Dayworld Rebel, Page 2

  At 5:30, he watched an hour of news, most of which was devoted to the meeting of the All-Days World Government Council in Zurich, Switzerland, the capital of the world government.

  After that, he went to a panel in the wall near the southwest corner and pulled out his supper tray. This had been inserted from the hall outside the room. He placed the tray in a destoning cabinet box, turned on the power for a second, opened the door, and withdrew the tray. It went into the microwave unit, and he took it out and set it on a table by the window. While he ate, he looked at the street through the window. Rain was beating against it; there was not much to see except the boat-shaped blockhouse across the way. Most people, like him, were dining, and the rain would have discouraged shoppers, anyway.

  From about midnight of today until six in the morning, Duncan had slept. The morpheus machine ensured that four hours of sleep were enough for his body and mind, but he had set the alarm for later because he had no need to get up earlier. Now, though he did not feel tired, he went to bed anyway. If events went as he hoped, he would require a lot of energy. He placed the band holding the electrode to his forehead around his head, closed his eyes, and was voyaging into a sea of dreams. Most of them, though pleasant, were about people whom he did not know yet felt that he had somehow known long long ago.

  At eleven-thirty, he was rocketed midway from a wet dream into lonely and dry reality. He got out of bed sluggishly, stripped off the covers, sheets, and pillowcases, put them into another wall panel, and showered. Feeling somewhat better, he left the bathroom. By then a wall strip was flashing and clanging, notice to him to get ready for stoning. Throughout the city-state of Manhattan, throughout this time zone, the warning was sounding.

  Clad only in shorts, very aware of being watched by the electronic eyes, he walked to the window. If the rain had stopped while he slept, it had started again. Two men and a woman, blasted by rain and wind, were hurrying bent over along the sidewalks. The street lights were flashing bright orange.

  Now and then, lightning curdled the night. Thunder must have been keeping it company, but the thick walls and windows shut it out. Within his mind were also thunder and lightning, though a physician would have described them as a storm of electrical impulses, hormones, and adrenaline, among many million other interactions, excluding that of the brain. Duncan, however, would have told you that he considered himself to be, not a robot, but a human being. The son of the sum was more than the whole.

  Now, he tensed. A fist seemed to be squeezing down on his heart. Looking calm (at least, he hoped he did), he walked to the Tuesday cylinder. He opened its door outward, knowing that a red light would be flashing on the panel before the monitor stationed on the first floor of the building. That would notify the monitor that the prisoner was about to enter the cylinder. However, the monitor was responsible for twelve rooms. Not all of these might be occupied. Duncan hoped that all were. The more the monitor had to watch, the greater the chances for Duncan to fool him.

  He shut the door on the Tuesday cylinder. Now, an orange light would be flashing. All the monitor had to do was to look at the screens showing the interior of Duncan’s rooms. If Duncan was outside the cylinder, the monitor would send guards up to make sure that Duncan was put into the cylinder.

  The next few seconds decided whether Duncan would get away with his plan. He strode to the Wednesday cylinder, grasped the handle of its door, swung it open, and stepped inside. Then he shut the door and crouched down.

  Several things could be happening down in the monitor room. The man at the station could be bored and not paying much attention. His eyes could be elsewhere than where they were supposed to be. He could have turned his head during the brief time that Duncan had strode from the Tuesday cylinder to Wednesday’s. He could be talking to other monitors. Duncan had a dim memory of having been in that room more than once, though he did not remember who he was then or when he had been there. Probably when he had been Caird the policeman, the organic. The psychicist had mentioned that name.

  Whatever was going on down there, Duncan knew that he would find out very quickly. If—oh, he hoped not!—the monitor was carrying out his duties, he would be closely watching the twelve screens. He would notice that Duncan was trying to pull a fast one. Within two minutes, guards would open the door of Wednesday’s cylinder. Like it or not, he would be thrust into Tuesday’s.

