There was enough light now to be helpful and the chuck bit onto the first bolt head and fairly tore it out of the wall. It dropped free and Kalmar turned to the other one of the pair that held the bracket. The falling bolt alerted the guard and he looked up to see what was going on. Continuing its free flight in a way which would have warmed Newton’s heart, it finally expended its kinetic energy by tearing itself a hole in the roof of the stationary cage. Seconds later it was followed by its fellow and there was a pause in the upward rush as the implication of it all began to dawn.
Kalmar went up the section gingerly. Two bolts were enough to take the weight, but not to prevent a lateral sway, which was unpleasant. He whipped out another bolt and then transferred his weight to the trellis. The guard was near enough to see what would happen next, and had self-preservation well to the fore. He wrapped himself round the pole and hung on.
The long section dug in at the foot and cannoned across the shaft; then sliding and stopping and falling free it made its way down to pierce the roof of the cage on that side. Kalmar had already crossed into the other half and was working on the top section there. This time he had time on his side.
Down below, Bourne could be excused for thinking it was not his day. No Newton, he could live without the demonstration. Standing well back and imitating a wallpaper, he avoided four penetrating meteorites. The pole was the last straw. An unseen participant in these stirring times, he quietly went into a dead faint as the five-meter spear neatly transfixed his cage.
Receiving the news from a section leader on the spot, Gruber believed it to be only a postponement. He went through a routine of screaming at the man for incompetence; but hardly believed that the delay mattered much. He expected in any case that power would soon be available for the elevator itself. In the meantime, someone could climb up with ropes and a grapnel. Any psephologist could have told him, without taking a poll, that he was in a minority of one in thinking it a good idea.
Having no further use for it, Gaul Kalmar dropped the power spanner down the hole, on his way back from the far shaft. It was switched on full and its motor worked itself into a protesting howl. To the men on the ladders there seemed a casual malice about it, which was no encouragement to zeal. When it carved its way through the battered roof of the cage and began a jig round the floor on its spinning chuck, it completed the disenchantment of the sitting tenant. He had just re-entered the world of sense and wished devoutly that he had not. A life of cynicism had not prepared him to meet the satanic mills of a medieval hell.
Up aloft, Gaul was driving his team to a last effort. There was not much time left before the repair to the power circuits would be completed. He was surprised that it had not been done already. There must have been some far-reaching dislocation which he had not expected.
Once power was available, the antihostility screen could be reactivated round the city. That would fence them in more certainly than all the civil guards in Byrsa. Jane Welland was sorting out ropes and tackle. Goda Hurst was bringing bundles of the one-piece overalls from the rack. Kalmar was through into the observatory working on the opening cowl with a crowbar.
The long haul of the climb had kept them warm; now they noticed a drop in temperature. Heat and light came from the dome. It was now cooling off. So much so, that when he broke the shutter and a low-lying sun shone into the small chamber it felt pleasantly warm.
He dropped back onto the landing and found neat piles of the fine unbreakable rope lying ready. The two girls came out into the light carrying more tools and gear selected by touch.
Goda Hurst, in the light of day, was not quite as tall as Jane. She had dark brown straight hair in a neat simple style, gray eyes, and a small straight nose and full lips, open at the moment with the effort she was making as a load carrier. The rest of her, which he felt he could imagine without difficulty, was now in the gray anonymity of a baggy zipper suit.
She said, “Thank you for getting me so far. I hope I’m not going to be a passenger in this enterprise.”
“That’s not likely. There’s a whole new world to build, no less.”
“Oh, good.”
He looked at her but couldn’t tell whether it was meant as simple acceptance or a deflationary jab. She would get on well with Shultz if they ever caught up with the main party.
Now that there was some light, he rummaged in the storeroom and found M.P. tools and spare power cells. They bundled extra suits together into packs, then passed all the gear through into the observatory. Out at the open port, he ran a long loop of line over the gentle curve of the outer surface. The crunch would come when the curve sharpened to the sheer drop of the vertical perimeter wall.
They were crowded together in the small capsule and he had some difficulty in replacing the ceiling plate. But it was done. They had left rope trailing into the inner dome, so the guards would explore that possibility first.
This time he led the way with Goda in the middle once more. Once outside, she had gone completely silent. The real sky was different in quality and kind from what anyone could expect. There was a pitiless, inhuman vastness about the set-up. It was a full-scale model of infinity. But she knew that she would not go back, even with a free pardon and no rehabilitation course.
At the end of the line, Gaul estimated the position of a transverse rib and cut out a circle of the metallic dome. Then he freed the rope, relooped it, and they started off again. With the help of the hand line, it was still possible to walk upright. At the fifth stop, his porthole was flooded with light. It just went to prove that no one was indispensable; the E.S. staff had delivered the baby without himself or Wayne or Bourne to hold their hands.
Busy with the line, he did not think immediately of the full implication, but at the next seal hole, it brought him to a stop. There was no rush. They were only hurrying along to meet the antihostility screen.
Jane Welland, very observant where he was concerned, said, “What is it, Gaul?”
