CHAPTER SEVEN

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Shesha Haddon voiced the doubt that was niggling in Holt's head. "If the Alpha people did this and the ones we saw were so hostile, what do we gain by going on to Alpha?" They had pushed open a swing door into an admin sector with many small desks and a labor force of human clerks. Moving slowly to minimize the turbulence, they walked down the center aisle. Claw hands still rested on keyboards. A girl in a bright yellow tabard was standing at a dispenser, neatly balanced with a paper cup in her left hand and her right hand holding the faucet. There was no immediate reply. Holt saved it until they were in the elevator. For the first time, he looked discouraged. "You may be right. I don't know."

Illogically, she switched to the other side of the argument "But it can't be worse than Delta, and there isn't a choice."

"No, there isn't a choice."

"Don't be like that. I'm relying on you to keep telling me that things will improve."

"That's an exercise we'll take turns at."

Protesting every foot of the way, the cage ground to a halt in the control room for the Gamma precinct above. When the noise stopped, they could pick up another one from the open hatch. Many voices, hurrying feet, and the flicker of moving lights reflected in an oblong patch on the ceiling. Looking from the darkside, they were invisible; but Holt was still cautious and mimed for her to keep out of a direct line.

Voice in an excited whisper, she said, "They're our own people. It's a folk migration." As they watched, a continuous stream poured up from below. A solid ladder had been fixed. There were hand lamps and flaring torches in a jostling line for a hundred meters down the tunnel, then a stop as the lead end was absorbed into another opening.

Holt said, "The Woodslee people have broken out. That's the way we should have taken. Question is, how will they get on? Once the leaders reach the elevators, the line will be backed up."

"The Alpha party?"

"It all depends how long they take on their tour."

"Who was the guard firing at, then?"

"Of course. This lot couldn't have got around it. They must have come another way." Movement had already slowed. From a purposeful walk, progress had dropped to a shuffle. Saturation point had been reached up ahead.

Now there was a new noise. An eteliolated scream that cut off in mid-trill and the tail end came with a rush up the connecting ladder.

Thin tracers of flame shot up from below in pursuit and flared in brilliant asterisks on the vaulted roof. There was a general scatter, and the last fifty yards of the column, judging with truth that there was no chance to get clear by going on, broke ranks and began a wild rush toward the Gamma junction box. In the hubbub, isolated voices could be picked out shouting the odds. The enemy was known. Names were being named. They knew that behind the new, deadly guards, the finger on the button was from Horizon Alpha, and there was as much anger as fear in the equation.

Holt said urgently, "Come away. They don't know us. They'll class us with the Fascist!."

"Can't you stop the androids? You can't let them do it, Gunnar." An advance unit of the force was head and shoulders through the trap, stabilized by one claw grab and firing indiscriminately into the mass. A small man, maddened by a terminal wound that had taken off his right arm and most of the shoulder, spun around and went at a stumbling run for the android. It had stopped firing to heave itself over the rim, and he got within a meter, before it realized that a threat had developed.

At point blank range, the beam hit like a power hose and blasted the running corpse to a halt in a heap of charred trash.

Others had turned to watch the heroic suicide, and half a dozen from each end started a weaving run to try to get near.

Holt knew that the situation had moved on beyond the area where choice was possible. This was a beachhead for humanity. If he withdrew to save his own skin, or Shesha's for that matter, there would be no value in any future. He had the hand control out of its pouch and was struggling to get through the hatch against the tide coming in.

A woman screamed, "Here's one. Murderer! Murderer!"

Hands tore at his clothes, and he had to use his fists to get clear. Then there was more space and he could see the android was clear of the hole and was using a claw grab like a scythe to carve up the men who were hanging on it. On the shoulder, there was a figure identity reference and he thumbed around a selector disk to match it.

He spoke into the transmitter. "Stand still. Put your arms over your head." Left and right, the tunnel had emptied except for those who could not move or could only crawl. Shesha Haddon was nowhere in sight. But above the noise from the control room he identified a brief scream, abruptly stifled, which had a familiar harmonic. She was experiencing at first hand that there was no rush of gratitude from an animal sprung from a trap.

