Dayworld (33 page)

His light stabbing the gigantic hollow, veering to pass by plastic-walled blocks of earth on top of which were artifacts, sidestepping trenches in which were artifacts not yet completely uncovered, he trotted swiftly. The air-conditioning machines were not turned on; the air was dead and heavy. It was also warmer than he had thought it would be. He was sweating and getting thirsty.

It was unfortunate, he thought, that the floors were soft wet dirt. If the floor had been hard, its lack of prints would have slowed down the immers. They would have been forced to look into the huge pipes above to make sure that he was not hiding in one.

He went around a crushed and rusty automobile, an ancient internal combustion vehicle. Its occupants were now pieces of bone. Past that was another obstacle, a tangled mass of steel that the strip-show mentor had said was the ruins of a Ferris wheel. Another detour was around a tangled mess the identification of which he did not remember. It was roped off like all the other artifacts and was marked with a sign. He did not have time to stop and read it.

He came around a block of earth on top of which was a huge mirror which had miraculously not been shattered. He stopped, and, despite the extreme need not to do so, he yelled.

Centered in the beam was a gigantic monster, a thing with a colossal head, enormous many-faceted eyes gleaming a vicious red, dripping mandibles, and a body with many legs. It was crouched, ready to spring upon him.

32.

His yell bounced back from the far walls.

He swore at himself and muttered, “I forgot about it.”

His terror was gone, but his heart was still beating hard.

The plastic monster had once been part of a “house of horrors.” Most of that had been destroyed during the earthquake, but there were some exhibits or “monsters” here and there, roped off and labeled.

Hoping that the gigantic spider would give his pursuers heart attacks, he ran on. His beam played on some of the artifacts, one of which was the severed head of a woman with tangled snakes where her hair should have been. Medusa. The unhappy woman of ancient Greek myth whose look turned all she saw into stone statues. He ran on, passing many other remnants of the fun fair until, panting and thirsty again, he stopped. There were four vertical tubes here, shafts for elevators. Two were very large, containing cages for bringing down machinery and supplies and taking up dirt and debris. The smaller cages were for use by personnel. A half-mile east was another bank of elevators.

Caird’s flashlight shone on the control panel by the elevators. It had OVERRIDE buttons that permitted remote control of the cages. According to the indicator panel, these were all on the level of the new transportation system. Caird pressed three of the DOWN buttons and then the corresponding LL (lowest level) buttons. Presently, the doors to three of the tubes opened, and light flooded out from the cages.

He hoped that the immers, when they got here, would believe that he had taken the one still at the top transportation level.

When the cages got to the bottom, he stepped outside of the light that shone from them when their doors opened. He stood in the darkness and looked toward the west. A few seconds later, a flashlight shone from the ceiling, illuminating the ladder. A man climbed down in the beam directed by his colleague in the next level above.

When the two men had reached the ground, Caird turned and sped toward the next bank. He tried to run as softly as he could because the cavern amplified sounds. He did not turn his light on until he was beyond the paleness shed by the cage lights. He kept the flashlight at belly level and directed straight ahead. There were many blocks of earth and artifacts between him and his pursuers. These, he hoped, would prevent them from seeing his light. When the light struck an obstacle, he turned it off and detoured, letting his memory carry him past the blocks and objects for a few steps. After which he turned the light on.

Though he had rested a minute and had drunk from a fountain by the elevators, he was still tired. The air seemed to thicken. It was dead, rising from dead earth and dead things. It suggested slowness, sluggishness, and an eventual motionlessness. The half-mile to the bank seemed to stretch to a mile and a half. Just as he arrived, panting and sweating heavily, he was surrounded by light.

He groaned. The immers had found the switch to turn on all the illumination in the cavern.

Had they seen him?

That was answered quickly. Here they came running, their guns in their hands. They were so far away that they looked small, but they would become large sooner than he wanted.

He jabbed the OVERRIDE, the number-one cage, and the DOWN and the LL buttons. He had been wrong in trying to fool them. He should have taken the elevator at the first bank. He would gain nothing by attempting to beat them to the next bank, another half-mile away. He would have to wait until the cage here got to the bottom. But would they be here before then? Or, if he did get into the cage and its door shut before they got to it, could they stop his cage?

They could. Not only could the cage be stopped at any level but a control also permitted it to be halted halfway between levels. Which, of course, it would be. They would trap him and then leisurely take him.

He could run and try to hide. That would only put off the end.

Though the immers were getting closer, they were slowing down. Their faces were agonized with the strain of pushing their dead legs and heaving lungs to the limit of speed. Within a minute or so, though, they would be shooting at him at the same time as they ran.

The elevator doors opened.

Caird jumped into the cage, turned, and punched the UP button and then the button for the third level, the next one above. He might get to it before the immers realized that they could stop him. Trying for any floor above that was suicidal. Trying for the next level might be suicidal, too.

The doors were closing when a ray struck the edge of one. The metal hissed and pooled, but the door closed, and the cage moved up.

Four seconds later, the cage stopped. The doors began sliding back. He grabbed their edges and pushed. He fell out through the narrow opening. The doors opened all the way and then slid back shut. Total darkness closed in on him. Somewhere on this level was a panel with a button to turn on all the lights in this area. He had been lucky that the immers had not found it when he was escaping from them. He did not have time to look for one now. Using the flashlight to light the floor before him, he ran.

They would expect him to take the next bank of elevators. But which bank? The one to the east or the one to the west? And which level would he go to?

If he had breath to spare, he would have laughed. One would have to go back to the first bank and the other would have to run on to the eastern bank. Both would then go to the top level, the transportation system tunnel just below the street. From the cages there, they would head toward each other, expecting, hoping, anyway, to catch him between them.

