I took advantage of the tact. Calmly, rationally, I said to her, “I would like to tell you something. Miss. I would like to tell you just what you people have done to me by disconnecting the elevator. You have ruined my life.”
She blinked, open-mouthed. “Ruined your life?”
“Precisely.” I found it necessary to inhale again, even more slowly than before. “I was on my way,” I explained, “to propose to a girl whom I dearly love. In every way but one, she is the perfect woman. Do you understand me?”
She nodded, wide-eyed. I had stumbled on a romantic, though I was too preoccupied to notice it at the time.
“In every way but one,” I continued. “She has one small imperfection, a fixation about punctuality. And I was supposed to meet her at ten o’clock. I’m late!” I shook my fist at the screen. “Do you realize what you’ve done, disconnecting the elevator? Not only won’t she marry me, she won’t even speak to me! Not now! Not after this!”
“Sir,” she said tremulously, “please don’t shout.”
“I’m not shouting!”
“Sir, I’m terribly sorry. I understand your—”
“You understand?” I trembled with speechless fury.
She looked all about her, and then leaned closer to the screen, revealing a cleavage that I was too distraught at the moment to pay any attention to. “We’re not supposed to give this information out, sir,” she said, her voice low, “but I’m going to tell you, so you’ll understand why we had to do it. I think it’s perfectly awful that it had to ruin things for you this way. But the fact of the matter is—” she leaned even closer to the screen—“there’s a spy in the elevator.”
II
It was my turn to be stunned. I just gaped at her. “A—a what?”
“A spy. He was discovered on the hundred forty-seventh floor, and managed to get into the elevator before the Army could catch him. He jammed it between floors. But the Army is doing everything it can think of to get him out.”
“Well—but why should there be any problem about getting him out?”
“He plugged in the manual controls. We can’t control the elevator from outside at all. And when anyone tries to get into the shaft, he aims the elevator at them.”
That sounded impossible. “He aims the elevator?”
“He runs it up and down the shaft,” she explained, “trying to crush anybody who goes after him.”
“Oh,” I said. “So it might take a while.”
She leaned so close this time that even I, distracted as I was, could hardly help but take note of her cleavage. She whispered, “They’re afraid they’ll have to starve him out.”
“Oh, no!”
She nodded solemnly. “I’m terribly sorry, sir,” she said. Then she glanced to her right, suddenly straightened up again, and said. “We-will-resume-service-as-soon-as-possible.” Click. Blank screen.
For a minute or two, all I could do was sit and absorb what !‘d been told. A spy in the elevator! A spy who had managed to work his way all the way up to the hundred forty-seventh floor before being unmasked!
What in the world was the matter with the Army? If things were getting that lax, the Project was doomed, force-screen or no. Who knew how many more spies there were in the Project, still unsuspected?
Until that moment, the state of siege in which we all lived had had no reality for me. The Project, after all, was self-sufficient and completely enclosed. No one ever left, no one ever entered. Under our roof, we were a nation, two hundred stories high. The ever-present threat of other projects had never been more for me—or for most other people either, I suspected—than occasional ore-sleds that didn’t return, occasional spies shot down as they tried to sneak into the building, occasional spies of our own leaving the Project in tiny radiation-proof cars, hoping to get safely within another project and bring back news of any immediate threats and dangers that project might be planning for us. Most spies didn’t return; most ore-sleds did. And within the Project life was full, the knowledge of external dangers merely lurking at the backs of our minds. After all, those external • dangers had been no more than potential for decades, since what Dr. Kilbillie called the Ungentlemanly Gentleman’s War.
Dr. Kilbillie—Intermediate Project History, when I was fifteen years old—had private names for every major war of the twentieth century. There was the Ignoble Nobleman’s War, the Racial Non-Racial War, and the Ungentlemanly Gentleman’s War, known to the textbooks, of course, as World Wars One, Two, and Three.
The rise of the Projects, according to Dr. Kilbillie, was the result of many many factors, but two of the most important were the population explosion and the Treaty of Oslo. The population explosion, of course, meant that there was continuously more I and more people but never any more space. So that housing, in the historically short time of one century, made a complete transformation from horizontal expansion to vertical. Before 1900, the vast majority of human beings lived in tiny huts of from one to five stories. By 2000, everybody lived in Projects. From the very beginning, small attempts were made to make these Projects more than dwelling places. By mid-century, Projects (also called apartments anti co-ops) already included restaurants, shopping centers, baby-sitting services, dry cleaners and a host of other adjuncts. By the end of the century, the Projects were completely self-sufficient, with food grow n hydroponically in the sub-basements, separate floors set aside for schools and churches and factories, robot ore-sleds capable of seeking out raw materials unavailable within the Projects themselves and so on. And all because of, among other things, the population explosion.
And the Treaty of Oslo.
It seems there was a power struggle between two sets of then-existing nations (they were something like Projects, only horizontal instead of vertical) and both sets were equipped with atomic weapons. The Treaty of Oslo began by stating that atomic war was unthinkable, and added that just in case anyone happened to think of it only tactical atomic weapons could be used. No strategic atomic weapons. (A tactical weapon is something you use on the soldiers, and a strategic weapon is something you use on the folks at home.) Oddly enough, when somebody did think of the war. Both sides adhered to the Treaty of Oslo, which meant that no Projects were bombed.
