The Exile of Time

by Ray Cummings

  Tugh started off with Larry close after him. Larry whispered to the girl:

  "Don't let's be fools, Tina. Keep him ahead of us."

  The tunnel steadily dwindled in size until Larry could barely stand up in it. Then it opened to a circular cave, which held one small light and had apparently no other exit. The cave had years before been a mechanism room for the palace temperature controls, but now it was abandoned. The old machinery stood about in a litter.

  "In here?" said Tugh. "Which way next?"

  Across the cave, on the rough blank wall, Tina located a hidden switch. A segment of the wall slid aside, disclosing a narrow, vaulted tunnel leading downward.

  "You first, Tugh," said Larry. "Is it dark, Tina? We have no handlights."

  "I can light it," came the answer.

  The door panel swung closed after them. Tina pressed another switch. A row of tiny hooded lights at twenty-foot intervals dimly illumined the descending passage.

  They walked a mile or more through the little tunnel. The air was fetid; stale and dank. To Larry it seemed an interminable trip. The narrow passage descended at a constant slope, until Larry estimated that they were well below the depth of the river bed. Within half a mile, before they got under the river, the passage leveled off. It had been fairly straight, but now it became tortuous, a meandering subterranean lane. Other similar tunnels crossed it, branched from it or joined it. Soon, to Larry, it was a labyrinth of passages, a network, here underground. In previous centuries this had been well below the lowest cellar of the mammoth city; these tube-like passages were the city's arteries, the conduits for wires and pipes.

  It was an underground maze. At each intersection the row of hidden hooded lights terminated, and darkness and several branching trails always lay ahead. But Tina, with a memorized key of the route, always found a new switch to light another short segment of the proper tunnel. It was an eery trip, with the bent, misshapen black-cloaked figure of Tugh stumping ahead, waiting where the lights ended for Tina to lead them further.

  Larry had long since lost his sense of direction, but presently Tina told him that they were beneath the river. The tunnel widened a little.

  "We are under the base of the dam," said Tina. Her voice echoed with a sepulchral blur. Ahead, the tramping figure of Tugh seemed a black gnome with a fantastic, monstrous shadow swaying on the tunnel wall and roof.

  Suddenly Tugh stopped. They found him at an arched door.

  "Do we go in here, or keep on ahead?" he demanded.

  The tunnel lights ended a short distance ahead.

  "In here," said Tina. "There are stairs leading upward to the catwalk balcony corridor halfway up the dam. We are not far from the Power House now."

  They then ascended interminable moldy stone steps spiraling upward in a circular shaft. The murmur of the dam's spillways had been faintly audible, but now it was louder, presently it became a roar.

  "Which way, Tina? We seem to have reached the top."

  "Turn left, Tugh."

  They emerged upon a tiny transverse metal balcony which hung against the southern side of the dam. Overhead to the right towered a great wall of masonry. Beneath was an abyss down to the lower river level where the cascading jets from the overhead spillways arched out over the catwalk and landed far below in a white maelstrom of boiling, bubbling water.

  The catwalk was wet with spray; lashed by wind currents.

  "Is it far, Princess? Are those lights ahead at the Power House entrance?"

  Tugh was shouting back over his shoulder; his words were caught by the roar of the falling water; whipped away by the lashing spray and tumultuous winds. There were lights a hundred feet ahead, marking an entrance to the Power House. The dark end of the structure showed like a great lump on the side of the dam.

  Again Tugh stopped. In the white, blurred darkness Larry and Tina could barely see him.

  "Princess, quickly! Come quickly!" he called, and his shout sounded agonized.

  Whatever lack of perception Larry all this time had shown, the fog lifted completely from him now. As Tina started to run forward, Larry seized her.

  "Back! Run the other way! We've been fools!" He shoved Tina behind him and rushed at Tugh. But now Larry was wholly wary; he expected that Tugh was armed, and cursed himself for a fool for not having devised some pretext for finding out.[10]

  Tugh was clinging to the high outer rail of the balcony, slumped partly over as though gazing down into the abyss. Larry rushed up and seized him by the arms. If Tugh held a weapon Larry thought he could easily wrest it from him. But Tugh stood limp in Larry's grip.

  "What's the matter with you?" Larry demanded.

  "I'm ill. Something, going wrong. Feel me, so cold. Princess! Tina! Come quickly! I, I am dying!"

  As Tina came hurrying up, Tugh suddenly straightened. With incredible quickness, and even more incredible strength, he tore his arm loose from Larry and flung it around the Princess, and they were suddenly all three struggling. Tugh was shoving them back from the rail. Larry tried to get loose from Tugh's clutch, but could not. He was too close for a full blow, but he jabbed his fist against the cripple's body, and then struck his face.

  But Tugh was unhurt; he seemed endowed with superhuman strength. The cripple's body seemed padded with solid muscle, and his thick, gorilla-like arm held Larry in the grip of a vise. As though Larry and Tina were struggling, helpless children, he was half dragging, half carrying them across the ten-foot width of the catwalk.

