Time of the Great Freeze (2 page)

"It was a pretty rough night, eh, Dad?" Jim said finally, as they reached their room.

"I had hoped for better results," Dr. Barnes admitted. He put his hand to the doorplate, and the sensors recognized his prints. The door yielded. They went in.

The room was small and low of ceiling. There was no space for luxury dwellings in New York. This was not the New York of skyscrapers and stock exchanges, but an underground hive a hundred miles inland from the old Atlantic coastline, a nest of interlocking tunnels going down deep into the crust of the Earth. Eight hundred thousand people lived here. The population had not varied so much as one percentage point in three hundred years. It was not
allowed
to vary. Limiting population was easier than building new tunnels; no laws were more strictly enforced in the underground cities than those controlling population growth.

The room that Jim shared with his father was occupied mostly with microfilmed books, hundred of reels of them. They belonged to the Central Library-private property was a rarity in underground New York-and Dr. Barnes had nearly filled the room with them. He was writing a history of the twenty-third century, the century in which the Fifth Ice Age came to engulf much of the earth.

Hardly had they closed the door when there came a knock at it. Jim and his father exchanged glances.

"I'll get it, Dad," Jim said.

He opened the door. Ted Callison and Dave Ellis stood there, side by side as though all memory of their recent scuffle had been blotted out.

"What is it?" Jim asked. "Did you pick up London again?"

"No," Callison said. "They've shut down for the night, I guess. Dave and I had an idea, though."

They came in. Dr. Barnes picked up a reel of microfilm, put it down, picked up another, and then another. After a moment of tense silence Dave Ellis said, "Ted and I have decided that radio isn't the right way to reach the Londoners."

"Oh?" Dr. Barnes said.

Callison said, "This way, we're just voices out of nowhere. What we've got to do is
go
to them. Get up out of the ground and cross the ice and say, 'Here we are, time to thaw out!' The Ice Age is ending. The worst of the freeze is over. We can risk an over-the-ice mission to Europe."

"He's right!" Jim blurted. "Dad, that's the best way."

"It's more than three thousand miles to London," Dr. Barnes said. "No one has made the trip in centuries. No one has left New York in fifty years, even to go to a spot as near as Philadelphia."

"Someone has to start it, Dad!"

"Another point," Dr. Barnes said. "It's taboo to contact other cities. You know that. What we've been doing goes against the whole way of life down here. You don't seriously expect the City Council to welcome the idea of an expedition, do you?"

Ellis said, "
We're
not asking
them
to go. Just to let
us
go, Dr. Barnes. To outfit us with such equipment as they can give us for the expedition. With a little help, we can make it to London. We can-"

There was another knock at the door. Jim frowned; his father gestured with a thumb, and Jim went to open it. Somehow, irrationally, he was expecting trouble, and trouble was there-in the form of four husky young men wearing the brassards of the police.

Jim knew one of them, at least slightly. He was Carl Bolin, a broad-shouldered, blond-haired young man, whose father, Peter Bolin, had been a hydroponics technician and instructor. Jim had studied with the elder Bolin the previous year, and had met Carl several times. Only a few months before, Jim had been saddened by Peter Bolin's death, and had sent condolences to Carl. And now here Carl was with three of his police comrades, and not here to visit, either. He looked both sheepish and grim at the same time, as though he were embarrassed by his mission and yet determined to carry it out.

One of the other policemen stepped forward. "Dr. Barnes? I'm sorry to say, you're under arrest. Also your son James. I'm instructed to take you to City Council headquarters." His hand went to the butt of his stun gun in a meaningful gesture. "I hope you'll surrender peacefully, sir."

A second policeman eyed Callison and Ellis. "Your names?" he demanded.

"Ted Callison."

"Dave Ellis."

"Very convenient, finding you two here. We've got warrants for both of you, also. Come along."

Jim saw Ted Callison's muscles tensing under his thin green shirt, and realized that the hothead was likely to cause trouble. Quietly, Jim reached out and caught Callison's thick wrist, encircling it with his fingers and squeezing until he heard Ted grunt.

