Feeling hungry, Andrew left his wife to watch over the children while he went to the canteen to bring back some snacks.
As he left the ward he heard echoing voices coming from somewhere and went to investigate. They were coming from another ward just a short distance along the corridor, which he was surprised to find was in just as poor a condition as the one he'd just left, with only around half the lights working and the privacy curtains drooping where they'd pulled loose from some of the hooks they were hanging by. What disturbed him most of all, though, was a line of bullet holes in the wall. Not recent by the look of them, but no attempt had been made to repair them. Either to intimidate the civilians or because no-one could find either the time or the energy to perform a simple maintenance task. Considering the generally dilapidated state of the entire complex, Andrew tended towards the second explanation.
Curious, he explored further. He found more signs of neglect and decay, as well as more soldiers standing guard on every corner. He wondered whether they were normally stationed there or whether they'd been posted because of the New Londoners. Although they watched him warily, they made no attempt to stop his wanderings until he came to the main entrance where two of them moved to bar his way.
Andrew went as close to the doors as they would let him, close enough to see people strolling past in the corridor outside. Like New Londoners, they were wearing one piece coveralls, decorated to individual taste with scenes and patterns reminiscent of the old world, but here and there were men in military uniform carrying weapons, walking arrogantly and deferred to by the civilians. Andrew watched them for a few moments until one of the soldiers on guard grew impatient and signalled with his gun for him to go back the way he'd come. Andrew knew better than to argue and did as he was told.
He got curious stares from everyone he passed, whether they were hospital staff or patients dressed in white hospital gowns, but no-one spoke to him, not even when he asked a nurse for directions back to his own ward. She would only point before hurrying fearfully away as if afraid that even that brief communication would bring dire consequences down upon her.
The snacks in the canteen turned out to be fruit, sugar sweets and biscuits of algae bread wrapped in banana leaves. Andrew got a tray and piled it up with enough to quell the hunger pangs of all the New Londoners until they were given their early afternoon meal. Other customers were paying for their snacks with metal coins, but when he smiled apologetically to the cashier she just waved him away.
Arriving back at his ward, he was delighted to find that most of the adults were now awake and sitting up on their beds. Only James, David, Stacey and Azindaba were still asleep, but Andrew was confident now that it was just normal sleep. They would wake up if he shook their shoulders, he thought, but he didn't put it to the test. Their bodies were exhausted from fighting the infection and they needed to rest.
He left the snacks on his bed for anyone who wanted to eat, but only Valentina seemed interested. Everyone else was too concerned for their children. Philip and Joe were standing on either side of Stacey's bed, looking down at the little girl, while Lungelo and Halona were watching over Izindaba. A surgeon had sewn up her injured leg and performed a proper repair of her torn artery but the infection had hit her harder even than David and Stacey and she would probably be the last to wake up. Neither of her parents had time for anything as mundane as eating while they waited.
A soldier entered the ward, looked around at the New Londoners and then came over to Andrew. "Which of you is in charge?" he asked.
"I am," Andrew replied. "What can I do for you?"
"General Wayne wishes to speak with you. Will you come with me please?"
It was clearly not a request, no matter how politely it was phrased, so he nodded and turned to Susan. "Look after the kids 'till I get back," he said. "I hope I won't be long."
Susan nodded and moved in close for a hug. Andrew put his arms around her to hold her tight and kissed the side of her face. "Don't get shot," she warned him.
"I'll try not to." He let her go and turned back to the soldier. "Lead on," he said. The soldier turned and headed back to the door, Andrew following.
This time, the soldiers on guard at the hospital entrance let them past and Andrew walked out onto the streets of New Philadelphia. If this city was laid out to the same design as New London then they would be on the sixth level, he knew. Below the levels that contained the estates of the city's rulers and above the levels on which the bulk of the population resided. Level six contained most of the city's public buildings. The school, the museum, theatres, cinemas and the library in addition to the hospital. The top three levels contained the city's industries. Out of the way where no-one would have to pass through them on their way to somewhere more tranquil and pleasing.
