Mike Morris/Gloria McKenzie
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S A V I N G T H E C Y B E R S O A P S
__________________________________________________________________
by Gloria McKenzie


Science Fiction Approx 18,208 words First US Serial Rights

CHAPTER 1 – Stale, Sweaty, Passé
In the earth, under the Windy City known as Chicago, in an underground world called the Warren, the business of producing brain-balm for survivors continued smoothly with the making of the eternal soap-opera. “Suburban Secrets – episode 14,172,” the script said. I, William L Jones, was the star, and Sweet Annie Pankowski was my leading lady. Ernie LaDouce, the co-star, was competent but basically second-rate, a good foil for my usual sterling performance. Three-hundred and two years after the star-travelers came and went, everything was smooth, uneventful, boring really, until the flying windows came crashing down all over the place, falling to earth in virtuous pieces.
Ernie the Douche started pounding the hypermike, teeth gleaming brownly behind cigarette smoke as he muttered bits and bytes to the cyber-lords. And Annie, sweet Annie, tossed her curly orange mop, gazing cow-like at the Douch’s sweaty grubshirt, while I gazed cow-like at Annie’s heaving bosom. We had been working this gig for about 56 years, and we were getting stale.
Suddenly Sir Simon entered, tuxedoed and shiny. “Gig’s over boys and girl,” he hollered. “You are all three stale, sweaty, passé.” He paused and switched off the crashing windows.
Ernie, hyper and brown-toothed, was the first to answer with a Douche curse, but sweet Annie was not far behind. “Jesus Gates,” she snarled, shedding cow like a skin. “Fifty years of cow-eyes is worse than fifty years of shit shoveling.”
I was, for a second, ready to cheer her. I snapped out of it soon enough, but Ernie developed a permanent tic, and they wiped him clean and reassigned him to shit-shoveling duties. As for me, two securities grabbed and disconnected me, none too gently. By the time my eyes had uncrossed, New Guy had taken over, smirking, and he and Annie were in a thrashing frenzy. Without the connection, though, sweet Annie looked a little beat-up. I doubt she even noticed the switch.
The two securities escorted me to Suddenly Sir Simon’s private office, where he, grinning wolfishly, told me I was in big trouble. He was chief gofer and an uninspiring bit-player when we started the eternal soaps, and he never forgotten my unkind but accurate remarks about his acting ability. He had, over the years, brown-nosed himself into a boss-bureaucrat politically correct producer of low-budget, no-brainer trash. In a world of ever-falling standards, Suddenly was a master at finding the lowest common denominator, and lowering the bar on standards that would seem to be too low, even for a no-talent third-rater.
“What is it now?” I asked him. “Someone in the audience up there had to think a little, and blew his brain-cell? Did I inadvertently use a word with more than one syllable? Did one of the sad bits last longer than ten seconds?” I asked him to explain and expand, tell me what terrible blunder of mine had caused him to end my fifty-six year streak as leading man in the world’s worst soap opera. The fact that he gave no further details indicated that he had no idea what was going on. It was obvious that someone down there was after my head, or other tender parts. He was enjoying himself tremendously until I reminded him of my opinion of his non-existent acting ability, at which point he bared his wolfs’ teeth and waved at the Securities.
I had heard about the new security force during the occasional soap breaks, when my character was supposedly dead, frozen, or comatose, felled by the evil Dr Krank, or a jealous lover, even by a spurned Sweet Annie Pankowski once, two days before we got married forever for the sixth time in episode 10,621. It seemed a little strange in our dull, rich self-satisfied little burrow where crime was almost unknown. Some of the executives suggested that the force served as a harmless safety valve for less talented Moles, but I had heard tales of over-zealous Securities roughing up citizens who expressed mild amusement over their comic-opera purple and gold uniforms, and some of them had started wearing the insignia of the department heads.
The two who came for me had an ornate ‘J’ stitched in gold braid on their left breast. The big one looked like a happy prize fighter who could easily beat a guy to a pulp and then laugh and buy him a drink. The little one looked mean.
“OK, who complained,” I gasped to Big Security. We were walking up endless flights of stairs, higher than I had ever been before, definitely away from the big boys with their fat chairs and pert secretaries and desks the size of football fields. Big security grunted and Little Security snickered. “You musta done something really stupid,” he told me stupidly. Then “Word came from big Dee herself.”
That knocked the wind out of me until I realized I wouldn’t be dealing with her directly. Big Dee lived really far down, with a whole army of wide shoulders to do her bidding, and an office the size of Australia. We were still going up, and I swear the air was getting thinner and colder. Up here, close to Topside, clerks and cleaners did their work and lived their endless lives. We passed through corridors of untidy looking shops and cheap restaurants. Some bars were open, and a few Moles looked at us disinterestedly or nervously as we marched past. At the end of each block, big security opened the steel emergency doors, and we walked up more endless stairs. I had no idea why they didn’t use the elevators, unless this trek was the mysterious ‘J’s’ idea of punishment and humiliation. I stumbled up the endless stairs, tripping and gasping, and I felt the iron bite into my ankles. Some of the levels were residential, and the pale flicker of Television showed under the doors. It occurred to me that these people were not much better off than Topsiders. Up here, close to Topside, the carpets were thin and dingy, and the brass nameplates on the doors had long since morphed into untidy hand-written pieces of cardboard.
We finally stopped in a corridor of broom-closets and toilets. The door in front of me had ‘Jones’ scrawled on it, and a broken handle. The Securities bundled me in. “All yours, Jonesy,” the big one rumbled, articulating for the first time. They left me in the middle of the uncarpeted room, which was definitely cold. There were a few unconvincing file cabinets with papers stacked untidily on top, and old bundles of paper on the floor. A sign on the wall announced that this was headquarters, Chicago division, of Acme Surveys, Inc. Jonesy sat behind a rickety desk, pretending to sign important papers. He was a small man with a pinched face who looked as if he spent all day adding up figures. I remembered an actor who played his type on every Soap on the slate. He played a series of short-term gigs because his character was the perennial fall-guy. Unattractive and unlamented, the guy acted as a foil for us stars, continually duped, dragged away to jail, run over, occasionally murdered when the writers ran out of ideas and required a cheap boost. This was the man. Then he looked at me and his eyes were dead. There was no soul behind them, and for the first time I realized I was in big trouble.
My acting training kicked in and I acted casual. I looked for a chair, but there were none, so I leaned on the desk and recited my credentials, starting with the fact that I was the longest serving field operative in the organization, and that I knew Big Dee personally. Jonesy looked at me with his fish eyes, and I realized what the big ‘J’ stood for on the purple and gold uniforms of the securities. This man was important – and dangerous. “I’m a personal friend of Big Dee,” I blurted, the first time I’d ever felt the need to bring up my old connection with the most powerful woman on the Eastern Seaboard.
Jonesy smirked at this. “So, why are you here, instead of down there with your contemporaries,” he asked sourly. “The ones who started with you, and survived the first couple of gigs.”
“I know what contemporaries means,” I snarled. If there’s anything I hate, it’s being seen as a dumb spider. The worst part of it was, he had me. Others had moved steadily down the ladder, except for me. Most of them were head flunkies, living in the depth of luxury. Jonesy stood up, all five and a half foot of him and strutted round the desk. Up close he smelled like a cheap perfume shop.
“Hate being this high up,” he said. “Gives me nosebleed.” He flashed a security badge at me, one of the fancy golden plates that the top brass were fond of waving, not at all like the cheap tin my securities had worn. “This is all very top secret,” he said importantly. “I’m going to have to take you down to corporate level.” He smirked again. “I doubt you’ve been that far down. Don’t fret. You won’t be there for long.”
“You going to drag me all the way down there in these leg irons?” I asked.
“You’re in big trouble, my boy,” he told me condescendingly. I bit back a smart remark and looked at him stonily as he scratched his neck irritably. “Big Dee wants to see you. Alone,” he went on, unable to contain his surprise. He’d been listening to his built-in communicator, and there must have been a video feed hidden somewhere in the bleak office. He tossed me a key. “Unlock them yourself,” he said irritably.” As I fumbled with the irons he fished a card from out of his desk and swiped it across a sensor plate. The wall opened up and warm air wafted in. Sardonically, he waved me forward, into a shaft forty stories deep. He probably thought I was going to panic, but I tossed the irons on his desk and stepped into the gravity well. Like Alice down the rabbit hole, I fell forty stories into the earth.

