H M Hoover Read online

“Because. If everyone is equal and all levels are the same—and if one level lived like that—other people would notice it and want to go there, too. Wouldn’t they?”

  “If they could,” agreed Axel. “If they knew about it.”

  “And even if there is an eightieth level its still inside the city and I’d rather go out.”

  “Where’s ground level?” He saw her puzzlement and explained, “Where the building meets the surface?”

  “Level one?” That seemed logical to her.

  But Axel shook his head. “I’ve been all over there. There’s no outside door at all. There’s none on two or three, either. A lot of this place is underground. All the freight belts are.” “How do you know that?” asked Amy.

  “Because they come into our terminal at Mercer from tunnels, and they go back into tunnels—and the tunnels to the city all slant down. I saw them that day—”

  In the dim passage across the way the man abruptly sat up and stared at them. By chance Amy glanced up to see him avert his stare. The man didn’t look psycho—or drugged— not when you looked closely. Sick maybe, but not crazy. She watched him fumble around beneath himself, pull out a flattened bunch of rags and slowly dress. All the time he dressed he kept looking over at them. He began to talk to himself. “What’s wrong with him?” Axel sat up, ready to run.

  “I don’t know—if he comes near we’ll go into my place.” The man rose with effort and kept one hand on the wall for support as he came toward the main passage, where he paused and looked both ways before starting toward the entrance. “The watcher is everywhere,” they heard him say as he stumbled out of sight.

  “He heard us!” Axel started to get up, but Amy pulled him down.

  “He couldn’t have. He’s just trying to scare us. He probably thinks he’s being funny.”

  “Maybe not.” Axel was worried. “There are cameras everywhere, and in the shelter they say half the crazies are watchers in disguise—”

  “And half the cameras are broken and some of them are dummy units,” Amy said. “Crazies stare because they are crazies. If you start worrying about it all, you'll go crazy yourself.”

  “Yeah,” Axel said quietly. “Sometimes when I see people like that, I think that’s what Fll be when I grow up if I can’t get out of here. ...”

  It hadn’t occurred to Amy to think of crazies as once having been someone like herself or Axel . . . who grew up. It was a very scary idea. To have that as a future . . . Valory thought Amy’s mind was spoiled already. What if others did, too?

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” she said. “Not yet, anyway. We’re going to get out of the city.”

  “When are we going to go?”

  “I don’t know—but we won’t tell anybody, and we won’t ask people questions. It doesn’t pay to make people curious about why you want to know something “How will we do it? I’ve tried and—”

  “I don’t know. But there has to be a way."

  4

  Before going to sleep that night, Amy tried to picture the city in her mind. Her image was that of a labyrinth of hails and corridors, low-ceilinged, dim, busy with human life and noise. But she could not see an outer shape, an encasement and end to it all. Yet she knew there had to be one somewhere. People had come inside from somewhere.

  The teaching machines said there were eighty levels and all levels were the same. Two wide corridors passed through

  each level. They were labeled A and B. Halls crossed the corridors. People lived in the blocks along the halls and worked in labs or factories on the corridors.

  There was a saying: “Halls are straight and have an end; corridors go on forever.” For all Amy knew, that was true. Every hall she'd ever walked ended eventually in a shop or living space. She’d explored a hundred and forty blocks of corridor A before turning back, and ninety blocks on B, and both had stretched on ahead, unchanging.

  Once, Janet had told her, there had been open spaces between building sectors, high windowed lobbies that went up twenty levels or more, and moving ramps, and trees, and flowers. But that was long ago, Amy knew, and all gone now. Maybe it had been better then.

  In the bunk below, Valory mumbled in her sleep and then thumped the wall as she rolled over and took a deep sighing breath. Amy put her earguards down; it was time for the woman to go into deep sleep, and when she did that, she ground her teeth. The girl hated that sound, a furtive skeech-skeech-skeech—like rats chewing inside the walls.

  The bunk shook and Amy’s eyes flew open to see the light flickering in the ceiling panel. The entire room was quaking with vibration from somewhere. She held her breath until the light became steady again. The shaking was normal. It happened most nights about this time and went on all night. But Amy always worried the lights might go out and there would be only blackness. Some people, she knew, prayed to their light panel and pasted bright things on the ceiling near it to encourage it to glow.

  She had tried doing that, but Valory made her stop. It showed no faith in the authorities, Valory said, and you had to believe they were in control. Otherwise you got nowhere.

  Now Amy reached over and pressed her palm flat against the wall to feel the hum that never stopped. Although no one had ever told her so, she believed that so long as the wall hummed, so long as there was noise, the city was alive and the people in it were safe.

  The light flickered again, and she closed her eyes. If the lights went out, she didn’t want to know about it until she woke up. She went back to thinking.

  The trouble was, she didn’t know where to begin to look for a way out—or how long it would take to find it. If it took only a day, then she wouldn’t have to worry about food arid things like that. But if it took longer, where would she sleep at night? Sleeping in the halls was dangerous. And if she used her ID card for food, they could trace her and bring her back as a runaway. Then Valory would be angry and Amy would be labeled a troublemaker and have to wear orange suits and maybe get sent to Rehabilitation for chemotherapy and truth teaching.

