Second Sight

  Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  _Basil Wells, who lives in Pennsylvania, writes that he has been doing research concerning the keelboat age prior to and following the War of 1812 on the "locally famous section of portage-keelboat-rafting stream from Waterford down to Pittsburgh," turning from this to this grimmer future._

  second sight

  _by BASIL WELLS_

  Then his hand caught an arm and he exerted his full strength. The entire arm tore away from its shoulder....

  His fingers moved over the modest packet of bills the invisiblerockhound had handed to him. He smiled through the eternal night thatwas his own personal hell. Duggan's Hades.

  "Thanks, Pete," he said gratefully. "Here, have a box of Conmos."

  His sensitized fingers found the cigars, handed over a box, and he heardthe nervous scuff of the other's shoes.

  "This eight thousand means I can see again--for a while at least. Take'em! It's little enough."

  "Look, Duggan. I get eight hundred for selling you the ticket on thebreakthrough time. Keep the cigars. You need the dough."

  Feet pounded, thumping into swift inaudibility along the 10th Level'syielding walkway. His fingers caressed the crisp notes that his luckyguess on the 80th Level's tunnel juncture had won for him, plus the tendollars, that this meager business could ill afford, it had cost to jointhe rockhounds' pool....

  But now he was free. His own man. He was released from the calculatedeconomies of his wife. Janith knew to within a few dollars what hisnewsstand on the 10th Level should make. He had never been able to savethe necessary thousand dollar deposit, and ten dollars an hour, that arented super mech cost. And she would never listen to his pleas that hemust see again--if only for an hour....

  "Waste ten or twenty dollars for nothing," she would storm. "We have allyour hospital bills to pay. I need new clothes. Your stock in the standsis too small."

  What she left unspoken was the fact that she must secretly have hatedhis engineering career in the deep levels under Appalachia, and that shewas dedicated to preventing his possible return....

  After three years of blindness, under his wife's firm dominance, Dugganfelt only hate for her. With this sudden fortune he could beindependent. He could divorce her. He could rent a super mech--evenreturn to work in the ever-deepening levels of Appalachia City!

  First of all he must see again.

  He closed up the news-and-cigar stand. With his cane's sensitive radarbutton pulsating beneath his fingers he hurried along the walkway towardthe nearest super mech showroom. It was less than three blocks....

  * * * * *

  "Be sure that all the contacts are against the skull and neck," thesalesman was saying, his voice muffled by the mentrol hood coveringDuggan's head and shoulders.

  "Of course." Duggan's impatience made his voice shrill. "I've usedmentrols before when inspecting cave-ins and such."

  "Very well, sir." The man's voice was relieved. Probably he hated hisjob as much as Duggan hated his cigars and news.

  Duggan tripped the switches and heard the building hum of power. An oddsort of vibration that his mind told him was purely emotional, seemed tobe permeating his whole body.

  Abruptly the transition was complete. He was no longer lying on thepadded bench beneath the mentrol hood. He was standing erect, consciousof the retaining clamps that held him upright.

  He gulped a deep draught of air into the artificial lungs that did notneed oxygen and his mechanical pulse quickened.

  His eyes slitted open, drinking in by degrees the mirrored mentrol boothand the pallid, fat, little man sitting beside his hooded body. Hestepped out of the clamps, his sharpened senses aware of softness, andhardness, and scent, and color that human weakness so often blurs.

  This super mech that was linked directly with his brain by twin mentrolswas tall, chunky and gray of eye and hair. In a general way it was aduplicate of his own body, but there was no facial resemblance.

  "How do you like it, sir?" The fat smile was empty, almost apologetic."We have younger, more handsome models...."

  "Well enough." Duggan started donning the clothing that he had removed."I'll want the mech for five, possibly ten, hours."

  "I'll make out the slip for ten hours, sir. We'll refund any balance dueyou. But after ten hours ..."

  "I know. You must report the mech missing. But with my body here youcan't lose."

  The salesman smiled enigmatically. "We _have_," he said.

  Duggan shrugged. He was impatient to be outside, feasting his starvedvision on the stores and parks of the various upper levels. He mighteven take a lift to the Outside. It had been fifteen years ago, whiletheir youngest son was a baby, that they had taken a weekend motor tripto the great scar that had been Manhattan. He remembered the vastnessand the rawness of the uncontrolled atmosphere. It had been beautifulbut also a bit terrifying. It was a ten years delayed honeymoon....

  And now Merle was in the rocket corps and Janith and he were likestrangers.

  Duggan zippered shut his gray-checked jacket and left the booth. Hewalked slowly, savoring every picture of the crowded passenger stripsbeyond the walkway, and of the fairy spans of moving walkways crossingthe travel strips. The soft glow of the level's ceiling, fifty feetabove, illuminated the double rows of apartment and store fronts.

  It was good to see again.

  Every twelfth section of the level was a park. The greenery was fresherand brighter than he remembered; the tree boles and the branches weremarvels of grace and strength. He strolled along the paths, impatient tobe moving on, but aching with the emerald beauty around him....

  He took the lifts to the upper levels. He rode the swiftest walkways andtravel strips, his eyes drinking in the long-hidden sights. From anobservation dome he looked out over the wooded mountain slopes ofOutside, and saw the telltale ridging of rock and earth that marked thescores of hidden vehicular tubes linking Appalachia with its sistercities of Ondack and Smoky.

  His five hours stretched into seven, and then, eight. Slowly adetermination to keep these eyes, at whatever cost, was building withinhim. Always before he had agreed when Janith decided. He had been sodependent on her those first terrible weeks. But now, with this moneyfrom the breakthrough pool, he could rent a super mech--live as a manshould live!

  * * * * *

  Duggan left the employment booth on the 20th Level, a badge on hisjacket and a half-grin on his full super mech's lips.

  On the records he was now Al Duggan, a second cousin from Montana. Heknew that nothing in the world could bring Al further east than Ozarka.Just to be safe, however, he decided to drop Al a line to explain.

  As far as his wife was concerned Merle Duggan was gone. Dead and buried.She could get a divorce if she wanted and marry that podgy, pink-skulledboss of hers at the advertising agency....

  "Five hundred a month," Duggan told himself. "Two-fifty for the rental,fifty for insurance--maybe fifty or so for spare parts--that leavesabout a hundred and fifty for me."

  He was starting at the bottom as a rock hog, a mucker, a clean-up man inthe newly opened 80th Level. And his wages were the minimum union scale.

  He took the lift down to the 79th Level, flashed his new badge at theguards, and took the gritty freight lift to the lowest level of thesprawling metropolis....

  "You Gaines Short?" he asked the lanky man bent over the littered deskin the rough plastic bubble that served as an office.

  Sharp black eyes studied him--noted the bright new olive badge, and thecreased, obviously new, coveralls.

  "You're the new rock hog?"

  "Yes, sir. Al Duggan."

  "Any experie
nce?"

  "Montana--mining. Had some engineering. Worked in Ozarka on tunnels."

  The lank man nodded, expressionless.

  "You'll hog for a while. Later we'll see.... Any relation to the Dugganwe lost a couple of years back?"

  "We're cousins."

  "Tough he couldn't see his way clear to try again." Short's lipsthinned. "He may snap out of it yet.... We could use a few more likehim."

  "I--I'll talk with him," promised Duggan.

  He fought back the words that wanted to pour out. Whether it was astrange sense of loyalty to his wife, or a stubborn sort of pride, hecould not bring himself to speak ill of her.

  "A super mech is not so bad, Duggan." Short flexed a skinny arm. "I'veworn this one since a rock slide crushed my back."

  "Yes, sir," Duggan