CHAPTER 2 – In the Womb of the Warren
His real office was done tastefully in orange and purple, with life-size pornography on the ceiling. Fashion, these days, stayed pretty stable. “I see nothing has changed in the past fifty years,” I told him, letting him know that I was no stranger to the low life.
“No need, now that we’re practically immortal,” he said, rattled. He was reassessing my relative importance in whatever was going on, and obviously didn’t like what the numbers added up to. I tried to look as if I knew the exact score, hoping I could coax some information from behind those stony eyes. I put my hand on his shoulder and he looked at me with fury and I just managed not to flinch.
“I understand,” I told him. “You have to be careful in your line of business. Like I said, Dee and I are old friends.” I stressed the last two words. “So,” I continued,” what are my instructions.”
He shook off my hand. “Dee will brief you,” he said sourly, and I realized with surprise that he had as much idea of what was going on as had Suddenly. He had anticipated some sort of summary trial and disposal near to the surface. Having to bring me to the center of power had rattled him considerably. I wondered how Dee could bring herself to deal with a person like Jonesy. The Dee I knew wouldn’t have wasted spit on him. Then I figured it out and cursed myself for being so stupid. Dee wasn’t dealing with him. He was still number two dog, or number three, or ten. He hated her, but he still feared her. He wasn’t ready to defy her yet. Ruthless as he was, he lacked the leadership and flair that had put Dee on top. She would have moved before now, and damn the risk. This man wanted to be sure. He was building up an irresistible machine. When the odds were overwhelmingly in his favor, he would strike.
Then he said to me “So, you’re her chief flunky up there. Don’t get me wrong, I admire Dee, but most of us think her time has passed. We don’t wish her any harm, William. I’m.. the board of directors is the future down here. A smart man like you should consider your options.” I was about to spit in his eye, then it hit me what he had just said.
“I’m nobody’s flunky. Not yours, not hers.” All the old anger came back, all the insecurity. I felt guilty about abandoning her all those years ago, and I pushed the guilt away. Dee had sold out. She had sold me out. Cast me upstairs without a thought until she realized she needed me again. “I don’t dance to her tune,” I told him. “I’m not stupid. As soon as she feels she doesn’t need me, she’ll shove me back up again.”
“I know,” he said soothingly. “She can be .. overwhelming. I understand. Just keep an open mind.” He seemed to have come to a decision, and I didn’t realize until much later that my immaturity had probably saved my life. He had decided that I was too stupid, or too weak to be a threat. He was probably thinking that, with friends and supporters like me, she needed no enemies, and, at that moment he was right. I had worked myself into a righteous indignation, and I was having nothing to do with any of them. “So,” he said. “She wants to see you. I’ll have one of my juniors escort you to her quarters.” And I was too self absorbed to even notice the contempt in his voice.
Five minutes later I was facing her across the inner sanctum.
Dee hadn’t changed a bit. Why should she, with all the resources at her disposal? She was still as beautiful, and as deadly, as a panther. She surprised me, circling the desk and walking towards me with the effortless grace that had helped her to the bottom of the tree, all those years ago. “Hello, William,” she murmured, standing close. She was as tall as me, and she wore sandals. Not much else, I noticed. The black, silk dress barely covered her hips, and I doubt she wore anything underneath. Well, she was the boss; who would venture to question corporate dress code. Certainly not me. I caught myself just in time. Those green eyes were bottomless pools where a man could drown. I put my hands on her shoulders to push myself away. Another mistake. She was in my arms, fragrant and feminine, ablaze with energy. Her fire snapped me back to reality. I had been pounding the beat longer than anyone in Cyber world, and I felt old and tired. I’d been upstairs for hundreds of years, just to avoid this sort of situation, and not once had she sent a message.
I shoved her away, roughly, and her eyes widened. Big Dee had been used to slavish devotion from her subjects for a long time. “Stow it, baby,” I grated, ”or I might forget myself and slap that pretty kisser through the wall.” I realized, belatedly, that this was a direct quote from a century-old detective show I’d starred in. Dee must have realized also. Her quick flash of anger dissipated, and she laughed, looking like the young girl I knew in the pre-cyberspace topside world. If I hadn’t felt such a fool, I’d have laughed myself, instead of maintaining a stony-faced silence until the laughter died away.
“OK,” she sighed. “Sit down and listen.”
I almost jumped when the chair appeared silently out of the wall. I wondered if it would disappear the same way, carrying me with it after the interview. It was comfortable, and Dee cleared a space on the huge desk and poured us a couple of shots of bourbon. “Still take it straight up, no ice?” she asked. I nodded and she offered me a cigarette. I was surprised. She had never gone in for anything illegal. “They calm my nerves.” She looked at me steadily. “I have problems,” she said.
I had to listen to her. She was the boss, she could fire me, send me above ground, if she wanted. I’d walk through cold and dirty streets and live in icy poverty among the lost people of Topside.
Society, down here, far below the weather and local skirmishes still managed to retain most of the amenities we’d all enjoyed before the visit from the star-travelers. It had been hundreds of years since the best and brightest of the human race were spirited away. We had been doing pretty well then. Only a few minor wars, and we were slowly fashioning ourselves into a society of different cultures, living together, helping each other. Poverty was disappearing, the rich countries finally giving real help to the poor, and we were on the way to colonizing the inner planets. Then, one day, the star-travelers simply appeared in every capital city of every major country of the world, and announced their intentions. Something about ‘enlisting us into the great, galactic society of living, thinking, ethical beings.’ Only problem was, three-quarters of us didn’t qualify, and the rules said we couldn’t be allowed to pollute the galaxy with our inferior life force. Of course, the star travelers were too ethical to kill us rejects off. In fact, like the brightest and the best, we became virtually immortal - and sterile.
The people of Earth were in a state of shock, and before we could recover, a quarter of the population simply vanished, and when the dust settled, the scientists, researchers, great artists, the movers and shakers, were all gone. Humanity started to tear itself apart, as if we wanted to punish ourselves for being rejected. We might be almost immortal, but we could still kill each other, and we did, in great numbers. Society fell apart, until a few leaders like Dee began to pull it together again.
I never found out why Dee was turned down by the race of star travelers who took our brightest and best. But Dee was as tough and clever as any of the Chosen, as we started calling the vanished ones. The best of the rejects tried to pick up the pieces, but we’d all lost too much. What was left of business, and ambition, and idealism retreated from the big cities, and then burrowed into the ground, deeper and deeper in an attempt to save what was left of civilization as centuries faded into the past and the world grew old and the travelers faded from our memories. Topsiders settled into a sort of medicated and sullen apathy, producing food and subsistence items, while we provided them with the drugs, chemical in the beginning, and later social. Dee’s empire churned out an unending stream of fourth rate soap operas and soft porn. Other businesses served up sports, or religion. One underground company even financed bogus political parties. Topsiders provided us with carefully inspected fresh food, and we lived in a luxurious cocoon.
The Topsiders had gone another route. I have to admit, they’d tried. They tried to maintain society as it always had been. Not just in the States, but all over the world. Too much talent had been sucked into space. The infrastructure was still there, but too few people wanted to use it. Maybe if the big businesses hadn’t retreated into the ground like frightened moles, the center might have held. But even we rejects had split, and the media opted for panacea and placebo instead of hard work and leadership. The world and the country drifted apart on a gentle swell of ignorance and apathy, and the individual States stood helpless as their power eroded and America became a loose coalition of Fortress Cities. Yet Americans stubbornly clung to the notion of a United States of America, a fiction held together by a media that broadcast an unending supply of escapism and bland, blinkered news. New Yorkers and Angelinos seldom mixed any more, Chicagoans hardly left the city limits, except in armored trucks more suited to war than commerce. And yet, wistfully, nostalgically, the scattered inhabitants of the United States still insisted on calling themselves Americans.
Here, at the heart of the Warren, I was for the first time in years thinking about life on the surface. Dee was still looking at me with a peculiar intensity, and all my anger started to boil. I was her companion, her soul mate, and she had abandoned me, thrown me aside like an old glove. Part of me realized that decades of fourth rate soap operas were shaping my thoughts into mindless clichés, but I pushed my rational self resolutely away. I knew she was going to send me topside. “You’re going to send me up there,” I accused her dramatically. “You wanted to tell me, to my face. You finally realized you couldn’t break me. I’m still a good soaper, a good actor. The public loves me.”
“And no-one else can stand you,” she finished for me. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself.” She settled down behind her big desk. “You think I don’t get reports. A lot of soapers are good actors, William. Every new project, I have to talk Suddenly into re-hiring you. You could have been comfortable, down here, if you were a team player. You were perfect for the twenty-first century, self-contained, selfish, egotistical, but that was a long time ago. Ah,” she sighed. “William, I’m not banishing you. I’m asking you to go up. I need your help up there.”
“Oh, sure,” I sneered. “The prima Dona, the dinosaur. The oldest field operative in the company. I was a star when Suddenly Sir Simon was a sniveling gofer.”
“Shut up,” she shouted suddenly. “Listen to me. I need you. Need! I know what sort of person you are, remember? You’re the only one I can turn to.”
I looked at her, astonished. Suddenly all the anger was gone. “Why,” I asked lamely. “Why me.”
“Because you’re the only person in the Warren that I can trust. Do you really think I’d throw you to the wolves?”
My self-important, self-pitying mood burst like a bubble in the sun. I listened to a lecture on boardroom politics and realized that Dee’s position down here was much more complicated and full of stress than my life in the endless soaps. Competition between the networks was brutal; a headlong rush to please the lowest common denominator, and Dee was in trouble. The men under her smelt blood, and a boardroom takeover can be pretty ugly. Dee still had a few – just a few - scruples about the garbage we produced. Her network still, occasionally, came out with stuff to make an audience smile rather than snigger, think rather than scratch. She was the only woman at the head of a major organization which even I knew had been getting more and more conservative as the endless cramped years rolled on. Dee was in serious danger of ending her days above ground. Part of me wanted to summon up the easy, self-justifying anger, but she had me, and I knew it. She should have left with the travelers. She shouldn’t have been rejected.
When she finished the lecture, I smiled sheepishly and she told me about her plan to broadcast from the surface, gradually at first, just a few remote stations. We needed change, she told me, just as much as Topsiders did. We needed to come together in order to build again. Somehow, after all these years, she was still an idealist. She wanted us all to be one big happy family. I knew it would never work. That idealism of hers blinded her to realities that even a dumb oaf like me could see. We were rich and comfortable and the Topsiders weren’t. They hated us. As soon as we stuck our heads out of the bunker the surface people would chop them off. But Dee wouldn’t listen, even if I could bring myself to tell her.
I knew I had to go along with her; otherwise I’d lose her. I’d play the soaps, and she would be fighting her losing battle, alone, down here. She wouldn’t summon me again, and she’d go down – fighting - but she would certainly lose. I thought of Jonesy and his ilk, waiting in their pornographic suites for the kill, and told her I’d do anything she wanted. She thanked me and we talked for a while about nothing in particular, just like the old days, and then we spent the night together between pale silk sheets.

CHAPTER 3 – Charades
The next day, she was all business, and I was sent for training. I’d been expecting to wander straight up to the surface dressed as a native and start operations. Instead, over a few weeks, I had three hundred years of Topside history stuffed into me. Dee had been planning this for a long time. Her empire was located underneath Chicago, but we broadcast all over the east coast, and even traded with New York, Boston, and cities south to Atlanta, using the pitifully small and erratic local airlines of those cities, and our own decaying shuttle fleet. When I had thought about it at all, I had imagined that Topsiders had sex, watched the shows and fought each other, just like we played it in the soaps. Some did, but an awful lot of life went on that I had never dreamed of. I was to be an ambassador, offering resources and cooperation to the big city mayors.
In my spare time, I learnt martial arts and the rudiments of espionage from a tough bodyguard type with muscles and no sense of humor. Real stuff, not what we did on television. In the evenings we played Topsie and her Toyboy for Jonesie and his ilk, making the rounds of the awful corporate parties, with me trailing behind, acting arrogant, stupid, and smug while the sharks waited for me to get my comeuppance. I began to feel like a punching bag as I crashed, exhausted into bed at night, but after about a month, we were ready to make our move. I’d stopped drinking and started thinking during that time, and I had to ask her a few questions, even if it was only to reassure her that I was loyal and aware, and still ready to back her.
I took a stroll through the executive corridors one evening. My training was over for the day, and Dee was working late, holed up in one of the plush padded cells they called conference enclaves. I remembered the fortieth level from the distant time when I was still Dee’s pal, before I had stupidly floated upward in a bubble of anger and self-pity. I remembered the big offices; well-appointed suites of the rich and powerful, corridors full of energy and purpose where the new order was being shaped. I realized now that I had been angered and intimidated. These were the new elite, the best of what was left, and they were more forceful, stronger than I. I had felt small and useless, without real talents. Doubly so since Dee, my old pal, my companion, was the biggest and toughest of them all. I blamed her for making me feel small, and we quarreled with increasing frequency and bitterness, until I finally drifted up in a bubble of self-pity to take up my role as the handsome, carefree, unattached soap star. I had left her alone with the sharks. I had let her down.
I began to realize how much things had changed down here. Executive comfort had turned into gaudy pretension, confidence into arrogance. The new executives minced past, dressed in purple and puce silks, powerful leaders strutted by, accompanied by retinues of flunkies, like old-time kings and nobles. Offices stood open to show the status of the occupiers, and department heads fondled assistants dressed like hookers. I saw clearly that, in one respect, Dee was right. We weren’t meant to grub in the earth like this. We had lost our souls. I knew it was too late for us to talk to the Topsiders. We were going to rot down here. With increasing frequency, I noticed Flunkies and Securities flaunting insignia on their sleeves and their breasts, most of them the elaborate ‘J’ that I’d seen on Jonesy’s Securities.
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“You’ve tried this before,” I told her that night. “How many times, and what happened?” She stiffened beside me, sighed and stroked my cheek.
“You’ve changed, William.” She kissed me gently. I was going to tell you, and I expected tantrums and arguments, figured I’d have to persuade you to go on. I was going to tell you that, no matter what, we have to try, for the sake of what we all used to be. I was going to tell you that this is bigger than both of us, and shit, I can’t stop talking in clichés after all these years making soap operas. I wanted to tell you so much, but I know you won’t believe me, and I don’t deserve that you should.” She was almost crying, and I wanted to hold her forever.
“It’s alright, I told her softly. Tell me. I’ll make it work.” I smiled wanly. “I don’t mind not being first. Not anymore. Right now, it’s just you and me. How many times?”
“Only once,” she answered. “Once before. He was a good man, and I trusted him, but not like you. I never heard from him again.”
“That’s OK,” I told her. “It’s OK. Second time lucky.” And I put my finger on her lips to quiet her, and then I kissed her.
The next day, we staged an argument in front of Jonesy. Dee was magnificent and I almost blew the scene by laughing when she threw a coffee cup at me and managed to soak Jonesy’s yellow silk suit.

