Nine by Laumer Read online

  The police pattern appeared. Sid paused to gather his thoughts. First things first …

  “That earthquake,” he said. “What’s happening? And the maniac who’s been exposing his face. My wife—”

  “The foregoing interruption was the result of circumstances beyond the control of CentProg. Normal service will now be resumed.”

  “What are you talking about? nothing is beyond the control of CentProg—”

  “The foregoing interruption was the result of circumstances beyond the control of CentProg. Normal service will now be resumed.”

  “That’s enough of your damned nonsense! What about this crazy guy showing his bare face? How do I know that he won’t—” “The foregoing interruption was the result of circumstances beyond the control of CentProg. Normal service will now be resumed.”

  Sid stared, aghast. A taped voice! A brush-off! He was supposed to settle for that? Well, by God, he had a contract …

  Mel’s code flashed again. Sid tuned him in. “Mel, this is a damned outrage. I called police channel and do you know what I got? A canned announcement—”

  “Sid,” Mel cut in. “Do you suppose it meant anything? I mean the … uh … guy with the … uh … face. All that about getting out, and the glacier wiping out the city.”

  “What?” Sid stared at Mel’s pattern, trying to make sense of what he was saying. “Glacier?” he said. “Wipe out what?”

  “You saw him, didn’t you? The crazy bird, cut in on all channels. He said the ice was going to wipe out the city …”

  Sid thought back. The damned obscene face. He hadn’t really listened to what it was raving about. But it was something about getting out …

  “Tell me that again, Mel.”

  Mel repeated the bare-faced man’s warning. “Do you suppose there’s anything in it? I mean, the shocks, and everything. And you can’t get police channel. And I tried to tune in to Pubinf just now and I got a canned voice, just like you did …”

  “It’s crazy, Mel. It can’t…”

  “I don’t know. I’ve tried to reach a couple of the fellows; I can’t get through …”

  “Mel,” Sid asked suddenly. “How long has it been? I mean, how long since CentProg has been handling things?”

  “What? My God, Sid, what a question. I don’t know.”

  “A long time, eh, Mel? A lot could have happened outside.”

  “My contract—”

  “But how do we know? I was talking to Ouster just now; we couldn’t remember. I mean, how can you gauge a thing like that? We have our routine, and everything goes along, and nobody thinks about anything like … outside. Then all of a sudden—”

  “I’m trying Pubinf again,” Mel said. “I don’t like this—”

  Mel was gone. Sid tried to think. Pubinf was handing out canned brush-offs, just like Police Channel. CentProg … maybe it was okay now …

  CentProg was still dark. Sid was staring at the blank screens when a new shock sent heavy vibrations through his cocoon. Sid gasped, tried to keep cool. It would pass; it wasn’t anything, it couldn’t be …

  The vibrations built, heavy, hard shocks that drove the air from Sid’s lungs, yanked painfully at arms, legs, neck, and his groin …

  It was a long time before the nausea passed. Sid lay, drawing breath painfully, fighting down the vertigo. The pain—it was a help, in a way. It helped to clear his head. Something was wrong, bad wrong. He had to think now, do the right thing. It wouldn’t do to panic. If only there wouldn’t be another earthquake …

  Something wet splattered against Sid’s half-open mouth. He recoiled, automatically spitting the mucky stuff, snorting—

  It was Vege-pap, gushing down from the feeding tube. Sid averted his face, felt the cool semi-liquid pattering against the cocoon, spreading over it, sloshing down the sides. Something was broken …

  Sid groped for the cut-off with his tongue, gagging at the viscous mess pouring over his face. Of course, it hadn’t actually touched his skin, except for his lips; the cocoon protected him. But he could feel the thick weight of it, awash in the fluid that supported the plastic cocoon. He could sense it quite clearly, flowing under him, forcing him up in the chamber as the hydrostatic balance was upset. With a shock of pain, Sid felt a set of neuro contacts along his spinal cord come taut. He gritted his teeth, felt searing agony as the contacts ripped loose.