“Just a thought. With the power back, they’ll reactivate the screen.”
“Perhaps not. There’ll be a lot of demand all at once and they might want to move out themselves.”
“True. There’s a fifty-fifty chance.”
Goda Hurst said, “What’s all that?”
It was explained to her and she was silent.
Two further rope lengths brought them to a steepening of the curve. This time Kalmar had to bring in a second rope and the transfer of Goda was ticklish. He made it a single line with a permanent fastening. They could just about afford it. The rope was fed through the belt of her suit and in a complicated friction run round her shoulders. There was every chance she would hang, and at the end of the pitch he reverted to the simpler plan of carrying her.
The last twenty meters was a vertical drop, with a smooth gray-tiled face, onto a strip of blue-black basalt paving. There was a six-foot drop from the end of the rope. He talked Goda into looking down and finally into letting go. She was white-faced and exhausted and simply crawled out of the way and lay down with her head on her arms.
Jane Welland dropped down, too tired to have much resilience, and she would have landed heavily if he had not judged the speed and caught her round the waist to use his arms like an absorbing spring. She automatically held on to him to steady herself and they stood looking at each other. She was obviously very tired and her hair was a tangled tawny mane. Golden brown eyes meeting his squarely, almost speaking, “What next, then?”
His hands left her waist and followed the lines of her figure. Then their lips were making the first definitive statement of the relationship which had grown between them. He turned her slowly without breaking adhesion, so that they could both lean against the gray wall and feel the sun striking them in profile. Following a distinguished precedent, his right hand was holding her head under the thick silk mop of hair and his left hand was caressing her.
Over her shoulder he saw Goda climb wearily to her feet. She stood with her back to the wall fo
r a moment and then began a deliberate walk out away from the city.
Gaul called sharply, “Goda, wait. There may be a screen on.”
At ten meters she said, “That’s all right. I’m paying my passage. Wish me luck.”
Before he could stop her, she had quickened her pace to a heroic jogtrot.
Six
Tania Clermont opened her eyes to the restricted field of vision offered by the underside of a seat and found the center ring with radial tension spring members a difficult thing to identify. She had just room enough to turn over. Using her elbows she began to move out.
Shultz watched her progress with a dispassionate eye and allowed her to wriggle out into the light of day, before he said, “And here’s a beautiful rat come out of its hole.”
She said, “What do you mean?”
It could have been simple confusion from the rigors of the day, or perhaps she still did not know how much he knew. Either way, he made it plain. “The jig is up, mind-bender. I wondered from the first how it could be that you were in on this. They’re pretty thorough with their checks in Byrsa. They wouldn’t let anyone have control of a screened therapy room unless they were very sure of the security angle. But you gave it away in Hitchen’s room. You’re wide open.”
She neither accepted nor denied, but the question was relevant either way: “If you thought that, why did you bring me along?”
“Therapy. I’m an idealist. I couldn’t believe that anyone so esthetically pleasing could be all bad.”
“Where’s Gaul Kalmar?”
“You’ve probably done for him. He didn’t get out. I expect Gruber is chatting him up in the interrogation set they have.”
“Did you bring my sling bag along?”
Shultz fished it off an overhead rack and pitched it towards her. As she caught it, he said, “Don’t look for that bijou P7, I have it.”
She took out assorted cosmetics and began a morale-building exercise. He said, “It was noted that the lady’s severed head had a flawless, peach-blossom complexion.”
She asked, “Where are we?”
It was a good question. There was nothing to be seen from the ports of the tender. Every horizon was a gradual blend of wine-dark sea and evening sky. From their bushel of a city they had moved onto a featureless limbo. It was a contrast of extremes; only the general curved shape of space over them had any common ground with the experience of their lives up to this point.
Neither Wanda nor Cheryl Bentham seemed inclined to reopen basic communication with the girl. Lee Wayne from the driver’s seat spared a word for auld lang syne.
“There was no telling when the antihostility screen would be reactivated or how far it reached. The final plan was to cross on a bearing West, North West. That’s a long diagonal. Land somewhere in southern Spain.”
“Gaul knows this?”
“After what you’ve done, I don’t see why you keep asking about Gaul. In fact I think Frank was out of his tiny mind bringing you at all.”
“You won’t get far, you know. There are Strikecraft standing by in Byrsa. They’ll pick up the trail.” There was enough certainty in her voice to alert Shultz. He said, “So you knew about the Strikecraft. A very well-informed little creeper.” As he was speaking, he was analyzing what she had said. She could not know what equipment such craft carried. Kalmar or Wayne or even Cheryl Bentham might have that kind of technical knowledge. What else was she thinking about? She had said it after she had got her bag back. He leaned across and took it.
She said, “Do you want to do your face?”
The flat-handed smack she received left the white marks of fingers on her right cheek. The noise of it brought every head round to look at her.
Shultz said equably, “Don’t take that tone with me. Get wise to your perilous situation. This is no longer a game.” Then he ignored her, and turned his attention to the contents of the bag. He had shoveled them back inside on the earlier occasion of finding the P7. Now he looked at each item in turn. There was something rather private, and in a way touching, about the miscellany. An unguarded extension of the persona.
