by James Axler
It seemed like forever until the echo of their feet became louder and the slap of boot on concrete floor became even louder than the reverberation. Doc watched as they came into view, each from the opposite end of their orbits, and moved toward the center, where they would cross under the pool of light cast by the bulb overhanging the door. It was as though his entire universe was centered on that one point.
Success. Doc barely resisted the urge to laugh out loud as the last thing he saw before the light went out was the look of surprise on the faces of both men.
His surmise had been correct—loosen the bulb, and the vibrations caused by the heavy footfalls would be enough to set it free. It dropped, and landed with a bang as loud as a gunshot in the almost empty lobby.
The radio handsets that both sec men had hanging from their belts crackled to urgent life, buzzing angrily as they were asked what the hell was going on.
“No panic,” one of them drawled into his handset. “Just one of the bastard lights gone. Fucker popped out and hit the deck. No worries.”
The handset crackled back angrily. The voices were distorted and hard to understand from where Doc was crouching, but it seemed that extra sec patrols had been laid on to cover any possible attempt to escape or recce. Those pressed into service were edgy and exhausted as they had been on-shift for almost twenty-four hours without respite.
“Look, it’s nothing to worry about, just a fucking bulb,” the sec man gritted into his handset. “This is a bastard waste of time. Those fuckers don’t want to do anything, and we’re just getting more and more tired.”
“You tell him, Bub,” the other sec man muttered.
“Yeah, just keep it frosty, right? It’s just one of the lights gone, no more. Let’s just get through this shift until sunup.”
There was some incoherent, angry buzzing from the handset.
“Yeah, fuck you, too,” Bub barked. “Fuckers. All on the fucking edge, man.”
“We all are,” his fellow guard replied in flat tones. “So we gonna replace this fucker and then get back to work?”
Even though the area was now shrouded in darkness, Doc could almost see the sec man look up at the bulb.
“Hell, no. Listen, we fuck around doing that and Schweiz finds we ain’t on his routes, then we get shit. It’s only a fucking light, man. Ain’t gonna matter if we fix it now or leave it for the maintenance guys tomorrow. All we gotta do is make sure we don’t fucking walk into each other when we come back this way and shoot each other in the balls ’cause we frighten ourselves.”
His companion chuckled. Even that sounded flat and weary. “Ain’t much chance of that. I can barely lift this fucker, way I feel right now.”
Bub wheezed a laugh. “Yeah, know what you mean. Still, gotta make it seem like we can, right? Fucking lightbulb. Bastard fucker,” he finished.
“See you when I walk into you, then…”
The two men parted company, leaving Doc to count the footfalls and wait. They had inadvertently given him a boost in confidence. Too tired to lift a blaster would also mean too tried to notice small noises or equally small movements in shadow. Good.
Doc moved out from cover and made his way across the floor until he was up against the door. Even though his eyes had adjusted to the darkness a long time back, it was still mostly by feel that he groped for the lock. He would have to move swiftly, before they returned. The darkness gave him cover, but also hampered him.
Fumbling in the pocket of his frock coat, he found a length of wire, twisted into a small loop. Using one hand to locate the keyhole, he guided the loop into the opening. He hoped that this was a simple lock and not anything complex. It seemed unlikely that the lock would have been substantially changed. Chances were that the locals either had no idea where the door led, or were sec who knew better than to pry. As long as Arcadian retained confidence in his own authority, then chances were that the original lock would remain in place.
Tumblers twisted and turned, and with a soft click Doc felt the door give. He gently tried the handle, and the door opened inward.
Once inside, on a landing of some kind, Doc closed the door and then reinserted the lock pick, this time using it to relock the door. There was no sense in tempting fate. To get this far and then be discovered for the simple expedient of an unlocked door would be absurd.
Now feeling more secure, Doc took stock of his situation. If the darkness on the other side of the door had been nearly impenetrable, then the blackness on this side of the door was complete. Tentatively poking with his toe, he could feel that the landing on which he stood stretched about three feet before stairs began.
He groped along the wall for a light switch, found it and wondered if the light leak would betray him to the passing sec patrol. Reaching up, he removed the bulb from the overhead socket and tucked it into the pocket of his frock coat. Taking a deep breath, he flicked the switch. The light cast by the three bulbs that ranged along the corridor at the bottom of the stairs wasn’t bright in itself, but to a man whose eyes had become accustomed to almost total blackness, it seemed as though he were momentarily staring into the sun.
Doc blinked, red and yellow flares behind his closed eyelids burning bright for a moment before passing. He squinted, gradually widening his eyes as his sight adjusted to the light. In a few moments, he was once again able to see normally.
Silence hung like a pall over the empty air. It was stale, yet not fouled. Dust motes hung almost motionless under the direct beam of the lights. There was a stillness that suggested he was the first to set foot here for some time.
“Have I been in search of that which is not?” he murmured to himself. “How ironic—and damn inconvenient—if I have expended all this effort on a dead end.”
