Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom, page 9
Davies was too busy staring at the rising stone wall inside the door frame; but Harry and Rusty took one look, tilted their heads up, and then turned slowly back to look at the stairway. It wasn’t there. They set out for the room’s far end, but after a few steps Rusty turned and came back to grab Davies’ arm. Rusty pointed at Harry and at the far wall, and then the two of them took off after him.
They all reached the place where the stairway had been, only to see that smooth stone panels had closed off that end of the room.
“It’s a factory,” marveled Harry, “and it’s an elevator.”
“So … where is it taking us?” Davies asked.
Rusty tapped Davies’ elbow. When the man looked down at him, Rusty pointed at the floor.
“Yeah,” said Davies. “Thanks.”
* * *
Things had gotten just as surprising up in the alleyway. The ground panels slid together and came up flush to the alley’s paving so quickly that Harry’s men barely had time to get out of the way. That left them all staring down at the practically invisible doors. One of them, a little quicker than the others, sprinted to the control panel and pounded on the green button. But something in the mechanism had locked it in place.
FRIDAY, 11:01 AM
In the dim light of the maintenance tunnels Abner was very careful about his footing. He had no idea how often anyone came down here, but he was fairly certain that the answer was “not very.” The Tube Transport system was so new that the tunnels themselves were spotless. About the only reason anybody would come down here would be simple curiosity, at least until the Tubes somehow broke down.
Abner paused long enough to make a note: someone should check all the tunnels on a regular schedule. Quite apart from the safety concerns, the workers ought to become more familiar with the system.
He’d begun an orderly survey near the middle of the area defined by Pitt’s inertrium deliveries. He marked off the current section and then continued to his next destination: an underground interchange where three of the Tube lines converged.
As he entered the nexus, one of the switch housings hummed into action and flipped two hundred and sixty degrees just in time to catch an incoming Pod and send it on its new path. The mechanism powered down then, and all was quiet once more. Abner did admire the system, in a way, even though it seemed both excessive—with all of those individual Pods—and impersonal, for the same reason. You’d never bump into an old friend in a Transport Tube, the way you might on a train.
About the only thing you’d bump into in a Transport Pod was a Transport Pod. Abner rubbed his left elbow. That you’d be bumping into over and over again.
The three Tube lines angled off, each one enclosed in its own maintenance tunnel. Abner marked off the one he’d just examined and set off down the right-hand chute. The system schematics showed this leg of the journey as one long, uninterrupted tube that ran for about three quarters of a mile.
So he might have been surprised, a hundred yards in, to see a hatchway in the tunnel that had not been indicated on the system’s blueprints. He wasn’t surprised at all. This was exactly what he’d been looking for.
Abner listened at the hatch. There was a quiet sound like whirring machinery on the other side. He tried the latch and found it unlocked. Very well, then: he opened the hatch and went inside.
FRIDAY, 11:08 AM
Dash had been inside for several minutes and Nola hadn’t heard a thing from him. She’d been a little startled to see how good a burglar he was, but it only took a moment for her to put that into perspective. She was just seeing him put some of his skills to good use, after all, and on her own behalf, besides.
But the immense crash that came from inside the building was a shock. By the time she heard the sounds of rubble bouncing across the floor she was already starting for the window. A great robotic voice said, “YOU WILL SURRENDER OR YOU WILL BE DISINTEGRATED,” and she leaped up without really thinking about it; which, she realized a moment later, was about the only way she would have done.
You don’t usually run toward a thing like that, although you might very easily find yourself running.
Nola nearly grabbed onto the window ledge before she tumbled down again, breaking her fall on Dash’s back pack. Devices and mysterious bundles scattered across the pavement.
Her eyebrows shot up when she saw Dash’s ray gun. Nola scooped that up and then grabbed a thin coil of rope that ended in a hook; she wound up and heaved the grappling line up at the window, where it caught on the edge of the frame, and with the gun in one hand she scaled the rope and swung inside. Dust floated in the glaring beams of light that followed her through the window.
