it, it’s still going to look like a banked racetrack. The people will start to lean over as they get farther away. It won’t look anything like this.” Beside it she drew another perspective view, this time with the two curves converging upward and away directly in front of the observer, and with the cross-lines appearing as horizontal rungs. It was a hamster’s view of the inside of its wheel. Again she added some human figures.

  “See, they’re nothing like each other. The people should stay vertical, and foreshorten.” Paula gestured back at her first sketch. “If you blocked off all the long sight lines, then maybe you could get away with it. But this place isn’t built like that. I’ve just driven from Turgenev, and everyone here’s been outside. You can see all the way from Novyi Kazan to the edge of Ag Station Three. It’s the same everywhere. Long lines of sight aren’t obstructed around the colony, yet you don’t see a banked racetrack. So how could it be the way you’re saying?”

  Rashazzi took back the pencil. “That was something that puzzled us for a long time, and why we at first rejected the racetrack explanation,” he said. “This is how you do it.” He drew an imitation of Paula’s first sketch and superimposed on it a pair of lines cutting across the curve of the track and forming a section of straight strip, as would the edges of a piece of ribbon laid flat along the sloping rim of a dinner plate. Then he added a series of verticals along the lines, connected them with horizontals to complete the illusion, and added a couple of figures as Paula had done.

  Rashazzi covered the parts outside the walls with his hands to leave just the view looking along between them. The result came uncannily close to the second sketch that Paula had made. “You build walls,” he said. “The colony we are inside is a replica of the real Tereshkova—the one you were taken to in May. But it is a replica with a difference. Instead of being circular, it consists of a series of straight segments with sides that don’t veer off laterally, just like the real one, and by the geometry I’ve described, with floors and roofs that curve and yet possess perpendicular gravity everywhere, just like the real one. There are six long segments, running between the bases of the spokes. In addition there are what amount to another six short segments that form the complexes around the spoke-bases themselves—three towns and the three agricultural stations.” Rashazzi rummaged through some of the papers that he and the others had been discussing when Paula and Istamel arrived, and produced a plan view to show what he meant.

  “That means you’d have to turn through a thirty-degree angle between segments,” Paula commented. “Then—” She broke off as the further implication struck her.

  “The architect who designed the towns wasn’t a nut,” Earnshaw supplied, as if reading her mind. “They’re that way on purpose, to make you lose your sense of direction.”

  “Or at least, sufficiently mislead you into not realizing that you’re coming out thirty degrees off from the direction you went in,” Rashazzi said.

  And that
explained why the towns and the agricultural stations forming the intersection zones were all built high: to obscure the views to the far side. From relatively close distances the rising structures formed a screen, while from farther back the dip of the roof interceded before it was possible to see over the top of any of the zones and into the next long, straight section.

  “The odd bits of sky that you think you see behind the intersection zones from some places are no doubt optical images projected onto screens built in among the higher levels of the architecture,” Haber said. “from even a short distance away, the difference would be impossible to distinguish. The overhead views of the hub and the stars at some places are also graphics simulations.”

  “And so there isn’t any hub, and that’s why he couldn’t have gone there,” Earnshaw said, gesturing at Istamel’s inert form. “And why security is so tight around the spokes.” Paula looked back at the papers on the table, accepting what was on them now, but still needing time to absorb it fully. “And suggestion did the rest,” Earnshaw said. “There is some residual distortion, but the unevenness of the valley-sides hides it—you won’t see it if you’re not looking for it. The gravity does vary a bit from the centers of the long sections to the ends, and the banking angle increases slightly toward the outside. . . . But what dominates everything else is that you know you came here physically through space, and that knowledge shapes your perceptions—it was your own first reaction. And being surrounded by people who reinforce the belief . . .” He shrugged. “What reason would there be to question it?”

  “Why did you question it?” Paula asked.

  “Me? I didn’t. Ask these guys. They were being scientists while you were saving the world.”

  Paula had asked for that, and let the remark go. There were so many questions bubbling in her head now that she didn’t know where to begin. “All the people out there? Surely they couldn’t all have been through the same treatment. Not on that scale.”

  “The Russians officers and so on are no doubt just playing parts,” Earnshaw said. “And probably a lot of the prisoners are, too. But some are genuine, like us—probably to give us an authentic layer of immediate contacts to interact with.”

  “I meant the inhabitants of the colony generally,” Paula said.

  “I don’t know. They could have been told they were taking part in a simulation experiment, and have a taboo about mentioning it—to preserve the realism. On the other hand, I’ve talked to some people who don’t seem to have any clear recollection of how they got here. They think they do, until you question them about details. Then you find it’s all vague and muddy.”

  “Drugs,” Haber said. “It would be possible to transport many people on a simulated two-day flight under the influence of sense-disorienting substances that would dull memory and increase suggestibility.”

  “A weightless flight?” Paula queried.

  “Later, they wouldn’t remember,” Haber said. “They could recall it as having been weightless if that was suggested to them.”

  Paula closed her eyes and nodded that she was finally persuaded. “Why?” She asked in a voice that sounded suddenly tired. “What would be worth so much effort . . . the cost of it all?”

  “The world,” Earnshaw said simply. “They saw years ago which way the game was going for them, and this was their last-ditch gamble. They built a weapons platform in space, thinly disguised as a colony—enough to fool visitors on the guided tours. At the same time they built this replica, with all the trappings of the complete colony. Then they hatched a scheme to get people inside the replica whose credibility the West would trust, and allowed them to set up supposedly secret communications channels to report back through. They staged this stunt with the November celebrations and the leaders to put everyone off guard. Sure there were people on the dummy we went to months ago, but they’ll have been taken off since.”

