The Road to Hell, page 4
The guard carrying Susan dropped her at Harrison’s feet. She sat there in the dust, ruffling her hair, running her fingers madly through her golden locks. Harrison reached out and picked a couple of cave bugs from her hair.
“Is this what was bothering you?” he asked, turning one of the bugs over on its back so its eight legs flayed through the air.
“I can look after myself,” she replied with indignation, slowly getting to her feet.
“I can see that,” replied Harrison with a laugh. The guards were enjoying this too much. A scantily clad young girl all dolled up with no place to go. That didn’t happen every day.
“Are you going to take responsibility for her in there?” asked the chief.
“Yeah,” replied Harrison, signing the registry. “Put her down with me.”
“OK,” said the chief. “You two love-birds have a nice stay, now.”
To which the guards laughed as the two of them walked off into the Underworld.
“You know they bite,” said Harrison, turning toward Susan with a smile.
“I know,” she replied, rubbing a small red mark on the back of her neck.
She was growing on him. He wasn’t sure why, but she was. She had a kind of annoying charm all of her own. And besides, Harrison thought, the company was welcome and she wasn’t half bad on the eyes. Not bad at all.
Chapter 04: Brains
“I thought this place was a myth,” said Susan, looking around in awe at the Underworld.
“Oh, it’s real, alright,” replied Harrison.
Rusting iron pipes carried steam from one section of the Underworld to another. Pressure valves released plumes of vapour in bursts, regulating the flow. Water dripped from the ceiling onto the metal walkway suspended from the cave wall.
The sounds of industry churned away in the background. Miners chipped away at veins of coal on one side of the vast chamber while a series of railway tracks crisscrossed the floor, some forty feet below, carrying ore and stone, tools and workers around the cavern. Harrison pointed at a robotic flyer darting around the cave; a remote control camera watched their every move.
“Don’t be fooled by the antiquated technology. They don’t miss much. This is just one of the nodes. There’s about twenty in all, spread out beneath the city. They’re linked by a series of tunnels, some man made, others naturally formed. Each node serves a different purpose. This is the coalface, feeding the furnaces that drive the Underworld. You’re in the belly of the beast now, girl.”
She was tempted, sorely tempted to remind him her name was Susan, but a silent truce seemed to have quelled the hostility between them and she was in no position to break it.
A series of ramparts and ladders weaved their way toward the floor of the vast cavern.
“So what do we do here?” asked Susan shivering, her arms wrapped around her thin clothing in a vain attempt to keep warm.
“Nothing.”
“You’re not going to do anything?”
“There’s nothing to do except lay low,” replied Harrison.
“But my sister-”
“Wherever your sister is,” added Harrison, cutting her off. “She’s a lot better off than either you or I are right now. Your sister’s a big girl. She can look after herself. If she can’t, there’s not a damn thing we can do about it, so quit stewing.”
Susan was not impressed, but she bit her tongue and followed along.
Wolf whistles and cheers broke out sporadically as the miners became aware of the beauty above them on the walkway. The attention made Susan feel distinctly uncomfortable.
“Looks like you’re going to be popular down here,” said Harrison, taking off his trench coat and wrapping it over her shoulders. The cardboard boxes full of ammo weighed down the pockets of the coat, pulling it taut over her shoulders.
“Thanks.” It felt nice to be both warm and covered from wandering eyes.
After about two hundred feet, they turned off the main walkway and into one of the numerous side tunnels disappearing into the rock. Each one had a name, like street names, only the tunnels were exclusively labelled with the first name of dead presidents and their wives. Harrison turned into Jackie-42. After a few twists and turns, passing by numerous alleyways, hatches and doors, Harrison knocked on a polished metal door set into the solid granite bedrock.
“Bugger off,” came the muted reply from the far side of the alloy door.
“Hey, Brains,” Harrison called out. “It’s me. Harry.”
