Michael G. Coney
The ‘closed environment’ story is always a fascinating subject. Authors can find so many different ways of pointing out our own shortcomings...
* * * *
About fifty miles east of the continental land mass an island thrusts its grey concrete towers from the ocean bed. This place is named by its pallid inhabitants Festive, a joyous name which belies its prison-like appearance of tall window-pocked walls rising abruptly from the sea and enclosing every square yard of the island.
It is said by the older inhabitants (who, like older inhabitants throughout the ages lay claim to superior knowledge) that the name Festive is a corruption of Fall-out Shelter Five; a peculiar description whose origins, like the original records of the colony, are lost in antiquity. An antiquity covers a very long time; many generations, many riots, a few small but destructive civil wars and a gradual but remorseless progression from underground caverns upwards through rock and shale to ground level. Then over the years the walls were built, ever higher, each chamber sealed from the poisonous outside air by men working in suits supplied with oxygen from the vast complex of machinery humming beneath the sea. Like primitive man before them, they had moved from a cave to a house.
As sunset brushed the towers with gold, the pigeons returned swiftly from the west, whirring across the sea in a small flock black-speckled like buckshot against the crimson sky. They rose to cross the outer walls and sped directly over the flat rooftop of the commune. Here and there they veered to avoid new works, new rooms jutting up from the plane of the general, communal roof; but once past they reverted to their original course, heading for the centre of the island city.
Abruptly they hovered, claws downthrust and tail-feathers fanspread, then they dropped down a well some twenty feet square, descending deeply between dark walls...
* * * *
An elderly man sat alone in his tiny room, knotted hands clasped placidly in his lap and eyes closed as he dreamed gently of the better times he never knew. The flutter of wings brushed his reverie aside and he rose stiffly, massaged his thighs briefly, then carefully climbed the small pile of rocks heaped in a corner incongruous like builder’s rubble.
He clamped a rubber mask over his face and reached up, throwing a catch in the skylight. Then, in an instant, he pushed a small hatch open, the pigeons fluttered into the room, he slammed the hatch shut and scrambled to the floor. Only after a few minutes had passed did he remove the mask. He sniffed suspiciously, then his expression cleared and he regarded the birds.
They sat, eleven of them, in a neat row on a perch improvised from a length of galvanised pipe set on a rough table. The man examined each bird carefully and they, in turn, regarded him unblinking.
He sighed and knelt before a rectangular enamelled box beneath the table, gave the dials a cursory glance and switched the pigeons off.
* * * *
They sat in the minute eating area of Section 13, bounded by featureless stone walls. The girl’s face was anxious, pleading; she leant forward across the table, placing her hand over that of her companion. The room was quiet and she spoke softly.
‘I can’t wait for ever, David,’ she was saying. ‘I’m twenty-three. Principles are all very well; but we live by them, not on them. Don’t you understand? I love you. I want us to get married. It’s as simple as that.’
The young man’s expression betrayed a mixture of longing and stubbornness; he grasped the girl’s hand but stared at the table between them while he traced abstract patterns on the rough surface with his free hand.
‘It’s not as simple as that,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve been a member of the Stabilisation Party since I was a kid. You’re not a member. You wouldn’t understand, Jillie ... All right, I love you, too. But we can’t get married.’ He raised his fair head and stared at her in sudden exasperation. ‘Can’t you see what will happen to Festive, and to all of us, if the population continues to increase? I wonder the Council doesn’t pass a law about it.’
‘I just said let’s get married, David,’ said Jillie miserably. ‘I didn’t say anything about children.’
‘But it follows, doesn’t it? I’ve seen it before. You get two people living together and the next thing is they’ve got kids. God, if only these fools could see what’s happening. If every woman in Festive farrowed in a given year, the population would triple itself by the end of that year, on an average of six babies to a litter. And that’s conservative.’
‘Jane Dunkerley had two babies last time. Just two ... lovely little boys.’ She could not keep the longing out of her voice.
David looked her straight in the eyes. ‘So you were thinking about children,’ he accused grimly. ‘You women are all the same, sex-mad. You never want a man for himself; you just think of him as a mobile phallus. My God, I wonder what goes on between you and old Jeremiah sometimes. He must be all of seventy and yet you can’t seem to stay away from him.’
She flushed angrily. ‘Jeremiah’s a nice old man. He’s interesting and he knows a lot of things. And he’s lonely in that little room with nothing but his pigeons to keep him. company. I like him,’ she finished, defensively.
David stood up with an air of finality. ‘That may be so. But I tell you one thing he doesn’t know. He won’t be able to fly those pigeons very much longer.’
Jillie stood up too, abruptly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘He can’t fly them if rooms are built above his place, can he?’
‘You’re going to build on top of Jeremiah?’ She was aghast.
‘Orders from the Local Housing Committee.’ He relaxed slightly. ‘I’m sorry, Jillie. I don’t always enjoy my job, you know. But this makes sense. We’ve held off building above him for five years just because he’s a character in the Sector and out of sentiment. Now the complex is all around and above him. It’s dangerous. If you suit up and stand on the roof, everything’s level and airtight except this square shaft three floors deep, down to Jeremiah. All it needs is a serious quake and the Atmosphere will get in. The whole set-up is unstable.’
‘Couldn’t you re-house him Up Top in one of the new rooms?’
‘You know he’d never move. In any case, we try to put Youngers Up Top where the skylights are. They need the light to grow strong, just like the hydroponics Down Below. And the Health Committee say sunlight is better than artificial.’ He shivered at the thought of the sun and its connotations of Outside and the Atmosphere.