Dash was standing nearby with his back to her. All of his attention was on the advancing robot.
It was about ten feet tall and massively built. In its chest cavity some kind of weapon was trained on Dash. The robot saw Nola and paused, evaluating her. The ray gun in her hand seemed to interest it. Its whole chest rotated so that the spinning barrels of its weapon swung up to cover her.
“DROP YOUR WEAPON AND EXIT IMMEDIATELY,” it said.
Nola had thought she knew how loud its voice was, but in here, with no wall between them, the force of the voice boomed out in sound waves that Nola could feel, like great gusts of wind. She felt herself swing at the end of her rope when each word rolled over her: it was the loudest voice she’d ever heard.
She lost her grip on the gun and saw it fall to the floor. Oops.
Between her and the robot were rows of racked drawings on incrementally taller racks, and then a rank of big, heavy, flat files that also increased in height as they advanced deeper into the room. While the gun clattered across the floor, Nola pushed out from the wall and grabbed at the nearest rack of drawings.
It overbalanced and tipped over, striking the next rack, which also overbalanced and did the same thing. Nola hit the ground with a grunt as the racks began a chain reaction that rippled across the room, falling, one after another, until the last of them struck the first of the flat files.
The weight of all the racks came to rest on the top edge of the file cabinet with just enough force to tip it over, in its turn; and to Nola’s great surprise the file cabinet also tipped and struck the next, slightly taller cabinet on its way down.
One after another—each just a little taller and a little heavier than the last—the flat file cabinets crashed to the floor until the final one, which was about sixteen feet tall, tipped over and struck the robot on top of its head.
The robot and the file cabinet went down together and neither one of them got back up again.
Gradually, the bits, shelves, and rolls of drawings stopped bouncing across the floor. One of the larger flat file cabinets overbalanced from its perch on another, and Nola and Dash both jumped at the crash.
Dash was looking back and forth from the window, to Nola, to the first of the shelves she’d overturned, and then one by one across the whole chain of shelves and file cabinets that had fallen in a perfect series that had landed, at last, on the top of the robot’s head. Then he looked them all over again.
“The Savage Planet of Paradox. Edward J. Bellin,” he said.
It sounded like he was having trouble believing what he was saying.
“We laughed about it, it was just too ridiculous. He submitted it to Future Planet Stories, and when Dad rejected it, he submitted it again to Exciting Tales of Science, Wonder World, and then, the last time, to Astonishing Future Stories. He just didn’t seem to understand that all those magazines were at the same address.”
Dash walked toward her, his eyes wide and amazed. “Dad didn’t even bother to test it. The idea that ten or twelve big cabinets would just all … line up, like dominoes, in exactly the right way, and smack a giant robot on the head … it was plain foolishness. We kept laughing, every time that story came back in the mail. We just kept on laughing, every time.”
He stopped right in front of her and, very gently, he touched her arm.
“And then you went and did it right off, on the first try.”
His eyes went back to the window, and the first shelf, and then the second shelf.…
Nola tossed her head. “Well! I’d say you owe Mr. Bellin an apology, then.”
FRIDAY, 11:29 AM
Edward J. Bellin unlocked the door to his storage room, but instead of opening it he just stood there, shoulders hanging, looking down at the fat envelope in his hands. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could go on.
He heard someone on the stairs. No doubt this was another renter: another person who was unable to give up on old furniture, old pictures, old memories, or old dreams. The storage building was full of them. Edward opened the door and slipped inside, shutting it quietly behind him. He waited until he heard footsteps pass along the hall, pause at another doorway, and then pass through it; he heard that door close with a quiet snick. Then he reached out and pulled the light cord. He didn’t need to search for it: he’d done this so many times before.
