Eight Against Utopia

by Douglas R. Mason

  He said, “Down it is. Go first, Pete. Then you, Frank. You and Lee take Goda between you. Move now. Lie down flat until it’s your turn to go.”

  Swarbrick dropped and guided Goda’s feet into rudimentary holds. He began to talk her down like a hypnotist. She was just able to say with some heat, “I know, even the longest and most difficult road has a turning, and round the corner you find an even longer and more difficult road.”

  She was, in fact, becoming hardened to terror and managed without any great crisis to get under the overhang. Last down, Gaul Kalmar took a brief look at the ridge. Still no one had appeared over it. Now they were out of sight, there would have to be a time-consuming search around to find their line of movement. When he reached his group they were still going down, but out of sight from the top with only a few meters to go before the V closed too narrowly for any further descent.

  Now it was possible to lean back against the opposite side and reach an easy stability without strain. Kalmar dropped into line next to Jane Welland. She said, “It was never like this at home.” Unspoken was the question, “What next then?” She was coming to the end of purely physical resources and indeed could see nothing particularly encouraging in the set-up to feed even optimism.

  Gaul Kalmar was feeling bitterly critical of his own performance in the command role. He had taken this party from security of a kind to a cul-de-sac, a rat hole, by what now seemed a direct route. He was glad that she had not framed the key question, but he tried to answer it. “We wait. At nightfall we move. There is the chance that we can find better shelter or take over one of their craft. But we can’t afford losses, so we have to take it slowly.”

  Parked between Shultz and Swarbrick, Goda was trying to relax limbs that were in a dither of muscular dystrophy. Frank Shultz had gone into a morose, introspective silence. Swarbrick edged away to carry a little speleological chat to Cheryl. So no one was actually watching her when she disappeared.

  Turning to speak to Swarbrick, Shultz found blank rock where her head had been. Even in his preoccupation with Tania, he had not failed to notice that Goda was more decorative than any rock. He called quietly but insistently, “Gaul, Goda’s gone round the bend.”

  They could see the scratch marks where she had braced across the narrow chimney. Two meters below, the cleft at that point bent away, still following a steep gradient. It was impossible to see how far it went on, or what width there was. If it followed the narrowing angle for the rest, she would be wedged somewhere not too far round.

  Frank Shultz was already dumping his gear. He said, “Don’t worry about me, Gaul. There’s no sense in losing more personnel on this. I’ll get her if I can. If I don’t come up, leave it at that.” Then he was squirming down through the gap which had taken the neurotic mountaineer.

  Before he went from view Lee Wayne got to him and handed down a small torch. “Take this. So that you bring back the right girl.” Then he was gone.

  When she felt herself moving, Goda had been too surprised to say anything. Then she had passively accepted it like an ineluctable fate. She was, anyway, tired of the vertical ballet which seemed to have been going on forever. If this was the world outside, it was just good sense on the part of the city fathers to withdraw under a dome. Instinctively she put her hands over her face and slid, without much discomfort, from daylight into gathering gloom and then like Eurydice into the underworld itself.

  When she finally came to a stop, her feet were on nothing at all. Small stones rolling past her, seemed to fall away into an echoing pit. An edge was under her knees. For Goda it was the ultimate moment of truth; entombed in a complete, thick, pressing darkness on the edge of a drop, believing that any move would send her over it. The blackness developed great beating wings and she lost consciousness.

  It was a pity in its way. Because she missed the arrival of Shultz’s firefly light and the knowledge of being gathered in from the abyss. She might perhaps have wondered whether the day would ever dawn when she would be carried about for a more social reason than basic survival; but in fact, when the Light separated from the moving darkness, she was well back from the edge and Shultz was leaning over it and waving his small torch about to see all.

  All, in this case, was unmistakably a culvert. Goda’s heels had been within centimeters of the top of it. Straight-sided, with a flat arched roof, it ran into the distance either way, parallel to the cleft. It almost looked as though its presence had caused the rock to fault in that way at that place. He kicked down at it experimentally. It sounded hollow.

  Getting back was more of a chore. He left Goda where she was, reflecting that she could only come to psychological harm. To minimize even that, he left the torch within arm’s reach and saw her eyes open, enormous and glittering in its light. He said, “That was well done, Goda. Don’t go dashing about. Just wait here, I’ll be back.”

  It was not up to Orpheus level, but it was music to her ears and she was as grateful for it as ever her prototype, and, more sensibly, made no attempt to follow him.

  In the event, she had not long to wait. She looked at the light and the roof which was about half a meter from her head and wondered whether this was reality or a very consistent nightmare.

  Until the moment on the walkway, life had followed a conventional, secure path and she had learned to live with mental surveillance. As of the decision to join the party, she had been more in a state of anxiety than not; but she now realized that she was more aware of being alive than at any other time. Without wishing Tania’s death on anyone, she could not avoid the thought that it was an ill wind that blew no good at all. For the first time she felt fully integrated with the group. It might take time, but she would now have a clear objective in taking Frank Shultz’s mind off the immediate past.

