Manalone (19 page)

‘You have to be sick or something. You pay that to labourers.’

‘Labourers have the choice of working for me or trying elsewhere. You don’t.’

‘Choice or not, you can’t expect me to work for that money. We had an agreement, remember?’

‘Agreements don’t hold when one of the parties is legally dead, Manny boy. I’ve told you my offer. If you don’t like it, let’s see you get back into that autram and leave.’

‘I’ll see you in hell,’ said Manalone.

‘Probably – but you’re already there. Hopefully I’ve a few more years to go.’

‘You can’t be serious about the money.’ Manalone looked into the mocking bull-moose face and saw he was wrong to be making an argument of the affair. This was a trial of strength. From an outstanding position, Blackman was trying to gauge how much dominance he could gain over Manalone. He had already taken his wife, to force him now to work for labouring rates would complete the triumph.

Manalone
shrugged and walked determinedly back towards the autram.

‘You’re pathetic, Victor. First you acquire Sandra – and thereby treble your expenses. Then you appear to consider you can create your own programmes without skilled advice. What are you trying to do – go out of business?’

‘You’re bluffing, Manny. You daren’t get back into that autram, and you know it.’

‘There’s something else you’ve not considered. What kind of a programme would I give you for fifty a week? It could cost you more before you could kick the bugs out of it than you could earn in a twelvemonth. You’re playing in the wrong league.’

‘I still think you’re bluffing. Get into that autram with your credit rating, and you’re straight on your way to gaol.’

‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that I might find gaol preferable?’

‘I know you’re crazy, but you’re not that crazy.’

‘Try me. Happy bankruptcy, Victor! I can only say it’s long overdue.’

‘I’m calling your bluff, Manny. Let’s see you register your credit in that vehicle.’

Cornered, Manalone had no alternative. He thrust his now perforated ComCredit card into the credit reader and dialled the first code that entered his head – that for the Hover-rail Terminal. Blackman’s eyes gained a certain admiration.

‘You win, Manny,’ he said. ‘I had you figured for a dropout. Better cancel that and get out fast. I’ll honour our original agreement. I may go broke because of it, but what else can I do for a friend?’

Manalone had kept the vehicle inactive by keeping the door propped partly open with his foot. He was now becoming aware of an increasing pressure as the automatic door attempted to close. This was unusual, because the safety devices in the door’s edge were designed to prevent accidental damage to passengers’ limbs or clothing. It was a considerable shock to have to withdraw his leg before pneumatic pressures closed the door with a force sufficient to have severed the limb had he not moved. He could do no more than shout his dismay to Blackman before the autram swung
sharply round towards the road and began to accelerate away.

Seized
with a sudden panic, Manalone punched the cancellation button. This should have terminated any normal journey, but the vehicle continued its progress undeterred. Perplexed by its vagary, he studied the route box, hoping the aberrations were the result of damage by vandals rather than being what he feared – a deliberate instruction from the central computer. He hated to admit it, but he appeared to have been caught in a rather ingenious trap.

A glance from the window told him that the autram had failed to follow its usual cross-town routing, and was steadily accelerating into an uptown fast lane. Its control of lane codes showed its direction to be purposeful rather than symptomatic of a breakdown in the route decoder.

With trembling fingers, Manalone checked his original destination code against the readout figures now on the route box. The exhibited numbers bore no resemblance to the sequence he had set there. Presumably the central transport computer had intercepted and re-routed the autram after the journey had been started. It would have been a simple matter to instruct the credit and transport computers that anyone using Manalone’s ComCredit card would be re-routed to a pre-stated destination. All the police or the MIPS had to do was wait for him to be delivered.

Manalone understood now the habitual criminals’ reluctance to use autrams as a means of transport. Somewhere in the city would be a depot, presumably constabulary staffed, into which autrams would be directed to deliver selected passengers. Those attempting to travel when out of credit, persons using stolen ComCredit cards, and a whole spectrum of known and wanted criminals could be continually collected from the streets with the minimum of fuss and human intervention. It was no wonder to Manalone that the police detection rates remained so high. The whole transport system was a police trap too polished to be contemplated – or endured.

