The maintenance quarters were above ground, he said, liberally fenestrated so the workers could see the stars and the wheeling, clouded orb of Phansure above them. The gravity was light. The quarters were luxurious. “Real nice,” said Emun. The food was delicious, just as it was on Authority. The chefs were trained on Authority, after all; none of them had to stay very long; and they received hardship pay plus bonuses if they kept the staff happy. Emun could recall nothing really unsatisfactory on Enforcement. There had even been a properly maintained brothel, for both sexes.
Sam nodded. “But you said ‘gloomy,’ Emun.”
Emun allowed it was more a matter of perception than reality. One rose in that place to the quiet whisper of air, the stroking of banal music—” Without any umph to it,” Emun said—the flurry of water as one cleaned oneself of one’s own dirt. There was no other dirt, no extraneous filth, no foreign organic or inorganic impurity from which the morning body needed deliverance. It was only sleep dirt, sleep sweat, the flake of no-longer-living skin, the fall of no-longer-living hair, to be cleansed away before submitting oneself to the dustless rooms, the sterile walls, the endless, empty ducts down which men moved in their white garb like ghosts on felt-padded feet. Ghost-servitors. Ghost-prowlers, along the edges and down the aisles of static madness. Perhaps that was what had been gloomy.
Or maybe it had been the cars, like coffins, with their padded, almost reclining seats, their airtight lids, their number pads greenly glowing in the shadows of the tube. One found the proper tube, one got in, one shut the lid, one entered the destination number. BB5601. An almost silent whoosh and a feeling of heaviness. A screaming above the level at which one could hear and the heaviness again. Then the lid opened of its own accord to let one out in green-lit Vestibule BB5601 with the closed door and the green light washing all the walls. Green meant as usual. Green meant no worse than yesterday. Green meant boring, uninteresting, but vastly preferable to yellow, or red. Certainly it was preferable to purple which meant it was already too late.
“Ah,” murmured Sam, sensing interesting danger.
But Emun didn’t talk about that. He went on to something else that had always disturbed him: the sound the doors made. The doors clanged. No matter what one did to them, or how carefully they were shut, they clanged—a deep, clamorous sound like an ill-tuned bell, a tocsin pealing danger. Clang, and then the whisper of feet as one went through. Clang, again. Inside, the cobweb aisles stretched ahead and back to infinity, vanishing in gloom, in distance. Gray light, there in the aisles. Coming from nowhere. Throwing no shadows. A long walk down the main aisle from Vestibule BB5601 before one saw Aisle BB5617 to the left. Past it would be Aisle BB5618 and Aisle BB5619 to the left again. “Those three were mine,” he said, almost with pride. “Those three were all mine.” Emun’s province, his kingdom, where the unlit eyes looked only to him, where the unspeaking throats quivered, almost ready to utter, only to him. Between him and Vestibule BB5601 were five other men, each with three aisles. Beyond him were five more, each with three aisles, and then Vestibule BB5635.
Sam imagined it and shivered.
On the first day of shift, one got the cart out of its garage, stocked it, led it down the main aisle, then turned left into BB5617 and began the slow trip down the side aisle, looking at telltales, tapping at dials, peering at signal lights, reading tapes, refilling tape registers, replacing telltale lights, running test patterns, the soft-tired little cart buzzing along behind like an obedient pet. There was a toilet on the cart, and a little kitchen, which would open at quarter-shift to give him drinks and snacks. By mid-shift one would have got a tenth of the way down the first aisle, and the cart would offer a comfortable seat and a built-in little table, where it would serve him a hot meal.
“That sounds well-managed,” Sam said, approving.
Oh, yes, that was well-managed enough. One would eat while listening to music or watching a recreation on the little information stage on the cart, and then the afternoon would go by, doing the same things. Replace. Repair. Check. Monitor. Sometimes something would actually be wrong! Then one could take out the tools, do a dismantle and repair, something different, something unusual. At quitting time one rode the cart back to its garage on the main aisle to be there, waiting, when the services scooter came ding-ding-dinging down behind him, with five other men already aboard, being taken back to Vestibule BB5601. They knew you were tired by then. They didn’t make you walk.
Every fifteen or twenty days, the route would be completed. Then there was time off to do what one pleased: to drink or dance or play games of chance, or simply to sleep or read or go to the brothel or to religious services. And then Aisle BB5617 once more, Aisle BB5618, Aisle BB5619.
“A little boring, perhaps,” suggested Sam, feeling goosebumps.
Oh well, yes, but not always. Once in a great while, a true malfunction. The monitors quivered in excitement, something wrong. Pseudoflesh is rotting, pseudobrain is not functioning, something awry, dangerous.
“And then all of a sudden you knew how dangerous it was,” said Emun. “Then you didn’t need no telltale to tell you anything. You didn’t need no monitors. You’d feel it, all the way down the aisle you’d feel it, like something reaching at you, like some great animal creature, evil and hating you every minute and not wanting you to get away.”
A brute malevolence, he went on saying, though not in those words. Sam supplied the words. A killing horror, barely withheld.
“You pick up that communicator so scared you can’t hardly breathe,” said Emun. “And at the same time your old heart’s poundin’ away
