“No, sir. It was the most intelligent thing I did during the entire trip.”
“But why? Never mind, Svetz, here’s the big extension cage.” A gray-blue shadow congealed in the hollow cradle of the time machine. “And there does seem to be something in it. Hi, you idiots, throw an antigravity beam inside the cage! Do you want the beast crushed?”
The cage had arrived. Ra Chen waved an arm in signal. The door opened.
Something tremendous hovered within the big extension cage. It looked like a malevolent white mountain in there, peering back at its captors with a single tiny, angry eye. It was trying to get at Ra Chen, but it couldn’t swim in air.
Its other eye was only a torn socket. One of its flippers was ripped along the trailing edge. Rips and ridges and puckers of scar tissue, and a forest of broken wood and broken steel, marked its tremendous expanse of albino skin. Lines trailed from many of the broken harpoons. High up on one flank, bound to the beast by broken and tangled lines, was the corpse of a bearded man with one leg.
“Hardly in mint condition, is he?” Ra Chen observed.
“Be careful, sir. He’s a killer. I saw him ram a sailing ship and sink it clean before I could focus the stunners on him.”
“What amazes me is that you found him at all in the time you had left. Svetz, I do not understand your luck. Or am I missing something?”
“It wasn’t luck, sir. It was the most intelligent thing I did the entire trip.”
“You said that before. About killing Leviathan.”
Svetz hurried to explain. “The sea serpent was just leaving the vicinity. I wanted to kill him, but I knew I didn’t have the time. I was about to leave myself, when he turned back and bared his teeth.
“He was an obvious carnivore. Those teeth were built strictly for killing, sir. I should have noticed earlier. And I could think of only one animal big enough to feed a carnivore that size.”
“Ah-h-h. Brilliant, Svetz.”
“There was corroborative evidence. Our research never found any mention of giant sea serpents. The great geological surveys of the first century Post Atomic should have turned up something. Why didn’t they?”
“Because the sea serpent quietly died out two centuries earlier, after whalers killed off his food supply.”
Svetz colored. “Exactly. So I turned the stunners on Leviathan before he could swim away, and I kept the stunners on him until the NAI said he was dead. I reasoned that if Leviathan was there, there must be whales in the vicinity.”
“And Leviathan’s nervous output was masking the signal.”
“Sure enough, it was. The moment he was dead the NAI registered another signal. I followed it to—” Svetz jerked his head. They were floating the whale out of the extension cage. “To him.”
Days later, two men stood on one side of a thick glass wall.
“We took some clones from him, then passed him on to the Secretary-General’s vivarium,” said Ra Chen. “Pity you had to settle for an albino.” He waved aside Svetz’s protest: “I know, I know, you were pressed for time.”
Beyond the glass, the one-eyed whale glared at Svetz through murky seawater. Surgeons had removed most of the harpoons, but scars remained along his flanks; and Svetz, awed, wondered how long the beast had been at war with man. Centuries? How long did sperm whales live?
Ra Chen lowered his voice. “We’d all be in trouble if the Secretary-General found out that there was once a bigger animal than this. You understand that, don’t you, Svetz?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” Ra Chen’s gaze swept across another glass wall and a fire-breathing Gila monster. Farther down, a horse looked back at him along the dangerous spiral horn in its forehead.
“Always we find the unexpected,” said Ra Chen. “Sometimes I wonder…”
If you’d do your research better, Svetz thought…
“Did you know that time travel wasn’t even a concept until the first century Ante Atomic? A writer invented it. From then until the fourth century Post Atomic, time travel was pure fantasy. It violates everything the scientists of the time thought were natural laws. Logic. Conservation of matter and energy. Momentum, reaction, any law of motion that makes time a part of the statement. Relativity.
“It strikes me,” said Ra Chen, “that every time we push an extension cage past that particular four-century period, we shove it into a kind of fantasy world. That’s why you keep finding giant sea serpents and fire breathing—”
“That’s nonsense,” said Svetz. He was afraid of his boss, yes; but there were limits.