CHAPTER 4 – Out in the Cold
The next day, they escorted me to the surface. Jonesy was with them, grinning as we shot upward in the cargo elevator to the docking bay. He kept trying to needle me and was disappointed when I didn’t respond.
“I give you twenty four hours out there,” he finally said. “A stupid arrogant bastard like you is going to get killed as soon as he meets a Topsider.” I grunted, and we stepped out into the docking bay. The big doors creaked open, and the cold damp Chicago air swept into the cargo bay. Two of them grabbed my arms, and Jonesy relieved me of my pistol and one of my knives. “Be a shame to let the natives have these,” he smirked while I struggled between the two guards. “Dee left you some supplies.” He grinned, and dropped them down the lift shaft. “Damn, that was clumsy.” The guards were still holding me. “I’ve got something for you,” he continued, and I turned in time to see his fist as it crashed into my face.
They dumped me in the slush above the Warren, in the deserted space terminal. When my head cleared, I could see the spires of the dead skyscrapers shining in the distance. Over the years, the city had shrunk, retreating to its center, as the population stagnated and dwindled. The outer suburbs, a few miles away, were deserted. Many of the houses were burned, and the rest were mostly roofless skeletons. The potholed access road stretched drearily into the distance, and wherever I was hadn’t been visited in years. Sighing, I stood up and started out for the gray distant city.
I’d been training for six weeks, but my feet felt like lumps of ice when I reached the first ruined houses. A faded wooden sign, barely legible, read ‘Linden Coppice, Desirable Suburban Development.’ There had been hundreds of places just like it until the star travelers arrived and sucked the life out of all the cities, and towns, and all the little villages. Those of us they spat out again crawled inward or downward, leaving a million desirable suburban developments behind. I looked at the desolation and shivered, marveling that Topsiders survived at all in this grim landscape. I was cold and hungry. Underground was uniformly warm, and I’d not thought to wear heavy boots. On the other hand, I was sweating in my leather coat, and I realized I felt pretty good. The air was cold and sharp, like good wine, and I remembered that this was the first time I’d done anything real in a couple of hundred years. Had we really been rotting away underground for so long? I looked at the desolate ruins. No one could live here, not even an animal.

CHAPTER 5 – Dr Payne
Then the big dog was on me, slashing at my arm with sharp yellow fangs. He must have been stalking me between the ruined houses, waiting his chance. The coat helped, but one of his teeth went right through and sank into my arm like a hot nail. I fumbled for the knife strapped to my leg, but he was already in the air, fang filled head as big as mine, about a foot from my neck.
His head exploded with a bang, showering me with bits of red meat. It wasn’t at all like the soaps, and I stood there stupidly as the man approached, rifle pointed casually in my direction.
“Dumber every year,” he muttered. “Don’t see the dog, don’t see me. You come blundering in here like some damn soap star.” He looked at me sharply. “Maybe an extra.” He lowered the rifle, and I thought about wrestling it from his thin arms, but he bent and lifted the ruined dog carcass onto his shoulders as if it were a sack full of feathers and I changed my mind. “Come with me, or get shot,” he said as he wandered away.
I followed. My training had been incomplete. The suburbs were supposed to be deserted, not filled with killer dogs and crazy gunslingers. I couldn’t figure how he survived, until he said “Must be sixty, seventy pounds of fresh meat,” ignoring the blood that mingled with the general dirt on his clothes. “I’m fed up of canned stuff.”
“Canned stuff?” I asked stupidly.
“Sure.” He grinned at me. “I hijack the trucks. There’s fresh food going out for you Moles, cheap electronics coming in from underground.” He turned into a driveway and approached a house marginally larger and less dilapidated than its neighbors. “Oh, I don’t take enough to bother anybody. Usually, I’m in and out of a truck, no one even notices.”
The front door looked like every suburban door from every suburban soap opera I’d ever played, except it was chipped and battered, not like the shiny painted doors in all the fairytale sets down below, but with a lick of paint it could have been used in ‘Suburban Secrets,” and I felt an unexpected pang of nostalgia.
The man extracted a black lozenge from his grimy coat, and the door slid smoothly to one side. “Designed it myself,” he told me. “I was an inventor before the Angels came. Still am, for that matter.” He grinned at my amazement. “You Moles think you have a monopoly on brains?” He gestured me inside, still grinning. “You’ve probably heard of me. Dr Desmond Payne.” I hadn’t, but I mumbled something that seemed to satisfy him.
He followed me into the house, still carrying the bloody dog. The place looked like the quarters of some executive down below. Not as plush as Dees place, but pretty respectable. There was something missing, though, that I couldn’t place. Then it hit me. “You don’t have TV.”
He threw the carcass down onto a big stone hearth, unloaded the rifle and hung it over the fireplace. Casually, he unbuttoned his coat, revealing a holstered pistol. He snorted. “I’m not a Moron, or a Mole.” I could hear the capitalization. Morons were city dwellers, we were the Moles, and there wasn’t much difference between us. “You want to eat?” he asked. I shook my head, feeling sick. “You will,” he said. The filthy kitchen had an electric stove that worked, so he was getting power from somewhere. I watched as he wolfed down chunks of the half-cooked dog. He put some stinging stuff on my swollen arm, “just a scratch,” he said, dismissively. That night he locked me in what must have once been a study. The windows were bricked up, and it smelt musty and unused with something else, unpleasant, lurking underneath. “You can stay here until I decide what to do with you,” he told me with a faint grin. There’s a light, and a toilet.” He fed me on thick canned soup and bottled beer, occasionally trying to tempt me with his ‘fresh meat.’ I couldn’t hear anything from inside the study, and I was going crazy with frustration. After a few days the thick door rattled open and he gestured me out with his gun.
The house was unchanged. The bloody remains of the dog lay in front of the fireplace, big chunks of flesh surgically cut from the body. I faced him across the room. “Look, I pleaded, I’m no threat to you. Just let me go, I’m no use to you. He looked at me silently, grinning. “I don’t know what you’re doing here,” I told him, “and I don’t care.”
“I told you before, I’m an inventor,” he said. “Name’s Dr Payne.” He looked at me slyly. “Want to see my real place.” He waved me towards a narrow door. “I soundproofed the basement years ago.” I went. I didn’t seem to have a lot of choice.

CHAPTER 6 – Death of a Bartender
The good doctor had extended the basement. As an immortal, he had plenty of time, but this place was the work of a monomaniac. It was a cross between a mad scientist’s laboratory and a set from ‘Manhattan Millionaires’. One wall was a bank of video screens. Soaps and Sitcoms shouted at each other. Politicians and Porn Stars gestured and writhed opposite each other in an obscene dance. Ancient black-and-white movies flickered opposite Hollywood musicals. Long-dead actors and performers shrieked at each other across the pale wall, and cables snaked away into dark corners.
“White noise,” he said. “Relaxes me while I create.” His workspace was like the bridge of a soap opera spaceship. His captain’s chair was a dial-studded throne, and his computer setup was as good as any owned by Big Dee or her competitors. A free-standing rack held paraphernalia I hadn’t seen since we threw out virtual reality as being too sophisticated for the Topsiders, and a large-screen terminal spat out quotes for what was left of the stock exchange, occasionally displaying trend analyses and graphs. Five printers on a metal rack chattered like clucking hens.
“Let’s have a drink,” he said, gesturing with his gun, and we sat on red plush stools facing an oak and mirrors bar with old-fashioned beer pulls and neon plastic beer mats. His bartender was a disappointment at first. At the touch of a button it unfolded from under the bar, a network of wires and rods with a pair of surprisingly lifelike hands. I asked it for a bourbon and beer back, and it looked at me with its blank, plastic face and eerily human eyes and poured like an expert. I knocked back the booze, and it slid another drink in front of me, a tin spider, with almost human hands and head. I looked around the basement in amazement. One corner was a fully equipped gymnasium; another was filled with a huge ornate bed.
“Jesus,” was all I could think of to say. I gulped down the second shot of bourbon, and another appeared in the humanlike hands. I grabbed it and raised it to my mouth, but this time I turned slightly and tipped the drink on the floor. It was an old acting trick and I was an old actor. I didn’t need to be drunk now. The thing in front of me kept feeding me booze, and I acted relaxed, then drunk, and finally glassy-eyed. “Why didn’t the star travelers take you,” I slurred. “Man, you’re a genius.” I was only half acting.
Doctor Payne looked at me thoughtfully. “There was a little problem,” he said slowly. “You sure you haven’t heard of me?” Then I remembered him and suddenly I was more sober than I’d been in years. Only a lifetime of acting kept me from showing my fear. The aptly named Dr Payne was a serial killer, specializing in human experiments. His lifelong ambition had been the creation of a cyborg, and his methods were, to say the least, unconventional. He always shot his victims, crippling or killing. The ones he had killed for their body parts were the lucky ones. Their limbs had been attached to his electronic creations. Others were not so lucky. Pieces of them were replaced by prosthetics, until they died or went mad. His hand rested casually on the gun in his belt. The bartender flicked me another drink, and I suddenly realized why it’s hands looked so real.
A tiny piece of my mind kept my face expressionless. I wanted to throw myself at his feet and blubber for mercy. Years of training kept me looking drunk and stupid. And a little spark of anger started my mind working again. An ‘extra’ he’d called me, the oldest, longest-serving soap star in Dee’s organization. I fed the oversized ego that had kept me upstairs and away from Dee for all these years. Who did he think he was, the little bastard? I was the hero of a dozen soap operas, and what was he? Quickly, I shied away from that particular line of thought.
I had to come up with the performance of a lifetime. In acting, timing and positioning are everything, and my life depended on both being perfect. “Hey, ol’ buddy,” I cried, holding on to the widest, most innocent hick grin in my repertoire. I know you. Sure, I know you. You’re a genius, man.” He was still leaning against the bar, looking at me thoughtfully, but there was a hint of puzzlement and mild amusement in his china blue eyes. Good. The longer I kept him amused, the longer I stayed healthy. “Lemme see,” I slurred. I staggered drunkenly, trying to get near him. “Wait a minute,” I’ve almost got it.” I leaned towards him owlishly, gaining a few more inches. Then I allowed a mask of frozen horror to transfix my face, and he relaxed for a moment, knowing he had me rigid with fear.
I was on him, hard, fuelled by terror. It was no use. Even as I grabbed him, his hand was free and the gun was in it. Time slowed, and I watched as the gun swung towards my head, the barrel looking as big as a cannon. ‘At least it’ll be quick,’ I thought.
The bottle bounced off Dr Payne’s head. There wasn’t much force behind it, just enough to cut his scalp and cause him to drop the gun in surprise. And the lifelike hands grabbed his throat and hung on like a vise, cutting off his air as blood trickled slowly down his face. It was as if all of the thing’s strength was concentrated in those white hands. The doctor thrashed and choked as it held his neck. Liquid was dripping from the side of one of its eyes, but it wouldn’t let go. I watched in horror as he choked in front of me and the unbroken bottle gurgled bourbon over my shoes. It held him a long time after he was still, then the hands slowly let go and the doctor and the bartender slid to the floor.
I finally managed to move. I walked round the bar and the bartender was crumpled on the floor. Fluid was leaking from under the plastic face, and the hands were twitching. As I watched, they finally became still.
I buried the bartender in the overgrown back garden, and piled some bricks on his grave. Whoever he had been, he had saved my life, and whatever human was left of him deserved a burial. I dragged the doctor into the street and left him there. The wild dogs would dispose of him. I rounded up a backpack and stowed some clothes, ammunition, home-made jerky, canned food, and some of the doctor’s stolen booze in it. I opened the door to his refrigerator so the fresh meat would spoil, and I locked all the doors. I got out into the street, then went resignedly back to the dirty kitchen and found a serviceable can-opener. Then I started out towards the distant Chicago skyline.