  Half the world went dark and cold. Sid was only dimly aware of the pressure against his face and chest as he pressed against the cell roof. All sensation was gone from his legs now, from his left arm, his back. His left contact screen was blank, unseeing. Groaning with the effort, Sid strained to reach out with a toe, key the emergency signal—

  Hopeless. Without the boosters he could never make it. His legs were dead, paralyzed. He was helpless.

  He tried to scream, choked, fought silently in the swaddling cocoon, no longer a euphorically caressing second skin but a dead, clammy weight, binding him. He twisted, feeling unused muscles cramp at the effort, touched the lever that controlled the face-plate. It had been a long time since Sid had opened the plate. He’d had a reputation as an open-air fiend once—but that had been—he didn’t know how long. The lever was stiff. Sid lunged against it again. It gave. There was a sudden lessening of pressure as the burden of Vege-pap slopped out through the opening. Sid sank away from the ceiling of the tiny cubicle, felt his cocoon ground on the bottom.

  For a long time Sid lay, dazed by pain and shock, not even thinking, waiting for the agony to subside …

  Then the itching began. It penetrated Sid’s daze, set him twitching in a frenzy of discomfort. The tearing loose of the dorsal contacts had opened dozens of tiny rents in the cocoon; a sticky mixture of the supporting water bath and Vege-pap seeped in, irritating the tender skin. Sid writhed, struggled to scratch—and discovered that, miraculously, the left arm responded now. The motor nerves which had been stunned by the electroneural trickle-flow through the contacts were recovering control. Feebly, Sid’s groping hand reached his inflamed hip—and scrabbled against the smooth sheath of plastic.

  He had to get out. The cocoon was a confining nightmare, a dead husk that had to be shed. The face-plate was open. Sid felt upward, found the edge, tugged—

  Slippery as an eel, he slithered from the cocoon, hung for an instant as the remaining contacts came taut, then slammed to the floor a foot below. Sid didn’t feel the pain of the fall; as the contacts ripped free, he fainted.

  When Sid recovered consciousness, his first thought was that the narco channel was getting a little too graphic. He groped for a tuning switch—

  Then he remembered. The earthquake, Mel, the canned announcement—

  And he had opened his face-plate and fought to get out—and here he was. He blinked dully, then moved his left hand. It took a long time, but he managed to peel the contact screens from his eyes. He looked around. He was lying on the floor in a rectangular tunnel. A dim light came from a glowing green spot along the corridor. Sid remembered seeing it before, a long time ago … the day he and Cluster had entered their cocoons.

  Now that he was detached from the stimuli of the cocoon, it seemed to Sid, he was able to think a little more clearly. It had hurt to be torn free from the security of the cocoon, but it wasn’t so bad now. A sort of numbness had set in. But he couldn’t lie here and rest; he had to do something, fast. First, there was Cluster. She hadn’t answered. Her cocoon was situated right next to his—

  Sid tried to move; his leg twitched; his arm fumbled over the floor. It was smooth and wet, gummy with the Vege-pap that was still spilling down from the open face-plate. The smell of the stuff was sickening. Irrationally, Sid had a sudden mouth-watering hunger for Prote-sim.

  Sid fixed his eyes on the green light, trying to remember. He and Cluster had been wheeled along the corridor, laughing and talking gaily. Somehow, out here, things took on a different perspective. That had been—God! years ago. How long? Maybe— twenty years? Longer. Fifty, maybe. Ma
ybe longer. How could you know? For a while they had tuned to Pubinf, followed the news, kept up with friends on the outside. But more and more of their friends had signed contracts with CentProg. The news sort of dried up. You lost interest.

  But what mattered now wasn’t how long, it was what he was going to do. Of course, an attendant would be along soon in any case to check up, but meanwhile, Cluster might be in trouble—

  The tremor was bad this time. Sid felt the floor rock, felt the hard paving under him ripple like the surface of a pond. Somewhere, a rumbling sound rolled, and somewhere something heavy fell. The green light flickered, then burned steadily again.

  A shape moved in the gloom of the corridor; there was the wet slap of footsteps. Sid sub-vocalized a calm ‘Hi, fellows’— The silence rang in his ears. My God, of course they couldn’t hear him. He tried again, consciously vocalizing, a tremendous shout—

  A feeble croak, and a fit of coughing. When he recovered his breath, a bare and hairy face, greenish white, was bending over him.