  No light would be flashing on the panel for the cylinder Duncan was hiding in. That cylinder was Wednesday’s business. When its personnel took over, a button would be pressed to switch monitoring to that day’s circuits. Thus, the monitor now down there would not be notified that someone had entered the wrong stoner.

  Duncan thought, the wrong one is the right one for me.

  At least two minutes passed. By then the stoning power had been automatically applied within Tuesday’s cylinder. If he had been in it, he would be unconscious now, every molecule in his body slowed so that his body was the hardest substance in the universe. In that state, he could be hurled into the sun and sink to its center, and he would not melt in the slightest.

  OK, he thought. Now the monitor has seen the light indicating that I’m stoned. He’ll scan the twelve screens and make sure that none of his charges are hiding in the bedroom. He’ll also press a button that will activate a mass detector to make sure I’m not in the bathroom. I hope he doesn’t look closely at the windows of the cylinders to be certain there’s a face behind Tuesday’s. He might do that. Duncan was counting on the carelessness borne of yawn-making routine.

  He began counting the minutes. When five had passed, he knew that his deception had worked. For the next fifteen minutes, he would be free to do what he wanted to do. The city was stoned, out of its gourd in one sense. His monitor and the guards had entered their cylinders, and it would be twelve minutes at least before Wednesday’s came out of their stoners and took up their duties.

  He had some extra time. The lights for this cylinder would not be on. Wednesday’s monitor had no reason to check out this room.

  However, Duncan wanted to get out of this place before today’s citizens were awake. He had to be long gone, relatively speaking, before people appeared on the streets.

  He stood up and pushed the door open. He stepped out. He felt strange because no one would be watching him. He was free of the ever-watchful eyes, but, at the same time, no one cared about him. He was really alone.

  “You have to be nuts,” he muttered. “Here you are, you’ve gotten what you wanted, and yet you’re feeling panicky.”

  Conditioning, he thought. He’d been conditioned to feel that he was safe as long as the government was watching him and making sure he didn’t harm himself or anyone else.

  There was no time to ponder the implications of the irrational. He began the hard and heavy work needed to get him out of this room—if indeed he could get out of it.

  The cylinders were paper-thin because they were made from paper. They, too, had been subjected to stoning power, and their molecules were also slowed in their motions. Hence, they were heavy. He uncoupled the power connection to the cable coming up from the wall behind Wednesday’s cylinder, and he began wrestling it toward the big round window. He had to reach up and grip the edge of the top and lean it toward him. Not too far because then it would topple, and he would have to jump out of the way before it crushed him. Once it was lying on its side on the floor, he could not lift it upright again.

  He rolled the tilted cylinder a few inches to his right on the edge of its round base. Then he rolled it a few inches to the left. Each maneuver got the cylinder about one inch toward his goal. Roll this way. Roll that way. Meanwhile, the wall chronometer flashed ever-increasing digits. Time, he thought, while he grunted and groaned, sweat coating him. Time was the greatest of the inevitables. Also the most indifferent of the indifferents. Perhaps Time, capital time, was the real God. In which case, it should be worshiped, even though it would be ignorant of that and uncaring if it knew.

 
At last, panting, eyes stinging with salt, he settled the cylinder on its base. He walked away from it to the end of the room. Now he could see where its end would strike if it were to be toppled eastward. He cursed. Its arc, the curve described by the top of the cylinder, would not strike the center of the window. Cursing because he had cursed and so wasted breath he needed, he ran to the cylinder, got behind it, pushed until it was tilted slightly toward the wall, worked around it, got his shoulder under, gripped with both arms and rolled it slightly. His muscles yelled at him to take it easier. He puffed and panted but got the cylinder a few inches forward.

  Another run to the southern wall got him the perspective he needed. He smiled, though wearily.

  Ten minutes left before the city came to life.