CHAPTER 7 – The City of Ruined Spires
It was noon when I reached a populated area, a wet late winter day in the inner suburbs. Blocks of forlorn semi-detached houses stretched into the distance. These had been the houses of hard-working blue-collar workers and low-level clerks. They had been neat and clean and tidy once, but according to my briefing, the working population, and what passed for the upper crust lived near the center of the city, where basic amenities like transportation, power and policing were almost reliable. The ragged groups of citizens watching me suspiciously as I walked through their neighborhood were edge dwellers, marginal to the economy, clinging to the city’s outskirts for whatever tattered remnants of livelihood they could eke out. Cables snaked untidily between houses, disappearing into overgrown yards, reappearing again to climb old telephone poles and vault across potholed streets. There seemed to be a lot of small generators in various states of repair, and some communal vegetable gardens, and after a while I passed through a business area with a couple of open air food stalls, an ancient saloon leaning drunkenly in the middle of a burned out block of ruins, and a hardware store.
I was getting tired, and on impulse I turned into the hardware store, which looked clean and inviting, despite the heavy bars on the windows. As I pushed open the door it fell off its hinges with a crash, and I realized I had made a mistake.
The owner was standing behind the counter, pointing a shotgun at me. The shotgun appeared to be surgically attached to his arm, and his finger was curled into a trigger. Folks around here seemed to have picked up some bizarre medical practices from the mad Doctor Payne. Behind the man, neatly stacked, were shelves with all sorts of nails, screws, wiring, old-fashioned locks, and hand tools. A lot of the merchandise was recycled, but some of it was new. All in all, it was quite impressive. The other three walls, and a center counter were very different. My shoes crunched on broken glass, shelves had been torn down, appliances and light fixtures were scattered everywhere. The man’s battered face was grim, his eyes bored into me.
“You got my answer,” he grated. “I don’t have any choice. Your boss gave me three days, and I’ll be out in three days. Now you get out, I got work to do.”
“I’m tired,” I told him. “Tired of having guns pointed at me.” The mad doctor and the wretched bartender had leeched away most of my capacity for fear or any other emotion. I was living on borrowed time. I made an effort. “Look,” I told the man. “I’m not threatening you. I’m not holding a gun. I came in here for directions.” I looked around again. “I’m sorry about whatever trouble you’re in, but all I want to know is how to get to the nearest train, or bus, or subway. I’m going to talk to the City Authorities.”
“City authorities,” he said incredulously. “The city authorities did this.” His shotgun arm swept the chaos, and I ducked wearily.
“I don't mean the local gangsters,” I told him. “I'm tired, not crazy. I'm going to see the Mayor, or the City Manager.” A horrible suspicion penetrated my tired brain. “They are still alive? I mean, there is still some sort of halfway lawful government here, isn't there?” I realized I'd given myself away, but I was too tired to care.
“My name is William L Jones,” I said. “What’s yours?”
He looked at me disgustedly, and the prosthetic shotgun retracted with a snap. “I don't believe it,” he sighed. “The Moles are dumping their crazies and criminals up here! You took what was left of the talent and buried it, left us with nothing, and now we get your rejects.”
“Hold on,” I said hastily. He was working himself up, and the shotgun arm was only the flick of a switch away. “I'm not a criminal. I'm an Ambassador from underground.”
His eyes had stopped appraising my torn clothes and worn shoes and were fixed on my face. “Yeah, I know you,” he said slowly. “I used to watch the Big D channel till the Ward Boss started collecting TV fees.” He considered for a while. “Big D was always a little better that the other garbage we got served up. Almost as if the folks there realized we were capable of rational thought.” His voice hardened. “Of course, your show was always a load of crap.”
The Soaper in me started to formulate a sneering speech, but the part of me that had survived the past month knew he was right, and the sneer turned into a rueful smile. “She tried, for a long time,” I said, “but I, we, the soapers, and the suits, nobody gave her much help.” I looked at him. “I used to be her friend, before the world ended. I let her down. We were as bad as you Topsiders - worse. We had more to work with, and we've almost thrown away our last chance.” I had told him I was a Mole, I had admitted that, by his standards, I was a rich, well-fed sellout. He had every reason to hate me. “Look,” I told him. “You can disarm me. Take me to the Mayor as your prisoner. I've got papers from Big Dee. All I want to do is talk to whatever lawful authority there is up here.”
He relaxed and lowered the shotgun. “I got nothing to lose,” he said. “I thought I could make it out here, spread some order a little further out, but I guess this part of town’s not ready to settle down yet.” He started to sort some tools into a backpack. “What are we waiting for?” he said.
The storekeeper was a pretty decent guy, and I think he was quite impressed that I had made it as far as his ruined shop without getting killed. He left everything but a few tools and a huge chunk of cheese, and we set off quickly for the skyscraping spires of the city. I was leaner and fitter than I had been since the Early days, and after a couple of miles, he gave up all pretense of guarding me. We shared a sizeable chunk of cheese and I produced a flask of Dr Payne’s liquor and a package of his freeze-dried beef (or dog, or cat) jerky. Soon, we were talking like old friends, and I got to know a few things about Topside that even Dee had been unable to learn.
The news wasn’t exactly good. Quite naturally, the Topsiders hated our guts. After all this time, I was attempting to talk to the leader of a once proud city that we Moles had kept starved of capital, educated manpower and hope for two hundred years. Just a few years ago, they would have been beggars, hating us, but cap in hand for any scraps that we could spare. Now, a daily shuttle plane flew between Chicago and Boston and New York, and the cities had begun to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They still needed us, but they could smell success and they were proud of it. A lot of Topsiders wanted to take what we had by force.
“The Mayor’s a decent guy,” the shopkeeper told me. “And the chief of police.” He looked at me somberly. “But there’s a lot of pressure, William. We’re a democracy now, and it’s not easy to persuade hungry folks to be patient.”
“I never fully realized,” I started to say, “just how much…” for once I was tongue-tied. “I still don’t know your name,” I said, but he was lost in thought, not speaking for hours.
It became obvious as we got closer in that the citizens of Chicago were fighting hard to resurrect a functioning city. Some buildings were patched up, and even sloppily painted. Curbside stalls gave way to shops, graffiti was painted over. For every Topsider that hid in a television set, or crawled into a bottle of the raw home-made booze that served for alcohol up here, there was another who, against all odds, retained some drive and determination, and even humanity. There were schools, and laboratories, and hospitals, run by self-taught engineers and scientists and doctors, men and women who, before the Fall had been janitors and bus drivers, and insurance salesmen. The cream of the crop had been taken away, and then Moles like us, with a reasonable amount of education had burrowed into the ground and left the dregs to starve. I began to see just how much damage we had done to the people here, while we wasted our time in the stale comfort of our burrows. I had thought in my arrogance that I was quicker and cleverer than these ragged Chicagoans, and that the Burrows held what was left of the cultural and scientific heritage of the human race. I had thought that Dee was hopelessly naïve, but she alone in our underground bunker had realized that we needed each other.
Finally we came to the terminus of a functioning bus service, a brick blockhouse with a big sign, guarded by a grim man in clothes probably borrowed from what was left of the central Transportation Museum. The storekeeper handed over a few tokens, and I said “thanks….,” and he turned away without giving his name. After a long wait a battered old bus coughed to a stop, choking on whatever passed for fuel up here. I thought about how our little electric cars in my safe city below would have helped these people. But the bus and its driver had heart. We struggled inwards over the pot-holed roads, and the city gradually began to pull itself together in a weird sort of way.
The bus meandered round several piles of rubble, always coming back to a wide road that was pretty well cleared. It pounded on, scattering cyclists like fish, laboring past a converted auto that appeared to be running on wood chips. A wide, ruined building blocked the road and I kept wondering when the driver would divert, until we dived under it.
“Old Post Office,” the driver called. We had picked up several passengers and many of them scrambled off the bus and wandered away among the ruins.
When we came up again I got a clear view of the river and the ruined city center with its stunted skyscrapers pointing arthritic fingers at the sky. I stared straight ahead, deliberately avoiding a sight I’d not seen in two hundred years. “Soon enough,” I thought.
The city center had been badly damaged in the first few years after the exodus, when we all lashed out in frustration, before the big corporations started to burrow beneath the ground for safety. Chicago had been a city of spires, but the big towers suffered when rival warlords fought for territory, first with planes and bombs, later with bazookas and guns, and finally with knives and rocks. The old, proud skyscrapers were reduced to jagged splinters, pointed defiantly at the stars, to where the travelers had sucked out all our drive and talent. A few days before, when I had emerged blinking into the light of late winter, they had been giant ice stalagmites, sparkling in the distance. Now the ice had melted and they were broken skeletons, weeping rusty tears.
But the remains of local government refused to abandon Chicago’s heritage. The Xerox Center building, ruthlessly beheaded at the twentieth floor was the headquarters of the local police/militia, who obviously commanded a large chunk of the city budget. Despite their black uniforms and boots, however, they were approachable. I was heartened to see a stunted civilian in work clothes arguing furiously with a bored-looking cop twice his size.
The bus trundled down wide city streets past ruined skyscrapers whose bottom floors had been patched up and put to use. The pattern seemed to be ten floors or so of grimy, gutted space, crammed with old machinery, topped by one floor of office workers and managers, who lived unconcernedly under the crushing weight of the thousands of tons of twisted girders and crumbling masonry of the wrecked and abandoned upper floors. We circled around, slowly approaching my destination.

