New Writings in SF 23 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Kenneth Bulmer

  ‘Yeah,’ said Chris. ‘Yeah.’ And he went.

  Lee walked up the ramp towards the gate. He stopped two or three yards away. The portal was a huge metal tube jutting a few feet out of the wall. Inside there was nothing but darkness so intense that the eye could not penetrate. It looked the same as it always did. To check if it was working, all he had to do was enter it and walk through to the other side. That was all.

  He turned back.

  Nine and a half thousand people had no other source of food or heat, light or water. He knew that communication would be restored as soon as possible. But would that be soon enough ?

  * * * *

  Steve and Eugene arrived before Chris was back. Both had already discovered the telephone and electricity failure.

  ‘I think we’ve been cut off,’ said Lee. ‘Chris went to find the captain.’

  Steve asked when it had happened, and Lee told them about the administrative staff leaving. They waited in silence, all considering the implications of being alone. Each one knew how tenuous was the link with the other side, but up until now none of them had tried to think about it. They had pushed it to the back of their minds, pretending it was somehow different.

  ‘I can’t find him,’ Chris said when he got back.

  ‘Maybe he hasn’t returned,’ said Steve.

  ‘You mean he left?’

  ‘Rob mentioned he went out last night.’

  ‘Then we’re on our own,’ said Lee, voicing what they all thought and knew. There was still the possibility that although no one could get in—as evidenced by the lack of deliveries—they could get out. Lee suggested it.

  ‘You’re volunteering?’ asked Steve.

  ‘I’d go through,’ said Eugene, ‘but it isn’t worth it. Say I make it to the other side, what then ? They already know something’s wrong and you wouldn’t know if I’d succeeded.’

  He was right, realised Lee. The only reason he had not thought it through was because he wanted to believe they could get out. Because if he did not believe that, he had no hope. Whatever happens, he said to himself, I’m going to survive.

  ‘But at least you’d be safe,’ said Chris to Eugene. He seemed to shiver, and it could not be because he was cold. ‘It makes you realise how vulnerable we are. Once they get it fixed, I’m quitting.’

  Eugene smiled. ‘If they fix it,’ he said. ‘It is an experiment, remember that. There might be a limit to the duration a portal can operate.’

  ‘No,’ Chris said, ‘they’ll fix it.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Lee, although he was not at all sure, ‘but the question is: How long will it take ? Minutes or days ? Or even weeks?’

  ‘We wouldn’t last longer than a week,’ said Eugene. ‘What should we do? Tell everyone?’

  ‘We’ve got to assume the worst,’ said Steve.

  ‘We’d better get the others and hold a war council,’ said Eugene. ‘We’ll have to tell the people something.’

  Lee did not say so, and it might have been coincidence that the administrators and the security captain were missing when the portal closed, but he thought they would have to prepare themselves for a long stay here—wherever ‘here’ was.

  * * * *

  Almost the entire population of what was referred to as the ‘village’ consisted of old people. They no longer worked. They had no reason to leave, and except in rare circumstances were not allowed to. Everything came from outside. They ordered what they wanted, it was delivered and they paid for it. The ten apartment blocks were completely self-catering. They had to look after themselves. The guards were posted at each end of the portal to prevent entrance by unauthorised persons—and there were many who saw the village as an escape route, even though publicity for the experiment and others like it was discouraged.

  Lee knew the villagers were nothing but guinea pigs. If this village proved successful, yet others would be established for such people. It was no good housing those who had to keep moving back and forth. The portals were not large enough to move so many. The idea was to get them out of the way and leave more room for everyone else.

  After the eight guards had come to an undecision to wait and see, Lee went to the doctor’s surgery. There were dozens of ‘villagers’ waiting in the outer room, and they grew silent and watched him as he entered. He expected to be bombarded with questions; but he was not. They had been given no choice as to where they had been rehoused, and Lee knew they regarded the security men as prison warders. In that, he reflected as he opened the inner door, they were not far from the truth.

  ‘Don’t you usually knock?’ said the nurse. Her name was Alice and she was the only female younger than sixty in the whole village. She was about half that age. Anywhere else, the man would not have spared her a first glance. She had never spoken to him before and he did not like her tone. ‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’ There was a man sitting on a chair in front of her.

  ‘I wanted the doctor,’ said Lee.

  ‘He isn’t here.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Lee knew. He had gone. That was what he had come to check. Two of the other guards would have been there when he left, but Lee had not asked because he did not want to share his suspicions.

  ‘Why,’ she went on, ‘has the electricity and water failed?’

  ‘A temporary fault,’ Lee told her, his eyes gesturing towards the old man.

  She took the hint. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you. That will be all.’ The man stood up and went out. She waited for the guard to speak.

