Cybernetic Controller Read online

  CYBERNETIC CONTROLLER

  ***

  A. V. Clarke & H. K. Bulmer

  ***

  Printed in Great Britain

  HAMILTON & CO.

  1 & 2 Melville Court, Gold

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  Chapter One

  "Look out there! The roof’s going!”

  Before he had finished the warning shout, Lin leapt through downward puffing clouds of dust, seized his comrade’s arm and smashed their two sweat-soaked bodies against the tunnel wall.

  Falling earth thudded heavily at their feet. Rocks rolled through the mounting chaos and crashed into the digger-machine. Shouts and curses and the screams of crushed men knifed through the din. Splinters of glass stung Lin’s face as the powerful lighting tubes on a nearby truck exploded with sharp reports, and he heard the steady hiss of the Vacuaminer intake funnel choke and die.

  Lin spat out hot grit, staggered through the gloom towards the Control Board. The falls of earth were ceasing, but thick dust filled the air and seared his eyes as he felt his way around a half-buried digging machine. In a flickering circle of light the Third Level technician, unsteadily wiping blood away from his face, was shouting into the inter-comm microphone.

  “ . . . and Sissy knows how many killed! Get the emergency crew through at the double! I'll get someone sent Outside for this . . . those first stage props they’ve been sending us . . . what do you want?” He glared redly at Lin.

  “It wasn’t the props, technician. The fall shows that the strain was on the East wall more than the roof. I think we’ve broken through to another tunnel.”

  “You think! Why, you—what! Another tunnel?” He swung round, wiped grit-filled eyes and peered through the falling dust and past the dimly seen forms of frantically digging men. An eddy of hot air swirled and shifted across the debris, the rescuers extricating the injured labourers appeared and disappeared, and, on the far wall, beyond the great mound of rubble and buried digging machines, a great gaping blankness swallowed the flickering light.

  “A tunnel,” breathed Lin. “One of the Ancient’s tunnels! ”

  The technician gaped for a moment, then turned back to the control board and snapped switches. A red light shone.

  “Guardroom? Send a squad through to the North 33 tunnel extension—we’ve broken into one of the old subways. Yes. Yes, I'll get my men out as soon as I can— we’ve had some casualties.”

  Lin stepped back as the technician turned from the board. The Third Level man began to issue rapid orders, and gradually men appeared from the blackness, received their orders. Makeshift stretchers were constructed, a group formed up at the open end of the workings. Lin groped his way back around the debris again to where he had left his shift mate.

  “Grota! Grota. get up! The fall has stopped. We’re going back.” The man had been crouching in a shivering heap, hands clasped over his head, sobbing in terror.

  Lin pulled him to his feet slapped him roughly across the face. “Grota! It’s all right! Come on, the others are going.”

  He could hear the technician snapping at others behind the machine, then the moans of wounded were drowned as someone started one of the chanting marching songs of the Fifth Level. The lights moved and swung and began retreating down the tunnel as the survivors began their journey back to the city block.

  There might have been some still living under the huge mound of earth, but few cared whether a Fifth Level labourer lived or died—certainly not a Third Level man like the technician. Lin clenched his fists and the old resentment choked him again.

  Under Sissy—C.C.. the Cybernetic Controller—you were graded at birth and in that class you stayed, and if it was Fifth Level you could consider yourself lucky to be looked after at all by those set above you. Grota and the others accepted their class and their life long service. Why should he feel so different from the others? Never to make any real friends. Never to meet others who would fully understand him.

  Impatiently he shook Grota’s shoulder.

  “Come on, they’re almost gone.”

  “All r-rights Lin.” Grota stumbled over the loose rocks, Lin’s hand under his arm. Echoes of falling stones whispered from the blank mouth of the old tunnel.

  Lin hesitated. One of the old tunnels! Once before a digging gang in which he had been working had broken through a tunnel and he had seen tantalising glimpses of rusted machinery, broken tile floors, before the workers had been herded back to their rooms.

