Omega (30 page)

There was one possibility and it was a risky one. The first step in it, Philip achieved within two days. He applied at the appropriate office for a Surface pass for an inspection trip and while he was there noticed from which drawer the blank pass was taken and where the rubber stamp was kept. He also remarked to the clerk who dealt with him that the office air-conditioning extractor was unduly noisy, and promised to come back after his inspection trip to take a look at it. He then went to his chief for his signature on the pass and paid his visit to Surface for a quite unnecessary examination of a roof-top intake near Mornington Crescent.

When he got back, he made his promised inspection of the office extractor, which took half an hour because he removed the grille to do it. Cleaning the grille did reduce the noise, so the clerk was quite unsuspicious - and quite unaware, too, that during one of his frequent trips into the next office, Philip had stolen and stamped three blank passes.

So far, so good. Philip was confident he could make a satisfactory forgery of his chief's signature on each of the passes. Meanwhile, Betty was busy altering Philip's spare uniform to fit herself, and sewing 'Maintenance' shoulder-flashes to it. There were women maintenance workers; no difficulty there.

It was the actual passing of the exit-guard that would be dangerous. Betty would be carrying equipment as Philip's assistant and her forged pass would bear a fictitious name. The exit-guard would have no reason to suspect them -unless it happened to be someone who had seen them together as man and wife. To minimize this possibility, they planned to use one of the outlying exits several kilometres from anywhere that Betty had visited. Philip did a reconnaissance, and found an empty room half a kilometre from the exit. There Betty could change, having brought her uniform bundled up in a shopping bag.

If the guard did suspect, he might ask for Betty's identity card; then, of course, they would be in trouble because Philip had found no way of obtaining a blank identity card and would not have been able to put a plasticated colour photograph of Betty on it if he had. But assuming they got past the guard, a pass that tallied with her identity card might be useful on Surface; hence the third stolen pass which Philip made out in her real name.

All was ready at last. There was no point in waiting, so they fixed their escape for the next morning.

On his last afternoon, Philip was busy - of which he was glad; having professional problems to think about kept him from getting nervous. He had to dismantle a filter that was giving trouble with the help of one of his men because it was an awkwardly placed job. They were almost enjoying swearing at the thing and wrestling with it. It had been installed by Philip's own firm and his assistant had worked for their biggest rival, which gave the assistant an excuse for some cheerfully disrespectful sarcasm - to which Philip, equally cheerfully, replied in kind.

Absorbed in their work and their cross-talk, they both jumped and almost dropped a heavy casing-panel when a nearby loudspeaker suddenly bellowed in their ears:

'Attention, all personnel. Attention, all personnel. Beehive Red has been ordered. I say again, Beehive Red has been ordered. All personnel with special duties to perform on the ordering
of
Beehive Red will proceed to them immediately. All other personnel will continue with their normal duties. The following security measures will be observed as from now: exit-guards will double-check all Surface passes that are presented to them,
by
telephoning the officers who signed them
for
confirmation that the Surface visits concerned are still essential. Without such confirmation, no holders
of
Surface passes will be permitted to leave Beehive. I say again...'

Talking far into the night, Philip and Betty still whispered from habit though they were growing hoarse with the effort.

'All that bloody work,' Philip said bitterly, after a couple of hours' discussion had got them nowhere. 'Theft, forgery and hours of bloody sewing. All for nothing. . . . For Christ's sake, I can't sleep. Want some coffee - or a scotch?'

'It had better be coffee. I'd like to get stinking drunk but it wouldn't help.'

Philip turned on the light and got out of bed, stumbling wearily and crossly about the cubicle, burning his fingers on the kettle and swearing. They nursed their cups, sitting side by side on the bed.

‘
What a
future,' Philip said at last. ‘
Me spending all day clambering about air-ducts, and you trying not to get beaten up, till the big quake comes. And
then,
God knows. Beehive
should
stand up to it but there's no telling.'

'Climbing about air-ducts,' Betty repeated, suddenly thoughtful.

Philip looked at her, puzzled. 'Keep me occupied, at least.'

'No, it's just
..
. Darling - how big are those air-ducts?' 'The trunk ones - quite big. Anything from sixty centimetres to a metre seventy-five.' 'All the way to Surface?'

He caught her meaning, suddenly, and said 'Jesus!' 'Well?'

'Hang on a moment - let me think . . . Oh, God, it'd be crazy.' 'Crazier than staying here?'

'Darling, it could take
hours.
...
I'd have to work it out on my charts, of course - there'd be fans to bypass, filters to get through - it'd be murder. You'd never make it.'

'Could
you?
'

'I guess so - probably - but what g
ood's that?' 'If you could, I
could. I'm slimmer than you and I'm pretty tough.'

Philip was silent for quite a while before he said: 'We might just make it. You know what, darling? We might just make it.'

Betty took his empty cup from his hands. 'Right, then. Now perhaps we can sleep. And tomorrow, you get studying your charts.'

Two days later, they were ready.

