THX hurried up the winding metal stairway with SRT a few steps behind him. In the steel-walled shaft of the maintenance well their slippered feet made odd shushing sounds that echoed and amplified wierdly.
The third level was also practically deserted. Most of the area was taken up by reproclinics and laboratories, singleshift installations where automated machines did most of the work.
As they stepped out of the maintenance stairwell and into the corridor, a taped voice from overhead told them:
“This is a restricted area. Authorized personnel only.”
THX ignored the warning and went to the directory map on the opposite wall of the white, glarelessly lit corridor. The directory showed that the reproclinics were all neatly arranged in alphanumerical order. LUH 3417 would be in the three-dimensional matrix of clinic 12, row 21, file 8. He glanced down the deserted corridor, then motioned to SRT to follow him.
“You are engaged in an unauthorized action. Check procedure manual F-45. This is a double-A restricted area. Remain where you are.”
The corridor emptied into a vast open area filled with rows of slabs that bore dead bodies. Everything was bathed in a cold, eery bluish light.
“Antibacterial,” SRT murmured.
“Violation! Unauthorized personnel are not allowed in this area. Stand where you are. Mercicontrol officers are on the way.”
“We don’t have much time,” SRT said.
“I know.” THX started moving between the slabs, heading in the direction of clinic 12.
SRT’s eyes widened as he looked at the corpses they were passing.
“All the insides are gone!”
THX nodded.
“Look at that one,” SRT pointed to a body with an oversized head. “He must have been a genius!”
What if you find LUH’s body here? THX asked himself.
Another part of his mind answered coldly, She’s been destroyed. They’re not using her organs. Destroyed, not consumed.
But still he shuddered and forced himself to look straight ahead, not at the bodies.
Destroyed. Destroyed.
How?
What did they do to her? What were her last moments like. How could they…
“Hey, here’s one with eyes! Why would they leave the eyes?”
Despite himself, THX turned to look at the body SRT was jabbering about.
“Oh no…” He sank to the edge of the slab on which the body rested. His legs seemed too weak to move.
“Are you all right?” SRT bent over him. “Want something to eat? I bet we could find food around here someplace.”
His stomach churning, THX could only shake his head.
“Well, what’s the matter? What’s wrong?”
Forcing himself to speak, “I… knew him. TWA—he was a prisoner with me… He was blind. That’s why they left the eyes… They’re useless.”
SRT straightened up. “Oh.”
The black man glanced around. Faintly, from far away, they heard the inevitable voices of Mercicontrol:
“Both felons observed entering Reproduction Center Complex. Second felon now positively identified as 5555 prefix SRT. Apprehension pending.”
“Monetary unit total: 1810 and rising.”
“Escaped felon 5241 prefix SEN apprehended and 140 now in custody. Total expenditure 4377 units under budget. Congratulations! Be efficient. Be happy.”
SRT grimaced. “Hey, they’re coming closer. Look… if there’s something you want to do in here, we’d better do it and get out. We’ve still got to figure out a place where we can hide—can’t keep running forever.”
Nodding, THX forced himself to stand up.
“I knew him,” he mumbled again. “In prison.”
“Well, at least his troubles are over. Soon he’ll be a plastic hexagon, just like the rest of them.”
“What?”
“That’s what they do with the bodies… didn’t you know that? Make them into the consumption units for the consumalls. Neat, huh? Nothing’s wasted.”
Suddenly a door banged open noisily somewhere up ahead of them and someone entered the clinic, whistling atrociously.
For a panicked instant, THX didn’t know what to do. He froze in terror. Behind them were the police robots. Up ahead was—what?
He saw SRT quickly move to an unoccupied slab and lay down on it. After a split- second’s revulsion, THX did the same.
Be still! Be absolutely still, THX commanded himself. Eyes closed. No blinking. Shallow breathing, don’t let him see your chest move.
He tried to make himself believe that he was frozen, he was paralyzed, he was truly dead. The whistling came closer, a raucous, horrible noise, punctuated by the slapping sounds of slippered feet against the tile flooring of the clinic. Then there was an odd clicking sound, like a staple gun working. The whistling was awful, tuneless, shrill and loud. Pad, pad, pad—click- click! Pad, pad, pad—click-click!
The sounds were getting closer. THX wanted to steal a glimpse at what was going on, but he didn’t dare move.
Then the footsteps came so close that he knew the whistler was right next to him. He could smell the antiseptic on him, even feel his breath…
Something cool and hard touched his left ear and then PAIN exploded there, seared through him like a white-hot iron. He leaped off the slab and his roar of pain was accompanied by the shriek of the registration clerk who had been tagging the corpses.
The clerk went over backwards and hit the floor with his rump, screaming and goggle- eyed, as THX and SRT dashed headlong away from the slabs, down a long row of corpses all bearing bright metal tags on their left ears. Up ahead loomed the many-tiered storage racks of Repro-clinic 12. The two men raced toward them and didn’t stop until they were well inside the dimly lit incubation racks.
They stopped at last, surrounded by twenty-tiered rows of plastic wombs bearing tiny inverted fetuses that were fed by plastic tubes. The light here was a sullen red, and the whole area seemed to be pulsating with millions of tiny heartbeats that throbbed just below the level of actual audibility.
The overhead speakers suddenly blared:
“Stop where you are. You cannot escape. All exits have been sealed shut. Give yourself up. We are here to help you. Relax. You have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
THX headed down the row until he came to a blank wall. He turned and looked helplessly at SRT. Trapped.