“Bugger me,” came the reply as an awkward looking old man struggled to open the door. “Well? What are you waiting for? An invitation from the Pope? Come on in.”
Susan was relieved to get out of the caves and into the safety of a home. A fire burnt in the centre of the room, throwing out heat and warmth, casting shadows on the rocky walls. A soft whistle sounded from the lid of a pot sitting on a grate over the open fire. Steam rose up from a small weight on top of the lid. It hissed in a slow, steady plume that dissipated well before it reached the lofty ceiling some thirty feet above. Vials of liquid bubbled away in the corner of the roughhewn cave, carrying a dark brown fluid through a series of distils and finally into a small vat.
“You still dragging around that ancient artillery piece?” asked Brains, referring to the shotgun.
“Yeah, it's a real chick magnet,” he replied grinning. Susan glared.
“Please, sit down,” the thin man beckoned, trying not to laugh.
Brains certainly looked the part, Susan thought. Thick, coke-bottle glasses hid his eyes, making them seem small and recessed. With a few slivers of grey hair still clinging to the sides of his head, he had the stately demeanour of her grandfather. Arthritis had set in, causing the old man to move slowly. His limbs seemed stiff. The graceful, fluid motion of his youth had been replaced with a coarse motion that made each action appear difficult and stressed. Perhaps that’s how he got the nickname Brains, Susan wondered. To her, at least, he seemed to move like one of the fabled Thunderbird puppets of yesteryear. So it seemed his ageing motion and his keen intellect had affectionately labelled him as a marionette in the eyes of others.
“How much do you owe this time?” asked Brains.
“Hey,” replied Harrison, sitting in a worn armchair. “You don’t call. You don’t write. You don’t visit. I come to see you and you think I’m fleecing you. Can’t a guy visit a friend without there being an ulterior motive?”
“Did you get her pregnant?” the old man asked with a wry smile.
“It’s not like that,” said Harrison. “Honest. We’ve had a little trouble with the law, that’s all, but it’ll blow over. It’s no big deal. Hey, tell me what you know about the daemon? Are they fact or fiction?”
Susan pulled out the photos and handed them to Brains as she sat down, warming herself by the fire.
“Daemon?” the old man replied, reaching for a magnifying glass and looking closely at the grainy images.
“Damn, Brains,” said Harrison, looking at the absurdly thick magnifying glass. “You’re going as blind as a bat.”
“Heh, heh, heh. Yeah, pretty soon I’ll need a scanning electron microscope to look at pictures like these. Ha ha ha.”
Flicking slowly through the images, he added. “The daemon. They’re not fiction, Harry. But you don’t want to mess with them.”
“What can you tell me about them?”
“Back in the Great War, I was stationed just outside of Charleston during the siege. We had one of them pass through there. I met him, but I never saw him in action. Hell, I thought it was just a myth. But the colonel took it pretty damn serious.”
“And?” asked Susan, intrigued by the old man's recollections.
“It was all pretty hush hush. Hard to separate rumours from reality. They said he could walk through walls, that blaster rounds would pass right through him, but he seemed pretty real to me. All I know is, that night the presidential general was murdered in his sleep. Three days later the city fell to us. Rumour was the daemon crossed no man’s land, walked past the defenders like they weren’t even there, passed through the command centre unseen and slit his throat while he dreamt of victory. No one knew it had happened until they found him dead in the morning.”
“So you think they’re real?” asked Harrison.
“Oh, they’re real alright,” replied Brains.
“Where would I find them?”
“They were part of the 23rd, based outside of Joliet. I would have thought they were wiped out when Chicago got nuked. Certainly, I never heard of them again.”
“But what if someone survived?”
“You won't find the daemon. If they're still around, and that's a pretty big if, then you won't find them, they'll find you. This is serious stuff, Harry, these guys don’t play games. You won’t even know they’re around until they’re gone and all you’re left with are corpses.”
“Come on, Brains, you must know how to get in contact with these guys. You were part of the resistance for years.”