  Here was another tunnel—and unguarded. There might be anything in it, even—books.

  He had a meagre dozen back at his room in the city block. Books collected by stealing, bribing and other devious ways. Books that gave fascinating glimpses of the world before the Final War. Supposing he found more—

  As Lin hesitated, Grota looked round.

  “What’s the matter, Lin?”

  “I—I don’t feel too well. I’ll just sit here and rest for a minute or two. If you hurry you’ll catch up with the others.”

  “Oh, no. I wouldn’t leave you. Are you hurt anywhere?”

  “No. I just want to rest. You go on.”

  “Oh, all right.. See you at the Red Pleasure Rooms tonight.”

  “Perhaps. I’ll meet you there at 20 hours if I go.”

  Grota trudged down the echoing tunnel, footsteps beating hollowly, his hand torch wavering a beam of light across walls and floor. He had not passed from sight when Lin slipped into the ancient tunnel mouth, his own torch ray cutting sharply through the still-settling dust. Rusted metal rails stretched before him in a long curving line that was lost in the gloom ahead.

  There might be a store of ancient knowledge somewhere ahead; books he could take and disguise in the brightly coloured covers of the Fifth Level novels. He stumbled forward over the sleepers. He had to hurry, for the guards would be coming soon. The relics of the old civilisation were always reserved for the inspection of First Level scientists. Lin smiled in the gloom. The ancient lore was not always secured by the First Level.

  The recurrent strangeness that he, a Fifth Level labourer, should yearn for the knowledge of these things shook him again, and his smile faded. There must be some reason . . .

  The questing torch beam slid across a wall ahead, and his hopes sank. This was a dead end then. There was nothing further. He would turn back, and if he met the guards tell them that he had been dazed, and—this was no wall! It was the end of a rectangular construction, and he could just make out the rusted debris of metal wheels fallen from the rails. He pushed forward recklessly, boots crushing gravel and sending stones clattering.

  Flaking red paint glimmered in the light, gaping windows, their glass broken and splintered, beckoned. The butt end of his torch knocked the remainder of the glass from the largest aperture, the carriage shuddered as his feet hit the boards inside. This was opportunity!

  The torch showed glimpses of skeleton seats, rusty springs thrusting through rotted upholstery, and scattered in amongst them, white bones and ragged, mummified bundles. The rats from the ruins had been here.

  “Poor devils,” breathed Lin. He felt nauseated at the thought of packed humans trapped underground here, dying, leaving their bones here to be discovered by a labourer of the CC civilisation. Then all thoughts and desires concentrated and flamed into one devouring urge. A suit case! The leather dry and dusty, steel locks corroded, the marks of rats’ teeth on the edges. Trembling, he lifted it by the handle. There was a ripping sound. The .whole thing sagged and collapsed, spilling onto the dusty floor bundles of rags that might have been ancient clothes and—three thick volumes!

  “Books!” Lin’
s shout boomed through the tunnel, and involuntarily he snapped off the torch, listened in alarm.

  Incredibly, as if in echo, a shout drifted back.

  “Lin!”

  In a single motion he scooped the books up, feeling their bindings stiff and solid, darted to the opening and crouched there, chills creeping up his spine.

  “Lin, it’s me, Grota! Where are you?”

  He let his breath out in a long sigh, stood up. The torch beam trembled a little as he flashed it twice down the tunnel, then he was clambering through the shattered window again, to land in another cloud of dust outside. His black hair was thick with it, and the taste of dirt lay on his tongue. He spat, then called softly.

  “Grota. Here!”

  Clattering unsteadily over the rubble the other came up, blinking in the light of Lin’s torch.

  “What’s that thing, Lin?” he asked, looking wonderingly at the ancient vehicle. “What have you got there? Why did you come this way? Did you lose yourself?”

