A World Out of Time Part 9

From inside the room he still couldn't see any doors.

There was only one opaque wall to inspect. He moved along it, rapping. It sounded hollow.

Door controls on the headboard? Nuts. You'd have to walk clear around to the other side-wait, there was something on the back side. Three thumb-sized circular depressions of chrome yellow against black headboard. Corbell pushed them.

The back wall slid up in three unequal sections.

The biggest one was a closet. Corbell found half a dozen garments in it, all one-piece long-sleeved garments with lots of pockets. Some had hoods. A layer of dust at the bottom of the closet was two to three inches thick.

The second section was smaller, no bigger than a telephone booth, with a free-form chair in it. Corbell stepped in. He found another chrome-yellow depression on the wall, and touched it. The door shot up behind him.

A chair. Funny. Now he saw the great hole in the seat of the chair. A toilet? But there was no water in the bowl, and no toilet paper...nothing but a glitteringly clean metal sponge attached to the chair by a wire.

He left the cubicle. By any terms, it was pretty basic for a house with this complexity of design. The owner should have been able to afford something better.

He turned to the clothing still hanging on shaped hangers. Funny, he couldn't tell if they were made for a man or a woman. He tugged at the fabric. It was amazingly resilient-and very dusty. He tugged harder, then tried in earnest to tear the cloth. It stood his full strength.

This clothing seemed new.

But the dust?

Say there were temporary clothes, meant to be thrown out when styles changed, and clothes meant to last longer. How long? If that layer of dust was the temporary clothes.

He still hadn't found a door.

The third cubicle looked promising. There was nothing in it at all except for one unmarked switch like the yellow circle in the bathroom, and a panel of four white-glowing touch points.

"I think I've found an elevator," he said. "I'm going to try it." He used the yellow touch point. The door came up; he turned on his helmet lamp.

Peerssa said, "Dangerous. What if the elevator takes you down and then breaks down?"

"Then you beam me another manhole to climb out of." Corbell pushed the top b.u.t.ton. Nothing happened.

He'd expected that. He must be at the top. He pushed number two.

Peerssa's voice came unnecessarily loud. "Corbell. Answer if you can."

"Yeah?" There had been no sense of motion, yet something something had changed. There were eight more white-glowing touch points: two additional vertical rows beside the first, set closer together, and each of these was marked with a black squiggle. had changed. There were eight more white-glowing touch points: two additional vertical rows beside the first, set closer together, and each of these was marked with a black squiggle.

Corbell jabbed at the door b.u.t.ton.

Peerssa said, "You have changed position by four point one miles southwest and two hundred feet loss of alt.i.tude. I place you in One City."

"Yeah." Corbell looked out into a different room. He was beginning to feel like a wandering ghost. Everything was spooky, unreal.

He stepped out, round what once must have been a floating desk but was now only knee-high. Screens and pushb.u.t.ton panels set into the desk made it look like the control board in the Womb Room; but they were ruined. It must have rained here for hundreds of years.

There was a rug like half-melted cotton candy, deep as his ankles. It squished beneath his boots, and tore, and stuck to his suit fabric. He stepped to the edge of an empty picture window frame and looked out and down.

Thirty stories of windows and empty frames dropped away beneath his toes. He saw much taller buildings around him. There, to the right, a masonry behemoth had fallen, taking buildings and pieces of buildings with it. Beyond that gap, beyond the mist and rain, he thought he could trace a gray-on-gray outline: a cube, impossibly large, whose walls had a slight outward curve.

"Peerssa, did the State ever have any kind of instant transportation? Like a telephone booth, but you dial and you're there?"

"Well, these people did. I should have guessed. Me, of all people! That house wasn't a house, it was only part of a house. I've found the office. It's in the city. There ought to be a bathroom and a dining room and maybe a game room, G.o.d knows where. What we broke into was the bedroom."

"It's likely that the machinery has not been tended for a long time. Bear that in mind."

"Yeah." Corbell stepped back into the cubicle. Where next? He pushed the third down in the row of unmarked b.u.t.tons.

A light flared to life in the ceiling. The extra b.u.t.tons had vanished. Corbell stepped out, and smiled. Definitely, this was the bathroom.

The outside temperature register at his chin was dropping.

"I think this place is air-conditioned," he said.

"You have traveled three point one miles west by southwest and have lost six hundred feet of alt.i.tude."

"Okay." Corbell opened his faceplate. Just for a moment, he'd close it fast if- But the air was cool and fresh.

It came to him, as he let the heavy backpack section fall, that he was exhausted. He pulled himself out of the rest of his armor and crouched at the edge of a bathtub almost big enough to be called a pool.

He couldn't read the markings on the water spigot. He turned it all the way in one direction and pushed it on. Hot water splashed into the tub. He turned it the other way. Boiling water spurted out, spitting steam. He recoiled. If he'd been in in the tub... the tub...

Okay, the "cold" water was hot, but it wasn't too hot to stand. It flooded out and around him as he lolled on the curved bottom.

A tiny voice called, "Corbell, answer."

He reached and pulled the helmet to the edge. "I'm taking a rest break. Check back in an hour. And send me a dancing girl."

IV.

A tiny voice peeped, "-can. Repeating. Corbell, answer if you can. Repeating. Corbell-"

Corbell opened his eyes.

Every texture was strange to his sight and his touch. He was nowhere aboard Don Juan. Don Juan. Then where-? Then where-?

Ah. He'd found two projections at the edge of the sunken tub, soft mounds like a pair of falsies, just right to rest his head between. His neck was still between the pillows. Lukewarm water enveloped him. He'd gone to sleep in the tub. He'd found two projections at the edge of the sunken tub, soft mounds like a pair of falsies, just right to rest his head between. His neck was still between the pillows. Lukewarm water enveloped him. He'd gone to sleep in the tub.

