Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke [18]
"Karellen! Thank God! But what have you done?"
"Don't worry they're quite all right. You can call it a paralysis, but it's much subtler than that. They're simply living a few thousand years more slowly than normal. When we've gone they'll never know what happened."
"You'll leave them here until the police come?"
"No. I've a much better plan. I'm letting them go."
Stormgren felt a surprising sense of relief. He gave a last valedictory glance at the little room and its frozen occupants. Joe was standing on one foot, staring very stupidly at nothing. Suddenly Stormgren laughed and fumbled in his pockets.
"Thanks for the hospitality, Joe," he said. "I think I'll leave a souvenir."
He ruffled through the scraps of paper until he had found the figures he wanted. Then, on a reasonably clean sheet, he wrote carefully;
BANK OF MANHATTAN
Pay Joe the sum of One hundred Thirty-Five Dollars and Fifty Cents ($135.50)
R. Stormgren.
As he laid the strip of paper beside the Pole, Karellen's voice enquired;
"Exactly what are you doing?"
"We Stormgrens always pay our debts. The other two cheated, but Joe played fair. At least I never caught him out."
He felt very gay and lightheaded, and quite forty years younger, as he walked to the door. The metal sphere moved aside to let him pass. He assumed that it was some kind of robot, and it explained how Karellen had been able to reach him through the unknown layers of rock overhead.
"Carry straight on for a hundred metres," said the sphere, speaking in Karellen's voice. "Then turn to the left until I give you further instructions."
He strode forward eagerly, though he realized that there was no need for hurry. The sphere remained hanging in the corridor, presumably covering his retreat.
A minute later he came across a second sphere, waiting for him at a branch in the corridor.
"You've half a kilometre to go," it said. "Keep to the left until we meet again."
Six times he encountered the spheres on his way to the open. At first he wondered if, somehow, the robot was managing to keep ahead of him; then he guessed that there must be a chain of the machines maintaining a complete circuit down into the depths of the mine. At the entrance a group of guards formed a piece of improbable statuary, watched over by yet another of the ubiquitous spheres. On the hillside a few metres away lay the little flying machine in which Stormgren had made all his journeys to Karellen.
He stood for a moment blinking in the sunlight. Then he saw the ruined mining machinery around him, and beyond that a derelict railway stretching down the mountainside. Several kilometres away a dense forest lapped at the base of the mountain, and very far off Stormgren could see the gleam of water from a great lake. He guessed that he was somewhere in South America, though it was not easy to say exactly what gave him that impression.
As he climbed into the little flying machine, Stormgren had a last glimpse of the mine entrance and the men frozen around it. Then the door sealed behind him and with a sigh of relief he sank back upon the familiar couch.
For a while he waited until he had recovered his breath; then he uttered a single, heart-felt syllable:
"Well?"
"I'm sorry I couldn't rescue you before. But you see how very important it was to wait until all the leaders had gathered here."
"Do you mean to say," spluttered Stormgren, "that you knew where I was all the time? If I thought-"
"Don't be too hasty," answered Karellen, "at least, let me finish explaining."
"Very well," said Stormgren darkly, "I'm listening." He was beginning to suspect that he had been no more than bait In an elaborate trap.
"I've had a-perhaps 'tracer' is the best word for it-on you For some time," began Karellen. "Though your late friends were correct in thinking