A World Out of Time Part 10

"To be polite."

Corbell examined the array of eight b.u.t.tons by the light from his helmet. The booth could kill him so fast he'd never know it. Punch at random? He could do better than that. He chose a b.u.t.ton-the fifth, counting across and down, whose symbol looked like an upside-down L. A gallows. He pushed it once, pause, twice, pause, thrice- Four did it. Suddenly there was indirect lighting around the rim of the ceiling.

The door wouldn't open.

Annoyed, he chose another b.u.t.ton, an hourgla.s.s on its side and compressed from both ends: 4 4 4 4.

"You have changed position twice," Peerssa informed him.

This time the door opened.

There were disintegrating skeletons in identical... uniforms? Loose garments, short pants, sleeveless s.h.i.+rts with rolls of fabric at the shoulders. Under the dust the garments looked new, in bright scarlet with black markings. The bones inside were crumbled with age, but they could not have been big men. Five feet tall or thereabouts. Corbell moved among them looking for bullet wounds. No holes in the garments or the skulls... but from the way they sprawled they seemed to have died in a firefight, and they seemed to be human.

He found desks and what looked like computer terminals. A thick sliding door had been melted out of the wall. Beyond it were cells. Their gridwork doors were decoratively lacy, and different on each cell; but they were locked, and there were more skeletons in the cells.

"Police station," he reported to Peerssa. "I was trying for a restaurant. I pushed the same b.u.t.ton four times." He heard irritation in his voice. Getting tired? "See, what I didn't didn't want was a number that went nowhere. The numbers the restaurants fight for are the ones that are easiest to remember. At least they used to be." want was a number that went nowhere. The numbers the restaurants fight for are the ones that are easiest to remember. At least they used to be."

"The State restricts those numbers to important munic.i.p.al functions: police stations, hospitals, ombudsmen-"

Corbell stepped through another, larger melted door. Doors beyond retracted before him, and he stepped into a waterfall of rain. He'd finally made it outside. He couldn't see much. A city street.

and occasional heaps of clothing peeking through the mud, skimpy one-piece shorts-and-unders.h.i.+rt garments in every pattern and color save scarlet.

"I'll have to try the other repeating numbers," he said without moving.

"I think it is safe. If you find a number not in use, you will not go nowhere."

"You're willing to risk that, huh?" He still hadn't moved. The rain ran down his faceplate and drummed on his helmet.

"There is an alternative. I have probed the city with my senses. There is hollow s.p.a.ce, a system of tunnels underground, leading away in many directions. I can lead you to the underground s.p.a.ce where they converge."

"What's the point of... ? You think it's a subway system? They'd have stopped using it when they invented the booths."

"If they no longer used the subway cars, they may have kept the buildings as a transportation nexus. Economy."

V.

He walked through pelting rain on packed dirt covered by thin mud. It sucked at his boots. He couldn't afford the energy that cost him. He was already too tired.

The streets and buildings were largely intact. He found no more scenes of ma.s.s death.

There was a bubble, half gla.s.s and half metal, like a Christmas tree ornament twelve feet across. It had smashed against the side of a building and was half full of rainwater. Corbell looked inside. He found spongy upholstery, and a pair of seats. One was occupied. Mud with lumps of bone in it oozed from within a yellow shorts-and-unders.h.i.+rt garment. Corbell forced himself to search the big patch pockets. What he found, he stowed in his tool pouch. He could examine it later.

He walked on.

Later there was an intact bubble, abandoned. It looked intact; the brightwork in the interior gleamed. He tried to start it, but nothing he tried seemed to work. He gave up and went on.

Now there was a tremendous empty lot to one side, with wind weathered stumps of trees and traces of curving paths. A park? To his other side was a wall that went up and up, curving away from view. It curved away from before and behind him too, so that he had no idea how high it was or how wide.

In the mists beyond the office picture window he had thought to trace the outlines of a cube bigger than belief. So: It had been real.

Streets. Why streets? And cars? Corbell began to suspect what he would find at the transportation nexus.

"You are over the hollow s.p.a.ce," said Peerssa.

"That's good. I'm tired." Corbell looked around him. Mummified park to the left, wall to the right. Ahead... the wall turned to gla.s.s.

