Race Against Time (12 page)

Which house, he wondered, had been hers? None of the round or square ones looked comfortable from the outside. Perhaps it was a different story from the inside, as the exotic tapestries here implied. A girl that wore massive gold earrings could hardly live in a hovel....

Abruptly he was outside. Canute had found the exit. John scuttled for cover again, hoping he had not been seen. He entered another building, ran through its gaunt clay chambers, and finally encountered the clay-covered palisade enclosing the back of the mosque. Was Meilan still inside?

Panting, he ducked through a gateway, slunk along inside the wall, and entered. This interior was dark and cool. He groped ahead. Canute made a little
woof!
of greeting.

"John! Did you find food?"

He jumped, though he had known by the dog's reaction that she was near. "There's a sphere outside! They're looking for us!"

She did not seem unduly alarmed. "If they were sure of our presence, they would be checking the buildings. Perhaps they are merely making sure the village is in good condition while vacant."

This was a sensible analysis, but John was not in a mood to admit it, after his struggle to get to her in time. "We'd better scram!"

She demurred. "I have found a bowl and pestle. We can prepare some of that millet in the field, perhaps."

"We can't prepare anything if they catch us!" he exclaimed.

"We should not go outside while they are watching. If we can find grain inside...."

She was right, of course. If the sphere came down, they could run; if it didn't, they wouldn't
have
to run. And they could not go far while it watched. So it made sense to continue looking for food.

They maneuvered into another building, then a third. There was no grain. "They really cleaned this place out," John said. "The personnel must've taken off the moment school got out. But they didn't destroy anything. Maybe they expect to reactivate it when Ala comes back from her visit, or after her hajj."

"I wonder now," she said, "whether the reason it was so easy to enter here was that they wanted us in the enclave—any enclave."

"Wanted
us here...." John considered. "Now I
really
want to get out!"

"Yes."

John realized that he rather liked this girl. She wasn't sarcastic the way Betsy was, but that was only part of it. She was different. Smart and decisive in her own way but ten times as subtle. "You didn't fall out of the taxi by accident," he said.

"I thought you would need help."

"I
have
help. Canute."

"An excellent animal."

Meaning that an animal couldn't prevent him from doing something stupid? Or meaning that she liked Canute? He couldn't tell.

They peeked cautiously out and into the sky. The sphere was gone.

"Now's our chance! Let's get out of here and over the fence. We can wait on the other side until it's time for rendezvous."

Meilan agreed silently. Eyes more on the sky than on the ground, they left Ala's village of Mopti, in the great empire of Songhai, 976, or in the 1500s, Christian calendar.

Canute woofed as they neared the fence. They hid and waited but saw nothing. "False alarm," John whispered, though the dog remained nervous. "A snake, maybe."

"Possibly," Meilan murmured noncommittally.

They moved up to the fence, and he boosted her over as before. Then he and Canute hurdled it. A miniature travel-sphere floated into sight just outside the palisade.

"Run!" John cried.

Meilan and Canute took off in opposite directions. John turned to go at right angles to their paths. He found himself headed back into the fence, spun about as the sphere bore down, and put his foot into a hole. He fell headlong, pain shooting through that ankle. He tried to get up but collapsed as the weight fell on his hurt foot. He cursed his own incompetence, but he had never before been exposed to real pain, and his reflexes prevented him from using that foot. By the time he oriented himself the sphere was before him.

A beam of light came out from it, and somehow John lost control over his muscles. It was as though the nerves had been disconnected, making him helpless. He fell a third time. The sphere did not wait for him. It flew after Meilan, weaving in and out between the trees with impressive facility. John tried to call out, to warn her, but his voice would not perform any more than his muscles. He was still breathing, and his heart was still beating, but he could do nothing on a voluntary basis. She hardly needed the warning, anyway.

