Wolfe, Gene - Smithe 01 - A Borrowed Man by Wolfe Gene

Author:Wolfe, Gene [Wolfe, Gene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466877993
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

12

BEHIND LOCKED DOORS

When I woke up I knew what I had to do. The room I had taken was not a corner room; but the one next to it was, and Georges (I kept calling him that because the way I saw it using his real one would be a double-cross) and Mahala were in another one across the hall. I washed up a little and got some clothes on, went into the empty one, opened a window, and took off my shoes and socks.

The rain had stopped. The sky was still sullen with clouds, but the window ledge I climbed out onto was almost dry. For a minute I wondered whether Conrad, Junior, had stood on a dry sill, and whether it had been this one. Then I stood up on my toes, got hold of the ledge above, and pulled myself up. He had not been all that much taller than I am, so it had been just about as hard for him as it was for me. Or anyhow, I kept telling myself that until I got one foot on the ledge above and was able to bring up the other and stand on that ledge.

Here let me stop and explain a couple of things. It was dangerous, sure it was; but it was not as dangerous as it sounds. If I had fallen I would have landed on the roof of the second floor, not on the ground. That would have shortened my fall quite a bit.

And the reason Junior had picked a corner room was that the third-floor corner room windows had fourth-floor windows directly above them. I had figured that one out the first time, when Colette and I had been there. The other third-floor windows did not. The third floor had a lot of windows; the fourth not nearly as many.

If the fourth-floor window I had climbed up to had been locked, I could probably have swung myself around the corner to another one, but I did not have to. Notint in a self-lubricating polymer frame works a lot better than the glass-in-wood windows we had. This one slid up smoothly as soon as I pushed. Climbing inside was a cinch.

It was a pretty small room and so full of equipment that for a minute I thought that was all there was. Then I saw a radiation sign and realized that the big round thing was a reactor. I had seen a micro pile once (which is what people generally call itty-bitty reactors) in the basement of the library, but that reactor had been one hell of a lot smaller than this one. My hands started to tremble; I had to wait until they calmed down a little (call it a quarter of an hour). Once they did, I got out of there fast and started working my way along the ledge until I got to a window I could see was not to the reactor room. I think that one must have been the one Junior had looked into.

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