  ‘I think we’re cut off. The portal isn’t working.’

  ‘You only think?’

  ‘We’re not getting anything through. Draw your own conclusion.’

  ‘I’m no expert.’

  ‘Nor am I. I don’t think anyone is.’ He backed to the door. ‘I thought you might like to know.’

  ‘Doctor Whitehead went to visit someone late last night. He said he’d be back around noon.’

  ‘Our captain’s gone, too. And the administrative staff.’

  ‘Which leaves ...?’

  ‘Us, you and around ten thousand others without food or water or ...’ He broke off, shrugging. ‘You get the picture?’

  ‘What can be done?’

  ‘By us, nothing. They’ve got to fix it at the other side.’

  ‘How long will it take?’

  Lee shrugged again.

  ‘Thanks for the good news,’ she said.

  ‘If you come up with any bright ideas, let us know.’

  He left. He supposed something should be done about rationing, but what was there to ration ? The water in the pipes would be all gone by now. There were no reserve stocks of food, only what there was in every apartment larder. Lee had not eaten yet and he thought that maybe he should start getting used to eating less. Perhaps there would not be time to starve. How long before the air became un-breathable and they died of asphyxiation ?

  * * * *

  At the other end of the tube the sun would be at its zenith. But here, where there were only twenty hours, eight minutes and thirty-six point three nine seconds in every day, a sun which was not Earth’s fast approached the horizon. Among themselves, they always talked of the strange star as being the sun, and they had no proof that it was not, no matter what they thought. The ones who had measured and analysed it must have known, but their discoveries were not passed down to mere gatekeepers.

  We’re the ones who live here, thought Lee, but we don’t know a thing about it. Did the portal transport them into the past, into the future? The moon was gone and he did not recognise the pattern of the stars, though he had only ever been able to pick out Orion and the Plough. And Jay said the constellations did not belong to the southern hemisphere, either. They could be on a parallel Earth, but the stars did not fit. Perhaps it was a mixture of everything—a different time, another dimension, an alien world swinging about a primary in an unimaginably distant galaxy. Whatever the case, it
made no difference to the fact that they were trapped there.

  Lee was due for some sleep and at the moment he did not care as much about their predicament as he should. They had been on their own for eight hours. The villagers had been told nothing yet, but it would not be hard for them to realise what was going on. None of them had come to find out. It was as if this only confirmed what they had expected to happen.

  ‘I think,’ said Lee to the other seven—he thought Alice might have come but he was wrong—’we should elect a leader.’

  ‘You nominating yourself, Lee?’ said Steve.

  ‘Not me. I’ll vote for Eugene.’

  ‘Anyone else want to stand ?’ asked Daren.

  Chris looked as though he was about to speak; but he did not.

  ‘Anyone object?’ asked Daren.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Eugene. ‘Me.’

  ‘Too late, Mr. President,’ said Steve, ‘you’re in.’

  Daren gave him a mock salute. ‘Your orders, sir?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Chris, ‘what are we going to do?’

  ‘Talk,’ said Eugene.

  ‘Someone should try and get through,’ said Rob. ‘I know we said it wouldn’t do any good; but if someone went through holding a line, perhaps a message could be tied to it and pulled back.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s better than doing nothing.’

  Eugene nodded. ‘Do you want to play Theseus ?’

  ‘Tomorrow. If we haven’t been rescued. We’re not desperate enough yet.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ said Allan, and a few of them forced a laugh. Anything to relieve the tension. Rob had used the right word: rescued. They could do nothing to help themselves. Going through the gate was the only action they could take, futile though it might be.

  ‘We’re in no immediate danger,’ said Eugene.

  ‘Face facts, Eugene,’ said Jay. ‘We’re in trouble. Bad trouble.’

  ‘I know that. But it’s only a power failure.’

  ‘Long kind of power failure,’ said Chris.

  ‘I don’t think we’ll ever get back,’ said Jay. ‘This didn’t just happen. It was planned. Why isn’t the captain here? Why did the doctor and the others leave ? So they wouldn’t be trapped, that’s why.’

  ‘You mean,’ said Steve, ‘they knew the portal was going to fail and ordered the others out. But why not us?’

  ‘Because we’re expendable,’ said Jay.

  ‘Why not the nurse?’ asked Steve.

  ‘Who’d want to save her?’ said Allan, which produced a better laugh than his previous remark.

  ‘Okay,’ Eugene said to Jay, ‘you think they knew something was going to go wrong and so-’

  ‘No! I’m saying they deliberately cut us off.’