An entire wall of gla.s.s doors. He pushed through into gloom lit by his helmet lamp.

The ceiling gave no sense of distance: only of random colors that changed with his position. The place was wide. His beam got lost in it. He glanced down at another, confusing light: the glow of dials at his chin.

The temperature was down to 20 C.

"Air-conditioned," he said.

"Good. Your suit batteries will last longer."

"There could be anything in this place," he argued with himself. He opened his faceplate. No heat. Sniffed: a touch of staleness, that was all. "I've got to get out of this suit. I'm tired."

"Drink from the syrup nipple."

He laughed; he'd forgotten it was there. He sucked until his belly felt less empty. Peerssa was right: Half of his tiredness had been hunger.

He pulled himself out of the rest of the suit.

Stepping into the rug was a sudden, thrilling shock. It might be the same as the rotted rug in the office, but it was dry, intact, and ankle-deep. Like walking on a cloud. It felt d.a.m.ned expensive, but there must have been an acre of it here in the foyer of a public building.

"Going to sleep," he told the helmet. He sprawled out in the cloud of carpet and let it close around him.

VI.

Gray dawn. He wriggled a little in the luxury of the rug. The ceiling was thousands of shades of color in what seemed to be whorl patterns; you could go crazy staring into it and never know how far away it was. He closed his eyes and dozed again.

Came down to die, he thought. He said, "Peerssa, how do you expect me to die? Heart attack?" he thought. He said, "Peerssa, how do you expect me to die? Heart attack?"

No answer. The helmet was out there by his fingertips. He pulled it close and repeated the question.

"I think not," said Peerssa.

"Why? The State's wonderful medicines?"

"Yes, if one counts contraceptives as medicines. After the founding of the State, there was a generation in which no man or woman subject to inherited diseases might have children. The population fell by half. Famine ended-"

"Heart patients?" His father had died of a coronary! "Certainly the children of heart patients were not allowed to have children. Your genes are those of a criminal, but a healthy one."

"You arrogant sons of b.i.t.c.hes. What about my children?"

"Their father was cancer-p.r.o.ne."

So they'd edited Corbell's genes from the human race... and it was three million years too late to do anything about it. Corbell got up, stretched against stiff muscles, and looked about him.

There were rings of couches around freely curved tables that still floated. The couches looked like humps in the rug.

"Nuts," said Corbell. "I could have slept on a couch." He pushed down on a floating table, finally putting his full weight on both hands. He'd lowered the table an inch. When he released it it bobbed up again.

Set within one wall was a row of booths. Corbell went to examine them. The rug-stuff flowed delightfully around his toes.

In each booth were rows of pushb.u.t.tons marked with squiggles. A dozen b.u.t.tons, with the eight marks he'd seen already and four new ones. He pushed a b.u.t.ton larger than the others (OPERATOR?) and got no response. Then he noticed the slot.

From the tool pouch of his empty pressure suit he spilled the items he had stolen from a smashed car. A seamless silver lipstick did nothing for him. Handkerchief: faint colors seemed to swirl in the material. Candy wrapper: the hard candy must have melted in untold years of rain; or it could have been drugs or medicine; or he could be wrong on every point. A hand-sized disk of clear plastic, its rim, also plastic, embedded with green ornamental squiggles.

That looked about right.

Which way was up? He tried it in one of the booths. It wouldn't fit in the slot with the markings up. With the markings down, it did. He pushed the larger b.u.t.ton and the screen lit up.

Now what? The screens might be the phone books he needed. All he had to do was punch for INFORMATION, without reaching a nonexistent number, and read the answer, in squiggles.

Corbell was sweating. He hadn't thought this out. He lowered his hands and stepped out of the booth.

Well. No hurry. His two-days-plus air reserve was not being used. There was time to explore. And there, far at the back of the lobby, were the stairs he'd expected: broad, well designed by the principles he had learned in his first life, carpeted in cloud-rug. A fright of stairs going down into darkness.

He went back to tuck his helmet in the crook of his elbow and to retrieve the lens-shaped key/credit card. Then he started down the stairs, playing his helmet lamp ahead of him, humming.

