The Stranger in the Basement
Waiting. Brog 13896 hated it. Waiting for the helicop to take him to work. Waiting for his shift to end. On a white plastic roof crowded with workingmen, Brog hated waiting for the vator worst of all. Golconda Family Tower 91 was sixteen hundred floors tall and had only nine vators.
Brog hated the happy pills. They made him tired and took away his anger. He liked his anger. He liked the fire it gave him.
Need a drink. Need a smoke.
Every day, it was the same thing. Up on the roof in the morning, a helicop would pick up all the Brogs it needed for the day. A Steev at a farm gigg told him that, in the old days, the men used to wait outside the factory rather than having the factory come and pick them up. Back them, there weren’t any Brogs or Steevs or Marks, only men. This was an improvement of sorts, Brog supposed.
The sky up here was nice-all decked out with fluffy clouds. He could see the tops of some of them. Rain was coming, and for the moment, a cold wind broke up the stream of warm humid air rising from the roof. It was Onemonth. Out on the plains, the crops were waist-high, and the tractormen would be swatting flies with rolled-up sheets of practice scripture. Out in the distance were the other towers-each of them a mile high and shaped like a nail driven into the Earth. Below was the city. It was crowded and noisy, but clean. Tenscore other men on the roof, shifting and scratching like apes-watching each other for the shine of the shoe and the ring around the collar-Brog hated all the cleanliness and sacred toil.
A house gecko ran across the face of the bronze doors as they began to slide open. Brog secretly liked them- a sinful thought. He had been sinning a lot lately. The foreman thrust a happy pill into his palm and slapped him on the back.
“Fiveday’s pill, almost Sevenday.”
The foreman was a Steev. All toothy and fullo’ grins, this one. He looked forward to the Sevenday pill all week long. Brog gripped the tiny blue sphere and waited for it to turn to paste in his hand.
Ten hours at the factory, cleaning machines that had not run since before Brog was born. The whiteshirt was a sunnovabich, who never woulda said that, but Brog knew by where the dirt was. Like every factory Brog ever worked, that one never made nothing. He hoped his next gigg was outdoors.
After the plant, it had been two hours of sacred toil for the Happy Family. Brog hated sorting rags. He hated moving piles of metal scrap from one side of the warehouse to the other. He hated keeping his shoes polished. The Happy Family demanded all these things, and he was beginning to hate the Happy Family.
Need a drink. Need a smoke.
The crowd got edgy as their vator clicked through the last sixty floors. Despite all the waxing and the removing of scent glands, his crew smelled strong and shuffled slow. None of the others wanted to miss Happy Family Time.
The bronze doors were mounted horizontal and were ten cubits wide. They were covered with art from the old days-geometrical patterns mostly. The bronze mouth opened, and a circular platform rose to meet them. It was the night shift, angel-faced and ghost-white in their uniforms. Robbs and Billies, most of them were. They were edgier than usual, he could see it in their step, because terrorists and saboteurs were on the loose again.
Going down. Brog lived down in the negatives with the other unmarrieds. Brogs and Steevs and Billies-every level below the street smelled like ape half the time and bleach the rest. Up here in the milehis was where the spectables lived. Dropping through the tower’s atrium, cavernous and windowlit, he imagined life up here-the spacious white apartments, sun drenched from plastisteel windows-the smell of clean carpet. Some of the spectables had four wives to cook and clean for them.
Need a drink. Need a smoke.
Above him, light streamed down the vatorshaft. The babble boxes were blaring a newsyell about terrorists on the loose. Spacemen. As the vator fell through the newsyell, the cornerman on the lift glanced about to make sure the men bore the proper expression of seriousness. For most of them, the happy pill was starting to kick in. The vator dropped through the 600′s. Niobium rebar poked through chipping and yellowed plastisteel. Nobody can cast Niobium glass nomore. Nobody can build these towers nomore. Momentarily, Brog wondered what was holding the vator in the air. Ever since he stopped taking his pill, he kept having thoughts like that. The Happy Family was building a glorious new city in the mountains-far from the bugs and the humidity. Brog hoped there would be no vators in it. The vator came to rest about sixcent from the floor, and the load disgorged hopping and stepping into the hallway. Nothing works quite rite nomore. Above them, cracked video scanners broadcast a newsyell.