“You’re right,” Ra Chen said instantly. Almost with relief. “Take a month’s vacation, Svetz, then back to work. The Secretary-General wants a bird.”
“A bird?” Svetz smiled. A bird sounded harmless enough. “I suppose he found it in another children’s book?”
“That’s right. Ever hear of a bird called a roc?”
In the days when Adrienne Martine and I were spinning stories at each other at Bergin’s House of Irish Coffee, Adrienne told me that she considers herself a muse. She enjoys generating stories in others.
Years later, in conversation at L’Orangerie in New York—a wonderful restaurant, now defunct, to our sorrow—Adrienne quoted a piece of the Bible at me, involving “Leviathan.”
And again we met at L’Orangerie, Marilyn and Adrienne and I. This time I told Adrienne a story. She laughed a lot. Then she allowed as how I didn’t need a muse any more.
I was proud.
Money is the sincerest form of flattery. It was a real kick in the ego when I sold this story to Playboy for fifty cents a word. They were wonderful to work with, too. Minimal changes were suggested, and described exactly. I’ve been trying for twenty years to sell them another.
• • •
• • •
From OATH OF FEALTY
[with JERRY POURNELLE]
Jerry came to me with a stack of notes for near-future technological developments and a stack of maps for Todos Santos, a city-sized building two miles by two miles, by a fifth of a -mile high. We explored some shopping centers, then he sent me to several more. I looked them over, absorbed the flavor…
And put a high diving board at the edge of the Todos Santos roof.
We like to think that what follows is the funniest jailbreak scene in literature.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
The miracle was a tiny hole that formed suddenly in the concrete floor, just where Harris’s eyes rested. George slid off the bunk and crouched to look. He poked at the hole with his finger. It was real.
Sanders asked, “What are you doing?”
“Damndest thing,” Harris said. He thought he saw light through the hole, but when he bent closer to look, there was only darkness. And a trace of a strange, mustily sweet smell. “Orange blossoms? I saw this little tiny,” he said, and fell over.
The vehicle Tony Rand was driving was longer than four Cadillacs, and shaped roughly like a .22 Long Rifle cartridge. Thick hoses in various colors, some as thick as Tony’s torso, trailed away down the tunnel and out of sight. The visibility ahead was poor. The top speed was contemptible. The mileage would have horrified a Cadillac owner. It wasn’t even quiet. Water poured through the blue hoses, live steam blasted back down the red hoses, hydrogen flame roared softly ahead of the cabin, heated rock snapped and crackled, and cool air hissed in the cabin.
For so large a vehicle the cabin was cramped, stuck onto the rear almost as an afterthought. It was cluttered with the extra gear Tony Rand had brought with him, so that Thomas Lunan had to sit straddling a large red-painted tank and regulator. There were far too many dials to watch. The best you could say for the Mole was that, unlike your ordinary automobile, it could drive through rock.
So we’re driving through rock, Lunan thought, and giggled.
The blunt, rounded nose of the Mole was white hot. Rock melted and flowed around the nose, flowed
back as lava until it reached the water-cooled collar, where it froze. The congealed rock was denser then, compressed into a fine tunnel wall with a flat floor.
Lunan was sweating. Why did I get into this? I can’t get any pix, and I can’t ever tell anybody I was here…
“Where are we?” Lunan asked. He had to shout.
“About ten feet to go,” Rand said.
“How do you know?”
“Inertial guidance system,” Rand said. He pointed to a blue screen, which showed a bright pathway that abruptly became a dotted line. “We’re right here,” Tony said. He pointed to the junction of dot and solid line.
“You trust that thing?”
“It’s pretty good,” Rand said. “Hell, it’s superb. It has to be. You don’t want to put a tunnel in the wrong place.”
Lunan laughed. “Let’s hope they want a tunnel here—”
“Yeah.” Rand fell silent. After a while he adjusted a vent to increase the cool air flowing through the cabin.
Despite the air flow, and the cabin insulation, Lunan was sweating. There was no place to hide. None at all. If anyone suspected what they were doing, they had only to follow the hoses to the end of the blind tunnel.
“We’re here,” Rand said.
