Eight Against Utopia

by Douglas R. Mason

  Wayne said, “That’s all right. You can have them. Can I help you?”

  “Not on this. You have to get your new toy in working order. Then we must take Swarbrick up on that invitation.”

  He wrote, “Meet 1600 at Swarbrick’s. Get Wanda along. Don’t tell her that it is THE DAY.”

  Wayne was working casually with his destructive sprays. After filling their glass-lined magazines, he completed the settings and chipped back the lids. Then he put them flat against the nearest wall, one in either hand, and took his hands away. They stayed put, like flat, black patches.

  “They stick to anything.” He looked more pleased about that than the other aspects of the work. “It’s part suction and part a straight-forward adhesive.”

  Shultz was the specialist for the foray into Byrsa. Gaul Kalmar had been in many times on routine inspection of E.S. section equipment, but the real life of Byrsa was not lived on the surface. The imposing public buildings, like the Council Hall and the Presidential Lodge took up a central position on the ground, but they were façade for the corridors of real power which lay away on the perimeter in a site topographically parallel to the Alhambra in Megara.

  Here the civil guard had their barracks. Once integrated into the guard, a citizen left the civilian quarters and made a permanent residence there. Families, too, joined the happy warrior, though a larger proportion of men in this service than the city average elected to remain single. It was generally understood that this was not so much in praise of celibacy as in opportunity for variety.

  There was no doubt in Gaul Kalmar’s mind that the Strikecraft would be tenders like their own discovery. Possibly armed in some way. Possibly the lock on this side had more bays and was altogether a more elaborate thing. After all it faced south and the greater threat would be from that direction when the whole of the known north had been evacuated. Fixing local and incoming power to Byrsa would cause enough dislocation to keep everyone occupied while they made an exit from their sally port. But if the Strikecraft were fueled, they would be out of their traps as soon as the balloon went up.

  It was just after 1800 hours on the time disk in the central square when Shultz and Kalmar moved against the gently twittering stream of walkers which was flowing from Byrsa and Esmun into Celesta and Megara. At this time there was largely one-way traffic and the circulation computers had reversed all but one of the ingoing walkways to accommodate the trend.

  They progressed by stages, some distance apart. Loitering now and then in reduction bays, they went forward like corks washing ashore against a withdrawing tide. Clerical workers, day staffs of all kinds were draining out. The monitoring officials would only check on some outstanding deviation; anything marginal would be difficult to trace.

  As the crowd thinned, they met in a small two-lane byway which took a direct path to the inner wheel of the quarter.

  Kalmar quoted to himself:

  There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying:

  “Stetson! You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!…”

  Shultz said, “I was coming to your flat later. Come and see how the other half live. I have to look on the detail board to see if there’s anything for me.”

  “Will it take long?”

  “Ten minutes at most.”

  Shultz led through a maze of small, connecting passages formed by the curious higgledy-piggledy layout of the buildings of the quarter. Where others had been progressively replanned and rebuilt, as a whole, for their particular purpose, the admin centers had been less able to reform themselves. The corridors of power had a Minos complex. Gaul Kalmar began to feel more optimistic. This was an aspect he had not considered. The Establishment was not as all powerful as its public image suggested.

  At a right-hand turn they came suddenly onto a guard moving in their direction. He nodded briefly to Shultz and they went on. At the next corner Kalmar looked back. The man had stopped and was looking after them. His blue-violet tunic had the shoulder rank flashes of a section leader. Narrow trousers tapered into calf-high, black, shiny boots. Flat cap had the exaggerated triangular peak of the enthusiast who spent time getting his equipment right. Metal badges on hat and breast pocket, two interlocked circles, symbolized security, or the manacles of restraint, according to point of view.

  “Who’s your friend?”

  “Orman, Wendle Orman. ‘Wen’ it is.” They were round the corner and the thumbs-down gesture was a definitive character sketch.

  The short stretch ahead ended as a T junction to a wider main thoroughfare, big enough to qualify for a narrow, two-track walkway. Shultz moved right into a public elevator cage and they went up thirty meters onto a top static way. This took them over a section of the Presidential Lodge gardens. A reproduction of some ancient style, flowing water, a bridge, a miniature-landscape effect. It was now only visited by botany students and its reproduction of many recorded zonal conditions made it a kind of field extension of the Medical Section in Esmun.

  Two minutes later they were facing the high wall of the heat conservancy rim and the long shallow crescent of the guard barracks.

  Even here, there were few of the civil guard in evidence. They played down their role in the city and managed to be omnipresent without being obtrusive. Kalmar noted the similarity of the buildings to the Alhambra. Stripping the Moorish trappings from the latter would make them identical. That suggested that the locks were in the same place.

  They dropped down to ground level and stopped before a continuous presentation board which currently held details of the deployment of personnel over the next forty-eight hours. F. Shultz was down for a four-hour stint at the end of the period; a patrol in Celesta. That was all right; it would be easy to get over to the assembly point in Megara. Though, to some extent, he would be a dangerous contact. Monitoring of patrols was detailed and continuous; it would be like introducing a radioactive trace into the patient’s gut and watching its progress in the labyrinth—an analogy which could not be pushed too far perhaps.

