Fortunately, there was an entrance: a horizontal hatch, which likely opened directly into the top floor. Unfortunately, it appeared to be secured from the inside. But we had roamers. I spit out a couple of 2 mm models and sent them down between the cracks in the structure. It took them only seconds to discover the problem: a simple sliding latch. Unfortunately, moving that was beyond the strength capabilities of that particular model, even if we all unloaded our entire complement.
“Can we cut the latch off?” Bill asked.
“I guess we'll have to,” I replied. “But let's make it quick. Everyone spit up fleas.”
We sent in a total of 20 of the little guys, miniature light sabers primed and ready. 10 seconds of battling the dark side, and the latch released with a thud sound. I pulled up the hatch, and we carefully climbed down the very steep stairs.
The building had the look of an apartment complex: long halls with numbered doors spaced evenly. The stairway was situated near the center of the building. No elevators, of course. The stairs creaked loudly enough to wake the dead in the next town, and we were all cringing with every step.
When we got to the main floor, Bridget glanced around and pointed. “Back door.” Without waiting for agreement, she headed that way.
The door let out to an alleyway. Not particularly odious, as alleys went, but quite gloomy, due to the tall buildings on all sides. We paused to take stock.
“Are we just gonna bail again?” Bill asked.
“A good question,” I replied. “It might not actually be a terrible tactic to stay overnight, and go to the library in the morning. I’d think they'd be expecting us to head downstream first thing. They might even have set up at the river to watch for us.”
“Or we could cross over to the next river and had back upstream, double back,” Garfield suggested. “Maybe communications between rivers is less dependable or slower.”
“Or,” Bridget added, “head downstream underwater and skip a couple of towns.”
“What about taking a tributary?” Bill said.
We turn to him in surprise.
“The population isn’t all concentrated along the main waterway. There lots of tributaries and branches along the way, and there’s usually a small town or village or two on them.”
“Unlikely to have a good-sized library, Bill. That's what we’re looking for.”
“Yes, but also less likely to have goons looking for us. At least I hope so.
“Alright, vote.” I queued up a voting app. 2 ms later, the results were in. One vote for each of four alternatives. Le sigh.
“Well, looks like it's rock paper scissors lizard Spock again.”
The elimination rounds lasted a few extra milliseconds, but it soon transpired that we would be, by executive decision, going farther downriver.
“Okay, fine. But we can’t just float down, that's asking for trouble.”
Agreed, Bill. Like Bridget said, we’ll stay underwater and put some serious speed on. That will hopefully throw them off.”
This business of sneaking to the shore was getting really old. The vegetation was thick and I didn't care how aquatic Quinlans were, I didn't like swampy squishy ground. But finally, we were in the water. We went under immediately, and stayed a good 20 to 30 feet below for hours, driving west as hard as our Mannies would allow. We still hadn't done that maintenance break, and I was a bit concerned about breakdowns, but the Mannies were well constructed and didn't give us trouble. This marathon swim would take us through one of the segment ends. We all agreed that this was a good thing and that it would be very interesting. Whether it would put us beyond the reach of our pursuers was up in the air.
When we were close to the mountain, we all surfaced and formed a raft. We knew, generally speaking, what to expect. The river narrowed and consolidated as it approached the segment boundary, until only four branches of it flowed through the mountains in straits wide enough to take the total river flow without forming rapids.
The mountains themselves were impressive. They rose abruptly out of the shell with very little lead up, only a mile or two of foothills, turning into a slope of 70° easily. Looking at them, I decided that even that pitch was a concession to the engineering requirements of holding back the atmosphere, if and when. And they seemed to go up forever.
“Are you sure this is intended to be closed off?” Bridget said, staring at the spectacle.
“We have scans,” Bill replied. “Not a ton of detail, but essentially the middle hundred yards or so of the segment boundary is a diaphragm, similar to a camera shutter. I think if it was activated, it would close off the segment right to the central cylinder. And you can see two sets of guide wires or pylons or stays of some kind attached to the central cylinder, if you engage telescopic vision. One set on either side of the central line of the mountains.”
“The diaphragms would serve two purposes,” Garfield added. “One, to allow segments of the topopolis to be pressurized during construction while adding new segments. And two, as a safety mechanism in case of catastrophic blowout.”
“Where would the river go, though?” I asked.
“We already have two rivers going in each direction. Just divert all the water to the next river.”
“Wow,” Bridget shook her head in awe. “Are we sure we’re more technologically advanced than these people?”
“Not really, no. We just have some tech that they don't. But remember Bridget, and we said this back when we were starting out on this quest, this whole thing is just scale. Everything we see, humans could do if they had the will, and a sufficiently long view to make