Holt ran back, trading the control unit for the blaster. She was still on her feet, hair in a snarl, blood masking her face from a long scratch across her forehead; the metallic shut was ripped to the navel. Two women were holding each arm and there was frenzied competition from the rest to get close enough to hit.

Sheer weight of numbers had so far prevented serious structural damage, but any minute some organizer would get it sorted and make room for fair turns.

A civil request would get nowhere. Holt used the blasted and shot over their heads into the free-standing hardware. Any loss of power on Gamma would hardly be noticed.

A long row of monitor dials raced into a frenetic spin and a bank of protective fuses went off like fire crackers at a Chinese New Year. It was a show stopper. Shesha broke free and was out through the hatch before anybody moved.

From the door, Holt tried to reason, while attention lasted, "Listen. I don't know what you aim to do. Keep out of the way of the Alpha contingent. There's nothing you can do against them." Behind him, Shesha said, "Leave them. There's no time. There's another android coming up." By the time he was near enough to see its number, it had pulled itself out of the hole and was looking for a target. Then he had it clear and spun the dial as its receptors locked on the only moving object and an arm came up to fire.

It was a close thing, and he knew that luck had to run out. In any case, he could only control one at a time. As soon as the Alpha leader realized what was going on he could pick up the strings and override the veto.

They ran on, past the two stationary androids, to where the wall was breached. Unexpectedly, the way was down. A long, steep ramp with batons every half meter to give a foothold. At the bottom, a familiar power main in its conduit made a T junction. Fifty meters to the left, light spilling from the hatch of the local control center showed the tail end of the refugee column, waiting nervously for its turn to go through.

Holt dropped on hands and knees and mimed for her to follow. When he turned right, keeping low behind a support saddle, she crawled rapidly up level with his ear to ask urgently, "Where are you going?

It's that way."

"Not yet, it isn't. Any time now, the Alpha party will be along. We can't hold them. Now that we know where it is, we'll wait until the activity dies down a bit."

He crossed three saddles, in gathering darkness, before he was satisfied. Eyes adjusting to the minimal light level, he checked through the contents of the pouches in the late Grove's belt. There was a comprehensive repair kit, which included the human frame in its span, and he broke out a dressing for her forehead.

When it was done, they sat back to the black cable and waited. She said, "It's your turn to tell me that things will get better. I don't see it."

Holt was saved a lying statement by sudden illumination flaring overhead, as a powerful spotlight probed down the tunnel. He thought, "God, why should I think they wouldn't check this way. At the least count, he'll send a zombie to take a look."

Taubman's voice just reached them over the baffles, "What do you say now, Joanna? Is there any use for your deviants, even as experimental subjects? They're dangerous animals." The light dimmed. It had been concentrated the other way. The thump of android feet receding down the tunnel made its own statement. Holt looked out from the angle where the cable ran through its support block.

The Alpha party was strung out along the tunnel. The near end of the connecting ramp had been sealed off. No doubt they had closed the access route at each stage behind them. Two androids ahead, then the girl and the big talker. More androids bringing up the rear.

She had hinged away the plexiglass visor and her hair had gathered a nimbus from the directional lighting. Curiosity had moved Shesha to take a look for herself. By intuition, she knew what had taken his eye. She said bitterly, "That one must be a sadist. What's she doing in a war party? Looks as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. Not that I like her mouth. It's feline. She's a psychopath."

"We don't know why they came."

"We know what they did."

"Delta people are no better."

Shesha Haddon had not worried about her torn shirt, treating Holt as family. But his outgoing interest in another woman put him in another category. She pulled the two edges together in a definitive gesture of withdrawal and moved to the other side of the cave to improvise a toggle. A highly colored dialogue was beginning in her mind, where Holt was at death's door in the blonde woman's experimental lab. He had at last realized that he had been wrong all along the line and was using his remaining breath to apologize.

"You were right, Shesha. Forgive me."

"Why should I? You made your bed and now you have to lie in it."

"I'm sorry."

"You should be."

The last bit was spoken out loud, and Holt, genuinely puzzled, asked, "I should be what?"

"Never mind."