  The white-walled, clinically clean corridor was empty. Shultz pointed left and down to indicate where he believed the subsidiary generator lay. Kalmar nodded and they walked that way. One thing was now in their favor: monitoring in the police barracks itself was at a minimum. Only some unusual surge of mental activity would ring up a warning signal.

  Gaul Kalmar had relegated mental control to the overriding purpose they had. This he had sunk to subconscious level. On the surface he was treating their trip like a simple sight-seeing tour. As in the Alhambra, the corridor they were in went on to meet a side entrance to the building at ground level. An elevator system lay just inside the small foyer. Beside it, a slender shaft carried a spiral staircase up and down.

  Byrsa controlled entry to the underground workshop and agriculture levels. Police H.Q. would have direct access. Emergency power plant would be at the deepest level. Kalmar stopped naturally at the end elevator of a block of four and read the legend. It was request operated, so he spoke into the microphone grille, “Level C.”

  A cage took three seconds to reach them and open its welcoming door. Incongruously, in the Spartan surroundings it held a very feminine attendant. There was just enough blue-violet material, strategically deployed, to identify her as a vital force in the police department. The locking ring motif was purely decorative. She said, “Going down,” and made it sound like a descent into the underworld.

  Shultz she had seen in the department before, otherwise they would never have been taken to the C level. The first snag came when the outer door slid back and she asked, “What shall I say?”

  The record obviously had to show who had been checked in. It was a classified site.

  Gaul Kalmar said, “Senior Engineer, biennial equipment check,” and flipped out his authorization tag. It took him into most places and the chances were that the girl would not know whether there was a periodic inspection or not.

  She dutifully repeated the spiel into a small handset and then gave its
scanning eye the pleasure of looking at all the faces present. They felt it was the first irreversible move they had made. A photographic Rubicon. Then she went on “Timed at 1820 hours, first check for cancellation at 1900.”

  Thereafter there would be two further checks and if no cancellation occurred, the balloon would go up.

  Neither had any experience of the C level at this end. Kalmar had occasionally visited the sectors below Esmun and supposed that a standard plan would be followed. In that event the area would be a series of barrel-vaulted tunnels fanning out from the arrival bay like wheel spokes. The low levels were relatively primitive and structural ribbing was not concealed as elsewhere. They were among the most ancient remains of the city’s early history.

  The elevator decanted them onto a circular pad on a thirty-meter diameter, with the elevator shaft in the center like a stocky column. Shining polished steel walls were numbered one to eight showing sites for invisible sliding doors which concealed the tunnel entrances. Finding the right one would take time, but the search would never need to be made.

  Facing the traveler, a horseshoe-shaped control desk had seats for five operators. No doubt this would be the nerve center for power requirements in an emergency. Three seats were empty. But the center one and the one on its left had occupants, who watched them cross the intervening space with the dead-pan, unenthusiastic look of the secret police of every age.

  Gaul Kalmar had a sudden rush of intuitive knowledge. He knew without doubt that the extra power intake had been used for fuel storage and that the auxiliary power system had been given special attention. He put the two together and staked both their lives on a direct throw. “Kalmar, Environment Stabilization. There’s a suggestion that your power storage requirements for Strikecraft installations can be met directly from your own auxiliary plant. I’m here to look into it. Power from the primary grid is getting into the red.”

  He said it, without any trace of hesitation, in a manner which expected the answer “Yes,” Coupled with the presence of Shultz, who looked as though he had been simply detailed to bring the man down and look after him, it carried the day. The man in the center, a thin-faced, graying type with a short trimmed, pepper-and-salt moustache, simply nodded curtly and his fellow pole-squatter, without any change of expression on a large, sallow, moon-shaped face, began to make organ-playing movements on the concealed inner surface of the console.

  Number five glowed deep orange and the screening wall wheeled itself aside. A long vista opened up of humped generators in an extended line. No wonder they had not used this setup for a direct power takeoff. It was Stone Age stuff. How long for Pete’s sake had this old ironmongery been operative?

  Kalmar walked straight ahead and the picture clarified as he registered more of the installation. There was, there had to be, a converter to make use of this old-fashioned power source in the form which could be accepted by the refined machinery of the present age. That was the obvious target. Knock that out and the generators would produce something which was quite useless.

  The younger man, a squat powerful figure with massive shoulder development, had followed them through. Although a policeman, he would have been trained in engineering to do this control job. Kalmar said, “This is the main concern. I’d like your help to get the cowl off this one. It should be quite simple to arrange a feed onto the charging duct.”

  The man’s voice grated as though he didn’t use it much, “If it was simple, we would have done it before now. Here”—to Shultz—”take out this line of clips.”

  A standard layout, under the cowl, caused Kalmar no bother in identification. The man was right. This could be fed onto the local grid to give light and heat, but certain problems would arise, if it was channeled to the other use. He said pacifically, “You’re quite right.” The man was not making much effort to conceal a kind of malicious triumph. It made him almost genial.