Noise levels fell as Rand turned down the hydrogen jets. He looked at his watch, then lifted the microphone dangling from the vehicle’s dashboard. “Art?”
“Here.”
“My computations tell me I’m either under Pres’s cell or just offshore from Nome, Alaska—”
“You don’t have to keep me entertained.” The voice blurred and crackled. No eavesdropper could have sworn that Art Bonner was speaking to the soon-to-be-notorious felon, Anthony Rand. A nice touch, Lunan thought.
“No, sir,” Tony said.
“As far as we can tell, you hit it just right,” the radio said. “They’re still at dinner. Or all the months of tunnel drilling around here got them used to the noise. Whatever. Anyway, we don’t hear any signs of alert.”
“Good,” Rand said. He put down the microphone and turned to Lunan. “Now we wait four hours.”
Lunan had carefully prepared for this moment. He took a pack of cards from his pocket and said, casually: “Gin?”
It was nine-thirty in the evening and Vinnie Thompson couldn’t believe his good fortune. He’d been hoping for a decent score later, some guy coming back from winning a big bet on the hockey game at the Forum, or maybe a sailor with a month’s pay. This early there probably wouldn’t be much, but there might be somebody with bread, although most Angelinos were smart enough not to carry much into the subway system. Of course they’d carry money in the Todos Santos stations, but everybody in Vinnie’s line of work learned early to stay away from there. The TS guards might or might not turn you in to the LA cops, but more important they might hurt you. A lot. They didn’t like muggers at all.
Maybe tonight he’d get a break. He needed one. He hadn’t hit a good score in two weeks.
Then he saw his vision. A man in a three-piece suit, an expensive suit with alligator shoes (like the ones Vinnie kept at home, you wouldn’t catch him taking something valuable like that into the subway). The vision carried a briefcase, and he was not only alone, he’d gone through a door into a maintenance tunnel!
And there sure as hell wasn’t anybody in that tunnel this time of night. What could Mr. Three-piece want? Take a pee? Meet somebody? While he was wondering about that, by God here she came! A hell of a looker, well dressed in an expensive pantsuit, and she was alone too! She went in the same door as Three-piece, and Vinnie snickered. She’d get a surprise…Once again he congratulated himself. Heaven couldn’t offer more attractions.
She’d locked the door behind her, but it didn’t take Vinnie’s knife long to take care of that. He went through quickly and pulled the door closed. The corridor in front of him was empty, but he could hear rapid heel-clicks around the bend ahead of him.
He could also hear sounds of machinery coming from down the tunnel. Somebody was working overtime here. Well, that didn’t matter, he’d just have to be quick, although that was a shame, the chick was a real looker and it’d be something to get into that. He could imagine her look of fear, and feel her writhing in his grasp, and he quickened his step to catch up to her. She’d be just around this bend in the tunnel—
He rounded the bend. There were half a dozen people there, all in expensive clothes. They looked up at him, first in surprise, then in annoyance.
Too many, Vinnie thought. But they looked like money, and he had his knife and a blackjack made of a leather bag of BB’s and if he did this right—Feet scuffed behind him.
He was trying to turn, to run, when a bomb exploded under his jaw. Lights flared behind his eyes, but through the blaze he saw his vision again: fluffy razor-cut hair, and a broad, smooth-shaven face snarling with even white teeth, and a polished gold ring on a huge fist.
“Gin,” Rand said. “That’s thirty-five million dollars you owe me.” He stared at his watch. “And now we go to work.”
Lunan grimaced. So far they hadn’t done anything. Well, nothing that would send you to prison. God knows what crime it might be to dig a tunnel under the County Jail (reckless driving?) but so far no harm done. Now, though…
Rand handed him a heavy tool and Lunan took it automatically. It was a large drill with a long, thin bit. Trickling sweat stung his eyes.
Rand was sweating too, and after a moment the engineer removed his shirt. “Damn Delores,” he muttered.
“Eh?”
“Oh. Nothing.” Rand threw his shirt down the tunnel. Then he lifted the microphone. “We’re starting in now,” he said. “Everything all right at your end?”
