THX 1138

by Ben Bova

  “Monetary unit total: 649 and rising.”

  “Mercicontrol dispatch, budget control reports expenditure on 1138 prefix THX is 649 and rising.”

  The dispatcher nodded absent-mindedly. He was manipulating control switches madly, fingers flying over his keyboard as he tried to coordinate the actions of a full platoon of police robots.

  The two fugitives were standing now, starting to move off.

  “No, no,” he shouted into his lip mike. “Take the central aisle, 04; 07 take the main left. I want you to make a net. Cover every aisle, surround station 4350…”

  The dispatcher was sweating hard.

  “They’re heading down the left central aisle in the northward direction. Who’s closest? Take 34, units 09 through 17… cover all the north exits. Full speed!”

  “Monetary unit total: 1000 and rising.”

  Suddenly Control’s knife-edged voice said in his earphones, “Do you realize that the man with THX 1138 is not SEN 5241?”

  “Yessir!” the dispatcher replied instantaneously. “We’re running an identification check on him, sir.”

  “Where is SEN 5241?”

  “We… we… lost track of him, sir. All observers have been alerted to report his location as soon as he’s spotted, sir.”

  “I see.” Control’s voice was like icewater being poured over the dispatcher. Or molten lead.

  “Sir?” the dispatcher called, trembling. “Sir, we could use another two platoons of police officers. The Computer Central File area is so big… as you know, sir. And the robots are very slow. But one man can’t handle more than a single platoon, so we’d need at least two more dispatchers…”

  “Economically unfeasible within the allotted budget for apprehension of these felons,” Control answered. “You’ll have to get them with the one platoon assigned.”

  “But sir…”

  “The responsibility is yours,” said Control, with finality.

  The dispatcher shivered. “Yessir.”

  With SRT leading them, they got to an exit door at the far end of the vast computer area. A speaker over the metal door blared:

  “Stand where you are. This is a restricted area. This exit is for emergency use only. Stay calm and await instructions. Help is on the way.”

  Grinning, SRT said, “If this isn’t an emergency, what is?”

  THX looked back down the aisle they had come through. A pair of chrome police robots were lumbering their way.

  “Let’s go!”

  SRT put his shoulder to the door and it popped open, with a gust of air blowing in their faces from the corridor outside. The passageway looked deserted.

  Overhead, OMM’s reassuring voice said:

  “Everything will be all right. You are in my hands. You have nowhere to go. I am here to protect you. Cooperate with the authorities, they only want to help you. You have nowhere to go.”

  “Which way?” SRT asked.

  “Up to the third level,” THX said unhesitatingly. “To the Reproclinic.”

  They pounded down the corridor, looking for a lift tube. Behind them, they heard a robot’s voice calling:

  “We only want to help you. You have nothing to be afraid of. Please come back. We won’t harm you.”

  But THX and SRT ran on, ignoring the taped voice of the robot, outdistancing the machines with their human, fear-driven legs.

  “Monetary unit total: 1240 and rising.”

  “Visual contact with felon 5241 prefix SEN. Habot 25, Con H DS 947.”

  “Proceed to pickup.”

  “Felon 1138 prefix THX. Visual contact, level four, area CCF-N-228. Apprehension pending.”

  They found a lift tube, but THX suddenly pushed SRT away from its entrance hatch.

  “No! We can’t use it.”

  “You wanted to go up to the next level. We can’t go back the way we came. The robots—”

  “But they’re watching for us now. They can trap us in the lift tube. Stop the cell… or drop it down to the bottom…”

  “Hey, yeah. But where do we go now?”

  Looking around at the bare metal walls of the passageway, THX said, “There must be an access stairway somewhere along here. For mantenance on the tube.”

  “Okay. You go that way and I’ll go this. If you find something, yell out.”

  Chapter 19

  SEN wandered through the crowded corridors, lost in the ever-stampeding masses of people who made the shopping levels a chaos of frenzied bodies rushing, rushing in response to the goadings from overhead:

  “Today only, red dendrites are only fifty credits. Buy now.”