  “… this poor devil,” the man was saying in a thin choked voice.

  Another face appeared over the first face’s shoulder. Sid recognized them both. They were the two that had been breaking into decent channels, with their wild talk about a glacier …

  “Listen, fellow,” one of the bare-faced men said. Sid stared with fascinated disgust at the clammy pale skin, the sprouting hairs, the loose toothless mouth, the darting pink tongue. God, people were horrible to look at!

  . . be along after a while. Didn’t mean to stir up anybody in your shape. You been in too long, fellow. You can’t make it.”

  “I’m … good … shape …” Sid whispered indignantly.

  “We can’t do anything for you. You’ll have to wait till the maintenance unit comes along. I’m pretty sure you’ll be okay. The ice’s piled itself up in a wall now, and split around the city walls. I think they’ll hold. Course, the ice will cover the city, but that won’t matter. CentProg will still handle everything. Plenty of energy from the pile and the solar cells, and the recycling will handle the food okay …”

  “… Cluster …” Sid gasped. The bare-faced man leaned closer. Sid explained about his wife. The man checked nearby face-plates. He came back and knelt by Sid. “Rest easy, fellow,” he said. “They all look all right. Your wife’s okay. Now, we’re going to have to go on. But you’ll be okay. Plenty of Vege-pap around, I see. Just eat a little now and then. The Maintenance machine will be along and get you tucked back in.”

  “Where … ?” Sid managed.

  “Us? We’re heading south. Matt here knows where we can get clothes and supplies, maybe even a flier. We never were too set on this Vital Programming. We’ve only been in maybe a few years and we always did a lot of auto-gym work, keeping in shape. Didn’t like the idea of wasting away … Matt’s the one found out about the ice. He came for me …”

  Sid was aware of the other man talking. It was hard to hear him.

  A sudden thought struck Sid. “… how … long … ?” he asked.

  It took three tries, but the bare-faced man got the idea at last.

  “I’ll take a look, fellow,” he said. He went to Sid’s open faceplate, peered at it, called the other man over. Then he came back, his feet spattering in the puddled Vege-pap.

  “Your record says … 2043,” he said. He looked at Sid with wide eyes. They were red and irritated, Sid saw. It made his own eyes itch.

  “If that’s right, you been here since the beginning. My God, that’s over … two hundred years . .

  The second bare-faced man, Matt, was pulling the other away. He was saying something, but Sid wasn’t listening. Two hundred years. It seemed impossible. But after all, why not? In a controlled environment, with no wear and tear, no disease, you could live as long as CentProg kept everything running. But two hundred years …

  Sid looked around. The two men were gone. He tried to remember just what had happened, but it was too hard. The ice, they had said, wouldn’t crush the city. But it would flow around it, encase it in ice, and the snow would fall, and cover it, and the city would lie under the ice.

  Ages might pass. In the cells, the cocoons would keep everyone snug and happy. There would be the traditional sitcoms, and Narco, and Psychan …

  And up above, the ice.

  Sid remembered the awful moments in the cocoon, when the shock waves had rocked him; the black wave of fear that had closed in; the paralyzing claustrophobia.

  The ice would build up and build up. Ice, two miles thick …

  Why hadn’t they waited? Sid groped, pushed himself up, rolled over. He was stronger already. Why hadn’t they waited? He’d used the micro-spasm unit regularly—every so often. He had good muscle tone. It was just that he was a little stiff. He scrabbled at the floor, moved his body a few inches. Nothing to it. He remembered the reason for the green light; it was the elevator. They had brought him and Cluster down in it. All he had to do was get to it, and—

  What about Cluster? He could try to bring her along. It would be lonely to be without her. But she wouldn’t want to leave. She’d been here—two hundred years. Sid almost chuckled. Cluster wouldn’t like the idea of being as old as that …

  No, he’d go alone. He couldn’t stay, of course. It would never be the same again for him. He pulled himself along, an inch, another. He rested, sucked up some Vege-pap from where it spread near his mouth …

  He went on. It was a long way to the green light, but if you took it an inch at a time, an inch at a time …

  He reached the door. There hadn’t been any more shocks. Along the corridor, the glass face-plates stood closed, peaceful, orderly. The mess on the floor was the only thing. But the maintenance units would be along. The bare-faced man had said so.