"Don't do anything," Jim murmured.

Callison subsided, grumbling under his breath.

Dr. Barnes said, "We're entitled to know the nature of the charges against us, aren't we?"

The first policeman nodded somberly. "The charge is treason, Dr. Barnes."

Down, down, down!

Down through the coiling intestines of the underground city, down through level after level, down past the last residential level to the industrial levels, and then still down, down to Level M in the depths of the city, the administrative level where no one went except on official business.

Here, the great computer that co-ordinated the life of the city ticked and throbbed. Here, the master controls of the city were housed: the water-recycling factory and the air plant and the food-processing laboratories and the hydroponics sheds. Here, too, was City Hall, where the Mayor and his nine Councilors ran the city.

Jim had been here once, when he was twelve, on a school trip. Every civics class came here once to be shown the heart and core of New York. He had seen, and he had been awed. Now he was here again-a prisoner.

The gleaming shell of the elevator came to a halt.

"Out," the police ordered.

Out, and down a shining ramp, and into a waiting roller car that ran along a track down a wide corridor, through looping curves of hallway. Dimly visible to left and to right were bulky power plants and mysterious installations, flat against the low ceiling. A faint humming sound, ominous and persistent, assailed Jim's ears. The deep booming
thum-
thum
thum-
thum
thum
-thum of the generators set a rhythm for his own thumping heart. Every narrow corridor intersecting the main one bore a glowing sign:

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

Some of the signs carried an extra symbol, the atom-symbol, warning that this was the approach to the nuclear reactor that powered the entire city. Anyone caught going beyond a sign that bore the atom-symbol was a dead man if a guard saw him. No citizen could approach the reactor for any reason whatever, without express permission of the City Council. To cross into the forbidden zone was to invite a fatal full-intensity blast from a stun gun, no questions asked.

There was silence in the roller car. Dr. Barnes sat in the front seat, bolt upright between two of the policemen. Jim, Ted Callison, and Dave Ellis were crowded together with a third policeman in the rear seat, while the remaining officer was hunched behind them, his stun gun drawn, its blunt snout tickling their backbones warningly. Jim saw Callison's powerful fists clenching and unclenching in cold, silent fury.

City Hall loomed up before them, squat and somehow sinister. The roller car halted. More police were waiting there, at least a dozen of them, although by now it was quite late at night.

"Out," came the crisp order.

The four prisoners left the roller car, hands held high. The new escort moved in, surrounding them, and the original police drove off. The prisoners were marched into City Hall, and down the brightly lit hallway that Jim had seen five years before.

He had met Mayor Hawkes then, and had been terrified of the seam-faced, wizened old man who had governed New York for what seemed like all eternity. Then, the Mayor had beamed, had smiled at the class of edgy twelve-year-olds, and had welcomed them all to the city's administrative level.

Mayor Hawkes would not beam tonight, Jim thought.

"In here," a frog-voiced policeman said crisply.

Here
turned out to be a square, forbidding little room whose unnaturally bright illumination stung the eyes. There was a raised dais along the far wall, and a low table with a bench behind it. No other furniture broke the starkness of the room. There were three other prisoners there already-Roy Veeder, Dom Hannon, Chet Farrington. The whole group, then-all seven who had gathered around the little radio to hear the squeaky voice from London only a short while before.

Rounded up! Charged with treason!

A door slid back out of sight, recessing into the rear wall, and a new group of men entered. Old men. Mayor Hawkes led the way, wearing his official robes of office for the occasion, the blue cloak with the orange trim, the peaked hat, the seal of power dangling from a massive chain around his neck.

He looked horribly, grotesquely old. He had been Mayor of New York since 2611, thirty-nine years ago, and he had been a middle-aged man when first elected. Every ten years since he had been reelected, and everyone assumed that he would be elected without opposition to a fifth term next year, though he was now nearly ninety. He stood rigidly erect, the light glaring down on his domed, wrinkled forehead, his hook of a nose, his withered cheeks and sharp chin. Humorless pale blue eyes glinted deep in the Mayor's eye sockets.