  “The consumer has the factor of advantage.”

  “Did you repent today?”

  SEN let the torrent of rushing bodies carry him along wherever it wanted to. He had no place to go. Once in a while he would see the shining white helmet of a police robot standing well above the heads of the masses. But the robots never came after him. In these pell-mell mobs, the robots couldn’t even see him, SEN knew.

  At Mercicontrol, another dispatcher—different from the one who was following THX and SRT and yet very much the same—received an analysis on his main viewscreen. “On the monk found dead in Cathedral 090. Statistical analysis shows the only known felon observed within reasonable range of that location/time complex is 5241 prefix SEN. Presume guilty unless otherwise proven.”

  The dispatcher nodded agreement and tapped out a bulletin on his keyboard that would add the murder to SEN’s record.

  “What are the latest reports on 5241 prefix SEN?”

  “Visual contact at Habot 25, Con H DS 947. Contact broken at 1438.”

  “Tracking information doesn’t match Harris profile of 5241 prefix SEN. Are you sure you’re following the right man?”

  “Computer correlation to point eight.”

  “Okay, okay. Keep all observers looking for him. Mark him dangerous.”

  The dispatcher nodded again and resumed working his keyboard.

  SEN drifted aimlessly in the busy roaring crowd. If only there were time… time to think… to rest… When he thought his head would split from the noise and bruisings of the crowd, he tried to edge his way out of the main flow of the pedestrian thoroughfare, toward a prayer booth or a rest area—anything, as long as there was some quiet and rest.

  He found an open corridor entrance along the edge of the main thoroughfare wall and, pushing himself free of the rushing crowd, staggered out into the empty corridor. It led to a school plaza—a restful little plaza with space to spare, a bench to sit on, and no taped announce- ments or glitter-eyed shoppers.

  The school itself was half a level above, connected to the plaza by moving stairways. Children were scattered all around the plaza, playing intensely at quiet, ordered, meaningful games. No teacher or supervisor was in sight, but still the children didn’t raise thek voices or run or get themselves dirty.

  Taped to each child’s arm was a plastic vial filled with a yellowish fluid. A connector tube fed the fluid into the main vein of the forearm.

  SEN sat, exhausted, on a bench off to one side of the plaza. He watched the children playing their solemn little games, his mind a blank. When there is too much to think on, too much to remember, it feels good to blank it all out, to pretend none of it exists. For a while, at least.

  His body began to relax. Cramped tense muscles were easing, the fluttering in his stomach was fading away. SEN almost felt as if he wanted to smile.

  One of the children approached him, his face very grave.

  “My inducer fell off.”

  SEN blinked at him. “What?”

  The boy held out his left arm. The plastic vial was gone. SEN could see the outlines of where the tape had held it on.

  “Oh, I see…”

  The boy had the vial in his other hand. The tape was still connected to it, but torn raggedly along one edge.

  “OPA 3114 knocked it off,” the boy said.

  “Really?”

  “He didn’t
mean to.”

  SEN took the vial from the boy’s hand. It was marked Advanced Primary Economics 5867H. A drop of the yellow liquid trickled out of the dangling connector tube.

  “Look out!” the boy snapped, and reached for the tube to pinch it shut.

  “Oh… I’m sorry… here, let me get it back on for you.”

  He taped the vial onto the boy’s arm and plugged the connector into the acceptor tube that poked out from the skin of his forearm.

  “There, that should do it. You’ll have the whole course digested by sleep time.” SEN smiled at the boy like an indulgent uncle.

  A bigger, older boy came trotting over. “Come on, we’re going to play stochastics…” He eyed SEN. “What are you doing here? Where’s your badge?”

  SEN shrugged. “I’m… I’m an escaped felon.”

  The two boys’ eyes bugged wide.

  “You’re not! Why aren’t you arrested?”

  Another shrug. “I will be… sooner or later.”

  They didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but they were plainly fascinated.

