The Missing Man (v4.1) (4 page)

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.

“Identity 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 glass 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 glass door and down a staircase,
and were gone from the top floor.

George looked around. There was the sky and
ocean spaces he had dreamed of, but the sky was cloudy, the ocean was gray, and
he was looking at them through thick glass. The island viewing platform was
arranged in a series of giant glass steps, and the elevator had opened and let
them into the top step, a glass room that looked out in all directions through
thick glass, giving a clear view of the-horizon, the glass 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 balls 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 glass wall and down through the glass 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
glass 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, glass 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
already. 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 passed. With each thanks received he felt the fear of the person
passing. 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 glass 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
glass 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.