Jillie was watching him and knew what he was thinking and felt a protective sympathy. ‘Come on, love,” she said quietly. ‘Let’s take a walk Down Below and see the ponic fields.’ Although she was free of the dread which gripped at least half the community, she guessed what it cost him each time he was obliged, in the course of his job as Housing Rep, to suit up and go Outside Up Top.
* * * *
That night Jillie sat in Jeremiah’s room and he spoke about the pigeons and the sky.
‘I know there’s no purpose in it,’ he was saying, sitting in his chair tilted back so that he could see the skylight and, further above, the square of deep indigo speckled with stars. ‘I just enjoy it, I guess; sending them out into the world, wondering what they see, watching them come back. It’s almost as if I’m there with them, free in the sky, sailing high above the sea ...’ His ancient eyes dreaming, he gazed at the pane of glass.
‘Have you ever lost any of them, Jeremiah?’ she asked.
A shadow crossed his face. ‘I used to have forty-eight,’ he replied sadly, ‘years ago. I think they break down from time to time and fall into the sea.’
‘Where did they come from, originally?’
He smiled. ‘You ask a lot of questions, young Jillie. Well, I found them in a box, with a book, Down Below in one of the rooms which was burned out during the riot of ‘37. A strong metal box it was and it survived the fire...’ He got up slowly and crossed the room to a door. ‘I’ll show you...’
When he reappeared Jillie jumped to her feet to assist; the box was large and heavy. They set it on the floor and Jeremiah threw back the lid. Inside were ranks of smaller boxes and a large compartment which, Jillie guessed, had contained the control box. The old man detached a booklet from clips inside the lid. ‘Take a look at this,’ he urged her eagerly, encouraged by her interest.
She read slowly, haltingly, aloud. ‘Elec ... Electronic Pigeon Set ... An educational pastime for all ages. Complete with control box and forty-eight robot pigeons, perfect replicas of birds now found only in remote Antarctica. Fill the sky again with the sound of wings. Defy pollution like birds never did—each pigeon is guaranteed corrosion-proof. Send messages to your friends.’
She smiled. ‘Is that why you fly them ? You’re hoping to get a message from Outside?’
He avoided her eyes. ‘Of course not. Everybody knows there’s nobody but ourselves. They have a thing at Council, a radio. It works something the same way as that control box.’
He paused, nervously drumming his fingers on the box as the room trembled to a minor quake, then continued: ‘It received messages once, so they say. From all over the world. I don’t know if we can believe it or not, but that’s what they say ...’ His voice had quickened.
Jillie looked at him hard. ‘You really believe in Outside, don’t you, Jeremiah? You really think there’s something besides Festive.’
‘Doesn’t make much sense if there isn’t,’ he muttered. He replaced the booklet and closed the lid, but remained kneeling on the floor beside the box.
‘David wouldn’t like to hear you say that,’ she observed. ‘He’s a Stabiliser. For him, nothing exists except Festive.’
‘But we know there’s other places,’ protested the old man. ‘They’ve still got some of the old maps. We know exactly where we are.’
‘I don’t mean that. David admits there are other places, but he says we should forget it because we can’t do anything about them; we can never reach them because that means going into the Atmosphere Outside. To think about other places, he says, makes us dissatisfied.’
‘And what do you say, Jillie?’ asked Jeremiah shrewdly.
Jillie smiled innocently. ‘I say let’s think about the other places, and one day we might go there. Didn’t you know ? All women think the same. Maybe we’re illogical.’
The old man regarded her carefully for a moment and she thought he was about to speak; but he shook his head silently and, awkwardly, began to rise from his kneeling position.
As Jillie moved to assist, his arm accidentally brushed across her breasts and she started back, shuddering, as her body was racked with mounting waves of desire. Her hands pressed to her stomach, she fought to control herself, to keep away from him, to subdue her lust with frantic random thoughts of hydroponics, pigeons, rocks, sea, sky, anything ...
And as she stood, the features of the young man before her changed, lengthened and became wrinkled and the strong figure wilted and stooped.
Old Jeremiah watched her sadly. ‘Not me, Jillie,’ he said gently. ‘Nor many other men these days, I guess. It’s too bad...’
* * * *
One week later David said to her: ‘Jillie, I want you to come with me to see Jeremiah.’ They were walking among the hydroponic fields deep Down Below. The air was humid and the banks of striplights in the ceiling were pressing hot upon her head, causing the sweat to trickle down her face and body. She looked away so that he would not see her expression. She had been avoiding Jeremiah all week, ashamed of herself.
‘Why?’ she asked.
A black-shirted workman moved near, alternately raking and spraying the fronds. He glanced up and, upon seeing Jillie, his lined, pallid face gaped in a toothless grin. As if by accident he trod on his hose and, as his hand jerked with the sudden tension, a jet of warm water sprayed her dress and legs.
David chose to ignore the incident; women went Down Below at their own risk. ‘I’ve got to break the news to him about the building programme,’ he explained. ‘The Council ratified the Committee’s decision last night. It’s no good being sentimental about it; we’ve got to build on top of Jeremiah. There was another quake last night,’ he added significantly.
She was about to protest when David gripped her elbow. ‘Listen,’ he murmured.
A faint echo; a dim, high-pitched keening sound came to her ears from somewhere on the far side of the vast chamber. It rose and fell, a wailing of several voices with no distinguishable words but an infinite sadness of tone.
‘Runners!’ David whispered. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here!’
They made their way swiftly along the aisle between the tanks, crouching so that they were partially concealed by the long, low walls and green fronds. The keening grew closer, somewhere between them and the exit staircase. David stopped suddenly, dropping to his knees and motioning Jillie to do the same.