  Now a lot of things were becoming clearer. “The dirt,” Paula said slowly. “That’s what that business was all about. Those ships didn’t come here . . . go there to take dirt up. They went there to bring the people down.”

  Earnshaw nodded. “Sure. And where have the Russians really been putting their leaders in the meantime—with all their families, generals, Party hacks, and lots of people who’d be too useful to risk losing if there was a lot of rebuilding to do afterward? Down here, wherever here is—in a self-contained world with its own industry, agriculture, life-support, and a population ready-installed to keep it running for years, if need be, if the predictions turn out wrong and bad conditions on the surface last for a long time. What we’re in is a giant-size bomb shelter.”

  Paula went very quiet as the full extent of how completely she had been taken in and how willingly she had fallen for it all became sickeningly clear to her. It must have shown on her face, she realized when she looked up and found Earnshaw watching her. “Oh, don’t worry too much,” he said. “You weren’t the only one. They were thorough. They even stripped the fittings from the cells they put us in after we were arrested up in the real Tereshkova, and transferred them down here with us to the cells in the replica. I remember a vent in the ceiling of mine that had the same scratch in it. And don’t think you were the only one they managed to hang a stooge on, either.” He indicated Istamel with a turn of his head. “He wasn’t the only one who was supposed to have been to the hub. I had my own Olga, too, and I fell for it.”

  Paula looked at him uncertainly. “Scanlon,” Rashazzi said. It was the first time that Paula had ever heard a note of hopelessness in the Israeli’s voice. “He’s known everything, right from the start. They’ve been playing us like fishes all the time.”

  Paula stared back, horrified. She looked across at the bench and the things around it that had been constructed with so much effort: the laser, to signal across a void that wasn’t out there; the survival suits—four of them—to get to a hub that didn’t exist; the detectors, circuit-test meters, RF monitors, IR sensors, badges, bracelet solvents, and all the other paraphernalia devised to evade a surveillance system that had never been intended to contain them. She shook her head in mute protest, struggling to take in the full magnitude of the disaster.

  And then a new voice spoke softly from the shadows in an Irish brogue. “Is that a fact, now?” They turned as Scanlon moved out into the light. Earnshaw started forward, then froze as he saw the automatic in Scanlon’s hand. The others remained motionless on either side of him. Scanlon stopped far enough back from them not to be rushed. “No, to give credit where credit’s due, Lew never told me that you were on your way to working out where we really are.” He looked around the circle of grim faces. “My compliments, gentlemen. As the barmaid told the parson, ‘It gets more interesting as you uncover more of it.’ Wouldn’t you agree?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  “Now what?” Scanlon asked them. “It was an interesting conversation and I’m impressed by your ingenuity, but what did you imagine you were going to do next? There wasn’t so much of a mention of any suggestion, unless I’m mistaken.”

  McCain didn’t bother replying, but continued staring back woodenly. It was true. There was no way out, and the Russians controlled all the communications—as they had done all along. Scanlon doubtless had a communicator like Istamel’s and would have summoned for help before revealing himself. Now he was simply waiting for it to arrive. Although Paula hadn’t had a chance to say so, McCain guessed that the errand she’d come here on after sending the message to Foleda had been to try getting him to endorse it personally. Scanlon had waited long enough to see if she would succeed. Now the whole sorry charade was over. There was nothing left to do but await the appearance of the show’s stagehands and producers from the wings.

  A whole pattern now became clear, which McCain could have kicked himself for not having spotted earlier. Of course the Russians would have ensured that there was always somebody at his elbow to steer and prompt him, making sure he played his part according to the design. Scanlon
had ingratiated himself with McCain from the beginning, by arranging—so he’d said—for McCain to get news of Paula via the library from the phantom Russian officer, who probably didn’t exist. It was Scanlon who had urged him to take on Maiskevik, which McCain could see now had been intended to equip him in the eyes of the billet with the image his role would require. Scanlon had steered McCain’s group to Istamel’s escape committee, and the committee had steered them to the freight system, which had doubtless been monitored all along by the Russians. McCain burned inwardly with anger at his own failing as much as at Scanlon’s duplicity. He stared at the gun in Scanlon’s hand, judging the distance and weighing up the chances—if everything was lost anyway—of taking the Irishman with him.

  And then Scanlon did something very strange. He checked that the gun’s safety catch was on, reversed it, and tossed it to McCain. McCain caught it reflexively but was too astonished to do anything more than blink. “I didn’t want to risk you fellas being too impetuous,” Scanlon said with a shrug. “Not after watching what happened to the sleeping beauty over there.” Everybody was still too dazed to move or say anything. Scanlon regarded them all quizzically for a few seconds more, like a professor waiting for a class of slow students to catch on. “Well?” he asked them. “Doesn’t a man have a right to change his mind?”

  For once, Rashazzi could do no more than stammer. “Change? . . . Change how? Are you saying you’re with us?”

  “To be sure, what else do you think I’m saying?”

  “But why?” Haber was shaking his head, equally bemused.

  “I found the way I thought about things and people changing as time went by,” Scanlon said. “Being among the likes of yourselves had a lot to do with it. But there isn’t the time now to be going off into grand speeches. The fact of the matter is that you’re stuck with me. And you’d be best advised to trust me whether you like it or not, because I’m the one chance you’ve got of getting out of here. And that’s the only way you’ll ever tell anyone what you know.”