“…….subversives and atheists and robot spies. Their sole aim is to corrupt. If you see any of them, do NOT attempt to reason with them. Call the Godsquad at once…..”
Brog could see the faces of the spacemen up above. Three men and three women-they were beautiful but with haunted looks in their eyes. He walked among the workingmen down the streetway. White lucite passed under his feet. The Snoops watched them all, peering from spycam and mouserobot. He rounded the corner and passed under another vidscreen. The audio was broken on this one, but he could see footage of the alien ship being destroyed and the visitors being brought in for questioning. It was strange to think of women on such a dangerous mission as all that.
Another vidscreen, this one showing footage of police being dispatched throughout the city. Cracked vidscreens, endless workdays, so many hallways marked “entrance forbidden” and now this.
“….do not talk to them….call the Godsquad or find a cornerman at once, violation of this order will result in vivisection…..We are a Happy Family…..slackers and robots….Schwartzism everywhere….”
Brog’s flat was below corridor level. He touched a handscreen and walked down the aluminum stairs into an oval beingroom. Sitting on the bedcouch, he took off his boots. He had a flat of his own and was proud of it. Spycams dangled uselessly from their cables on the roof, disabled by the last tenant. His bottle was exactly where he left it, half full of clear liquid.
Still, something was wrong. Something smelled wrong.
He rubbed the paste from his daily pill onto the sole of his boot. The monitor screen ticked off the last few minutes till Happy Family Time. Finally, the colors came. Brog grabbed his bottle and drank, grinning with irony.
“We are a HAPPY FAMILY and this is HAPPY FAMILY TIME….”
The voice sounded both hypnotic and menacing. All over the city, workingmen and wifewomen, spectables and workies were sitting mesmerized. Brog pulled a contraband zigarette from its hiding place under the bedcouch.
Something moved downstairs. He could hear it.
Brog felt the short hairs rise on the back of his neck. He lit a zigarette and looked for something heavy. Maby it was a mouserobot. Maby it was Binny 7774 looking for his still. No longer content to trade ziggs for booze, maybe he was snooping for it in the basement. That didn’t sound like Binny though, good old drunk. Brog stood up and grabbed a wrench from his toolbox. Puffing from his smoke, he checked the floorseams and the ventilator shafts. It was probably a mouserobot. “What else could get in here?” he muttered, tired of stuffing steel mesh into crevices to keep the Snoops out of his place.
He heard it again.
Brog walked to the back of the flat and eyed the open door to the basement. It wasn’t really his basement, but he used it. The guts of the tower were down there; elektrik and water, spycable and glucose line. That was where he hid the still. Something smelled like ozone, and his vidscreen kept fuzzing out. Brog mounted the stairs and descended into the dark.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
He could hear the still. A juicecoil heated a cylinder of fermenting rice and corn syrup. Another juicecoil, a flask of the contents, a length of glass electrical conduit and some bottles-it could get him vivisected. The dripping sound was comforting. No snoops had been here.
Brog stepped into the shadows and looked square into the dark. There was a man back there, all hunched over some power cables.
“Who the hell are you?” Spoke Brog, wrench in one hand and smoke between the knuckles of the other. He could clobber any workie short of a Jack.
“A stranger” the shadow replied. He stood, face passing through the feeble beam of light from the doorway behind Brog. “I think you suspect my identity.” He talked like a spectable only more so. “Despite reports to the contrary, I mean you no harm.”
Day in and day out, it was the same routine. Nothing ever happened to Brog. Now this. The reward money could land him enough to buy a sixteen-year-old bride, but he had to be careful.
“How did you get in here?”
“Through this pipe here.”
It was a fistwide conduit. Smartass.
Brog took a puff from his zigarette and spoke again “What makes you expect I won’t call the Godsquad or the Snoops?”