Crouching, feeling exposed and vulnerable in the long aisle, she stared through the fronds in the direction of the desolate wailing and presently she saw them, six heads bobbing above the plants as the Runners trotted along an aisle at right-angles which would intersect theirs at a point some thirty yards ahead. She held her breath as they reached the intersection, wailing in a dismal, spine-chilling ululation; then they came into full view as they jogged across the gap ahead, and for some reason they turned, wheeled in unison like Jeremiah’s pigeons, and came jogging down the aisle directly towards her...
She jumped to her feet, David beside her. ‘Run! I’ll hold them off,’ he snapped, turning to face the Runners who accelerated on seeing the couple; their wailing rising to a banshee shriek of anticipation and triumph. They were dressed in drab overalls and their bare feet pattered on the wet concrete floor as they raced forward with wide, mad eyes and slack, screaming mouths.
Jillie scrambled across the low wall and ran splashing over the hydroponic fields, the tangled roots catching at her feet. She lost a shoe but stumbled on. ‘Come on, David!’ she cried, glancing over her shoulder and seeing the fair man tear himself loose from a struggling mob and climb the wall to follow her across the field. The high roof echoed the yells of their pursuers and soon David was at her shoulder, gripping her elbow and urging her on.
‘We can make it to the central shaft,’ she panted. ‘There’s a hatch ...’ David did not reply, but pointed away to their left as he ran.
Her eyes had been fixed on the thick column in the steaming distance, the shining tower which rose from among the hydroponics and disappeared through the ceiling; but now she glanced in the direction he indicated.
A harvester was approaching.
A huge, trundling rectangle of steel hoppers footed by flashing blades, it spanned the entire width of the tank, suspended from the ceiling and supported also by the guide rails which capped the tank walls. Groaning and chattering, it flung an emerald cataract of sliced leaf and shoot into the vast hoppers as it rumbled inexorably towards them.
‘Keep going. We can make it!’ shouted David.
Jillie struggled on, sobbing now; both her shoes were gone and the coarse ponic roots were slashing cruelly at her feet. The harvester was close; she tried not to see the long, clashing blades flashing viciously in the hard artificial light. Above the din of grinding machinery she heard faint cries of alarm from behind. Something unyielding struck her shins and she fell forward and screamed once, involuntarily. She lay with her hands to her ears. The ground felt hard. Dry.
‘It’s all right, Jillie. Get up.’ David’s hand was on her arm; he was drawing her to her feet. Trembling, she stood, leaning against him.
They were in an aisle, outside the tank; she had fallen over the boundary wall without seeing it. The harvester was level with them and she watched it in hypnotised fascination as it reached the Runners caught in the middle of the field.
Apparently their dementia had not altogether impaired their presence of mind. Five men flung themselves flat in the ponics. The sixth, however, backed away from the blades, holding out his arms as if trying to ward them off; his mouth was open but no sound could be heard. Suddenly he whirled about and tried to run. The blades caught him just above the knees.
Horrified, Jillie glimpsed a legless, twisted body hurtling backwards into the hopper, then David was dragging her away.
‘Quick!’ he shouted above the din of machinery. ‘They’ll be after us as soon as the harvester’s gone.’ He began to run, gripping her wrist.
She stumbled after him and they arrived, breathless, at the central shaft. David spun the wheel and swung the hatch open. A gust of hot, foetid air blasted their faces. ‘Inside, quick!’ he urged. ‘I’ll shut the hatch behind you and try to get back to the exit stairs!’
She paused inside with her foot on the first rung while the fierce updraught flung her loose dress over her head. ‘Aren’t you coming?’ she asked indistinctly. Holding on to a higher rung with one hand she dragged the wet, clammy material from her face and regarded him anxiously.
His expression was a curious mixture of fear and longing; he was looking at her legs. ‘The shaft’s open to the Atmosphere Up Top,’ he muttered nervously, refusing to meet her eyes.
‘Don’t be a damned fool, David,’ she snapped. ‘There’s an upcurrent; you can see that. Come in and start climbing.’
A chorus of cries decided him; the Runners had resumed the pursuit. He swung himself into the shaft and began to follow her.
They climbed for some time, hand over hand in the deepening gloom until the light from the open hatch was a tiny disc far below. The foul air was stinging Jillie’s nostrils and eyelids; she closed her eyes and climbed on, trying to breathe as shallowly as possible. Once she glanced down to see David’s head bobbing against the dim circle of light, then she closed her eyes again, hard, trying not to think of the terrifying drop below.
They had passed several hatches before she felt it safe to stop, spin a projecting wheel and step out into the brightly-lit corridor beyond. She turned and assisted David through the hatch, he slammed it shut, then they leaned against the wall to recover. They were in a corridor of Level 12; people passed, glancing at them curiously. The place was reassuringly normal.
At last David spoke. ‘That’s the last time you go Down Below,’ he said shakily. ‘Up Top is the place for women and children. Make sure you stay there in future.’
Impressed by his concern for her she asked about the Runners.
‘It happens from time to time,’ he replied. ‘A group of ponic workers go berserk. A sort of hysteria gets one and others join in. I’ve seen twenty men running about. Just running and screaming. We tried taking them Up Top and showing them the sky, but it only made them worse. The cure is sedation for a day or two.’
‘What would they do?’ Jillie asked, and her body betrayed a thrill of fearful, pleasurable anticipation. ‘If they had caught me, what would they have done?’
David stiffened. ‘They would have killed you,’ he replied coldly. ‘Just that and nothing else. They don’t like women, Down Below.’
* * * *
An hour later they knocked on the door of Jeremiah’s room.
