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been the hum of high-
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speed motors or generators. There were whistles, thus, whines - nearly
everything there is a word for, but none of it exactly similar to anything
familiar, and one particular class of noise completely missing.
The gabble of speech which drenches every other inhabited part of Earth was
totally lacking.
Nearly an hour passed according to my watch, before anyone appeared (the watch
itself was a solid-
state radioactive-powered affair which had not been designed with sea-bottom
pressure in mind, but had come through the change perfectly). I spent most of
the time cursing myself -not for making the change, but for failing to take
advantage of the time between decision and action by getting more information
from Bert.
The new arrival was young and quite decorative - but I didn't fall in love
with her. The response was mutual. She waved me back to the cot and examined
my dressings with an air of competence.
When she finished, I tried to call her attention to my lack of swimming
ballast. She may have understood, since she paid courteous attention to me and
nodded agreeably after I'd finished my gestures, but she left without doing
anything constructive about the matter. I hoped she was going to call Bert.
Whether she did or not, he was the next to enter. He had no extra ballast with
him, but he did have the writing pad. This was even better. I reached for it
and buckled down to work.
I'd been restricted to communicating only by written note before, but not
since leaving grammar school.
In those days it had had a certain thrill, being an illicit activity in study
hall; now it proved to be purest nuisance.
In something over two hours, we settled:
That I was a fully naturalized citizen of this place, and entitled to go where
I pleased and do what I
wanted short of obvious conflict with the interests of others;
That I was not only permitted to examine the power-generating units, but was
expected to familiarize myself with them as soon as possible;
That I could visit Marie at her submarine whenever I felt like it, and I had
the blessing of the Council and the rest of the population in arguing with
her; and
That I would be expected to support myself by farming until I demonstrated
some different and at least equally useful way of contributing to the general
welfare.
That was all. Often in the past I'd held a lengthy conversation with someone,
and after he was out of sight had remembered other things I'd wanted to say;
but down here this sort of thing wasn't an incident, it was a habit.
It wasn't so much that one forgot to bring up some point or other. As a rule
there wasn't time to cover even the ones remembered. I've never appreciated
the gift of speech so much in my life. Those of you who feel, after finishing
this report, that I should have learned certain key facts sooner than I did
will please remember this difficulty. I don't say I shouldn't have been
quicker, but I do claim some excuse for failure.
The whole thing was not merely annoying; it did wind up making me look more
like a plain fool than I
ever have before or hope to again. What is really embarrassing is that so many
people who have heard only this much of the story can see already where I went
wrong.
I had no real enthusiasm for farming, though I was curious about how it would
be conducted on the sea bottom. I did want to learn about the power plant, but
even that item I postponed. I asked Bert first of all to guide me to Marie's
sub. He nodded and started swimming.
The trip was made without conversation. Maybe Bert was used enough to swimming
by this time so that he could have written and read while doing it, like a
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city secretary doing a crossword puzzle as she strolls out to lunch, but I
certainly was not. I simply looked around as I followed him, noting everything
I possibly could.
The tunnels were long and for the most part straight, but they formed a
hopeless maze as far as I was concerned. I would be a long, long time learning
to find my way around unaided. If there was anything corresponding to an
ordinary street sign, I failed to spot it. There were all sorts of color
patterns on the walls, but I couldn't tell whether they meant something or
were merely decoration. Everything was brightly lighted.
The place wasn't just tunnels, either. There were large rooms of all shapes,
some of which might have been business plazas or shopping centers or theaters
or almost anything else one can think of where a lot of people congregate. I
seldom saw any real crowds, but there were enough swimmers around to support
the claim that the population was quite large - not surprising if it had been
going for several generations. I was gradually coming to think of the place as
a country, as Bert had claimed, rather than an outlaw organization; a country
which had never lost its identity by subscribing to the Power Code.
This might indeed be the case - it might have been here longer than the Code
had. I didn't know how much more than the eighty years Bert had mentioned
might be in its history. That was something else to find out.
I never got good at judging distances in swimming, and some of the corridors
had their traffic assisted by a pump-driven current, so I don't know how far
we went before reaching the submarine. As a matter of fact, I still have only
the vaguest notion of the size of the whole place. At any rate, we finally
emerged from a narrow corridor into one of the big chambers under an ocean
entrance, crossed beneath the circle of blackness which gave on a mile of salt
water, went on down a much larger passageway for perhaps two hundred yards,
and found ourselves at the entrance to a fair-sized room in which one ordinary
Board work sub, loaded with external ballast slugs as my tank had been, lay
cradled on the floor.
Bert stopped just outside the entrance and began to write. I read over his
shoulder as he produced 'I'd better stay outside. She's firmly convinced that
I'm Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, and Vidkun
Quisling all rolled into one. You'll have enough trouble appearing as you are
without me beside you.
Have you decided what excuse to offer for making the change?
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