He had always been, to a degree, unstable in this way, perhaps because of his tendency to suppress the unpleasant ideas which sometimes came to him. Having no parents, unloved by his grandfather, his childhood had been spent in a perpetual quest for attention; at school he had been broken of his exhibitionism, and the nature of his job gave him no means of expressing these feelings. Now he sought, perhaps, that needed love in the Fireclown with his constant evoking of parent images. Certainly he had sought it in Helen, so much so that a similar need in her had clashed with his own. And now, spurred on by his grandfather's bitter references to his illegitimacy, he had embarked on a search which had led him to this-death!
He got up, abstractedly watching the door slowly turning red hot.
Had many others, like him, identified the Fireclown with some need to feel wanted?
He smiled. It was too pat, really-too cheap. But he had hit upon a clue to the Fireclown's popularity even if he was not yet near to the exact truth.
Looking at it from another angle, he assembled the facts. They were few and obvious. The Fireclown's own psychological need had created the creed that he had preached, and it had found an echo in the hearts of a large percentage of the world's population. But the creed had not really supplied an answer to their ills, had only enabled them to find expression.
The door turned to smoky white and he smelled the steel smoldering. A slight glow filled the room and his mouth was dry of saliva, his body drained of sweat.
The world had reached some kind of crisis point. Perhaps it was, as the Fireclown had said, because man had removed himself from his roots and lived an increasingly artificial life.
Yet Alan couldn't completely accept this. An observer from another star, for instance, might see the rise and fall of man-made constructions as nothing more than a natural change-process. Did human beings consider an ant-hill "unnatural?" Wasn't the City of Switzerland itself merely a huge ant-hill?
He saw with surprise that the door had faded from white to red hot and the heat in the room was decreasing. Immediately there was some hope. He forgot his reverie and watched the change intently. Soon the door was only warm to his touch. He pushed at it but it wouldn't budge. Then he realized that the heat had expanded the metal. He waited impatiently, giving an experimental push every now and then until, at last the door gave and he stepped into the ruined laboratory.
The fire had destroyed much, but now the room swam with liquid. An occasional spurt from the walls close to the ceiling told him the source of his salvation.
Evidently the old section of the City had had to protect itself against fire more than any other part-the old automatic extinguishers had finally functioned and engulfed the fire.
In the passage outside it was the same. The extinguishers had not been tested-not even known about-for years but, activated by the extreme heat, they had finally done the job they had been designed for.
With relief, he began to run up the pitch-dark corridor, at last finding his way to the ramp. A small heap of containers was still there, but there were not so many as he had seen earlier. Had the police managed to take them, or had they been salvaged by the Fireclown? It was, of course, virtually impossible for fire to destroy the P-bombs' shielding, but how many knew that these days? How much panic, Alan wondered, had been the result of the Fireclown's holocaust?
Levels all the way up had been swept by fire. He was forced to push his body on and on, climbing the emergency stairways, avoiding charred corpses and wreckage.
Naked flame had not been used in the city for many years and fire precautions had been lax-there had been no need for them until now.
Alan wondered wryly if the Fireclown's popularity was as great as it had been yesterday.
The first group of men he met were on the fifteenth level. They were forcing open a door in a residential corridor, obviously equipped as a rescue team.
They stared at him, astonished.
"Where did you come from?" one of them asked, rubbing a dirty sleeve over his soot-blackened face.
"I was trapped down below-old fire extinguishers put out the fire."
"They may have put out the fire that the initial fire started," another said,
"but they wouldn't have worked on the first lot. We tried. Nothing puts it out once it's under way."
"Then why is it out now?"
"Just thank the stars it is out. We don't know why. It suddenly subsided and disappeared between the fifteenth and sixteenth levels. We can only guess that the stuff it's made of doesn't last forever. We don't know why it burns and we don't know what it burns. To think we trusted the Fireclown and he did this to our homes…"
"You're sure it was the Fireclown?"
"Who else? He had the P-bomb cache, didn't he? It stands to reason he had other weapons, too-flame-weapons he'd made himself."
Alan passed on.
The semi-melted corridors gave way to untouched corridors full of disturbed people, milling around men organizing them into rescue teams. Emergency hospital stations had been set up and doctors were treating shock and burn victims, the lucky survivors. The lowest level had been built to withstand destruction of this kind, but the newer levels had not been. If he had been on the tenth level, or even the ninth where a few families had still lived before the blaze, he wouldn't be alive now.
Though climbing the emergency stairs and ramps was hard going, Alan chose these instead of the overcrowded, fear-filled elevators. On he climbed, grateful for the peace and quiet of the stairs in contrast to the turbulence in the corridors.
He was crossing the corridor of the thirtieth level when he saw that one of the shopfronts-it was a consumer corridor-bore a gaudy slogan. A FREER LIFE WITH THE RLM, it said. The place was the election headquarters of the Radical Liberal Movement. Another poster-a tri-di build-up-showed the smiling face of Helen Curtis. At the top, above the picture, it said Curtis, and at the bottom, below the picture, it said President. The troublesome for had been left out.
He stopped and spoke to the door of the place.
"May I come in?"
The door opened. He walked into a poster-lined passage and into a large room stacked with election literature. Bundles of leaflets and posters, all brightly colored, were stacked everywhere. There didn't seem to be anyone around.
He picked up a plastipaper poster of Helen. An audiostrip in its lining began to whisper softly: Curtis for President, Curtis for President, Curtis for President. He flung it down and as it crumpled the whispering stopped.
"I see that's another vote I've lost," said Helen's voice behind him.
"I had a feeling I was going to meet you," he said quietly, still staring at the fallen poster.
"It would be likely, in my own election headquarters. This is only the store-room. Do you want to see the offices? They're smart." Her voice, unlike her words, was not a bit cheerful.
"What are you going to do with all this now?" he said, waving a tired arm around the room.
"Use it, of course. What did you expect?"
"I should have thought a campaign wouldn't have been worth your time now."
"You think because I supported the Fireclown when he was popular I won't have a chance now he's unpopular-is that it?"
"Yes." He was surprised. Her spirit, it seemed, was still there. She didn't have a chance of winning the elections now. Was she hiding the fact from herself? he wondered.
"Look, Alan," she said forcefully, "I could have walked into the Presidency without a fight if this hadn't happened. Now it's going to be a tough fight-and I'm rather glad."
"You always liked a fight."
"Certainly-if the opposition's strong enough."
He smiled. "Was that levelled at me by any chance? I've heard it said that if a man doesn't love a woman enough she thinks he's strong; if he loves her too much she thinks he's weak. Was the opposition weak, Helen?"