‘Just let me do the talking,’ David was telling her. ‘I don’t want this business to get fouled up immediately because you two are on friendly terms. At first, we keep it impersonal. Then, if necessary, you come in with the womanly sympathy. OK?’
‘Right.’ Jillie, who had been somewhat effervescent during the last few minutes in reaction from the pursuit, subsided. The door swung inwards and she gazed coolly at the stooping figure beyond. ‘Hello, Jeremiah,’ she said in carefully neutral tones.
‘Jillie!’ cried the old man in pleasure. ‘How nice to see you. I’ve missed you this past week. And you’ve brought your boy-friend too. That’s good. Come in ...’ He stepped aside to allow them to enter. ‘Sit down, sit down...” He dragged chairs about, vaguely.
‘Ah, Jeremiah.’ David spoke in businesslike tones before the other two could start gossiping. ‘This is in the nature of an official visit. I represent the Housing Committee. My name’s David Bank-’
‘But you are Jillie’s boy-friend?’ queried Jeremiah anxiously.
‘Er ... yes, but-’
‘I’m very pleased to meet you, David. Too few young men nowadays will even look at women. Jillie’s a fine girl. She deserves a husband. When are you two getting married?’
‘We’re not,’ stated David flatly.
‘Oh ...’ Jeremiah glanced from David to Jillie and back again. ‘I see...’ he murmured. ‘You’re a Stabiliser, I take it?’
‘I am.’
In the awkward silence which followed Jillie cast her thoughts around for something to say. Jeremiah had suffered a disappointment; he looked on her as a daughter— or granddaughter—and she knew that her happiness was important to the old man. Her gaze fell on the table in the corner. ‘What’s wrong with that pigeon?’ she asked. ‘Why isn’t it outside with the others?’
Jeremiah crossed to the table and returned with the bird; the breastplate was open exposing an intricate mass of delicate machinery.
‘It caught its wing getting in last night,’ he said regretfully. ‘It can’t seem to fly properly.’
David was staring suspiciously at the skylight. ‘I take it you have an airlock there?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes. The birds open the outside hatch themselves, then when they’re all inside the lock, I let them into the room.’ The old man was regarding David with growing dismay.
‘How big is the airlock?’
‘Oh, I don’t know—about four cubic yards, I guess.’ The old man’s eyes dropped.
‘What! Do you realise that every time you open the hatch you let four cubic yards of Atmosphere into Festive?’
Jeremiah looked up again. ‘Into my room,’ he corrected. ‘And I’m still alive, am I not?’
‘You damned old fool!’ David burst out. ‘You’ve probably knocked ten years off your life!’
‘Ten years,’ repeated the old man softly. ‘That’s a long time, isn’t it? But how can you be sure of the figures? How do you know how long I might have lived otherwise? In fact, how do you know the Atmosphere is poisonous?’
‘Instruments, of course. The radiation count. We take readings ... often. Often.’
‘How often?’
‘I’m not sure. The Council takes care of all that. Damn it, we’re not all specialists.’
Jeremiah smiled. ‘And the Council consists entirely of men, does it not?’
‘What if it does ? The figures can’t lie.’
‘I wonder what women would have read into those figures,’ Jeremiah speculated, ‘had they been made generally available.’ He regarded David quizzically.
‘What are you getting at?’
‘I’m getting at the fact that, for all we know, it might be perfectly safe to go Outside. I’m getting at the fact that men are scared to go Outside, more so than women. We’ve lived inside so long, the thought of the Atmosphere frightens us all to some degree.
‘So why not maintain the status quo? somebody says. Why not give people to understand that the Atmosphere is still radio-active, so that those men in charge, who are scared of the fresh air, can still govern from their cosy little air-tight chambers? Why not form a Stabilisation Party, devoted to cutting down the birth-rate?’
‘That’s not the only purpose of the party,’ David objected.
‘Go on, Jeremiah,’ urged Jillie.
‘You see, David,’ the old man continued, ‘Jillie welcomes this notion. It fits in with her instinctive idea of possibility. Now I want you, just for a moment, to imagine something ...
‘Imagine a community, totally enclosed and, for the time being, totally self-supporting. Its original inhabitants began their lives underground but with the passing of generations the increased population forced them above ground level, but building in the same method, totally sealed from the outside air, because to breathe that is death. They build upwards, because the island of their community is small. Raw materials quarried from beneath the land and surrounding sea become more difficult to obtain, yet the population still increases. Imagine Festive.
‘Imagine, now, the resultant attitude of mind. The outside air is poisonous. The community is incapable of much further expansion. The original food factories cannot be extended—lack of materials and knowledge. Everyone, men and women alike, agree to the solution. The birth-rate must be restricted.’
‘Women agreed?’ queried David sceptically.
‘Oh, yes; they agreed at that time. All this is hypothesis, remember. But let us suppose that this system works and the community becomes stable. But lurking at the back of everyone’s mind is the sure knowledge that machinery does not last for ever; that one day in the near or distant future the air purification plant will break down; or the food factory, or the electricity system. One day there will be a breakdown to an extent which, with available knowledge and materials, cannot be made good.’
The small room was silent as Jeremiah paused to let this fact sink in; David started nervously as a minor quake caused the lights to flicker. Jillie’s gaze was fixed on the old man’s face. They had never spoken together on this subject before, but she felt she knew what was coming next.
At last Jeremiah continued. ‘There was a thing, once, which used to be called Nature. It had a habit of taking its course, I believe they used to say ...’