  “It’s an underground vehicle—I think they called it a ‘train.’ These are books,” said Lin, briefly. Grota was a fairly typical Fifth Level labourer, brighter, than average if anything, for the fact that he had returned for Lin and deduced that he had come down here proved that somewhere he was different from his fellows. But Lin knew instinctively that intellectually Grota was as far removed from himself as were the First Class above him.

  “We’ve got to get back to the city-block right away,” he said, cheerfully, and ignoring Grota’s questioning stare, hunched the books under his arm and started back down the tunnel. He could find a tool-bag at the site of the tunnel fall to put them in. “I’ve been here too long already. They don’t like us poaching on First Class preserves.”

  “First Level—you mean only the First’s are supposed to come here? I didn’t know—you know we’re not supposed to go outside the Fifth Level, but I thought—” Grota’s voice died in a panicky gulp.

  “No,” whispered Lin, through tightened lips, “when the Cybernetic Controller graded us according to our potential intelligence as Fifth, we were condemned to—simple things. Since babyhood, no enquiring after knowledge. No curiosity about other classes, about the world outside, about— oh, everything that matters.”

  “But.—but we know all about the world, Lin. When the mad people had the Last War, everything outside was smashed. It’s dangerous to go outside, and anyway, who’d want to? We’ve got food, and after work, the pleasure rooms and—”

  He collided solidly with Lin as the other stopped.

  “Quiet!” Lin snapped off his torch, reached over and thumbed the switch on Grota’s. Faint flecks of light glanced upwards along the tunnel, the clash of heavy boots against the rails came clearly in sharp, ringing tones. A little avalanche of dirt whispered down the tunnel walls.

  “The guards!” Grota was suddenly trembling with fear. Lin took his arm, gripping tightly round the biceps.

  “Steady. Don’t panic. We must move up the tunnel. There may be a way out somewhere, or else we’ll hide until the guards have gone. Go quietly, and shield the light with your fingers, like this.”

  As rapidly as they dared, they retreated, stepping cautiously over distorted rails, squeezing past leaning carriages, through the wreckage of those crushed against the walls.

  “When the guards reach the train they’ll stop, then one will go back and report. We’ll just get as far away as possible, then wait it out.”

  Grota nodded dumbly, twisted to look back over his shoulder at the dancing beams in the rear. Unwatching, he walked into a jagged strip of metal tom from a side of the wreck, and yelled in anguish as the sharp edge ripped his flesh. Echoes pealing down the tunnel were answered by shouts in the rear. Torches flashed suddenly brighter.

  Lin cursed briefly, plunged forward, flung his arms around Grota, dragging him down into the deeper shadows beneath the nearest carriage. Harsh shouts and splintering sounds echoed along the tunnel as the guards forced their way through the wreckage.

  “Run!” gasped Lin. He smarted away, leaping obstructions, dodging the larger pieces, Grota pounding behind him. The harsh roar: of a shot boomed, magnified tenfold, then a fusillade as the torch beams found them. Grota’s torch suddenly clattered past Lin, its glass shattering, and Lin stopped, aware that his were the only noises.

  He flashed his light for a brief instant and helpless anger wrenched at his stomach as he saw the sprawl of Grota’s body and the red ruin of his back.

  He was away again, crawling along the tracks, over rubble, feeling his way in the darkness. Bullets screeched and ricochetted; but he was hearing something else. His own voice, reciting in the ten-year-old’s class: “Peace must be preserved. It is better for a man to die than the Rules be broken.”

  He was weakening. His body was bruised and cut from colliding with wreckage. He couldn’t go on.

  He stopped, grasping a support, swaying. And there was no pursuit. The crash of heavy boots stilled. They had found Grota’s body and he cursed dully as the triumphant overtones of their voices came to him. Peace must be preserved. So Grota must die. Lin must die. Humanity with mixed intelligence-classes had enabled stupid men to govern and war and destroy and eventually reduce itself to underground groups, hiding from surface dangers, and the Rules would keep peace for ever more . . .

  They might call off the hunt now, if they thought there had only been one fugitive. If he could find somewhere to hide—he squeezed into a corner, behind a pile of earth.

