The City Machine Read online

  THINK OF THE CITY

  as an organism. It lives to protect us, to sustain us. It keeps away the terrors and dangers and discomforts of the Out, and it feeds and clothes us. It provides the air we breathe, the water we require, the food we need. It is never too warm nor too cold…

  Imagine if you can a world where food depends on the whims of a hostile nature. If men are caught in the open without proper clothing or shelter, they die from too much heat or cold. Many men who have no cities such as ours have died in great pain from weather or disease or wild animals attacking them.

  We’re protected from all these things. But what we get, we have to pay for…

  But while that was true of the all-encompassing City of that colonized planet, was it not also true of any maximum-security prison? If so, was the price to be paid: freedom, truth, progress?

  The

  CITY

  MACHINE

  by

  Louis Trimble

  DAW BOOKS, INC.

  donald a. wollheim, publisher

  1301 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, N. Y. 10019

  Contents:-

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  XI

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  Copyright ©, 1972, by Louis Trimble

  all rights reserved.

  cover art by Kelly Freas.

  first printing 1972

  printed in u.s.a.

  I

  The late-hour shift was a third gone when the light flashed in the tech room, calling Ryne to Scan Central. He found the four scanmen staring at their screens, watches in hands.

  Fuller, the shift head, looked around. “We’re all getting the same picture on a ninety-second repeat run.”

  Ryne moved over and studied filler’s screen. The grimy streets of Lower City slid across the screen, picked up by the probing eye of the scan camera. At this hour the streets were not only drab but empty. It was too early for Shift Change at the factories; too Late for other workers to be up.

  A flicker of movement on the left side of Fuller’s screen caught Ryne’s attention. What had appeared to be a bundle of rags or litter cast aside in a recessed doorway twitched just enough to disturb the shadows in which it lay,

  “Hold it,” Ryne said.

  Fuller reached out to his adjusters, stopping Are picture and bringing it to dose resolution. Ryne leaned forward, waiting for the sharp focus of the close-up. When it came, he saw that the bundle of rags was an old man, a typical derelict drunk. Ryne wondered where they got their illegal alcohol. He’d lived in Lower City long enough before rising to Upper City and he’d never heard a whisper of the source.

  His eyes moved to the other three screens. He should have seen something of each of the four quarters of Lower City, since a different quarter was assigned to each scan.

  Instead he saw the same scene as Fuller’s screen carried—the same street, the same doorway, the same old man, every ninety seconds.

  “That’s enough,” Ryne said. “Somebody’s playing it cute and jamming the scanline between Lower City and here.” He moved out of the room and down the hall to Communication Central. The three late-shift girls were at their boards, idle at the moment. Linne was in her supervisor’s cubicle. She looked up and smiled at Him through the transparent plasti-window.

  He went into the cubicle. “Trouble on the scans.” He glanced at her board, noting its inactivity.

  Linne said softly, “When you came in, I closed the lines down. Lean close to me and the girls will think you’re setting up a date.”

  “I intend to, Ryne said. He bent toward her. “Is this it? Is this what you told me to look for?”

  “This is it,” she agreed softly. “The trouble is down beyond the Central Utilities Core. You’ll be met there.”

  “Before or after I fix the jammed line—or do I fix it?”

  “You fix it.” She smiled at him gently. “And you’ll be met afterward. We don’t want the Coordinator to send someone down to help you out.” Her hand moved to touch his fingers lightly. “I know you think you’ve made your decision, Ryne. But listen to the man who meets you. Don’t really make up your mind until then. Because once you say ‘yes’ to them, there’s no going back.”

  She paused and added softly, “If you tried to go back, it would be the end of us all—of everything we’ve worked for.”

  “m listen,” Ryne said. “And HI try to balance the alternatives, if only out of habit. But I’m a Riser too. I came from down there, and I had fourteen years of knowing what it’s like to be a Lower. If what I hear offers a chance to really change things, saying no would be damned hard.”

  Linne said quietly, “You’ve also had twelve years of being an Upper. Twelve years of security and enough to eat and a decent place to live. Just remember that you’ll be risking all that, risking your whole future life. So don’t say yes just because of me.” Her eyes were soft meeting his. “No one person is worth that much. You have to believe—down here.” She touched her breastbone. “Yon have to believe as I and the others do.”

  “I’ve thought about both sides of it,” Ryne said. He took a deep breath to steady himself, to keep from bending forward and kissing her here, to show her somehow the depths of his affection. But that would only make her thinkin he was trying to please her rather than use his own mind to make his decision. He was, she had told him more than once, very susceptible to suggestion. And perhaps it was true. When he was with her, his decision was clear enough; when they were apart and he was alone, the doubts came.

  He said again, “I’ll listen. I’ll thinkin about it I’ll make up my own mind.”

  She warmed him with her smile. ’The girls are beginning to look this way.”

