Underground Movement — Reading Notes

Something had gotten into the Tube, that slick intestine we'd ridden through under the Andes, below the Matto Grosso, out under the pampas. Something had got in the way of the hundred hurricanes that pushed us. The eyes and ears and un-man-like senses I'd helped build into this five thousand kilometers of metal gut had stopped the pumps. The vacuum inviting our capsule on had filled with air, no longer tugging us to the terminal nest by the Atlantic. We were abandoned, fifteen meters under God-knows-where.

Mrs. Swaime, who knew that I'd helped in the Tube's engineering, turned to me for explanation. "What happened?" she asked. "What did we hit?"

The foreigner across the aisle, Mr. Rhinklav'n, smiled, a curious effect. "A cow on the track, I believe," he said, his voice brassy with the accent of Mars.

"How did a cow get in here?" Anna demanded. She was the girl whose girl-ness had snagged the eyes and riled the hormones of every male in the car.

"The gentleman is joking," I assured Anna. I glanced toward Surgeon-General Raimazan, the man whose knees had hammered my forehead. He was clutching his right forearm, his eyes squeezed shut by pain. "What happened, Doctor?" I demanded, laying my hand on his shoulder.

"Fractured my arm, my ulna. Get my case under the seat. I want to look at him." The doctor nodded toward the Bupo man, who was struggling to sit up. I got out the doctor's bag.

"Morphine?" I asked, finding it.

"Codeine, next tray, will be plenty." I dropped three of the pills into Dr. Raimazan's left hand. He swallowed them without water. I used my newspaper for a splint, rolling it tight and bandaging it to the doctor's forearm. Then I hammocked the arm in a sling made of a triangular bandage. "OK?" I asked.

"You could make a fortune in orthopedics," Dr. Raimazan said. "Let's get our friend out of the aisle." I stepped out and pulled the policeman toward a sitting position. He groaned and opened his eyes. Though he'd fallen into the fragments of the broken pitcher, he'd suffered damage only to his dignity and his lower lip. A line of red dashes below the lip showed where his teeth had bitten through. He shook his head at our offers of tape and antiseptic and struggled to his feet. Holding the key to the front compartment before him like a dagger, he shuffled up there. He unlocked the door. Shouting something violent, he ducked into the compartment and slammed the door behind him.

I lent my hands to the Surgeon-General's instructions, patching up the cuts and sprains the passengers had gotten. In a moment Miss Barrie, the stewardess, took the bandages out of my hands and finished the job with fewer knots and less adhesive. The passengers sat quiet in the dim light of the capsule, as though afraid that panic might constitute a security-violation. The lovely Anna pouted. Though she was unhurt herself, her precious radio was shattered. It lay under her seat, its antenna snapped like a slender idiot's-neck, its electronic guts spilling from its belly.

"Whatever else happens, we're rid of that puling nuisance," Don Raffe growled, looking at the ex-radio. His mouth settled into creases, a satisfied line between parentheses. He picked up his magazine and leafed through it, to prove himself superior to these chance joltings-about. The lights maliciously dropped till only the bulbs at either end of the aisle were glowing. These died till they were yellow coils, magnifying the dark that fogged us.

In the top tray of my test kit was a flashlight. I broke it out to sweep the light in a quick survey of the car. Anna's eyes squinted at my beam, her mouth loose with fear for a moment, like a drawstring bag. Then she squared off, sat straight, stared defiantly into my light. Without looking down she snapped her purse open and took a tiny automatic pistol from it. She laid this on the seat beside her, out of sight. "I've got a right to defend myself," Anna said, grim as a suffragette. I laughed out loud at this tableau of maidenhood-at-bay. She smoothed her hair back with both hands, making a double cantilever of her arms to lift her breasts, demonstrating the noble architecture of woman, mocking me. I stopped laughing. I jumped the beam over her to help Miss Barrie break out the emergency lights.

Those lamps were lit, and glowed in the cabin with their chilly blue light. Mrs. Swaime asked of the woman beside her, as though it were an afterthought, "Why did we stop?"