The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1. Adam Thirlwell

back the long way round. Greg, will you?’

      ‘I don’t know if I should.’ Gregson played helplessly with his coffee. ‘Franz, how can there be free space? How?’

      ‘That’s what I’m going to find out,’ Franz said. ‘Think of it as my first physics practical.’

      

      Passenger distances on the transport system were measured point to point by the application of a = √ b² + c² + d². The actual itinerary taken was the passenger’s responsibility, and as long as he remained within the system he could choose any route he liked. Tickets were checked only at the station exits, where necessary surcharges were collected by an inspector. If the passenger was unable to pay the surcharge – ten cents a mile – he was sent back to his original destination.

      Franz and Gregson entered the station on 984th Street and went over to the large console where tickets were automatically dispensed. Franz put in a penny and pressed the destination button marked 984. The machine rumbled, coughed out a ticket, and the change slot gave him back his coin.

      ‘Well, Greg, goodbye,’ Franz said as they moved towards the barrier. ‘I’ll see you in about two weeks. They’re covering me down at the dormitory. Tell Sanger I’m on Fire Duty.’

      ‘What if you don’t get back, Franz?’ Gregson asked. ‘Suppose they take you off the Sleeper?’

      ‘How can they? I’ve got my ticket.’

      ‘And if you do find free space? Will you come back then?’

      ‘If I can.’

      Franz patted Gregson on the shoulder reassuringly, waved and disappeared among the commuters.

      He took the local Suburban Green to the district junction in the next county. The Green Line train travelled at an interrupted 70 m.p.h. and the ride took two and a half hours.

      At the junction he changed to an express elevator which lifted him out of the sector in ninety minutes, at 400 m.p.h. Another fifty minutes in a Through-Sector Special brought him to the Mainline Terminus which served the Union.

      There he bought a coffee and gathered his determination together. Supersleepers ran east and west, halting at this and every tenth station. The next arrived in seventy-two hours time, westbound.

      The Mainline Terminus was the largest station Franz had seen, a mile-long cavern thirty levels in depth. Hundreds of elevator shafts sank through the station and the maze of platforms, escalators, restaurants, hotels and theatres seemed like an exaggerated replica of the City itself.

      Getting his bearings from one of the information booths, Franz made his way up an escalator to Tier 15, where the Supersleepers berthed. Running the length of the station were two steel vacuum tunnels each three hundred feet in diameter, supported at thirty-four intervals by huge concrete buttresses.

      Franz walked along the platform and stopped by the telescopic gangway that plunged into one of the airlocks. Two hundred and seventy degrees true, he thought, gazing up at the curving underbelly of the tunnel. It must come out somewhere. He had forty-five dollars in his pocket, sufficient coffee and sandwich money to last him three weeks, six if he needed it, time anyway to find the City’s end.

      He passed the next three days nursing cups of coffee in any of the thirty cafeterias in the station, reading discarded newspapers and sleeping in the local Red trains which ran four-hour journeys round the nearest sector.

      When at last the Supersleeper came in he joined the small group of Fire Police and municipal officials waiting by the gangway, and followed them into the train. There were two cars; a sleeper which no one used, and a day coach.

      Franz took an inconspicuous corner seat near one of the indicator panels in the day coach, and pulled out his notebook ready to make his first entry.

       1st Day: West 270 °. Union 4,350.

      ‘Coming out for a drink?’ a Fire Captain across the aisle asked. ‘We have a ten-minute break here.’

      ‘No thanks,’ Franz said. ‘I’ll hold your seat for you.’

      Dollar five a cubic foot. Free space, he knew, would bring the price down. There was no need to leave the train or make too many inquiries. All he had to do was borrow a paper and watch the market averages.

       2nd Day: West 270 °. Union 7,550.

      ‘They’re slowly cutting down on these Sleepers,’ someone told him. ‘Everyone sits in the day coach. Look at this one. Seats sixty, and only four people in it. There’s no need to move around. People are staying where they are. In a few years there’ll be nothing left but the suburban services.’

      97 cents.

      At an average of a dollar a cubic foot, Franz calculated idly, it’s so far worth about $4 × 10²⁷.

      ‘Going on to the next stop, are you? Well, goodbye, young fellow.’

      Few of the passengers stayed on the Sleeper for more than three or four hours. By the end of the second day Franz’s back and neck ached from the constant acceleration. He managed to take a little exercise walking up and down the narrow corridor in the deserted sleeping coach, but had to spend most of his time strapped to his seat as the train began its long braking runs into the next station.

       3rd Day: West 270 °. Federation 657.

      ‘Interesting, but how could you demonstrate it?’

      ‘It’s just an odd idea of mine,’ Franz said, screwing up the sketch and dropping it in the disposal chute. ‘Hasn’t any real application.’

      ‘Curious, but it rings a bell somewhere.’

      Franz sat up. ‘Do you mean you’ve seen machines like this? In a newspaper or a book?’

      ‘No, no. In a dream.’

      Every half day’s run the pilot signed the log, the crew handed over to their opposites on an Eastbound sleeper, crossed the platform and started back for home.

      125 cents.

      $8 × 10²⁸.

       4th Day: West 270 °. Federation 1,225.

      ‘Dollar a cubic foot. You in the estate business?’

      ‘Starting up,’ Franz said easily. ‘I’m hoping to open a new office of my own.’

      He played cards, bought coffee and rolls from the dispenser in the washroom, watched the indicator panel and listened to the talk around him.

      ‘Believe me, a time will come when each union, each sector, almost I might say, each street and avenue will have achieved complete local independence. Equipped with its own power services, aerators, reservoirs, farm laboratories …’

      The car bore.

      $6 × 10⁷⁵.

       5th Day: West 270 °. 17th Greater Federation.

      At a kiosk on the station Franz bought a clip of razor blades and glanced at the brochure put out by the local chamber of commerce.

      ‘12,000 levels, 98 cents a foot, unique Elm Drive, fire safety records unequalled …’

      He went back to the train, shaved, and counted the thirty dollars left. He was now ninety-five million Great-Miles from the suburban station on 984th Street and he knew he could not delay his return much longer. Next time he would save up a couple of thousand.

      $7 × 10¹²⁷.

       7th Day: West 270 °. 212th Metropolitan Empire.

      Franz peered at the indicator.

      ‘Aren’t we stopping here?’ he asked a man three seats away. ‘I wanted to find out the market average.’

      ‘Varies.