‘You’re a
problem solver, Manalone. Let’s see you solve your way out of this one.’

He tried manipulating the emergency stop lever. It did not work, and he had been reasonably sure of this before he tried it. The problem was not to be so easily resolved. Nor was he so naive as to believe he could merely open the door and jump out. Autrams were built for safety, and no amount of pressure on the doors could open them whilst the car was in motion. Nevertheless he tried it, and was not at all surprised to find the doors immovable.

Manalone dropped back in his seat and tried to recall all that he knew about autram operation. Because it was an unattended public vehicle its control mechanisms were virtually unassailable, as a protection against vandalism and theft. It took its route co-ordinates from the central transport computer, but remained autonomous inasmuch as local traffic decisions were made by the vehicle’s own internal units. If there was any escape to be found, it lay in affecting one of the internal circuits not controlled or controllable by the transport computer.

Enlarging this idea, Manalone drew from his pocket the gas-fuelled igniter. The roof of the autram was covered internally with a thick layer of a crushable plastic material designed to absorb the effect of crash impact. He hazarded a guess that somewhere in the roof would be a fire-detection instrument coupled to a mandatory emergency stop circuit. If he could induce a fire to start in the roof he might well trigger the autram into an emergency action mode.

At first it did not look as though the idea was going to work. The tough, hide-like exterior of the roof refused to take the flame, although it produced a plentiful supply of acrid and faintly scented smoke. The igniter flame, though brilliant, did not seem powerful enough to simulate the effect of a major internal fire. Exploring the crushable underlay with his fingers, Manalone detected a lump which might or might not be the detector he sought. He concentrated the igniter on this one point, and reinforced its intensity with a few impious prayers.

Then came a welcome reaction. With a sudden scream of its emergency siren, the autram slewed from the fast lane and decelerated rapidly. Still choosing its route with meticulous road-sense, it manoeuvred across the midi lane and into the slow, and finally drove to a halt against the kerb. For several agonizing seconds the doors refused to open. Finally, with a reluctance which appeared to be the vector of conflicting commands, the pneumatic pressure was released, and Manalone thankfully extricated himself from the screaming vehicle.

He did not
stop to explain the situation to the several operators of manu-drives slowing to see if he was in need of assistance. Finding a passageway between the buildings in front of him, he turned and ran down it. It occurred to him that it would be interesting to double-back and see exactly who arrived to investigate the autram, but native caution coupled with an increasing mistrust of all forms of authority made him decide to keep running. He had the feeling that his next interview with Colonel Shears would be anything but comfortable.

As soon as possible after putting a few corners between himself and the road, Manalone slowed to a walk. He viewed this as necessary, because he was coming into a populated area and he wished not to attract attention to himself. He threw his change of day clothes over a wall for the same reason. Coming shortly into a broad shopping concourse which was the focal point of a complex of high-density units, he felt much safer being able to mingle with the crowd.

The concourse was the type of place he normally avoided. The concrete plaza surrounded by concrete shops was to him the epitome of dreary, featureless planning and dreary, featureless living. Nothing about it made any concession to the human need for difference or individuality. Only a computer could have produced so brutal and efficient a design.

Even less sufferable was the back-drop of the huge bulks of the high-density housing units, which reared their concrete heads into the sky as merciless reminders to individuals that they were merely insignificant components of an extremely large machine. Manalone found the situation depressing. The knowledge that so much of the world’s resources were dedicated to producing increasing quantities of even higher population density units, depressed him even further. He wondered what would happen to sanity when the world was covered with ugly concrete boxes.

‘
And
what will they do when it is covered, Manalone? Fill in the gaps between? Is this really all the human race was designed to achieve – living in concrete boxes around diminishing areas of concrete plain?’

