Fritz Leiber - The Green Millennium

“I’m sending you to the first basement,” she told him in clipped tones. “I’ll give you five seconds to get out. I think the door’ll be open there. If not, you’ll have to come up again, and hope it’s me that gets you and not some other floor. Now don’t worry,” she told him as she slid the door shut, “I’ve done this a dozen times myself – or at least thought of doing it.”

In the darkness Phil’s spine stiffened to condensed steel and his hands clutching the clamps became those of a gorilla. He had time to think that if only Lucky were with him, tucked inside his jacket…

The platform was jerked down from under him, dragging him along. His stomach rapidly scrambled over his heart and nestled just below his Adam’s apple. A giant snake hissed and he was acutely conscious of being inches from death by friction on every side. Then, just as he figured he’d got a really firm grip on the clamps, he distinctly felt the platform through the hassock, his heels cut into his rump, his vertebrae cut into his intervertebral disks, and various things inside him jarred loose.

He was staring groggily into a dimly lit and empty room. Time was passing, it occurred to him. He dove out onto the floor, while behind him the platform took off with a hearty whish. By the time he had dragged himself to a sitting position and taken a few breaths there was a gust of air from the chute and a zing as the platform came to a stop. Miss Romadka sprang out nimbly and curtsied to an imaginary audience.

“You never did that before?” he asked her glumly.

“Of course I have, but I knew if I said I hadn’t you’d take it more seriously.” She tweaked him by the nearest ear. “Come on, you’re not out of Father’s clutches yet.”

Almost to his disappointment, he found he could scramble to his feet and follow her. He almost felt calm. “How did you push the button from the inside, anyhow?”

“Just taped it down, jumped in and shut the door. The platform won’t move if any of the upper-floor doors are open.”

“What’s your name, by the way?”

“Mitzie,” she told him. “Mitzie Romadka.”

“Mine’s Phil,” he said. “Phil Gish.”

She led him into a shadowy garage, lined with ornate cars in stalls barred like prison cells. Several of the cars had recharging cables plugged in. He saw a ramp ahead that led upward. Mitzie coded the barrier in front of a small black coupe without a hint of decor.

“Innocent looking little job, isn’t it?” she remarked. “Used to belong to an undertaker.” She hopped in. When, with a sad shrug, Phil followed her, he was hardly surprised to find she had donned a full-length black evening-mask. ‘It’s not my car,” she explained. “I’m just hiding it for Carstairs and the gang. It’s hot.”

And with that reassuring remark she guided it out toward the ramp, its small electric motor whining faintly. A door rose at her voice. Then they were outside in the ghostly yellow evening of the sodium mirror. When they had climbed almost to ground level, a big car slammed to a stop in the street ahead, three-quarters blocking the exit. Two men jumped out of the car and someone, of whom Phil could for the moment see only waddling legs and chubby tummy, hurried to meet them.

“Look, if this is another tame-chicken chase -” he heard the first of the two men from the car begin in heavy skeptical tones.

“Don’t be absurd,” the hurrier asserted crisply in a voice Phil recognized as Dr. Romadka’s. “I tell you, he mentioned the green cat.”

At that moment the analyst looked around and saw Phil gawking at him.

“There he goes now!”

The analyst’s outraged squeal turned to the rasp of plastics as Mitzie bullied the small black car between the rampwall and the newcomer. With the twang of hooked bumpers parting, they swung out into the street, the little electric accelerating modestly. Phil looked over his shoulder.

“They’ve got back in,” he told Mitzie. “They’re turning around.”

“Like I said, you’re important,” she murmured through her mask, still incredulously. “Well, here goes,” and she abruptly nosed the car toward the narrow mouth of a ramp leading downward.

“Hey, that’s marked ‘Exit Only,’” Phil yiped at her.

“That’s why I’m using it,” she informed him curtly.

He closed his eyes as the car tilted sharply down, but the gods of probability seemed inclined to grant boons tonight. When the car leveled out, Phil opened his eyes to the brighter, nearer, fog-light sodium yellow of the under level. They were moving ahead smartly. Once more Phil looked back.

“They’ve come down after us,” he said with wonder perhaps a trifle mixed with pride.

“Really important,” Mitzie muttered, shaking her head. “Well, this little mouse was never meant to outrace that rhino. Prepare for acceleration, and hope the cars at the next ten intersections are stacked right.”

Phil felt himself crunched into the foam rubber he had his chin on. There was a red glow just behind them. The pursuing car shrank rapidly in size. Twisting himself around with difficulty, he noted that the sodium lights had become a molten yellow ribbon. Their car flew past the hood of a truck entering from a side street, though their speed made it appear to be standing still. Some blocks ahead they shot between two cars which also seemed frozen. The red glow died. They sailed up another “Exit Only” ramp into the spectral yellow night. Proceeding at a speed that soon became reasonable, they turned four successive corners.

“That should do it,” Mitzie said with professional nonchalance. Phil nodded his slumped head.

“Carstairs put in the rocket assist yesterday,” she explained. “He wasn’t altogether sure he had it lined up right. Neat little trick, isn’t it? A great comfort when you’ve just knocked over a fat sales robot, say, and have three cop cars converging and maybe a cop copter up above. Beats a smoke screen all hollow. You’ll see.”

“I have,” Phil assured her with a rather absentminded shiver.

“That was nothing,” she said scornfully. “I mean when you’ve really pulled a job and they’re closing in. That’s the big thrill. You’ll see, I tell you. You know, Phil, I sort of like you. You’re so darn scared and innocent, yet you play along. I’m sure I can persuade Carstairs to let you join the gang.”

Phil shivered again, but with even less of his mind on it. Neither Mitzie Romadka’s criminal pastimes nor her sudden friendliness could hold his attention. Staring out frowningly at the jaundiced street, he was thinking of Lucky and of the way he had felt when Lucky was with him.

He jerked awake. “What is this green cat, anyhow?” Mitzie was asking with an indifference that her mask intensified. “A carved emerald or the password in a secret society?”

Phil shrugged.

“Well, let’s forget it then,” Mitzie was saying, “and have some fun.” She speeded up again to the electric’s unassisted limit and ran through a stop light which yipped protestingly. Her eyes gleamed wickedly in their circles of black lace. Her breathing grew quicker, her voice lighter. “Carstairs has a bunch of sales robots lined up. Got their after theater routes cased to a hair. We can ram ’em and gut ’em, one, two, ten! Jump for the curb, sisters!”

This last exuberant remark was directed at two cloaked women on glittering platforms, and it was accompanied by a vicious swerve of the car toward them. They made it, just, and tumbled on their knees, shrieking. Mitzie cooed happily.

Like someone waking from a dream, Phil said sharply “No! I don’t want any part of it!” He went on, “You can drop me at 3010 Opperly Avenue, top level.”

She looked at him curiously for a change, even with surprise. “All right,” she said after a bit, “I’ll do it, if only because I got such a kick out of the look on your face when I shut the door of the chute.” She spun the car illegally in a tight U-turn. She said harshly, not looking at Phil, “I never hot rod at old people, you know. They don’t have enough hormones to make it fun. Those two girls were real funnies.”