  At this point her subterranean reverie was cut off by Wanda’s spirited arrival and she suffered the last of her crises de nerfs. Wanda went past and over the edge, to be brought up short by the roof of the culvert. Shultz had not mentioned it. Goda twisted herself sideways and grabbed desperately at Wanda’s passing hair.

  It took some little time to convince the newcomer that she was not in the hands of a maniac. They were still preoccupied by communication, when the rest began to pile up behind them.

  Gaul Kalmar, last down, crawled forward and dropped onto the concrete roof. He said, “We can break into this. God knows what’s inside it, though. But it must go somewhere. Get your thermal lance on it, Lee.”

  Lee Wayne cut a meticulously circular hatch. When he lifted it clear and shone a light down, there was a three-meter drop to a dry gray floor; the air coming up was faintly redolent of geraniums. Poking his head inside, he could see that a continuous, flanged, metallic beam ran along the center of the ceiling arch.

  A gust of sudden heat down the funnel turned their heads to look the way they had come, in time to catch the tail end of a dying glow. Gaul said, “They know which one we went down. Spraying around along the overhang. Time to move on.”

  Jane asked, “Which way?”

  Leadership had its difficulties. He said, “Right,” in a way which seemed to suggest that he had built the thing himself.

  Progress along the culvert was straightforward but slow. Any sudden movement brought up the ankle-deep, fine talc dust in clouds which filled the tube and turned the light into a small white glow of refraction. There was an uncomfortable feeling that at any moment a thermal hose might pump a charge along in an exploratory kind of way.

  Gaul Kalmar, walking ahead with Jane, had come to the conclusion that they were in a communications tunnel. It seemed unsuited for use as a conduit. The continuous monorail overhead also suggested something, which was at the back of his mind, but refused to gel into any positive idea. Clarification came when a gradual curve in the tunnel brought them to a bullet-shaped projectile, which hung from the roof. That was it, of course. He remembered that the teaching tapes on mechanical engineering had featured a primitive, linear motor, which pulled itself
along a conductor.

  Sagging, overhead gear showed that no quick rehabilitation of this particular museum piece could be attempted. They squeezed past, glad to have a plug in the pipe behind them. A hundred meters farther on a blank wall ran across.

  At waist height, Wayne cut a hatch. As the last centimeter went through, the square of concrete sagged away and fell inside. Dust clouded up and remained in a milky suspension. But below it was subdued light which was not from the torches.

  When the mist cleared, it was evident that the culvert ran out on a high open gantry. Only its floor was carried forward and the flanged beam for the monorail shuttle. Ten meters on, it ran into its terminus, and familiar-looking elevator shafts ran down to the floor, a good sixty meters down. Light came from a single, huge, circular disk set in the cavern’s roof. There were many such, now black. They had caught this one at the end of its tether before it too glimmered out. In its heyday the place must have enjoyed bright day. They shuffled cautiously to the elevator framework and Lee Wayne led down. Shultz and Swarbrick moved to gather in Goda, but she had passed rock bottom on this kind of activity. She swung herself out on the lattice and began to go down as if it had never been any bother to her at all.

  At floor level they were obviously in the command center of an elaborate system. Consoles, disposed in a horseshoe, carried the nomenclature of a mixed force. AIR STRIKE had subsidiary divisions for manned and unmanned machines with controls for remote launch and direction. SEA SCREEN controlled surface and submarine craft. A whole wall was taken up by a large-scale operations’ map of the Mediterranean and its approaches.

  Gaul said, “Here we stay for now. Frank, you and Peter get back up top. Carve blocks out of that tunnel and collapse it for about five meters. That will give us a little time.”

  It was a good idea. They had reached the gantry and were making for the square entry hole when dust began to seep out of it. They were near enough to see the nozzle of a heat hose come through, and for Shultz to yell, “Look out below.” Then they both dropped flat and rolled off the edge of the roadway as the thin searing blast sprayed out.

  The beam splashed and broke in the center of the great wall map, where the sea showed its bluest. It was like the breaking of some great furnace in the iron age, when molten metal gushed out into molds. Its light showed up everything in the cavern with an eye-aching intensity. There had been time for personnel to get clear under the lee of the nearer wall, where they were out of direct line. But the heat was intense.

  The Mediterranean dissolved away as the thermal activity of the rock built up and it flowed down sluggishly as lava. Then, as if the map had galvanized itself into independent life, the surface opened out like a sluice gate and the sea came in. Pressure forced it through in a roaring torrent three meters wide. It came out in a curve which dropped its thunderfoot into the center of the cavern. The noise was a phenomenon in itself and the man above stopped spraying to look at this bonus effect.

  His satisfaction was short-lived. Shultz had worked hand over hand to the point where the roadway met the wall. Now he heaved himself back on top. Noise was no concern. A whole percussion section could have been beating up a Tchaikovsky climax under the hole, without the guard being aware of it. All he knew was that the hose was twisted out of his grasp and pulled through the gap.

  In spite of the stupefying noise, he was quick enough to appreciate what would follow and began to run back up the tunnel. He had shrouded himself in a dust pall before Shultz had familiarized himself with the controls of the hose. Then the appalling line of white heat tore its way through the veil and momentarily lit him up.

