For an instant he was spinning, tumbling, wind ripping at him and noise blasting. He hit the very solid wall, shoulder first, and fell to the tunnel floor, scraping face and hands against the rough wall surface.
For a moment he lay there dazed, ears ringing, face starting to burn where the skin had been scraped, shoulder throbbing. He looked up and saw that the tram had stopped at the terminal, several hundred yards down the tunnel. He was in darkness, a pool of shadow between two lights recessed in the tunnel walls.
“1138 prefix THX, on warrant. Drug evasion. Fled tram in transit. Presume destroyed. Investigate.”
“Check 0463. Proceeding.”
He could see two of the chrome police robots heading for the end of the platform. There were steps leading down to the tunnel floor. Between the steps and THX was nothing but darkness.
THX hauled himself painfully to his feet. Stumbling, holding his injured shoulder, he ran deeper into the tunnel.
They won’t stop until they find me. Or my body.
He scuttled along the wall, trying to stay in the shadows. Then his hand felt a recess, an open hatchway. Blindly, he stepped into it and fell down a metallic chute. Despite himself, he screamed in surprise and fear.
He landed jarringly in a pile of refuse. It stank. It was churning, moiling, gurgling obscenely. Absolute darkness. But THX could feel the mass of evil-smelling garbage surging slowly, like a turgid river of rot. He floundered in it, tried to claw his way out. But he could find nothing to grasp, no walls, not even a solid footing, only a mushy, quicksand-like ooze beneath his frantically treading feet.
He was sinking in it. Deeper and deeper. And then his foot struck something. Metal, sharp, it cut into his heel with a nerve-searing pain. Blindly, THX pushed his way upward. This was another chute of some kind—There’s light up ahead!
The chute was narrowing. He could now see in the faint bluish glow up ahead that there were walls and a ceiling that necked down constantly, forcing the river of slime to move faster, faster, flow toward the light.
And then he knew what the light was. Fusion torch! This was a garbage incinerator, where the refuse of the city was burned by the star-hot tongue of fusion flame, purified into elemental atoms, for recycling as new raw material.
A billion-degree fusion plasma was waiting for him, so hot that it was nearly invisible. THX scrambled to one side of the chute, tried to stand against the flow that pushed him inevitably toward the fusion torch. Now he could hear its voice, the low steady roar of thermonuclear power, the throaty song of a man-made star that sang of death, not life.
The bluish glow was strong enough now to hurt his eyes. But in its fierce light, THX saw a single hand grip projecting downward from the ceiling of the chute. He reached out for it, missed it once, tried again and grabbed it.
A hatch. Painfully, his injured shoulder shrieking along nerve paths, he held onto the grip and worked the release mechanism. The hatch creaked open.
THX pulled himself upward, an agony of exertion, and then lay exhausted, stinking, panting but alive on the metal flooring above the garbage chute.
LUH.
His body wanted to stay there, to sleep, to take time to heal and rest. But his mind repeated, LUH. Got to warn her. Get away…
He forced himself to his feet and staggered down the corridor in which he found himself. At the end of it was a sanitary station and locker room.
I’ll never make it out in the open like this.
The sanitary station was empty. He stripped and showered, then put on a fresh set of clothes. There was a row of stimulants, bright little vials chock-full of pills, stand-big on one side of the locker area. THX shuddered looking at them. But he left them alone.
It seemed like a century before he got back to his own apartment. He was on the wrong side of the city, but he didn’t dare try the tram again. He kept to the crowded shopping levels, stayed on the busiest pedestrian passageways, used the slideways as much as he could.
Every time he saw a chrome police robot his stomach twisted inside him, but the robots merely plodded stoically along, ignoring him.
He got to the apartment at last and flung the door open.
“LUH!”
He rushed in, looked frantically through each room, calling her name.
But she wasn’t there. The apartment was empty.
He stood in the middle of the living room, turning in slow helpless circles. Where can she be? Does she know? Did they arrest her? Is she safe?
And then there were three chrome police robots standing at the still-open door. They stepped inside. They were all carrying long chrome rods.
“THX 1138, you are under arrest for drug evasion and resisting arrest. Further resistance is useless.”
Then from the same robot came OOM’s voice: “I am here to help you. Relax. You have nothing to fear. I am here.”
THX’s shoulders slumped. There was no other place to run to.
From one of the robots he heard a faint human voice announcing:
“THX 1138 has been taken into custody at a minimal monetary expenditure. Total operation cost 3000 units under budget. Congratulations. Be efficient. Be happy.”
The other chrome robot took a step forward and touched THX with his rod. Gently.
A searing bolt of electricity blazed through every nerve in his body. He collapsed into blackness.
Chapter 9
He was sitting up. It took a long time for his eyes to focus, and then he realized it was because there was nothing for them to focus on.
He was clean, freshly dressed, sitting alone in an endless, featureless expanse of white. Clinical white, soundless, odorless, no shadows, no horizon. Nothing but himself and a perfect endless limbo of pure white.
Suddenly he was shivering uncontrollably. He pulled himself together into a fetal ball, trying to protect himself against the nothingness that surrounded him. Gradually he grew tired. His eyes closed. He slept.
Voices awakened him. He couldn’t tell where they were coming from. There was still absolutely nothing to be seen. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but the chatter was like the continuous babble of instructions and commands that filled the working and living areas of the city. Somehow THX felt reassured. This at least was familiar.
He slept again.
This time he was awakened by footsteps. THX got to his feet and looked around to see where they were coming from. Nothing. But the steps were getting louder. Firm, heavy, even strides. He turned and there was a police robot with an electric rod in one hand.
THX backed away. But another police robot appeared, and another. He tried to move away from them, out of reach of those rods. He had felt what they could do.
They circled him, three police robots, identical and identically armed. THX ran, ran in circles while they stood around him, shuffling sideways slightly to make certain he couldn’t break between them. He ran like a caged animal looking for a way out of an endless treadmill; ran until his legs were fluttering with exhaustion, his eyes blurred and stinging, his lungs raw.
As he collapsed to the blank white floor the police robots disappeared with a bluish flash.
Chest heaving, drenched with sweat, THX stared around himself. He was alone again, alone in this white void. Which is worse? he wondered.
Then the voices came back, and he could hear them this time.