  You opened the door to the elevator by breaking a beam of light; Sid remembered that. He raised his arm; it was getting strong, all right. It was hardly any effort to lift it right up—

  The door opened with a whoosh of air. Sid worked his way inside. Half way in, the door tried to close on him; his weight must have triggered the door-closing mechanism. But it touched him and flew open again. It was working fine, Sid thought.

  He pulled his legs in, then rested. He would have to get up to the switch, somehow, and that was going to be tricky. Still, he had gotten this far okay. Just a little farther, and he’d catch up with the bare-faced men, and they’d set out together.

  It took Sid an hour of hard work, but he managed to reach, first, the low stool, then the chrome-plated control button. With a lurch the car started up. Sid fell back to the floor and fought back wave on wave of vertigo. It was hectic, being outside. But he wouldn’t go back now; not even to see Cluster’s familiar identity pattern again. Never again. He had to get out.

  The elevator came to a stop. The door slid open—and a blast of sub-arctic air struck Sid like a blow from a giant hammer. His naked body—mere flaccid skin over atrophied bones—curled like a grub in the flames. For a long moment all sensation was washed away in the shock of the cold. Then there was pain; pain that went on and on …

  And then the pain went, and it was almost like being back again, back in the cocoon, warm and comfortable, secure and protected and safe. But not quite the same. A thought stirred in Sid’s mind. He pushed at the fog of cotton-wool, fought to grasp the thought that bobbed on the surface of the blissful warmth.

  He opened his eyes. Out across the white expanse of roof-tops, beyond the last rim of the snow, the glittering jagged shape of the ice-face reared up, crystal-blue, gigantic; and in the high arched blue-black sky, a star burned with a brilliant fire.

  This was what he wanted to tell Cluster, Sid thought. This, about the deep sky, and the star, so far away—and yet a man could see it.

  But it was too late now to tell Cluster, too late to tell anyone. The bare-faced men were gone. Sid was alone; alone now under the sky.

  Long ago, Sid thought, on the shore of some warm and muddy sea, some yearning s
ea-thing had crawled out to blink at the open sky, gulp a few breaths of burning oxygen, and die.

  But not in vain. The urge to climb out was the thing. That was the force that was bigger than all the laws of nature, greater than all the distant suns blazing in their meaningless lonely splendor.

  The other ones, the ones below, the secure and comfortable ones in their snug cocoons under the snow, they had lost the great urge. The thing that made a man.

  But he, Sid Throndyke—he had made it.

  Sid lay with his eyes on the star and the silent snow drifted over him to form a still small mound; and then the mound was buried, and then the city.

  And only the ice and the star remained.

  A TRIP TO THE CITY

  “She’ll be pulling out in a minute, Brett,” Mr. Phillips said. He tucked his railroader’s watch back in his vest pocket. “You better get aboard—if you’re still set on going.”

  “It was reading all them books done it,” Aunt Haicey said. “Thick books, and no pictures in them. I knew it’d make trouble.” She plucked at the faded hand-embroidered shawl over her thin shoulders, a tiny bird-like woman with bright anxious eyes. “Don’t worry about me,” Brett said. “I’ll be back.”

  “The place’ll be yours when I’m gone,” Aunt Haicey said. “Lord knows it won’t be long.”

  “Why don’t you change your mind and stay on, boy?” Mr. Phillips said, blinking up at the young man. “If I talk to Mr. J.D., I think he can find a job for you at the plant.”

  “So many young people leave Casperton,” Aunt Haicey said. “They never come back.”

  Mr. Phillips clicked his teeth. “They write, at first,” he said. “Then they gradually lose touch.”

  “All your people are here, Brett,” Aunt Haicey said. “Haven’t you been happy here?”

  “Why can’t you young folks be content with Casperton?” Mr. Phillips said. “There’s everything you need here.”