  Ryne backed to die door. “Then get me the Coordinator on a private line, will you?”

  “At this hour? Can’t you just go?”

  “No,” Ryne said. “Not into the utility tunnels without clearance. Besides, I’ll need a helper. I can’t request one. His office has to.”

  “The helper is all arranged for,” she said. She opened her board and flicked a switch. Ryne crossed to a communicator at the far side of the room. He lifted it and waited, listening for an answer to her call to the top level of Upper City, to the man who alone had the responsibility for Lower and Upper Cities, and the responsibility for coordinating the work they did with those at the very top, the High.

  He had never personally talked to the Coordinator, and he felt uneasy when the Coordinator demanded a video hookup on the call. Ryne studied the most familiar face on Upper City viewscreens; it seemed to him he had seen that face and listened to the persuasive voice at least once a day since his rising from Lower City.

  Yet this was a different kind of image, a more intimate one; and Ryne thought that the Coordinator was becoming gray and slightly jowly. But he was still tall and erect with the kind of shoulders that had helped him figuratively batter his way through the obstacles that had stood in the way of his becoming the most important man below the High. His eyes were alert, despite his having been wakened after only a short period of sleep.

  “Scan Technician Ryne reporting a non routine problem,” Ryne said formally.

  I’m listening,” the Coordinator said.

  Ryne saw his eyes drop toward the desk visible at waist level. The Coordinator would have bis file there; he was not a man to approach anything unprepared. Ryne said, “The scans have been jammed for a ninety-second repeat Same picture from all sectors. I’d say die technique used was pretty sophisticated.”

  ‘I’m hooked in,” the Coordinator said. “I can see what you mean. How do you think it’s being done?”

  “A holographic film loop set to repeat every ninety seconds,” Ryne said promptly. “I think it’s been plugged into the system somewhere above the point where all the feeder cables come together but below where the main cable passes through Lower City street level.”

  “Logical. What do you need to fix it?”

  “An assistant to hold the big lamp and a pass into the Core.”

  “It will be arranged by the time you reach the Core Entry Room.” He paused briefly. “Report to me personally on completion.”

  Ryne was too intent in trying to read something into the Coordinator’s tone to guard against his natural tendency toward being sardonic. “If I succeed, that is.”

  “In either case.” The connection was abruptly broken.

  Ryne moved back to Linne’s cubicle. She said, “Your helper will be a man named Mabton. Remember—just because you’ve agreed to listen doesn’t mean he’ll trust you. And the Core isn’t the safest place to get into an argument”

  ““I’ll remember,” he said. He bent, brushing his lips across her cheek. When he straightened up, he said, “If I’m a little late for tonight’s date, don’t go running off with someone else.”

  It was their private joke; in the year since they’d been keeping company, they had reserved themselves exclusively for one another. As he left, he heard one of the girls call softly to Linne, “I wish I had a man willing to snoozle me in public. When are you two going to break down and get a pair-up license?”

  A minor flood of calls lighting the boards kept Linne from having to answer. Ryn
e stood a moment watching the graceful efficiency with which she performed her routine tasks. She was damned attractive to him in a tilt-nosed way. Like himself, she had dark hair and dark eyes, intense against skin tones belonging to a blonde. And while she was slender in contrast to his burliness, she gave no impression of fragility. If anything, he had always found in her a spiritual strength he was not sure that he could match.

  He went directly to the next level down, the last before the three-level gap that separated Lower from Upper City. Here a small contingent of the Coordinator’s Auxiliaries—his volunteer guards—watched for any Lower who might try to infiltrate from below.

  His Core pass was waiting. He went through a doorway as one of the guards pressed a release button. He entered a small room with one wall made up of the great circular side of the Core, the big duct that carried the vital utilities from deep underground into Upper City and on to the High. Beside an open doorway in the Core wall stood a small, wiry man a little older than Ryne. He wore die rough coveralls of a Lower, with a tech-assistant insignia on his sleeve. That meant he either worked for the factory management or for the Wardens themselves; in either case he wouldn’t be a man too popular with rank-and-file Lowers.

  “Mabton,” he said, not offering to shake hands. He had one of the big lamps beside him, and be bent, slipping the straps of the power pack onto his shoulders. When they had fixed the helmet lamps on their heads, Mabton said, “Who goes first?”

  “I do,” Ryne said dryly. “If you slip I won’t feel as much as you would if I fell on you.”

  Mabton grinned sourly. “Don’t slip, not on the ladders. It’s a long way down in some places.” He moved aside to let Ryne go first

  The Core was a mass of tubes and cables running up the center of a great duct. Ladders allowed vertical movement, and where the Core ran level with the cross section of the City, narrow catwalks allowed slow progress. There was no light except that from the bulbs in their headlamps.

  They went down slowly, carefully, the only sounds their steadying breathing and the scrape of soft boot soles on die

  Slasti-metal rungs of die ladder. At die first cross section, Mabton stepped onto the platform and eased the weight of the power pack from his Shoulders. “How far down do we go?”