  ‘After all the money and time they’ve spent on this place?’ said Lee. ‘All the trouble to build the dome and construct the village simply to sever all links with it? There are cheaper ways of killing off a few thousand pensioners—not to mention a handful of misfits like us.’ The fact that the others had left could not easily be dismissed as coincidence, although they all had plausible reasons for going, but it made no sense for them to be deliberately castaway.

  ‘Cheap?’ said Chris. ‘We’ll be dead in a week. Then they can start all over again. They won’t have lost the village.’

  ‘It could be part of the experiment,’ said Steve.

  ‘To see how we’d react, you mean?’ said Eugene.

  ‘Or to see how long we’d live?’ said Allan, and nobody laughed this time. ‘That’s more their sort of experiment.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Eugene said, ‘all of you. We can’t do anything in the dark. We’ll carry on tomorrow. Allan, Jay, you’re on duty?’

  ‘It’s not worth it, is it ?’ said Allan, but he got no answer.

  * * * *

  Lee turned his back on the ten housing blocks. We’re not even pretending to care about them, he thought. But should we ? Aren’t we here to guard them, to protect them ?

  ‘Maybe,’ he said to Daren, ‘we’re meant to break through the dome and colonise this world.’

  ‘Could be,’ agreed the other, treating the idea as seriously as it had been suggested. ‘The eight of us share the nurse— to ensure a mixed gene pool—and eat the rest of them.’

  ‘What we really need is a couple of loaves and five fishes, then we’d be okay.’

  ‘Twice that much,’ said Daren. ‘And Eugene our miracle worker.’

  They were watching as Rob tied a line around his waist and prepared to enter the portal. Two or three of them might have thought he stood a chance, but so far as the others were concerned he was killing himself.

  ‘I feel like a mountaineer,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t have to go,’ Eugene told him.

  ‘I’ve got nothing better to do. See you later.’

  He walked up the ramp and stepped into the shadows and was gone. They only had the length of thin rope to tell them Rob was still moving. The portal was cylindrical with a corridor built through it. The walls of this did not touch the sides of the portal but instead rested on concrete blocks built at either end. A man had to feel his way along to get out; even the brightest light was absorbed in a matter of inches.

  He ought to be there by now, thought Lee, and the line became still. Then it dropped. Eugene hauled it back and examined the end of the rope.

  ‘It doesn’t prove anything,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell if it’s where Rob tied it or if it’s been severed.’

  ‘You should have measured it,’ said Allan.

  ‘I will if you want to try it.’

  Then there were seven, thought Lee.

  ‘Why don’t the rest of us go through ?’ asked Chris.

  ‘No one’s stopping you,’ said Jay.

  ‘He could have got through.’

  No one bothered to comment.

  ‘Now what,’ said Jay to Eugene, ‘sir?’

  ‘How about leaving the dome?’ said Steve, which brought a mixed series of comments in reply to which Steve said: ‘There might be something to eat out there. Water. Air. Or it might be a quicker way to die, yes. But we’ve nothing to lose.’

  ‘Only our lives,’ said Allan.

  ‘Listen,’ said Jay. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the apartment buildings. ‘Why don’t we send some of them out and see if they survive? There’s no point in risking ourselves.’

  ‘And what do we tell them?’ asked Eugene.

  Jay patted his holstered revolver.

  ‘We could get them out through the waste chutes,’ said Chris.

  Waste chutes, repeated Lee silently. A brand new world, and what do we do with it? Pump out our sewage and rubbish. Probably there were other portals used exclusively to get rid of such inconvenient by-products of civilisation. He had not considered that before. He knew that a few other experimental gates were in operation or being opened. Ones to exploit the resources found, ones to become complete self-contained productive units, and likely ones to be used as prisons. But where were they? On this world? If so, perhaps they could be reached. They would have a route back to Earth. If, of course, their portals had not also failed.

  Allan said something about waste chutes being the best place for the villagers, but the most he got was an uneasy smile or two.

  ‘No,’ said Eugene, ‘We all go out or none.’

  ‘If,’ said Lee, ‘we found that this world didn’t kill us, we could explore it and see if there are any more domes. It would take a while, seeing we’d have to go on foot, but it would pass the time.’

  ‘Pass our lifetimes, you mean,’ said Daren.

  Nothing else was decided. They simply continued to wait.

  * * * *

  They had been waiting a total of twenty-five hours when Eugene visited Lee in his room and said: ‘I want to know if I can count on you.’

  Lee nodded. ‘What for?’

  ‘You, me and Steve to disarm the others before they do something crazy.’

&n
bsp; ‘Daren too?’

  ‘I’m not sure about him.’

  ‘If we exclude him, he’ll turn against us.’

  ‘We’ll have to risk that.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now. Steve’s outside.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Lee, thinking that if he had refused, he would have lost his gun by this time.