Complete Short Fiction, page 178
When Bert did get back and saw what was going on he had another siege of near-laughter.
“I tried that, too,” he finally wrote, “when I first got here. I’m supposed to be a fair linguist, but I never made more than the slightest headway. I hate to seem conceited, but I really don’t think it can be done unless you start as a child.”
“You must have learned a little.”
“Yes, About fifty basic symbols—I think.”
“But you were talking to these people here. I got the impression you were telling them what to do.”
“I was, in a sloppy sort of way. My few dozen gestures include the most obvious verbs, but even those I can’t do very well. Three-quarters of the people can’t understand me at all—this girl here is one of the best. I can read them only when they make my few signs very slowly.”
“Then how in blazes are you in a position to tell any of them what to do? And how does that fact jibe with what you told me about no one here being able to tell people what to do?”
“I may have expressed myself badly. This isn’t a very authoritative government, but the Council’s advice is usualy taken, at least on matters even slightly connected with physical maintenance of the installation.”
“And this Council has given you some sort of authority? Why? And does that mean that Marie was right in believing you’d deserted the Board and mankind and gone over to these wasters for good?”
“One question at a time, please,” he scribbled hastily. “The Council didn’t exactly give me authority. I’m making my suggestions as a member.”
I took the pad and cleared it, trying to catch his eye the whole time. I finally wrote, “Let’s have that again? My eyes must be fooling me, too.”
He grinned and repeated the sentence. I looked at him with an expression which sobered him at once, and he went on writing.
“I’m not—heavily underlined—here to stay, whatever Marie may think, and in spite of what I told you before. I’m sorry about having to lie to you. I’m here to do a job; what will happen after it’s done I don’t know. You’re in the same position, as you know perfectly well.” I had to nod agreement at that point. “I’m on the Council because of my linguistic skills and general background.” I was so hard put to it to make sense out of that remark that I almost failed to read the next one in time; I had to stop him as I was about to clear the board to make room for more words. “There’s a little more information about the place down here which I wasn’t going to bother you with, but I’ve changed my mind. I’ll let you see it, and you can decide for yourself how and whether to include it or allow for it in your job of getting Marie to make her mind up. I have my opinion on how it should be used, but you’re entitled to yours. Come on. I want you to meet the engineer in charge of maintenance development work here.”
He swam off, and I went after him with the others trailing behind. I had no urge to talk, even if it had been possible. I was still trying to figure out how someone whose mastery of the local speech represented a slow two-year-old’s vocabulary could have earned an official position on the strength of his linguistic talents.
No doubt you’ve seen it by now, since I’ve tried to tell this fairly, but it was too much for me. I was so far behind the facts that I was even startled by something else you’ve probably been expecting. We swam into a sort of office opening from the far end of the control room, and I saw floating in front of a microfilm viewer, oblivious to the people around him, my good friend Joey Elfven.
TO BE CONCLUDED
Ocean on Top
The energy masters were criminals against my world. The trouble was in every important way—so was I!
SYNOPSIS
Three of my friends had disappeared in a single small area of the Pacific, just north of Easter Island. Like me, all worked for the Power Board, the group which was responsible for rationing man’s severely limited supply of energy and which was, because of that fact, practically the world government.
Bert Wehlstrahl had vanished a year before, and Joey Elfven ten months later. Marie Wladetsky had gone two weeks after Joe, presumably in search of him, and I was principally interested in finding Marie. (Don’t ask for my name; it’s bad enough to have to listen to it occasionally, and I’m certainly not going to put it in print.) Since the two men were police workers of a sort, it was likely that their disappearance was not accidental, so my first step was to search the ocean bottom in the key area from a camouflaged vantage point—actually one of the spherical escape tanks used in ordinary cargo submarines, somewhat modified for my purpose.
I found evidence of rationing violation the moment I reached the bottom—I almost landed on it. A mile down there was an area actually lighted artificially, and apparently concealed under a flat, translucent surface which I interpreted as some sort of fabric. Seeing energy wasted to light the outside of a tent roof was bad enough; the sight of a swimmer in what looked like ordinary scuba gear under five thousand feet of sea water was far worse. The technological capacity so demonstrated suggested something much more serious than an ordinary black-market energy gang.
My tank was not very maneuverable, but I managed to get myself “captured” and towed to an entrance to the undersea base. Here I dropped a sonar transponder which should guide Board enforcement forces to the spot, released my ballast and headed for the surface with the comfortable certainty that the swimmers could not follow far because of the pressure gradient.
This belief proved wrong. One of them hung on to my tank and by pounding on it was able to guide a sub to the scene. After doing my best to get the nearly helpless tank away, I was really captured and dragged back to the bottom.
The tank was brought to a lighted pit in the ocean floor. There were no doors or air locks. The swimmers, who had loaded my tank with enough ballast to keep it down even if they lost hold again, towed me into a tunnel which led from the entrance pit, along it for a short distance, and into a flooded room. Then they removed their helmets.
