Only Forward. Michael Marshall Smith
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Название: Only Forward
Автор: Michael Marshall Smith
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Классическая проза
isbn: 9780007325368
isbn:
These were not crack troops, wired up and itching for action. They were just a couple of cops, bored but content with their lot, sipping coffee and cheerfully telling each other fibs which both knew the other wouldn’t believe. The guns on the desk weren’t machine guns, but just a pair of old-fashioned revolvers. Maybe Snedd had been the last outsider to make an intrusion, and after eight years security had become a little lax.
What I couldn’t do was risk the chance of the sound of shots echoing up the tunnel, and so I had something else in mind. I crept forward inch by inch until I was little more than ten yards away, and then stopped. The tunnel was becoming too light, and I didn’t dare go any further forward. I felt in my jacket pocket for the device, steeled myself, and then snapped forward at a sprint.
I got to within a couple of yards before either noticed me, and that was far enough. By the time they were rising to their feet I was vaulting onto the desk, judging my landing so that one foot kicked the guns off onto the floor. I spun round and kicked the lamp very firmly into the wall. It smashed, plunging the tunnel into utter darkness. Then I leapt off the desk and after a few yards hurled the device back in their general direction. It hit the desk and detonated with a barely audible crump, and the two guards immediately started sneezing, coughing and sniffing.
Then I ran like hell. As I sprinted soundlessly up the tunnel I kept a listen out for sounds of pursuit, but they soon faded into the distance. A hacking cough reached me every now and then, but that was all.
The device I threw was a Flu Bomb. Anyone within a two-yard range when it detonates instantaneously goes down with a really dismal dose of flu. Runny nose, headache, chesty cough, aching muscles, the whole works. Not in the least fatal, but all you want to do is go home, wrap up warm and watch old films while drinking gallons of hot lemon and honey. The absolute last thing you feel like doing is pelting down a dark tunnel after some lunatic and possibly being shot in the process. It just doesn’t appeal.
I knew they’d be back there somewhere, dutifully trudging up the pipe and miserably complaining to each other about the aches in their backs, but as far as catching me went, they were out of the frame.
After a few hundred yards the tunnel opened into a dimly-lit room, and as I sped through I noticed an elevator in one corner. That was obviously the way the guards got down here, but as it doubtless opened in a police station it was no use to me. After the room the tunnel returned to its previous size and I raced up it, knowing I didn’t have much time.
After another quarter mile I came to a junction. Following Snedd’s route I pelted up the left fork. The gradual upward slope of the pipe was levelling out, and I guessed that I was now only about a few yards below street level. I ignored the first ladder I passed, and the second, but when I came to the third I leapt up at it and shinned quietly to the top. Above me was a manhole, and I paused for the briefest of moments, forgetting about the Centre, about Red, about Sound and Natsci, and just thinking Stable, Stable, Stable.
The world is very small, I thought, and I like it that way. I’m very lucky and content to be here, because outside the wall is a lethal wasteland. I know, because I’ve seen it, heard about it, learnt about it in school. We tried expansion, tried to go further than we should, and look what happened. The whole thing was a complete disaster. No, I’m really very happy where I am. Oh look, it’s eleven o’clock: think I’ll go to bed.
Then I shoved the manhole up, moved it to the side and popped out onto the street.
‘And finally, the main points again. The rate of inflation has fallen for the third month running, to 4.5 per cent.
‘Colette Willis, gold medallist in the Stable Games, has broken the 100-metres breaststroke record for the fourth time.
‘Scientists from the Principle Institute agree that estimates on levels of external toxicity may have to be revised upwards again. It now appears that the level of radiation outside Stable will remain at fatal levels for at least another two hundred years.
‘The weather: tomorrow will be a bright day, with light rain between 9.00 and 10.05 a.m.
‘That’s it from us: we’ll leave you with more footage of Gerald the talking duck. Goodnight.’
Half an hour later I was sitting nonchalantly in a cafe about a mile away, drinking a rather nice cup of coffee, smoking a relaxed cigarette and reading the paper. Stable scientists had run yet more tests, I read, and were now sadly confident that it would be at least three hundred years before it was safe to go out. That story was on page six. Good news about the economy was on the cover, sports on pages two and three, and some duck that could talk took up most of four. Sooner or later I was going to have to get on with the job, but for the time being I felt I deserved a coffee. It was now twelve o’clock, after all, and I hadn’t had one since leaving the apartment. I was in, I was alive, and everything was going according to plan.
Okay, I admit I was kind of lucky in the tunnel. Three guys with machine guns would have been more of a handful. The plan, if you’re interested, was to throw the Flu Bomb so that it broke the light as it detonated, and then run and jump.
Would have been a bit touch and go, I admit, but there you are. What can I say? I had a lucky break for once: do you begrudge me that? Well, shut up then.
There were only three people in the backstreet into which I emerged from the tunnel, an old man with a dog and a young housewife pushing a baby in a pram. At first they did look mildly surprised to see me, but I had a plan.
‘Well,’ I said, dusting off my hands, ‘you don’t need to worry about that any more!’
They had no idea what I was talking about, of course, but it sounded reassuring so they forgot about the whole thing and went about their business. I strode confidently up the street, head held high, quietly content that everything was so nice in here when there was only a radioactive wasteland outside. I turned the corner into a busy shopping street and slowed my pace to an apparent dawdle, looking in the windows and taking in the scenery. I say ‘apparent’ because, though I took care to look like just one of the strolling masses out on a Saturday afternoon, I was actually making sure that I got some distance between the wall and myself.
Stable was actually rather nice, I decided. The ceiling of the Neighbourhood was so high that there was enough atmosphere and haze to partially obscure the fact that it was there at all. The wide streets had trees dotted along either side, and every now and then there was a little park. No one was using a portable phone or trying to one-up other people on their knowledge of staff motivation theory; they weren’t using a prostitute or casually disposing of a body. They were just lolling about on the grass or walking their dogs.
The goods in the shop windows were all very old-fashioned, but nicely designed: the whole place was like a time capsule, a living museum of life. There are older places in The City, but none where life is still lived the way it was. You can see fragments, but not the whole picture, and it made me feel very nostalgic. Zany five-wheeled cars pulled slowly through the crowded streets, and the phone kiosks clearly weren’t built to allow you to see who you were talking to.
I hadn’t realised how weird being in Stable would actually feel. This was all they knew. As far as they were concerned, this was how things were. They still had neighbourhoods with a small n, and little houses with driveways and gardens; they still had two-dimensional televisions; they still lived together СКАЧАТЬ