“Frankly, I don’t expect anything, but please don’t. It would be inconvenient for both of us.” The stranger motioned to the still.
Shit.
Brog realized the spot he was in. It was a bad stick, with vivisection on either end of it. One way the Snoops found his still, the other way the Godsquad give him the knife for helping an agent of Schwartz.
Need a drink. Need it now.
Brog walked over to the still and changed over the half-full bottle at the end of the distilling coil. He raised it to his lips and downed a goodsolid belt. The stranger eyed him curiously. Brog took a second belt and eyed the man. He was medical waste in 24 hours. He grabbed a glass and poured a belt for the stranger.
Having regained some composure, Brog eyed the man. The guy was about twobit tall, with angular features and a square jaw. Brog wished it was one of the Spacewomen who paid him a visit instead. The man wore a gray suit, with zippers here and there and pants, rather than the white tunic of a spectable. He had seen pix of men like this, back in the old days, the sinful giants of the earth who built the towers and shot men into space. It was men like this that Schwartz came from, intellectuals, who angered God till he finally had enough. That’s what the Happy Family said, anyway.
“Where’d you come from?” inquired Brog, watching the stranger as he downed the belt and curiously fingered the glass. The man drank without wincing-without pain or pleasure-like he wasn’t no man at all.
“I grew up in a city that doesn’t exist anymore-Pacifica. It was in North America about ten centuries ago. After that, I was in space. Our last stop was 69 Cygni before returning to the solar system.” The glass seemed to glow in the stranger’s hand.
“What?”
“I am an explorer. A cosmonaut. An Earthling like you. I came back to a world that considers me to be a criminal.” The stranger walked into the light. His face was resolute, unafraid, thoughtful. “We landed ten days ago. Initially, when we were brought into custody, we though it was a sensible precaution against disease. I now realize that it was another kind of contamination they had in mind.”
It had started to rain outside. Down in the basement, he could hear the torrents of tropical rain rushing into the buildings’ cisterns. Brog stammered “You came as spies, subversives….”
“You don’t really believe that, or you would have hit me with that wrench. Can you imagine having the foresight to corrupt a civilization a millennium into the future?”
Brog’s head hurt, and for a second he wished he had taken the day’s pill after all.
The stranger continued “No, we were space travelers. We saw things you could scarcely imagine, I suppose. Volcanic worlds with surfaces so unstable they ripped apart underfoot. A world so cold it had a hydrogen ocean, with life so slow it took centuries to complete a single thought. We shared. We brought back the lessons of ancient species to a planet so ignorant it refused to even listen.”
“Is that why they destroyed your ship?”
“They only got the landing craft. You cannot land a starship on a planet. The mother ship is still out there in high orbit. Who are these people, anyway?” replied the stranger, his glass melted into a transparent lump in his hand. Brog was finally drunk enough not to be concerned.
“What people?”
“The people that run the Earth.”
“You mean the Happy Family.”
“I suppose I do.”
“We’re a Happy Family and this is Happy Family Time.” Upstairs, the vidscreen was about halfway through the colors by now, Brog supposed.
“And?”
“And I’m a Brog. A thirdborn. There are Miks and Steevs and Ralfs…”
“Which means?”
Brogs have brogules. Steevs have steveules….circulating around in them.” Brog motioned toward his chest. “They make us all different, and still we make a Happy Family.”
The stranger was nonplussed “What, exactly, is a steveule?”
“A particle of steev.”
“I see. And they use that hypnotic broadcast to condition you into believing it” remarked the stranger.
Brog was confused.
“Why aren’t you watching it?” The stranger shifted tactics.
“I don’t like it, I guess. It takes away the fire inside.”
Brog was proud of his rebellion. For the first time in his life, he could share the feeling.
“It makes the work go faster, but when I take the pill, the time goes by like a blur and I feel like there isn’t any me anymore.”
The bottle was empty. Brog set both the bottle and the wrench down on the stairs and began to light a new zigarette. The stranger took the wrench into both hands and it melted like an ice cube. Suddenly, Brog was very scared.
“OK, give me one good reason why I shouldn’t call the Snoops?”