"-if you can. Repeat-"

Corbell pulled the pressure-suit helmet to him. "Here."

"Your hour's gone, and another hour and six minutes. Are you sick?"

"No, just sleepy. Hang on." He pulled the spigot on. Hot water spurted through cool water and mixed. Corbell stirred with his foot. "I'm still on a rest break. Anything new at your end?"

"Something's watching me. I sense radar and gravity radiation."

"Gravity?"

"Gravity waves going through my ma.s.s sensor, yes. I'm being probed by advanced instruments which must have learned a great deal about me. They could be automatic."

"They could also be from whoever sent the messages. Where is all this action coming from?"

"From what would be Tasmania, if this were Earth. The probing has stopped. I can't detect the source."

"If it starts throwing missiles at you you'll have to pull out fast."

"Yes. I'll have to change my orbit. I didn't want to use the fuel, but my orbit does not take me over Antarctica."

"Do that." Corbell stood up (his legs ached) and waded dripping from the warm water. A line of thick dust against the base of a wall might have been the remains of towels. He stopped before a picture window.

The day had darkened. He looked down across a shallow slope of beach sand, downhill into haze that thickened to opaque mist. Was that a... fish skeleton down there, glimmering white through haze? It looked far distant-and big.

Lightning flared, waited, flared again.

The rain fell like an avalanche.

Corbell turned away. He put on his undersuit, then his pressure suit piece by piece, feeling the weight and the chafe spots. The bath had been good. He would have to come back here when he got the chance. There was even a sauna, not that he'd need- Yeah, a sauna. This place was old. If it had been built after the Earth grew hot, the sauna would have been a door to the outside!

He stood in the booth, dithered, and decided not to push the bottom b.u.t.ton. Peerssa was right. The machinery had been untended for a long time. So: bedroom or office? He knew those circuits still worked.

Bedroom.

He stepped out. Next to his chin the temperature readout rose in blinking numerals. He stepped around to the headboard, confirmed a memory: He had seen a television screen, and controls.

He turned it on. The screen lit, first gray-white, then- It was a fuzzy view of the ruined bed, showing his own armored legs.

He tried switches until he found the playback. The scene ran backward. Suddenly the bed was whole and four figures writhed on it at flickering speed. The scene jumped to a different foursome or to the same foursome differently dressed, before he found a way to freeze it.

"Corbell, I have tried to signal the source of the probes, to no effect."

"Okay. Listen, if you have to run, just do it. We'll both be safer if you don't stop to call me about it."

"What will you do now?"

"I'm watching home movies." Corbell chortled. "This place is like the Playboy Mansion. There's an invisible video camera focused on the bed."

"A degenerate civilization, then. Small wonder they could not save themselves. You should not degrade yourself by watching."

"What are you-? What about the loving bunks in the dormitory in Selerdor? That That wasn't degenerate?" wasn't degenerate?"

"It was not thought polite to watch the loving bunks."

Corbell swallowed his annoyance. "I want to know if they're still human."

"Are they?"

"The tape's faded. And they're wearing clothes, loose suits with lots of openings in them, in pastels. If they aren't human I can't see the differences... but they're thin. And they don't seem to carry themselves right." He paused to watch. "And they're very limber. The situation isn't quite what I thought."

"In what way?"

"I thought it was an orgy for four. It isn't. It's like in ancient China: Two of them are servants. They're helping the other pair get into those advanced s.e.xual positions. Maybe they're not servants; maybe they're trainers, or teachers." He watched some more. "Or even... they're as limber as dancers. Maybe that's what they are. I wish I had a view of the couch. There might be spectators."

"Corbell."

"Yeah?"

"Are you hungry?"

"Yeah. I may have to use that fourth b.u.t.ton."

"I wouldn't bother. If a thousand-year-old kitchen is your only food source, you'll die quickly. Your suit will only recycle air for another seventy-one hours. Your food-syrup reserve is trivial. I suggest you try to reach the South Pole. I am over it now. I see a large continental ma.s.s, and forest."

"Well, fine. fine." Corbell switched off the stag movie and made for the booth.

The second b.u.t.ton down created a panel of eight b.u.t.tons beside the smaller panel.

He studied it. The symbols on those eight b.u.t.tons might be letters or numbers. He reached, then drew back. "I'm afraid of it."

"Of what?"

"Of this panel in the office. See, there are four white b.u.t.tons in all the booths. I think that's an intercom, a closed circuit; you couldn't get into it except from the office, or by breaking in the way we did. But there are eight b.u.t.tons with squiggles on them here in the office.

I think they must be more like a telephone dial, and there's a private number that lets you into the office."

"Reasonable."

"Well, what happens when you dial a phone number at random?"

"In my time there was a recorded voice to tell you you had made a mistake."

"Yeah, we had that too. But in this instant transportation setup you might be sent nowhere! Poof!" Poof!"

"That would be poor design. Can you find a telephone directory?" There was nothing like that in the booth. Corbell opened the door. Rain and howling wind were blowing into the office. Fat drops plated themselves across his faceplate. He walked around the desk, waited a minute for the water to run off the gla.s.s, then began puffing at desk drawers. They didn't want to open. He pried one open and found it half full of gray-green mold. An abandoned apple?

Machines were set into the desktop. Telephone, picture-phone, computer link, what? No telling now. Time and rain had destroyed them.

"I'll have to try pushing b.u.t.tons at random," he told Peerssa.

"Good luck."

"Why did you say that?"