With her head... tucked... underneath her arm, she wa-a-alks the b.l.o.o.d.y Tower...

The stairs unexpectedly lurched into motion, throwing him back-ward. He sat up cursing. He hadn't hurt himself, but... get crippled here and it would be his death.

Light grew below him.

At first he thought this was the last gasp of an emergency power system. The light blossomed. When he reached bottom it was bright as daylight. He was in a vast open s.p.a.ce with a high ceiling and alcoves he thought were shops: a place with the feel of a European train station, but with touches of sybaritic luxury more appropriate to a palace. There were fountains, and more of the ankle-enveloping rug swelling to rings of couches. Along one entire wall- "Peerssa! I've found a map!"

"Please describe it."

"It's two polar projections. d.a.m.n, I wish I could show you. The continents are about the way they were when I was in school. These maps must have been made before all that ocean water evaporated. There are lines across them, all from"-he checked-"this point, I think. Most of the lines are dark. Peerssa, the only lines still lighted run to Antarctica and the tip of Argentina and, uh, Alaska." Alaska had been twisted north. So had the tip of Siberia. "The lines run right through oceans, or under them."

He saw that what he'd taken for shops were alcoves with couches and food-dispensing walls. He tried one. When he inserted the plastic disk, a woman's voice spoke in tones of regret. He tried other slots and got the same reedy voice repeating the same incomprehensible words.

Next stop? Down there at the far end, that line of doors.

Thick doors, with slots for credit disks.

He went back for his pressure suit. The stairs carried him up. How the heck did they handle streams of commuters going both ways? He rode back down with the heavy suit draped over his shoulder.

There were lighted squiggles on the map, next to the lighted lines. He memorized the pattern that marked the route he wanted: not to the center of the thawed Antarctic continent, but to the nearer sh.o.r.e. Sh.o.r.es get colonized first.

The doors: Yes, there was the pattern of squiggles he wanted.

The disk: He found it, turned it blank side up and inserted it.

The door opened. He retrieved the disk, glanced at it and smiled. The squiggles had changed. He'd been docked the price of a ticket.

He faced gla.s.s within gla.s.s within concrete. The end of the subway car protruded slightly from its socket in the wall; it was a circle of gla.s.s eight feet across, with an oval gla.s.s door in it. Through the gla.s.s Corbell saw a cylindrical car lined with seats facing each other and padded in cloud-rug. The front of the car was metal.

He found a disk-sized slot in the gla.s.s door. He used it. The door opened. He entered, and pulled the disk out of the other side. The door closed.

"Here I am," he said into the helmet.

"Where?"

"In one of the subway cars. I don't know what to do next. Wait, I guess."

"You aren't going to use the instant-transportation booths?"

"No, I think that was a dead end. Maybe they were toys for the rich, too expensive to be practical, or too short-range. Why else would there be streets with cars on them? The streets were too good and there were too many cars."

"I wondered," Peerssa said. "Four digits in base eight gives only four thousand and ninety-six possible booth numbers. Too few."

"Yeah." There was room for about eight people, he decided, on benches of cloud-rug tinted at intervals in contrasting pastels to mark off the seats. He found another food dispenser, which spoke to him regretfully when he tried it. Behind a half-door that would barely hide one's torso, he found a toilet, again equipped with one of the glitteringly clean metal sponges. He tried that too.

His best guess was that the sponge had an instant-elsewhere unit in it. It cleaned itself miraculously.

There were arms for the benches. They had to be pulled out of a slot along the back and locked.

"There is increased power usage from your locus," said Peerssa. "Then something's something's happening." Corbell stretched out on the cloudrug bench to wait. No telling about departure time. He would wait twenty-four hours before he gave up. His stomach growled. happening." Corbell stretched out on the cloudrug bench to wait. No telling about departure time. He would wait twenty-four hours before he gave up. His stomach growled.

CHAPTER FOUR:

THE NORN.

I.

Somebody spoke to him. Corbell jerked violently and woke with a scream on his lips. Who but Peerssa could speak to him here? Who but Peerssa could speak to him here?

But he was not aboard Don Juan. Don Juan.

The voice had stopped.

Peerssa spoke from his helmet, "I do not recognize the language."