Lockridge’s helmet vibrated with a call. “Who comes yonder?” Black-uniformed like himself, two sentries stooped on him. Below, rafted weapons raised their snouts.
He had been schooled. “Guardsmaster Darvast, household troops of Director Brann, returning from a special mission.” The Ranger language was harsh on his tongue. He must admit its grammar and semantics were closer to English than the Warden speech, in which he could not even say some things with any precision. But here, the closest word to “freedom” meant “ability to accomplish,” and there was none for “love” at all.
Since he was going to identify himself to Brann anyway, he had suggested doing so at the start. But Hu vetoed the idea. “You would have to go through too many layers of bureaucracy.” Perforce, that last phrase was a Ranger one. “While you would reach him eventually, the interrogation processes would reveal too much to them, and leave you too crippled.”
“Land at Gate 43 for identification,” the radio voice commanded.
Lockridge obeyed, setting down on a flange that jutted over the water. It was naked metal, as was the immense portal in the wall before him. A guard stepped from an emplacement. “Your ego pattern,” he said.
Warden agents had done their job well. Against a day of need, an identity had been planted in that machine which recorded the life of each person in the hemisphere. Lockridge went to the mind scanner and thought a code word. The circuits took it for the entire biogram of Darvast 05-874-623-189, bred thirty years ago, educated in Crèche 935 and the Academy of War, special service appointee to Director Brann, politically reliable and holder of several decorations for hazardous assignments successfully carried out. The guard saluted with an arm laid across his breast. “Pass, master.”
The gates opened, eerily quiet for such ponderosity. The city’s pulse came through, and a gust of foul air. Lockridge went in.
There had been no time to give him more than a general idea of the layout; he must concentrate on learning what was known about the castle. Play by ear, he thought. I’ve got my direction, more or less.
Brann’s tower had been unmistakable, sheathed in steel and topped by a ball of blue flame. It must be a couple of miles from here. Lockridge began walking.
He found he had entered at the bottom of human habitation. The city went deep below ground, but only machines housed there, with a few armoured engineers and a million convict attendants who did not live long amidst the fumes and radiation. Here, walls, rusted and grimed, enclosed a narrow pedestrian passageway. High overhead, girders and upper-level structures shut out the sky. The air throbbed and stank. Around him pullulated the half-skilled, the useless, the uncaught criminals, with sleazy clothes over fish-belly skins. No one looked hungry—machine-produced food was issued free at one’s assigned refectory—but Lockridge felt as if his lungs were being contaminated by the smell of unwashed bodies. Raucousness:
“So I said to him, I said, you can’t do this to me, I said, I know the apartment proctor personal, I said, and—”
“—where y’ can get the real thing, yuh, ’s true, a real happy, jolt right ’n y’ head—”
“Better leave him alone. He don’t act like nobody else. One of these nights they’ll come get him, you mark my words.”
“If she wants t’ get rid o’ her brats b’fore they’re registered, well, that’s between her and the proctors, I don’t want no part of it, but when she throws ’em down my unit’s waste chute, well!”
“Last I heard, he’d been transferred to, uh, I don’t know exactly but might be disposal detail in, uh, the south somewhere.”
“Nah, they won’t investigate. She wasn’t filling her quota. Why should they care if somebody cuts her throat? Saves them trouble, in fact.”
“Shhh! Look out!”
The stillness spread in rings around Lockridge’s uniform. He didn’t have to push through the crowd like everyone else; folk pressed themselves against the walls, away from him, looked down at the pavement and pretended they were nowhere near.
Their ancestors had been Americans.
He was glad to reach an upward shaft where he could use his gravity belt. Above were levels of wide hallways, painfully clean. The doors were shut and few were abroad, for the technician class need not scrabble around the clock for a livelihood.
Those people he glimpsed wore uniforms of good material and walked with a puritan purposefulness. They saluted him.
Then a file of grey-clad men passed by, with one soldier for
guard Their heads were shaven and their faces dead. He knew them for convicted unreliables. Genetic control did not yet extend to the whole personality, nor was indoctrination always successful. That these men might be trusted among the machines down below, their brains had been seared by an energy field. More efficient would have been to automate everything, rather than use such labour; but object lessons were needed. Still more important was to keep the population busy. Behind a poker face, Lockridge struggled not to retch.
He reminded himself, somewhat wildly, that no state could long endure which had not at least the passive support of a large majority. But that was the final abomination. Nearly everyone here, on every level of society, took the Rangers’ government for granted, could not imagine living in any other way, often enjoyed their existence. The masters fed them, sheltered them, clothed them, educated them, doctored them, thought for them. A gifted, ambitious man could rise high, as technician, scientist, soldier, impresario of ever more elaborate and sadistic entertainments. To get anywhere, one must kick others in the teeth; and that was fun, that gave release. One did not, of course, aspire to the ultimate masterships. Those were assigned by machines, taken to be wiser than any mortal, and if a man was fortunate enough to serve close to such a person, he did so in the spirit of a watchdog.
Like Darvast, Lockridge thought. I’ve got to remember who I’m s’posed to be. He hurried on.
The sun was just rising, through carcinogenic clouds, when he left the roofs behind and flitted toward Brann’s stronghold. Patrolmen swarmed about the walls, flies against a mountain. Guns crouched on every flange, and warcraft circled the burning globe at the spire. This high, the air was clean and cold, the city’s growl subdued to a whisper, the westward view a sierra of towers.
Lockridge landed as ordered and identified himself again.
There followed three hours of hurry-up-and-wait, partly because he must go through the chain of command, partly because the master was not yet ready to see anyone. An officer, of sufficiently elevated rank to be daring, explained with a leer, “He was busy till late last night with his new playmate. You know.”
“No, I’ve been away,” Lockridge said. “Some girl, eh?”
“What?” The Ranger looked shocked. “A female—for pleasure? Where have you been?” His lids drew together.
“In the past, and spent several years,” Lockridge said hastily. “You forget your own world, back then.”
“Ye-e-es . . . I understand that’s quite a problem. Agents who are gone too long, ego time, can develop some nasty deviant notions.”
Being still under close watch, Lockridge said, “You needn’t tell me. I’ve met such cases. Also among the enemy, luckily.”
“It balances out,” the officer nodded, and relaxed. “Well, what’s so urgent about your own report that you can’t wait for an appointment?”