  She didn’t want to cause her mother more shame or get her in trouble. If she’d been a normal child she would have been transferred to live in a training dorm as other ten-year-olds were, but she was eleven and the authorities still had not transferred her. Valory said it was because they didn’t want Amy perverting other children with her reading.

  If she went away, Amy thought, Valory would be glad because then the authorities might give permission for Val-ory’s friend Ted to move in. The two adults often told Amy that if it weren’t for her living here, things would be a lot easier for them. So she would give them the gift of her space.

  She fell asleep feeling noble and a little sorry for herself, since she suspected that if she went away no one would miss her. Not only that, but they might be glad she’d gone.

  Still, she didn’t want to cause worry or have the authorities start looking for her as soon as she left. She would have to think of some excuse to be away. . . .

  The slam of the sanit door woke her. Her earguards had slipped off, and the sudden noise frightened her and set her heart racing. She could never understand how her mother could get the sanit door to make that much noise—Amy had tried sliding it as hard as she could and never got more than a soft clunk out of it. But then Valory could make almost anything slam.

  Soon I won’t have to hear that any more, Amy thought, listening to the sounds from the module. Maybe never again. If I left today—her stomach suddenly felt lead-filled and she shivered. What if they did get outside and it was awful out there like people said it was and they couldn’t get back in? Then what?

  If you do find a way, you can stand inside and look out and see, her common sense told her. If it’s bad, you don’t have to go out; you can come back here. But what if Ted had moved into her space while she was gone?

  This would not do. If she started thinking this way, she would give up before she started—as Axel had nearly given up. As the crazies had given up. Or she’d become like V
alory. Amy wasn’t sure what was wrong with her mother, but she knew she didn’t want to be like her or, for that matter, like any adult she had ever known. Except Janet.

  The sanit door rumbled open. Amy feigned sleep as Valory emerged to dress and comb her hair. Prolonged forced intimacy had created an aversion between them that increased as Amy got older. With her eyes shut, she knew every move Valory made.

  She listened to the morning ritual until the noises indicated her mother’s near departure for her job. Then she half sat up under the low ceiling.

  “I nearly forgot to tell you,” Amy said. “I’m going to ask to be moved into a training dorm.”

  The woman stared at the piece of protomush she was eating for breakfast. “They won’t take you.” She spoke without looking at the girl.

  “They might. My record’s pretty normal now. I can try.” “They won’t take you,” her mother repeated. “I know.” “You tried to get me moved out of here?”

  “For the past year. For your own good. You should have a skill. Besides”—the tone became defensive—“I have a right to have some adult male company while I’m still young.”

  It was one thing to want to leave, but quite another to realize she definitely was not wanted and hadn’t been for a long, long time. Amy found she was both surprised and frightened by her mother’s words. But she wasn’t going to let Valory know that.

  “I’m going to apply myself,” she said, “so if you come back and I’m not here—that’s where I’ll be.”

  “No such luck.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m going to be late for work if I don’t quit listening to your stupid talk.”

  She rose and put the remains of her meal into the freezer, then without a further word went out the door. Neither of them said good-bye, but then, Amy thought later, strangers usually don't.

  The girl climbed down from her bunk and stood in the middle of the tiny room, looking at it. This room was the on.!v home she could remember. It was an odd feeling to think she might never see it again. It suddenly seemed a very safe place to be. Except she wasn’t wanted here.

  Although it wasn’t her day to shower, she did so—half in defiance and half from an urge to start out clean. Before she dressed, she opened the freezer and, finding six protomush disks there, put them all into the cooker and set the timer for an extra minute to make them dry, like cookies. She put on both of her two clean suits, one on top of the other, and when the mush was done, ate one cake. When the rest were cool, she slid them into her shirt pockets. In the baggy unpressed garments, bulging pockets made no difference. There was nothing else she wanted to take with her but her comb and toothbrush. She didn’t own anything else. Turning on the roach ray, she policed the area. Keeping the room neat was her job, and she did it extra thoroughly.

  When the blankets had been folded on each bunk mattress, the ray shut off, and, the dead bugs kicked out into the hall, she was finished with the room. There was no sign that she lived here except for her dirty sandals by the door. She washed them and put them in the micro-cooker to dry before putting them on, and then she left.

  5

  The crazy wasn’t sleeping in his usual spot this morning. On her way out she saw him leaning against the fry shop window, shirt off, talking to himself. For a split second their glances met, and she felt a twinge of guilty fear. What if he was a watcher? But he looked away and drooled, and she promptly forgot about him as she entered the pedestrian traffic in the hallway.

  She took for granted the dimly lit halls and corridors, concrete tunnels fetid with the scents of unwashed bodies, morning breaths, stale food odors, clogged drains, and venti-ators blocked with refuse. This was normal for her. She had never known anything else.

  Morning traffic was heavy with first-shift workers going to work, third-shifters coming home, and students en route to class. Delivery pushcarts blocked half the halls and crowded the corridors and ramps. The delivery people tended to get nasty when someone was in their way. Deliveries were supposed to be made at night but somehow never were.