Crowded into the middle of Edward’s storage unit was an old wooden desk. Its surface was clean and polished. All it held was an old typewriter and a ream of blank paper. Everything else was in the file cabinets.
Edward walked past the cabinets full of manuscripts, which were on his left, and past the much taller file cabinets labeled A through E. He slid open a drawer in F.
It wasn’t until then that he realized he hadn’t even opened the envelope. So he slit it open with his pen knife and pulled out the manuscript—its first three pages covered with angry scribbles in red ink—and slipped the rejection slip out from under it.
Years ago, when Edward’s rejection slips would still fit in a single drawer, he had always opened these envelopes in hopeful anticipation. Now it seemed as though he might as well file them without even looking. He sorted through the folders in the F drawer and found the one for Fantastic Future Stories. His lips pressed together as he paged through the rejection slips: so many, so many. The slips were also arranged alphabetically, so he found the H’s, and filed his new rejection slip for Harem of the Seamstress of Outer Space.
Then he riffled the pages of the manuscript. After those first three pages, the red notations like “Hackneyed!,” “Seriously? Can you be SERIOUS?,” and “Do not send this again” stopped, either because the editor had run out of red ink, or out of patience. But as a result the rest of the manuscript was in pristine condition. He could send it out again once he’d retyped those first three pages. Edward J. Bellin slid the F drawer closed and dropped the manuscript next to his typewriter.
Maybe tomorrow. He just didn’t have the heart, and he was almost late for work.
FRIDAY, 11:11 AM
While Davies tried to climb up to the ceiling in hopes of finding a hatch, Harry and Rusty went left and right along the newly sealed wall. There ought to be a control panel someplace. But if it was there it was turning out to be very hard to find, in that room that was already littered with machinery, and Harry had a feeling that they might not have long to search.
They could still feel the gentle vibration of the floor that meant they were continuing to descend.
Harry thumbed open a box near the floor. Inside, he saw a couple of dials and a large knife switch that … well, it must do something, and Harry decided he might as well find out what that was. He flipped the switch and heard a rhythmic thumping begin at the room’s far end. One of the dials trembled. Its needle swung into what Harry was glad to see was a green bar on the gauge.
Behind him, the conveyor belt turned slowly. It was carrying its empty load right along the assembly line. Several machines alongside the line straightened and passed their fingers over the belt, no doubt seeking unassembled parts to manipulate. Harry swung the box’s lid closed again and kept moving along the wall.
There was a quiet bump that seemed to come from below the floor. The three of them stopped and listened: the sound of the room’s descent had ended.
Wherever we were going, Harry thought, it looks like we’re there.
He looked over at Rusty and raised his empty hands; Rusty did the same. Harry looked up to where Davies clung to the wall like a spider: nothing there, either.
The only sound in the factory was the quiet murmur of the conveyor belt and the random clicks and pops of the pointless machines, trying their best to build something out of nothing.
“All right,” Harry announced, “I’m going to have a look at that far wall. There may be another entrance down there.”
Davies nodded and went back to his cautious ascent.
Harry hurried down the assembly line and wondered what alarms they might have triggered. He looked up, thinking about the men he’d left in the alley, and he hoped they were doing some good up there.
* * *
The men in the alley had tried the obvious, which was to try to pry the pavement apart, but there wasn’t much use in that. The man by the panel had given up his efforts to shift the big green button.
Just below it there was a smaller red button that was partly covered by a safety hood. The man thought about that: it looked just like the emergency stop buttons they used at the Moto-Man plant.
He looked around at the other men. He shrugged. “I guess we should see what this does,” he said, and he pressed the red button.
* * *
Davies’ yell echoed from one bare wall to the other.
Harry spun and saw, but he didn’t understand: the big technician had let go his hold on the wall and was tumbling down for no reason that Harry could see. He started back to the end of the factory. It was plain that Rusty would reach Davies first.