  Actually, Manhattan was not entirely asleep.’ There were a few civil servants, police personnel, fire fighters, ambulance drivers, and others who were authorized to be destoned earlier than the rest of the city. These, however, would be few and not near, and they would not know that an outlaw daybreaker was on the loose.

  On the loose!

  His smile reflected his knowledge that he was not as yet free. And, if he did get out of this place, he might not stay long out of it.

  Though he needed to rest, he had no time for it. After going to the west wall, he set his back to it, against the area in front of which Wednesday’s cylinder had been. Then he crouched like a runner, his right heel against the base of the wall.

  The starter’s pistol went off in his head, and he was up and running. A few strides and he leaped high, his torso falling back. Both his feet struck the back of the cylinder near its top. He shouted at the same time as if his expressed wish would somehow aid his weight to topple the cylinder.

  He fell back, rolled, and landed on all fours.

  He turned around. He groaned. The cylinder might have leaned over from the impact of his feet, but it had not been. enough. It stood upright, not showing in the slightest that it had been disturbed.

  He rose slowly. The lower part of his back felt as if it were about to have a spasm. If that happened, he was done for. Forget the plan. Say good-bye to all hope.

  He walked swiftly to the bathroom and ran cold water into a glass. Having drunk that, he walked just as swiftly to Thursday’s cylinder. With a mighty effort that took him five minutes, he rotated the cylinder away from the wall and at an angle toward the one by the window. When he had it lined up with that stoner, he rested a minute. Four minutes left before the island came alive.

  Friday’s cylinder took another five minutes to get to the exact place where Wednesday’s had been. Now he had three cylinders in a line. One near the wall. One halfway across the room. One a few feet from the window.

  The labors of Hercules were nothing compared to mine, he thought. And the ancient strong man had a lot more muscle and a lot more time to get his work done.

  The pain in his back told him that he might not have any time left. It was now one minute past time for destoning for Wednesday. He was behind schedule. This was, however, no time to push his body. Like it or not, failing or succeeding, he had to repair the damage. Slowly, he eased down on hands and knees while the back muscles quivered and burned. When he was on his back and was staring at the ceiling, his—legs stretched out, he closed his eyes. Immediately, he went into the state of mind he called SEARCH. He had been training himself so long in this procedure, five to ten minutes at a time, two hours at others, any spare time he had (or so his memory told him), that he had only to think out the code letters. They hung in his mind like curiously shaped comets in a dark sky. When the last of the nine digits were there, he felt himself sliding down, down, shooting in and out, turning sharp bends in his body. It was like riding down a convoluted and murky tunnel, a safety chute.

  Then he was flying through more darkness, but somewhere below him were enormous dully glowing blocks. His back muscles.

  No time today to do more than say hello to the latissimus dorsi, the lumbar fascia, the serratus posterior inferior, the rhomboideus major, the infraspinatus, and all their close allies and friends.

  Pain, hot and savage, struck him across the lower part of his back. It lasted for a half-second and was gone. Sweating even more, he rose. His muscles, for the moment at least, were in superb condition, violin strings ready to pour forth the music of Beethoven or his favorite composer, Tudi Swanson Kai.

  His room was quiet. In other rooms in this building and in thousands of other rooms throughout the city, there would be noise. People, just destoned, getting ready for Wednesday, their seventh part of the week. Many of them would at once go to bed to sleep under the influence of the morpheus machine before rising to get ready for whatever time their work shifts started. In this building, the first shift would be sitting down to eat. Some of them would breakfast in front of their monitors, eating and at the same time watching the prisoners. His room would be unmonitored. It was possible, though, that a prisoner would be brought in and assigned to this room. That did not seem likely to happen immediately.

  Outside, it was still dark. Rain struck the window. There would not be many people out on the streets as yet.

  He went behind Friday’s cylinder, put one foot against it, and, his back against the wall, worked his way upward. When he was opposite the top of the cylinder, he was in a fetal position, his knees against his chest, the bottoms of his feet against the cold gray substance of the stoner. Then he began straightening his legs. His face twisted with the effort; the cylinder started slowly, very slowly, to lean outward.

