At the centre of the pool there was something very strange. A channel of water about six feet across shot straight up as far as the eye could see. Four spotlights were trained on the spout, which seemed to be contained within a tube of thick glass.
'What can you see?' gasped Alkland, clinging onto the lip of the hole with all his might, bless him.
'I don't know. But it's very nicely lit.'
It clicked soon enough, of course. You probably think you were there before me, but of course you're not hanging onto a wall while crouched on a raft. Or if you are, you're doing it of your own free will and I bet the water isn't flowing as quickly.
The river didn't flow out of the Neighbourhood and into the toilet outside: water in that quantity would have been hard to come by, and constantly refining turd soup from Royle would have been a real pain for the Authorities. So instead they'd set this up. The river was zapped up to some pipe up in the roof, sent over to the other side, and dropped back down to join the start of the river. That was impressive engineering by anyone's standards. They had to have some help from somewhere: anti-gravity frolics of that kind are pretty state-of-the-art stuff. That sort of technology is bloody expensive and held very close by the people developing it. The Stable Authorities had to have some pretty stunning contacts themselves. I filed away the question of what exactly it was they had to offer in exchange for later consideration.
For immediate consideration was what this offered us. My arms were getting very tired and Alkland's contribution had waned to negligible. There was very little choice. We couldn't go back, and once we were inside there was nowhere to go except into the pool. The current in there was fierce: there was a very strong pull from the glass tube sucking the water up into the field.
'Alkland?' I shouted, and he wearily ducked his head under the wall. I let him take a second to take everything in. 'We're going up that tube.'
The prospect clearly alarmed him a great deal, but there was nothing I could do about that. I wasn't regarding the experience in a wholly positive light myself, but we weren't in a choice situation, and he realised that.
'Oh dear. I - oh dear.'
'Yeah. I know what you mean. We're going to have to go down on the table. We don't want it to get there first or it might block the tube, and with that sort of suction we'll never get it off. So. We let go, and ride the rapids. Ready?'
'Oh dear.'
I took that as a 'yes' and let go. The raft immediately cannoned down the channel towards the pool and in about two seconds we were bouncing around a Jacuzzi from hell. Almost immediately two of the barrels sprang off the bottom of the table, the pads unable to cope with the power of the current. The raft tipped and turned over, dumping us into the churning water. I grabbed Alkland's coat and pulled him towards me as best I could. We were set on course now, spinning round the pool increasingly quickly, with the table and two barrels in close pursuit. Alkland looked deeply unhappy about the whole experience, and I grinned maniacally at him to try to cheer him up. I look after my clients.
'At the last possible moment' I screamed, trying to communicate above the din, 'take the deepest breath you can. Breathe till you're full. Then take another breath. It may have to last you a while.'
I didn't add that it might be the last one he took. In another couple of seconds we were whipped under the bottom end of the tube, hauled into the column of water and dropped towards the sky.
Immense speed, a rushing sound and a feeling of crushed and utter helplessness. For the first few moments, that was all I knew. Then I noticed that I still had a handful of Alkland's jacket and tightened my grip. If by some chance I got out of this, I wanted him with me.
The elevator ride lasted about forty seconds, I suppose, but it seemed a, hell of a lot longer than that. The last third seemed to expand, swelling until time almost stopped, with nothing but the sound of water and the glint of the glass tube reflecting light from the spots below. Though the impact had knocked a little out of me I still had enough breath left for a while, but I had no idea how long there was still to go, or what would happen next. If the chute reached roof level and was then diverted into a pipe to run across to the other side, we were finished. There was no way I could hold my breath that long, and I'm youngish and pretty damn fit. I'd be holding on to a dead man's jacket before we got a tenth of the way across Stable.
I tried, but in the circumstances I couldn't quite get my head round the physics of the whole thing. To keep the river cycle going, I hazarded vaguely, similar quantities of water would have to cross the ground in one direction and the roof in the other. If the pipe was the same size as the river, the water speed would be the same. Probably. If it was thinner, it would have to be quicker. Wouldn't it? If so, how thin would it have to be to be quick enough? I didn't have a pen, piece of paper, calculator and pitcher of alcohol to hand, so I gave up trying to work it out, and almost immediately afterwards the next thing happened.