Of course, they made up for this as best they could by using tactical atomic weapons all over the place. After the war almost the whole world was quite dangerously radioactive. Except for the Projects. Or at least those of them which had in time installed the force screens which had been invented on the very eve of battle, and which deflected radioactive particles.
However, what with all of the other treaties which were broken during the Ungentlemanly Gentleman’s War, by the time it was finished nobody was quite sure anymore who was on w hose side. That project over there on the horizon might be an ally. And then again it might not. Since they weren’t sure either, it was risky to expose yourself in order to ask.
And so life went on, with little to remind us of the dangers lurking outside. The basic policy of Eternal Vigilance and Instant Preparedness was left to the Army. The rest of us simply lived our lives and let it go at that.
But now there was a spy in the elevator.
When I thought of how deeply he had penetrated our defenses, and of how many others there might be, still penetrating. I shuddered. The walls were our safeguards only so long as all potential enemies were on the other side of them.
I sat shaken, digesting this news, until suddenly I remembered Linda.
I leaped to my feet, reading from my watch that it was now ten-fifteen. I dashed once more from the apartment and down the hall to the elevator, proving that the spy had been captured by now and that Linda would agree with me that a spy in the elevator was good and sufficient reason for me to be late.
He was still there. At least, the elevator was still out.
I sagged against the wall, thinking dismal thoughts. Then I noticed the door to the right of the elevator. Through the door was the stairway.
I hadn’t paid any attention to it before. No one ever uses the stairs except for adventurous young boys playing cops and robbers, running up and down from landing to landing. I myself hadn’t set foot on a flight of stairs since I was twelve years old.
Actually, the whole idea of stairs was ridiculous. We had elevators, didn’t we? Usually, I mean, when they didn’t contain spies. So what was the use of stairs?
Well, according to Dr. Kilbillie (a walking library of unnecessary information), the Project had been built when there still had been such things as municipal governments (something to do with dries, which were more or less grouped Projects), and the local municipal government had had on its books a fire ordinance, anachronistic even then, which required a complete set of stairs in every building constructed in the city. Ergo, the Project had stairs, thirty-two hundred of them.
And now, after all these years, the stairs might prove useful after all. It was only thirteen flights to Linda’s floor. At sixteen steps a flight, that meant two hundred and eight steps.
Could I descend two hundred and eight steps for my true love? I could. If the door would open.
It would, though reluctantly. Who knew how many years it had been since last this door had been opened? It squeaked and waited and groaned and finally opened half way. I stepped through to the musty, dusty landing, took a deep breath, and started down. Eight steps and a landing, eight steps and a floor. Eight steps and a landing, eight steps and a floor.
On the landing between one fifty and one forty-nine, there was a smallish door. I paused, looking curiously at it, and saw that at one time letters had been painted on it. The letters had long since flaked away, but they left a lighter residue of dust than that which covered the rest of the door. And so the words could still be read, if with difficulty.
I read them. They said:
EMERGENCY ENTRANCE
ELEVATOR SHAFT
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
KEEP LOCKED
I frowned, wondering immediately why this door wasn’t being firmly guarded by at least a platoon of Army men. Half a dozen possible answers flashed through my mind. The more recent maps might simply have omitted this discarded and unnecessary door. It might be sealed shut on the other side. The Army might have caught the spy already. Somebody in authority might simply have goofed.
As I stood there, pondering these possibilities, the door opened and the spy came out, waving a gun.
III
He couldn’t have been anyone else but the spy. The gun, in the first place. The fact that he looked harried and upset and terribly nervous, in the second place. And, of course, the fact that he came from the elevator shaft.
Looking back, I think he must have been just as startled as I when we came face to face like that. We formed a brief tableau, both of us open-mouthed and wide-eyed.
Unfortunately, he recovered first.
He closed the emergency door behind him, quickly but quietly. His gun stopped waving around and instead pointed directly at my middle. “Don’t move!” he whispered harshly. “Don’t make a sound!”
I did exactly as I was told. I didn’t move and I didn’t make a sound. Which left me quite free to study him.
He was rather short, perhaps three inches shorter than me, with a bony high-cheekboned face featuring deepset eyes and a thin-lipped mouth. He wore gray slacks and shirt, with brown slippers on his feet. He looked exactly like a spy . . . which is to say that he didn’t look like a spy, he looked overpoweringly ordinary. More than anything else, he reminded me of a rather taciturn milkman who used to make deliveries to my parents’ apartment.
His gaze darted this way and that. Then he motioned with his free hand at the descending stairs and whispered, “Where do they go?”
I had to clear my throat before I could speak. “All the way down,” I said.
“Good.” he said—just as we both heard a sudden raucous squealing from perhaps four flights down, a squealing which could be nothing but the opening of a hall door. It was followed by the heavy thud of ascending boors. The Army!