After recovering, more or less, from the shock of seeing people breathing water, I got another one by discovering that Bert Wehlstrahl was among them. Communicating with him wasn’t easy; he could hear my voice through the walls of the tank, but couldn’t talk himself—reasonable enough if his vocal cords were trying to wriggle in water. He had to write his messages. He told me very little; I assumed that this was partly because of the communication difficulty and partly because of the audience. He said that Marie was somewhere nearby, still in her sub, but that he knew nothing of Joe’s whereabouts. He also dropped a remark which forced me to revise my belief that he and the others were breathing water. They weren’t breathing at all, as more careful observation showed.
Also, the liquid around us wasn’t water, but something denser. I realized that I should have spotted this from some of the maneuvers incident to bringing my tank “indoors.” On the new theory, it seemed that these people must be getting their oxygen from some food or drink which released it slowly and let them absorb it through the villi in the small intestine—the enormous pressure made this seem at least possible, though further data were certainly needed. Bert would give no details.
He said that I could stay and join them if I wished, or that I could return to the surface if I agreed to include certain information, which he would supply, in my report of the Board. Marie had been offered the same choice but had refused to make it—refused, in fact, to do anything until she was told what had happened to Joe. She didn’t believe Bert’s claim of ignorance, he said.
After thinking it over, I agreed to stay, with some mental reservations. I could obviously do nothing from inside the tank, but something had to be done first about Marie, and second about getting this frightful flood of wasted power tied into the world energy net. The inside of the place was as brightly lighted as the outside. I would take my chances about being restored to air-breathing capability later. Bert had said it was possible, but I was beginning to wonder about Bert’s reliability myself.
1 was unconscious during the change, which involved surgery. I woke up immersed in liquid, comfortable enough, and with no urge to breathe. Bert and some of the “natives”—with whom I had no luck whatever in communication, either by written language or signs, though they seemed to have a complex sign language of their own—accompanied me around the place. I saw Marie in her sub, and confirmed Bert’s report of her attitude.
I went outside to the “farm” area for food, incidentally learning that the “tent” was merely the interface between the sea water above and the liquid in which we lived. I did not find out which, if any, of the vegetables we ate might be our oxygen source.
Finally I was taken to see their main power installation, which was of course what I had wanted; I had expected to be kept away from it until they were more certain of my motives, but they showed no sign of suspicion at all. The generator was simply a huge crystal-heat engine, its high-temperature end far down in the rock below the sea bottom and its heat sink simply the ocean. It was all obvious enough—except, how, why and by whom it had been built under a mile of sea.
There was also some doubt about what I could do about it, though none of course about what I should do; all these megawatts should obviously be feeding into the world power net and getting properly rationed. I could make no plans which seemed at all promising, though. I was still wondering whether Bert were actually working under cover for the Board or had gone over to these power-wasters. I couldn’t decide whether it would be wise to trust him with any ideas I did develop. This point was suddenly clarified—slightly.
He had told me in so many words that he didn’t know where Joe Elfven was. Now he took me to the office of the power unit’s director. Joe was inside, apparently in charge.
XVII
That sight made a change in me. Bert had been a good friend of mine for several years. I had trusted him; Marie, admittedly, had not and had tried to get me to share her feelings, but I’d felt sure she was just brooding.
A few minutes ago I had been jolted when Bert confessed to a falsehood in his earlier talk to me, but I had still been ready to listen to his excuses. I would even have been willing to believe that I had misunderstood him the first time.
But he had also told me—written it in plain words, with no possible doubt about their meaning—that he did not know about Joey’s whereabouts and that to the best of his knowledge and belief Joey had never gotten to this place.
Clearly and unarguably Bert Whelstrahl had been lying like the proverbial rug. He had known that Joey was here. He had known just where he was and what he was doing. Why should he tell such a lie to me and apparently to Marie? And having told it, why was he now bringing me face to face with the proof that he was a liar? And had Marie formed her impression by spotting some evidence I had missed?
One thing was certain in my own mind. Whatever explanation Bert gave was going to have to be supported by some pretty good independent evidence before I could accord it any weight. So was anything else he said from now on.
These thoughts were interrupted by Joey’s pulling away from his viewer and catching sight of me. The expression on his face indicated that Bert hadn’t told him about me either. He was clearly astonished, and seemed delighted. He came over and shook hands violently, and seemed as frustrated as I was by the impossibility of talking. He looked around, probably for the writing pad, but Bert was already busy with the stylus. He held his words up for both of us to read.