  Confined in the tunnel, the heat buckled out the constructional rings. Soundless against the background noise of the indoor Niagara, the walls came in as an instant tomb.

  Swarbrick had joined his partner. He had to cup his hands round the nearest ear to make himself understood, and it spoiled the line—which should have been delivered in a pregnant silence, “Well done, Frank. How do we get out?”

  Palely lit from above, the cascade had settled down to a solid gray tube, bent down to a white lotus foot. The noise was a steady roar. Already the whole floor was awash.

  Along the wall to the left of the map, a continuous bench seat stretched for thirty meters; a testament to the days when a large staff manned the operations’ center. Gaul was estimating what depth below sea level they were likely to be. There were some imponderables and it was impossible to be exact, but he believed that the break-in, high in the wall, was not very far below the surface. While they still could, he decided that the seats should be dismantled and made into a raft.

  Jane was near enough to tell by lifting a swath of auburn hair and putting his lips close to her ear. She turned to him and a quick pressure of her body against his was answer enough. She had virtually given up independent thought; the last twenty-four hours was merged in a blur of movement and action. If he had told her to stand under the tap, she would have done it.

  Telling the others was a considerable chore in itself. By the time there was a working party on the job, the water was at knee level. With an engineer’s instinct, Lee Wayne had been running down store lockers and had come up with spare signal wire in handy reels. Slats of wood were floated back and he and Swarbrick built the raft. When the whole run of seating had been used, they were waist deep and the noise of the stream was less as its fall was more cushioned. Using flotsam as it came free and floated to the surface, they improved the platform. At shoulder level they walked it away to a backwater and climbed aboard. At the rate of increase so far, it would take two hours to reach the inlet. After that it might slow down. Six hours to reach the roof.

  Goda said, “I’m absolutely ravenous. I could eat a raw fish. Let’s celebrate our escape from the gendarmerie.”

  It was not a meal to remember. They were wet through and it was beginning to be very cold. On the whole, there was silence. Goda’s attempts to make conversation finally faded out. Halfway to the inlet, the water was quieter. Too full for sound or foam. They sat backs to the center for stability and some warmth; each one thinking the thing through. It was still a novel-enough thing to be completely alone inside the head. Even here it was a considerable freedom. Jane voiced it with, “It’s nice to know that one’s panic is personal to oneself. It puts the onus where it belongs. When you weigh it up, it was not possible to be a person in Carthage.”

  “True”—Goda took up the conversational ball—“whereas here it is an individualist’s paradise. Provided he or she is content with the allotted ration of slatted floor and accepts that any untoward move will rock the boat. Also one should be prepared to be a drowned person in the near future.”

  Shultz said, “No man is an island, even in extremis. I agree, though. It’s better to opt in to communication than have to opt out.”

  When they were level with the inlet hole, the noise of incoming water had dropped to a murmur and when the hole was finally covered there was complete silence. Rate of climb seemed undiminished. Looking down into the dark water, the gap itself seemed to show palely as a ragged patch.

  Gaul stood up and began to take off his overall suit. “I’m going to have a look through there. Getting back should be easy enough. Give me ten minutes. After that, think out something different.”

  The opening was half a meter below the surface. Using spare rails, they paddled the clumsy raft against the swilling current, until it was against the wall and to the left of the hole. Then he slipped over the side. For a moment he hung on and the force of water took his legs from under him. He waved to Swarbrick to take the raft back, so that he could come up from the side, just out of the main stream. Jane Welland leaned out and kissed his forehead. “Take care.” A curtain of auburn hair fell between him and the light. He meant it when he said, “There is everything to be careful for.”

  Then he was sidling along the wall, finding some handholds in the fused remnants of the geographical features which had made it the pride
and joy of the operations’ room. He leaned down and hooked his fingers into the raw edge, then took a maximum breath and hauled himself powerfully down.

  The force tried to tear him away and crush out his stored breath, but he was beyond feeling or thinking. He was programmed to get through. The watchers saw him move like a slow motion acrobat into the hole. Then he disappeared from view.

  Inside, the tunnel in the thickness of the wall was barely a meter long. His fingers got a grip on the far, upper edge and he hauled himself through, stone scraping his chest. His head was out of the pressure, then only his legs were held. When he finally broke free, he was conscious of a pale, corrugated surface overhead like the underside of an aluminum roof. He kicked up with bursting lungs and his arms went neatly through the mesh of the antisubmarine net which still survived there. For a split second he was in complete confusion. Then his mind settled down to conduct a cold, bitter, last-ditch struggle.

  Ten

  Almost as soon as his heels disappeared through the gap, Jane Welland began to urge action. Seconds later, when he hit the mesh, she knew it with as much certainty as if she were present herself. “You’ve got to do something, Lee. He’s trapped, I tell you. I know it as a true thing.”

  She was rapidly getting down to a bare minimum and preparing to dive in herself, when Shultz said quickly, “There’s not much head of water, Lee. If we take down a bit more wall, we might get through. Either way we will have to come to it, sometime.”

  “Back, then.” Lee Wayne had the thermal hose ready. “There’ll be some superheated steam about, though. Be ready to drop over the side. Keep out of it.”