CHAPTER 8 – The Big Tower
“Sears Tower,” the driver called, looking at me curiously. “City Manager.” I got out, the storekeeper treading on my heels, and we both looked up into the early spring sky. It was all there, stretching impossibly upward, one hundred and ten floors, still intact, stripped bare of concrete in places, blackened by old fire at the top, still straight and strong, the legacy of all of us survivors, a defiant arm raised to the sky. The storekeeper beside me gazed upwards expressionlessly and I saw a tear slide down his face.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“John,” he said, “John Doe.” He laughed for the first time I'd known him. "I guess my folks had a sense of humor."
We walked into the atrium and I realized what all of us Moles had been missing. This was a massive, airy, and beautiful sculpture. Down below we were warm and comfortable, living in warm, comfortable caves. We were meant to live in the open air, under the stars. We Moles had grown old and sour under the earth.
The receptionist sat behind an old mahogany desk. The lady and the desk were polished like glass. She could have been a Soap Star, or a Porn Star, I thought, looking at her wispy dress. “William L Jones,” she said, fixing me with her cold gray eyes. “You are expected.” I looked at John, amazed, and he shrugged.
“And John Doe,” I told her. “Hope you haven’t forgotten about him.”
She pursed her lips and picked up an old black phone. “Twentieth floor,” she said after a second. “City Manager to your left. Please take the elevator.”
We got in. The little box smelled like sweat and polish and we were jerked upward like a yo-yo on a string when I pushed the jury-rigged button. Together we went sailing up, up, and the dim bulb flickered. I tried to remember what it was like when the elevators went all the way, a thousand feet up, a third of a mile, in cities in Chicago and New York, and Boston, all the big cities that used to light up the world. I was higher than I had been in two hundred years, and I started to feel sick.
The elevator jerked to a stop, and the doors opened. We saw paneled walls, thick and new carpets, and the air was fresh and warm. Some Topsiders, at least, were living well. Two big guys faced us, and, somehow they reminded me of the security guards who had led me to Jonesy, a lifetime ago.
“This way, gentlemen.” The smaller of the two padded down a plush corridor, and the larger guard fell in behind us.
Most of the offices looked like classrooms, and most of the classrooms were filled with men. Through frosted glass windows, I could make out instructors, pacing the floor, instructing earnestly. The place reminded me of a Police Training Academy in a Seminary. An office boy on a motor scooter zipped past, gripping a bunch of papers. We finally stopped in front of heavy oak doors which the first guard tapped deferentially.
“Send them in.” The voice was vaguely familiar, but unless I had met him two centuries ago, I didn’t see how I could know him.
The City Manager occupied an office that rivaled Big Dee’s. His back was to a large window that looked out on the ruins of Chicago, strangely beautiful in the early spring sunlight. Filing cabinets and storage bins gave the room a hard-working look.
“Sit down,” he said, and John and I sank into comfortable armchairs. The man steepled his hands and leant forward. I strained to see his vaguely familiar features against the glare of the sun. “It’s been quite a while, Bill,” he said, and I gasped.
“Lawrence Blake,” I said. I felt a surge of relief. Lawrence Blake had been the first man that Dee had sent out to contact the Topsiders, four years ago. He had succeeded in his mission beyond all expectations.
Out of the shadows the form of a man appeared. It was Jonesy, with a gun. “We’ve been waiting for you,” he said. He seemed nervous, so high up, so close to the window and the vast open spaces beyond. I was afraid that he’d shoot me right there and mess up the City Manager’s beautiful carpet.
“I didn’t think you’d make it.” He shook his head. “Who’d have thought, a stupid arrogant bastard like you.” He glanced at John. “getting friendly with the natives, are we,” he sneered.
“Bastard took me hostage,” John mumbled, turning into a couch potato. “I’m glad you got the bum. Jeez,” he went on, gaping at the office with childish wonderment, “you got a great place here. Maybe I can get a job, huh?” He looked anxiously at Lawrence. “On the first floor is OK.” He laughed nervously. “No harm in trying, huh?” He shuffled towards the door, and I made a mental note to recommend him for a bit part in my next show, in the unlikely event that we both survived.
“Just a minute.” Jonesy sounded strained. “You can’t be that stupid. And, if you are, that’s tough, we can’t let you go.”
John turned, deciding the game was up, and his stupid face vanished. “You bastards,” he said. “We’re just getting on our feet. What are you trying to do to us?”
Jonesy snickered. His nervousness at being in the clouds, exposed to the sun and the elements had not improved his temper. “You think we’re going to allow you morons to run things?” He snarled. “We control what’s left of the economy, trade, communications, the Internet. Think we’re going to give it all up to you because your precious Mayor and Chief of Police decide that Morons can run the world again?” His tongue flicked out, wetting his lips. “It took four years for Lawrence to get to this,” he said, “with our superior technology. Another few weeks and we’ll control this city.” He waved impatiently at Lawrence.
“Let them hear it all,” he said. “Doesn’t matter really. They’ll be dead in a few minutes, shot trying to assassinate the City Manager.” He laughed unsteadily. “Maybe we can blame the Mayor and the Chief.” He turned to me triumphantly. “What do you think we’re doing up here. We’re training an army to set things straight. With underground technology.” He paused, breathing hard. “ Once I get rid of that bitch Big Dee, we’ll have the company shuttle fleet, and company bombs, and we’ll flatten any other cities that get too powerful.”
I stared at him. “you know, Jonesy,” I said softly. “You’re insane. All those years underground, I didn’t realize.” I turned to Lawrence. “Can’t you see, he’s crazy, he’ll kill us all.”
Jonesy was rapidly reaching boiling point. Twenty stories above ground, with his back to an entire city, he must have felt like an ant on a mountain. He was ready to explode, and suddenly, as a cloud passed over the sun, John Doe pointed at the window, yelling “look out!” and Jonesy spun around in terror and tripped as I knocked the gun from his hand.
The gun went off, and I felt the bullet graze my ear, deafening me. Out of the red haze of my headache, and the stickiness of trickling blood, I saw Jonesy disappear through the wall before I fainted.
When I came to, the large guard was bending over me. “He’s fine,” I heard him say from a far distance, and I sat up with a grimace.
“Send the nurse up.” Lawrence said, and the guard looked doubtfully at John, who was leaning casually against the desk. “Do it,” Lawrence said sharply. “These men just saved my life.”
When the guard had gone, John relaxed a little, flexing his shotgun arm stiffly. “Lawrence tells me he’s a changed man,” he growled, “but I’ll keep an eye on him in case he changes back.”
“Honestly, William,” Lawrence looked at me miserably. “I was just going to enjoy myself up here. I really like it above ground, but I’ve been used to the good life. This was perfect. I have the whole twentieth floor, I’ve been making it comfortable for years..”
“While people down there,” John roared, waving at the ruined city beyond the window, “were starving.”
Lawrence looked at me pleadingly as John flexed his deadly arm ominously. “Since Jonesy appeared, I’ve had no peace of mind. At first, I thought he was jumpy because of the height, but I realized today that he’s crazy. He wants to crawl down below and seal himself in and blow all the cities to bits. He’s got ideas about growing all our food underground, tells me Moles are self-sufficient already.”
I nodded. “He’s just about right, too, if you don’t mind eating food that tastes like cardboard, and breathing air that smells like a dirty clothes hamper.” I was beginning to understand why Lawrence had stayed up here, abandoning Big Dee and her plans for the future.
“You’re still a good actor, Lawrence,” I said, and he looked frightened. “But I think you realize you have no option but to throw your lot in with us. With Jonesy on the loose, we’re none of us safe.” My head was clearing now. “Where the hell did he go, anyway.”
Before anyone could reply, the nurse strode through the doorway with the guards, and started to swab my head, none too gently. He looked like an ex-boxer, and his breath smelt of garlic, but he was thorough, and when he had finished I resembled a brain-damaged Frankenstein, and felt like I was wearing a hat three sizes too small. “What’s going on with you guys?” he asked suspiciously.
Lawrence took over. “Somebody got into my office,” he said angrily. “We’re supposed to have ironclad security, but someone got in and tried to kill me.” He looked scathingly at the three men. “While my own guards were picking their noses, or taking a crap, or whatever, two delegates from the Mayor’s office helped me chase away an assassin. I suppose you’ve got the building locked up tight.” The guards looked uncomfortable. “I want the entire building sealed off,” he exploded. “Not just this floor. I want a detail of armed men outside my door. I want men who are awake, alert, and trustworthy.” He looked hard at the two guards. “I’m holding you responsible. If you don’t find this person, you’ll be patrolling a garbage dump somewhere in an Edge district. Now, get out.”
“Not bad,” I said after they had left. “Now, just where did Jonesy disappear to?”
“Gravity well behind the wall,” Lawrence said, and I looked at him stupidly. Somehow, I’ve always associated gravity wells with underground living. They’d been invented down there, and it seemed unnatural for a gravity well to be operating up in the sky. “Goes right down into a tunnel system under the City,” Lawrence said. “Part of the Blue Line, and God knows what else he’s had dug down there. Big Dee doesn’t know anything about it.” He sighed. “He’s gotten away by now in his electric car, all the way to Big Dee Warren.” He walked over to the far wall and touched a piece of molding. The well went straight down, about wide enough for two people who weren’t too embarrassed to hug.

CHAPTER 9 – Down to Earth
I peered into the darkness. “I have to go after him,” I said. “He’ll make his move on Big Dee now that his cover’s blown. She has to be warned. Don’t you have any old subway maps?” I asked. “You’re supposed to be the City manager.”
“Sure,” he told me, opening a storage cabinet. “But it’s like a maze down there. The Warren is thirty miles on a straight, and you’ll be on foot. Even with the car, Jonesy is nervous about traveling down there.”
He was right. “Wait a minute,” I looked at John. “Remember the office boy that almost ran us down. I’ll bet that little scooter can do 40mph. Think it’ll squeeze down the shaft?” John nodded and I looked at Lawrence. He called the guards.
“How many office scooters do we have on this floor,” he asked a bewildered, uniformed guardian of the door.
“Three or four,” I think, the man stuttered.
“Bring me three,” Lawrence snapped, “on the double.” The man hurried away, and Lawrence rubbed his hands. “Hope they have enough gas. I can’t think of any way to have the tanks filled without raising suspicions.”
I started to argue half-heartedly that this was my mission. “I owe Big Dee,” Lawrence said wryly, and John rasped that he wasn’t going to be left holding the bag.
When the scooters arrived they looked to be in good condition. Owning one of these babies must have seemed like owning a private plane to the Topsiders. Lawrence told the Captain of the Guard that we might all three be taking a trial run between offices, and that his men were to keep us covered as we rattled up and down the main corridor. Then we shut the door and took a good look at the machines. Two of the gas tanks were just over half-full, and one had a quarter-tank. I shook my head dubiously, but Lawrence told us the gas consumption of these little machines was fantastic. So we wrestled the little scooters over to the gravity well and eased them into the shaft. They floated down like butterflies. “These might come in useful,” Lawrence said, handing us three flashlight helmets from a storage bin. I began to see that, self indulgent turncoat though he might be, he was struggling to do a good job for his adopted home. “It’s going to be a piece of cake,” I whooped. “An hour from now, we’ll be in the Warren with Big Dee.” It turned out I was wildly optimistic.
I floated down first and came to rest gently in the subway tunnel. Apart from Jonesy’s tracks, barely visible in the dim green light of a single bulb, the place looked as if it had been deserted for centuries, which was probably the case. The tunnel, which used to carry thousands of people per day, split into two and wandered off into the rubble-strewn gloom. The old platform was slippery and damp, and a pair of eyes looked at me inquisitively from a cave in a pile of rocks. “Awa, Bo” a cracked voice creaked from a mouth that was not human, and looked like it belonged to no animal I’d ever seen. And then the eyes were gone, and I took a deep breath. I settled the helmet gingerly on my bandaged head and switched it on. The three scooters lay on their sides on the platform. The one nearest the cave-creatures hole glugged out a feeble drop of gasoline. The creature had obviously seen a use for the missing gas-cap.
I picked up the little scooter and shook it. There was a faint splash, about half a cupful of gas was left. When Lawrence and John landed beside me I told them what had happened. John peered thoughtfully into the gloom. “Damn,” he muttered. “I’d forgotten about all this down here, under my city.”
“I was going to reactivate the subway system,” Lawrence said a little sadly, and John glared at him.
“Sure, after you fixed up your palace on the twentieth floor.”
Down in the gloom of the dead station, my idea seemed crazy. I had pictured us zooming through wide, well-lit tunnels until we reached the Warren. I was used to underground life being warm and dry and full of good things – I hadn’t imagined these bleak, abandoned tunnels fanning out into the blackness under the earth. Jonesy’s car would have fitted nicely on the twin tracks, but from what I could see our remaining scooters would have to cruise along a narrow shadowed platform that ran along the side of the tunnel.
“One of you will have to go back,” I said. “The scooters won’t carry more than one person.” They started arguing at once. “No turning back, now,” somebody said, and we argued indecisively in the dim damp light of our helmets, like miners trapped deep underground. The shadows cast by our helmet lights caused our shadows to dance like goblins and I wondered how long the batteries would last. Glancing around, I noticed that the creature was back, watching us warily. It looked like a small dog with scales. I watched giddily as it stretched out a thin metal arm and laid the gas cap at my feet.
“Orry,” it said. “Kay?”
I looked into the bright, intelligent eyes, realizing that its scales were made of some sort of overlapping metal plates. “Alright, Kay,” I told it. On impulse I bent down and scratched the metal head. After an initial flinch, it crooned happily. “Dr Payne,” I muttered.
“You know him?” John flexed his shotgun arm. “He saved my life, in a way, and just after that I escaped.” He bent down and looked at the creature. “This must be one of his experiments.” He straightened up with a sigh. “What are we going to do?”
“If we can find something to siphon the gas,” Lawrence said, we can split it between the scooters. The three of us could still just about make it.” I looked around helplessly and John laughed.
“I got a pipe in this arm of mine. It keeps the joints oiled up, but I can do without it for a few days if I have to.” He grabbed at his arm and started to yank out a flesh-colored tube. I winced and he grinned. “Don’t hurt none,” he said. “Not any more.”
We got organized and shared out the gasoline. I shone my helmet anxiously into my tank. “There’ll be enough,” Lawrence said. We wrestled the scooters onto the narrow strip of concrete. There was room to travel single file, with the wall close by on one side, and a six-foot drop to the inky black of the tracks on the other. I thought about Jonesy, in his well-lit, warm electric car. He was probably at the Warren by now. I started up my motor and the metal dog jumped agilely into the little document carrying basket up front.
“Kay seems to like you,” John chuckled.
The tunnel rushed past as we rode the narrow walkway. My helmet light bobbed and danced, lighting up odd parts of the way ahead, and the occasional red eyes of a rat. Other, stranger eyes flashed briefly in the light, and once I could have sworn I saw a pale human face hanging in midair above the abandoned tracks. Lawrence, who had turned out unexpectedly practical, had in addition to the helmets provided a couple of luminous dial compasses. We had started off going due west, but the gentle curve of the tunnel was gradually forcing us north, and I looked anxiously for tracks from Jonesy’s electric car. There was no sign that anyone had been in the tunnel for years.
Ahead of me a station loomed, and I screeched to a stop. This station had never been completed, and the tunnel ahead was blocked. The others pulled up beside me, the little motors cut out, and we slowly dismounted in the gloom of the unfinished station. Three beams of light illuminated the blocked tunnel. There was no way to go but back. In the basket, Kay had been sniffing cautiously. Now she jumped down and loped slowly towards the blocked tunnel. “Come back, Kay,” I shouted, and she glanced back, but continued to advance. She reached the wall and disappeared through it. With startled shouts we forward. The gray looking rock was stiff cloth, attached with Velcro.
“Well, this is new,“ Lawrence murmured. “Maybe it’s Warren territory behind here.”
Behind the false wall, the unfinished tunnel stretched into the darkness. Kay was sniffing at some faint tire marks. There were no rails this side of the fake wall, and we drove our scooters on the bare rail-bed. It should have been easy after that, but a few minutes later the tunnel split. One leg, barely wide enough for an electric car, continued north. The other, wider, went west. I couldn’t see any tracks, but the tunnel to the west seemed an obvious choice, despite twittering objections from Kay. “Come on,” I said confidently. I thought we should have gas enough to reach the Warren. We started down the broad unobstructed tunnel, opening up to the scooters’ maximum speed of 40mph, with Kay yipping anxiously in the basket in front of me. I figured, fifteen, twenty minutes, we should be in the Warren.