Noises told that the unlucky remnants of the Delta column were being carved up. Two, a man and a woman, jumped for the cable and made out in a nimble-footed, balancing run. Away from the light, they were difficult to hit, and an android climbed out to shine a beam down the tunnel. The man, who had let the woman go first, recognized the danger and yelled for her to jump down as the android got a directional fix and began to fire.

Lines of tracer beam went overhead into the far darkness as though they had no end. Hicks, the survivor of the strong-arm duo, appeared in the hatch to direct the search, and the android climbed to the cable top where his headlamp could light up each bay as he reached it. Voices were unexpectedly near at hand, immediately over the saddle. A girl's voice, quick and high-pitched, said, "It's no use, Hal. It's following. Hold me."

"We'll give the bastard a run for it. I'll cross to the other side. When I shout, get over the top, Stella, and don't hang around."

"What are you going to do?"

There was a scuff of movement. He had prudently cut the argument by moving off. Holt anticipated how it would be. The invisible Hal would pop up to draw the fire, while the girl crossed the saddle. But with the android all keyed up and ready for a snap target, he was likely to get crisped. If he used the hand control, even supposing he could get a quick reading of the shoulder flash for a setting, it would tell the Alpha leader that they also were in the tunnel and he would not stop until they were found.

Bent low, he joined Shesha. The same line of reasoning had gone through her computer and come out with an emotional loading. "Help them."

Holt had the torch out and shoved it into her hand.

"You have one thing to do. As it fires at Hal, light up the shoulder, read off the number, and don't hang around."

The man's voice shouting "Now" made a period. There was a quick scuffle. The girl rolled over and dropped, and Shesha Haddon stood up with the torch searching for a target. Holt waited with his finger on the button in a state of absolute concentration that closed him off from any other detail. When the light snapped off without any signal, he was some seconds returning to the here and now. The girl Stella, judging that she had fallen into a subtle trap, was opening her mouth to shout a warning. Nothing was clear to Holt, but he reckoned silence all around was the better part and gagged her by grabbing her head and pulling it smartly against his chest.

Stella was on the small side but lithe as a netted fish, and, finding that the hands were human, she did her best to kick his crotch. Her friend, forgetting the decoy role, leaped from the cradle and landed nicely on Holt's back.

The three went down in a clawing tangle. Shesha Haddon said, unfairly, "You can take your hands off her now. It's all right. It's turned back."

Dark herself, she melted into the darkness, and Stella had enough reserves of untapped fear to react as though to the supernatural. Holt said urgently, "Calm down, you little nut. We're on the same side. What's happened Shesha?"

"The leader came out and said something to the man Hicks. Now they're all going inside. I've got the blaster. Do you need any help?"

Holt picked himself up. The other two were dusting each other off as though it was all in a day's march and they could wait to hear the score. He said, "That figures. Why should they bother? With all the outlets sealed off, they could leave these two to roam about until they starve." As he said it, the light from the distant hatch went out and Stella stopped her grooming play to give a startled "Eek."

Hal spoke up, out of the darkness. "That does it. Down here the flux will drive us out of our heads. Some got through, though. There's just a chance that Carter might organize something to get us out." The girl was fighting to keep her voice steady. "You saw what they did. How can he do anything against them? And he only just persuaded the others to break out. They won't risk any more, even if they stay free."

Shesha Haddon put the small torch on the floor and it threw a circle of light on the vaulted ceiling. She said simply, 'This is Gunnar Holt. I am Shesha Haddon. We were born and brought up on Delta, and after we met, two days ago, we decided to try to get out. We made for Woodslee, because we heard there was something unusual going on there. But your people took us for part of the Alpha group. Can't we work together?"

There was a silence broken by hammering as wedges were driven into the distant hatch from the inside. The girl, a slight number with straight, dark hair caught in an apricot headband, and a mobile, heart-shaped face, broke from Hal's circling arm and voted with her feet. She said "I'm Stella Morton, and the spring-heeled type is Hal Davies. I've never seen anybody like you before, except in pictures. You're beautiful. Hal, isn't she beautiful?"