Brains scratched his forehead, lost deep in thought.
“If any of them survived, they never tried to help us.”
He paused before continuing.
“Alexander would know, or at least he’d be able to point you in the right direction.”
“Is he still down in engineering?”
“Yeah,” said Brains, still lost in thought. “He’s still down there somewhere.”
Harrison stood up. Susan went to get up as well.
“You. Stay here,” said Harrison, pointing at her as he headed for the door.
“But-”
“No buts. You’re a lot safer in here than you are out there. And besides, where I’m going, I don’t need any extra attention.”
“But-”
“Trust, remember,” said Harrison, grabbing his shotgun. “It’s all about trust. I’ll be back before curfew.”
The solid iron door slammed shut behind him and Susan felt abandoned, again.
There was silence for a few seconds, an awkward silence.
“You like him, don’t you,” said Brains. “I can tell. Always had a nose for these things.”
“I-” said Susan. But she caught herself. Why deny it? It would only strengthen the old man’s resolve and, besides, she did think Harrison was cute, a little old for her tastes, but cute nonetheless.
“Hungry?” asked Brains, lifting the sealed pot off the grate, its whistle still chirping away, steam shooting out from the lid.
“Ah, sure,” replied Susan, not really thinking about it.
“What is that, anyway,” she asked, pointing at the pot.
“It’s a pressure cooker.”
“How do you survive down here?” she asked as Brains lifted the whistle off the top of the clamped lid, allowing the steam inside the pot to vent.
“How do we survive? My dear, you make it sound like it's a prison sentence.”
“They told us the old world was gone,” she said, reaching out and warming her hands in the light of the fire. “That the fourth world was consigned to the history books.”
“They lied.”
Brains released the cast-iron lid on the pressure cooker and a rush of steam billowed up to the ceiling followed by the smell of freshly stewed meats and herbs and spices.
“But don’t worry about us,” said Brains, dishing up a couple of plates. “We don’t need your precious technology down here. We’re free.”
“How can you say you’re free? You’re trapped miles underground, never to see the light of day.”
“Freedom, my dear lady, is a state of mind, not of place. What freedoms do you have, Hmmm? You can watch your holovision, you can jet to the mall, send your kids to school, join a virtual gym, meet for tea on Wednesdays. And for what? An existence that, on a cosmic scale, is solely about consumption and reproduction. Is that freedom?”
“I don’t understand,” she replied.
“Freedom is the ability to think, the ability to choose. Freedom is the ability to direct, to move your life where you decide, to explore, to develop your mind, to exercise your soul. Freedom isn’t found in the comforts of life it’s found in the pursuit of reason. You think freedom is found lying on a tropical beach with a tequila in your hand, but it's not.”
Susan wasn’t quite sure how to take the brash old man so she just smiled politely and said nothing.
Brains gestured to the walls around him as he added, “Freedom is found digging holes in the ground.”
“You’re mad,” she said, light-heartedly.
“Am I?” he asked, chuckling to himself, handing her a plate of meat and vegetables. “Maybe I am. But think about it. We live in a time of contradictions, a time of unparalleled knowledge and ignorance. Never before has so much knowledge been so freely available to so many and yet we are surrounded by such apathy and ignorance. You pity me because I slave away, living in a hole in the ground. But I don’t need your pity. I don’t want it. I pity you. For there is no greater treasure than the knowledge you’ve lost.”
Susan looked sheepishly at the fire. Just like grandad, she thought, another waffling lecture. But she was too polite to say anything.
Turning to the pot Brains continued, saying, “Take this pressure cooker, for example. Do you know how it works?”
“You boil stuff in it,” she replied, biting into what looked like a small potato. It tasted funny, not like the synthetic foods she was use to from the Mall. It was earthy, fibrous.
“Try the meat.” Brains had a big smile stretching out across his face.
