The Spy in the Elevator, Donald E. Westlake [free e reader .txt] 📗

was reaching out for it." He glared as though daring me to doubt it.

I decided that this man was doubly dangerous. Not only was he a spy, he was also a lunatic. So I had two reasons for humoring him. I nodded politely.

"So what happened?" he demanded, and immediately answered himself. "I'll tell you what happened! Just as he was about to make that first giant step, Man got a hotfoot. That's all it was, just a little hotfoot. So what did Man do? I'll tell you what he did. He turned around and he ran all the way back to the cave he started from, his tail between his legs. That's what he did!"

To say that all of this was incomprehensible would be an extreme understatement. I fulfilled my obligation to this insane dialogue by saying, "Here's your coffee."

"Put it on the table," he said, switching instantly from raving maniac to watchful spy.

I put it on the table. He drank deep, then carried the cup across the room and sat down in my favorite chair. He studied me narrowly, and suddenly said, "What did they tell you I was? A spy?"

"Of course," I said.

He grinned bitterly, with one side of his mouth. "Of course. The damn fools! Spy! What do you suppose I'm going to spy on?"

He asked the question so violently and urgently that I knew I had to answer quickly and well, or the maniac would return. "I—I wouldn't know, exactly," I stammered. "Military equipment, I suppose."

"Military equipment? What military equipment? Your Army is supplied with uniforms, whistles and hand guns, and that's about it."

"The defenses—" I started.

"The defenses," he interrupted me, "are non-existent. If you mean the rocket launchers on the roof, they're rusted through with age. And what other defenses are there? None."

"If you say so," I replied stiffly. The Army claimed that we had adequate defense equipment. I chose to believe the Army over an enemy spy.

"Your people send out spies, too, don't they?" he demanded.

"Well, of course."

"And what are they supposed to spy on?"

"Well—" It was such a pointless question, it seemed silly to even answer it. "They're supposed to look for indications of an attack by one of the other projects."

"And do they find any indications, ever?"

"I'm sure I don't know," I told him frostily. "That would be classified information."

"You bet it would," he said, with malicious glee. "All right, if that's what your spies are doing, and if I'm a spy, then it follows that I'm doing the same thing, right?"

"I don't follow you," I admitted.

"If I'm a spy," he said impatiently, "then I'm supposed to look for indications of an attack by you people on my Project."

I shrugged. "If that's your job," I said, "then that's your job."

He got suddenly red-faced, and jumped to his feet. "That's not my job, you blatant idiot!" he shouted. "I'm not a spy! If I were a spy, then that would be my job!"

The maniac had returned, in full force. "All right," I said hastily. "All right, whatever you say."

He glowered at me a moment longer, then shouted, "Bah!" and dropped back into the chair.

He breathed rather heavily for a while, glaring at the floor, then looked at me again. "All right, listen. What if I were to tell you that I had found indications that you people were planning to attack my Project?"

I stared at him. "That's impossible!" I cried. "We aren't planning to attack anybody! We just want to be left in peace!"

"How do I know that?" he demanded.

"It's the truth! What would we want to attack anybody for?"

"Ah hah!" He sat forward, tensed, pointing the gun at me like a finger again. "Now, then," he said. "If you know it doesn't make any sense for this Project to attack any other project, then why in the world should you think they might see some advantage in attacking you?"

I shook my head, dumbfounded. "I can't answer a question like that," I said. "How do I know what they're thinking?"

"They're human beings, aren't they?" he cried. "Like you? Like me? Like all the other people in this mausoleum?"

"Now, wait a minute—"

"No!" he shouted. "You wait a minute! I want to tell you something. You think I'm a spy. That blundering Army of yours thinks I'm a spy. That fathead who turned me in thinks I'm a spy. But I'm not a spy, and I'm going to tell you what I am."

I waited, looking as attentive as possible.

"I come," he said, "from a Project about eighty miles north of here. I came here by foot, without any sort of radiation shield at all to protect me."

The maniac was back. I didn't say a word. I didn't want to set off the violence that was so obviously in this lunatic.

"The radiation level," he went on, "is way down. It's practically as low as it was before the Atom War. I don't know how long it's been that low, but I would guess about ten years, at the very least." He leaned forward again, urgent and serious. "The world is safe out there now. Man can come back out of the cave again. He can start building the dreams again. And this time he can build better, because he has the horrible example of the recent past to guide him away from the pitfalls. There's no need any longer for the Projects."

And that was like saying there's no need any longer for stomachs, but I didn't say so. I didn't say anything at all.