She might have been taking a course on how to make friends and influence people. Holt reckoned enough was enough. He said, "Hold it. Let's think this thing through. There's more than one precinct control room on Alpha. They've closed this one, but we might get to the next before they think of sending down to seal it. You can do any back-scratching that seems suitable as we go." Indian file on the cable top with the single torch beam bouncing ahead damped conversation to a minimum. After an hour by his time disk, Holt reckoned that they had covered three kilometers. Without a break, somebody would lose concentration and drop off. He called a halt and jumped down, holding up his arms to catch Shesha, who was next in line.

The brief contact before she broke away was enough to show she was still harboring a grievance that he could not fathom.

Holt said, "Ten-minute spell. Put us in the picture about Woodslee. What's all the brouhaha?" Stella Morton said, "It started in a small way about ten years ago, when we were still children, but it's gone stronger all the time."

"What has?"

"This brainstorm thing. But Hal knows more about it. He's a power engineer."

"So what's it all about, Hal?"

"You really don't know?"

"Would I be asking?"

"That means it's only local. I don't understand that. For years now, Woodslee's been sealed off from the rest of Delta. But we thought the condition would be widespread. Nobody knows what causes the mental effect, but the tuning links it with the daily power surge. Twice daily, in fact. Most often, one falls during the night period and isn't noticed very much. Except that some neurotics have nightmares." Shesha Haddon said, "It might be general, at that, on the lower levels. We experienced it in Burton precinct—in a deep library store. Then again near here. It was much stronger here. The Alpha guard went down. So they don't understand it either."

Holt said, "But this power system has been going since the city was built. Why should it only start in recent times?"

There was a pause. Stella Morton, sensitive as a tick to atmosphere, felt the growing sense of isolation now that movement had stopped, and shivered violently. Hal put an arm around her shoulders. He said,

"That's the big question. Twice a day the power flows through this conductor. It's a very special job. At the core, there's a vacuum tube and the buzz-bar's kept at near absolute zero. Almost no resistance. Power flows in and fills the storage units. Like blood being pumped around. We don't even know how it's generated. But it's there, always has been there, and as far as we know always will be there. But now this mental effect comes with it. I reckon there's been a slow breakdown in the dielectric over the years. Nothing lasts forever. The field is leaking out from the conduits. Twice a day when the generators go into full boost, it's strong enough to climb into your head and knock normal brain currents all to hell. Sometimes you're more susceptible, like when emotion gets involved. At first, it was something to talk about. Dream swapping took over from sessions at the Coliseum. Then violence. After the blank, you had to check around and see how your friends had made out. There were suicides. Men ran amok and killed their families. Then they'd come to, knife in hand, and not know what they'd done. We got the times on a schedule, so people could get home and lock themselves in. Even then you weren't safe from yourself. That's why Carter got a big following when he began to plan to break out."

"Carter?"

"Nick Carter. He was one of the first to suffer. A neighbor in the next unit got into his apartment and killed his wife and daughter. It was their own child, too. They'd kept tabs on her through the creche and wangled the adoption. He was crazy about that kid. It was a long time before he got over it, and then he started an undercover group. He's a power engineer and reckoned if there was a way out, it was through the trunks. Must have been five hundred joined."

"How did you get around the public meeting laws?"

"Never more than ten at a session. Took some dovetailing. But he has a genius for it. We met a lot at the Coliseum. Got a block of seats and worked under the noise. But the specials were moving in. He couldn't have held off much longer."

Shesha Haddon asked, "Did he get out?"

"He was up front. We have some thermic lances. He guessed there'd be opposition, and the first out were to hold a beach head for the others to come up. Nobody reckoned they'd take us from behind. But then, finding the way open was a bonus."

Holt said, "He sounds like a good man. There aren't many about. In the other precincts, nobody wants to know. On the other hand, they haven't had your particular kind of problem. What were you aiming to do when you got out?"

Uncurling herself from Davies' lap, where she had settled like a homing pigeon, Stella Morton said, "We built up a picture of the city from reported dreams. There was too much in common to be a coincidence. Horizon Alpha is open to a natural sky. We aimed to leave the city altogether and make a colony in the waste. Start subsistence farming. Make a new beginning. But some say it isn't possible, because of the animals. A lot of nightmare sequences pointed to wild dog packs roaming around. If you believe the rest, maybe you have to believe that too."