Suddenly the glass tube came to an end. The column of water spurted a few feet above it and then broke up, falling round the sides. I heard Alkland gasp for breath as we fell back and were bounced by the water charging up behind us. We slid painfully across a sort of conduit thing before landing in a pair of bruised heaps on the ground.With one mind we flailed unseeingly to the side, instinctively crawling out of the continual flow of water. Within five yards we came to a ridge in the ground, and I heaved myself to my knees and, turned round to sit on it.
Alkland joined me a moment later, chest heaving, and we looked at each other Wearily. The Actioneer looked like an experiment in aquatic rat-breeding and I doubt I appeared exactly dapper. After a moment we both laughed, quietly at first, and then louder and louder, pointing at each other; with weak arms. Each time it looked like we were going to get it under control one of us would breakout again, and the other would follow. It was kind of hysterical, I guess, but it was a good thing all the same.
When we eventually got a grip I unzipped my inside pocket and got out a cigarette. Alkland retrieved his glasses and put them on. Both thus-armed with our aids to thought, we gazed slowly; round the area we found ourselves in.
We were in a low dark room the size of the whole of Stable Neighbourhood. The ceiling was about ten feet high, and tiny bulbs set into the floor shed a little light at intervals, enough to give an impression of how the thing worked.
In front of us and to the left was the end of the water column. Water pumped out of it at a constant rate, and after a moment one of the barrels, closely followed by the others, popped out like corks and fell with a drum roll to the floor. The table came up in pieces, which was good. It could have jammed round the bottom of the tube, which sooner or later would have alerted whoever maintained this set-up. The water dropped into the wide conduit we'd scraped across.
This conduit was in two parts: one led by our side and behind us, and the other went off into the distance. Both were slightly angled to keep the water moving. At intervals along the conduit's length were small let-off pipes, which released what was presumably a gauged amount of water onto the floor. The room, I saw, looking round, stretched as far as we could see to the front and to the right. It was divided into channels about six feet across by low ridges like the one we were perched on. Although it was too gentle to sense, I realised that the floor must slope very slightly from where we were to the other side of Stable.
In fact, it was the one permutation I hadn't tried to work out in the column of water. Instead of pumping the water back across in a narrow pipe, or letting it flow at a river's width, they had the opposite arrangement. Water fell into the conduits and was dispersed across the width of the Neighbourhood, falling into the channels. There, at a depth of no more than an inch, it flowed across to the other side, where presumably it was funnelled into a chute that dropped it down at the source of the Stable river.
'Peculiar,' observed Alkland. It transpired that he'd gone through similar calculations in the tube, and, zappy can-do over-achiever that he was, had been able to work the thing out in his head. He'd known exactly how narrow the pipe was going to have to be for us to survive, realised how unlikely that was, and was pleasantly surprised to still be alive. I was too, I guess, and the mood, though subdued, was buoyant. Alkland shook his head briefly like a venerable old dog, spraying some of the water out of his hair and making him look like he'd just been electrocuted. While taking off his squelchy shoes he turned and looked up at me. 'What now, Mr Stark?'
'Just call me Stark,' I said. I liked Alkland, I decided. From the purely business point of view, he was good to work with. He did what he was told, didn't endlessly pipe up with unworkable suggestions and disturb my flow of thought, and didn't complain much either. He was also pretty relaxed for someone of his age and background. I'm used to finding myself in strange places. It's the story of my life. Most Actioneers, with a few honourable exceptions, would have needed months of therapy after this sort of thing, and yet
here he was, just patiently waiting for the next bit. Liking him was going to complicate the issue if and when we ever got back home, of course, but that problem was some way back in the queue.
'What happens now' I said, standing, 'is that we walk.'
'Where?' Alkland frowned, peering eloquently out into the gloom.
