Edward Llewellyn - Prelude to Chaos

“Then we’d better get back to the boat.”

“And lose this chance of seeing what’s inside? We may never get another as good!”

“We can reach the boat faster than anybody who spots us,” urged Barbara.

Some African tyrant had once remarked that nobody can outrun a bullet. I didn’t quote him, but whispered, “No shooting! For God’s sake—no shooting!”

“Then keep moving!” hissed Judith.

There is an Inuit saying to the effect that the woman walks behind the man so she can give him a push when he stops. I was being shoved by two women seized by the exploratory drive. “Okay—but one at a time. Go from cover to cover. Barbara, you guard the rear. I’ll go point.” And I inched forward toward the inspection station.

There was a light burning above the container platform but the glass-fronted inspection booth was dark and empty. I sent a brief flash back to signal Judith it was safe for her to move while I went on up the tunnel, passing one open gate after another, going deeper and deeper into the Pen.

An occasional light was burning—they had either brought in an auxiliary generator or the fusion reactor was still operating. Moving cautiously, I reached the main distribution hall. A single flood hung high above the vast room, now filled with containers. A place of shapes and shadows, but it seemed deserted. I signaled the women to join me and we crouched together between two containers, staring around us.

“They’ve been shipping stuff in here so fast they haven’t had time to stow,” muttered Barbara. “Chock-a-block’s the term!” She studied the doors around the hall. “Where to now?”

“Gavin—do you know your way from here to the Surveillance Center?”

“I think so. Why?”

“If we can reach it, and if the gear’s still operating, we can check out the whole place.”

“Christ—we’d have to get into the guard ring. All the doors are coded. And we don’t know the code.”

“Maybe the one I used to get us out might get us back. There’s no harm in trying.”

No harm unless by trying we’d set off every alarm in the place. “Judy, haven’t we seen enough?”

“Is this really the guy who made the break with you, Doc?” whispered Barbara.

I choked; stung by her derision and startled by the knowledge it implied.

“Quiet, brat!” snapped Judith. “Gavin, which of those doors leads to the ring?”

“That one in the corner—I think. I wasn’t allowed to wander free around here, you know!”

“Let’s try it!” Judith was away into the shadows, as silent as a shade.

“Relax, Mister Gavin!” Barbara squeezed my arm.

Being told to relax by a kid who had just questioned my courage made me reckless. I snapped, “Stay here!” and went after Judith. She was trying various half-remembered combinations on the lock and I was about to haul her off before she tripped an alarm when the door swung open onto a stairwell.

The next instant Barbara arrived. I held her back and stepped through the doorway. Dust lay heavy on the stairs.

Nobody had used them for a long time. “Landing by landing,” I whispered. “And one by one! Yes, I can see that nobody’s been here lately, but somebody might come here tonight.”

The surviving lights had probably been burning ever since the Pen had been abandoned as a prison. I began to get the impression that this surveillance circle, lying between the outer quarters where the guards had lived and the central prison complex, was either unknown or of no interest to whoever was using the place now. The dust was thick everywhere, many of the lights had burned out and never been replaced, and the whole section had a musty disused smell. But there was some positive pressure ventilation. so the fusion generator must still be running; no auxiliary could supply sufficient power to maintain the load of an installation this size.

We reached the top level and started down a corridor along which I had often gone under surveillance during my days as the Pen’s captive tech. By now my hopes that the whole place was unoccupied were rising. The door to the Surveillance Center opened to the same code as the doors behind us, and then we were standing in front of the array of screens and controls I had serviced more than two years before.

Dusty and deserted like everywhere else. The screens were blank. The speakers were silent. Barbara stared around her. “So this is where they watched what you were up to. Quite a rig!”

“Wonder if it’s still working?” Judith stepped forward and, before I could check her, had snapped on the main switch and brought a dozen screens alive.

I stopped in mid-grab. Most of the screens showed empty cells, rooms, and corridors. But five showed living people. On one screen two men and two women were sitting round a table playing cards. On another, one man and one woman were lying on a bed making love. On a third a man and a woman in combat kit were standing in an alcove on the roof, glancing intermittently into the darkness of the Bay but spending most of their time looking at each other. All, except the pair making love, were in the uniform of Federal Marshals.

“Christ!” I breathed. “The place is guarded by Feds!”

“Some guards!” said Barbara, studying the pair on the bed.

I jumped forward to bring up the wharf cameras. Only the dark shapes of the containers were visible, even when I went to infrared. Our boat was hidden by the wharf.

“She’ll float up into view when the tide rises,” said Barbara. “But that’ll be -hours yet.”

“We’d better get to hell out of here!” The sight of so many Feds was making me nervous. The whole atmosphere of the Pen was making me nervous.

“No rush. The tide won’t be full for another five hours.” Barbara was prowling round the Surveillance Center, inspecting the gadgetry. “What are those?” She pointed to the banks of controls on the wall.

“For God’s sake—don’t touch! Or you’ll lock every door in the place. And then we’ll really be screwed.” I breathed easier as she moved back to the display console. “There are trick interlocks all over!”

“That pair can’t imagine they’re being watched!” Judith nodded toward the couple on the bed who had started to add imagination to passion.

I switched off the monitor. After all, one of us was a young girl. “I think we’ve seen as much of the setup as we need to see. Let’s talk about it when we’re safely out on the Bay.”

But when we were offshore they would not talk. Most women are talkative; even Barbara had chattered away earlier in the evening. But back on the Bay neither would talk about the Pen.

It was Barbara who finally gave a sort of explanation. “It’s not that we don’t trust you. It’s because you’re outside our group. We need your help. But please don’t say anything about this until we ask you to speak up.”

“Then why the hell did you drag me along?”

Judith smiled and touched my hand. “Barbara said that, besides her father, you were the only man over thirty who had both guts and brains.”

“Barb!” I looked at her. “Did you really say that?”

In the moonlight I could not be sure but I had the impression she blushed again. And I was certain of her quick nod.

“After that last unfortunate incident we must be especially careful to avoid friction with outsiders. Our fellow-Believers still in government service are urging all Settlements to keep what they call a low ‘profile.’ We must not give Federal or State authorities an excuse for intervening in our affairs.” Chairman Yackle wiped his bald head. “Has anyone got any comments?”

“A low profile didn’t save Cellerton!” objected Martha, a large and resolute woman. Cellerton, a Settlement in Ohio, had been overrun by a mob, looted, and its people dispersed, arrested, or abducted. We had heard its last despairing signals on the radio network. Its fate had gone unmentioned in the media.