It made no difference. He heard her cry as the sphere caught up. Then silence. He knew the outcome. He had not anticipated this nullifying beam that rendered him unconscious from the neck down, though he should have. The web of force that the Standards had placed around the fleeing taxi had suggested what type of technology they possessed.

The invisible hold on him loosened gradually. His arms and legs prickled as though awakening from circulatory restriction. The pain returned to his ankle. Evidently sensation as well as control had been inhibited. He struggled to sit up, and slowly his body responded. It was like swimming through molasses (not that he had ever done such a thing!). He had to exert an infinite force to accomplish an infinitesimal motion, but the job did get done.

He looked at his ankle. The skin was unbroken, and he couldn't be sure whether there was swelling, but he could not put weight on it. Something inside had been wrenched. Nevertheless he scrambled, on hands and knees, trying to hide himself before the sphere returned. He might get away while Canute led the Standards a merry chase, or he might distract the sphere long enough to allow Meilan to recover and hide. Certainly he couldn't give up now!

It was not to be. The sphere returned, stunning him again, and this time he lost consciousness completely.

John woke in lather. He struggled through the foam, gasping for breath and blinking away the sting. This was involuntary, as he was neither suffocating nor hurting; the stuff around him merely seemed as though it should have some such effect.

In due course the bubbles receded, leaving him in a warm glowing tank or stall. He saw that his skin was white again. The foam had washed away the cosmetics! He had, then, no secrets from his captors. They knew who he was and what he had tried to do, and they had stopped him. He did not even have Canute for company.

Canute! That was his one trump card! The dog must have escaped and would seek him out. Almost immediately his flush of enthusiasm diminished, seeming to ebb with the bubbles. How could a dog get in here? If Canute approached, the Standards would beam him down, and that would be that.

When the glow had dried him, a section of the wall became bright. He recognized one of the walkthrough panels. He had no ID anymore, but these things didn't
have
to be attuned to that, he was sure. He stood up, wincing as his weight hit his foot—but found that the pain was slight. He was hardly lame.

The compartment was octagonal, and now he saw that a panel had opened in one of the walls to show a dry Standard tunic and footwear together with underclothing. John took the outfit and put it on, preferring this to going naked. Strange, he thought. They had washed him white but were dressing him Standard. That didn't seem as though they were going to return him to Newton.

Now he touched the door panel and found it open. He passed through it into a comfortable apartment. Meilan was waiting for him. Canute was with her.

Numbly John surveyed the scene. This was a complete Standard residence, with a sleep converter, communicator, and sundry furniture. The main room was about twelve feet across and octagonal, with a plaque high on one wall bearing the number 32, the number of the apartment. Of the eight short walls he knew that four would abut the walls of similar compartments in one of the Standard beehive complexes he had observed during their long flights in the taxi—unless this happened to be an isolated unit, like the one he had spied near his own enclave.

"I am pleased to see you," Meilan said, maintaining her T'ang reserve. She wore a tunic, too, and looked better in it than she had in her peasant rags. Then: "You're white!"

"I got scrubbed. This is my natural color, you know. That's the bathroom I was in—sanitary cubicle, in Standardese. A square with the corners lopped off by cupboards, so it comes out octagonal, like this room. Have you been here long?"

"About an hour. They brought me in through there." She gestured to the wall a quarter circle to his right.

"That figures. That's the hall door, then. That's open for only an hour, if what I picked up in my pre-escape explorations is accurate. Then the dining room, then the supply closet, or maybe the other way around. I think it just keeps going around like that. You have to time yourself, if you know what I mean."

She looked perplexed. "But why?"

"Because four apartments share each utility. The Standards don't waste anything, not even space or time, though they seem to have a whole planet to exploit. Each family lives in a unit like this, with eight in a row and eight rows. And eight floors. That's what I understand, anyway. Just a big block of five hundred and twelve octagonal chambers, and I don't know how many square spaces between them. Cramped but efficient, I guess. And miles between the buildings—miles of wilderness forest. And no roads. You saw that, too."

"All these huts shoved together?"

