Frederik Pohl Other End of Time

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But she hesitated.
So did everyone else, all of them staring apprehensively at the vista around
them, strange machines and distant gleams of light and, from somewhere, a pall
of smoke drifting over them. No one moved . . . until Jimmy Lin, glancing
wildly back at the rest of them, took a deep breath, then carefully stepped
over the little puddle of his own recent urine and walked through the space
where the wall had been. Not far. Just a step or two, actually, before he
stopped to stare around.
But he was definitely outside.
That did it for Patsy Adcock. If Jimmy Lin could do it she certainly could.
She turned and marched resolutely out into the space she had never seen
before. Behind her Pat called worriedly, "Hey, watch it, hon! What're you
going to do if the power comes back on and you're stuck out there?"
That stopped Patsy, frozen on one foot, until she remembered. "No, it isn't
like that," she called back. What she remembered was how it had been when
Dopey brought them to the cell. It was a one-
way wall. They hadn't even seen the thing as they approached from outside, had
simply walked into the space where the others were clustered, and had then
been astonished to see the wall of mirrors bright and impenetrable behind
them.
Everyone was staring after her. She saw Rosaleen, her face still gray,
crossing herself, and
Martin standing with his mouth open, and Dannerman experimentally poking his
own arm through the space where the wall had been. And she took a deep breath,
looking at the bizarre structures around her, and said to herself, Okay,
sweetie, now you've got your freedom. Use it!
Or (the echo sounded in her mind) lose it.
Things were happening in that outside world, now revealed to them. Patsy
sniffed acrid smoke, heard distant, and sometimes not so very distant at all,
crashes and pops from whatever it was that was going on just out of sight.
Jimmy Lin, greatly daring, had ventured, a step at a time, five or six meters
down the broadest of the passages, Patrice close behind him and Martin and
Rosaleen peering after them. Dannerman and Pat were on their knees at the
margin of their cell, poking at something on the floor. When Patsy drew close
she saw that where the base of the mirror wall had been there was now only a
shiny line of alternating coppery and colorless segments, each less than a
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centimeter long. "It wasn't real," Pat marveled, looking up at Patsy. "The
wall, I
mean. It wasn't solid. It was just some kind of projection, and when the power
went off it just disappeared."
"And so did the floor," Dannerman added. "Not just our floor. Look outside
here." The floor on the other side of the boundary was the same metal mesh as
inside, or most of it was. But a few meters away there was a section that
looked as though it had been repaired with ordinary cement-not recently,
either; the patch was stained and potholed. Actually, everything looked pretty
helter-
skelter to Patsy. Some of the machines looked naked, as though they had been
meant to have some sort of case or cover. (The mirror walls they'd seen on the
way in? Maybe so, Patsy thought, because she could see the same buried
hexagonal lines as surrounded their cell.) Some looked very
file:///F|/rah/Frederik%20Pohl/Pohl,%20Freder...n%201%20-%20The%20Other%20End%
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0Other%20End%20Of%20Time.txt old, corroded with time.
"It's a mess," Jimmy Lin reported, returning. "There's a machine out there
that looks as though it ran itself to destruction- bearings scorched, housing
popped off-like a car engine that ran out of oil."
"I don't think they used oil," Patrice said.
Rosaleen said thoughtfully, "I wouldn't be surprised if they used some kind of
energy to reduce friction-like maglev, you know? Or something like the balls
the cooker moved on, and when the power went off-"
"The cooker!" Jimmy Lin interrupted, looking stricken. And when they put it to
the test it was what they had feared. The packet of chili Pat dropped in sat
there at the bottom of the well, unwarmed.
"Oh, hell," Jimmy said, contemplating another period of uncooked food. And of
worse; at a sudden thought he picked up the helmet and tried it on, then
morosely set it down again. "No power there, either," he said. "What do we do
now?"
Dannerman had a prompt answer. "I think," he said, "that somebody ought to go
out and see what's going on."
"Are you volunteering?" Pat asked. "Because if you are, I'll go along."
Dannerman looked pleased, then frowned. "Better not," he said reluctantly. "I
won't go far, and it's easier if I do it alone."
"Don't you want to eat something first?" Rosaleen asked.
"Put some in to soak," he ordered. "I'll eat it when I get back." And turned
and left without looking at Pat again.
When Dannerman was out of sight Pat stared after him for a moment, then
sulkily took over the job of opening packets and filling them with cold water
to soften. Patsy looked at her with compassion. She was pretty sure that
exploration hadn't been the only thing on Pat's mind, or on
Dannerman's, either; if ever she had seen two people with a strong compulsion
to get off by themselves it was they. But Dannerman, Patsy thought, had been
right; he had the skills of his
Bureau training and Dr. Pat Adcock did not. Score one for responsibility in
the face of temptation.
She joined Pat at the task of preparing food. It wasn't a job she really
enjoyed, but it had one great advantage: it was a task she was confident she
could handle. And confidence in dealing with everything else in this
challenging new environment was absent from her frame of mind. Were the others
as stunned- well, say the word: as frightened-as she was? She couldn't tell.
They didn't seem to show it if they were . . . but on the other hand, she told
herself, probably she wasn't showing that total interior terror either.
By the time her job was done the others were clustered at the base of the
things that looked like file cabinets (though if they had drawers, nothing any
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of the captives could do had managed to open one). As she joined them she
heard Rosaleen say, as she stood with one hand on Martin's shoulder, "Listen.
Am I wrong or have the explosions mostly stopped?"
"There aren't very many now, anyway," Martin agreed, looking up at the top of
the cabinets. "I
wish I could get up there. I might be able to see something useful." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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