‘So Nature has reappeared in man-made Festive and taken over. She is trying to force the community to expand and burst out of its confines before it is too late. Man’s restriction on conception is countered by multiple birth. Women have become aggressively sexual, without realising why. Men have retreated to the lower levels of the community, preaching Stabilisation with logical tongues. Women have moved, intuitively, to the top levels, because that is nearer to the Outside...’
Jeremiah looked hard at the young man. ‘Does that fit, David ? You visualise the men cowering protectively about the falling machines, while the women long for the fresh air? Does our hypothetical community sound a little like Festive?’
David’s face was white; he glanced at Jillie and she flinched at his expression. ‘I’ve never heard such a load of crap in my life,’ he said stonily. ‘It’s fortunate for you that you’re a friend of Jillie’s.’ He was forcing himself to speak steadily and Jillie realised with acute sympathy that logic had been countered with superior logic; male supremacy was threatened by a man ...
‘It doesn’t matter what you believe,’ said Jeremiah quietly. ‘I’ll never live to see the change.’
‘It’ll matter to you when you’re shut off from the sky, old man!’ David’s voice had risen; he was hitting back unthinkingly. ‘When you can’t fly your birds any more because you’ve got three rooms built above you. And that won’t be long from now, you can be sure.’
From the stricken expression on Jeremiah’s face, Jillie knew that David had made his point.
* * * *
Jillie trotted along the crowded corridor of Level 8 savouring, as ever, the tingling excitement of male proximity. This was her favourite of all corridors; where men and women mingled in equal numbers without the sullen animosity of the lower levels or the frustrated femineity Up Top. Every now and then she would brush against an incautious man with a gay cry of ‘Sorry!’ and feel again the all-pervading thrill of physical contact. On this corridor, she was not ashamed of her actions; all women did the same and the men seemed to expect it. If only the men would do something about it, she thought, and hurried full tilt, but this time accidentally into a man who did do something. He held her at arms’ length, firmly.
‘Sorry!’ she said brightly, then she saw his face. ‘David!’ she gasped.
He had been avoiding her, apparently, for over a week. She had called him at work and they had said he was busy. She had tried his room, knocking without response. After a few days she had given up, deciding sadly that what little had been between them was over, in the manner of most such affairs. But now he seemed to want to speak to her.
‘Hello, Jillie,’ he said in studied, neutral tones, still holding her nevertheless, as though afraid she might run off. ‘It’s been a long time. Where can we talk?’
In her consuming desire for him she found it difficult to speak. ‘There’s ... There’s a rest room along here,’ she stammered at last.
Fortunately the room was empty; they could speak freely. She took a chair but David still stood awkwardly, leafing through a month-old copy of Festive Life at a writing table.
‘I see ponic production is up,’ he said absently. ‘Er ... I’m sorry about last week, Jillie.’
‘That’s OK.’
‘I mean what I said to Jeremiah. I’m sorry. I lost my head. Maybe ... Maybe he’s right. I don’t know. I wish I did.’ He looked at her at last. ‘I can’t get the Housing Committee to reverse its decision,’ he said, flushing. ‘But I’ve managed to delay things for a while.’
Jillie had recovered herself and a touch of ancient Woman asserted itself. ‘What’s brought about this change of mind?’ she asked, acidly.
‘Er ...’ he hesitated. ‘I got a sight of Council records. It’s just conceivable Jeremiah was right. About falsification of public information, I mean. About radiation counts, and so on ...’
‘Just what do you mean, David ? What did the radiation readings say?’
‘There were no readings. There was nothing.’ His voice betrayed perplexity. ‘Nobody’s taken a radiation count for over a hundred years! Why ? Why, Jillie ?’
She took a breath. ‘Because, Down Below, they’re satisfied with the status quo and always will be. Like Jeremiah said, so many generations have lived indoors that they’re scared to go out. They like things as they are.’
David spoke seriously. ‘Don’t get carried away, Jillie. Because no counts have been taken, it doesn’t mean there is no radiation.’
‘David, we must have been exposed to minor radiation for a very long time now, ever since Festive began to build above the ground level shields. Isn’t it possible we’ve adapted to it?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Then ...’ Suddenly she stood and took his hand. ‘In spite of all this, in spite of the fact that almost, you believe Jeremiah and you think that the Council could be hoodwinking us all, you’re still scared to go Outside?’
He refused to meet her eyes. ‘Yes...” he said at last. ‘I can’t help it, Jillie. I’m scared. Scared of the Atmosphere. I know I couldn’t breathe it. It’s not just radiation. I don’t trust it...’
* * * *
Jillie crept quietly behind the banks of horizontal cooling pipes and waited for the workmen to pass. They strolled along on the other side of the pipes, silently in a group of five on some obscure mechanical mission, carrying wrenches. She caught sight of their faces through the narrow slit between conduits; their expressions were blank, almost moronic. It was easy to imagine this group running amok; their eyes betrayed a permanent condition of dull shock one step removed from hysteria. She waited ...
Yesterday evening she had visited Jeremiah and they had spoken at length into the night and he had told her of the layout Down Below, of the things he had seen and heard during his lifetime. And his description which had interested her most was that of the One House; the single construction above ground level built at the same time, so it was said, as the original underground Festive. Her curiosity was aroused. Why one above-ground building, when everything else was hidden underground? What was the purpose of the One House?
Jeremiah had never seen the interior but he knew that the One House could only be reached from Down Below; there was no ground level or upper level entrances. As Festive had expanded upwards, the One House had been surrounded on three sides by new buildings and had eventually been submerged beneath the upthrust of the soaring city.
But the fourth wall of the One House was bounded by the sea ...