  There were sounds of feet again, advancing slowly, far down the tunnel. And a clicking. Here. With him.

  The sweat on his forehead seemed suddenly icy. His geiger. Strapped to his wrist, a little box, two inches square, such a standard part of equipment for anyone outside the city block that he never gave it a thought. He must throw it away before it’s ticking betrayed him.

  It seemed incredible afterwards that that was his first thought. Then he suddenly realised what it meant. There was radio-activity here. Not dangerous, from the rate of the counter, but here. He wiped his forehead, looked around. A thin, water}- shaft of light, shot through with specks of shining dust, soared up beside his shoulder. He peered up, trying to gauge the size of the hole in the roof. This could easily be an ancient bomb-crater, possibly the very one that had destroyed the wheeled train.

  The guards’ boots rang again, closer. There might be radio-active elements alive in the rocks above, and silent gamma rays might even now be quietly killing him, but a possible death was better than a sure one under the ripping fire of high-velocity bullets. He started to climb the side wall, slid back again in an agonisingly loud shower of dirt and loose tiles. Was there any other way?

  He looked around desperately. The faint, light showed cracked walls, piping running in sagging loops along the tunnel roof, and, he saw with sudden hope, the loose ends of wire cables running up into the bomb hole. Reaching to full stretch he grasped the ends, swung up, and hands clutching the wire, feet braced against the side of the hole, pulled and clawed in sudden spurts of energy.

  Sweat poured down his bare back, made his grip slippery. If the guards were near enough to see the cable ends moving—he should have taken the ends with him. He heaved again. Dirt cascaded into his face, into his eyes. Then his fingers met the wall of the hole, light formed dark red patterns on his closed eyelids. He blinked them open, caught the edge of the hole, jack-knifed up, found himself teetering on the edge at the bottom of a shallow crater. Instinct forced him away from the hole, up the sides of the crater, over the top.

  Then, nostrils and mouth gaping wide for air, the metallic taste of blood in his mouth, he collapsed onto the earth. On the Outside that he had never thought to see in person. The tears that filled his eyes were not all due to the dust in them.

  For long minutes he drew deep, shuddering breaths, trying to hear above the sound of his hammering heart the noise of pursuit. There was none. Calmer, he rubbed his eyes, and conscious that he was now in the wor
ld shunned by the self-contained city-block, peered through the dusk. Silhouetted against a blood-red western sky squatted the city-block, the huge, windowless concrete pile erected by the early survivors with little regard for anything but protection from the radio-active dust.

  Corrosive rains had swept the world, plagues had raged from the great cities of the north to remote Pacific islands, but beneath these hastily constructed city-blocks life had continued and expanded. Man had dug and burrowed until the earth was honeycombed into the fantastically convoluted corridors and caves of the CC civilisation.

  Desolation, smashed buildings, twisted girders loomed black in the gathering twilight. Lin shivered, glanced over his shoulder. Soon the guards would come pouring from the old bomb crater, hunting like wolves. He was one defenceless Fifth Level labourer, shivering in the oncoming chill of night. His chances of ever returning to the city block, the warmth and lights, the machine made life, the pleasure rooms, were growing slimmer. He was a pariah, to be shot down without mercy.

  He knuckled his eyes, cursing the dust. Blinking, he turned to move away from the crater. Quite close to his head was a pair of worn leather boots. Then slim ankles. Corduroy shorts, zipper jacket. He did not look any higher then, but concentrated on the bulky, high-velocity automatic.

  The trigger guard was shiny, the white finger round the trigger was smooth and without wrinkles. A fraction more pressure—

  “Get up, mole, and let me look at you.”

  The voice was smooth, controlled, overtoned with authority, and quite delightful.

  Chapter Two

  LIN rose, and the girl backed away a little, giving him no chance to grab the gun. Standing up, Lin was head and shoulders taller, but the weapon more than equalised the difference.

  “Well?” he said, quietly.

  “What are you doing here?”