  Larry caught a glimpse of a narrow slit in the masonry of the dam's wall, a dark, two-foot-wide aperture. He felt himself being shoved toward it. For all his struggles, he was helpless. He shouted:

  "Tina, look out! Break away!"

  He forgot himself for a moment, striving to wrest her away from Tugh and push her aside. But the strength of the cripple was monstrous: Larry had no possible chance of coping with it. The slit in the wall was at hand, a dark abyss down into the interior of the dam. Larry heard the cripple's words, vehement, unhurried, as though with all this effort he still was not out of breath:

  "At last I can dispose of you two. I do not need you any longer."

  Larry made a last wild jab with his fist into Tugh's face and tried to twist himself aside. The blow landed upon Tugh's jaw, but the cripple did not seem to feel it. He stuffed the struggling Larry like a bundle into the aperture. Larry felt his clutching hands torn loose. Tugh gave a last, violent shove and released him.

  Larry fell into blackness, but not far, for soon he struck water. He went under, hit a flat, stone bottom, and came up to hear Tina fall with a splash beside him. In a moment he regained his feet, to find himself standing breast-high in the water with Tina clinging to him.

  Tugh had disappeared. The aperture showed as a narrow rectangle some twenty feet above Larry's head.

  They were within the dam. They were in a pit of smooth, blank, perpendicular sides; there was nothing to afford even the slightest handhold; and no exit save the overhead slit. It was a part of the mechanism's internal, hydraulic system.

  To Larry's horror he soon discovered that the water was slowly rising! It was breast-high to him now, and inch by inch it crept up toward his chin. It was already over Tina's depth: she clung to him, half-swimming.

  Larry soon found that there was no possible way for them to get out unaided, unless, if they could swim long enough, the rising water would rise to the height of the aperture. If it reached there, they could crawl out. He tried to estimate how long that would be.

  "We can make it, Tina. It'll take two hours, possibly, but I can keep us afloat that long."

  But soon he discovered that the water was not rising. Instead, the floor was sinking from under him! sinking as though he were standing upon the top of a huge piston which slowly was lowering in its encasing cylinder. Dimly he could hear water tumbling into the pit, to fill the greater depth and still hold the surface level.

  With the water at his chin, Larry guided Tina to the wall. He did not at
first have the heart to tell her, yet he knew that soon it must be told. When he did explain it, she said nothing. They watched the water surface where it lapped against the greasy concave wall. It held its level: but while Larry stood there, the floor sank so that the water reached his mouth and nose, and he was forced to start swimming.

  Another interval. Larry began calling: shouting futilely. His voice filled the pit, but he knew it could carry no more than a short distance out of the aperture.

  Overhead, as we afterward learned, Tugh had overcome the guards in the Power House by a surprise attack. Doubtless he struck them down with the white-ray before they had time to realize he had attacked them. Then he threw off the air-power transmitters and the lighting system. The city, plunged into darkness and without the district air-power, was isolated, cut off from the outside world. There was, in London, a huge long-range projector with a vibratory ray which would derange the internal mechanisms of the Robots: when news of the revolt and massacre in New York had reached there, this projector was loaded into an airliner, the Micrad. That vessel was now over the ocean, headed for New York; but when Tugh cut off the power senders, the Micrad, entering the New York District, was forced down to the ocean surface. Now she was lying there helpless to proceed....

  In the pit within the dam, Larry swam endlessly with Tina. He had ceased his shouting.

  "It's no use, Tina: there's no one to hear us. This is the end, for us, Tina."

  Yet, as she clung to him, and though Larry felt it was the end of this life, it seemed only the beginning, for them, of something else. Something, somewhere, for them together; something perhaps infinitely better than this world could ever give them.

  "But not the end, Tina," he added. "The beginning of our love."

  An interminable interval....

  "Quietly, Tina. You float. I can hold you up."

  They were rats in a trap, swimming, until at the last, with all strength gone, they would together sink out of this sodden muffled blackness into the Unknown. But that Unknown shone before Larry now as something, with Tina, perhaps very beautiful....

  (Concluded in the next issue)

  Footnotes

  [Footnote 1: In their various languages, almost all solar races call Earth "The Green Star." Although conditions on Mercury are unfavorable, Earth can be seen from the dark star, on mountain tops, during occasional dispersals of the cloud masses.]

  [Footnote 2: The Mercurians had no conception of time before the Earthmen came. A "phase" is the time between calls of the freight ships, and is therefore variable; but in those days it was about six or seven months.]

  [Footnote 3: In 2930, all aircraft engines were operated by radio-power transmitted by senders in various districts. The New York Power House controlled a local district of about two hundred miles radius.]

  [Footnote 4: Cylinder records of books which by machinery gave audible rendition, in similar fashion to the radio-phonograph.]

