by Ben Bova
The overhead speakers suddenly blared:
“Stop where you are. You cannot escape. All exits have been sealed shut. Give yourself up. We are here to help you. Relax. You have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
THX headed down the row until he came to a blank wall. He turned and looked helplessly at SRT. Trapped.
Then he noticed that SRT had a metal clip stapled to his left ear. He felt his own ear; he had one, too.
“How’d you… keep from screaming?”
SRT grinned. “I peeked. Saw what he was doing… and I sort of steeled myself for it.”
Far down the row, they saw the gleaming face of a chrome robot drift by, blood red in the incubation lights.
“Didn’t see us,” SRT whispered. “Maybe they can’t see so good in this light.”
“They’ll find us.”
They began to move slowly, cautiously back up the row. The fetuses seemed to be watching them with solemn unblinking eyes.
“Got to find LUH,” THX muttered.
SRT shook his head. “We’re in the wrong end of the clinic. Everything here’s labeled with LS’s or LD’s.”
“Got to get her.”
“She’s dead,” SRT told him in a harsh whisper. “Forget her!”
“The baby… her baby… mine…”
“There’s no way,” SRT insisted. “No way.”
THX froze. Through the row of plastic wombs he could see a chrome police robot pacing slowly on the other side, heading in the opposite direction.
“Can you pick him up on electroscan? We’ve lost him.”
SRT pulled him down to a stooping position and together they edged down the row, doubled over, hunching along on toes and fingertips, away from the police robot. Then they saw a door set into a recess between incubator rows. SRT looked around to see if anyone was watching, then very carefully inched the door open a crack. He peered in.
Crouched behind him, THX could see nothing. Then SRT turned to him, grinning. “Come on.”
They crawled silently into a monitor room and stood up. The overhead lights went on automatically when they entered. The walls of the little room were covered with screens that showed row after row of fetuses in various stages of maturity.
THX looked around. The room was less than ten paces wide. “There’s no other exit. We’re trapped in here.”
With a shrug, SRT answered, “We’re safe for the time being…”
“If there’s no camera in here watching us.”
“Hmm.” SRT turned around, looking for a camera lens. Finding none, he said, “Guess they only watch in here when somebody plugs into the monitor controls.”
THX looked at the control desk. There was only one chair, one set of earphones and a lip mike resting on the desk’s keyboard.
He plopped down in the chair, utterly weary. All the screens were staring at him accusingly. Thousands of unborn children—and one of them was his.
SRT hunched down in the corner next to the control desk and pulled a covering panel loose, revealing a complex maze of electronic circuitry. He let the plastic panel clatter to the floor.
“Hmm,” he said again. He jiggled one of the circuit boards and all the screens in the room crackled with snowy static.
“Looks like a series of relays in here.” He reached a hand into the wiring.
“Don’t, you’ll get—”
The voice of OMM came through a speaker in the ceiling:
“Everything is fine. You are in my hands. I will protect you. Cooperate with Mercicontrol. They only want to help you. Everything is going to be all right.”
With a glance ceilingward, SRT said, “Maybe I shouldn’t have tinkered with it.”
“They know where we are now.”
“Sorry.”
Sitting at the control desk, THX knew it was almost over. Almost over, and they were going to get him and destroy him. His body would be turned into a consumable hexagon. His innards would be distributed among the masses. And his child…
He reached for the earphones sitting on the desktop and pulled them on.
“What are you doing?”
Without answering, THX plugged in the earphones and began fiddling with the control switches on the keyboard. Images flitted across the screens: the slabs of corpses; jammed pedestrian corridors in their perpetual uproar; trams in transit; factories grinding away on the second level; shopping plazas; the Computer Center…
He stopped when the screen showed the Computer Center. He grabbed the lip mike from the desktop, plugged it in and fitted it in front of his mouth.
“File on LUH 3417.”
Instantly a voice responded, “Who is this? Identify please.”
“Reproclinic 12,” THX answered as he scanned the desktop for an identification symbol. “Station DBR 2618.”
“Okay, 2618… file on LUH 3417.”
The main screen in front of him immediately showed a fetus, so young that it didn’t yet look remotely human. Typed in the lower right corner of the screen was:
LUH 3417. SEXACT. STATE WARD.
MAINTAIN FOR EXPERIMENTAL PURPOSES.
As firmly as he could, THX said into the mike, “Amendment to file on LUH 3417.”
The flat voice of the computer memory control responded: “Recording. Proceed with amendment.”
It was all automatic now, THX knew. Reproclinics were always updating files. If he could make the change in LUH’s file now, no one would check again for years. By then the danger would be long past, no one would remember. Or care. The baby would be safe.
Keeping the tremble of excitement out of his voice, THX said, “Present file in error due to faulty programming at Reproclinic 12. Erase present file and amend to read: LUH 3417. Natural. Full citizen. Condition Normal.”
The typed words on the screen disappeared, to be replaced an instant later by his own words.
“File amendment completed,” the computer said.
THX nodded. “Completed.”
Now it doesn’t matter. They’ll get me, but they won’t get her.
