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sound, mind you, but " The hell with Herrera. He could take his chances like everybody else. Anybody who sets out to turn the world upside down has no right to complain if he gets caught in its gears. nine Days went by like weeks. Herrera talked little to me, until one evening in the dayroom he suddenly asked: "You ever see Gallina?" That was Chicken Little. I said no. "Come on down, then, I can get you in. Page 43 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html She's a sight." We walked through corridors and leaped for the descending cargo net. I resolutely shut my eyes. You look straight down that thing and you get the high-shy horrors. Forty, Thirty, Twenty, Ten, Zero, Minus Ten "Jump off, Jorge," Herrera said. "Below Minus Ten is the machinery." I jumped. Minus Ten was gloomy and sweated water from its concrete walls. The roof was supported by immense beams. A tangle of pipes jammed the corridor where we got off. "Nutrient fluid," Herrera said. I asked about the apparently immense weight of the ceiling. "Concrete and lead. It shields cosmic rays. Sometimes a Gallina goes cancer." He spat. "No good to eat for people. You got to burn it all if you don't catch it real fast and " He swung his glittering slicer in a screaming arc to show me what he meat by "catch." He swung open a door. "This is her nest," he said proudly. I looked and gulped. It was a great concrete dome, concrete-floored. Chicken Little filled most of it. She was a gray-brown, rubbery hemisphere some fifteen yards in diameter. Dozens of pipes ran into her pulsating flesh. You could see that she was alive. Herrera said to me: "All day I walk around her. I see a part growing fast, it looks good and tender, I slice." His two-handed blade screamed again. This time it shaved off an inch-thick Chicken Little steak. "Crumbs behind me hook it away and cut it up and put it on the conveyor." There were tunnel openings spotted around the circumference of the dome, with idle conveyor belts visible in them. "Doesn't she grow at night?" "No. They turn down the nutrient just enough; they let the waste accumulate in her just right. Each night she almost dies. Each morning she comes to life like San Lazaro. But nobody ever pray before pobrecita Gallina, hey?" He whacked the rubbery thing affectionately with the flat of his slicer. "You like her," I said inanely. "Sure, Jorge. She does tricks for me." He looked around and then marched the circuit of the nest, peering into each of the tunnel mouths. Then he took a short beam from one of them and casually braced it against the door to the nest. It fitted against a cross-bar on the door and against a seemingly-random groove in the concrete floor. It would do very well as a lock. "I'll show you the trick," he said, with an Aztec grin. With a magician's elaborate gesture he took from his pocket a sort of whistle. It didn't have a mouthpiece. It had an air tank fed by a small hand pump. "I didn't make this," he hastened to assure me. "They call it Gallon's whistle, but who this Gallon is I don't know. Watch and listen." He began working the pump, pointing ihe whislle purposefully al Chicken Little. I heard no sound, bul I shuddered as ihe rubbery protoplasm bulged in away from ihe pipe in ihe hemispherical depression. "Don'1 be scared, companero," he told me. "Just follow." He pumped harder and passed me a flashlight which I slupidly turned on. Herrera played the soundless blast of the whistle against Chicken Little like a hose. She reacled with a bigger and bigger cavity thai finally became an archway whose floor was ihe concrete floor of the nest. Herrera walked into the archway, saying: "Follow." I did, my heart pounding frightfully. He inched forward, pumping ihe whistle, and the archway became a dome. The entrance into Chicken Little behind us became smaller . . . smaller . . . smaller . . . We were quile inside, in a hemispherical bubble moving slowly through a hundred-ion lump of gray-brown, rubbery flesh. "Light on the floor, Page 44 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html companero," he said, and I flashed it on the floor. The concrete was marked wilh lines lhal looked accidental, bul which guided Herrera's feel. We inched forward, and I wondered vividly whal would happen if the Gallon whislle sprang a leak . . . After about two thousand years of inch-by-inch progress my light flashed on a crescent of metal. Herrera piped the bubble over it, and il became a disk. Still pumping, he slamped three limes on il. Il flipped open like a manhole. "You firsl," he said, and I dived inlo il, not knowing or caring whether the landing would be hard or soft. It was soft, and I lay there, shuddering. A moment laier Herrera landed beside me and ihe manhole above clapped shul. He stood up, massaging his arm. "Hard work," he said. "I pump and pump that thing and I don'l hear il. Some day il's going lo slop working and I won'l know ihe difference until " He grinned again. "George Groby," Herrera inlroduced me. "This is Ronnie Bowen." He was a short, phlegmatic consumer in a fronl-office suil. "And ihis is Arluro Denzer." Denzer was very young and nervous. The place was a well-lighted little office, all concrele, with air regeneralors. There were desks and communication equipmenl. Il was hard lo believe that the only way to get in was barred by thai mouniain of protoplasm above. Il was harder lo believe lhal ihe squeak of inaudibly high-frequency sound waves could goad lhal insensale hulk inlo moving aside. Bowen look over. "Pleased lo have you wilh us, Groby," he said. "Herrera says you have brains. We don'l go in a greal deal for red lape, but I wanl your profile." I gave him Groby's profile and he look it down. His mouth tighlened with suspicion as I lold him the low educational level. "I'll be frank," he said. "You don'l lalk like an uneducaled man." "You know how some kids are," I said. "I spenl my time reading and viewing. Il's lough being righl in the middle of a family of five. You aren'i old enough lo be respected and you aren't young enough to be the pel. I fell kind of losl and I kepi irying lo better myself." He accepted il. "Fair enough. Now, whal can you do?" "Well . . . I think I can write a better conlacl sheel lhan you use." "Indeed. Whal else?" "Well, propaganda generally. You could slari stories going around and people wouldn't know they were from the Co from us. Things to make them feel discontented and wake them up." "That's a very interesting idea. Give me an example." My brain was chugging nicely. "Start a rumor going around the mess hall that they've got a way of making new protein. Say it tastes exactly like roast beef and you'll be able to buy it at a dollar a pound. Say it's going to be announced in three days. Then when the three days are up and there's no announcement start a wisecrack going. Like: 'What's the difference between roast beef and Chicken Little?' Answer, 'A hundred and fifty years of progress.' Something like that catches on and it'll make them think about the old days favorably." It was easy. It wasn't the first time I'd turned my talent to backing a product I didn't care for personally. Bowen was taking it down on a silenced typewriter. "Good," he said. "Very ingenious, Groby. We'll try that. Why do you say 'three clays'?" I couldn't very well tell him that three days was the optimum priming period for a closed social circuit to be triggered with a catalytic cue-phrase, which was the book answer. I said instead, with embarrassment: "It just seemed about right to me." "Well, we'll try it at that. Now, Groby, you're going to have a study period. We've got the classic conservationist texts, and you should read them. We've got special publications of interest to us which you should follow: Statistical Abstracts, Journal of Space Flight, Biometrika, Agricultural Bulletin, and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |