The Hidden World: A Golden Age SF Classic Page 8

  "You now behold the battlefield a hundred miles away,” I heard the speaker proclaim, when, in order to relieve my aching ears, I had removed the earphones. “The Phonoscope is connected with scores of points on the battlefield. Motion picture cameras, at the other end of the line, are constantly photographing the sights, which are conveyed to you by an apparatus like television, except that you may see directly instead of gazing at a screen. At the same time, radio transmitters catch the sounds and bring them to your ears; so that you may see and hear the battle from a safe distance."

  I saw the army, with yellow and purple banners afloat, advancing across the field; but I was so interested in the speaker's words that I was reluctant to clap on the earphones again.

  "Thanks to the Phonoscope,” he went on, “war has become much more interesting than ever before. Previously we had only the newspapers, altogether too tame. Or else we had to go to war ourselves—in which case we were all too likely to be ... er ... turned over. But now, for a mere Brass Finger, we can enjoy the spectacle without enduring any of its hardships."

  At this point, my attention was distracted from the speaker to the battlefield. Out of little round orifices on the cavern walls, showers of phosphorescent silvery orbs had flashed, falling like shooting stars upon the floor where the purple-and-yellow army was maneuvering. And all at once those regular, serried ranks became like a column of ants deluged with hot water. The wildest disorder prevailed; squadrons of men seemed literally to wither away, while other myriads fled in all directions.

  All at once, the announcer broke in. “Look carefully, my friends! Look carefully. The Subterrain is coming! The Subterrain! The Subterrain!"

  Anxious not to miss anything, I clapped the earphones on again, and glanced once more at the battlefield. And, as I did so, a scene of shattering fury burst upon my view.

  For one instant, I was aware of the wide cavern floor, but the next instant, all this had vanished. There was a terrific upheaval of earth and rock, which for a fraction of a second covered all things in a great blur; the walls of the cavern sagged, and in places collapsed in avalanches. The floor became jagged as a lunar landscape, with sharp craters and deep ravines, and hillocks, bluffs and gulches where all had been flat and smooth a moment before. And in my ears was such a thundering that I reeled and was all but knocked over.

  Hastily snatching off the earphones, I remained gazing with absorbed interest upon that scene. I could no longer see any trace of the purple-and-yellow army. The fugitives, no less than the victims, had all disappeared. And as the visible sign of their destruction, a long, thin, dark metallic tube was projecting from the broken center of the floor, like the neck of some great carniverous dinosaur.

  "Ali that is fine, isn't it, my friends? A most satisfactory enemy turnover. Most satisfactory! You see that long tube jutting above the floor? That is the tip of the Subterrain! No other contrivance has produced half so great a turnover. It was the creation of the renowned engineer Hyz Cre. Why not make a machine, he asked, which would travel underground as our submersible vessels travel beneath rivers and lakes?

  "The result was the Subterrain. The principles behind it are admirably simple; the weapon, which is a relatively slender steel cylinder accommodating five or six men, gradually works its way through a narrow excavation already prepared for it by a machine like a powerful well-borer—the ‘cave blaster,’ which operates by the power of Mulflar and has made it possible to dig our gigantic war galleries.

  "But let me tell about the Subterrain itself. Affixed to its prow is an electric dredge, which tears up the earth before it and deposits it behind; by this means, the Subterrain digs its way forward at the rate of a quarter of a mile an hour. Meanwhile its crew, confined in their narrow compartment, are kept alive by air supplied through long connecting tubes, in the manner of divers. A delicate instrument, with a radio attachment, informs the men when they are in the neighborhood of an enemy cavern, for, of course, the machine is never used except in wartime. Being within a few feet of a hostile gallery, the Subterrain halts, retreats a short distance into the tunnel it has bored and launches a Mulflar torpedo, whose effects, as you have observed, are highly gratifying.

  "Great as are the merits of the Subterrain,” the speaker continued, “it cannot be denied that it has some minor drawbacks. One of these is that there is no longer any security for the civilian population during wartime. You never know when a Subterrain, boring unnoticed beneath your feet, may launch a Mulflar bomb directly at you. It is impossible to say how many thousands of noncombatants have been turned over in this manner since the war began. Even First Class citizens have not been spared, an intolerable form of barbarity which will now be ended by a humanitarian treaty which has just been negotiated, confining attacks of the Subterrain to regions occupied by Second and Third Class citizens."

  It was at this point that I lost interest in the speech. I had risen to leave, when my eyes were riveted on a chalk-face just appearing at the door. There at the entrance, staring at me with a fascinated gaze, was my friend of the slit eyes and twisted nose!

  Not tempted to make his closer acquaintance, I darted toward a dark passageway marked Exit. And instantly he set up such a howl that the whole theatre was aroused, and the speaker, startled, halted midway in his address. “Thief! Robber! Bandit!” scores of shouts dinned from behind me. “Catch him! Catch him! He's a deserter! Grab him! Turn him over!"

  As I darted into the passageway at a speed that did justice to my college track training, it was only too evident that the slit-eyed detective had mistaken me for someone else. But I did not wait to argue about his error. I dashed away with half the theatre audience at my heels.

  As I rushed around the bends of the branching corridors, I could feel the blood-lusting of the rabble behind me, could hear their cries growing more excited, could hear the rattling of pebbles and rocks hurled at me by the on sweeping patriots.

  Then suddenly, above the din and screaming of the throng, my ears caught the screech of a whistle, and I knew that the police were being summoned. In that critical moment, while my breath came hard and fast, and my heart hammered like a great weight, I slipped around a turn that hid me temporarily from my pursuers. And, at the same instant, the saving suggestion came to me. There, on the pavement before me, was an iron lid as large as the manhole of a sewer, its top bearing the prominent letters, PROPERTY OF THE VENTILATION COMPANY! KEEP OFF!

  Instantly, I thrust the iron lid out of place. With a leap and a plunge, I dropped into the gaping black hole; and with a furious wrench of my arms, as I came to a halt on the slippery steel surface, I pulled the lid into place above me.

  The next second, secure in that cranny amid the darkness, I could hear the mob surging and stamping above my head.

  CHAPTER XII

  COMPANY HERO

  It is impossible to say just how long I lay there in the gloom. It may have been only minutes, but it seemed hours, while the howls of the rabble came to my ears through the thin slit of iron just above.

  I felt an intense desire to creep farther down into my hiding place. But my feet were resting on a ledge only a foot or two wide, and vacancy seemed to yawn beneath. I felt sure that I was on the brink of a precipice, for a pebble or fragment of metal, accidentally dislodged by my foot, rattled for a long while as it descended. Meantime, I was in as uncomfortable a position as you could imagine: huddled against the iron while a chilly breath of air blew continually over me. I was not only catching cold, but much worse—I had reason to fear that I might sneeze.

  At last, however, the tumult of the multitude subsided, and I could hear the shouting at a distance, until gradually it died out entirely.

  Even so, it did not seem safe to lift the iron lid—might some member of the mob not be lurking near? And so I remained crouched there in the darkness, waiting, waiting.

  But after a while, I again heard the sound of voices—voices lifted in loud excitement. “The ventilation! What's happened to the ventil
ation?"

  "Looks to me like the work of those spies from Zu!"

  "Disturbance seems to center somewhere up this way,” grumbled a third. “Those blazing complaints are coming in for miles around!"

  "By my mother's white skin!” resumed the first. “If anything got into one of those pipes, it would automatically stop the air over the whole district!"

  As I listened to this conversation, a thrill of horror and a sense of guilt shot over me.

  "Remember that last time,” continued one of the men. “When those big rats got caught in one of the tubes? We had to shoot in some Mulflar and blow them to cinders!"

  By this time the men were almost directly above me, and I was overwhelmed by the desire to sneeze. The best I could do was to muffle it, so that it had a stifled but unfortunately all-too-loud sound not in the least like a sneeze. I could hear the men pausing above my head. “Great caverns! What's that?” one of them snapped. “Didn't it sound like a rat?"

