Charles Maine - World Without Men

The building was deserted, it seemed, and he came upon a staircase leading to an upper level. He ascended cautiously, flexing his ankles to avoid making any sound. Another corridor, another flight of stairs, but he kept ascending. And presently there were no more stairs, and the corridor he was in was a cul-de-sac. There were doors, four of them, in the corridor, but they were of the metal roller type, and there was no way of opening them. If he had had the patience and common sense to remove the electronic belt from the olive skinned girl he raped not so long ago, he would have been able to open the doors. Perhaps behind those doors were the other last men of the world, sealed away forever until the liberating moment of death.

There was no time to pause and worry about them, if indeed they existed at all. Time was running out. The olive skinned girl might be conscious by now, or she might be missed. At any moment the alarm might be raised. Escape became a precision operation, a matter of split second timing, difficult enough when you are seventy-five.

This must be the top, for there were no more stairs, and no elevators. There was nothing left but to descend, as quickly as possible on feeble legs. Four flights, five, six and seven. And still the building was deserted. Could it be that there was only one woman in the entire structure? But no, for he had seen several different faces, three or four, and there was also the Mistress in charge. In charge of what? A prison of some kind? How large or how small a staff would be required to run such an establishment?

There was no answer to his question, and the building remained silent. Perhaps they thought escape was impossible, or unlikely. Perhaps they believed the prisoners would prefer the austere comfort of their apartment cells to what lay outside. Perhaps the outside world had become so alien that no man would voluntarily seek to escape into it?

There could be no turning back. He had committed a criminal act by any code of conduct, and the need for escape became more pressing as each second ticked by. But where was the outside world? How could he locate it in a tall building of windowless corridors and stairs, with uniform temperature and illumination so that each level was identical with the one above and the one below?

Descend. Quickly at first, then more slowly, for he was still an old man, and his energy had been drained by rape. Level after level of steel, metal, and plastic curving corridors and roller doors, featureless, identical, with no humanity, faced him. Perhaps he was now descending below ground level. Any one door might be the exit to the outside world, but there was no way of opening it. He had exchanged one prison for another. There was no escape, and he could no longer remember the location of his own apartment; it was lost in the maze of levels and corridors and doors.

After an hour he began to tire, and he sat on a stair to think. He remembered, with a certain sense of irony, that at no time had any special precautions been taken to prevent violent escape. The female attendants had always been unarmed and vulnerable. Presently the reason permeated his brain: escape was impossible. The building was a maze, a rat trap, a geometrical structure without form or orientation. The roller doors in the corridors might well have been fakes for all he knew. Perhaps there was only one apartment: the one he vacated an eternity ago, and perhaps all the rest was an elaborate facade designed to deceive you. Perhaps the building was designed to tire the would-be escaper, to disillusion him and destroy his spirit. In an old man that would not be so difficult to accomplish.

He continued to stumble down the stairs, rapidly losing faith and enthusiasm. It must have been the fourteenth or fifteenth level, above or below ground he did not know, but he still was descending. It might be that as he was descending the levels were moving upwards in some kind of infernal squirrel cage, so that he would descend forevermore. At the twentieth level of descent he stopped. There was no exit. Escape had become an abstraction with no roots in reality. Worse still, there was no way of finding his way back to his own apartment.

And still the stairs went down, falling endlessly into a kind of bottomless pit, spiralling eternally into the abyss. He realized that he was a fool, an old fool. Why didn’t he stay in his comfortable apartment and take life as it came? Why worry about the outside world when you were seventy-five? Surely it was enough to survive and be looked after by pretty girls.

There must be somebody in the building — the Mistress, the attendants. Without them he could wander forever up and down the stairs and along the silent corridors. He could thirst and starve to death in desolate isolation, surrounded by closed doors. There was nothing left to do but appeal for help. He shouted louder and louder, until presently he realized in horror that he was screaming…

She came suddenly, perhaps minutes, perhaps hours, after he had abandoned all hope. She was the olive-skinned girl he raped a thousand years ago. Her face was a mask, a beautiful mask, and there was no feeling or emotion in her eyes. He pushed himself erect, feeling more like an animal than a human being. She stood on a higher stair, somehow remote and on another plane of being. Her eyes were steady and he could not face them…

“So you wanted to escape” said the girl. Her voice was calm, without rancour or hate.

“Yes,” Old Gavor sighed. “I had that idea. I thought it would be easy. I didn’t realize…”

“There are many things you do not realize, old man. You are out of touch with reality.”

He hesitated. “Death is very close to me. Right and wrong have lost their meaning. There are things I want to do,".

“And things you have done.”

He sensed the implication of her words, and nodded humbly. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorrow is meaningless. What is done is done. You sought escape and you shall have escape.”

“I am no longer sure that I want it.”

“We are just. You shall have what you sought. Follow me.

She turned and ascended the stairs. He followed her mechanically, stumbling over the steps, forcing himself upwards in defiance of the paralysing weariness that was creeping into his limbs. He felt cold and shivery, as if rigor mortis were invading the fibre of his body.

Two flights, three flights, he ascended, and suddenly they were facing a roller door in a corridor. She turned to him, and he thought he could detect an element of sadness in her eyes.

“You will not be the first to pass through this door,” she said, “and you will not be the last. Men do not vary. Even unto death they seek to enlarge their horizons, they seek escape. I shall not stop you now. Escape if you wish.”

Her fingers touched her waist, pressing a concealed button on the unseen belt. The door rolled aside. Old Gavor remained motionless.

“Go,” she ordered.

He hesitated. “Tell me: am I the last man?”

There was a ghost of a smile on her lips. “You are what you are, Gavor. Once you are dead there will be neither men nor women on Earth. Now go.”

Old Gavor walked into the corridor beyond the door and into the world.

The corridor was long and dark, and as he walked along it the air grew progressively colder. Old Gavor shivered in his sombre gray clothes. But there was a faint glow of light on the walls ahead, and he hurried towards it on his stumbling legs.

The glow became brighter and the cold became more intense, and presently the corridor came to an end. He was in the open, under a sky of midnight blue, with an immense crimson sun lying low on the horizon. Something flickered and undulated above him, and in a brief glance he observed the intermittent luminous curtains of aurora. The air howled with wind, and the ground was white with snow and ice. His breath frosted as it left his lips.