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.
After lunch, Marten went on a routine inspection walk. His mind began to wander as he checked well-oiled segments of machinery… neatly maintained like his life. He didn’t know any more what he wanted. Not to live in Greater Sydney forever, that’s for sure. He wondered sometimes if he had the balls to take an excursion into the slums. Where had his daring gone? Had seeing his Dad’s head explode stolen something out of him?
Despite the so-called glories of Social Unity, slums had formed in paradise. Each city seemed to have them. Greater Sydney wasn’t an exception. In fact, for reasons unknown to the social engineers, Greater Sydney’s slums proved nastier than the common run. Sydney’s deep-core mine reached down to Earth’s mantle, drawing planetary thermal power. Many of the larger cities did likewise.
None of the levels reached anywhere near the mantle. The deep-core mine was a narrow shaft that went far beyond Sydney’s living space. The slums were always near the mine, or the upper part of it, anyway. Sydney’s slums were from Level Forty-one to Forty-nine and for a full kilometer outward. Police raids seldom helped keep control there. Social workers rarely ventured into the slums even if guaranteed army patrols. Hall and block leaders kept a low profile there. Ward officers seldom set foot in their own territory. Desperate people lived in the slums, uneducated, violent people with bizarre modes of thought and behavior. Gangs roved at night, youth gangs being particular bloodthirsty. Drug-lords hired people called mules, bodyguards and enforcers.
The honest, card-carrying citizens on the fringes who lived above and below the slums cried out for stronger police patrols. So at elevator openings and stairwells and at strategic tunnel doors thick knots of heavily-armed shock cops formed.