But if I had any visions of imminent rescue, the spy dashed them. He said, “Where do you live?”
“One fifty-three,” I said. This was a desperate and dangerous man. I knew my only slim chance of safety lay in answering his questions promptly, cooperating with him until and unless I saw a chance to either escape or capture him.
“All right,” he whispered. “Go on.” He prodded me with the gun.
And so we went back up the stairs to one fifty-three, and stopped at the door. He stood close behind me, the gun pressed against my back, and grated in my ear, “I’ll have this gun in my pocket. If you make one false move I’ll kill you. Now, we’re going to your apartment. We’re friends, just strolling along together. You got that?”
I nodded.
“All right. Let’s go.”
We went. I have never in my life seen that long hall quire so empty as it was right then. No one came out of any of the apartments, no one emerged from any of the branch halls. We walked to my apartment. I thumbed the door open and we went inside.
Once the door was closed behind us, he visibly relaxed, sagging against the door, his gun hand hanging limp at his side, a nervous smile playing across his lips.
I looked at him, judging the distance between us, wondering if I could leap at him before he could bring the gun up again. But he must have read my intentions on my face. He said, “Don’t try it. I don’t want to kill you. I don’t want to kill anybody, but I will if I have to. We’ll just wait here together until the hue and cry passes us. Then I’ll tie you up. so you won’t be able to sic your Army on me too soon, and I’ll leave. If you don’t try any silly heroics, nothing will happen to you.”
“You’ll never get away,” I told him. “The whole Project is alerted.”
“You let me worry about that,” he said. He licked his lips. “You got any chico coffee?”
“Yes.”
“Make me a cup. And don’t get any bright ideas about dousing me with boiling water.”
“I only have my day’s allotment,” I protested. “Just enough for two cups, lunch and dinner.”
“Two cups is fine,” he said. ‘One for each of us.”
And now I had yet another grudge against this blasted spy. Which reminded me again of Linda. From the looks of things, I wasn’t ever going to get to her place. By now she was probably in mourning for me and might even have the Sanitation Staff searching for my remains.
As I made the chico, he asked me questions. My name First, and then, “What do you do for a living?”
I thought fast. “I’m an ore-sled dispatcher,” I said. That was a lie, of course, bur I’d heard enough about ore-sled dispatching from Linda to be able to maintain the fiction should he question me further about it.
Actually, I was a gymnast instructor. The subjects I taught included wrestling, judo and karate—talents I would prefer to disclose to him in my own fashion, when the time came.
He was quiet for a moment. “What about radiation levels on the ore-sleds?”
I had no idea what he was talking about, and admitted as much.
“When they come back,” he said. “How much radiation do they pick up? Don’t you people ever test them?”
“Of course not,” I told him. I was on secure ground now, with Linda’s information to guide me. “All radiation is cleared from the sleds and their cargo before they’re brought into the building.”
“I know that.” he said impatiently. “But don’t you ever check them before de-radiating them?”
“No. Why should we?”
“To find out how far the radiation level outside has dropped.”
“For what? Who cares about that?”
He frowned bitterly. “The same answer,” he muttered, more to himself than to me. “The same answer every time. You people have crawled into your caves and you’re ready to stay in them forever.”
I looked around at my apartment. “Rather a well-a
ppointed cave,” I told him.
“But a cave nevertheless.” He leaned toward me, his eyes gleaming with a fanatical flame. “Don’t you ever wish to get Outside?”
Incredible! I nearly poured boiling water all over myself. “Outside? Of course not!”
“The same thing,” he grumbled, “over and over again. Always the same stupidity. Listen, you! Do you realize how long it took man to get out of the caves? The long slow painful creep of progress, for millennia, before he ever made that first step from the cave?”
“I have no idea,” I told him.
“I’ll tell you this,” he said belligerently. “A lot longer than it took for him to turn around and go right back into the cave again.” He started pacing the floor, waving the gun around in an agitated fashion as he talked. “Is this the natural life of man? It is not. Is this even a desirable life for man? It is definitely not.” He spun back to face me, pointing the gun at me again, but this time he pointed it as though it were a finger, not a gun. “Listen, you,” he snapped. “Man was progressing. For all his stupidities and excesses, he was growing up. His dreams were getting bigger and grander and better all the time. He was planning to tackle space! The moon first, and then the planets, and finally the stars. The whole universe was out there, waiting to be plucked like an apple from a tank. And Man was reaching out for it.” He glared as though daring me to doubt it.
I decided that this man was doubly dangerous. Not only was he a spy, he was also a lunatic. So I had two reasons for humoring him. I nodded politely.
“So what happened?” he demanded, and immediately answered himself. “I’ll tell you what happened! Just as he was about to make the first giant step, Man got a hotfoot. That’s all it was, just a little hotfoot. So what did Man do? I’ll tell you what he did. He turned around and he ran all the way back to the cave he started from, his rail between his legs. That’s what he did!”
To say that all of this was incomprehensible would be an extreme understatement. I fulfilled my obligation to this insane dialogue by saying, “Here’s your coffee.”
Tomorrow's Crimes Page 4
