"He runs it up and down the shaft," she explained, "trying to crush
anybody who goes after him."
"Oh," I said. "So it might take a while."
She leaned so close this time that even I, distracted as I was, could
hardly help but take note of her cleavage. She whispered, "They're
afraid they'll have to starve him out."
"Oh, no!"
She nodded solemnly. "I'm terribly sorry, sir," she said. Then she
glanced to her right, suddenly straightened up again, and said,
"We-will-resume-service-as-soon-as-possible." Click. Blank screen.
For a minute or two, all I could do was sit and absorb what I'd been
told. A spy in the elevator! A spy who had managed to work his way all
the way up to the hundred forty-seventh floor before being unmasked!
What in the world was the matter with the Army? If things were getting
that lax, the Project was doomed, force-screen or no. Who knew how many
more spies there were in the Project, still unsuspected?
Until that moment, the state of siege in which we all lived had had
no reality for me. The Project, after all, was self-sufficient and
completely enclosed. No one ever left, no one ever entered. Under our
roof, we were a nation, two hundred stories high. The ever-present
threat of other projects had never been more for me--or for most other
people either, I suspected--than occasional ore-sleds that didn't
return, occasional spies shot down as they tried to sneak into the
building, occasional spies of our own leaving the Project in tiny
radiation-proof cars, hoping to get safely within another project and
bring back news of any immediate threats and dangers that project might
be planning for us. Most spies didn't return; most ore-sleds did. And
within the Project life was full, the knowledge of external dangers
merely lurking at the backs of our minds. After all, those external
dangers had been no more than potential for decades, since what Dr.
Kilbillie called the Ungentlemanly Gentleman's War.
Dr. Kilbillie--Intermediate Project History, when I was fifteen years
old--had private names for every major war of the twentieth century.
There was the Ignoble Nobleman's War, the Racial Non-Racial War, and
the Ungentlemanly Gentleman's War, known to the textbooks of course as
World Wars One, Two, and Three.
The rise of the Projects, according to Dr. Kilbillie, was the result of
many many factors, but two of the most important were the population
explosion and the Treaty of Oslo. The population explosion, of course,
meant that there was continuously more and more people but never any
more space. So that housing, in the historically short time of one
century, made a complete transformation from horizontal expansion to
vertical. Before 1900, the vast majority of human beings lived in
tiny huts of from one to five stories. By 2000, _everybody_ lived in
Projects. From the very beginning, small attempts were made to make
these Projects more than dwelling places. By mid-century, Projects
(also called apartments and co-ops) already included restaurants,
shopping centers, baby-sitting services, dry cleaners and a host of
other adjuncts. By the end of the century, the Projects were completely
self-sufficient, with food grown hydroponically in the sub-basements,
separate floors set aside for schools and churches and factories, robot
ore-sleds capable of seeking out raw materials unavailable within the
Projects themselves and so on. And all because of, among other things,
the population explosion.
And the Treaty of Oslo.
It seems there was a power-struggle between two sets of then-existing
nations (they were something like Projects, only horizontal instead of
vertical) and both sets were equipped with atomic weapons. The Treaty
of Oslo began by stating that atomic war was unthinkable, and added
that just in case anyone happened to think of it only _tactical_ atomic
weapons could be used. No _strategic_ atomic weapons. (A tactical
weapon is something you use on the soldiers, and a strategic weapons is
something you use on the folks at home.) Oddly enough, when somebody
did think of the war, both sides adhered to the Treaty of Oslo, which
meant that no Projects were bombed.
Of course, they made up for this as best they could by using tactical
atomic weapons all over the place. After the war almost the whole
world was quite dangerously radioactive. Except for the Projects. Or
at least those of them which had in time installed the force screens
which had been invented on the very eve of battle, and which deflected
radioactive particles.
However, what with all of the _other_ treaties which were broken during
the Ungentlemanly Gentleman's War, by the time it was finished nobody
was quite sure any more who was on whose side. That project over there
on the horizon might be an ally. And then again it might not. Since
they weren't sure either, it was risky to expose yourself in order to
ask.
And so life went on, with little to remind us of the dangers lurking
Outside. The basic policy of Eternal Vigilance and Instant Preparedness
was left to the Army. The rest of us simply lived our lives and let it
go at that.
* * * * *
But now there was a spy in the elevator.
When I thought of how deeply he had penetrated our defenses, and of how
many others there might be, still penetrating, I shuddered. The walls
were our safeguards only so long as all potential enemies were on the
other side of them.