The Missing Man Part 3

"Then it doesn't matter. He's not up to any bad business."

The two walked across the small green park, through the thick air, toward the glittering gla.s.s shaft that went up from the ground into the distant green dome that was the roof of the city. Inside the huge gla.s.s tube a brightly lit elevator rose slowly, carrying a crowd of people looking out over the city as a canary would look out above a giant room.

"Next we check the air-pump controls," Ahmed said. "They're near the elevator." People went by, looking formal and overdressed, pale and quiet, stiff and neat. Not his kind of people. Civil servants, government administration people, accountants.

George followed, trying to breathe. The air seemed to be not air, but some inferior subst.i.tute. Glittering small buildings rose on either side of the park in rows, like teeth, and he felt inside a tiger mouth. The air smelled like lilies in a funeral parlor. The people he pa.s.sed gave out vibes of a trapped hopeless defeat that made his depression worse. They pa.s.sed a crowd of quiet miserable people waiting to get on the elevator, carrying fishing poles and swimming equipment.

High above them the elevator descended slowly.

"That's bad," George said. "You feel it, don't you, Ahmed?"

"Feel what?" Ahmed stopped beside a small rounded building attached to the side of the shaft. The building throbbed with a deep steady thump, thump, thump, like a giant heart.

"I want to get out of here," George said. "Don't you feel it?"

"I ignore that kind of feeling," Ahmed said expressionlessly, and pulled on the handle of the door to the pump room. It was unlocked. It opened. The thumping was louder. "Should be locked,"

Ahmed muttered. They looked inside.-

Inside, down a flight of steps, two workmen were checking over some large warm thumping machinery. The two detectives went down the steps.

"Ident.i.ty check, let's see your ID," George said, and looked at: the two badges they handed him, in the same way he had seen. Ahmed and other detectives checking them over. He took thumbprints and matched them to the photo thumbprints, he compared the faces on the photos to the faces before him. One big one with a craggy chiseled stone face and grim vertical lines on the cheeks; one short weathered one, slightly leaner. slightly more humor in the face. Both identified as engineers of Consolidated Power and' Light, inspectors of electrical motor appliance and life support services.

"What are the pumps doing?" Ahmed asked, looking around.

"Pumping air in, pumping water out," replied one of the men. "There's the pump that pushes excess water up to the top, where' it comes out as a little ornamental fountain in an artificial island..:, The pressure equalizes by itself, so it doesn't need elaborate equipment, just power."

"Why pump water out?" Ahmed asked. "The air pressure is supposed to be so high that it pushes the water, out."

The man laughed. "You make it sound so simple. The air pressure is approximately the same here as up at the top surface of the , dome, but the water pressure rises every foot of the way down. Down here at the bottom it is higher than the air pressure. Water squeezes in along the edges of the cement slab, up through the . ground cover and the dirt. We have drains to catch the seepage:, and lead it back to this pump. We expect seepage."

"Why not pump in more air? Higher air pressure would keep all . the water out."

"Higher air pressure would burst the top of the dome like a balloon. There isn't enough weight of water to counter push."

George got an uncertain picture of air pushing to get out the top and water pushing to get in the bottom. "It's working all right?" He handed the ID badges back to them.

"Right," said the explanatory man, pinning on his badge. "It would take a bomb to get those pumps out of balance. Don't know why they sent us to check the pumps. I'd rather be out fishing."

"They're looking for a bomb, dummy," said the other one sourly.

"Oh." The bigger one made a face. "You mean, like Brooklyn Dome blew up?" He looked around slowly. "If anything starts to happen, we're right near the elevator. We can get to the top."

"Not a chance," said the sour one. "The elevator is too slow. And it has a waiting line, people ahead of you. Resign yourself. If this place blows, we blow."

"Why is the elevator so slow?" George asked. Fix it! He hoped silently. They listened to the burn of the elevator engine lowering the elevator. It was slow.

"It can go faster; the timer's right here." The sour engineer walked over and inspected the box. "Someone has set it to the slowest speed. I wonder why."

"For sightseeing," George said, "but I saw the crowd waiting. They have fishing poles. They want to get to the top, they don't want to wait in the middle of the air, just viewing."

"Okay." The talkative one walked over and firmly set the pointer over to "fast." The elevator reached the ground on the other side of the wall, rumbled to a stop and the doors whirred open.

They listened, hearing voices and the shuffle of feet as people crowded inside, then the doors rumbled shut and the elevator started for the top. The whirr was high and rapid. In less than a third of the time the trip up to the surface had taken before, the whirr stopped.

The two engineers nodded at each other. "I hope they are happy with it."

"They are getting there faster."

George said, "That makes sense," and Ahmed nodded agreement. They went out and watched the elevator return. As rapidly as falling, the great silver birdcage came down the gla.s.s shaft and slowed, and stopped, and opened. It was empty. No one who was up there was coming back in to the city.

More people got on.

"What is up there?" George asked, holding himself back from a panic desire to get in the elevator with the others and get out of the enclosed city. "I have a feeling we should go up there," he said, hoping Ahmed would misunderstand and think George was being called by a hunch.

"What do you feel?" Ahmed looked at him keenly. The doors shut and the elevator rose rapidly, leaving them behind on the ground.

"What I feel is, we shouldn't have let that elevator go without us. We've had it, old buddy. It's been nice knowing you. I didn't expect to die young."

"Snap out of it." Ahmed clicked his fingers under George's nose. "You're talking for somebody else. Hold that feeling separate from your thinking. It's not your kind of feeling. George Sanford isn't afraid, ever. You don't think like that."

"Yes I do," George said sadly. He heard the elevator doors rumble open far overhead. Somewhere above people had escaped to the top of the ocean instead of the bottom. A dock? An island? Somewhere fresh winds were blowing across ocean waves.

"Locate that feeling of doom," Ahmed said. "Maybe our mad bomber is a suicider and plans to go down with the ship. Shut your eyes. Where are you in your head?"

"On top, on an island in the daylight," George said sadly, looking at his imagination of sand and seagulls. "It's too late, Ahmed We're dead." A few new people arrived and lined up behind him waiting for the elevator. The sound of its descent began far above. People approached through the park from the direction of the railway station, and George remembered that there had been fenced-in crowds waiting for trains, waiting to get out. Maybe some people had grown impatient and wanted to get to fresh air. The crowd behind him grew denser and began to push. The elevator doors opened in front of George. '

"Get in, George," said Ahmed, and pushed his elbow. "We're going to the top."

"Thanks." George got on. They were pushed to the back of the cage and the doors shut. The elevator rose with knee-pressing speed. Over the heads of the people before him George saw a widening vision of the undersea city, small buildings circling a central park, dimly and artistically lit by green and blue spotlights on trees and vines, with a rippling effect in the light like seaweed and underwater waves. Paths and roads were lit with bead chains of golden sodium lights. On the other side of the park the railroad station, squares of soft yellow light, fenced in by lacework metal walls. Many people around it. Too many. Dense crowds. The paths across the park were moving with people approaching the elevator shaft.

The elevator reached the top of the dome and went through into a tube of darkness. For a few moments they rose through the darkness and then they felt the elevator slow and stop. The doors rumbled open and the people pressed out, hurried through a gla.s.s door and down a staircase, and were gone from the top floor.

George looked around. There was the sky and ocean s.p.a.ces he had dreamed of, but the sky was cloudy, the ocean was gray, and he was looking at them through thick gla.s.s. The island viewing platform was arranged in a series of giant gla.s.s steps, and the elevator had opened and let them into the top step, a gla.s.s room that looked out in all directions through thick gla.s.s, giving a clear view of the-horizon, the gla.s.s rooms below, and the little motorboats that circled the docks of an artificial island.

"How's your hunch? What do you feel'?" Ahmed snapped out, looking around alertly, weight on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, ready to spring at some mad bomber that he expected George to locate.

"The air is faked. I can't breathe it," George said, breathing noisily through his mouth. He felt like crying. This was not the escape he had dreamed of. The feeling of doom persisted and grew worse.

"It's the same air and the same pressure as down undersea in the dome," Ahmed said impatiently. "They keep the pressure high so

people can come here from under without going through air locks.. They can look, take pictures and go back down. It smells lousy, so ignore it."

"You mean the air is under pressure here, as bad as all the way down at the bottom of the ocean?"

"Yes, lunk. That's what makes sense to them, so that's the way ,. they have it set up."