  The corridors were five times wider than the halls but worse to travel because of inter-level traffic, especially around the ramps. People were often knocked down and stepped on in the crush when the traffic lights changed. When that happened, sirens and guard whistles shrilled through the crowd roar. In the enclosed spaces all sounds echoed and were magnified over and over.

  Amy had learned to walk as fast as traffic allowed, dodging and weaving to avoid all contact with strangers. People were odd in the anonymity of crowds; some hit and some caressed, and she was not sure which kind of touch was more frightening. Shut into the whispering protection of her earguards, she slipped through the mob with the swiftness of a wild thing, adept at eluding any kind of capture. Her walk to the learning center took her twenty-five minutes.

  Axel wasn’t in class when she got there. He was often late so she didn’t start to worry until after the opening isometrics session.

  “The crazy isn’t here.” Anita pointed at Axel’s empty terminal.

  “He’s not crazy,” Amy said as she wiped her forehead. It was very warm exercising in two suits of clothing.

  “He’s not normal.”

  “Maybe he’s sick?” a boy named Alan said.

  “How could they tell?” Anita laughed, but no one else did. The older girl’s eyes narrowed and she looked more closely at Amy. “You’re getting fat! Look at you! Is that why you get out of training dorm? Because your mother steals extra rations for you?”

  “She doesn’t!” Amy blushed, first with anger at Anita and then with self-consciousness as the other students stared at her. With two sets of clothes on and her pockets stuffed full, maybe she did look odd, but nobody had noticed until now. “Why don’t you mind your own business, Anita?”

  “The truth hurts!” the other girl taunted.

  Amy turned her back and sat down. Giving Anita a good kick would be very satisfying, but it would also start a fight. Anita outweighed her by thirty pounds, and Amy was not stupid. Nor did she want to attract the camera’s attention to herself this morning. She just wanted to get out of here.

  She could go up to level twelve and try to find Axel, but if he had already left the shelter and was on his way here she’d never see him in the crowds. And if he was sick . . . she didn’t want to go home again without even trying to get outside, but she didn’t want to go without him.

  The buzzer rasped for class. Talking ceased. Amy’s first tape was called “City Living” and was a retarded form of citizenship. She had been given the same course for three years now, its scheduling part of the watcher’s system to dull her mind as much as possible.

  “Hallway traffic flows fine if we all keep in single line,” the worn tape chanted. “Traffic never gets too tight if we all keep to the right,” and “We will have a better day if we give sirens right of way.”

  No rhyme had been found for “Don’t shove on ramps,” or “Wasting water kills us all.” While her screen showed a series of warning symbols, the voice track explained the meaning of these road signs for the illiterate. “Don’t run/’ was a picture of a boy with broken legs.

  Amy pretended to watch by staring at the top rim of her screen. Next to her, Anita’s screen was showing the simplified steps of assembling thong sandals as part of the girl’s career training. To the left, Ann was learning how to repair the sealing unit of a pipe extruder. Amy had seen both those tapes so often she knew them by heart.

  Sometimes, if she allowed herself to think about how bored she was, a feeling of deep tiredness would come over her- Her body would seem to weigh a thousand pounds, her stomach would start to churn, and she would have to get up and go to the sanit to keep from fainting or throwing up. So she had learned not to think about it but instead would try to remember a story in the book and flash it on the screen within her mind.

  This might be the last time she ever sat here like this. She knew she should feel bad abou
t that, but she didn’t. Her mother still talked about how bad she felt when she had to leave her learning center for training dorm. Amy wondered why; it wouldn’t matter to her if she never saw Anita again, or Ann, who had once been her best friend until Anita warned her that Amy was a reader. Ann didn’t even know what “reader” meant, but she had quit talking to Amy. Or Alan, who was very bright, but pretended to be a normal, and passed hours playing with himself until the watcher had him fixed. Or Agnes, who never spoke, just smiled sometimes.

  At midbreak, when all the others went to get their lunch from the dispensers, Amy went to find Axel.

  There was much less traffic now. Some places one could see all the way across the corridor and, at intersections, down the halls. Greasy fluid had been spilled on the up ramp to level ten. Maintenance workers were spreading lint to absorb the slippery oil. Amy waited at the edge of the crowd until the ramp was clear, then let the crowd precede her so she could take her time.

  She liked walking ramps. They curved and she found curves pleasing in a world where everything ran in straight lines. For safety reasons, the ramps were well lit and kept fairly clean and, where they opened out onto a level, gave the only feeling of spaciousness she knew.

  There was no need to ask directions; the youth shelters were in the same block on every level, at B and seven down. At the shelter two guards sat on stools just inside the sliding glass doors.

  They were talking to each other, and while one looked up and saw her waiting, he ignored her. She waved, then pressed her nose against the glass, looking lost and scared. After a good five minutes one of the men bestirred himself enough to rise and open the door a crack, but he neither spoke nor looked directly at her.

  “Thank you,” she said, suspecting that if she let her anger show, he'd slam the door as if she didn’t exist. Adults did that to kids, or anyone smaller than themselves. “I’ve come to get Axel 32281. He’s a transfer in my class on nine, and he didn’t show up. Is he sick?”