Strips of light brown meat fell off a small bone as her fork picked at a drumstick on her plate. It tasted great, the muscle seemed to fall apart in her mouth.
“It’s not the heat that makes it so tender,” said Brains. “You could get heat by simply roasting the meat over a fire. The reason it’s so tender is because of a scientific principle, Boyle's law. Think about it. Why pressure? Why cook food in a pressure cooker? Why bother? Why go to all the effort?”
“I don’t know,” replied Susan. “But it sure does taste good.”
“It’s not the heat alone. It’s not even the pressure than makes the difference. It’s what both of those factors do to water. Increase the pressure and you raise the boiling point of water to a higher temperature than normal and so the meat cooks in super-heated water and that," Brains paused for effect, “is the secret to such tender meat.”
“Really?” replied Susan, only somewhat vaguely interested as she took another bite. She figured she'd humour the old geezer and fain interest as she had no idea where her next meal would come from.
“Sure. Sit atop of Mt. Everest and boil some water for a cup of tea and you’ll find it boiling away at temperatures you could take a bath in because the atmospheric pressure is so low. But this illustrates my point about freedom. Freedom is based on reason. There are reasons things happen the way they do. Freedom lies in mastering those reasons, making those reasons work for you. Knowledge is freedom. Ignorance is slavery.”
“I don’t get it,” replied Susan munching away. “What does a pressure cooker have to do with my freedom?”
“This lowly pressure cooker is perhaps the most decisive invention of the past five hundred years.”
“No way.”
“In the history of mankind, it is second only to inventions like the wheel, writing, gun powder and the printing press.”
“A pressure cooker?”
“Not because it cooks under pressure, but because of the laws of science it harnesses, because of reason. The action of the lid lifting off the pot under pressure is the same as the single stroke of a piston. It’s the same basic mechanical action that led to the invention of the steam engine and then to the internal combustion engine, without which, there would have never been an industrial revolution and we’d still be living in the Dark Ages.”
“But you are living in the Dark Ages,” replied Susan with a wry smile.
Brains let out a chesty laugh.
“You’re a crazy old man,” she said, picking up a bone and gnawing at the meat. “But you sure can cook.”
“And you're an intelligent young lady, but don’t you see you’ve lost your freedom,” replied Brains somewhat animated by the one-sided discussion. “You enjoy these benefits without the realisation of what it took to accomplish them. You live in ignorance at a time when there has never been so much knowledge available. You’re a slave to your own comforts.”
“And you’re free?” she asked, wiping her mouth.
“Yes, free from ignorance. Free to live as I choose. Free to learn. Free to think. Free to explore and experiment.”
“Give me holovision any day and I’ll keep my eyes open for a National Geographic special on the revolutionary nature of pressure cookers.”
“Ha,” replied Brains laughing.
“You’re a funny old man,” said Susan. “Hey, what is this meat anyway? It tastes delicious.”
“Sewer rat,” replied Brains with a triumphant smile.
Chapter 05: Assault
Looking out through the one-way mirror, the interrogation room appeared empty. Occasionally, wisps of smoke seemed to hang in the air, darting in one direction and then another, trailing off like leaves blowing on an autumn breeze. No one had ever seen one of the daemon this close before, at least no one that had lived to tell the tale, no one except Kane, that is.
After a few minutes Senator Johannes asked, “Is he gone? Has he escaped?”
“No,” replied Kane, “He hasn’t gone anywhere. He just wants you to think he has. He’s bluffing, waiting for someone to open the door.”
Still, there was no movement in the room.
To the casual observer, there appeared to be no one in the adjacent room at all. A rough metal desk sat in the centre of the empty room with two chairs chained to it, one on either side of the desk. Torture was not uncommon in this precinct; a not-so-subtle means of persuasion always guaranteed a confession of sorts. Dried blood marred the walls and floor, faint splatter patterns crying out of untold misery. Soundproof panels set in the walls ensured no one would hear the screaming. Not that anyone on this level would care anyway.