CHAPTER 10 – The Cyborgs
The thing stepped out of the darkness, apparently impervious to danger, and I swerved round him, bounced off the side of the wall, and slid down the rocky tunnel, scraping skin from my arm. When I sat up in a cloud of dust, we were all three surrounded by things that reminded me of the bartender in Dr Payne’s den. The pale face I had seen hovering over the tracks loomed towards me, and I made out his body, narrow, roughly humanoid, in dull black plastic. His companions were not quite so photogenic. There were eight of them, trailing cables, metal limbs broken, soft jelly oozing from cracked plastic. “Good of you to drop in,” the face said softly. “Welcome to the zoo.” The thing shifted, arthritically. “Shame you won’t live long enough to take the full tour.”
My mouth was dry, and John cut in before I could find words. “Hey, brother.” He advanced on the face. “We’re not so different,” he waved his arm. “I had a run in with Dr Payne, had to be twenty years ago.”
The Face snickered. “Looks like you’re the one that got away.”
“You all got away,” John said levelly. “Maybe not as quick as me, but are you going to kill us all because we only got cut up a little.”
The Face looked at Lawrence and me. “Why are you traveling with real people?” he said. “Brother.”
John grabbed my arm and advanced on the creature. He took off my helmet. “See that,” he snapped, pointing to the bandages. “He’s one of the latest. The old doctor decided the brain was the ultimate challenge. Look at him,” he pointed dramatically at my head. “Most of the time he’s as normal as you and me, but sometimes, one of those little relays clicks shut, and blam! It’s not a pretty sight.”
A humanoid with thin metal limbs peered intently into my eyes. “I don’t think so,” he said. We appeared to be losing the battle to convince them that we were their kind of humanoid, and John went on desperately, describing the prejudice, ill-treatment and death threats from the Topsiders that had driven us down here. They muttered, skeptical, amongst themselves.
“What about this one, then,” a half-man on metal tracks said, pointing to Lawrence.
The Face shone my helmet light onto the perfect features of Lawrence Blake, ex leading man and Soap star, a man who even I had to admit was remarkably free of physical defects. Lawrence blinked and smiled sheepishly.
John tried his best. “You can’t see what the doctor did to him,” he said loudly, waving his metal arm. “But it was pretty bad.”
“Look,” I said, “you want to kill us because of what the Doctor did to you. He was an evil man, believe me, I know, but killing us won’t help. He’s dead now, and we’re all safe from him.” I had an inspiration. “We’re trying to get to the Warren. They may be able to help there.” I looked at them and barely repressed a shudder. “Maybe some of you..”
But the Face grabbed me, squeezing my shoulders with vice-like claws. “Dead,” he cried. “How. He can’t be dead, that bastard’s the Devil himself.”
I told them about the laboratory, and the crazy TV screens, and the electronic equipment, and some of them nodded, remembering their days of imprisonment and torment. Then, I told them about my futile attempt to escape, and about the bartender, who had grabbed the Good Doctors neck, and refused to let go and who had died in the act of killing Doctor Payne.
“That was Harry, Harry Kolbeck,” one of them muttered, and a couple nodded in agreement. “He was a bartender all his life. Before the star travelers came he worked a fancy bar in Manhattan. Good old Harry, you sure he did it?” They were shocked, uncertain, as if something fundamental had just disappeared from their universe.
I went on to describe how I had buried the bartender and left the doctors body in the street for the dogs to dispose of, and they nodded in approval. It was as if their hatred had fed on the invincible Doctor Payne, and they were disoriented now that the center of their universe had vanished. At a sign from the Face, they tied our hands and dragged us to a battered old bus. The bus was a poor cousin of the wreck that had transported John and myself Topside. It coughed and hacked and ground its gears, gasping and creaking through ancient sewers, scraping through narrow cellars, all the time shuddering like an animal in its death-throes. Faithful Kay, loping behind, had no problem keeping up as they carried us on our tortuous journey to their camp.
The camp was like an underground factory, lit with oil-soaked rags stuffed in big pots. I suspected that it was the deepest basement of one of the ruined towers above us, and that we were back where we started, under the center of the city. All in all, there were about fifteen of them, a couple only a little more doctored up than John. The news of the Doctors death had a strange effect on them. It was as if they had arrived at the gates of Paradise after a long, hard struggle, and were just realizing that there was nothing left to struggle, or live for. A couple of them muttered unconvincingly that they didn’t believe it.
An oddly graceful android squatted beside us. It had not been one of our ambushers. “Try not to worry too much,” it said in a soft contralto, and I realized with a start that this was a woman. She smiled. “My name’s Olive. This news about the Doctor has taken the wind out of their sails. They don’t know what to do.” She untied our hands, waving away the tractor-man, who had been casually guarding us. “They’re not a bad bunch,” she looked around at the strange collection of half-humans who were talking animatedly amongst themselves. “You know, Dr Payne experimented on at least fifty people.” She stroked Kay, metal on metal. “A few animals, too.”
“This one can talk,” I told her, and she nodded seriously.
“The bastard kept telling me that all his experiments were for the good of humanity,” she said. “I fantasized for years about doing to him some of the things he did to us.” She looked at John. “You were lucky. You got away before he did too much harm.”
John nodded and I said, “It’s possible that we can get help at the Warren. There’s been a lot of research done on tissue regeneration and organ cloning.”
“We could have all used something like that,” she told me, the Topsiders, too.”
I sighed. “We have a lot to answer for, don’t we?” I looked at the half-humans, arguing in the flickering light of the torches. “We didn’t know, we didn’t think.” John grunted, and, on impulse, I started to tell her about Dee, and her ideas of dragging us all topside, sharing some of our hoarded goodies.
“Can she do it?” Olive asked.
“I’m beginning to think we need you more than you need us,” I answered obliquely.
She looked at me. “Are you lumping us monsters in with the normal people up there?” She nodded toward the city above.
“Things are changing,” John told her.
She looked at me again. “Will this Dee be able to convince all the Moles?”
“No,” I told her, “only the ones with something left to offer.”
“What sort of people will they be?”
“The ones with talent,” I said. “Some, like Dee, who should have gone to the stars. We have doctors and scientists and researchers down there who have done some marvelous things. Some who aren’t afraid to hope and think. They’ll come up to breath fresh air again, if the Topsiders will allow it.”
“Won’t the others stop them?” Olive asked.
“No,” I surprised myself by saying. “I don’t think they will.” Not so long as we leave the money and the power down there. They won’t realize that the talent they let go is far more valuable than anything they have. And if we can make it in Chicago, it’ll happen with all the Warrens”
Olive stretched out her silver arms and looked at herself. “You really think somebody down there can turn us back into real, live humans?”
John ran his hand gently down her arm. “It’s just the skin, isn’t it? Inside he didn’t touch you.”
“Some chemicals,” she said, quietly. “He messed around with my blood. But basically, I’m just a woman in a silver suit that I can never take off.” She stood up. “I’m going to get Stretch. Tell him what you just told me.”
The face came over to us, his almost invisible body shaking gently. “Can you fix me?” he asked skeptically, “or the tractor over there?”
“Maybe not,” I told him. “It might take decades for someone like you.”
“I won’t wait for decades,” Stretch told me. “I’d sooner die.”
“How long,” I said. “How long have you been like this?”
He laughed shortly. “I was one of the first. Just after the Star people came and went.”
“Now you want to die.” I looked at him coldly. “Why?”
He seemed surprised. “Well,”…
“Dr Payne is dead,” I told him. “There’s nothing left.” He looked at me expressionlessly. “How long have you plotted to kill the Doctor? A century? Two? Three?”
“It kept us alive,” he told me. “We had meetings,” he said. “Made plans. Even tried to carry them out sometimes. I lost a couple of good men. We used to spend hours telling each other what we’d do when we captured him. Right up until you told us he was dead.”
“It was your idea?”
“Yeah. Kept us alive,” he repeated. “I made them believe we could do it. When they started to doubt, I’d cook up some new, crazy scheme, and we’d be off, making plans like kids. Sure.” He looked at me. “I know what you want. But it won’t work.”
“Why?” I asked him.
“Because I don’t believe you can change us back. Not in a million years.”
“Did you believe anyone could ever kill the great Dr Payne?”
The pale face on the ridiculous body looked down at me. “No,” he said, wonderingly. “I never really believed he would ever die.”
“You’re the leader,” I told him. “What if you take us to the Warren? We may get Dee and some doctors and scientists out. We Moles may start to cooperate with the Topsiders. We may not forget you. We may even figure we owe you.”
He grinned faintly. “It may even take years for us to lose faith in your promises. Then we can plot against you for a couple of centuries: I’ll talk to them,” he said, unconvincingly.
“Stretch,” I called, and he turned back.
“I know Big Dee,” I told him. “She won’t forget. You’d be surprised what our doctors can do, especially for someone like Olive.”
The silver woman put her hand on his narrow back. “I like you just the way you are,” she said.
____________________________________________________________________ Olive stared thoughtfully into the shadows beyond the fire, where the Cyborgs gestured jerkily in the flickering light. Her silver skin flickered dimly in the dancing flames, the classic bone structure underneath conquering the alien metal skin. She must have been beautiful before Dr Payne got his hands on her, and she was beautiful still, sitting on a stack of rusty fuse boxes, staring thoughtfully at the monstrous shapes of her companions as they argued our fate in the flickering light of the oil fires. On impulse, I walked over and sat next to her. I saw Stretch glance angrily in our direction. “How can you stay with them?” I asked. “How can you stay with these monsters.”
She looked at me calmly. “they’re people, and I’m one of them,” she answered. “They’re still human. Thanks to Stretch, they’re alive, and reasonably sane. Like I said, I’m one of them. We’d all be dead if it wasn’t for Stretch.”
“They’re going to kill us,” I told her. “John, and Lawrence, and me.”
“Why not,” she murmured. “After Dr Payne turned us into monsters you normals drove us underground to starve and die.”
I wanted to tell her that it was the Topsiders that had done this, but she was right. The Cyborgs were untouchable. We Moles would have done the same. To the Cyborgs, there was no difference between Morons and Moles. We had all condemned them to a life in Hell.
_________________________________________________________
Stretch and his band of Cyborgs must have talked for a couple of hours, while I tried to contain my impatience. I watched them in the flickering light, waving tentacles and metal stumps at each other. They were apathetic at first as Stretch floated among them broodingly. As a man, he must have been a politician or an evangelist, because he played them like so many tin fish. One by one, they started to wake up. At first they were angry. Up from despair and a readiness to fade away and die, they were being dragged back into their painful lives. He let them get angry. He let them feed on each other’s anger, and when the juices were flowing he gave them hope. Olive went over to join them then, and I knew that Big Dee had some fresh allies.
For all of the bizarre situations I had experienced in all my roles as a soap star, I’d never thought to be a party guest of a bunch of drunken half-machines. Most of them still had internal organs that responded to alcohol, but Tractor, for instance, dosed himself with a lethal looking concoction that looked and smelt like a combination of industrial waste and battery acid.
“I worry about Tractor, sometimes,” Stretch confided in me over a table full of bourbon and beer. That stuff rots his fuel lines and clogs up his intake valves.” He looked around at the others. “Still, I’m glad they’re having a good time. God knows what I’m getting them into.”
The light of the flickering oil-rags glinted in the human eyes of the Cyborgs. Dr Payne had never managed to synthesize the delicate lenses through which we all see our surroundings, and even Tractor had startlingly blue eyes which he could cover with a tough Plexiglass shield.
“How can that stuff get him high?” I asked Stretch, sipping meditatively.
“Psychological. It disturbs his balance and throws off his sense of direction, and afterwards he feels like shit. So he’s convinced himself that he’s having a great time. Not a lot different from drinking this stuff.” Stretch took a huge gulp of bootleg beer.
A couple of the revelers were laying out a makeshift race track, contoured by oil-rags on sticks. A man with metal spider-legs and a wheeled giant with a barrel chest seemed to be the favorites to win the race. Over in a corner, John Doe was demonstrating his quick draw shotgun arm to a circle of admirers. He was pointing out the latest features of Dr Payne’s surgical skills, and one of his listeners started to sketch excitedly.
“What did you do, Stretch?” I asked. “Before” I stopped, embarrassed.
“Before Dr Payne?” He shifted his narrow body, and sipped bourbon. “Same sort of job as you, really. I was a traveling preacher-man. Used to fill the big tent in five minutes. Served up lies to the yokels, took a few pennies, sent ‘em home feeling a little better than before. He looked at me with his piercing eyes. “That offends you, doesn’t it? A two-bit con-artist comparing himself to a famous soap star like yourself.”
I pressed my back against the wall, watching the revelers in the smoky light. “I might have been offended a couple of months ago,” I told him. “Not now. What are we all doing down in the Warren, but feeding garbage to the yokels. Your audience at least went away feeling a little splinter of hope. All I ever did for my audience was to drug their minds. I used to think I was a good actor, when, in fact I was an obnoxious arrogant bastard. Even my fellow thespians couldn’t stand me.” I grabbed a beer and took a deep pull. “You know, they have software in the Warren that writes most of the plot, the stage directions, and even the dialog for the soaps. There’s even software that will patch in an appropriate ad-lib when you forget. Pretty soon, the programmers will tape a few scenes and gestures, and the computer will take over completely. You’ll see a virtual William L Jones spouting the same old trash forever. So much for my talents.” I finished my bourbon and chased it away with another beer. “No, Stretch, you’re a leader. You’ve saved these men, given them hope. You don’t want to be comparing yourself with the likes of me.”
I pointed to silver Olive, talking quietly to Lawrence. “You have the love of a beautiful woman.” I realized I was getting a little maudlin, but Stretch startled me.
“Leave it,” he snapped. “Don’t patronize me, I’m not a fool.” He looked across the room at the silver lady. “See the way she’s talking to Lawrence. Can you blame her?” She’ll leave with you guys and I won’t try to stop her. She deserves better than me.”
I laughed at him. “She loves you, Stretch. Don’t tell me you can’t see it. Lawrence is a third-rate actor, just like me.” I looked into his eyes. “You’re a leader, a special person.”
He stood unsteadily and glared at me. “Don’t push your luck, William. This bunch of mechanical freaks has agreed to help you because it gives us a purpose in life. Leave it at that. Don’t try to torment us, we’ve been through too much already.” He stormed away, and I wondered for a second what had come over him.
Then it hit me. I had been talking to Stretch, the man. I’d looked into his eyes and seen him as a person. I saw them all as human, a pretty tough bunch of survivors. I’d see them as human now for as long as I lived. I’d compare them favorably with any bunch of people I’d ever met, and on equal terms. Stretch and his people had accepted that they were mechanical freaks. Perhaps it was the only way they could live with themselves. I shook my head. Dr Payne should have died harder.