  “What did you do? How did you escape?”

  SEN chuckled at them. “Now, now… it’s nothing for your tender ears to listen to.” He tapped the vial on the first boy’s arm. “When I was in school it was all different. We had to lie in bed all the time. Advanced primary economics was a bottle about this big—” He spread his hands about the width of his shoulders. “It took a week to digest it!”

  “Wow!”

  An observer, making a routine scan of the school plaza, spotted him. In his earphones he was hearing a police dispatcher saying:

  “Lost contact with 1138. An unidentified felon is traveling with him. Will transfer further information when available.”

  The observer ran a crosscheck on all known fugitives. The man in the school plaza was without a badge. When SEN’s picture turned up on one of the screens, the observer dialed a closeup of the man in the plaza.

  “Visual contact with 5241 prefix SEN,” he spoke into his lip mike. “Habot 25 Con H, PS947.”

  Voices crackled in his earphones.

  “PS947? Is he molesting the children?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Request PB 848: officer 1088 proceed with recovery of felon 5241 SEN. Use caution, protect children. Current position Habot 25, Con H, PS947.”

  “Negative sweep of Con J, Section H.”

  “If 5241SEN is not the unidentified felon traveling with 1138THX, then who the hell is he?”

  “Better get analysis to worry that one.”

  “Will comply.”

  SEN had attracted most of the children in the plaza by now. They were clustered around htm. The first boy was reciting from his lessons, but the older boy corrected:

  “No… impresses on each of us.”

  “That’s not how it goes.”

  “Yes it is,” the older boy said, drawing himself up to dominate the younger child physically.

  “Now, now,” said SEN. “Don’t argue. Go on, continue the lesson.”

  The younger boy singsonged, “There are no other rational alternatives in this way. We eliminate the economic function generated by the contrast of separate but compatible energies…”

  “Elements! Compatible elements,” the older boy said.

  “Energies!”

  “There, there,” SEN soothed.

  “I know the whole text by heart,” the younger boy said proudly. “I got a perfect mark on my test…” Then, a little wistfully, “I wish I knew what it meant. All those words…”

  A chrome robot came down the moving staircase. SEN saw it and stood up. The children, turning to follow his gaze, flowed back away from him silently as the robot approached.

  “SEN 5241,” the robot said.

  “Yes.”

  Smoothly, almost gently, the robot turned SEN around and pulled his arms behind his back. He taped SEN’S hands together at the wrists, then taped his mouth and eyes and led him off. The children stood there for a long, long moment and watched SEN being led off by the policeman, back up the escalator.

  “See?” said the younger boy. “I told you he really was a felon.”

  Chapter 20

  THX hurried up the winding metal stairway with SRT a few steps behind him. In the steel-walled shaft of the maintenance well their slippered feet made odd shushing sounds that echoed and amplified wierdly.

  The third level was also practically deserted. Most of the area was taken up by reproclinics and laboratories, singleshift installations where automated machines did most of the work.

  As they stepped out of the maintenance stairwell and into the corridor, a taped voice from overhead told them:

  “This is a restricted area. Authorized personnel only.”

  THX ignored the warning and went to the directory map on the opposite wall of the white, glarelessly lit corridor. The directory showed that the reproclinics were all neatly arranged in alphanumerical order. LUH 3417 would be in the three-dimensional matrix of clinic 12, row 21, file 8. He glanced down the deserted corridor, then motioned to SRT to follow him.

  “You are engaged in an unauthorized action. Check procedure manual F-45. This is a double-A restricted area. Remain where you are.”

  The corridor emptied into a vast open area filled with rows of slabs that bore dead bodies. Everything was bathed in a cold, eery bluish light.

  “Antibacterial,” SRT murmured.

  “Violation! Unauthorized personnel are not allowed in this area. Stand where you are. Mercicontrol officers are on the way.”

  “We don’t have much time,” SRT said.

  “I know.” THX started moving between the slabs, heading in the direction of clinic 12.

  SRT’s eyes widened as he looked at the corpses they were passing.