The workmen had passed; they shambled through a scarlet door at the far end of the large room, pulling it shut behind them. Jillie rose from her concealment and looked around. She was in the middle levels of Down Below, close to the ponic fields. Now she had to make her way in an easterly direction from room to room, avoiding the exposed corridors. She began to wish she had brought David.
To her left lay the huge areas of the generating plant; according to Jeremiah’s description she must keep straight on through the workshops until she reached the eastern extremity of Festive: the rock wall which marked the boundary of Down Below. There, so the old man said, she would find the entrance to the One House.
The room was empty. She moved quickly to the green door in the wall adjacent to that through which the workmen had passed and eased it open. Beyond was a large area, brightly lit, the floor arrayed with benches, lathes, presses and other machinery. A number of men were working; some moved from bench to bench observing and directing. Gusts of hot, oily-metallic air wafted past her and the mechanical clatter was deafening.
‘Can I help you?’
She whirled round, startled. A tall man was regarding her curiously. The beginnings of fear which had constricted her chest eased; he looked harmless.
‘Oh ... I was just looking around,’ she said lamely.
‘Funny place for a young woman to be looking around, all alone,’ he observed after a thoughtful pause. ‘Let me show you. It’s as well for you to have a companion, Down Below. My name’s Andrew Shaw,’ he added.
‘Jillie ... Jillie Adams.’ She clasped his proffered hand, conscious of a feeling of unreality. For the past hour she had been creeping Down Below from one point of concealment to the next in fear of her life, only to be welcomed in the friendliest fashion by the first man who saw her.
‘I’m the Overseer here,’ he explained, ‘and you were just spying on the Maintenance Department.’ His grin took the sting out of the words; she found herself liking him, and more.
In the humid atmosphere her dress was clinging intimately to her body and, as Andrew Shaw took her arm to pilot her into the Maintenance Department, she made an effort to rid her mind of wayward emotions and concentrate on the one fact: she had come Down Below with the specific purpose of examining the One House and for no other reason.
For the next half hour Shaw explained to her the workings of the Department, leading her from bench to bench, introducing her to welders and turners, drillers and cutters, all of whom acknowledged her presence with the utmost politeness before returning to their tasks; none of whom, to her infinite chagrin, acknowledged her unique womanhood in a community of men.
At last Shaw took her to his office, a small cubicle with large glass windows commanding a view of the area. She sat down, hitching her skirt around her thighs.
Shaw leaned against the wall, regarding her with some amusement. ‘Don’t sell yourself short, Jillie,’ he remarked. ‘You’re an intelligent girl. Now perhaps you’ll credit me with some intelligence and tell me the real reason you came Down Below.’
Abashed, she dropped what she had intended to be a frank and appraising stare. ‘I’d heard stories,’ she muttered at last. ‘I wanted to find out what went on down here. I was curious. I wanted to find out how you lived—all you men, I mean.’
He laughed openly. ‘Just like a woman. You can’t believe men can exist without you ... I can assure you that we conduct ourselves with the utmost propriety. We immerse ourselves completely in our work which, basically, is to keep you people Up Top alive.’
‘Sorry ...’ She gazed through the window at the workers; they seemed happy enough. And at least they had a purpose; their work was demonstrably useful unlike so many of those Up Top. ‘Do you ever get ... Runners, in your department?’ she asked.
‘It happens,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve never been able to figure out why.’
‘Maybe living a useful life isn’t enough,’ she suggested. ‘Maybe they want something else, without knowing what it is.’
‘Women, you mean?’ Shaw frowned. ‘I don’t see any sign of it, do you?’
‘I don’t mean women. I mean ... well...’ she hesitated. ‘How do you feel, cooped up Down Below all the time?’
‘I feel fine.’ Shaw regarded her, puzzled. ‘I was born here, I’ve always lived here. I don’t feel cooped up. How do you feel, Jillie?’
She looked away. Suddenly, she wanted to confide in someone, in someone younger than Jeremiah; someone who might understand the problem from her own standpoint. ‘I want to get out,’ she muttered. ‘I want to go Outside, into the Atmosphere.’ Her voice rose. ‘I want to stand on the roof without a suit, with no clothes at all and feel the rain on me with no walls and no ceiling ...’ She felt, dimly and too late that she was losing control and the tears began to fall. ‘I want to marry David and have lots of children and go away from Festive to a big place, a ... continent, and lie down in the Atmosphere and sleep under the sky and I can’t, because I’m shut in here and I can’t get out-’ Her voice had risen to an incoherent wail but she couldn’t stop.
A huge pain exploded in her head; the shock checked her outburst. Shaw was standing over her; he had slapped her face violently. She gazed at him, horrified, through a veil of tears.
‘You asked about Runners,’ he said. ‘Well, that’s how they start. I’m sorry I had to do that, Jillie.’ And he bent down and kissed her gently on the lips.
* * * *
And afterwards, it seemed perfectly reasonable that she should ask him to take her to the One House, and that he should agree without hesitation. It appeared that there was nothing secret about the place; but its existence was not generally known. He confessed that he was intrigued by her interest in the House and by the fact that she was unable to explain, exactly, what she hoped to find there. He described it as being apparently some kind of museum.
So they climbed the narrow spiral staircase against the rough rock wall which marked the subterranean limit of Festive, opened the unlocked doors and, hand in hand in the glowing aftermath of physical love, they examined the ancient wonders of the One House.
There were machines, many of them, huge and incomprehensible, reminding Jillie of nothing so much as the cockroaches which infested the eating areas Up Top, but in their great mechanical perfection infinitely less repulsive. In fact, she thought as she stood beneath a wheeled monster of sleek proportions capped by long slender blades, they were beautiful. Their purpose she could only guess at, but it was obvious that they were not a fixed part of the Festive equipment. They were individual, mobile machines, built to be operated in an environment other than the large room in which they now stood; built, obviously, to be operated Outside, in the Atmosphere.