As in New London, the buildings had been hollowed out of the solid bedrock, but on the sixth level large open spaces had also been excavated between them to combat the feelings of claustrophobia that being confined might otherwise have caused. The caverns, with grass, trees and gardens, were long and curved so that the far ends were out of sight, further giving the illusion of distance, and their ceilings were painted blue, reflecting the light of the sun lamps back down onto the citizens strolling along below. In New London the illusion was good enough to give a realistic impression of the surface before The Freeze, especially with the birds and small ground animals that also inhabited the parks, but in New Philadelphia the illusion had begun to crumble some time ago.
Many of the sun lamps had failed over the years, leaving large parts of the city in darkness. Those that were left had all been moved to the area around the hospital, presumably to give comfort to those most in need of it, but as Andrew and his guard walked the paved walkways through the neatly trimmed grass he saw the caverns disappearing into darkness in the distance. It gave the city an ominous, threatening appearance, or at least it did to Andrew. It was all too easy to imagine slimy, bulging eyed subterranean creatures lurking in that darkness, waiting to pounce on any unwary citizen who strayed too far from the light. The people around him didn't seem bothered, though. Maybe they were simply used to it and barely noticed any more.
More worrying than the threat of imaginary monsters, though, was the graphic and unmistakable proof that the city was in a bad state of decay. They clearly had no way to replace the sun lamps that lit the city, which meant that every time one of them failed another small piece of the city was lost to the darkness. It made Andrew wonder what else the New Philadelphians were unable to replace. Plutonium, perhaps, or maybe computer micro-circuitry. At least they still had the ability to manufacture antibiotics, and since all medicines in New London came from the same chemical plant this suggested that the New Philadelphians could still look after all their medical needs. The New Londoners had struck it lucky in that respect. He tried talking to his guard about it, but the man remained stubbornly silent.
The people they passed as they made their way through the remaining neatly maintained parks stared at Andrew curiously, but none of them found the courage to risk the anger of his guard by speaking to him. Andrew found himself staring back at the citizens, though, his attention attracted by something he couldn't at first identify. There was something about some of these people that made him a little uneasy. Their appearance was strange, disturbingly so. A man he passed had a very prominent chin and a lumpy nose, while a woman had eyes that were set a little too high in her face. Or perhaps it was that the dome of her skull was a little lower than was normal for a human, leaving less space for the brain inside. The strangeness was familiar, as if he'd seen it before, and suddenly it came to him.
One of the lessons drilled most strongly into the people of New London was the danger of inbreeding, and the examples used to highlight this danger were the medieval Royal families of Europe. The Habsburgs, the Trastamarans, the Romanovs. As a schoolchild, Andrew and his classmates had been shown pictures of prominent royals dressed in silks and finery, their faces powdered, their hair immaculately groomed, but with grossly distorted facial features that none of them could bear to look at for long. The product of marriages between cousins over many generations, their teacher had explained. An attempt to keep the Royal bloodlines pure. An aversion to the introduction of 'lesser' genes that had backfired horribly on them.
New London had managed to avoid this curse up until now by deliberately including people of all races and nationalities in the founding population and providing financial incentives for people to marry outside their own ethnic group. New Philadelphia had been the same at first, as had all the underground cities, but then this city had been overrun by a rampaging mob almost all of whom had been white anglo saxons. Some of the original inhabitants had probably been spared, Andrew guessed. Those with essential knowledge of critical systems. The people needed to keep the city running. Pretty much everyone else would have been put to death, though, or thrown out onto the surface to make room for the invaders, and along with them had gone the genetic diversity necessary to give the human race a long term future.
All twelve cities had been given a vast reservoir of frozen fertilised human embryos surreptitiously taken from fertility clinics all across the world, Andrew knew. An emergency backup to maintain their genetic diversity in case the city suffered a critical drop in population as a result of some disaster. Why hadn't the people of New Philadelphia made use of this resource? Could they be making the same mistake as the medieval Royal families, believing that all outsiders were inferior and would degrade their descendants? Surely they couldn't be that stupid. Surely all they had to do was look at the people of their city to see the trap they were falling into.
The guard took him to the elevator shafts in the centre of the city, where Andrew wasn't surprised to see that only five of the original twelve lifts were still operational. A greater shock was waiting for him when he stepped inside the elevator car, though. The one the guard took him to was set apart from the others, making Andrew wonder if it was the only one that went up to the levels occupied by the city's rulers. It went to the lower levels as well, of course, and had twelve buttons inside it, beside the door. One for each of the city's original twelve levels.
