He said, “This is your place. You could live in a natural light. What do you think about it?”
She was drawing in deep breaths. Although they were very close together in the narrow confines of the cupola, she was clearly oblivious of his presence beside her. The tiny room had dropped to outside temperature and the pale brown skin of her bare arms was roughening as the cold-sensitive sense buds made their defensive bid.
Her voice sounded as though she was thinking aloud. “I knew there had to be something like this. It’s incredible. It’s like meeting a scene that you’ve imagined and finding that there’s a real basis for it after all.” She turned to him and remembered why they were there. “What’s it all about? What are you doing here?”
“A group of us are aiming to set up a colony outside—in the open. We need two or three more people. Would you come?”
“How is that possible? The books say that life outside had to be given up. North is too cold. South is too hot and has hostile cities. You will not be allowed to go.”
“Never mind about that. We shall get out all right. But whether you accept or not, you must keep this out of your mind except up here. The monitor is out of range here.”
“I guessed that. I can mask my thoughts. I’ll think about it in terms of whether or not to buy a red dress. Can I have until tomorrow to think it over?”
“No later.”
“I’ll tell you when you come on duty.”
“How?”
“Whether I’m buying it or not. Can I suggest anybody else?”
“How can you put it to them?”
“Cheryl Bentham is in the section. I could bring her up here.”
“You’ll have to move quickly. There’s another screened meeting place. We meet in two days’ time. In the therapy room of psychologist’s section.”
“Tania Clermont?”
“Yes. Do you know her?”
“Slightly.” For the first time there was a drop in the enthusiasm level.
“Incidentally, this is the first time the light has been like this. You look magnificent in it.”
“Thank you. Has the psychologist been up here?”
“No.”
“She must be a very trusting soul then. I wouldn’t have believed that the outside could look like this.”
“We’ve been out too long. When you get below think of that dress.”
“Check.”
He lowered her down and closed the shutters. When the last slit of red light was squeezed out, the inside of the observatory looked dead. Through the manhole he could see her hair which seemed to carry with it a small reservoir of natural light, like an Olympic torch in a cave. Then they were in the elevator going down and they both felt in some definite but inexplicable way that a monitor had picked them up and was taking a special and particular interest.
At the exact moment when he sensed the beam’s infiltration, she put a hand on his arm. The touch was momentary but positive. His engineer’s mind had a sudden picture of her body as a lightweight honeycomb structure of immense strength. There was no need for the warning signal from wide golden eyes. She said, “That was most interesting, Mr. Kalmar. In all the time I’ve been in the section, I’ve never actually seen that part of our activities before. Would it be possible to change sky colors to something entirely new?”
He knew that she would decide to join the group. In some way which he did not stop to analyze, he knew also that it was very important to him that she should do that.
In the event, eight people crowded into the small therapy room for a penultimate briefing. Jane Welland was accompanied by two others, a very dark girl with large brown eyes and a pale, creamy skin and an athletic type, Latin-looking, and having the unusual feature of a short brown, spade-shaped beard.
As soon as the screen operated, Shultz, with more security consciousness than anyone else, said, “This is the way to end up in the Conservator. Who stops people doing their public duty and turning us all in?”
Gaul Kalmar said, “I’ll worry about that. This has to work on trust or it might as well not work at all. Jane Welland I vouch for.” He nodded to her to introduce the others. The girl, he knew by sight and remembered the name when Jane picked up the exposition with, “This is Cheryl Bentham, also of the E.S. section. She brings—” Here she was interrupted by the man himself.
“Peter Swarbrick. Education Service. Principally concerned with physical education and music. I’d count it a privilege to join this group. Either way”—he turned to Shultz—“you can depend on my silence.”
Gaul Kalmar said, “There is very little time. Some detail will have to be circulated in writing. Tania has a birthday in ten days. That is our zero. Relate any message to that as if it were concerned with a party. Assembly will be at her flat as if for that purpose.”
Shultz fulfilled the statistical requirement of the twenty out of every hundred who are against everything all the time. “That’s too far from the perimeter. I live nearer. Be my guest.”
Swarbrick said, “For that matter, I live right on the edge. The block supports the heat conservancy run. Invitations out in two days.”
“Show me.” Kalmar had a map of the Megara quarter.
“There. But how do we get out?”
“That’s an engineer’s problem. You’re well placed. One of the original airlocks is near you. Thank you, that will be better. Anything else?”
“What equipment do we take?”
“Finally, we build a settlement and live off the land. To get there we need a tent system. Once outside we follow the coast roughly west and then cross the sea perhaps to Sardinia. Then to the mainland. We need a minimum of 500 kilometers between us and the city.”
Shultz said, “I’d say more. The President will come in on this. He could re-activate the retaliation network. That brings in Strikecraft. Not used in living memory, but still effective.”
“We need time to make distance. Once on the other side, we would take some finding. Can you do anything about that system?”
“I’ll look at it. Another thing, Byrsa has some local power plant. There has to be, to keep the President ticking over. A failure from your department can be made up. It gets a dummy run every day.”
“Thank you very much. I had an idea for pulling the plug from the E.S. end.”