“No guns,” I said when they came clattering over like a platoon of soldiers that had just gone through hell and was ready for one more suicide mission. The weapons they had wouldn’t have gotten them past a couple of security guards in the Warren. Our strength lay in their fearsome appearance, and John’s arm attachment.
“How’s your arm, John,” I asked worriedly, and he told me it was a bit stiff, but ready for action.
“Half an hour,” Stretch said. “We’ll be half an hour,” and the old bus rattled into life as we crammed ourselves into its ramshackle interior. Olive drove unerringly through basements and tunnels and slime covered sewers. For a while we were in a ditch, and could see the late afternoon sun above. Then we drove down a steep ramp, skidding and screeching into the darkness. “This used to be one of your supply routes,” Stretch commented, “but it hasn’t been used in years.” Finally we fetched up against a solid steel door, huge and immovable. I looked at Stretch questioningly and he grinned. “We don’t need guns,” he told me. “We’re our own weapons.”
The wide center doors of the bus opened, and the tractor-man rolled out, landing with a thump, and causing the bus springs to groan with relief. He backed up and surveyed the door, before approaching and extending a metal arm. There was a blinding flash, and I watched with amazement as he started cutting through the thick steel. “He told me, he wants to see your engineers, not your doctors,” Stretch told me. “He’s gotten used to being a machine. He wants to be smoother, lighter, and stronger.”
“Jesus,” John muttered behind me.
“We have to smash this down when he’s done,” Stretch said.
“Won’t that make a lot of noise?” I asked nervously.
“Sure it will,” he said. “So be prepared, Mr. Actor, to talk to your people. Be prepared to convince them that we’re not invading their nice little Warren.”
I waited nervously, and Lawrence stepped up. “I’ll be there, too,” he said. “Most of the Securities will be Jonesy’s men, but there’ll be a ton of reporters. How long has it been since we’ve had news like this?” He was right. And there’d be plenty of light on us from inside the Warren. Unfortunately the cyborgs would also be on display.
The tractor had stopped and now two or three of the more beefy metal men were making an awful racket, banging and smashing at the weakened door with anything they could lay their hands on. “Tell them to take their time,” I told Stretch. We need to let the news media get here.”
“Didn’t I see a bullhorn, up in the luggage rack?”, Lawrence asked thoughtfully.
“Could be,” one of the cyborgs answered. “This used to be a tour bus.” He chuckled. “One of yours, Mole.”
By now, all the Cyborgs were out of the bus, whooping like drunken sports fans on tour. They looked like the army from hell, and I wondered what they’d look like to the Moles, fresh from the comfort of their warm, safe burrows. “Stretch,” I said. When we’re ready to roll the door back, I want you guys to move away. I’ll make a little speech, and then I want the Moles to see Lawrence and myself, and two of the least threatening of our new allies. John, are you up for this?” He nodded, and I turned to Olive. “How about you? I asked. “Will you help us?”
“No, she won’t,” Stretch said, “Let ‘em shoot at me.”
“Of course I will, William.” Olive turned on Stretch. “Thank you kindly, Stretch, I appreciate it, but you know I’m the best choice.” Her voice hardened. “And you know I always do exactly as I please.”
I felt a little ashamed. “I know it’s a lot to ask,” I told her, “and it’s not your fight, but they’re less likely to shoot at you than the others.”
“You’d better be right,” Stretch said. “If anything happens to her, You’ll pay for it.”

CHAPTER 11 – The Power of Television
We made sure that the steel door collapsed outwards, slamming down like a giant fist and wafting the warm dry air of the Warren towards us. I saw a mass of Moles silhouetted against some hastily erected TV backdrops, and a reassuring multitude of cameras, some with logos from as far as the California warrens, focused on us.
Stretch turned on the bus headlights, and the four of us were spotlighted – actors on a dark stage. I waited for bullets or stun-pellets to rip into us, but all I heard was the busy whirr of the cameras. The cyborgs were shrouded in darkness, and we held center stage.
Lawrence lifted his bullhorn and spoke in sonorous tones. “We come in peace!” he boomed and I almost laughed. “Well, what do you expect,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth. “I’m an actor, not a writer.”
“You all know me,” he continued, “Lawrence Blake, star of the soap operas.” He drew himself up. “I gave up an illustrious career to work for this meeting. For five years I’ve been an ambassador for you good Warren people. I’ve lived amongst the Topsiders, shared their hardships.” He was warming up, fired by some inner vision of political power. “What we have here,” he continued, “is a historic reunion of the two peoples of Chicago.” He went on for a long time, crafting a persuasive speech. It was obvious that Lawrence saw himself as the first Mayor of a united Chicago. He introduced me as his assistant, and John as a high-level Topside representative and John remembered to wave his good arm just in time. He spoke about the amazing strides that Topsiders had made in the past few years, and he introduced Olive Mahoney, silver and elegant, and Olive bowed to the crowd.
I could feel the Moles holding their collective breaths. Moles regarded Topsiders as little more than barbarians. Olive jerked them out of their complacency. She was a work of art, they had no idea of who or what she was, but she had walked out of the wilderness that they thought was Topside, and they started to speculate on what was going on up there.
Then Jonesy came marching through the crowd at the head of a small army of securities. I grabbed the bullhorn, shouting “here’s the man of the moment, folks, a man of great vision and courage who saw what had to be done, and went ahead, despite tremendous obstacles.” I dashed forward and grabbed the open-mouthed security chief as if he were my long-lost brother. “Smile for the cameras, you bastard,” I muttered through my TV smile, “or I’ll break your goddam ribs.” I marched him to a bank of TV mikes as if we were joined at the hip.
With all the cameras focused on him, Jonesy had no choice but to grin through his teeth. I introduced him as the brains behind ‘this historic event’, carefully describing the Underground Railroad and the secret meetings between Lawrence and the Security Chief. Then I shoved a mike in his face. He stuttered a little and modestly declared that he was only a figurehead, that the real force behind ‘this radical idea’ was Big Dee herself. His little army of securities was fidgeting uneasily in the background, unsure of what to do, so I called them up to the mike. Through the miracle of television, I announced to all the Mole cities in the United States that a joint Mole/Topside security force had been set up in Chicago to monitor the reintegration process. With my arm around his neck and shoulders and our motley army of Cyborgs just beyond the lights, Jonesy could only squirm and grind his teeth. “Tell your guys to wrap it up,” I said, and Jonesy, sensing an opening ordered his troops to clear the area, at about the same time as Stretch and his mutants moved into the limelight to give a helping claw.
I held my breath. Some of the cameramen gasped and the Chicago securities paused indecisively. “Tell them to clear the area,” I ordered Jonesy, and keep an eye on John’s shotgun arm while you’re doing it.” He nodded to his people, and, gingerly, the half-men and security moles cooperated in moving the cameramen down the corridor, where doubtless they rushed to temporary studios to report and analyze the first real news story in a couple of hundred years. “Let’s get in the bus,” I told him and he stiffened. His men surrounded us, about fifty of them now, with no cameras to inhibit them.

CHAPTER 12 – Friends and Enemies
“You’re a dead man,” Jonesy told me, and I answered him without hesitation.
“You too, Jonesy. I can shove this knife through about five major organs before they take me out.” I had no knife, the securities carried weapons far more powerful than Stretch and his small band could deploy, and I assumed that, whatever else, Jonesy had enough guts to call my weak bluff. But, surprisingly, he held his peace. He was nervous, jumpy, and I remembered him, twenty floors up, his back to the vast geometry of Chicago, out of his element. It was the same now, and his eyes flicked nervously from Stretch to Tractor, to the other monstrosities that Dr Payne had created. I realized that this was how he saw them – frighteningly different - monstrous, evil. Jonesy and his kind could never accept the Topsiders, let alone the Cyborgs who I knew as individual human beings despite their appearance. They were terrified, and they would never again emerge from their underground burrows.
I stepped away from him. “Where’s Dee,” I demanded. “Take me to her, or I’ll tell them” I nodded towards the half-men, “to tear you apart.” He crumbled then. Surrounded by demons, all he wanted to do was get back to his warm, safe underground chamber.
“She’s fine,” he started.
“She’d better be.” I cut him off. “I want to see her now, and the boys are coming with me.”
We made an interesting tableau as we traveled to the heart of the Warren, inward and down to where the vast underground enterprise was run. Workers and executives gawped at us from hot little offices, and I realized how much I had changed. Not too long ago, this was the depth of luxury, and though I had denied it, even to myself, this is what I had wanted and thought I deserved. The offices got bigger and gaudier and more smoke-filled, and the half-men stared at the pert little half-undressed secretaries as we moved towards Dees’ quarters. Then Jonesy turned down a side corridor and I grabbed his arm. “We had to lock her up,” he said, “for her own good.” John grabbed my arm, and Lawrence murmured soothingly, and, with an effort I calmed down.
Her cell was comfortable enough, a suite of offices with a private bathroom and locks and alarms on every door. She ran to me and was in my arms before I noticed the black eye. “I’m sorry I got you into this, William,” she said. “You should have stayed up there.” Her eyes widened as she took in Lawrence and Molly and the cyborgs, crowding in behind Jonesy and his securities. “Let me introduce you to some friends of mine,” I said.
A couple of hours later I had told Dee about our adventures and we were in the Boardroom, seated around an oak table that looked as big and solid as a battleship. Dee and Lawrence and I faced Jonesy and ten of the twelve directors. The other two, supporters of Big Dee were ‘unavailable’ Jonesy declared. In the stifling confines of the lower reaches of the Warren, Jonesy was in his element, arrogant and confident. Only the presence of the Cyborgs, scattered amongst his securities, kept a precarious balance. We were negotiating armistice, not quite surrender.

