Филип Керр - The Second Angel

‘If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were enjoying this.’

‘If I didn’t know better, I might agree with you.’

At every junction, Dallas fired his UHT at the wall of the route they had taken, so that a hot spot glowed there like a live coal, a sign to mark the progress of their route, or lack of it; for sometimes they encountered the glowing mark again, whereupon Dallas would scorch the wall with two more marks.

‘We must only choose a route with a single sign or none at all,’ he sighed, exasperated, and obliged them to retrace their steps. ‘And never choose a route with three.’

For almost an hour it seemed to Cavor that they wandered bewildered, entrapped in the coils of the labyrinth that surrounded them. Just as Dallas was about to concede he had been defeated by his own ingenuity, they had an immense stroke of luck. One minute Dallas was cursing the diabolical circuitry of his apparently impenetrable maze, and next he was down on his knees, laughing and rubbing the palms of his gloves on the steel floor. Cavor thought him merely mad, and it was a moment or two before he perceived that the laughter he heard in his headset was born of relief rather than frustration.

‘What?’ he asked, desperate for good news. ‘For Christ’s sake, Dallas. What is it?’

Dallas pointed to the floor. ‘Look,’ he said, still laughing with delight. He rubbed his gloves on the floor again and then showed Cavor the grime-covered palms.

‘Dust,’ said Cavor, unimpressed. ‘That’s just great, Dallas. They need cleaners in here. Maybe we can apply for the job, if we’re still alive, that is.’

‘Don’t you see? Look, you can even see the tire marks.’ He pointed along the floor to a set of tracks leading down one of the corridors. ‘The electric car has been this way. We can follow its trail. What a stroke of luck. When we landed, our engines must have blown some moondust onto the landing site road, otherwise this dust would not be here. We can follow these tracks all the way to the vault.’

Cavor nodded wearily, too tired to say anything, and helped Dallas to his feet.

‘Who needs a golden thread, when we have the Moon to guide our footsteps?’

Their way was quicker now, and except for the need to keep both eyes on the ground for the faint evidence of the electric car, Dallas would have bounded through the remaining corridors.

Suddenly the labyrinth ended in a great smooth and circular wall of dark steel.

‘What’s this?’ asked Cavor. ‘Another hazard?’

‘This is it,’ Dallas told him excitedly. He took Cavor by the arm and led him up to the perfectly smooth curvature. ‘This is the vault, my friend. We’re here.’

Cavor stared up at the giant-sized edifice, astonished at its enormous proportions.

‘We’re here,’ he repeated dumbly. ‘My God, it’s huge.’

‘Of course it’s huge. Did you expect people to take so much trouble to protect some piffling steel box in a wall? The vault is over two hundred feet in diameter. There’s over twenty million liters of frozen blood in there. Think of that, Cav. That’s enough life force to cure an entire country. What a pity we can only take a mere fraction of that. But first — first, you have to open the door.’

‘What door? I don’t see one.’

Dallas pointed at the faint tire tracks that led seemingly straight through the great steel wall.

‘You’re looking at it,’ he said. ‘Thirty-seven inches thick, no exterior parts. No handles, no knobs, no combination bezels, no grips, no spinners, no cranks. All interior mechanism, controlled by Descartes from the inside. There’s no way this door can be opened from the outside, not even if you and I were the president of the First National and the director of Terotechnology standing here.’

‘Then how are we going to get in there? Even a phantom limb’s not long enough to reach through a thirty-seven-inch-thick steel door. It may be a phantasmagoria, Dallas, but it’s no longer than a real arm, of that much I’m sure.’

‘Not reach through,’ said Dallas. ‘Reach in. As I said, it’s all interior mechanism. There’s nothing on the other side of the door either.’

‘You mean, reach into the door itself?’

‘That’s right, Cav. Inside it’s actually a fairly conventional mechanism. Levers and precision gears. There’s a diagram on your computer. All you’ve got to do is reach inside the door and feel for those gears. Just as if you were a safecracker in an old movie. As a matter of fact, that’s where I got the idea. Only you won’t have to use a stethoscope to help you hear what’s happening inside, or a sheet of sandpaper to make your fingers more sensitive on the combination dial. You’ll be using the most sensitive safecracking tool in the human toolbox: the telekinetic power of your own brain.’

Dallas picked up Cavor’s real arm and helped him to access a diagram of the safe’s interior workings on his life-support computer.

‘Here we are,’ he said, locating the layout. ‘The Ambler Tageslicht SuperVault. A patent class 109 safe. Capable of repelling a missile, but incapable of defeating you, Cav. Those UHT guns wouldn’t make a mark on this. It’s made of heat-dissipating steel. The locking mechanism consists of six massive six-inch-diameter chrome-plated solid steel locking bolts, all individually chambered in titanium steel. The bolts operate independently of one another. Each bolt is electrically controlled by a separate gear that’s about the size of a melon, which, for all its size, is extremely easy to turn inside its own compartment. It has to be, to move bolts of these dimensions. All you have to do is place your hand on each one in turn and then roll them counterclockwise, the way you’d roll a basketball. When those six bolts are withdrawn, there’s still a continuous fixing locking bar that’s six feet long and about an inch and a half in diameter, and which is connected to the electrically operated hinges. As soon as you pull that out of the way, the door will open automatically.’ Dallas waited to see that Cavor had understood and then tapped him on the helmet.

‘How do you feel?’

‘Like I ate something.’

‘Forget about it. Mind over matter. The brain generates the experience of the body, remember?’ Dallas steered Cavor toward the vault door and positioned him so that the shoulder bearing his false arm was pressed up against the smooth curving steel.

‘No, wait,’ said Cavor, and moved away again. ‘I thought of something. Something that might help my confidence.’

‘Try anything, if it helps,’ agreed Dallas.

Cavor lowered the prosthetic arm by his side and tried to concentrate his thoughts. Gradually, a conscious perception formed inside his brain, and then became an awareness. It was the feeling he’d experienced before, only stronger this time. It started as a burning sensation in the tips of his fingers, almost as if he had already rubbed them on a piece of sandpaper, as Dallas had described. Was there some kind of suggestive power operating here as well? Cavor wasn’t sure. But as the sensation increased, so did the certainty that it had nothing to do with the prosthetic by his side, which now seemed something quite alien to him. Burning gave way to a cramping sensation — a feeling that made him think the phantom limb was something that needed exercise and movement after long disuse. It was as if he were trying something long neglected. He could see now how the phantom limb needed to be stretched before being used. A shooting pain traveled through his whole arm as he flexed his invisible muscles. The messages from his brain urging his muscles to move the limb were now stronger and more frequent, and the perception of the limb amounted to something more than a mere feeling. If he thought hard enough, surely he would see it.