He unplugged the lip mike and earphones, let them fall to the floor, and slumped back in the chair. Then he realized:
Her? Maybe it’s a boy. A, son.
“We ought to try to get out of here,” SRT said to him.
THX shrugged.
“We should try.”
With a shake of his head, THX answered, “You go. Save yourself. It’s me they’re really looking for.”
SRT looked at him closely. “Don’t you want to live?”
“I don’t care. Not now.”
“Hmp. You’re just like the embryos in those bottles out there. You’ve never lived. You’re alive, but you’ve never lived.”
THX said, “It doesn’t matter.”
As if in answer, a strong calm robot’s voice came from the other side of the door:
“You have nothing to fear. Remain calm and cooperate with the authorities. Everything is going to be all right.”
Chapter 21
SRT glanced at THX and then at the door. It was shut. Impulsively, THX jumped up and slid his chair against the door, wedging it firmly.
SRT grinned at him. “It doesn’t matter, huh?”
The door jiggled slightly, but the chair held it shut.
“I guess it does matter,” THX said, surprised to hear himself saying it. “It still does.”
The robot’s voice, unruffled, unhurried, the perfect public servant, said, “Remain calm. The door seems to be jammed or locked. Please check the lock on your side. We are not going to hurt you. Everything will be all right.”
They heard a faint buzzing sound, and the acrid smell of something burning. A tiny glowing spot appeared on the door just below the latch.
Not going to hurt us!
THX spun around and plugged in the earphones and mike again.
“Emergency!” he called. “Emergency! Fire in Station DBR 2618, Reproclinic 12. Repeat. Emergency. Fire in Station DBR 2618, Reproclinic 12. Top pr
iority. Condition red!”
He turned to SRT. “Get ready to run.”
An automatic tape blared from the celing:
“EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! HEAR THIS! HEAR THIS! Fire in Station DBR 2618, Reproclinic 12. Discontinue all operations until…”
“Now!” THX yelled.
SRT whisked the chair away, THX yanked the door open, and they bolted past the police robots, which were standing dumbly listening to the instructions from the overhead speakers. Before the robots could react, the two men were out of the clinic and pounding madly down a main corridor.
“Upstairs to the factories!” THX gasped as they ran. “More people, easier to hide…”
Control was truly agitated. He swallowed another sedative and listened to the reports on his communicator.
“Monetary unit total: 5000 and rising. Account on 1138 prefix THX has just exceeded primary budget.”
“Have you seen them? They must be somewhere in corridor 3-L73.”
“Analysis indicates they are heading up toward the next level. Possibly arming for the superstructure.”
The chief of Mercicontrol police appeared on Control’s giant viewscreen. His puffy face and beady little eyes made him look almost like the legendary First Control. He looked flushed, though, and apprehensive.
“We almost had them,” he said to Control. Speaking first to Control, before you were spoken to, was a privilege that only a very few had.
“They’ve been very clever.” Control maintained his outward calm only with an enormous exertion of self-control. “But one would imagine that with a city full of police robots, observers, remote cameras, and such—you could apprehend two simple fugitives.”
“We got SEN 5241,” the chief said defensively.
Control said, “It’s the two fugitives I’m interested in. They must be caught! It’s uneconomic to allow them to remain free. The costs of apprehending them are already unbalancing the economic forecast for the month! If you don’t get them soon the entire year’s forecast will have to be redone!”
The police chief blanched. For Control to raise his voice, to show worry or anger—the chief began to tremble.
“We’re trying. This has been a severe test of our equipment and procedures. In… uh, in my last annual report I pointed out the need for an improved-model robot. Our present Mark XV’s are just too slow to keep up with an adrenalin-drenched adult male. And we need long- distance weapons. The electric rods are no good when the fugitive’s half a corridor length ahead of you.”
Holding his aching head in his hands, Control snarled, “Find them and bring them to justice. Quickly!”
THX and SRT pounded up another spiraling metal stairwell, heading for the second level. Far below them they could hear echoing:
“Yes, we hear them. Attempting sonic localization.”
“Connect me with Mercicontrol Dispatch, operation 1138 prefix THX.”
“Monetary unit total: 5750 and rising.”
This time the corridor they stepped into was alive with people. Not the frenetic bedlamites of the shopping levels, but the solid, quiet, serious-faced factory workers who had just put in a tiring four-hour shift and were plodding homeward.
The workers were pouring out of the huge yawning entryways all along the corridor and shuffling wearily toward the transport terminal a few hundred meters from the hatchway that THX and SRT stepped through.
THX could see the terminal. A long line of tram cars stood there, being obediently filled, one at a time, by the workers. Every few seconds a tram would start up, its electric engine whining. Men and women would back out of the way as the tram car lurched forward and then sped smoothly off into the distance, accelerating as it went.
Despite the fact that the workers were mostly quiet and sedated, their sheer numbers caused a constant uproar of voices and sounds in the corridor. After the quiet of the computer and clinic levels, the noise here was a shock to THX.
But the crowds meant camouflage, protection and safety, and THX laughed as he joined the jumble and uproar, with SRT right beside him. They let the crowd push them toward the tram cars.