It was an untidy jumble. The trim, fastidious Tania might have been expected to have a purely utilitarian tool kit. But it was a mess. An interesting study for a psychologist. Perhaps she had not thought of turning the probing eye onto herself. The litter included a selection of the tiny counterfoils which restaurants issued as duplicates of the filed record. Price tags from all kinds of purchases. Five small electron charms, with broken loops, from a charm bracelet. Fluff. Scissors in a leather case. Shultz said, “Item: One leather scissors case. Question: What use does the girl find for leather scissors?”
A mild pleasantry which did nothing to have her rolling in the aisle. She showed more interest when he went on, “Item: one black, metal-like box; use not known. What use then would you say for this black box?” There was no reply and she was looking so indifferent that he dropped it back into the depths as though it had no importance. Relief was harder to hide than concern and the faint flicker of it was enough. He said, “All right, Tania. There isn’t a spare seat. Have a bed. Just relax and think yourself into the right state of mind for founding a colony. I want to talk to Aeneas Wayne.”
The tender’s two bench seats were full. Tania had been parked with her head under the rear one, stretching back into the loading bay with its double bunks. In front, Lee Wayne and Wanda Mardin sat at the control console, with a panoramic view of sea and sky. Swarbrick and Cheryl Bentham, in the second row, were angled slightly to face ports on either side.
Frank Shultz edged his way along the narrow companion until he could talk to Wayne. He said, “Let me get in there, Wanda. You go and chat up your old friend for a minute.”
Wanda squeezed pneumatically past him and he followed her progress with an admiring eye. He said aloud, “And I go and get myself interested in a skinny, treacherous type.”
The object of this passionate avowal looked down the length of the car with the most animated expression yet noted on her perfect oval face. Anyone, without even a minimum training in the meaning of symbolic mime, could read there a combination of loathing and murderous intent. The tender’s power pack was virtually silent, but traveling over water created enough general turbulence to put in a background noise. Even the two nearest potential eavesdroppers did not hear the quiet question and answer.
Shultz had left the sling bag casually in a rack on his way forward. But, by a sleight of hand which merited a wider public, he had brought out the black box. Something between seven and eight centimeters square to a thickness of two and a half; it was not unlike one of Wayne’s gadgets. His eyes warned against any great notice that might be taken. He said, “Do you have anything near enough like this?”
“Do you want it now?”
“Now it is. I believe it’s important.”
Wayne pushed over a stubby lever to AUTO PILOT, and began to rummage under the seat. He pulled out a soft-sided plastic grip and handed it over. Shultz put it between them on the seat and opened it up. Except for the fluff, it held as confused a collection as the sling bag, but there were small containers, with snap lids, holding smaller items, which looked about right. He matched one up to within five millimeters of width and tipped its contents, small self-tapping screws, into the bag. Then he tested for comparative weights and filled it with wedged tidbits until the two were indistinguishable.
When it was done, he took the new box and left Tania’s in the grip. Then he made his way back. Passing the bag, he pulled it from the rack and when he reached her again said, “Here you are then. I thought you wanted this.”
She took it without comment and began to repair the ravages of time. A certain aura of satisfaction confirmed his opinion about the box and suggested that the change had not been recognized.
Frank Shultz had not finished being the only moving passenger. Back with Wayne, he said, “I want a watertight container.”
“Help yourself.” Lee Wayne
had poked his nose in every corner of the tender and knew as much about its facilities as one of its original pilots. He stubbed a spring catch in the bulkhead over the windscreen and slid back a shutter. A row of large, twist-top, sample jars in some translucent plastic filled the shelf.
“What were these for?”
“God knows. Will one of them do?”
“Just the job.”
Shultz recovered the black box and picked out a lemon-colored jar. The box slipped easily inside and he screwed down the top. Then he looked back at Tania; she was staring out of a rear port, making no special effort to be reconciliatory. He wound down a side port and dropped the liter bottle through.
It disappeared in the tumbling cascade of broken water. No doubt it would survive and drift back the way they had come. If the current system of the old maps still gave a valid picture, it should drift with its burden to the Nile delta. Nothing, however, is ever perfect for long. A metallic ping from the depths of the coach work sounded the death rattle of the winding gear and the port remained jammed open.
When the jar was well clear, he said to Lee Wayne, “That’s a good thing done. Don’t mention it to Tania, but that was her last line of communication. Special agents have them, but I wasn’t sure of the form it would take. The monitor group could beam on to that and pick us up loud and clear. Directional too. Now they’ll follow it up the creek.”
“And she thinks she’s still got it? You’re a very sneaky bastard.” It was admiringly said, and Shultz accepted the compliment with, “An enterprise like this rates at least one.”
In the next thirty minutes they made ninety kilometers on the trip distance recorder and then the tender’s silent motors made a dramatic addition to their repertoire. After a brief tear-away howl, which rose over the noise level of the water splash, they stopped altogether and the shuttle planed down to surface level and tried to bury its nose in the Mediterranean.
Eight Against Utopia Page 9