"I'm a trained atomic engineer," he went on. "In my project, I worked on the reactor. Theoretically, I believed that there was a chance the radiation Outside was lessening by now, though we had no idea exactly how much radiation had been released by the Atom War. But I wanted to test the theory, and the Commission wouldn't let me. They claimed public safety, but I knew better. If the Outside were safe and the Projects were no longer needed, then the Commission was out of a job, and they knew it.

"Well, I went ahead with the test anyway, and I was caught at it. For my punishment, I was banned from the Project. They kicked me out, telling me if I thought it was safe Outside I could live Outside. And if it really was safe, I could come back and tell them. Except that they also made it clear that I would be shot if I tried to get back in, because I would be carrying deadly radiation."

He smiled bitterly. "They had it all their own way," he said. "But it is safe out there, I'm living proof of it. I lived Outside for five months. And gradually I realized I had to tell others. I had to spread the word that Man could have his world back. I didn't dare try to get back into my own Project; I would have been recognized and shot before I could say a word. So I came here."

He paused to finish the cup of chico that I should have had with lunch. "I knew better," he continued, "than to simply walk into the building and announce that I came from Outside. Man has an instinctive distrust for strangers anyway; the Projects only intensify it. Once again, I would have been shot. So I've been working in a more devious way. I snuck into the Project—not a difficult thing for a man with no metal on his person, no radiation shield cocooning him—and for the last two months I've been wandering around the building talking with people. I strike up a conversation. I try to plant a few seeds of doubt about the deadliness of Outside, and I hope that at least a few of the people I talk to will begin to wonder, as I once did."

Two months! This spy, by his own admission, had been in the Project two months before being detected. I'd never heard of such a thing, and I hoped I'd never hear of such a thing again.

"Things worked out pretty well," he said, "until today. I said something wrong—I'm still not sure what—and the man I was talking to hollered for Army, shouted I was a spy." He pounded the chair arm. "But I'm not a spy! And it's the truth, Outside is safe!" He glared suddenly at the window. "Why've you got that drape up there?"

"The window broke down," I explained. "It's stuck at transparent."

"Transparent? Fine!" He got up from the chair, strode across the room, and ripped the drape down from the window.

I cowered away from the sun-glare, turning my back to the window.

"Come over here!" he shouted. When I didn't move, he snarled, "Get up and come over here, or I swear I'll shoot!"

And he would have, it was plain in his voice. I got to my feet, hesitant, and walked trembling to the window, squinting against the glare.

"Look out there," he ordered. "Look!"

I looked.

IV

Terror. Horror. Dizziness and nausea.

Far and away and far, nothing and nothing. Only the glare, and the high blue, and the far far horizon, and the broken gray slag stretching out, way down below.

"Do you see?" he demanded. "Look down there! We're so high up, it's hard to see, but look for it. Do you see it? Do you see the green? Do you know what that means? There are green things growing again Outside! Not much yet. It's only just started back, but it's begun. The radiation is down. Plants are growing again."

The power of suggestion. And, of course, the heightened sensitivity caused by the double threat of a man beside me carrying a gun that yawning aching expanse of nothing beyond the window. I nearly fancied that I did see faint specks of green.

"Do you see it?" he asked me.

"Wait," I said. I leaned closer to the window, though every nerve in me wanted to leap the other way. "Yes!" I said. "Yes, I see it! Green!"

He sighed, a long painful sigh of thanksgiving. "Then now you know," he said. "I've been telling you the truth. It is safe Outside."

And my lie worked. For the first time, his guard was completely down.

I moved like a whirlwind. I leaped, and twisted his arm in a hard hammerlock, which caused him to cry out and drop the gun. That was wrestling. Then I turned and twisted and dipped, causing him to fly over my head and crash to the floor. That was judo. Then I jabbed one rigid forefinger against a certain spot on the side of his neck, causing the blood in his veins to forever stop its motion. That was karati.

Well, by the time the Army men had finished questioning me, it was three o'clock in the afternoon, and I was five hours late. The Army men corroborated my belief that the man had been a spy, who had apparently lost his mind when cornered in the elevator. Outside was still dangerous, of course, they assured me of that. And he'd been lying about having been here two months. He'd been in the Project less than two days. Not only that, the Army men told me they'd found the radiation-proof car he'd driven, and in which he had hoped to drive back to his own Project once he'd discovered all our defenses.

Despite the fact that I had the most legitimate excuse for tardiness under the roof, Linda refused to forgive me for not making our ten o'clock meeting. When I asked her to marry me she refused, at length and descriptively.

But I was surprised and relieved to discover how rapidly I got over my heartbreak. This was aided by the fact that once the news of my exploit spread, there were any number of girls more than anxious to get to know me better, including the well-cleavaged young lady from the Transit Staff. After all, I was a hero.

They even gave me a medal.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Spy in the Elevator, by Donald E. Westlake