Marten sneered as he picked up his lunch pail. According to the news, this was the third time this week the Highborn had retreated to their initial drop zone. How much farther could they go? He believed that instead of retreating, they advanced. He shrugged. It really didn’t matter what he thought.
He stepped out of his cubicle, closing Door No. 209 and strode along Corridor 118 until he reached the nearest conveyer belt. He rode it out of the twenty-story complex and onto the darkened street. Terraced gardens of sleeping tulips and marigolds drooped away from him, while dwarf palms rustled in the breeze. Gigantic fans connected to vents that led all the way to the surface created that breeze. High overhead, the sunlamps of Level Thirty-nine glowed at dim and soft “sleep” music played from hidden speakers. Automated street sweepers swished by Marten as he strode fast along the sidewalk. Passing him zipped a caravan of cyclists training for the upcoming Festival Games.
Others on the early morning shift passed Marten or headed in the same direction. Many shouted hearty greetings to each other and spoke of the latest Highborn defeat. Uniformed peacekeepers on patrol nodded approvingly. Once or twice, the black visor of a peacekeeper turned in Marten’s direction. He shouted no greetings to his fellow workers nor made any comments on the news. A tall peacekeeper spoke into a hand recorder. Marten wondered if he’d gained another demerit for unsociable behavior.
He entered the Far-Forty Lift Tube with twenty other people, a mixture of manual laborers and office workers. The door closed with a hiss and down they plunged. Ads played on the lift vid. A shouting emcee told of the prizes to be won on Tell-a-Friend. Then dancing girls in sequins wiggled by, singing of the wonders of algae protein shakes. “Mmmm, great!”
The lift stopped, people struggled out and others shouldered their way in. Hiss, close, down they plunged.
Fifteen minutes later Marten and five other men in gray jumpsuits, hardhats and boots strode out of the elevator. No music played down here; no vids or holos blared. The only sound was that of their boots drumming on the cool earth. They peeled away in different directions, one or two waving, and then Marten strode alone deep underground and in a semi-dark corridor.
His shoulders relaxed and the stiffness in his neck went away. His somber features softened. He walked and walked and walked, turning many times into many different corridors. Finally, in the distance he heard the grind and roar of Tunnel Crawler Six as it chewed into deep sedimentary rock.
This was end of the line for Greater Sydney. This was the bottom of the city, where Level Sixty was under construction.
Marten inserted his earplugs, snapped on his helmet lamp, fixed his oxygen mask and strolled closer to his monster.
The mighty Tunnel Crawler Six was a vast metallic worm. The huge segmented sections slithered after the main mouth that tore at the rock twenty-four hours a day. The chewed up parts went on an internal conveyer belt to the central dump. Some of the rock was mined for useful minerals. Some went topside for construction and the rest went down the deep-core mine, there to be turned into lava and added to the Earth’s interior. Pollution as such was nonexistent with the deep-core dump. Nuclear wastes, toxic chemicals, fuel sludge—anything unwanted or non-reusable—was simply dumped deep into the Earth and never worried about again.
Marten’s job wasn’t repairing Tunnel Crawler Six. His specs called for maintenance of the biocomp that ran the beast.
Fine particles of dust drifted in the corridor. Marten’s light beamed through it. It got thicker up ahead as he neared the machine’s maw. The clank and roar of the chewing mouth shook the air. No one could talk here. The roar became a blanket covering other noise. It brought… well, after awhile the roar seemed to fade in one’s thinking until it became a kind of silence.
“Silence is golden,” Marten mouthed under his oxygen mask.
For such an utterance—if he’d been heard—peacekeepers would surely have drawn their shock rods and beaten him down as anti-social.
Marten reached the cab, which was three hundred meters from the mouth, and hoisted himself up the rungs. The long beast shook and vibrated. He opened the cab and slipped in, shutting the heavy door behind him. Much of the roar and clanking faded away, although the vibrations were constant.
He sat at the controls and turned on the Bioram Taw2. The cab was cramped with coils, leads, tools and screens, but the control chair was heaven compared to anything Marten had ever used.
The Bioram Taw2 was a marvel of modern technology. Human brain tissue, from a criminal who’d been liquidated for the good of the state, had been carefully teased from the main brain mass. After a good personality-scrubbing, the brain tissue was embedded in cryo-sheets and surrounded by programming gel. One point five kilos of brain tissue had replaced tons of specialized control and volitional systems. Unfortunately, the cryocyorgic environment accelerated decay and eventual death. Still, biocomps were the wave of the future.
Here, away from prying eyes and busybodies, Marten had given rein to his impulses. He’d written brand new software for his Data-Five auxiliary computer. The auxiliary computer was only to be used as backup for the biocomp, but Marten had ignored that reg. In fact, he’d erased many of the D5’s programs in order to make room for his own. Then, with infinite patience, he’d teased memories out of the biocomp’s brain tissue.
The pros upstairs thought they’d scrubbed all personality from the biocomp’s gray matter. Marten knew it wasn’t as easy as that. His mother had known more about bio-computers than the so-called experts had, and she’d taught him before she’d been killed on the Sun-Works Factory.
Marten took off his work gloves, turned on the D5 and logged onto his Bio-Speak Program. Then he settled the keyboard on his knees, put the mike near his mouth and the audio-plugs in his ears.
It wasn’t what he learned from the Bioram Taw2 that made the difference. It was that after three long years he finally had someone to talk to again. No one in the cab marked demerits or awarded him honors for his views. What he said was what he felt, no less and no more.
Blake, the Bioram Taw2’s name, remembered little of his former life. He’d been married, had two kids and he’d run a big government agency, but of what exactly he couldn’t remember. During their talks, Blake upheld Social Unity, sort of. He mostly wanted to hear all about Marten and Molly Tan. Marten thought it ironic that the disembodied brain was a randy sex-fiend, but he never told Blake that.
Blake and he greeted one another this morning, talked about the news, the work, rambled about nothing for awhile, until finally Blake brought up Molly. He asked, “Why don’t you move in with her?”
“Because she’s not my wife yet,” said Marten for the umpteenth time.
“So?”
“So I think a man should commit first before he has sex with a woman.”
“What a perverse notion, Marten. Don’t ever tell your block leader that.”
“I’ll punch him unconscious is what I’ll do.”
“Why?” That asked eagerly.
“He’s making moves on Molly again, hinting that he can pull strings for her and maybe even for me if she’s nice. When she tells him no thank you, he hints that events can turn the other way just as easily.”
“Tut, tut. Women chase power, Marten. Surely, you know that. She’s just playing hard to get.”
“You don’t know Molly.”
Something like laughter came over the audio-feed. Marten wondered how Blake did that, because laughter had never been in the program.
“Marten, you punch your block leader and you’ll go to the slime pits. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Or maybe they’ll tear your brain down and hook you into a beast.” More of that mad laughter came over the line.
Then the cab shook as the beast tore into the rock with greater intensity than ever.
To Marten’s left, a holoset flickered into life. A small, angry, holo-image shouted silently.
Marten picked up the receiver and put it to his ear.
“Slow it down, Marten!”
“Roger,” said Marten.
In order to keep Blake’s mind off his fate, Marten spent the rest of the morning playing chess. He let Blake win three games in a row. Blake hated losing, but he hated even more someone letting him win. So Marten had to stretch out the games.