Tania Clermont said, “That would be murder.”
Swarbrick said, “Only theoretically. Nobody can die twice.”
“All the same, it puts a different slant on the project. The therapy section has no procedure for dealing with major deviation of that kind. It would mean the Conservator.”
Swarbrick turned a nice phrase, “I’m sure you would add a pleasing curve to the day’s power output.”
Gaul Kalmar said, “The President’s brain has been integrated with a computer. It is a computer extension. It has only cognitive areas left functioning. Conative and affective segments have been amputated. That’s the whole purpose. He analyzes any problem with complete detachment. I believe the detachment has gone so far that he is no longer human. The city has handed over its future to a direction which is no longer dynamic. A human personality regresses or advances, it does not stand still. I see the point that we bring in greater personal risk. But for my part, I would choose the Conservator rather than a reorientation course. Even in Tania’s direction.”
Shultz said, “There’s no doubt, the President should go. We do everyone a favor. It could be that we do him one too. Nobody knows how successful the surgery is. Any human thought left in that brain would be working on ways to turn the taps off.”
Tania said, “We’ve been here too long. Anything else, Gaul?”
“No, let it go. I’ll keep in touch as I want things done.”
The screen dissolved and the busy, probing, microwave that seeped into every corner of the city picked them up again.
Swarbrick’s apartment block backed into the wall of the dome. Blank, and thickened to act as a pediment for the immense
weight of the great semisphere, the wall rose for two hundred meters without a break. For seventy-five it carried out its subsidiary function as an integral part of the crescent-shaped building, then it was faced with a mirror surface for the rest of its height. It created a sensation of light and space and the illusion that the city had no boundary. One of the main pedestrian ways curved along the front of the block and separated it from a long narrow strip of ornamental garden. This corner of Megara preserved some relics of an ancient Moorish culture. Slender pillars, minaret-like towers, palms, unexpected courts with mosaic pavements and alabaster fountains.
But the main line of a functional roadway was still evident and its point of entry from outside could be inferred. Gaul Kalmar had collected the oldest working drawings from E.S archives and estimated that the locks they showed could be located, within inches, from a survey of the ground at this point.
Swarbrick set up an easel and sketched openly, working to a given scale and given points of reference. When it was done, it fitted over the detailed plan as if it were a layer of a peel-off, anatomical diagram. There was no doubt at all about where the exit lay. The only problem was how to open it quickly and without attracting attention.
Kalmar and Wayne visited him in his second-floor apartment.
Gaul said, “You have a nice place here. I like the view. How did you come to get on the list for a plumb choice of this kind.” While he was speaking he pushed across a written message which asked, “Who lives at the extreme end on this floor, backing on the wall?”
Swarbrick did a neat schizophrenic job of chatting on about the view and writing out. “Colleague Hitchen. Call now. He’s out for at least two hours.” Then he said aloud, “I’ll show you round.”
A central corridor curving away into the distance with built-in perspective trickery to give a vista had suites of rooms opening either side. They passed returning groups. It was largely reserved for staffs of I.T.E. and Further Study Schools. Most knew Swarbrick. At the end of the line, he made a ploy of pressing a signal stud to call the inmate. Then, as if they had been invited, they opened the door and went quickly inside.
Still talking, Wayne and Kalmar inspected the rear wall. A false veneer of imitation paneling faced the stark ferroconcrete. A built-in cupboard in a storeroom made an ideal point of exploration and Kalmar cut out a two-foot section with swift strokes of an M.P. blade. The matter pulverizer made no mess and could be said to feel its way through the structure of any material however dense. The inch-thick, light slab lifted away and revealed a six-inch space before the stone face.
Swarbrick mimed, “How thick?”
Kalmar chanced the out-of-context remark, “A meter to an air space, then room to move on.” He drew with his finger on the gray dust of the wall an elevation showing the first thickness, then a space, then the great thickness of the remainder of the wall. He arrowed in a path. It was clear that he meant they should move into the gap, then go left to meet one of the old airlocks and break into that. Then go out from there.
Swarbrick said, “Hitchen is out a great deal. I must ask him if I can work in here. Starting tomorrow. I could bring some materials and put them out of his way. The view is just what I want to finish my series of sketches of this quarter.”
Kalmar was slowly excavating a cube. Setting for a depth of just over a meter, he was moving the invisible beam of intense thermal activity over the rough surface of the wall. A thin line of calcined stone showed progress. In ten minutes the square was complete and ready to lift away.
Lee Wayne mimed that it would be better to push it inside. He went on to mime that insulation was good enough to absorb any noise.
Gaul Kalmar thought it out dispassionately for half a minute before he nodded and they began to push. Atomized cement made a graphite-like lubricant in the hair cracks and the block moved. When the free end began to drop, there was hard work to do. Then suddenly it came free and fell away. It had about ten meters to go and the fraction of time it took seemed long enough. Only a slight seismographic jar came back and a cushioned thud.
“Thick dust,” Wayne said, and added, “How long will your friend be?”
“A good hour yet.”
