第41节

, Steve had to admit it was not far from the truth. After washing

up, the majority would shuffle past the mess counter like a sullen,

dull-eyed chain-gang of Mutes. Even the effort of choosing one of the

three meal choices was too much.

Most thrust their mess tray forward and mumbled 'Gimme whatever's

going..." then they would prop their heads up with one hand while they

ate their slop with the other. Once or twice, Steve didn't even get

that far - he fell asleep in the shower.

Although Steve had been tagged for General Duties the lowest grade of

the lowest form of life - the engineering training he had undergone

during his three years at the Flight Academy came to the attention of

one of the supervisors who decided to put it to some use. For one

whole week he was transferred to a squad welding clean new sections of

pipe together. For six glorious days, in the brief moments of silence

when he changed rods, he congratulated himself on the slight

improvement in his fortunes. A skilled job was the first step up the

ladder. It was only a matter of time, he told himself, before Maxey's

staff recognised his leadership abilities and then ... No such luck.

After the twenty-four-hour weekend break, he found himself back in his

original squad, disconnecting old, corroded sections of pipe containing

a thick, foul-smelling coating of effluent. It was with a distinct

feeling of desperation that Steve learned that Maxey's assignment was

to replace and expand the sewage system under the whole of

Houston/Grand Central.

Like the overground, the world of the A-Levels left within him its own

set of vivid impressions. Huge, echoing, slab-sided tunnels lined with

pipes and power lines, valves, and vents belching steam. Pools of

darkness and light with brown-andyellow-suited Seamsters illuminated

one minute, thrown into silhouette the next, then just as suddenly

swallowed up by the darkness. The white hard-hats of supervisors and

line-bosses. Snowdrops. One or two sprinkled among the yellow hats

was a sign that things were okay; on schedule. One or two wheelies

full of them usually meant they'd come to kick ass. Down in the

A-Levels they didn't go in for handing out prizes.

Noise: the constant thrumming of the huge fans in the main vents; the

staccato clamour of compressed air drills and rivet guns hammering at

the eardrums, the shrill buzz of metal edge-grinders cutting into the

brain. Wave upon wave of sound, pulsing through the air with tangible

force, reverberating off the tunnel walls, seeping through the

insulation lining the bunkhouse walls. During the first few days,

Steve thought he might crack up but, after a few weeks, his body

gradually built up a resistance to the initially unbearable level of

noise.

His brain began to blank off the raw nerve endings; began to build a

wall around itself.

Water: running in rivulets down the walls; dripping from ceilings of

service tunnels and galleries. Sometimes Steve found himself working

in it up to his knees. Pumps worked constantly to drain areas where

it threatened to become a flood. During his travels he encountered

huge steel and concrete watertight doors that could seal off whole

sections, or one level from another. And he wondered how it would feel

to find yourself on the wrong side of the door when the water began to

rise towards the ceiling.

Heat: enervating, inescapable. Despite the geothermal power-plants,

heat-exchangers, refrigeration, air conditioning and the complex

ventilation system that made life bearable in the rest of the

Federation, conditions in the A-Levels varied enormously. The

environment in the rest and recreation areas was roughly equivalent to

that in the Quad but in some of the less-populated work-faces, such as

the service tunnels on B-3 - which was nearly seventeen hundred feet

underground - it was hot, and it was humid. Great conditions for

growing rice and bamboo shoots in narrow tanks as long as football