  "If it's one rat, it's a whole colony! They grow big down here, you know."

  "Well, here's the very place,” took up the first. “Right in this air-tube! We'll fix them, all right!” And I could hear the man rattling the iron lid above my head.

  Never before had I wished so ardently for the power of invisibility. I resorted to the desperate expedient of hanging over the brim, holding onto the ledge with both hands, while my body lay along an iron surface sloping at an angle of forty-five degrees.

  No sooner had I gained this position than I heard the lid clanging out of place; and a flood of light burst upon me. In the glare above, several chalk-faces were staring down at me. “There it is! The biggest I ever saw!"

  "Well, we'll get rid of him fast enough!” the second man declared. “Just one minute there! Let's have that brush! And here—the poison spray!"

  It had never occurred to me, until that moment, to have any sympathy for a trapped rat. But I could feel boundless sympathy as a huge brush, malodorous with some vile-smelling concoction, was thrust through the opening directly at my face.

  I do not know whether I cried out in my terror. But I do know that my hands, as I struggled to evade that oncoming weapon, lost their precarious grip on the ledge. The next instant, I had gone shooting off into the darkness.

  Each man at sometime in his life, I suppose, experiences things that seem miraculous. But for me no miracle ever surpassed my survival from that plunge. I could easily have broken my head or caved in my ribs against the steel projections of the ventilating system. Nothing but chance, and the fact that the ventilating tubes were not perpendicular, saved me from a sudden and horrible turnover. Down, down, down I shot, skimming around curves, banging against bends and corners, tumbling head over heels in a mad dash wherein it was impossible to regain my balance. Only now and then could I momentarily check my speed, when the tube, for a few feet, became almost horizontal; but always it would dip sharply again, and I would go falling once more.

  It seemed that I had traveled for miles when suddenly I collided with a wall and came to a halt, stunned and bruised. With difficulty, I picked myself up, while noting with relief a slit of light through the partition I had just struck. It was, in fact, not a wall, but a partly open door.

  Then, as my dazed senses gradually cleared, I became aware of something familiar in my surroundings. Did this not resemble the ventilating duct which opened on the office where I had worked? Still feeling somewhat dizzy, I crept through the doorway, and found myself in a large, well-lighted chamber—not, indeed, my former place of employment, but so similar that I knew it to be another office of the Ventilating Company.

  Before I had had time to reflect upon my plight, or wonder what to do, I was startled to see four or five men rushing out of several adjoining rooms.

  Upon seeing me, they stopped short, with loud, excited cries. Had I had the energy, I would have crawled back into the ventilating tube. But I was so weak that I could only drop to the floor.

  "Who in the sacred name of Wu may you be? Where did you come from?” demanded the foremost. “Don't you know it's forbidden to trespass on the ventilating ducts?"

  "Of course I know!” I moaned. And then, as a last resource, “But I-I'm also an employee of the company."

  "Oh, you're an employee of the company?” The chalk-faces stared at one another significantly, and their manner became slightly more friendly. “Well, we'd better go and report to the manager!"

  With my last remaining gasp of energy, I sought to dissuade them. But, plead as I might, the ventilation men were inexorable. “No, we must report to the manager! The rules require it!"

  This assertion was the last straw; merciful unconsciousness swept over me.

  * * * *

  I remained unconscious for a long while, so I was afterwards told. When I came to myself again, I was lying on a sort of bed or couch, with a sheet drawn up to my neck; all my clothes had been removed, except for a single shirt-like covering, and my head was swathed in bandages. To my right rose a bare wall, and above me, at a height of three or four feet, stared a blank ceiling. To the left, across an aisle little more than a yard wide, were neat rows of berths, arranged one above the other three tiers high. Dozens of men reclined there, one to each cot, all of them buried up to the neck beneath the sheets.