They wandered among the machines and speculated as to their use, then, at the very limit of the room where tall steel doors protected the One House from the sea and the Atmosphere, they encountered a long, low object.
‘That,’ said Jillie definitely, in the certainty of past learning, ‘is a boat. For going on the sea,’ she explained further.
‘Why?’ asked Andrew Shaw.
She looked at him sadly. He just was not attuned to her way of thinking. In short, he would not do.
Half an hour later they parted at the foot of the stairs to the ground level. Jillie held out her hand formally. ‘Bye, Andrew,’ she said.
‘Goodbye, Jillie. Anytime, you know ...’ he replied awkwardly.
‘Thanks a lot,’ she said. ‘I might need your help again some time. Maybe soon,’ she added hopefully.
‘It’s possible ... that I might be in trouble before long. What we did in the office ... we did in full view of the men. I don’t know what got into me. I’m a Stabiliser, you know. I’m supposed to set an example ...’ His voice trailed off.
‘Resign from the Party, Andrew,’ said Jillie brightly. ‘You’re not the type.’
* * * *
It took a very long time to convince David, but Jillie persevered, pointing out yet again the logic of Jeremiah’s theories which appeared to be verified by her observations and the significant cessation of Council radiation records.
‘I tell you it’s safe, David,’ she repeated yet again. ‘It’s just like breathing Festive air.’
The lights flickered as the room trembled to another quake. Over the past week the tremors had been the most serious yet recorded and Jillie was possessed with a sense of urgency; she had to convince David and through him pressurise the Council, before the widespread recent power failures caused the population to panic. Or, if everything else failed, maybe she could set an example ...
She had observed the change in her sector during the last week. People glanced apprehensively at the walls as they walked, wincing with each tremor and, on the corridors being plunged into temporary darkness, there had been outbursts of hysteria. She had been conscripted into a temporary position as a nurse working alongside qualified doctors in the Medicentre, and she had been alarmed at the recent increase in admittances for sedation and psychiatric care.
‘But how do you know it’s safe?’ David was asking again. It was apparent that he wanted to believe her, but the concept of breathing untreated, unpurified air into his lungs represented a mental barrier he could not surmount.
At last Jillie’s patience was exhausted. ‘I’ll prove it to you!’ she snapped. ‘And I’ll tell you this—I don’t know why I bother. I could find a man who would be pleased to come with me if he knew what you know about the Council. You’re yellow, David. But just to prove I’m right, I’m going on to the roof without a suit. And you’re going to watch me do it!’
‘I can’t let you do that,’ he muttered.
‘Just try to stop me ... And then, when I’ve walked on the roof before as big an audience I can get, I’m going Down Below and take that boat away and if you won’t come with me, someone else will!’ Frustrated, she was close to tears. She ran from the room abruptly, slamming the door behind her and hating the uncertain look on David’s face.
He caught her two floors below the roof. At this point the stone corridor was broken by one of the few windows in Festive; she paused to look out, craning her neck and seeing a stormy sky above the wall close opposite. Looking down, she saw Jeremiah’s skylight and could make out, dimly, the figure of the old man pottering about his room. This was the square well in the otherwise flat Festive roof down which the pigeons came; the well about which there had been so much controversy. A hand gripped her arm.
‘Now don’t do anything stupid, Jillie.’ David’s voice was intended to be soothing, but held a hint of helpless alarm.
She tried to pull herself away but he held tight. A crowd was gathering, grinning men and women pressing close and curious.
‘We’re making ourselves ridiculous,’ she hissed, struggling. ‘Let me go, David!’
‘I don’t care!’ he shouted recklessly, staring pugnaciously at the faces around. ‘I’m not letting you kill yourself.’
Jillie was thrown off her feet and for an instant thought that David had gone berserk. Then, as she fell heavily, she felt the floor heave beneath her, and the screaming began.
Someone was lying on top of her; the weight pressed her to the tossing floor and, twisting away, she found David’s face next to hers.
‘It’s a quake!’ he shouted unnecessarily. ‘A big one!’ His eyes were bright with fear.
Jillie tried to rise but fell back as another tremor rocked Festive to its ocean roots. She lay quietly then, her head embraced by her arms, hearing the shouting and wailing and the heavy thumping in her throat as the community screamed with one voice, as though by screaming it might frighten away the monster Earth which was destroying it.
Then, in a sudden silence, the patter of falling plaster and stones from the ceiling sounded loud. The floor was still; she climbed to her feet, looked around for David and saw him rising also, rubbing his head.
He was not looking at her; she felt a flush of annoyance at his lack of concern for her safety, then she caught sight of the expression on his face. Naked fear was there; he was staring at the window and, as she followed his gaze, she saw the shattered glass falling away ...
Great, rolling white clouds surged about the corridor in an instant. Jillie saw men and women clutching at their throats, eyes distended as they struggled to breathe. Hoarse shouts and strangled coughing rose in tumult. She stumbled away from the gap, holding her breath, dragging David with her. An alarm bell jangled belatedly as they reached a rest room and flung themselves inside, slamming the door behind. They heard the pounding feet of the suited Rescue Squad racing past to seal the gap and evacuate the victims.
In the sudden quiet of the room David eyed her grimly. ‘So much for your theories,’ he said harshly, coughing. His face was flushed and his cheeks wet with tears.
His comment did not call for a reply and Jillie remained silent, Wondering about the people in the corridor and whether the Rescue Squad had been able to get them out in time. She said: ‘I must get along to the Medicentre, David. They’re going to be busy for a while.’