  “I was expecting yon to tell me,” Ryne said with soft sarcasm.

  Mabton threw him a sour grin. “I was hoping to detour and tap one of the hydroponic-food-factory storerooms. Us Lowers can always use an extra mouthful.”

  Ryne made no answer. He recalled only too clearly his own days as a Lower. There had never been quite enough food to stretch even a young child’s small belly; and a growing boy was always hungry. The most impressive discovery he had made on first rising had been that Uppers ate three full meals a day and, if they chose, could even buy additional food from their earnings. He had heard that the Highs ate whenever and whatever they pleased; but even after years in Upper City he found that hard to believe.

  “I didn’t mean to step on a sensitive toe,” Mabton gibed into the silence.

  “No pain,” Ryne said shortly. “I was wondering how a small man with an empty belly could carry that power pack.” He turned from Mabton’s challenging grin to the ladder.

  “We should be about Lower City level now,” Ryne said. He struggled to bring back sharply the schematic he had carefully memorized. “In a few more meters, the Core should be running through Warden Central. Below its basement floor, the main branch ducts begin coming in.”

  “No problem, then,” Mabton said. “Just find the duct carrying the communication cables and follow it.”

  “Except that the entire duct doesn’t feed into the Core,” Ryne answered. He climbed slowly downward, talking as he went. “Only the cables themselves feed in. That means we have to go all the way to Utilities Central and backtrack to get into the communications duct itself. It’ll be a long haul through a number of side ducts.”

  “I’ll survive,” Mabton said.

  They were silent again. Another fifty meters downward and the big Core made a direct right-angle turn. Now they could follow the horizontal catwalk, and they made better time. Suddenly it angled again, once more downward. And here was another cross-sectional plate, allowing them to leave the ladder.

  “This should be Utilities Central,” Ryne said. There was a door in the curving side of the Core. He opened it and led the way into a cavernous room that echoed emptily with the shuffling sounds from their boot soles.

  They stepped onto the wide fiat top of a great cylinder that stretched meters in all directions. The Core ran through its center, and around the outer perimeter of the Core sat a large number of metallic boxes.

  Ryne said, “Let’s break and take the weight of my lunch out of my tool kit” He sat down, some distance from the wall of the Core, and opened the kit.

  “Aren’t you afraid of the radiation?” Mabton gibed. But he seated himself next to Ryne.

  “We’re supposedly screened from radiation—whatever that is.”

  He passed Mabton one of Us two small food packets and extended his flask of synkaf. “If you don’t mind drinking out of the same bottle as a Riser.”

  “I’ll risk it,” Mabton said. He opened bis packet and began to eat the bread and meat, both the characterless but nourishing products of the hydroponics factories. “You know these ducts pretty well,” he stud around a mouthful of food.

  “I memorized the schematic,” Ryne said. He paused and added carefully, “After I knew I might have to find my way around.”

  “Linne is a nice girl,” Mabton said cryptically. “Very efficient. We all think a lot of her.”

  “So do I,” Ryne replied.

  He waited for Mabton to press the subject. Instead Mabton said, “Can you read the writing on those boxes?”

  Ryne glanced at die metallic boxes lining the Core wall. Starting to the left of where he sat, they continued along the curve of the Core and passed out of sight Each had two sets of symbols on its faceplate. The upper set was in the ancient script They had been overpainted a long time ago, but their deep intaglio still preserved their outlines legibly. The lower set was in easily readable, standadized print

  “‘Water, heat, atmosphere control…’” Ryne read. The remainder were beyond his range of vision. “Shutoffs for the various utilities coming up through the Core,” he suggested.

  Mabton said, “Did you read from the old script or the modem print?”

  It was an unexpected question, and one Ryne wasn’t sure he could answer. He said thoughtfully, honestly, “I don’t know. I can remember the sounds the old symbols stand for, but with the translations right there, I’m not sure I read the old words.”

  Mabton stood up. “Fair enough,” he said. “Where to now?”

  Again the abrupt shift of subject jerked at Ryne. But with a shrug, he put the synkaf flask back in the tool kit and got to his feet “Back into the Core and then across the cross-section platform to a communication side duct We follow that until it goes into the main branch. After we’ve picked up all the side ducts, we start looking for the jam.”

  He added, “We could save time if you show me where it is.”

  “How would a simple tech like me know that?” Mabton asked.

  Ryne led the way silently back into the Core. Once inside, Mabton grunted, stepped ahead, and quickly led the way across the platform and into the side duct. They followed it to the main branch duct and continued up that to the point where it narrowed to permit the many cables that had now fused into one to pass into the Core again. He stopped, turned on the big lamp, and let its light shine on the cable.

  “Just reach out and bum that little bulge you see,” he said. “That will take care of it”