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The hands moved rapidly across the desk. His safest course of action would
be to get the Doctor and his companion arrested on some trumped-up charge
on the basis of faked evidence. That way his tame Adjudicator could safely
brainwipe the two of them. The records would be straight, and there would
be nothing to point the finger of blame on him. Not that he was worried, but
it was best to be sure.
And he was always sure.
Some sort of scuffle appeared to be going on in the distance; a crowd was
gathering around a fight. After a cautious initial look  life with the Doctor
had taught her to be wary of anything out of the ordinary  Bernice ignored
it. Instead, she let the walkway carry her to a point midway between two
buildings, then walked across to its stationary edge and leaned against the
semi-transparent bulwark.
 Progress moves fast, she said as the Doctor caught up with her.  How do
they keep it all up in the air?
He took his hat off and fanned at his face with it.
 Cheap and effective null gravity. One of the key discoveries that keeps the
Earth Empire ahead of the opposition. Null-grav had been around for cen-
turies, of course, but this particular variant was based on a completely novel
principle. It caused a minor technological revolution, and a major demo-
graphic one.
He flipped the hat back up his arm and onto his head.
 Everybody lives in the towers of the Overcity now, he continued.  Well,
everybody who is anybody. Some levels are accommodation, some are shops,
some offices and some are a mixture. Status depends on how high up you
live. Implanted identification chips limit access to the levels you are allowed
to visit, and no others.
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Bernice craned her neck and gazed down towards the ground and the shad-
ows too deep for the sun to penetrate. Tiny lights seemed to flicker within the
darkness.
 Are those fires? she said.
 Hmm? Yes, indeed. That will be the Undertown.
 The what?
 The slum area. The bit that got left behind when all this   He waved a
hand at the surrounding towers.   was built.
 Slums? she asked, disbelievingly.  Haven t they done away with slums by
now?
 It s always like this, rejoined the Doctor.  The rich build upon the backs of
the poor.
He peered over the edge.  No doubt Ace would have said it was like Hong
Kong hanging over Venice, he added.  Very pithy, was Ace.
The Doctor broke off as a deep rumble shook the walkway. Looking up,
Bernice saw the dark, irregular shape of a spacecraft descending through the
atmosphere.
 Is there a spaceport around here? she asked.
The Doctor grimaced.  There s a spaceport everywhere, he said.  Hundreds
of thousands of spaceships dock here every day. Trade and transport are so
important to the Empire that the cities have been renamed for the spaceports.
This, for instance, is Spaceport Five Overcity, although it used to be known as
Central City, and before that as London. According to your friend Homeless
Forsaken, this is where the danger will start. Any ideas as to how we go about
identifying it?
Bernice puffed her cheeks out.  Nothing springs to mind, she murmured.
 Unless . . . 
The Doctor s face was expectant.  Yes?
 Unless we find another Hith on Earth who can tell us what s going on.
The Doctor s face fell again.  It s a long shot, he said.
 But it might just work, Bernice replied.
An Eirtj Knight asked the way to the market as Terg McConnel walked into
the alley. It was crouching in the shadows, mist swirling around its sleek body,
eyes glinting faintly in the twilight. He ignored it. The Eirtj probably knew the
Undertown better than he did; they only requested directions in order to start
a conversation, but once you d spoken to one of them for any length of time
you d exhausted all possible topics of conversation with the entire race. And
besides, aliens made his skin crawl. Goddess alone knew why he d agreed to
head the research team. He should have stayed back in his comfortable office
in the university block, up in the Overcity. Amongst his fellow humans.
32
McConnel headed down the alley, water sleeting down from the half-hidden
bases of the Towers that hung high above the Undertown. Behind him he
heard the Knight sigh faintly, and stalk off in search of somebody more garru-
lous.
A warning notice hung in the air a few feet into the alley. Static blurred the
faint red letters. DANGER, it said, DO NOT PASS: RADIATION HAZARD. McConnel
walked through the notice, raising a hand to brush at his forehead as the
letters curved around him with a brief caress of light, and halted as he came to
the end of the alley. The scanners were still there, attached to the stonework
like little metal snails. The radiation leak story wasn t true, of course, but
it was the only way to keep the damned underdwellers from removing the
scanners and selling the parts as scrap. A sign saying PLEASE DO NOT PASS:
SCIENTIFIC MEASUREMENTS IN PROGRESS just didn t carry the same weight.
The fact that McConnel s team of students were trying to help the ungrateful
scum by measuring the effects on the Undertown of the Overcity s null-grav
generators wouldn t cut any ice at all.
The devices were damp with condensing mist. His fingers slipped as he
checked them, and he grazed his knuckles upon the rough stonework. The
water stung in the wound. He cursed and held his wrist up to the scanners,
waiting for the information to download into his processor. When he got the
readings back to the university he would pore over them for hours, pulling
every morsel he could out of them, but he could already see from the figures
scrolling across the screen that the levels of ultrasonic vibration were well
above safe limits.
He turned away and headed back towards the mouth of the alley. The
restaurant where he had arranged to meet the team was nearby, accord-
ing to the centcomp map, but  nearby was a flexible concept in the Under-
town. It took McConnel fifteen minutes to get there through alleys and streets
thronged with stinking aliens and degenerate humans. He made sure that his
stunner was visible to all as he walked. He had to double back on himself five
times, and twice miscalculated and found himself in blind alleys or up against
the banks of one of the infinity of canals that were the arteries of the Under-
town. His path took him across bridges, through dog-leg bends, down narrow
alleys, up corkscrew stairways and through concealed entrances. Finally he
recognized a flight of stone steps which had been smoothed into curves by
generations of feet. Bodies sprawled on the steps, some of them asleep, oth-
ers muttering obscurely to themselves. Humans with heavily lined faces and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]