'Anywhere. There's no way out sitting here. Any move in any direction increases the probability of us finding a solution.'
He nodded approvingly.
'You're not an Actioneer, are you?' he asked.
'No' I smiled. 'Not my sort of thing.'
'Pity.'
Shoes in hand, we walked along the ridge, which was just wide enough not to involve a major high-wire balancing act. It was still rather tiring, and after a while we climbed down and traipsed along the channel instead, feet slushing through the shallow water. I was trying to decide whether it was better to head back for the side of the room, or keep going for the centre, when Alkland pointed at the floor.
'Look' he said.
Bending down, I saw what he meant. A thin stream of tiny bubbles was rising from the floor.
'Looks as if they've got a leak.'
'I wonder' I replied, and crawled a few feet up the channel, staring down into the water. Sure enough, I soon found another stream of bubbles, and within a minute had established that the channel was full of them, at regular one-yard intervals. 'I think they're having a little rain in Stable this morning.'
'How clever' said Alkland, getting it at once.
I guess it was, really. It hadn't occurred to me at first, because most Neighbourhoods with roofs put them on specifically to do away with the weather. The last thing they'd be doing was developing complicated work-arounds so they could have it back again. In Stable, of course, things were different. They still wanted weather, it was just the outside world they'd renounced. So instead of pumping the water across in the quickest time possible, they killed two birds with one stone. Alkland walked over to the next channel and peered down into the water there.
'No bubbles in this one' he observed. That must be how they control it. For a sunny day they set the outlets out there to just send water down channels without the holes. For a downpour, they just send it down the ones with holes. Today must be a light shower.'
'No wonder they need such a flash computer' I said, shaking my head. I couldn't get my mind round so much pointless ingenuity. If they could just get a grip on the way the world was now and come to terms with things outside, they could have normal rain without all this high-tech dicking around. It was all very clever, but kind of stupid too. Then a thought struck me.
'I have an idea' I said, and Alkland's face immediately brightened. It was touching, really, to see his developing faith. I like that in a client. 'We're going to separate and walk in different directions, looking up at the ceiling.'
'I see' he said, sagely. 'Why?'
'No system is perfect. There's no perpetual motion. With condensation, spillage, evaporation, tiny amounts of water must be lost out of the cycle either up here or down there. Over time, the whole thing would run dry, unless there's water coming in too. Either they purify water out of Royle, or they get it from somewhere else. I'm plumping for the latter, because I can only see one input tube.'
'Then where do you think they get it from?'
'Same place as everywhere else,' I said, pointing up at the ceiling. 'Rain falls on that roof, pure water falling from the sky. They'd be insane not to make use of it. Maybe there's a way of getting out the way that it gets in.'
We split up and walked quickly, staring up at the ceiling, which was grey, featureless and intermittently covered with algae. Alkland tripped once over a ridge and went splat down into the water, but I pretended I hadn't noticed. I don't think you can find that kind of thing funny once you've realised how fragile most men's dignity is. Take mine for instance. You can almost see through it.
When Alkland shouted we were so far apart I couldn't even see him. The tiny bulbs attached to the ridges cast little pools of light across the water, but the glow didn't reach very far. He shouted again out of the gloom and I headed towards the sound, hoping that the system up here ran itself and there wasn't some engineer monitoring the whole thing.
The Actioneer was standing on a ridge when I found him, squinting upwards. I joined him and followed his gaze. I saw light, and clapped Alkland so hard on the back that I had to grab him to prevent him from ending face-up in the water again. When he'd recovered his balance he grinned at me, and then we both stared upwards.
Above us was a hole, about three feet square and covered with a grille. The mesh was too fine ~to show what lay beyond, but I could guess. The outside world.
I hoisted Alkland onto my shoulders with some difficulty and he reached up to poke the grille. It didn't move immediately, and I had time to wish I'd found my Furt before leaving the apartment two hundred years ago. Then he shoved it harder, and one end moved. Another push sent it up like a little trapdoor, revealing what lay beyond.