But what if one of them took the elevator in the middle? He could go to the same level as Caird, and he could see Caird’s flashlight. He would go after him while his quarry was running again as fast as he could to beat the other immer striving for the western bank. Then they would know that Caird was heading for the ladder down which he had come.

He stopped, breathing hard, his heart thudding. Some of his tiredness was lost in a surge of delight. His flashlight had shone on another ladder.

He went up that and had no trouble with a bent enclosure. He was in the tunnel of the old transportation system. He walked as swiftly as he could, too fatigued to run anymore, until he came to the first ladder down which he had sunk into the buried and ancient darkness. At the top of the ladder, he raised his head until his eyes were just above the edge of the hole. The light would not come until he had emerged to his waist.

As far as he could see, there was darkness.

When he climbed out, light blooming around him, he found that the belts, which had been inactive, were now moving. A large green plastic box moved swiftly from the blackness, through the light he had caused, and into the blackness. Before he had turned to walk westward, another box was squeezed out by the artificial night. And two more, going eastward, were carried to their destination.

He walked until another westering box approached. He climbed over the railing and jumped onto the belt. The light filled the belt area for a hundred feet in each direction. There was nothing he could do about that, but he could rest. At the same time, he would be going faster than if he walked. He sat down on the cool plate, his back against the box, and watched the east for a sudden glow in the night. It might be caused by workers, but the probability was that it would announce the two killers.

Three minutes later, his box was snatched from him. Aware that it would be, he had risen and leaped to the railing. Here was an intersection where the belt passed beneath a northward belt. The sensors of the pair of mechanical arms stationed here had read the coded plaque on the box, had determined that its route should be changed, and had lifted it and deposited it on a belt in a recess. Caird climbed up a short ladder and got onto the north-going belt. For a moment, he thought about switching to the south-going belt. In a little more than a quarter-mile, he could get onto an east-going belt. The immers would not know where he was because they could not see his light. However, that would be the longer route to his destination. He could take the chance that the immers would not catch up. How would they know when they got to the intersection—if they got to it—that he had taken this belt? They would not know unless they arrived quickly enough to see the light wrapping him like a photonic shroud. He was gambling that he could switch to an east-going belt before then.

His back against another box, he passed quietly under the Kropotkin Canal. Above him was rock, metal, water, fish, and the storm. He was, at the moment, both subterranean and subaqueous. And he was passing from darkness into darkness, his presence birthing new light. In the darkness behind were known terrors. Who knew what unknowns faced him?

(“Corny,” Repp said.)

(“It’s life,” Dunski said.)

(“Clinched, cloistered, and cloyed by clichés,” Tingle said.)

The next voice startled Caird. He had thought that it was gone forever.

(“I was wrong,” Will Isharashvili said. “I’ve wrestled with the ethics of the situation, and I’ve decided that I shouldn’t just give up to avoid violence. What I think—”)

(“My God! Isharashvili rides again!” Repp said.)

(“You can’t keep a good man down,” Dunski said. “And Will is
good.”)

(“What I think,” Isharashvili said gently, “is that—”)

“Quiet!” Caird said more loudly than he intended. “Shut up, you fools! They’ve found me! I can’t think with you chattering away at me!”

Far down the tunnel, the darkness had opened like a fist to let light out. Two Lilliputian figures were climbing over a box. He watched as they got down from the box and started trotting.

He was tired and desperate, but so were they. He climbed over the box, got down on the other side, and trotted. Sooner or later, he would pass SCC workers. If he had been alone, he would, probably, be reported. The workers would assume, however, that the two organics had reported to HQ that they were chasing the criminal. Those who asked the two officers if they wanted help would be told that none was needed. The immers did not want other organics involved.

When he saw an envelope of light in the darkness ahead, he forced himself to run faster, and to climb over the boxes more vigorously. Fortunately, there were only three td get over before he got to the light. This came from an office in a recess at the intersection of north-south and east-west belts.

He leaped out when he approached the steps and grabbed the railing. His chest heaving, breath sawing, he ran up the steps. The light accompanying him would merge with the light from the office windows. But that would not keep the pursuers from seeing him leave the belt.

He went past the windows. A man was sitting at a desk and watching a strip show while he drank from an unlabeled bottle.

If there was another worker around, he or she could be in the toilet or sleeping in the back room. Caird did not hesitate to take his chances. He ran around the corner, through the door, and at the man behind the desk. The man had just put the bottle down when Caird charged in, and he did not see Caird until he was almost on him. The man rose from the chair, saying, “What the ...?” Caird grabbed the bottle by the neck and brought it down on the man’s forehead. He just wanted to stun him, not severely injure or kill him. The man fell backward over the chair and sprawled out, his eyes closed and his mouth hanging open. Whiskey fumes rose from it.

Caird glanced at the half-closed door to the back room. A woman’s head and the cot on which she lay were visible. Her mouth was open, and she was snoring as heavily as the unconscious man. He assumed that she had also been drinking the bootleg whiskey.

The man on the floor groaned, and his eyelids fluttered. Caird groaned, too, though not for the same reason. He had to make sure that the man was unconscious for at least five minutes.

Gritting his teeth, disliking what he had to do, Caird lifted the man, propped him against the desk, and hit him on the jaw with the bottle. The man fell over on his side.

33.

Caird dragged the body by the feet through the doorway. Forty feet eastward was one of the huge mechanical arms that removed boxes from one belt to another. He dropped the man’s legs and switched the controls on the panel at its base to MANUAL. He slipped his hand into a metal-mesh glove and moved it as he wished the arm and its “fingers” to move.

The man, his waist gripped by the “fingers,” his body arched, head and arms and legs dangling, was placed in front of a box on the east-going belt.