Actually, though I wouldn’t even have admitted this to Linda, much less to anyone else, I loved her in more than a Non-P way. But even if we both had been genetically desirable (neither of us were) I knew that Linda relished her freedom and independence too much to ever contract for any kind of marriage other than Non-P — Non-Permanent, No Progeny.
So I rehearsed my various approaches, realizing that when the time came I would probably be so tongue-tied I’d be capable of no more than a blurted, “Will you marry me?” and I struggled with zippers and malfunctioning aircons, and I managed somehow to leave the apartment at five minutes to ten.
Linda lived down on the hundred fortieth floor, thirteen stories away. It never took more than two or three minutes to get to her place, so I was giving myself plenty of time.
But then the elevator didn’t come.
I pushed the button, waited, and nothing happened. I couldn’t understand it.
The elevator had always arrived before, within thirty seconds of the burton being pushed. This was a local stop, with an elevator that traveled between the hundred thirty-third floor and the hundred sixty-seventh floor, where it was possible to make connections for either the next local or for the express. So it couldn’t be more than twenty stories away. And this was a non-rush hour.
I pushed the button again, and then I waited some more. I looked at my watch and it was three minutes to ten. Two minutes, and no elevator! If it didn’t arrive this instant, this second, I would be late.
It didn’t arrive.
I vacillated, not knowing what to do next. Stay, hoping the elevator would come after all? Or hurry back to the apartment and call Linda, to give her advance warning that I would be late?
Ten more seconds, and still no elevator. I chose the second alternative, raced back down the hall, and thumbed my way into my apartment I dialed Linda’s number, and the screen lit up with white letters on black: PRIVACY DISCONNECTION.
Of course! Linda expected me at any moment. And she knew what I wanted to say to her, so quite naturally she had disconnected the phone, to keep us from being interrupted.
Frantic, I dashed from the apartment again, back down the hall to the elevator, and leaned on that blasted button with all my weight. Even if the elevator should arrive right now, I would still be almost a minute late.
No matter. It didn’t arrive.
I would have been in a howling rage anyway, but this impossibility piled on top of all the other annoyances and breakdowns of the day was just too much. I went into a frenzy, and kicked the elevator door three rimes before I realized I was hurting myself more than I was hurting the door. I limped back to the apartment. fuming, slammed the door behind me, grabbed the phone book and looked up the number of the Transit Staff. I dialed, prepared to register a complaint so loud they’d be able to hear me in sub-basement three.
I got some more letters that spelled. BUSY.
It took three tries before I got through to a harried-looking female receptionist. “My name is Rice!” I bellowed. “Edmund Rice! I live on the hundred and fifty-third floor! I just rang for the elevator and—”
“The-elevator-is-disconnected.” She said it very rapidly, as though she were growing very used to saying it.
It only stopped me for a second. “Disconnected? What do you mean disconnected? Elevators don’t gel disconnected!” I told her.
“We-will-resume-service-as-soon-as-possible,” she rattled. My bellowing was bouncing off her like radiation off the Project force-screen.
I changed tactics. First I inhaled, making a production out of it, giving myself a chance to calm down a bit. And then I asked, as rationally as you could please, “Would you mind terribly telling me why the elevator is disconnected?”
“l-am-sorry-sir-but-that—”
“Stop,” I said. I said it quietly, too, but she stopped. I saw her looking at me. She hadn’t done that before, she’d merely gazed blankly at her screen and parroted her responses.
But now she was actually looking at me.
I took advantage of the tact. Calmly, rationally, I said to her, “I would like to tell you something. Miss. I would like to tell you just what you people have done to me by disconnecting the elevator. You have ruined my life.”
She blinked, open-mouthed. “Ruined your life?”
“Precisely.” I found it necessary to inhale again, even more slowly than before. “I was on my way,” I explained, “to propose to a girl whom I dearly love. In every way but one, she is the perfect woman. Do you understand me?”
She nodded, wide-eyed. I had stumbled on a romantic, though I was too preoccupied to notice it at the time.
“In every way but one,” I continued. “She has one small imperfection, a fixation about punctuality. And I was supposed to meet her at ten o’clock. I’m late!” I shook my fist at the screen. “Do you realize what you’ve done, disconnecting the elevator? Not only won’t she marry me, she won’t even speak to me! Not now! Not after this!”
“Sir,” she said tremulously, “please don’t shout.”
“I’m not shouting!”
“Sir, I’m terribly sorry. I understand your—”
“You understand?” I trembled with speechless fury.
She looked all about her, and then leaned closer to the screen, revealing a cleavage that I was too distraught at the moment to pay any attention to. “We’re not supposed to give this information out, sir,” she said, her voice low, “but I’m going to tell you, so you’ll understand why we had to do it. I think it’s perfectly awful that it had to ruin things for you this way. But the fact of the matter is—” she leaned even closer to the screen — “there’s a spy in the elevator.”
II
It was my turn to be stunned. I just gaped at her. “A… a what?”
“A spy. He was discovered on the hundred forty-seventh floor, and managed to get into the elevator before the Army could catch him. He jammed it between floors. But the Army is doing everything it can think of to get him out.”
“Well... but why should there be any problem about getting him out?”
“He plugged in the manual controls. We can’t control the elevator from outside at all. And when anyone tries to get into the shaft, he aims the elevator at them.”
That sounded impossible. “He aims the elevator?”
“He runs it up and down the shaft,” she explained, “trying to crush anybody who goes after him.”
“Oh,” I said. “So it might take a while.”
She leaned so close this time that even I, distracted as I was, could hardly help but take note of her cleavage. She whispered, “They’re afraid they’ll have to starve him out.”
“Oh, no!”
She nodded solemnly. “I’m terribly sorry, sir,” she said. Then she glanced to her right, suddenly straightened up again, and said. “We-will-resume-service-as-soon-as-possible.” Click. Blank screen.
For a minute or two, all I could do was sit and absorb what!‘d been told. A spy in the elevator! A spy who had managed to work his way all the way up to the hundred forty-seventh floor before being unmasked!
What in the world was the matter with the Army? If things were getting that lax, the Project was doomed, force-screen or no. Who knew how many more spies there were in the Project, still unsuspected?