CHAPTER 13 – Of Moles and Morons
Big Dee was magnificent. She laid out her vision for them all to hear. We would share our technology with the Topsiders, work together as equals, start to look outwards again, and upwards towards the stars. They didn’t hear a word. Jonesy sat like a rock, eyes blank as she spun her tale of hope and change. Pretty soon they’d begin to fidget, and Jonesy would decide to make a move and it would be all over. Big Dee stood no chance of converting these zombies. She paused for a drink of water and I stood up.
“It’s not working, Dee,” I said. “I guess Jonesy’s been too clever for us.” Dee and Jonesy looked at me in amazement. “Oh,” I said casually, “with these boys,” nodding at the Cyborgs, we could probably do a lot of damage; maybe even fight our way out of here.” I paused. “But even with our superior numbers and weapons we’d be hard put to keep a lid on this place.” I couldn’t believe that Jonesy was listening to this nonsense, but he was staring at me hard, paranoia showing. I could almost see his vision of a vast conspiracy of superhuman Cyborgs, poised and ready to tunnel into his little empire. I glanced at Dee, who was looking at me in horror. “Give us an hour,” I said, “and we’ll get back to you with a proposal that we can all live with.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing!” she yelled at me in the antechamber. “You, of all people, I trusted. You want to sell out to them, you bastard.”
Surprisingly, it was Lawrence who came to my rescue. “I sold you out,” he said. “Years ago.” He put his hands on her shoulders, and I felt a twinge of jealousy. “You’ve been down here too long, Dee. There aren’t many people like you. A lot of the Moles want to stay underground. They’re like Jonesy, terrified. It doesn’t matter how right you are, they’re not ready to come out of the burrow, and probably never will be.” He faced both of us. “And there’s something neither of you seems to have thought of. I’ve been Topside for five years, now, and they don’t like you – us. They feel as threatened by you, and your science, and your money as Jonesy does by the Cyborgs, and the open space above ground.” He shook his head. “Dee, what you need to do is tell them that we need to confer with the City authorities. Maybe we can bluff the Directors and get out of here.”
Dee looked at us both. “Then what.” She stroked my face. “William, you told me he’s training an army up there, and building weapons down here.” She shook her head. “It seems as if I lost the battle years ago. Lawrence is right. I’ve been down here much too long.” She stretched and paced the small room. “I can’t just leave them, though. This is my fault, in a way.” I started to protest, and tried to hold her, but she waved me away, strong even in defeat. “You can see, both of you, that I have to stay and fight, even if I have no chance. Dammit, I wish there was another way.”
“You know,” I said. “If there was a vote, possibly five, six hundred would jump at the chance to go Topside, and maybe twice that number would follow later.” I looked at Lawrence. “That would be enough for a small, self-sufficient organization, out in the suburbs, with some help from the Topsiders. And we wouldn’t be a threat to anyone.”
“What makes you think Jones and the Directors will allow us to just get up and go,” Dee asked skeptically.
“Jonesy,” I said. “He’s the only one that counts. What if we offer to move out with all the rebels and malcontents, the people he can’t control? What if we tell him that he’s won, that we’ll get out of his way?”
“What are we going to do with a bunch of rebels and malcontents?” Lawrence asked dubiously.
“They’re the only ones that count,” I told him. You know who will want to come with us?”
“The people with some creativity left,” Dee interrupted. “The ones with vision and new ideas. With the vision and new ideas that we stifle down here. The best writers, some of the actors.”
“The scientists,” I added. “Doctors, engineers, sociologists, architects.” I took a deep breath. “If we work it right, we can swing most of the scientists working on his weapons. He won’t even realize until they’ve gone. He’ll have his army of securities, his shuttles and his bombs. But he won’t have what counts, the brains that made them, the ideas that improved them.” I was warming to the idea. “Do either of you see any other way?”
It was easier than we thought. Jonesy was obsessed with his empire under the ground. We all knew that most of the Moles would want to stay in the safety of the Warren, and Jonesy was certain that he could build up his army and remain invulnerable. He figured he could get us out of his hair, and deal with us as soon as he was good and ready.
We spread the word that the Chicago Warren was going to set up a Topside division, and Jonesy spread the word that anyone who joined us would have no more future in the underground Warren. Some of the best writers signed up with Dee, and from the beginning we practiced a kind of electoral triage, concentrating on the minority who could still accept change. Dee asked the head of our medical research division to look at the Cyborgs to see if anything could be done for them, and he refused, muttering something about ‘creatures of the Devil.’ Dee told him to go to Hell, and we added another powerful enemy to our list. His young assistant and a few doctors joined us, and we moved our quarters up a few floors to accommodate them. Jonesy gloated that we’d all get nosebleed if we moved any higher.
The next month was a cross between an election rally, a referendum, and a volunteer drive, as we tried to spread the word, hampered by the securities, constantly moving our quarters upwards. For the last week we were near the surface, in draughty and decrepit quarters, but surprisingly few people gave up and left, and we began bleeding equipment out of the Warren and trucking it to the suburb where I had met the late Dr Payne.

CHAPTER 14 – Tomorrow
In the end, we numbered over seven hundred, and we set off in our air-conditioned electric trucks, with enough concentrated food to last a month. It was early summer, and it felt wonderful to be in the fresh air again. Only a few complained about bugs and breezes and the absence of tablecloths and cocktail parties. These few wandered back to the Warren, and within twenty-four hours we had jury-rigged a studio and were broadcasting good solid news material to Chicago and other cities. Lawrence and John Doe went off to re-occupy the city manager’s office and to root out Jonesy’s troops, and the following day we received a visit from the Mayor and the Chief of Police. John was with them, and he didn’t look too happy as we all sat down for a conference.
The Mayor was a craggy Irishman, who looked like everyone’s grandfather, if you discounted the broken nose and wrestlers shoulders. The Chief looked pretty well the same, with the addition of a long scar on his cheek. It was obvious from the start that these men had not reached the top of the tree by being charming and photogenic. The Mayor came straight to the point. “This is City property. If you want to live here, you have to pay taxes and rent.”
“I love you, too,” I murmured and the Chief glared at me.
“We’re not generating any income, yet,” Dee said gently. “We’ve already offered whatever help and services we have. Look,” she pointed out of the window of the modest building that we were still repairing. “We’re not living much better than your citizens. You both know we can help each other.” She paused. “And you both know that, given a chance we can generate enough income to pay any reasonable rent and taxes you want.”
The Mayor looked uncomfortable, and the Chief pursed his lips. “You’re a Mole,” he said. “Until a few days ago, you headed up the Chicago Warren. If you got thrown out without feathering your nest beforehand, you’re a fool.”
“You want us to line your pockets, so you can..” I started to say, angrily, and the Chief held me in an iron grip, choking me. For a frozen moment I looked past his enraged face to see John with his good hand covering his face, and Dee, ready to fight.
“Let him go,” was all she said, and the Chief subsided. “And you,” she turned to me. “Next time you fuck up, I won’t interfere.” Dee was learning Topside politics quickly. She looked at the two city leaders steadily. “He’s right, though. Assuming I have assets, why should I hand them over to you. What guarantee do I have that they’ll be used to benefit our city.”
“Our city,” the Chief sputtered, and the Mayor laughed.
“Miz Dee,” he said, turning into a wise old grandfather. “Can we talk alone for a minute.”
“You remind me of my old granddad,” she told him. “He was a union leader. Before that, he robbed banks. No, we need to do this above board. Two of us and two of you. I’ll trust John to be the impartial observer.”
The Mayor sighed. “Twenty years ago,” he said, “this city was divided up and ruled by rival gangs. Some of it still is. Mahoney, here, and I, were the two biggest, toughest Robber Barons. Then, twenty years ago, it seemed like the right time to go a step further, and we teamed up and started to impose some law and order on this place, where we’ve lived all our lives.” He got up and went over to the window, peering out at the construction outside. “I understand that there was almost bloodshed when you were deposed, Dee.” He looked at her earnestly. “How do you think it is with us?” He sighed. “We have our constituents to pacify, and they want your blood. They may be satisfied if we take most of your equipment, and most of your profits.” He turned to the ex-storekeeper. “Tell them how it is, John.”
“They know how it is,” John told them. “What they don’t know is that you still live in a run-down house, next door to Mahoney’s place, that you live like the rest of the citizens, unlike our illustrious City Manager.”
“I see,” Dee murmured. “And you’re saying that, if I did have some money stashed away, I should give it to you, and you two ex gang-bangers will spend it wisely for the good of the community.” I glanced at Dee, wondering what game she was playing.
The Mayor laughed. “Hell, no,” he said. “We’d be off to the Bahamas or one of those places where deposed dictators live. No, if you have money, we want to see it in the city bank account, all legal and accountable.” He smiled at her. “We do have a banking system up here, you know, and a few self-taught lawyers.”
“OK,” Dee said airily. “You were right. I do have money, in the underground banking system, and in the Bahamas, and in Australia. I need to get rid of it, it’s just a crutch. I need to start taking chances again.” She looked out of the window at the distant skyline. “I need something cast-iron in return.”
Once again the Mayor looked uncomfortable. “There’s nothing we can offer, except time, and a chance to work your way into the community. To be honest, you’d be better off someplace like Australia, or the Bahamas.”
“First,” Dee went on, as if he had not spoken, “we need a five year lease out here.” She looked at the city leaders. “Once I start pulling money out of my accounts, Jonesy and his people will try to freeze them. So, I’m going to grab it all, from all my accounts, and I’ll transfer it all to the Topside city of Chicago. Now, that’s going to leave me vulnerable.”
“Whoa,” the Chief interrupted. “How much is all?”
“About seventeen billion credits, give or take a few million,” Dee said, and even the mayor looked surprised. “That’s about five year’s budget for you, for hospitals, schools, defense, and investment. And we have scientists and doctors; we’ll share whatever we have.”
“I think,” the Mayor told her, “that we may be able to manage a five-year lease.”
“And police protection, if you need it,” Mahoney added.
“After a while, we won’t need it,” Dee assured him.
“What’s number two?” the Mayor asked her.
“Come on outside,” she said.
The sun was shining on the spires of Chicago, and Sears Tower, whole and unbroken, pointed at the sky. Dee pointed with a steady arm. “I want that,” she told us.
We gawped at her, and she shook her head. “Just the top few floors,” she said. “For my new transmitter. You can tell your people I work for the City, or for the City Manager. I don’t mind what you say.” She took a deep breath. “With our knowledge and your drive, we’ll have satellites up there again in a few years, and I want to broadcast to the world. I want us to look up again, at the stars, and dream again.” She looked at the Mayor. “That’s number two.”
I thought about the long journey ahead, the gradual reintegration of Topsiders and Moles, the slow effort to change our perceptions of each other. The Mayor must have been thinking along the same lines. He scratched his head. “Craziest idea I ever heard,” he muttered, “but we can deed you the top ten floors, if you can make them safe. If you can get that money for us.”
“We’ll start now,” she said. “Our computers will have it done in five minutes.”
The Mayor blinked. “Five minutes,” he said, “seventeen billion credits.” He coughed. “And when do you want to take over the top ten floors of the largest derelict building in the world.”
Dee was still looking at the skyline, and the sky above it. “There’s no hurry,” she said. “I want to look at the stars tonight.” She turned towards us, smiling serenely. “Tomorrow will be fine.”

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 25.04.2010

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