Shesha Haddon said, "I like the idea of starting over. This city has been going too long. It's rotting from the ground up; but the message hasn't reached the top yet. Even the rebuilding's got stuck on a loop. It's just shifting the same bricks backward and forward. Unless you can believe that you can change the future you might as well be dead."

Stella asked, "Who said that?"

"A dead friend of Gunnar's."

"It has the ring of truth."

Holt said, "One personal angle. How is it you don't resent us? We were outsiders in our own precincts. Your people were hostile."

There was a pause, and he was ready to believe he shouldn't have asked. But Hal Davies was weighing it on its merits. Finally he looked at Stella, then said slowly, "It's a fair question. I guess the others were placing you with the Alpha party. We know you're not. If you mean on the size issue, why should it bother us? We've had a long contact in dream sequences with the past of the city. It seems that the whole population started out on the same physical scale, which was roughly where you are now. It's the rest of us who are exceptional in biological terms. Density over a long period works the trick. Stature adjusts to available space. Mental habits, too. It becomes useful to conform. Without the special circumstances, there'd have been no revolutionary fervor in Woodslee."

Holt checked his time disk. "Time to get on."

Once they were moving, it seemed as though there had been no stop. Holt pondered on how they would make out if there was another patch of bad air. He asked over his shoulder, "How do you feel, Shesha?"

"How should I feel? Sick to death of this black tube. How far still? Why isn't there any light along this way?"

"Switched out to discourage travelers. It can't be far. Stand fast, all. I want to look ahead." It was a necessary warning. When he snapped out the torch, Shesha Haddon felt that she was balance walking over a bottomless pit. She dropped to a crouch to get her hands on the gritty black surface of the cable and closed her eyes.

When she opened them, Holt was a defined shape against the darkness ahead. Before she could testify, Stella was calling excitedly from immediately behind. "I can see. I think. Shesha, you're kneeling down." Holt said, "That's it then. Better douse the light and go along at floor level. It'll be the next power take-off point. And if there's light, it could be manned."

From the ground it was less evident. The cradles were still hardly visible. For half a kilometer it was a matter of going forward until one came up dead ahead and feeling for it with hands out like antennae. Then there was enough light to make out the endless features of the tunnel system and, very faintly at first, then with gathering definition, the regular pounding of machinery under load. They made the last fifty meters to the saddle before the bulkhead of the control room bent double and on tiptoe, which strained every muscle that had not yet taken its full due. Then they looked over the rim. Androids were on the move for a plain fact. They were of a pattern that no one had seen before—not the general purpose guards who policed the precincts on Delta, nor the specials who had appeared to seal off Woodslee, nor the type that the Alpha contingent had brought along as a protection screen. They were squat, steel gray, and each had a blue-gray plaque on the fid of its chest cavity carrying an identity reference of three black rings followed by numerals. The trunk tapered to a ball foot, and the limitations of this were plain. A system of narrow, slotted ramps, clearly custom-built to suit the locomotive system, had been set up to lead in from a branch tunnel that skirted the control room. Though the noise would have masked a shout, Shesha's lips were brushing Holt's ear when she asked the jackpot question. "Where are they going, then?"

The question was echoed farther along the line, all except Stella looking at Holt for the answer. He would have been glad to have an oracle on his right to pass the question on to, but being last in line, he had to do his best with deduction.

In the first place, incredibly, they were going up and not coming down, so they were not motivated to search for intruders. In the second place, they seemed to be doing it on their own initiative without visible human direction.

He had gotten to the point of saying that there was not enough evidence to justify a working hypothesis, when Stella, rigid as a yogi in a samhadic trance, said positively, "It's them."

"Them—who?" Davies, even in extreme reis, was not going to have a sloppy speaker for a consort.

"From Beta. I saw it once in a dream. The whole Horizon is peopled by androids. They carry these little planks everywhere. They use them to cross stairs or whatever."