“Yeah, barring three surprised muggers. Have at it.”
“Roger.” Rand hung up the mike and turned to Lunan. “Okay, let’s get at it.” He took a strip of computer readout from the console in front of him, then manipulated controls. A very bright spot of light appeared on the tunnel roof above them. “Drill right there,” Rand said.
The ceiling was concrete, very rough. Lunan thought the drill bit too thin and weak for the job, but when he applied it and pulled the trigger, the drill ate in quickly. And quietly, Lunan noticed. After a while the bit went in all the way.
Rand took the drill and changed to a longer bit. “My turn,” he said.
“What do I do?” Lunan asked.
“Just stand by.” Rand drilled at the ceiling. When the bit was all the way in, he took out still another, this one a foot long, still very thin. He drilled cautiously, withdrawing the bit often. Then he saw light, and pointed.
“Mask time,” Rand said. Lunan handed up a gas mask, then put on his own.
The hole in the ceiling was no more than a pinprick, which was what Rand had told Lunan to expect. When he had his mask on properly, Lunan went over to a large red tank. There was a hose attached to it, and Lunan handed up the hose and watched as Rand put it to the hole and sealed it in place with aluminized duct tape. “Crack the valve,” Rand said, and Lunan turned the valve handle. There was a faint hissing. Rand pointed to the microphone.
“Phase two,” Lunan said into the mike. “Hope we’re in the right place—”
“All quiet here. Out,” the radio answered.
Lunan replaced the mike. Quiet there, which was the tunnel entrance. Just one entrance, guarded by TS executives, which meant Lunan and Rand were safe. Of course it also meant there was only one exit. Unless they wanted to dig a new one, fleeing the law at a few dozen feet an hour…
Rand waved and made cutting motions, and Lunan shut off the sleepy gas. He worried about that gas. Rand said the stuff was the safest he could find, unlikely to harm anyone except possibly a heart patient; but there was no way they could control the dosages. This was the trickiest part of the maneuver—
Rand had removed the tube and widened the hole slightly. Now he was trying to insert the tiny, thin periscope, and cursing.
“What??
?? Lunan asked.
“Blocked,” Rand said. Swearing terribly, he moved two feet away and tried the drill again. When light showed, he inserted his periscope and looked. He turned it this way and that, then chuckled and motioned for Lunan to come look.
Concrete floor, something overhead, all very dark. Tom Lunan adjusted the light amplification and rotated the periscope.
Aha. Foreground, a pair of feet showed under a very low ceiling. He was under a bunk. Beyond, a mouse’s-eye view of a jail cell: concrete floor, toilet, sink, and a middle-aged felon in fine physical shape sleeping peacefully on Tony Rand’s first periscope hole.
While Tom looked, Rand brought up the gas tube and put it to the new hole. “Body blocked the flow,” Rand muttered, and went back to open the valve on the tank.
He let it run another minute, then disconnected the hose and brought up the periscope again. Meanwhile, Lunan had attached the electronic stethoscope to the floor. He put on the earphones. At highest sensitivity he could hear the sounds of breathing and a heartbeat. Otherwise nothing. He made the “OK” sign to Rand.
Rand nodded and turned to the control console. When he twisted dials, a large jack ascended from the top of the vehicle and rose until it touched the ceiling. Another control sent up a large saw and spray hoses. The saw began cutting in a circular pattern around the jack.
It wailed like a banshee. Lunan felt real terror. Surely someone would hear that, the horrible rasping sound that proclaimed “JAILBREAK!” Evidently it worried Rand too, because he rigged up the tank and sent more sleepy gas through the hole.
The saw cut on a bias, a concrete disk larger at the top than at the bottom. Eventually the cut was made, and Tony used the jack to lift the plug until it was two feet higher than the cell floor. Lunan helped him set up a newly bought aluminum stepladder. Rand scrambled up it and disappeared, while Lunan arranged Therm-A-Rest air mattresses on the flat top of the vehicle. Then he climbed up, squeezing under the concrete plug. There was a moment of terror when he dislodged his gas mask, but he got it back on without breathing.