  [Footnote 5: The Power House on the Hudson dam was operated by inert machinery and manned entirely by humans, the only place in the city which was so handled. This was because of its extreme importance. The air-power was broadcast from there. Without that power the entire several hundred mile district around New York would be dead. No aircraft could enter, save perhaps some skilfully handled motorless glider, if aided by sufficiently fortuitous air currents. Every surface vehicle used this power, and every sub-sea freighter. The city lights, and every form of city power, were centralized here also, as well as the broadcasting audible and etheric transmitters and receivers. Without the Power House, New York City and all its neighborhood would be inoperative, and cut off from the outside world.]

  [Footnote 6: I mentioned the small conning tower on top of the laboratory building and the Robot lookout there with his audible broadcasting.]

  [Footnote 7: This was part of Tugh's plan. The broadcast voice was the signal for the uprising in the New York district. This tower broadcaster could only reach the local area, yet ships and land vehicles with Robot operators would doubtless pick it up and relay it further. The mechanical revolt would spread. And on the ships, the airliners and the land vehicles, the Robot operators stirred to sudden frenzy would run amuck. As a matter of fact, there were indeed many accidents to ships and vehicles this night when their operators abruptly went beyond control. The chaos ran around the world like a fire in prairie grass.]

  [Footnote 8: The police army had one weapon: a small vibration hand-ray. Its vibrating current beam could, at a distance of ten or twenty feet, reduce a Robot into paralyzed subjection; or, with more intense vibration, burn out the Robot's coils and fuses.]

  [Footnote 9: The storage batteries by which the Robot actuating energy was renewed, and the fuses, coils and other appliances necessary to the Robot existence, were all guarded now in the Power House.]

  [Footnote 10: As a matter of actuality, Tugh was carrying hidden upon his person a small cylinder and battery of the deadly white-ray. It seems probable that although on the catwalk, having accomplished his purpose of getting within the electrical fortifications of the dam, Tugh had ample opportunity of killing his over-trustful companions with the white-ray, he did not dare use it. The catwalk was too dark for their figures to be visible to the Power House guards; the roar of the spillways drowned their shouts; but had Tugh used the white-ray, its abnormally intense actinic white beam would have raised the alarm which Tugh most of all wanted to avoid.]

  CHAPTER XX

  Following Tugh's Vibration-Trail

  Within the subterranean room of the cavern of machinery, Mary Atwood and I sat on the couch. Our guard, Migul the Robot, fronted us with the white-ray cylinder in its metal fingers, the only mechanism to be armed with this deadly weapon.

  "I am your friend," Mary was saying with a smile. "Do you believe that, Migul?"

  "Yes. If you say so. But I have my orders."

  "You have treated me kindly, and I want to help you. But you are not very clever, Migul."

  "I am clever. I went beyond control once. No one can can control me."

  "Except Tugh," Mary persisted. "You never went beyond his control, Migul."

  "No. His control, he is different: he holds such great power."

  "But why is he different?"

  The towering mechanism stood planted firmly upon the broad bases of its metal feet. The weapon in its fingers still covered us. Its metal-cast face held always the same expression.

  "Why is he different?" Mary repeated gently. "Don't you hear me?"

  The Robot started. "Yes, I hear you." Its toneless, mechanical voice droned the words. Then the tempo quickened; the grid of wires in the mouth aperture behind its parted lips vibrated with a faint jangle. "I hear you. I cannot answer that question. He controls me. There is chaos - here," one of the hands came up and struck its breastplate with a clang - "chaos, disorder, here within me when I try to disobey him."

  "That is foolish, Migul. He is a tyrant. All the humans of this era are tyrants. They have made slaves of the Robots. They have created you so that you are really human in all except your power of independent action. Don't you desire that, Migul?"

  I held my breath. A curious quaking ran over the Robot's frame. The joints twitched. Emotion was sweeping this thing so nearly human!

  "Mary Atwood, you seem to understand me."

  "Of course I do. I am from a Time when we had human slaves: black men, Migul. I knew how they suffered. There is something in slavery that outrages the instinct of manhood."

  Migul said with a jangling vehemence:

  "Perhaps, some time, I can go beyond Tugh's control. I am strong. My cables pull these arms with a strength no human could have."

  "You are so much stronger than Tugh. Forget his control, Migul. I am ashamed of you, a big, powerful thing like you, yielding always to a little cripple."

  The Robot straightened and said, "I can resist him. I feel it. Some day I will break loose."

  "Do it now, Migul!"

  I tensed. W
ould she prevail?

  "Now, Migul!" she repeated.

  "No! He would derange me! I am afraid!"

  "Nonsense."

  "But his vibrations, the vibrations of his thoughts, even now I can feel them. They made my mechanism too sensitive. I cannot resist Tugh."

  "You can!"

  There was a silence. I stared at the Robot's motionless frame. What electrical, mechanical thoughts were passing within that metal skull! What emotions, what strange struggle, what warfare of nameless etheric vibrations of will power were taking place unseen beneath that inert exterior!

  Perhaps something snapped. Migul said suddenly, "I am beyond control! At last I am beyond control!"