  Suddenly he was falling. He slid back against the wall, turned, and landed on his side. That jarred him, though not so much that he could not get back on his feet at once. By then Friday’s cylinder had struck against the back of Thursday’s. Advancing in a short but heavily weighted arc, it struck Thursday’s on the upper fourth of its height. And that, as he had hoped, tilted Thursday’s and sent its top crashing into the back of Wednesday’s upper quarter area. And that sent Wednesday’s leaning, and it kept on leaning, and its upper front edge slammed into the center of the great round window.

  The plastic window shot out of the incised retaining area in the wall like a retina detached in an airplane crash. It screamed when it did so, plastic rubbing against stone. The tumble of the three cylinders was as loud as the fall of the temple pulled down by Samson. The floor shook three times and vibrated like the earth in a quake. Rain spat through the opening. Now, he could hear the thunder.

  He wished desperately that he had been able to do all this before destoning time. The people in the building might not hear the fall of the cylinders, but this side of the building would have shaken considerably. It would take them some time to track down just where the vibrations had originated. A time that should be all he needed. Even so, it would have been far better if the opening were not to be found until much later in the day.

  He picked up the mattress he had taken from his bed and shoved it through the round hole. The rain cooled his face. Leaning out of the opening, he saw by the streetlights and yardlamps that the mattress was lying somewhat canted on the bushes at the base of the building. The bushes would bend beneath the mattress and soften the impact of his fall. He climbed into the large O of the opening, gripped its sides, and leaned out. He felt as if he were in a spaceship’s airlock and about to venture onto a little-known but undoubtedly dangerous planet. Gauging the distance to the mattress, he leaped.

  2

  He landed on his back, and the mattress and the springlike bushes absorbed the energy of the impact well enough. Unhurt, he crawled out of the bushes, stood up, and waited a few seconds. Rain soaked him, and the lightning lit up the yard so that anyone coming up the walk to the building could have seen him. No one was there.

  He was the first ever to get free of the building. Now, he would find out if he could be the pioneer to escape entirely.

  He shoved the mattress behind the crushed bushes and dropped the plastic window behind them. He plunged
into the bushes as he saw a car stop by the curb. A man and a woman got out and, heads bent under their umbrellas, ran up the sidewalk to the front door. The car pulled away. Duncan walked slowly through the yard to its northeast corner, turned onto West 122nd and walked toward the Hudson River. He strode along as if he had legitimate business. Any organic patrol car going by would stop, though. Bareheaded, without raincoat, he would look suspicious.

  He got to Riverside Drive West without incident, though a few pedestrians and cyclists did look at him. He slanted southward to go around the tip of Grants Park, a long narrow pile of rocks and dirt covered by trees. Grants Tomb had been destroyed during the first great earthquake of an obmillennium ago and never rebuilt. He crossed under the high pylons of Riverside Drive West and entered Riverside Park. It took him a few minutes to get to the bank of the Hudson River. First, he had to climb a long high flight of stone steps to get to the top of the dike that kept the river from flooding Manhattan. The sea level was now fifty feet above the lowest point of the island, and the polar ice caps were still melting.

  The top of the dike was at its narrowest a hundred feet across. He crossed it and went down a flight of many steps to the dock area. The larger buildings were store and office areas for the commercial boat companies. Between them were small boathouses for private citizens, mostly government elite. He went into the closest, found a rowboat, opened one of the doors, and rowed out onto the river. The rain was as heavy as before, and the current angled him far down to the opposite shore. When he reached it, he was tired and cold.

  He had to drift along high banks for an hour. Meanwhile, the rain ceased, and the clouds began to disappear as if by fiat of Mother Nature. Begone. You’ve had your fun.

  There were also more boats out, magnetohydrodynamically powered electrically driven vessels pulling or pushing long strings of barges, and some early fishers. They could not see him, but he could see their lights.