“Joey, we know you’re tied up for the next few hours at least, but will it be all right if I give you another assistant as soon as his first job is finished?” I appreciated his tactful skipping of my name and felt a little more willing to listen to his excuses when they came. I suspected from Joey’s quick grin that he appreciated it too; a few weeks away from our section hadn’t let him forget my chronic embarrassment at the handle my parents had inflicted on me or my self-consciousness about all nicknames offered as substitutes. “More than glad,” he wrote. “Check him out as quickly as you can, Bert. We need him badly.” He came as close to slapping me on the back as the medium permitted, grinned once more, and went back to his viewer.
I would have liked to make more of a conversation out of it, but was coming to see how anyone who had been here long might start to lose the urge for idle chatter. I could even think of a few people who would be improved by such a change in residence. I waved a farewell which Joey didn’t see, and followed Bert back out into the control room.
I was going to put some pretty harsh questions to him, but he had the writing pad and circumstances made it difficult to interrupt anyone else’s talk. He had stopped swimming and started writing by the time I got through the door.
“I didn’t want you to know about Joey until after you’d had your talk with Marie,” were his words. “In fact, I only just decided to let you know even this soon. I don’t think she should know he’s here, and I’m quite sure he shouldn’t know that she is.” I grabbed the pad.
“Why not? It sounds to me like a dirty trick on both of them.”
“If she knows he’s here she’ll want to stay.”
“What’s bad about that? You wanted me to stay, as you said, and I never denied she’s more decorative than I am.”
“She shouldn’t stay because her only reason for doing it would be Joey, and you know as well as I do how much good that would do her. You know he doesn’t care two cents for the kid. He chose to stay down here, remember. If she learns about him and stays, she’ll be giving him a hard time, and we can’t afford to have that happen. The job’s much too important. If he gets distracted, or changes his mind about staying here, it’s trouble.”
“And why shouldn’t he know about her?”
“For the same set of reasons. He’d know why she was here, and it would be as bad as though she were hanging around him in person. He never admitted it, but I think she was one of the reasons he chose to stay here.”
“You mean he disappeared on purpose? That he knew about this place earlier?”
“Oh, no. He got here just as I did, and as Marie did. He spotted a work sub that didn’t belong to the Board and followed it.”
I pondered. The story had some convincing aspects; Joey’s attitude toward Marie was almost as well known as mine, though no one had ever convinced Marie of it. Few people had risked trying. Joey himself wasn’t the sort of man who could tell a girl to run along, even if it were obviously the best thing for the girl as well as for himself. He’d feel it was somehow his fault for not falling for her.
“But why should you have had to lie to me about it?” I asked finally.
“Because you were going to see Marie, and I had some hopes you’d talk her into leaving. You’ll forgive my saying that if you’d known Joey was here you wouldn’t have been able to tell her that as far as you knew he wasn’t. I’m not belittling your acting ability, but you wouldn’t have believed it was necessary then.”
“I’m not sure I do yet. I’m still in the dark about this very important job Joey has to do and I’m supposed to help with.”
“True enough. We’d better get on with your education. Library next.”
“Will these guards, or whatever they are, be with us to the end?”
“It’s hard to say. They aren’t guards, just people who are interested. You ought to be flattered.”
“Oh, I am. I’ve never been a celebrity before.” It’s curious how hard it is to convey irony by the written word alone. Bert missed it completely, as far as I could tell. He swam back in the general direction of the tunnel we had come down, and the rest of us followed him.
As I had guessed, the way up was along a different route—maybe I should say a different pipe—with the current, as I’d also expected, carrying us up.
As usual the trip was not enlivened by conversation, though I found it wasn’t too boring; the girl swam beside me instead of trailing behind with the others. As before, I didn’t know how long the journey took.
I’m not clear how they controlled the current. It had carried us down one passage, it carried us back to the same room through another, but in the room itself there was no trouble in stopping. Bert opened the big door, and we shed our coveralls on the other side. Then he led the way once more.
I was a little surprised, and a little more disappointed, to lose our escort at this point. They turned off into another tunnel a few yards from where we left the coveralls. No doubt they, too, had to work at times. I put them out of my mind, more or less, and followed Bert.
This is one of the points where it’s hard to be detailed without being boring. A library is a library, even when it’s upside down. The books were ordinary in shape and style, if not in content. The films and cards were in no way remarkable. Like unballasted human bodies, most of them tended to float. The chairs, tables, and carrels were on the ceiling, with racks under—no, I mean over—the chairs for parking ballast belts. Not everyone parked them, though; many readers had their belts still on as they drifted in front of a reading screen or floated with a book in their hands.
The images on the screens were all of the general sort the girl had drawn on the writing pad, second cousins to electrical diagrams or grad-school topology exercises. I watched several of the readers for some minutes each and got the opinion that while they were reading in the same sense that the word usually implies, there was an important difference in technique. They did go page by page or frame by frame, as the case might be, spending half a minute or a minute on each before going on to the next. But their eyes didn’t follow the regular back-and-forth routine of a book reader. They wandered irregularly over each page, like the eyes of a man examining a picture.