"Pretty much. Octagons don't fit together exactly. There's leftover space. That's why they have the little cubicles, though some of them turn into octagons by the time all the fixtures are installed. It would make sense if the Standards had a large population—building things close and tight, I mean—but they don't. They let hundreds of square miles go to waste for every one they use. Which is a paradox, because they're so efficient otherwise."

"I don't like it," she said. "I'd rather live in Songhai."

John laughed, feeling at ease and important as he explained things to her. "Doesn't bother me. Not that part, anyway. All the comforts come right here to your room. Where I get sensitive is about my
mental
freedom. I don't mind living in a small room; I
do
mind being told what to do."

"I have always been told what to do," she murmured. "I did not mind."

"Then why were you so happy to leave?"

"They were not my people."

That much he understood completely.

The bathroom door slid shut. At the same time the door to the right slid open. "Mealtime—for an hour," he said. "If we want it."

"I am not hungry. But I will be before it comes round again."

"Well, I'm famished. We don't know how long they'll keep us here. Maybe only another hour. Maybe days. In either case I want to fill my stomach. Come on."

They stepped into the dining compartment. "I've never had a chance to do it before, but I think I know how to work this," he said. "You press one of these buttons, like this, then stand back, and...."

A bowl of something that looked like hot porridge rose up through the counter as the surface became fuzzy. There was no eating utensil. He looked at it dubiously. "I don't know how you get a spoon. Maybe something else...."

Meilan reached inside her tunic and brought out a pair of chopsticks. She took the steaming bowl and lifted out a gob. She touched it to her tongue. She smiled.

John was tempted to order another for himself, but he did not know how to use chopsticks, even if he had any. He punched another button at random, hoping for something he could eat without an implement. He was lucky. It looked like a slice of meat loaf, and the taste was not too far off. He used his fingers.

Canute woofed. "Sorry, man's best friend. I forgot you. I guess you don't get too much choice, but it seems to be good food. I'll get you another like mine."

So they ate and, once they found the buttons, drank. "I wonder how Pei and Betsy are doing?"

John said. "They must be pretty hungry by now if they're still in the taxi."

"Pei had a fish," Meilan said, smiling momentarily.

They continued in silence. John found that he had to believe that the others had escaped, for they were the only remaining hope. Surely they would have been brought here, if captured, since he and Meilan and Canute had been put together. So the fact that the others hadn't shown....

But that didn't help the captives directly. If he and Meilan could escape, then they could rejoin the purebreds. John was sure Meilan wanted to escape, too, but he could not confer with her openly. He was sure they were being spied on. In fact, that might be the reason they had been put together: so the Standards could watch and listen and learn enough to pinpoint the location and plans of the other two. Any plan he and Meilan might make would be balked before it got started, and though their captivity had been gentle enough so far, any misbehavior could change that radically. And he couldn't even climb or run well. Not with his tender ankle.

But it was a challenge of a sort: How could they plan anything, let alone execute it, under constant observation? Suddenly he had an inspiration.

When the diner closed and the supply room opened, John wasted no time. "I'd like a typewriter," he said to the communicator.

"Please define," the machine voice said. John defined.

"There is no such instrument in stock."

He was not surprised. Probably his own typewriter, back at the Caucasian enclave, had been specifically reconstituted from ancient specifications for his benefit. He had suspected that typewriters were no longer used by man. In fact, it was possible that
writing
was no longer used by man. Why should it be, when communicators could talk intelligently and viewscreens brought a comprehensive slate of programs to every octagonal cubbyhole? He and Betsy might be the only literate people on the planet. And Pei and Meilan—only they would write Chinese, not English.

Then another realization struck him full-blown. English, Chinese, and whatever language they spoke in Songhai. Different languages entirely, with no common root for at least ten thousand years. He should not be able to understand Meilan or Ala at all, for he knew only his own language. But he
did
understand them, and they understood him, and each other.
They all spoke the same language
—
Standard.