  Shultz was balancing the six-foot-square plate by its two lifting handles. He turned casually to say, “That’s fine, now we can all go home. I’m due off duty.” At the same time he let go and the square fell away from him. Air pressure cushioned the fall and there was no dramatic clatter, but the explosive “plop” was enough to make their new friend snap out, “You crazy, ham-handed nut. Pick it up.”

  Kalmar had sized up the pattern of the converter and knew exactly where disintegration would do most good. When the man turned back to him, he was leaning with both hands on the outer casing and the hollow black tile had melded into the scenery in natural camouflage. He said, “I think I should look at the receiving end. But this is something we may not be able to help with.”

  Together they clipped back the screen and returned to the Hall of a Thousand mirrors. Their guard approached the resident and said something which they did not hear. No doubt he was sharing his dark happiness, because the older man’s tone had a sneering civility when he said, “So, even the expert finds himself baffled.”

  From a psychological point of view, Kalmar was on the right tack. If he had played along with an idea that he knew the answer there would have been opposition to the next stage. Feeling a glow of superiority, the senior guard allowed absolute security to lapse and simply played the tune which opened number seven.

  They were at a depth which was below that of the exit locks. Number seven was a short tunnel which led back and ended at the city’s outer wall. It contained very little. A spiral staircase took up some space on the left; a long black rectangular slab, two meters wide by a meter high, ran down the center; an elaborate panel of assorted switchgear filled most of the vertical part of the right-hand side.

  Kalmar recognized it as an extended version of the control board in the ambulance bay. At close quarters the slab showed itself to be made up of many hundreds of individual slices, close packed, seemingly detachable. A disintegrator would do well among that lot. But the other one was for the main feed from Esmun. Both guards had accompanied them this time, so there was nothing to be done in that direction.

  No doubt this was a primitive kind of energy storage setup. The long panel was broken down into nine sections. Eight appeared to carry identical instrumentation. Heavy cables fanned out and disappeared above. Eight Strikecraft then and the first board for general purposes.

  He walked straight to this first board and found it to be so. On this one there was also the legend, President, apparently added sometime after the original mounting of the gear, because it had been cramped in between other controls.

  It was all very interesting, but it was definitely time they got themselves out. Any busy-minded duty man on top might make a spot check at any time and find unauthorized visitors on the elevator record.

  He said, “Now I see you would need complete refitting to use the generator capacity on this. It’s a storage system out of the ark. You’ve done very well to adapt the normal grid to it. I’ll put that in the report.”

  The older man said, “I’m surprised you should have been bothered. We know that. We’ll ask for a refit soon enough if it’s necessary.”

  “Well, you know, we can’t go on supplying the power you’ve had this week. Not indefinitely.”

  “That’s all right. We’re very nearly finished. Another three days and it won’t be necessary.”

  Back at the desk Kalmar signed the white oblong, presented to him by a checking computer. It was like signing his own death warrant. Now he had to get out, and before the accounting of such tally slips showed up his visit. It was just a question of which day the department used for its bookkeeping check.

  Multiple reflections of the central horseshoe had an encircling effect which seemed to give the two guards a disproportionate advantage. Looking out at them through the narrowing observation window, as the elevator went up, they appeared to be deciding some matter. The last, vanishing glimpse showed fatso in the act of speaking into a closed-circuit video. He might well have decided to do some checking. At this time no senior official would be available to confirm or deny a po
ssible arrangement with the E.S. staff. But there was always tomorrow. It could be that the two-day time lag was stretching it a bit far.

  Shultz could say that he had been approached by the visitor and had acted in good faith in conducting him to the place he had asked for. It would stand up, unless they put him on the couch for a start. Then there was Wendle Orman. He had seen them arrive together. It was getting dicey. A lot would depend on luck, which was no way to start an enterprise of great pith and moment.

  For himself, it looked almost certain that there would be another visit from Gruber. This time it would be a matter of keeping himself out of actual restrictive custody for the next forty-eight hours.

  Only a trickle of returning citizens still used the walkways. They went back on a long detour via Celesta and separated in the underground. Gaul Kalmar was finding it easy to keep his mind off the project because he found that whenever it was off load it reproduced pictures of Jane Welland’s auburn hair and thrown-back head as she looked up to the circular trap of the observatory floor. It was a preoccupation new to him and vaguely pleasant. He made no deeper analysis of it than that.

  When he passed her next morning on his way through, she seemed so familiar to him that he could not remember a time when she had not been in his mind. It was like coming across an externalized part of himself.

  She said, “You have a visitor again. The same one.” Her eyes said, “Be careful. Please, be careful.”

  He stopped by her station and wrote casually on the erasing memo pad, “Place this where it will wreck this console. Timed disintegrating spray. Depart 1600 tomorrow. Meet Swarbrick’s. Alhambra.” She read it as he wrote and, as he finished the last word, she erased the whole message. The thin black tile remained on the desktop as he went on into his own office.

  Controller Gruber said, “I didn’t think, when I was here before, Mr. Kalmar, that there was any misunderstanding between us. What has decided you that you have to know more about internal matters under police jurisdiction?”