The climb would be very hard work but possible. Even the vertical shafts would be easy to climb because the large ones they would be using were fit
ted
with inspection-ladders. The problems would arise at the filters and fan-installations, of which there were several on the route Philip had planned. Some of the filters could be dismantled and replaced behind them, and all but one of the fans could be bypassed. But however they climbed, there were three places where they would have to emerge from inspection trap-doors into a corridor, and re-enter the duct through another trapdoor on the other side of the obstruction. They could have saved a lot of time by going directly via lift and corridor to the third of these open stretches, but that was ruled out because it could only be reached through areas for which Betty would have needed a special Security pass.

There was only one way to brave the open stretches; Betty must wear her maintenance uniform, and hope not to be seen - or at least not recognized - at those three perilous points.

They could take practically nothing with them apart from their anti-Dust respirators (compulsory at all times, in any case), all the money they had, and such small objects as they could stuff into their pockets. And, of course, the tools in the regulation maintenance kits they both carried - in Betty's case, as part of her disguise.

They debated whether it would be better to make their attempt during the day, or at night. Beehive corridors were swarming with the thousands of new arrivals brought in by the Beehive Red order, during the day; this would make busy maintenance workers less noticeable but on the other hand daytime meant a bigger danger of running into someone who knew Betty. In the end, they decided that four o'clock in the morning was the least risky time. Very few people would be about and anyone they did meet would surely accept that they were engaged in urgent work on the ventilation system; Philip was, after all, the official judge of that urgency.

Leaving their cubicle was a nervous business. Betty was still in her ordinary clothes, with her uniform in the shopping-bag. If they met anyone they knew, they could have been at a private party - but that shopping bag looked odd, they felt, and they were both very conscious of it. In the event, they met no one in the kilometre walk to the trapdoor they needed to start at, but there were still a few anxious minutes while Betty hid in a doorway till Philip had the trap open. They listened and she ran across. As soon as she was up the ladder a couple of metres out of his way, Philip came in after her and secured the trap-door behind them. Fortunately, they could be operated from both sides.

They climbed, against a steady and over-warm down-draught, for about a hundred metres till they reached a horizontal section of the duct. There, awkwardly in a sixty-centimetre space, Betty changed into her uniform - putting her other clothes in the shopping bag which had come with them till they found a suitable place to dump it.

They reached a filter, which took ten minutes to dismantle and replace - ten dirty and choking minutes, for the filter was excessively clogged. Philip caught himself making a mental note to find out why before he remembered that
i
t was no longer his concern.

Just beyond the filter, they came to the first of their three danger-spots. A fan-installation had to be passed by emerging into a dozen metres of public corridor.

'Stay out of sight till I tell you,' Philip whispered, 'and for God's sake keep that torch out.'

He unfastened the trap-door and peered out. The corridor was empty, so he climbed through, propping the trap cover on the floor. Then he walked to the second trap-door and began to unfasten it.

Footsteps.

His heart in his mouth, Philip forced himself to carry oh naturally. A man rounded the corner and stopped, looking at him. He wore the police-blue of Security.

'Hullo,' Philip said, without stopping his work.

'Hullo
...
What are you up to, sir?'

'Bloody temperature fluctuations on Level Three. Director got me out of bed. There's something clogging a filter somewhere.'

'Tough. . . . I'd better look at your ID, sir. Routine, you know. But everything's tightened up, since Beehive Red.'

'Sure.' Philip presented his card which not only identified him by name and photograph (a pity) but also gave his status of Senior Ventilation Officer (thank heaven). 'Hadn't the heart to get one of the lads up. They'd only just come off.'

'Thank you, sir.' The Security man gave him back his card and strolled on along the corridor to the other trapdoor. To Philip's horror, he stuck his head inside and pointed his torch about. After a few seconds he pulled his head out again, said chattily 'Never seen inside the ventilation - big, isn't it?', and moved away round the next corner.

Hardly believing their luck, Philip lowered the trap cover to the floor and hurried back to the first trap. When the Security man's footsteps were sufficiently faint, he called softly along the shaft: 'Betty? OK. Hurry.'

She slithered along the duct and joined him. He pointed to the second trap, and without a word she sprinted to it and disappeared.

When both trap-doors were back in place and he was beside her inside the duct, he whispered: 'How come he didn't see you?'

'Because I heard
you talking and got back round the bend, stupid.' 'I love you,' he said, fervently.

Danger point number two passed without incident; nobody came near, and they were out and in again quickly. There followed a long and tiring climb, with several more filters to dismantle and replace, and a nerve-racking squeeze past a whirling fan whose bypass door was not really supposed to be opened unless the fan was switched off at the control room. Philip hoped the duty man was not awake enough to notice the temporary drop in air pressure which must be registering on one of his dials.

At last, a mere hundred metres from Surface, they reached danger point number three, the last and worst.

'Now let's recap the drill,' Philip whispered before he began unfastening the door. 'There's a good half-minute walk between this and the other door, so we can't do it like the first two. We have to play this for real, with you as my assistant. Out of this trap and re-close it; then walk naturally to the other one and open it, together. OK?'

'OK.'

He unfastened the trap and climbed out; no one in sight, no footsteps to be heard. He beckoned to Betty and she jumped down beside him. She was very quick with her fingers and working together they had the trap-door re-fastened in seconds.

'Now,' he said, 'Quick but not too quick.'

The first corner; no o
ne. The second corner; no one.
They reached the trap-door and started to release the fastenings, two on each side. Philip had both his open while Betty was still struggling with the second.