The little robot waved his hands around Davies’ head, which became complicated because Davies was doing the same thing. They looked like they were trying to shoo something, or more likely a lot of things, away from the big man’s face. Harry could hear Davies crying out whenever their hands collided; but he seemed to be yelling even when Rusty managed to stay out of his way.
By the time Harry reached them, Davies was kneeling on the floor, hands still batting at his head, while Rusty had sat back on his heels with his lamp-like eyes fixed on the man.
“What the blazes is going on here?” Harry demanded.
Davies’ face turned to him. The man’s head was surrounded by a swarm of tiny insects: there might be a thousand of them. It was hard to tell since they were circling Davies’ head so quickly.
Harry leaned in. They were mosquitoes, he saw: but not normal mosquitoes. There was a little trail of particles streaming behind every one of them, like water drops suspended in the air.
Davies’ head had been surrounded by what looked like a horde of tiny comets.
Harry’s breath washed over the mosquitoes. A dozen or so broke away from Davies and started to circle Harry, instead. He fell back back and swatted at them.
Rusty shook his head, slowly, and looked up at Harry.
“Yeah,” Harry panted. “I think so, too.”
FRIDAY, 11:15 AM
Abner crept into the hidden room below the city and looked around him.
It wasn’t what he’d expected.
One wall of the long, low room was filled with control panels, cabling, and sockets, with a televideo display at each station and a hanging rack of cables that ran the length of the room. Each workstation was staffed with a robot; the robots were rapidly pulling cables out of their sockets and reattaching them in new ones. There was a quiet buzzing noise in the background. There was no other sound of any kind.
Abner walked along the switchboard and looked left and right, hoping for some sign of Pitt’s stolen inertrium, but all he could see was the robots. They took no notice of him.
There was something odd about those robots, he thought; but Abner’s only interest in robotics was that he often assigned crews of Big Lugs to construction jobs for the Transit Authority. These robots were far smaller. In fact, they were unusually short, as he finally understood.
These robots had no legs. Each one was bolted at the hips to a stool so that they were fastened in place.
“Oh, I see,” Abner mumbled. “That is a bit odd.”
They wouldn’t be any use in construction, not at all, and so Abner stopped thinking about them.
He continued past the row of robots at their long, narrow switchboard, and when he arrived at the end he reached for the handle of the hatch he found there.
Under almost any circumstances this would have been perfectly safe. But under the heightened state of alert that had been triggered throughout Pitt’s facilities the circumstances were now quite unusual indeed.
FRIDAY, 11:19 AM
Harry had to keep his distance from Davies because every time he got any closer some of the mosquito-comets would stray in his direction. They weren’t attracted to Rusty, though. The robot was peering into the swarm of insects, each one followed by its tail of droplets.
Rusty’s eyes flashed brighter. Some of the bugs darted toward him, but they lost interest immediately. He brightened his eyes again, and then again; but now, Harry saw, the mosquitoes had decided to ignore Rusty altogether. Something else was happening.
Harry leaned in as close as he dared. The vapor trail behind each of the bugs had moved closer to its own, personal mosquito. When the tiny droplets touched one another they merged into little drops; when the little drops came close enough to touch, they became bigger drops; and soon each mosquito was contained inside a bubble of transparent material. The bubbles began to expand.
Davies had stopped struggling. His wide eyes were fixed on the little construction project in front of his face. The bubbles were … changing.
Each bubble extruded little pseudopods of resin; these grew into tiny structural beams which, once they’d collided with the beams from a neighboring bubble, fused into a kind of globular web around the big technician’s head. It looked exactly like the geodesic dome of a Dymaxion building.
When the globe was complete the little beams swelled and grew thicker, and this startled Davies so that he lurched up and started to strike at his head again. Little transparent girders jutted out toward his neck; they swiftly formed a collar there, and now the anchored globe resisted all Davies’ attacks on it. In the center of each segment of the globe a mosquito buzzed and darted from side to side, straining to reach the man’s skin.