  “All the insides are gone!”

  THX nodded.

  “Look at that one,” SRT pointed to a body with an oversized head. “He must have been a genius!”

  What if you find LUH’s body here? THX asked himself.

  Another part of his mind answered coldly, She’s been destroyed. They’re not using her organs. Destroyed, not consumed.

  But still he shuddered and forced himself to look straight ahead, not at the bodies.

  Destroyed. Destroyed.

  How?

  What did they do to her? What were her last moments like. How could they…

  “Hey, here’s one with eyes! Why would they leave the eyes?”

  Despite himself, THX turned to look at the body SRT was jabbering about.

  “Oh no…” He sank to the edge of the slab on which the body rested. His legs seemed too weak to move.

  “Are you all right?” SRT bent over him. “Want something to eat? I bet we could find food around here someplace.”

  His stomach churning, THX could only shake his head.

  “Well, what’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

  Forcing himself to speak, “I… knew him. TWA—he was a prisoner with me… He was blind. That’s why they left the eyes… They’re useless.”

  SRT straightened up. “Oh.”

  The black man glanced around. Faintly, from far away, they heard the inevitable voices of Mercicontrol:

  “Both felons observed entering Reproduction Center Complex. Second felon now positively identified as 5555 prefix SRT. Apprehension pending.”

  “Monetary unit total: 1810 and rising.”

  “Escaped felon 5241 prefix SEN apprehended and 140 now in custody. Total expenditure 4377 units under budget. Congratulations! Be efficient. Be happy.”

  SRT grimaced. “Hey, they’re coming closer. Look… if there’s something you want to do in here, we’d better do it and get out. We’ve still got to figure out a place where we can hide—can’t keep running forever.”

  Nodding, THX forced himself to stand up.

  “I knew him,” he mumbled again. “In prison.”

  “Well, at least his troubles are over. Soon he’ll be a p
lastic hexagon, just like the rest of them.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what they do with the bodies… didn’t you know that? Make them into the consumption units for the consumalls. Neat, huh? Nothing’s wasted.”

  Suddenly a door banged open noisily somewhere up ahead of them and someone entered the clinic, whistling atrociously.

  For a panicked instant, THX didn’t know what to do. He froze in terror. Behind them were the police robots. Up ahead was—what?

  He saw SRT quickly move to an unoccupied slab and lay down on it. After a split- second’s revulsion, THX did the same.

  Be still! Be absolutely still, THX commanded himself. Eyes closed. No blinking. Shallow breathing, don’t let him see your chest move.

  He tried to make himself believe that he was frozen, he was paralyzed, he was truly dead. The whistling came closer, a raucous, horrible noise, punctuated by the slapping sounds of slippered feet against the tile flooring of the clinic. Then there was an odd clicking sound, like a staple gun working. The whistling was awful, tuneless, shrill and loud. Pad, pad, pad—click- click! Pad, pad, pad—click-click!

  The sounds were getting closer. THX wanted to steal a glimpse at what was going on, but he didn’t dare move.

  Then the footsteps came so close that he knew the whistler was right next to him. He could smell the antiseptic on him, even feel his breath…

  Something cool and hard touched his left ear and then PAIN exploded there, seared through him like a white-hot iron. He leaped off the slab and his roar of pain was accompanied by the shriek of the registration clerk who had been tagging the corpses.

  The clerk went over backwards and hit the floor with his rump, screaming and goggle- eyed, as THX and SRT dashed headlong away from the slabs, down a long row of corpses all bearing bright metal tags on their left ears. Up ahead loomed the many-tiered storage racks of Repro-clinic 12. The two men raced toward them and didn’t stop until they were well inside the dimly lit incubation racks.

  They stopped at last, surrounded by twenty-tiered rows of plastic wombs bearing tiny inverted fetuses that were fed by plastic tubes. The light here was a sullen red, and the whole area seemed to be pulsating with millions of tiny heartbeats that throbbed just below the level of actual audibility.