Slowly he began to pick his way down the steps. The metal rail on one side of the stairs was covered in dust, and he avoided touching it. There was no need to leave telltale signs. The stairs underfoot, however, were cleaner than he would have expected. Likewise, the passage at the foot of the stairs, leading off into a long corridor, was also free of dust and dirt.
“Well, well,” he mused to himself, “does someone just wish to make it seem as though this is not used?”
The wall on one side of the stairs was painted white, faded to a kind of dirty-cream by time. Likewise, the passage at the foot of the stairs was similarly decorated. Turning at a sharp angle, the wall closed in on both sides, curving to form an arch for the ceiling. It resembled a tunnel more than a corridor, and Doc had to shrug off the feeling of being confined and trapped that suddenly threatened to overwhelm him.
“Come now, sir, there can be no turning back,” he murmured to fortify himself before physically shrugging off his fear and continuing along the passage.
At regular intervals along the passage, as it twisted and turned, were a number of locked doors. Doc tried one or two experimentally at the head of the passage, but the locks were old, and had obviously not been tampered with for many years. That caught his attention. The passage was obviously in use, from the state of the floor, yet the rooms were—so far—untampered with, and there was an attempt to hide any usage. Ergo, unless he was way off the mark, the purpose of the passage would only be revealed when he reached its terminus. One thing was for sure—this wasn’t quite the layout he had expected.
As he walked along, careful to keep the noise of his feet on the flagged floor to a minimum, so as not to mask any approaching noises as much as to hide his own, he pondered on the layout he had found beneath the old library.
He had expected to find a number of storerooms. Their original use would have been to keep stock, perhaps house facilities for the maintenance of the building and its stock. Rooms that he had been expecting to have been converted into…well, what? Workshops, perhaps. Even repositories of documents, old tech, anything that would reveal to him just exactly why Arcadian was collecting so much old material. An intimation of the ends, and perhaps the means, of the baron’s theories about society a
nd the manner in which he wished to impose them on the rest of the populous.
Doc was no lover of the way in which the world had turned out. He pined for the world he had once known, and in truth tried to distance himself from that part of his mind so as to stave off the madness induced by the gap between the two. Nonetheless, he would be damned if he would let anyone tell him how to live. From Jordan Teague onward, he had seen too much of that since he had arrived in this world. Most of the coldhearts who fought tooth and claw to run a ville had the ambition, but not the brains or the means to take their ambition to the next level. Doc had the nasty suspicion, creeping like ice down his spine, that Arcadian had both.
Hence this expedition. Now that he was down here, Doc had little idea of how he could get back to the room he had left without arousing suspicion. Come to that, he had no idea of the time. He looked at his chron, suspended on a chain in his vest pocket. Stopped. Just as it had for some days.
“Oh, dear, Theophilus, it appears you have little option but to press on and see what you find,” he murmured with a sad smile. It hadn’t been his most considered course of action, but if he could find out what Arcadian was doing, then that itch within him would be assuaged.
So, Tanner, what is the next question you should ask yourself? Doc thought. He stopped and looked around. The corridor had twisted in such a manner that he was now unable to see the stairs he had descended. He had also been walking for some time without pause, and so he had to be well beyond the boundaries of the library building. The stairs had been steep, and he suspected that he had descended beyond usual basement level until he was below the level of the old water and sewage system.
Why would a library basement be so deep? Come to that, why would it fan out in such a manner that it seemed to have an exit some distance away from—
Doc sighed. What had happened to the brain that had won him such academic distinction? Of course, he knew the answer.
Shelter. The ville’s proximity to old military bases, as described by Arcadian when he had been droning on earlier that evening. The people of the predark ville would have been only too aware of the escalation of hostilities, and the consequences that would result. So what else would the elders do but build a shelter for themselves beneath the central focus of the ville.
So presumably this had been where they lived until the nukecaust and skydark had abated. And behind these doors, now abandoned for so long?
His curiosity piqued, Doc decided to pause to try to seek access to one of the rooms. Choosing purely at random, he stopped and produced his lock pick. It was uncertain whether or not it would work on something that had been so long neglected, but he opted to try his luck.
As he worked the wire loop into the keyhole, feeling for the tumblers in the lock, he wondered whether the lighting would be working in the room beyond the door. So far, he had encountered not a single defective bulb in the lighting along the passage, even though they were hung at regular intervals. That bespoke of regular maintenance. Did they, he wondered, also check behind these doors?
He grunted satisfaction as the lock gave and the door grudgingly opened on hinges rusted and made stiff by dust and time. The room beyond was dimly illuminated by the light from the passage. He felt for a light switch and depressed it when found. No such luck. The room remained in half-light gloom. Pushing the door wide, Doc ventured in. His eyes adjusted to the gloom, and he could see that it had been a dormitory for five people. The beds were made, left as they had been when the occupants found it safe to venture back to the surface. The bedding was thick with dust, as were the few books and magazines that were scattered on bedside tables. Pictures still hung on the walls—some of them were posters, some were framed photographs of people long since gone.
