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“Here. There will be people in the corridors. By the time I return they will all be in the assembly hall.”
“That was sort of my idea too.”
“I do not know what you are pla
“That’s it, Hanasu boy, always look on the bright side. Now go!”
He went and I prowled the carpet and looked for an unchewed fingernail to chew. I jumped when the communicator buzzed, but I stayed far away from it. Hanasu was gone all of four minutes. It felt like four days.
“You had a call,” I said, grabbing the goods from him. I stowed them about my person while he went to the communicator.
“They are all assembled and the search squads are here,” he said.
“That’s good news. Go down and organize them. See that they do a good and thorough job and work upwards from the bottom to the top. I’ll need all the time I can get since I have no idea what I will find.”
“You are going on to the roof?”
“What you don’t know you can’t tell. Get moving.”
“You are of course correct.” He started for the door and, as he opened it, turned back for an instant. “Good luck. Isn’t that what is said in a circumstance like this?”
“It is. Thanks. Good luck yourself. And I’ll see if we can’t avoid the mutual suicide pact.”
I was out right behind him, ru
“Jim diGriz laughs at locks,” I laughed as I used one of the large nails to pick the even larger lock. The door swung open with a loud squeaking and I was through and slammed it behind me. There was no light switch that I could find and the air was frigid and musty. I turned on the light I had brought and looked around, treading between the heaped boxes and ancient files. The door I was looking for was at the far end of the room, a good four meters above the floor. There was no ladder.
“Better and better,” I chortled and began to collect boxes that I could climb up on.
This took some time since I could not drag any of them and leave marks that might be noticed. I had to carry each one and stack it on the ones below to build a pile. Before I was done I was no longer feeling chill. In fact I sweated a bit when I thought of the searchers and wondered how close they were getting. I stacked faster.
The door was more of a trapdoor, a meter-square lid let into the angle of the roof just below the peak. When I pushed at it it squeaked and a fine rain of rust particles showered down on me, which is about what I expected. I carefully applied the lubricant so it didn’t drip, then wiped up all the rust. It would have been obvious it had been opened recently if I left it in its original condition. Now it was just another smooth-working trapdoor—and I only hoped that whoever was in charge of trapdoors like this wasn’t around when the search was made. This was a chance I had to take. Now, when I pushed up on the trapdoor, it lifted easily and a blast of freezing air rushed in. I opened it all the way and poked my head out into the freezing night. Stars sparkled in the darkness above giving just enough light for me to see that there was absolutely no place of concealment on the roof.
“Solve that one when you come to it, Jim,” I told myself with false good humor. “One step at the time, you crafty devil. You’ve licked them so far—you’ll win in the end.”
While I babbled this fatuous morale boosting I was driving a heavy nail into the coping outside. When it was well home I tied the end of the line to it. The 500-kilo test had enough diameter to take a grip, which is why I had selected it.
After that it was simply a matter of putting the boxes back where I had found them while trying not to think of the searchers getting closer every second. I was almost there—though I still wasn’t quite sure where “there” was. All I wanted to do was to rush up to the roof and to close the trapdoor. What I did was to carefully go over the entire floor with my light to be sure I had left no traces of my passage. I found a lovely big footprint in the dust of one of the boxes; I turned the box on its side. Only when I was sure that nothing obvious indicated my visit did I go to the line leading up to the opening. After making sure that all my equipment was secure, I turned off the light, stowed it in my pocket and seized the line.
Behind me, in the darkness, I heard a key rattle in the lock.
Now, I don’t know if there is any athletic event called the four-meter rope climb. But if there is I am sure that I set a new record at that moment. Without pausing for breath I was up it, hand over hand, grappling with insane desperation. One instant I was on the floor, the next I had the edge of the opening in my hand, was up and through it, stretched full length on the peak of the roof with one leg on each side, pulling up the rest of the rope. It seemed endless and I had finally pulled it all clear and was closing the trapdoor—when a light appeared in the room below.
“You take that side, Bukai, and I’ll do this one,” a gruff and toneless voice said. “Look behind all the boxes. Open ones big enough for a man.”
With desperate caution I closed the door, holding fast with my fingertips until it was in place. What next? Would the searchers come up here? To ask the question was to have the answer. Of course they would. They would look everywhere a man could possibly be. Then I must find an impossible place. The featureless, welded metal surface of the roof filled me with no enthusiasm. It slanted away on both sides at a steep angle. Ahead of me, not five meters away, was the end of the roof. Featureless. Nothing in that direction, so perhaps in the other. I grunted as I pulled one leg up to turn around. It was then that I discovered that the metal was covered with a thin sheet of ice. My feet shot out from under me and I started to slide.
Down the slippery surface, my fingers scrabbling for holds that did not exist, faster and faster toward the edge and the drop to the frozen surface far below.
Until I remembered that the line was still attached. I grabbed at it with both hands. It slithered through my gloves. Then I gripped harder and held on. The shock on my arms when I stopped was something else again.
All I could do was hold on. Waiting for the pain to go away. Aware that my feet were hanging over the abyss. As soon as I could I dragged myself up, hand over hand, to the peak of the roof again. Where I remembered the searchers below and the fact that trapdoor was going to be open very soon.
Of course the roof in the other direction was as featureless. Maybe they would not see me in the starlight. I had to get as far away from the trapdoor as I could. Unfastening the rope with numb fingers, I straddled the peak and began to crawl along it, arms and legs widespread. Dragging myself really, sliding on the ice. Knowing that if I slipped to one side or the other that would be the end.
The end. That’s what the roof did. Stopped. When I looked over my shoulder I saw that the trapdoor was clearly visible. As I would be to anyone putting his head out.
The line had held me before; it was going to have to do it again. Carefully and slowly, so I wouldn’t lose my balance, I worked the power tool out and fitted one of the nails into the jaws. I would have to take the risk that the thick roof would muffle the sound. One touch on the trigger drove the nail in, through the metal, at the peak of the roof at the very end. My fingers were cold—and clumsy in the gloves—as I worked desperately to tie a knot on the line, to slip it over the nail, to tie a loop further down. To fit my foot into it and to let myself slide carefully over the edge. To hang down the end of the building. To ignore the creaking as the nail took up the strain.