Gaul Kalmar was already crawling through. A thin pencil beam from a pocket torch cut through a heavy gray mist of swirling powder which was beginning to settle. To the right, there was a long, unbroken space, which only curved out of sight with the curvature of the building plan. To the left, and not fifteen meters distant was an occluding wall. They were exactly where they needed to be.
Staggered tie bars were just outside his limits of reach. A four-meter rope with a grapnel would make it a textbook descent. He sketched it for Swarbrick, who said, “I’ll go along and bring the easel now.”
Kalmar and Wayne closed the opening and had a dummy run on the chore of leaving the scene as if nothing had been touched. From the contents of the cupboard, it looked as though it was seldom used. Hitchen would have to get inside and beat on the panel to make an accidental discovery. They had moved into the lounge, when a melodic pinger began to sound in each room. The absent Hitchen must have been anxious not to miss any visitor. He had it piped to make its urgent summons in every possible corner.
It could not be Swarbrick, and whoever it was would stop his return if they stayed in the corridor. Kalmar counted out twenty seconds then the silence flowed back. Before the minute was up the door opened and Swarbrick came through.
“Who was wanting to come in?”
“Come in?”
“Just now. A long ring.”
“There was nobody about when I arrived.”
“Nobody just going away?”
“Nobody.”
They were in an end room. Only seconds would be needed for anyone to reach the ramp. But it was curious.
Gaul Kalmar pushed it to the back of his mind. They had about forty minutes. Within ten, he was swinging from the first tie bar and dropping down to where his trailing rope brushed the next in line. When he reached it, he signaled for Swarbrick to heave on a light, lifting rope to disengage the hook. Then he guided it down to meet the second holdfast. Two shifts completed the descent and he stood in six inches of fine gray powder.
Such was the cushioning effect of the dust that the concrete cube was unbroken. It lay foursquare behind him. Later it would serve to anchor a rope ladder. He went quickly towards the sealing wall and dust rose in a choking cloud. Moving more slowly, and lifting each foot with care, he found he could get away with an opaque, waist-deep, gray sea. It was like a stylized dream sequence.
At the wall he was below the level he believed necessary to cut into the lock and swung his hooked rope twice before it lodged on the nearest tie. Standing on it, he could lean forward and take his weight on one hand. Rough calculation suggested that an opening at this level would now be higher than he really wanted. But it was good enough. Depth of cut was not critical, but likely to be about a meter, so he worked with the same setting.
This time it was more difficult. It was a good fifteen minutes before he completed the cut. Then it was impossible to get enough purchase to force out the block. He began to cut back a kind of recessed lug which would take a rope. The block would have to be pulled out.
Swarbrick was saying in a conversational tone, “We ought to be going now,” and he knew time had run out.
Getting back, he realized how tired he was and lay in the narrow entrance hole, breathing hard. He was caked with dust and sweat.
Lee Wayne said, “Take a shower, Gaul.”
“Is there time?”
“Ten minutes.”
When he was ready to leave, the slab was back and every trace of entry cleared away.
They were almost turning into Swarbrick’s door, when he stopped a portly, middle-aged man coming from the central elevator system.
“Hitchen.”
“Our man in calisthenics”—the voice was plummy and self-regarding—“‘Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth�
�’”
“Meet two fugitives from E.S. Kalmar and Wayne.”
“Welcome to our Moorish paradise.”
Swarbrick said, “Hitchen here teaches History. Every other sentence is a good gag. I’ve been looking for you, Harry. I’d like to do some sketches from your window. I believe it would give me the angle I need to complete a set of pictures of this quarter.”
“Anytime, my boy. Help yourself.”
He went importantly on his way.
Inside, Wayne said, “Very neat. Now you’re set up with a base. When are you going to start?”
“Tomorrow afternoon. You can come along if you like. Bring that girl Wanda, if she’s free. She can put on a yashmak and carry a pitcher round the nearest fountain.”
Gaul Kalmar suddenly stood very still and gestured for silence. He signaled Swarbrick to back up and went silently to the archway which led through to the bedroom. When they were both standing backed to the wall on either side he said, “Now,” and they went through the arch side by side.
For a moment he thought that he had been wrong and the room was empty, then Shultz detached himself from the wall beside him and said, “Very well done. A credit to the force.”
Swarbrick said, “Every group has its funny man. We’ve drawn a beauty.”
Kalmar asked, “Have you been looking for us at the end apartment? Ringing the bell, for Instance?”
“No. Just a social call on friend Swarbrick here.” He flipped out a self-canceling memo pad and passed it over. Gaul Kalmar read, “A lot of activity in Byrsa. May be coincidence, but guards on emergency power unit have been doubled. This is a very unusual thing.”
Swarbrick spread out his sketches and under cover of looking at them Shultz was brought up to date. He said, “They’ll hang you in the City Gallery yet, Peter.” He wrote on one, “Obvious enough. Now we know, destroy them. They’re not slow in Byrsa. Another thing, keep this venue for breakout between the four of us. Women think too much. Records show that most leads on deviants come from women thinking about what they’ve been told. Just bring them along at the last minute.”
Eight Against Utopia Page 3