Doc walked farther into the room, feeling as though he were violating a crypt, and picked up one of the books. A cheap paperback Western. He put it down and dusted off the front of a magazine. Newsweek, dated May 1999, and carrying a picture of the last president on the cover. Doc half smiled, half sneered. He remembered reading several scandalous articles about the man. With such people in charge, it was little wonder that the endtimes had come.
Doc placed the magazine back where he had found it and looked around. There was little to tell him much about the people who had spent so long down here, waiting for skydark to fade. Yet in itself that told him much about the way in which they had obviously been well organized. There was no sudden abandonment or signs of decay here. When the all-clear was sounded, they had simply packed up and left in an orderly fashion, leaving only the least valuable of their possessions behind them.
That level of organization, carried through to the current baron and his subjects, could be very dangerous.
Thoughtful of those consequences, Doc left the room, being careful to relock the door. He moved down the corridor and picked another at random. This time, the light was still working, and he found himself in a washroom and latrine. Even though he didn’t try the taps, he had little doubt that the water would still run. The shower area was clean, just dusty. They had maintained it well up until the time they had left.
Again, Doc left the room deep in thought, locking it behind him to cover any tracks he might leave. He continued along the passage, wanting now only to reach its conclusion and find what secrets lay there.
He kept walking for some minutes while the white stone walls twisted around him. The passage hadn’t been cut in a straight line presumably because of the lines of rock and clay in the earth. He presumed that the rooms had been constructed hastily, albeit efficiently, and the natural geology of the Earth had partly dictated the pattern. And yet, he suspected that part of the pattern was because of wherever the passage led.
Where was he going to emerge?
He found out soon enough. As he rounded a curve, he could see that the passage ended in another staircase that led up to a small landing, like the one he had originally descended. Yet this landing didn’t face onto a door. Instead, there was a ladder set into the wall, with a trapdoor in what was the ceiling of the passage.
“Curiouser and curiouser, Alice,” Doc murmured, slowing as he approached. He looked back over his shoulder, even though he was certain that he was alone. Ah, well, he’d come this far…
Doc climbed the stairs, then climbed the ladder. Craning his neck, he could see that the trapdoor was locked by a wheel mechanism. Clinging to the ladder with one hand, he pulled at it experimentally. It was no great surprise that the wheel yielded easily. Obviously it was oiled for regular use.
If the rooms weren’t in use, then why was this passage alone used secretly to move from one sector of the ville to another? It was puzzling. Only one way to find out, Doc decided as, with a shrug, he spun the wheel and unlocked the trap.
It was heavy, but not so much that he was unable to heave it upward. It slammed back onto an earthen floor, and Doc cautiously emerged to find himself in a darkened courtyard, surrounded on all four sides by four- story buildings, blank windows looking down on him. Distant lights within cast a glow into the otherwise black rooms, showing them to be empty while allowing him to see that the courtyard was empty, apart from the open trap and himself.
He heaved himself out, looked around and bent to close the trap.
That was when the courtyard became flooded with light and Doc found himself exposed and defenseless.
“Oh, dear. I feared this might happen.”
Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
Jak knew there was something wrong even before he was awake. Somewhere in his subconscious he had detected Doc’s departure, and he had filed it away. So when his red albino eyes opened and were almost instantly attuned to the low level of light, he knew that Doc was not in the next bed.
“Stupe,” he whispered. Jak didn’t like Arcadian, and thought that Ryan was playing a tough game in sticking around. Doc’s curiosity made the chances of the baron turning on them even greater. Okay, so they had their weapons. This meant that
the baron knew of ways in which he could easily break them. No one would be stupe enough to let them keep their blasters unless they had the utmost confidence in being able to best the companions regardless.
This would play right into his hands.
Jak rose and went to the door. The situation might be redeemed if they could drag Doc back before the baron discovered his actions. As no alarm had been raised, it was doubtful he had breached the building’s exits. He had to be somewhere inside. Maybe they could get him back.
The unguarded corridor didn’t surprise Jak. Doc would have been easily discovered otherwise. The thing to do now would be to rouse Ryan and then decide on a course of action that could drag back the old man.
Always assuming he didn’t get himself caught in the meantime.
“KEEP YOUR HANDS out in the open and move out of the tunnel slowly.”
“Of course. You have the advantage on me,” Doc said deliberately, placing his hands on the gravel of the courtyard and hauling himself out so that he was on his knees, before rising slowly to his feet.
“Replace the cover. Slowly.”
Doc bent slowly to flip the cover back into place before spinning the wheel to lock it. He straightened, then raised a hand to shield his eyes, looking around. The courtyard was bathed in a brilliant light, illuminated from all four sides. The ground-level lights were angled up, which was presumably why he had missed them at an initial glance. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen such a brilliant white light. The source of the voice was hidden to him by their luminescence.
“You have the advantage of me,” he said clearly. “I cannot see you.”
“That is, of course, the point. You’re the one they call Doc, aren’t you?”
“A further advantage,” Doc demurred. “You have the upper hand, by a long way. Would it be too much to ask that you cease blinding me?”
