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the map that the computer had produced. He pressed his bloodless lips together
and decided, with some reluctance, that the computer was right.
9.
Ewen was deaf to Jenine's protestations that it was insane to return to
the lowest level. He insisted that he had to see the door that they had come
through came through.
"But why?" Jenine had demanded.
"To see if it's designed to automatically lock when it's shut from the
outside."
"Is it important?"
"Yes," Ewen replied, picking up the restaurant's coiled rope. "If it
automatically locks when it's shut on the outside, it's possible that this
place is really part of Arama that's been forgotten. But if the door can only
be closed from the inside, then the people that built this complex, or their
descendants, may still be in here somewhere. If they're not, then there has to
be another way out. Lateral thinking."
Jenine gave in. They retraced their footsteps down through the levels to
the lowest level and the flight of stairs that had so surprised them the
previous day. Ewen turned up the discharge tube's brightness when they entered
the steel-lined room that they had climbed into.
"Something's different," Ewen muttered, dropping the holdall and the rope
on the floor.
"Looks the same to me," said Jenine. She went forward and lifted the
hatch.
"Can't you see what's missing!"
Jenine glanced around the room. "No."
"The length of steel conduit we climbed up! I put it against that wall
and now it's gone!"
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure. I remember thinking that we might need it in case we
had to return this way."
They knelt by the open hatch and peered down into the switch room where
they had huddled together, waiting for the final plasma assault on the steel
door that had never come. The light fell on the contactor housing that they
had stood on. Beside that was the length of conduit they had used to climb out
of the switch room. It was in exactly the same place, but with its end unbent.
Jenine broke the silence that followed their discovery. "I'm tempted to
say that maybe we dreamed it all." She tried to sound flippant but there was
no mistaking the strained note in her voice.
Ewen glanced around the room. He lashed the end of the rope to a
substantial-looking wall bracket and climbed down into the switch room. Jenine
held the discharge tube through the hatch for him while he inspected the
conduit without touching it. There was no doubt that it was lying in precisely
the same position as yesterday. He picked it up. As near as he could judge, it
was exactly the same length as the old piece whose end he had bent to form a
cranked end. He glanced up, caught Jenine's eye and shook his head in
bewilderment.
"It looks like a new length of pipe," he said.
"See if there's any scratch marks on the door where we bent the pipe,"
Jenine suggested.
Ewen looked at door's locking mechanism and confirmed that around the
strongest lever were unmistakable fresh marks from their exertions of the
previous day. He checked the way the locking tongues fitted into their slots -
the reason for this return visit. The design of the door was such that it was
not self-locking when closed from the chord-metro tunnel side: to lock the
door meant that it had to be closed from the inside.
It meant that there was another way out of this place.
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It also meant that, perhaps, they were not alone.
10.
The restaurant was like the switch room: everything had been restored.
The tables and chairs were once again in neat rows. There was even a new rope
threaded through the stanchions that marked off the self-service lane. None of
the tabletops had burn marks from the MANIX's PD weapon. Of the MANIX itself,
there was no sign although Jenine did find traces of burn marks on the floor
where the android had blazed away when Ewen had pounced on it.
Just being in the place where they had been attacked made them both edgy.
Jenine agreed that there was no point in examining the vat in which she had
cooked 400 portions of vegetable soup. They were glad to get out of the place.
They reached Level 9, where they had spent the night, and continued up to
Level 1.
At Level 1 there were no more stairs.
"Let's rest," Jenine pleaded. "My legs are dropping off." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