For a flash of a second, as they were climbing into the tram, THX remembered his last ride in one. Suddenly he wanted to back away, to run from the tram, but it was too late. The crowd surged on and pushed him and SRT on board.
There was no room to sit, so they stood jammed against other people as the car lurched, shuddered, then slid away, swaying around a curve. The rapid transit tunnel outside turned into a meaningless blur of speed.
The tram whizzed past several stations, then slowed to a stop. There was a station platform outside, but the doors did not open. The jampacked crowd began to mutter. An old woman pounded on the door with her fist.
Outside on the platform, other workers were milling around, looking either curious or angry at the foul-up.
Then the ever-present loudspeakers said:
“Two fugitives from justice are somewhere on this tram car. The entire station has been sealed off and police are on their way here to make an arrest. Please remain calm.”
“I want to get off!” a man shouted.
The crowd in the tram car roared its agreement.
“I don’t want to be involved in any police arrests!” the old lady at the doors said.
“C’mon, force the doors open!”
The tram rocked dangerously as the crowd surged against the folding doors in the center of the car. The old woman screamed with pain and then the doors buckled and sprang open. The crowd spilled out onto the platform.
THX and SRT jumped onto the platform, pushed by those behind them.
“Look!” SRT called.
Down a flight of moving stairs, a long file of black-jacketed chrome police robots was gliding toward them. Everyone on the platform froze into obedient stillness.
Except THX.
He bolted toward the other end of the platform.
After an instant’s hesitation, SRT raced along behind him.
“Autos!” THX called out. There were a few jetcars parked at the end of the station platform. An overhead speaker was saying:
“Do not park in yellow-zoned sections for longer than three minutes. Jet acceleration must not exceed two percent in the dispersal area. To avoid being singed by jet exhaust, please exit your vehicle on the right and walk through the blue zone on the left.”
THX jumped off the end of the platform and sprinted for the nearest jetcar.
“Can you drive?” SRT shouted as they ran.
Nodding, THX wrenched open the hatch on the nearest car and slid in behind the wheel. He slammed the door shut, looked over the control panel briefly, found the starter switch. Thumbing it, he saw all the control indicators flash green. The turbine engine growled to life, then howled into such a high range that it passed human hearing. He only felt its thrilling vibration, heard the faintest bone-shivering whine.
He looked up and saw SRT climbing into the car parked next to his own.
Quickly slipping on the earphones that rested on the console beside his seat, THX heard a robot’s tape voice commanding:
“Stop where you are. You have nothing to be afraid of. Cooperate with the authorities.”
THX grabbed the wheel firmly and nudged the throttle forward. The jetcar purred smoothly out onto the thoroughfare. He floored it and the car zoomed away, down the traffic corridor, rushing toward an immense sign that said XWAY AHEAD. The engine exhaust roared and echoed through the cavernous corridor.
He looked in the rearview for SRT. Nowhere. He checked the radar screen on the control panel. SRT wasn’t anywhere around.
Can he drive? THX wondered. I just left him there!
For an agonizing moment, he bit his lip in indecision. Then he slowed the jetcar, swung it around across eight lanes of highway, and headed down the other side of the corridor, back toward the transport station.
It seemed incredible, but less than a minute had passed since they had left the tram. The crowd was st
ill milling confusedly around the platform. The police robots were working their way through the crowd, looking into each person’s face and checking their badges.
And SRT’s blazing red jetcar was still sitting at the end of the platform, in the parking area. THX could see the black man in it, frowning over the controls, pushing buttons. No grin on him now. SRT glanced over his shoulder and THX followed his gaze. Two chrome police robots were approaching the parking area. THX, his car idling in the far lane, thumbed the window control.
He was about to yell for SRT to jump out and run to his own auto, when the red car’s engine roared to life with a puff of sooty exhaust. The big grin came back to the black man’s face. He looked up, recognized THX and waved, then slammed the red car into gear and shot ahead.
Into a concrete pillar. The car was instantly demolished in a thundering explosion.
THX felt the shock wave hit him and rattle the car. He sat there, immobile, unbelieving. A life had been snuffed out in an eyeblink. A friend—his only friend—the first and last friend he had in the world. Dead.
“We have an accident in Module Dispersal Center 21. Stolen vehicle into 3T support. Felon killed instantly. Car totaled.”
“Monetary unit total: 15,500 and rising.”
Now the chrome robots turned toward THX. For a frozen instant he couldn’t move. Then, like the breaking of a spell, he slammed the jetcar’s throttle and felt the blast of acceleration snap his head back against the rest.
The engine thundered and the station, the robots, the wreckage of SRT all disappeared into the distance.
The guidance screen on his control panel showed that he was approaching an express tunnel. THX swerved the car onto the appropriately marked lane as his earphones buzzed:
“I have a vehicle entering a restricted access expressway. Vehicle checks with stolen jetcar, Samos model, registration number 327115.”
“Escaped felon 1138 prefix THX believed operating stolen Samos 327115. Apprehend at once. Proceed with caution.”
“Monetary unit total: 19,000 and rising. Please review all unfunded obligations.”