  I saw wires, with pulley-like attachments, which ran through minute holes in the ceiling to each of the berths, and which carried little rattling cars no larger than a small ink bottle. I saw vials and tubes, filled with variously colored liquids and powders, which stood on a neatly numbered shelf just above my head; and I noted that a copper wire, attached to my left wrist, ran the length of the bed and out through an opening in the wall, while similar wires led to each of the other berths.

  But I was too weary to wonder; I sank back upon a pillow composed of some straw-like substance, closed my eyes, and fell into a refreshing slumber...

  From this sleep I was aroused with a start by the sound of someone talking; it took me a minute to discover that the voice, transmitted by radio, issued from the ceiling behind me.

  Unfortunately, I had missed the first words, but, judging from what I later heard, I believe I can reproduce the whole fairly accurately:

  "Mechanical Hospital Number 807 QL, Third Class! It is now precisely fifteen minutes and eleven seconds after the start of the wake! Time to take your morning tonic! This you will find on the shelf above you, Number 36 A, in the blue vial. Dissolve two pellets in the distilled water which you will find in Number 36 B. Drink slowly, and finish with an ounce of the liquid in 36 C. Then recline, and return to sleep. Our next announcement will be for the midmorning repast!"

  With uncanny suddenness, the machine snapped into silence. The occupants of all the other berths, rising slightly out of bed, reached for the indicated vials and consumed the contents as the voice had directed. For my own part, however, I merely sank down into bed again.

  A moment later, irritated by the wire about my wrist, which dug into the flesh and checked the circulation, I pulled at the obstruction viciously and succeeded in removing it. But no sooner had I accomplished this than I was shocked to hear a bell clanging just above my head. And, from the radio-speaker on the ceiling, a voice bawled reprovingly:

  "The patient who has just removed his wrist register will kindly fasten it on again. We cannot expect to cure him unless this is left securely in place. For the benefit of any persons still ignorant of the facts, we may repeat that the wrist register is the essence of modern medicine. By means of a faint but constant electric current, it records the patient's pulse, temperature, and respiration, which are noted down in the chartroom by automatic wired connections. Thus we are aware of the patient's condition minute by minute and are able to do without expensive attendants. It is this device which has made the Mechanical Hospital possible, and has enabled Third Class citizens to enjoy the benefits of modern medical knowledge."

  I hastily readjusted the wire.

  * * * *

  Let me
now pass over the space of a few hours, during which I dozed from time to time, and from time to time took food or drugs in accordance with the radio instructions, which were constantly awakening me from the most invigorating sleep. The most important event occurred toward the close of the wake, when the radio announced “Visitors’ Hour."

  Needless to say, this announcement did not interest me, for who was there to see me?

  But no sooner had Visitors’ Hour begun than I heard four or five pairs of feet shuffling down the aisle in my direction; and was electrified at the sight of several familiar faces. These were the employees of the Ventilation Company who had threatened to call the manager. Among them—might heaven preserve me!—I noticed the tigerish face of the manager himself!

  Only on one other occasion, when I had begun work in the Ventilation Office, had I encountered this personage, who answered to the name of Go Gral. But never could I forget that occasion, or drive his bullish, square-jawed face from my mind; I thought of him somewhat as the small boy thinks of the rod-wielding pedagogue. I closed my eyes.

  "There he is!” exclaimed one of the visitors. “All beaten up from knocking about inside the tube!"

  "No wonder!” declared a second. “He must have gone through two miles of pipe!"

  "When did you say he would be well again?” I heard the voice of the manager. “Naturally, we can do nothing until then!"

  "They say he'll be out in a few wakes. Only suffering from shock, along with surface cuts and bruises."

  "Good! It would be awkward if he had been turned over."

  "It was a wonderful performance,” one of the employees was declaring. “By the lowest caverns, I never saw anything like it. To creep for miles through the ventilation tubes, all the way from his office to ours! To dust them out and brush away all obstructions, at the risk of his life! I assure you, Go Gral, we were all dumbfounded! The best of it was that he succeeded! From the moment he left the duct, the air currents were working properly again!"