Behind him marched the City Council, nine of them, the youngest well past sixty. Like the Mayor, the City Council was supposedly chosen in open election every ten years. But it had been a century or more since anyone had last contested an election. The way the system worked now, a new Councilor was elected only when one of the old ones died-and the stubborn old men never seemed to die. Two of the nine were past the hundred-year mark now, and evidently planned to live forever.

The ten rulers of New York arrayed themselves along the dais and sat down. Ten pairs of flinty aged eyes peered in hostility at the prisoners, who stood before them.

Dr. Barnes said, staring straight at the Mayor, "Your Honor, I demand to know the meaning of this arrest."

"The charge is treason," Mayor Hawkes said in a voice that sounded like a swinging rusty gate. "The seven of you have engaged in activities detrimental to the welfare of New York City, and you stand accused. How do you plead?"

Jim gasped. His father said, "Is this a trial?"

"
It is."

"Without lawyers? Without witnesses? Without a judge or a jury?"

"I understand there is one among you who is a lawyer," the Mayor replied, with a glance at Roy Veeder. "He can speak for you. I am the judge. The Council is the jury. There is no need for anyone else."

"You know we have the right of independent counsel, Your Honor," Roy Veeder said. "An accused man is entitled-"

"Never mind, Roy," Dr. Barnes said. "They have us, and we're helpless."

"No." Veeder shook his head. "I must protest, Your Honor," he said to the Mayor. "This violates the basic charter of the city. Accused men have right of counsel. You are not empowered to conduct a trial, Your Honor! Your powers are executive, not judicial!"

"Roy's wasting his breath," Ted Callison murmured to Jim. "Those men can do anything they please. This is a trial that was over before it ever began."

Jim nodded. A sense of hopeless rage stole over him. Those ten willful men up there had ruled the city so long they were convinced of their own infallibility. What did charters, laws, codes mean to them? They were the representatives of the people! They were the rulers!

The Mayors gaunt, fleshless face grew harsher, more ugly. He glowered at Roy Veeder and said, "Such trial as you will have, you will have here, Counselor Veeder. If you object to the proceedings, you will be removed from the room and tried
in absentia
. Traitors must be dealt with promptly. It is late at night."

"Of course," Ted Callison blurted out. "Old men need to get their sleep! Get rid of us fast so you can get to bed!"

Callison grunted as the snout of a stun gun was rammed into his kidneys. He subsided. There was a chill silence in the room. The Mayor beckoned, and the sliding panel opened again. A policeman walked in-carrying the radio!

He carried it as though it were a live serpent. He put it down on the table before the Mayor, and backed out of the room.

The Mayor eyed the square box sourly, then glared at the prisoners. "With this," he said, "you contacted another city. You spoke with men from London. True or false?"

"True," Roy said.

"You conspired with them against the welfare of New York City. You plotted the overthrow of the legally constituted government of this city."

"That's false, Your Honor," Roy said.

"There is evidence on record against you."

"Produce it, then! It's an established principle of law that an accused man has the right to be confronted with evidence on which he's been indicted."

"There is no need of that," the Mayor said, almost to himself. "The evidence exists. We have examined it and discussed it. Traitors! Enemies of the city!"

"No," Dr. Barnes said. "We are not traitors! I won't deny we've been in contact with London. Dave Ellis, here, has been studying surface conditions with the telemetering equipment. He believes that the Freeze is almost over, that climatic conditions have reversed themselves at last. It's time to come up out of the ground. Time for men to breathe the air again, to walk under the open sky. And so we've tried to reach other cities, to find out what's been happening in the world. All this I freely admit. But treason? No! Enemies of the city? No!"

"You are trying to disturb the established order of things," the Mayor said cuttingly. "This is treason, and must be punished. You stand condemned by your own words. I call for the verdict, Councilors."