In New London the city had been extended downwards as the population grew, with extra buttons added to the elevator cars to access them, but this city, it seemed, had never had the chance to grow. Not only that, but the lowest three of the twelve original levels were no longer accessible, with pieces of metal having been welded over the buttons to keep them from being used. Andrew wondered whether essential pieces of life support machinery were failing one by one, with components being cannibalised from the lower levels to keep the upper levels habitable. He wondered what happened to the people that the city could no longer support as its capacity shrank. Were the remaining levels temporarily overcrowded with refugees until birth control measures could reduce the city's population, or did they resort to more drastic means? He decided he didn't want to know.
With the general population not allowed to use this particular lift, Andrew and his guard had it to themselves and the soldier pressed the button to level four. The elevator car began to move immediately, passing level five without stopping and the doors opening smoothly when it reached its destination.
Like New London, each of the levels of New Philadelphia had been given a name that had once belonged to a town or city district from before The Freeze and he wasn't surprised to see that the level occupied by this city's rulers had been called Washington. Andrew had never been to the equivalent level of New London. He knew it only from News reports on television so he had little idea what to expect and stared in amazement as he stepped out into a formal garden that might have graced the grounds of an aristocrat's palace. Neatly trimmed hedges surrounded beds of bright flowers and golden fish swam in pools in which tall, sparkling fountains danced in the light of the sun lamps. People in expensive looking clothes strolled leisurely beneath the flowering cherry trees and played croquet on finely tended lawns, the men wearing perfectly tailored military uniforms except those too young to have joined the army yet. They wore richly embroidered scarlet tunics, all so similar to each other that it was almost a uniform in itself.
Gardeners were tending the plants, clipping the hedges with shears and removing dead flowers with pruning knives. A man in brown coveralls pushed a trolley on which a crate of potatoes was balanced. All the servants had the lumpy, misshapen faces of inbreeding, and when Andrew and his guard passed close to where one of them was edging the grass the man backed away, his head lowered deferentially. The guard pointedly ignored him.
The cavern in which the gardens were set was longer than it was wide and the high walls of the long sides had been sculpted into the facades of large mansions with fluted columns flanking the doors and balconies outside the upper windows. The walls were dressed with red brick and white cement, some with colourful climbing plants growing up them. Everything was pristine and perfect. There was no sign of the decay that was afflicting the lower levels of the city.
The guard took Andrew to one of the grandest of the mansions and pulled a cord hanging beside the sturdy looking mahogany door, ringing a bell inside. The door was opened a moment later by a stern looking man in a butler's uniform who glared at the guard as if he'd distracted him from something important. "Captain Douglas and the leader of our New London visitors," the guard said. "The General is expecting us."
"Of course," said the butler, his expression not softening in the slightest. "If you would wait in the library I will inform him that you are here." He stood reluctantly aside to allow them to enter and glanced pointedly downward at the doormat. The guard took the hint and made a big show of wiping his feet, as did Andrew as he followed him in. He was pretty sure that the white slippers he was wearing were perfectly clean, having walked on nothing other than tiles and paving stones since leaving the hospital, but he was getting the impression that etiquette was very important to these people and that it would be a bad idea to offend them.
Inside, the mansion was decorated like a palace. A potted plant stood on a small table just inside the door and paintings lined the walls, paintings that Andrew was pretty sure were originals that had once graced the walls of a museum. The butler took them through the house, past a room in which a young woman was playing the piano, to a room at the back that had a window looking out into another garden. A smaller, private garden for the use of the householders alone. Andrew saw another neatly mown lawn lined on both sides with flower beds and, at the back, near the wall of rock that formed the garden's furthest extent, a large, imposing statue that, Andrew was pretty sure, had once stood near the entrance of the Smithsonian institute building. He thought he'd seen it in an old movie once.
The butler closed the door behind them, shutting them in and leaving the two men alone with the dusty books lining the shelves. With nothing else to do, they sat on antique looking chairs while they waited for the owner of the house to come and see the men he'd summoned.