‘Just wait a moment. Give the Squad a chance to plug the gap and clear the air. Then you can go to the Medicentre and I’ll evict Jeremiah and get the building team in. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t persuaded me to leave him alone. My God, we were lucky the wall didn’t crack. The whole structure of the Sector is unstable in this area.’
Then they sat in silence, not looking at each other, and after a while the All Clear bell sounded.
* * * *
Later Jillie tapped on Jeremiah’s door and entered on hearing David’s voice. The room was a mess; broken plaster was everywhere. Jeremiah sat slumped in a chair. David stood, irresolute following her arrival; apparently he had been about to leave.
‘How many died ?’ he asked stonily, with a glance at the old man.
She hesitated. ‘Two,’ she admitted at last. ‘But-’
‘Two,’ he repeated. ‘Two people died needlessly because of the Committee’s sentimentality about one old man. There’s not very much more to say, is there, Jillie? Anyway, I’ve told him to pack his things and he’ll have to move into temporary quarters while building is going on; then he can move back here. It’s the best I can do. I’m not blaming him. I’m blaming the Committee and myself.’
Jeremiah had dragged himself to his feet and donned his mask; he climbed to the hatch and threw it open to admit the returning pigeons; it was noticeable that a few wisps of white Atmosphere accompanied the electronic birds into the room.
‘Look at that!’ David observed grimly. ‘I reckon he knew all along. He must have seen that muck coming in every day, but he didn’t tell us. He was too wrapped up in his damned hobby to bother about Festive.’
Jeremiah looked up from his examination of the birds. ‘I didn’t think it mattered,’ he said softly. ‘It doesn’t always happen like that; only when it’s stormy outside, in the summer. I put it down to condensation. We know that the plant Down Below isn’t in good shape. I’d worked it out that the pressure inside Festive is a little lower than Outside and colder too. I thought it was humid air condensing.’ He looked at Jillie, pleading. ‘Like steam from a kettle,’ he mumbled.’
‘Balls,’ retorted David crudely. ‘You’re just covering up for yourself. That sort of excuse will get you nowhere.’
‘David-’
‘And you, too, Jillie. You believe what you want to, like all women. You ignore hard facts. Two people died, remember that. I might have died myself. I couldn’t breathe —I know that much. I ought to go for treatment myself; God knows what poison I’ve got inside my lungs.’
‘You needn’t bother, David,’ said Jillie firmly.
‘What?’
‘There’s no poison in your lungs. I’ve just got back from the Medicentre, remember? Those two people—they weren’t poisoned, they had weak hearts. They were asphyxiated and died from heart failure. The others all recovered with no ill-effects.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ David flushed angrily. ‘Are you trying to tell me I imagined that white filth that came in? I tell you I couldn’t breathe. I choked. You saw me.’
‘I saw you ... but you were choking because of what you saw—when you knew the window was gone your windpipe closed in a reflex spasm. The same thing happened to the others. It became mass hysteria in an instant. You’ve been so conditioned to the theory that the Atmosphere is poisonous that your mind accepts this as a fact and refuses to allow you to breathe it.’
‘Then what was the white stuff ? We both saw it again, just now.’
Jillie smiled. ‘Condensation, just like Jeremiah said ...’
David grunted. ‘I prefer to believe the evidence of my own eyes, thanks. I saw people die breathing that muck. I tell you, nothing can live Outside...’
Jeremiah looked up; his eyes were bright.
‘Something can, David,’ he said. ‘Look!’
David’s eyes widened as he stared from the fluttering object cupped in the old man’s hands to the row of motionless, switched-off birds on the tubular perch ...
‘They’re not really very good replicas, after all,’ observed Jeremiah shakily. ‘But they were good enough to fool this little fellow.’
Uttering soft bubbling sounds the bird regarded them with bright, alert interest.
* * * *
‘I don’t know ...’ muttered David. ‘For God’s sake, I just don’t know. Maybe you’re right. I don’t know ...’
Jillie stared at him in futile anger. ‘What more proof do you want? Don’t you see? This is the sort of evidence we’ve been waiting for—this is the proof which you can take to the Council, and if they won’t listen or if they make any attempt to suppress it, we can blow the whole of Festive wide open by making it public ourselves, and showing people. And then we can live the way we were meant to live, in the Open Air, with no fear of radiation or any other sort of pollution, because if the Atmosphere will support birds, it’ll support us. Just imagine it, David! We could get away from this place, perhaps tomorrow, and people would see us, and follow. And if the Council and all the other yellow-bellies Down Below want to stay behind, that’s up to them. But they can’t deny the rest of the people a chance to live properly.’
David stared at the bird, irresolute. ‘Suppose they can’t bring themselves to breathe, even after we’ve shown them the bird ? We’ve been in Festive a long time, Jillie.’
Jeremiah was watching the two of them impatiently. His gaze wandered about the small room, taking in the stone walls, the pathetic skylight, the piles of rubble littering the floor, the cracked ceiling, the rough, ancient furniture. He heard the faint hiss from the air duct and the muffled footsteps and occasional chattering from the corridor. He sniffed and could smell the odour of Festive anew, although his nose had had a lifetime to get used to it. Suddenly, he realised that all this, the impressions of a lifetime, was perhaps not worth so very much ...
He released the pigeon which fluttered across the room, alighted on the perch and examined curiously its immobile companions.
Moving with surprising speed, Jeremiah snatched up a battered aluminium chair and flung it through the skylight.
‘Now, David!’ he shouted as shards of glass rained about him and the white clouds billowed in, ‘breathe, damn you, breathe!’
David breathed.