For more than a week, Ron’s mind was in a turmoil. How can I get away, with them watching me all the time? And how can I leave Sylvia here? That was the real question. No matter how hard he thought about it, he knew that she was right. There was no way to bring her Outside.
Could he get himself Outside?
The springtime passed slowly. The weather warmed. The summer began and the gates opened to let the visitors in for the vacation season.
“The tourists never come up here,” Timmy Jim said, “The hardtops make sure of that.”
And Timmy Jim made sure that Ron didn’t get out of Muslim territory. He always felt the eyes of warriors on him. Even at night.
But finally Ron made a break for freedom. He waited until very late one night, several weeks after the summer season had started. His sleeping quarters had been moved to an old hotel building, where there were warriors sleeping in all the rooms around him. More guards were on duty all night down in the hotel lobby.
Ron had studied the building very carefully. He didn’t go down the stairs to the lobby. He forced open the doors to one of the old elevator shafts.
For a moment he stood at the edge of the open doorway, staring into the darkness of the shaft. There was emptiness waiting for him, and a five-story drop to the bottom. Ron took a deep breath, then leaped out into the dark emptiness, reaching for the steel cable that hung in the middle of the shaft, hoping he could grab it, praying that it would hold his weight.
It was slimy with grease. Ron felt his breath puff out of him as his body slammed into the cable. His hands slid and scraped, but held. The cable’s creaking, as his body swayed on it, seemed loud enough to wake everybody in the building.
For a moment Ron hung there. But only for a moment. Slowly, painfully, he started to climb up the cable. It was difficult. The cable was slippery. Finally, though, he had climbed the six flights to the equipment shed on the roof.
Wonder why they never asked me to fix the elevators? Ron asked himself as he stepped out of the shed and onto the roof.
He crossed one roof after another until he was at the end of the block. Then he went downstairs inside the building, knowing that it was empty and unguarded. He made it to the street and started walking.
Dawn was already starting to brighten the new day when Ron stopped on the sidewalk next to the last row of buildings before the huge girders of the Dome. Across the wide avenue ahead of him, the massive steel girders reared and arched so far overhead that they were lost in haze. And on the other side of the Dome—freedom? No, Ron realized. Not freedom. Just another kind of world, with its own kind of slavery.
Still, Ron started walking along that avenue, following the curving flank of the Dome, looking for the nearest gate. As he walked block after block, it began to get brighter with daylight. The streets were still empty, though.
Off to his left, just a few blocks away was Central Park. Ron kept a careful eye out for stray dogs. He had heard from the Muslims that the dog packs sent out scouts, and a single dog’s bark could bring out a snarling horde in no time.
By mid-morning, he saw a bus growling along one of the crosstown streets several blocks up ahead of him. He walked faster. Soon he saw well-dressed people strolling on the streets, staring up at the buildings and the overspanning Dome. Tourists! A gate must be nearby.
As he walked among the strolling visitors, they stared at his filthy clothes and ragged looks and skirted clear of him. Ron laughed and clutched the credit card in his pocket. He went to the first hotel he could find. Using his credit card on the automated registration desk, he obtained a room and ordered new clothes. He bathed for an hour, feeling the beautiful hot water and clean-smelling soap take away his dirt and pain. And his fear.
For the first time in nearly a year, Ron wasn’t afraid.
But as he dressed, he began to worry about Sylvia. And Dewey. Maybe she was right, and there was no place Outside for her. But what about the old man? I can’t leave him here to go blind, all by himself. Yet, if he tried to take Dewey through a gate with him, Ron knew that the guards would send the ID-less old man to the Tombs.
He dressed slowly, lost in his thoughts, pulling on a disposable green zipsuit almost exactly like the one he had worn when he’d first come to the City. He was pushing his feet into the new boots when his hotel room door swung open and Timmy Jim walked in.
The fear flashed through Ron again. He stood there on the soft carpeting, fresh and clean, dressed in a crisp new suit. But he felt the way he had felt all year long, as if anything could happen to him any minute. He was alone. Unprotected.
Two black warriors stood out in the hall, grim-faced. Timmy Jim shut the door quietly.
“Where do you think you’re goin’?” he asked.
“Outside. I’m getting out.”
“You think so.”
“Now look,” Ron said, “you can’t start trouble in here. The police . . .”
Timmy Jim smiled, but there was no humor in it. “The hardtops been paid off. I can take this hotel apart, brick by brick, if I want to. I can take this whole friggin’ City apart, any time I want to!”
Ron sank down on the bed. “Okay, so you’re top man. But there’s one thing you can’t do.”
“Name it.”
“You can’t make me go back with you. I’m finished. I’m going Outside . . . or you’ll have to kill me. One or the other.”
Timmy Jim blinked at him. “You’re bluffin’.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You think you’re gonna go Outside and warn ’em that we’re comin’ out . . . that we’re gonna take over?”
Ron shrugged.
Laughing, Timmy Jim said, “Man, they won’t believe word number one! They’ll think you’re spaced out!”
“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“I saved your ass, man,” Timmy Jim snapped. “You owe me your life. You ain’t gonna get outta that.”
Ron answered, “I trained nearly a hundred kids for you. They know as much as I do. Let them train others. You got your money’s worth out of me.”
The smile crept back across Timmy Jim’s bony face. “Tired of bein’ a slave, huh?”
Ron nodded.