Davies put his finger on another flaw. "If the Horizon was built for androids, they wouldn't have stairs

—they'd have put in ramps in the first place."

"I'm telling you how it is. I can't explain it. I know I'm right. Shesha, you believe me?"

"I believe you. Where are they going, then?"

Wherever it was, it took a long time. Holt had counted fifty-three when the flow stopped. The last one snaked out a flexible cable, with a grab tip, that picked up the catwalk sections behind it as it passed. These nested in a compact block, which it carried under its left arm. It was so deft and economical in its movements, like a neat domestic tidying the apartment, that it was a tail-end comedy sequence. Stella said, "He's sweet. There should be one in every home." She was hopping about from one foot to the other, anxious to get on.

Davies said, "If you want to go, go. Otherwise, stand still, you fidgety little nut, I can't think."

"That's no secret."

Holt said patiently, "Give them five minutes to clear from the landing. Then we'll follow. Meantime, I'll take a look farther on. See where they came from."

Stella was already over the barrier like a child anxious not to miss the treat, and they disappeared beyond the pool of light that spilled from the open hatch.

There was silence. Shesha Haddon took a closer look at her tunnel mate. He was all set up for the exercise, hands on the barrier, obviously anxious about Stella.

She recognized that she was out of the habit of looking closely at people. At home, in Burton precinct, she had gone about her own business, content when she was left alone. Now she was getting involved, being accepted in a group, and in spite of the current hazards, she felt happier than at any time she could remember.

Hal was a person, one pair of eyes looking out, as she was herself. A good match for the volatile Stella. Swarthy-skinned, with a round, Celtic head and wiry black hair. Neat and hard. He was sensitive enough to know he was under scrutiny.

"What is it?"

"You're anxious about her."

"She's impulsive. Just as likely to run up to one of those zombies and knock on its chest."

"Gunnar will watch her." It was the first time she had been able to speak with that kind of knowledgeable claim about somebody else's line of action.

Davies was doing a little judging of his own. He said, "You really are something, Shesha. On the tall side for the average man, but a natural for the open spaces. What's this 'Shesha'? I never heard the name."

"It's very ancient. Has to do with a snake. An emblem for infinite possibility."

"The snake bit is out, but the rest is reasonable."

"Thank you."

"Think nothing of it. Here they are. It couldn't have been far." Stella Morton was first in sight, throwing elongated narrow shadows, still full of sap as a jumping bean. She said, "I was right. It goes to Beta. We found the entry. Still open. Gunnar thinks another detachment might come up, so we'd better get on."

The control room was empty. When they climbed through the hatch, they could see that it was uniform with all the others—interchangeable nodal points on the power lattice that made the city tick. They knew it was the final link to a world outside experience, and suddenly they were reluctant to go. Shesha Haddon said, "There is the known and the unknown and an elevator between." Holt put his arm around her shoulders. "We have no choice. We can't go back. We can't stay here. We have to go on."

To Davies, he said, "We'll go first. I have this blaster. Give us two minutes. I'll send the cage back if it's okay. If not, you'll have to work it out for yourself."

Impulsively, Stella Morton broke away from Davies and went on tiptoe to kiss Shesha on the side of her neck. "Good luck."

When the elevator began to move, the two were standing hand-in-hand, sober-faced, to watch it out of sight.

It was a long ride, and Holt reckoned he had been optimistic with his two minutes. Then the cage stopped, and unlike the other landings, they were faced by a solid door with a single restricted port. Light from it had a peculiar intensity. Color in Shesha's torn dress was suddenly flamboyant. There was no moving thing in sight.

He said, "Flat against the wall," and shoved over the lever for out. Holt jumped through the door as it opened and spun around to check out the lobby. It was a circular area, a hundred meters across, with the elevator housing in a center column that was part of the continuing structure. Every wall was translucent in a shifting pattern of pale tones. Light was beating in every which way. Such light as he had not imagined. If there had been a reception party, he would have been easy as a stunned rabbit.

Behind him, Shesha Haddon switched the cage for its return trip. Then she joined him, shielding her eyes with her hands. "Gunnar. If it's like this inside, what will it be like in the open?"