The Missing Man (v4.1) Read Free Page A

counting
the distance. Sound arrives first through the ground, second through the air.
I’m waiting for the sound. I’ll get the distance by the time lag.”
    At thirty seconds the sound of the death of an
underseas city reached them, a strange sort of grinding roar, muffled, low and
distant.
    George shut his eyes again, and felt the world
change around him to another place.
    “Got something, George?” Ahmed asked
alertly. “That was about seven miles.”
    “Someone knows what happened. I’m picking
him up. Brooklyn Dome just collapsed.”
    “Twelve thousand inhabitants,” Ahmed
said, dialing his wrist radio grimly, his earphone plugged into his ear.
“No one answering at headquarters, just busy signals.”
    George shut his eyes again, exploring the other
place. “Someone’s having a nightmare,” he said. “He can’t wake
up.”
    “Don’t flip out, George, keep in touch with
facts. A lot of people just died, is all. Keep a grip on that. I’m trying to
get our orders.”
    George stood with his eyes shut, exploring the
sensation inside his head. Somewhere a man was trapped in a nightmare, half
asleep in a dark prison or closet. It was some kind of delirium.
    The real world was a cruel place that bright
day, but the black and coiling fragments of that man’s world were worse. There
was something important about the man’s thoughts. He had felt the explosion
thud at a distance, as they had, and he had known what it meant. He had
expected it.
    “Can’t locate where he is,” George
said, opening his eyes and regaining his grip on the bright sunshine world
around him.
    Ahmed squinted and tilted his head, listening to
the obscure and rapid voices on the earplugs of his radio.
    “Never mind about that case, George. That’s
Carl Hodges probably. He’ll keep. Headquarters is broadcasting general orders
for the emergency. Repair and services inspection people are ordered to make
quick inspections at all danger points in the automatic services, looking for
malfunction and sabotage. Repair and inspection teams are ordered into Jersey
Dome, to check out every part of it and make sure it is not gimmicked to blow
the way Brooklyn Dome went. They are instructed to describe it as a routine
safety check.”
    “What do we do? What about us?”
    “Wait, I’m listening. They mentioned us by
name. We go to Jersey underseas and try to locate and stop a sabotage agent who
might have sabotaged Brooklyn Dome and might be preparing to use the same
method on Jersey Dome.”
    “What method?”
    “They don’t know. They don’t even know if
there is a saboteur. They’re sending us to make sure.”
    “‘If there is a saboteur, he’s probably
working on it right now.” George walked, and then ran for the subway steps
down into the underground moving chair belts. Ahmed followed and they caught a
brace of abandoned chairs just as they slowed and accelerated them again out
into the fast lanes.
     
    “Dirty dogs! Let me out of here. I’ll kill
you.” Furiously Carl Hodges kicked and thrashed and bit at restraining
straps, remembering at last, believing his conclusions about the group of
teeners that had him prisoner. “You decerebrate lizards. Let me out of
here, you fools! You killed Brooklyn Dome. I’ve got to get back to work and
level off the exchanges before something else happens. Let me out of
here!”
    They backed off, their smiles fading at the
barrage of his anger. The tallest one answered with a trace of resentment.
“Don’t get upset, Pops. They weren’t real people, just technocrats and
objectivists and fascists and like that.”
    “They were techs. This city needs techs.
People with tech jobs run the city, remember?”
    The tall one leaned over him, glowering. “I
remember what my tapes tell me. The objectivists passed the law that the
compulsory sterility of women can’t be reversed without paying five hundred
dollars for the operation. That means if I ever want to get married I’ll have
to save five