His forward projections of the ultimate were halted by a different line of speculation.

‘Shears was certain that only a span of five generations separates humanity from a return to the trees – if there are any trees left to return to. This is difficult to accept, but if he’s right then they won’t be building any more places like this – not ever.’

He stopped in mid-stride, appalled by a picture of the calamity to come. In his mind he saw a vision of the desperate battles to be fought for living space and food amongst these self-same concrete caves; the apartments becoming bone-littered dens of men reverting back to beasts – and the gradual return of Nature as the concrete broke through centuries of disrepair. He could vividly picture the foliage heaving up the heavy slabs of masonry, and hear the shriek of the man-animal as it hunted through the ruins for its prey.

‘And what then, Manalone? Does
homo sapiens
get a second chance? Or will some other creatures get the opportunity to see what they can do as the dominant species? The verdict of post-history must be that the reptiles made a better job of dominance than Man. They at least held tenure of the Earth for two hundred million years, which makes our attempt look rather puny. Perhaps intelligence as a dominant factor was less effective than strong jaws and a thick hide, after all.

‘But did intelligence fail us? If Shears is right, the human species will fall not because of intelligence, but because of a failure to maintain that intelligence. A rather different proposition. It would be very interesting to know if Shears is right.’

The proof was not going to be an easy thing to establish. He could scarcely set up a group intelligence test in the middle of the shopping concourse. He reasoned the effect would be more pronounced in the young if the decline in intelligence was a genetic and therefore hereditary regression, and the Breve offered the most readily available subjects. Even so, he needed to interpret the results with caution. Lack of comprehension of the rising generation was a failure of elders known throughout history.

He began patiently
to track and observe gangs of the Breve along the concourse. After a while his conclusions made him feel rather sick inside. The indications were that the Breve retained the minds of children long beyond their due chronological age. If this trend continued, it would be a range of mental infants who would see their complex civilization fall apart. Not for them the brute savagery of mature animals defending a domain – but rather the shrill wail of children looking for protection to the father-figures who were no longer being born.

‘
And that’s what they mean, Manalone, by the world going out with a whimper and not with a bang.’

‘Pieces,
Manalone – a little bit more of the puzzle. Perhaps even a key piece. The evidence isn’t conclusive, but it does look as though Shears told the truth about the decline in intelligence. And if he’s right about that, he could well be right about other things he’s said.

‘The statistics on protein famine, pollution and population seemed to be realistic. Yet Shears was insistent that taken together they formed an explosive line of speculation. Truth is, Manalone, you must be staring at the obvious, but for some reason you’re unable to see it.

‘If Shears is also right about the population-related subjects, either the base data has been falsified – which is doubtful – or something has been done to the world which made the inevitable eco-crisis far less critical. More specifically, something was done to the human race which made the inevitable eco-crisis far less critical … and this is the thing which has run amok and is now responsible for a catastrophic decline in intelligence. You may be a bright-eyed technical genius, Manalone, but this is the first time you’ve got two pieces of this particular puzzle to fit together.’

Feeling faintly pleased with himself at this progress, Manalone looked around for somewhere quiet where he could sit and think. There was no suitable place on the concourse itself, and he therefore drifted towards the nearest bar. It was only when he was about to enter the door that he realized he dared not use his ComCredit card and he was still without cash.

Disappointedly he turned away, but the point of his newfound penury was not lost on him. If he was unable to obtain a drink, he would be equally unable to obtain food. The prospect of real hunger was a new experience for him, and one that he did not much enjoy. In normal circumstances subsistence-level unemployment payments could be obtained from Local Authorities – but to gain these would involve the answering of questions and the production of documents. Any information he gave would first be verified with the national computer networks before any money was advanced. Herein lay the danger – the MIPS had deliberately forced him down to this level, and it would be on this level that they would now be expecting to find him. Suddenly even Victor Blackman’s offer of fifty a week seemed a marvellous prospect.