“Nice piece of improvised engineering” quipped the stranger, examining the condenser coil on the still “This should be longer, if possible.”
“Give me one, Schwartz!”
The stranger raised an eyebrow.
“Schwartz!” stammered Brog. “The evil one-the leader of rebels and corruption, his agents are everywhere….circulating their book.”
“I see, sort of a Goldstein figure.”
“What?”
“Never mind, an ancient literary reference” quipped the stranger. The wrench was gone now. “Here’s a reason; I can put an
end to this.”
“To what?”
“To all this-the warehousing of men. They have a surplus of unmarried men resulting from their polygamous lifestyle.
Millions of you-so overworked and drugged that you cannot rebel against them. They justify the system with an imaginary bogeyman, and with some ancient text that lost all meaning millennia ago.”
“You mean the book?”
“Yes, the bible. I understand there is an Anglic translation of the Koran in it as well. There used to be more than two books
millions, in fact.”
Brog felt overwhelmed. This was too much, and too fast.
“That’s Schwartz, right?” The stranger pointed to the black-haired, goateed face on a propaganda sheet used to insulate a
heating duct.
Brog didn’t answer. Instead he mounted the stairs. “I’m gonna get something to eat. I need to think some.”
“As you wish, and thank you for your hospitality.” answered the stranger. That thing in his voice, they used to call it irony.
Upstairs, the vidscreen was still playing the colors.
“We’re a happy family and this is HAPPY FAMILY TIME….”
Could the stranger be telling the truth? Or was this some trick? The things he said were exactly the same things Schwartz would say. Brog was torn. He stood near the sellfone.
Brog made the call. An eager young whiteshirt in a gray cap took the call.
“You did the right thing. They are tricky and clever. That’s why they are so dangerous. We’re sending a squad over right away. Just stay put and don’t do anything to warn him we are coming.”
Brog felt relieved. The Happy Family knew what he was going through. Maybe there would be a reward after all.
A moment later, the squad came through the door and down the stairs to his beingroom. Six gray men in boots and black kilts with shaven heads with dark glasses. Four of them pushed him aside as the leaderman, a burly Frank, strode over to the basement stairs with a stunbeam.
Suddenly, their eyes rolled up in their heads. All six of them. They gripped their faces and fell to their knees. He could hear the teeth in one of them cracking. Static fuzzed over the vidscreen and the lights went dark.
The stranger came up the stairs, all blurred in shadow.
“…..gave me a ready-made means of subverting them. That is the problem with hobgoblins, I suppose - they have a tendency to become real.” The stranger grabbed a zigarette from Brog’s pocket and lit it. Standing this close, he could make out the man’s facial features and they were different now. Brog was terrified.
The stranger, now blacksuited and and goateed, touched each of the convulsing men on the forehead. “Those were microwaves, by the way. I really hate hurting people like that, but there seems to be a lot at stake.”
The men stopped convulsing.
“This building is a natural antenna…a niobium scaffold two kilometers tall. The ship and I are in contact now. These men work for me….”
The six stood up, blankfaced and calm. “Microbots are building a nervous system in parallel with the original. Thank you very much for the glass, by the way, I needed the silica.” There was that thing in his voice again.
Brog was completely lost.
The stranger stood up and looked Brog square in the face. “You don’t think a human space traveler could have lasted that long, do you? The cosmic rays alone would have killed a pure organic. I am a machine, built from smaller machines, using a man named Vincent Karlos as a blueprint. I was a cosmonaut, but now, it seems, I have a new role. I hope my crewmates are watching these devices.” He motioned to the vidscreen, which was beginning to clear. “I will need a figurehead, of course, history has shown time and time again that humans will not serve robot masters.”
In the blue light of the vidscreen, Brog could see now. The stranger now had a familiar face. It was Schwartz. Lights blinked. The vidscreen was recording and broadcasting now, not receiving.
On the vidscreen, Brog could see his own face standing there near the enemy. The six graysuites arrayed behind them like tenpins. It was Happy Family Time and the whole world was watching.
The stranger whispered…“Say something.”