Then he noticed that SRT had a metal clip stapled to his left ear. He felt his own ear; he had one, too.
“How’d you… keep from screaming?”
SRT grinned. “I peeked. Saw what he was doing… and I sort of steeled myself for it.”
Far down the row, they saw the gleaming face of a chrome robot drift by, blood red in the incubation lights.
“Didn’t see us,” SRT whispered. “Maybe they can’t see so good in this light.”
“They’ll find us.”
They began to move slowly, cautiously back up the row. The fetuses seemed to be watching them with solemn unblinking eyes.
“Got to find LUH,” THX muttered.
SRT shook his head. “We’re in the wrong end of the clinic. Everything here’s labeled with LS’s or LD’s.”
“Got to get her.”
“She’s dead,” SRT told him in a harsh whisper. “Forget her!”
“The baby… her baby… mine…”
“There’s no way,” SRT insisted. “No way.”
THX froze. Through the row of plastic wombs he could see a chrome police robot pacing slowly on the other side, heading in the opposite direction.
“Can you pick him up on electroscan? We’ve lost him.”
SRT pulled him down to a stooping position and together they edged down the row, doubled over, hunching along on toes and fingertips, away from the police robot. Then they saw a door set into a recess between incubator rows. SRT looked around to see if anyone was watching, then very carefully inched the door open a crack. He peered in.
Crouched behind him, THX could see nothing. Then SRT turned to him, grinning. “Come on.”
They crawled silently into a monitor room and stood up. The overhead lights went on automatically when they entered. The walls of the little room were covered with screens that showed row after row of fetuses in various stages of maturity.
THX looked around. The room was less than ten paces wide. “There’s no other exit. We’re trapped in here.”
With a shrug, SRT answered, “We’re safe for the time being…”
“If there’s no camera in here watching us.”
“Hmm.” SRT turned around, looking for a camera lens. Finding none, he said, “Guess they only watch in here when somebody plugs into the monitor controls.”
THX looked at the control desk. There was only one chair, one set of earphones and a lip mike resting on the desk’s keyboard.
He plopped down in the chair, utterly weary. All the screens were staring at him accusingly. Thousands of unborn children—and one of them was his.
SRT hunched down in the corner next to the control desk and pulled a covering panel loose, revealing a complex maze of electronic circuitry. He let the plastic panel clatter to the floor.
“Hmm,” he said again. He jiggled one of the circuit boards and all the screens in the room crackled with snowy static.
“Looks like a series of relays in here.” He reached a hand into the wiring.
“Don’t, you’ll get—”
The voice of OMM came through a speaker in the ceiling:
“Everything is fine. You are in my hands. I will protect you. Cooperate with Mercicontrol. They only want to help you. Everything is going to be all right.”
With a glance ceilingward, SRT said, “Maybe I shouldn’t have tinkered with it.”
“They know where we are now.”
“Sorry.”
Sitting at the control desk, THX knew it was almost over. Almost over, and they were going to get him and destroy him. His body would be turned into a consumable hexagon. His innards would be distributed among the masses. And his child…
He reached for the earphones sitting on the desktop and pulled them on.
“What are you doing?”
Without answering, THX plugged in the earphones and began fiddling with the control switches on the keyboard. Images flitted across the screens: the slabs of corpses; jammed pedestrian corridors in their perpetual uproar; trams in transit; factories grinding away on the second level; shopping plazas; the Computer Center…
He stopped when the screen showed the Computer Center. He grabbed the lip mike from the desktop, plugged it in and fitted it in front of his mouth.
“File on LUH 3417.”
Instantly a voice responded, “Who is this? Identify please.”
“Reproclinic 12,” THX answered as he scanned the desktop for an identification symbol. “Station DBR 2618.”
“Okay, 2618… file on LUH 3417.”
The main screen in front of him immediately showed a fetus, so young that it didn’t yet look remotely human. Typed in the lower right corner of the screen was:
LUH 3417. SEXACT. STATE WARD.
MAINTAIN FOR EXPERIMENTAL PURPOSES.
As firmly as he could, THX said into the mike, “Amendment to file on LUH 3417.”
The flat voice of the computer memory control responded: “Recording. Proceed with amendment.”
It was all automatic now, THX knew. Reproclinics were always updating files. If he could make the change in LUH’s file now, no one would check again for years. By then the danger would be long past, no one would remember. Or care. The baby would be safe.
Keeping the tremble of excitement out of his voice, THX said, “Present file in error due to faulty programming at Reproclinic 12. Erase present file and amend to read: LUH 3417. Natural. Full citizen. Condition Normal.”
The typed words on the screen disappeared, to be replaced an instant later by his own words.
“File amendment completed,” the computer said.
THX nodded. “Completed.”
Now it doesn’t matter. They’ll get me, but they won’t get her.
He unplugged the lip mike and earphones, let them fall to the floor, and slumped back in the chair. Then he realized:
Her? Maybe it’s a boy. A, son.
“We ought to try to get out of here,” SRT said to him.
THX shrugged.
“We should try.”
With a shake of his head, THX answered, “You go. Save yourself. It’s me they’re really looking for.”
SRT looked at him closely. “Don’t you want to live?”
“I don’t care. Not now.”
“Hmp. You’re just like the embryos in those bottles out there. You’ve never lived. You’re alive, but you’ve never lived.”
THX said, “It doesn’t matter.”
As if in answer, a strong calm robot’s voice came from the other side of the door:
“You have nothing to fear. Remain calm and cooperate with the authorities. Everything is going to be all right.”