"That's why the wall is so thick then, so it won't burst and let the pressure out," George said, feeling as if the thickness of the' wall were a coffin, keeping him from escaping. He looked out'. through the thick gla.s.s wall and down through the gla.s.s roof of the observation room that was the next step down. He saw chairs and magazines, a waiting room, and the crowd of people that had come on the elevator with him lined up at a gla.s.s door, with the r first one in line tugging at the handle of the door. The door was . not opening. "What are they doing?"

"They are waiting for the air pressure in the room to go down -. and equalize with the air pressure in the stairwell and the next room. Right now the pressure in the room presses the door shut. It opens inward as soon as the pressure goes down." Ahmed looked bored.

"We have to go out." George strode over to the inside door that. shut off a stair leading down to the next room. He tugged. The, gla.s.s door did not open. "Air pressure?"

"Yes; wait, the elevator is rising. It seems to be compressing the air, forcing it upward." Thick air made Ahmed's voice high- . pitched and distant.

George tugged on the handle, feeling the air growing thicker and press on his eardrums. "We have enough pressure here al- 'ready. We don't need any more fake air. Just some real air. I want .; to be out of here."

The elevator door opened and a group of people, some carrying. suitcases, some carrying fishing gear, pressed out and milled and lined up at the door behind George, pushing each other and murmuring complaints about pushing in tones that were much less .

subdued than the civil service culture usually considered to be polite. -

The elevator closed its doors and sank out of sight, and air pressure began to drop as if the air followed the piston of the elevator in pumping up and down. George swallowed and his eardrums clicked and rang. He yanked hard on the handle of the stairwell door. It swung wide with a hiss and he held it open. The crowd hurried down the stairs, giving him polite thanks as they pa.s.sed. With each thanks received he felt the fear of the person pa.s.sing. He stared into the faces of a woman, a teener, a young woman, a handsome middle-aged man, looking for something beside fear, and finding only fear and a mouse like instinctive urge to escape a trap, and a fear of fear that kept them quiet, afraid to express the sense of disaster that filled their imaginations.

"Argh," said George as the last one went down the stairs. "Hurry up, Ahmed, maybe they are right." He gestured his friend through the door and ran down after him onto the lower step of a big gla.s.s viewing room with tables and magazines to make waiting easy. Behind him he heard the door lock shut and the whirr of the elevator returning to the top with more people.

George leaned his forehead against the thick gla.s.s walls and looked out at a scene of little docks and a buzz of small electric boats circling the platform, bouncing in a gray choppy sea, under thick gray clouds.

"What's out there?" Ahmed asked.

"Escape."

"What about the saboteur?" Ahmed asked with an edge of impatience. "What is he thinking, or feeling? Are you picking anything up?.,

"One of those boats is it," George answered, lying to avoid Ahmed's duty to return to the undersea city. "Or a small submarine, right out there. The top's going to be blasted off the observation platform. Get rescue boats in here. Use your radio, hurry, and get me a helicopter. I want to be in the air to spot which boat."

It wasn't all lies; some of it felt like the truth. He still leaned his forehead against the wall and looked out, knowing he would say anything to get out. Or do anything. He tried to tune to the idea of sabotage, and open to other people's thoughts, but the urge to escape came back in a greater sickness and swamped other Thoughts. "Why?" he asked the fear. "What is going to happen'?" An image. came of horses kicking down a barn from inside, of cattle stampeding, of a chick pecking to get out of an egg, with the chick an embryo, not ready yet to survive in air. Kicking skeleton feet broke through from inside a bubble and the bubble vanished. The images were confusing. He looked away from his thoughts and watched the outside platform.

The platform was crowded with people, shivering in a cold wind; apparently waiting their turn to enjoy a ride in the little boats. George knew that they were outdoors because they could not stand being indoors.

Ahmed tapped on his arm. He had the wrist-radio earphones plugged into both ears, and his voice sounded odd and deaf "Headquarters wants to know why, George. Can you give details?"

"Tell them they have five minutes, seven minutes if they're lucky. Get the patrol boats here to stop it and"-George almost shouted into Ahmed's wrist mike-"GET ME THAT HELICOPTER. Get it over here fast! We need it as soon as we get through the air locks!"