Then, while my visitors uttered sharp orders to their lackeys and wheeled ceremoniously away, I sank down upon my chair in a daze of astonishment. Certainly, if all that I had been promised should come to pass, I was the luckiest man in Wu!
CHAPTER XXIV
A Bold Stroke
The duties and obligations of my new position were formidable—if one looked at them merely on paper. I was the official possessor of seven titles and sub-titles, from Supervising Engineer to Sub-Director of the Airways; I was the occupant of a capacious suite of rooms, with a huge private office importantly marked "Hours by appointment only"; I had the promised two thousand employees, from office girls to "Ventilating Linemen," all of them strictly at my bid and call; and I was provided with whole libraries of literature and a list of "55 everyday rules," which, I was told, I must scrupulously follow.
However, I hardly glanced at these rules, and never so much as turned the pages of the instruction books; for I found that my assistants, at less than a tenth of my salary, did all the work, while my only task of any consequence was to sign my pay-check every five "wakes." This, naturally, left me with much time upon my hands; yet I did not waste my hours, but devoted them to enlarging my knowledge of the ventilation system, until there was no man in all Wu who understood the apparatus so thoroughly as I. It was not to be long before I should put my information to use.
In spite of my good fortune—good fortune that made me the envy not only of the Third Class but of thousands of Second Class citizens—I was still not contented, for there were many worries on my mind. One was the dread of encountering Loa, whom I had never seen since being declared eugenically unfit; I had, indeed, no intention of seeing her if I could avoid it, but from time to time I ran across her father, Professor Tan Trum, and always he would look at me with a reproachful air, and inquire, "Why don't you come around to the house sometime, my boy? Loa has been asking about you. Now that you are Second Class, like us, it can no longer be your Class delicacy that keeps you away." And always I would apologize, make some excuse—the pressure of work, etc.—and promise to pay him a visit as soon as I was able. But secretly I was trembling. Who knew but that Loa and her father would find some way of setting aside the eugenics provision?
This brings me to my second great worry. Day by day I was growing more weary of the Underworld and of its network of galleries and chasms illuminated with the weird greenish-yellow light; day by day I was becoming more hungry for a sight of the open earth and its blue skies, its stars and its sunlight and the faces of my own people. And my thoughts were constantly upon means and opportunities of escape. But I still was hopelessly imprisoned. More carefully than ever before, I took stock of my position and found that the only connection between the Underworld and the Overworld was by means of the ventilating tubes, some of which admitted the fresh air from above, and others of which were the outlets for used and vitiated air. But all these vents had been placed under a military guard, for fear of attack by Zu, and it was therefore impossible to approach them. Even could I have approached, however, it would have been doubtful if I could have climbed to safety through those steep and tortuous tubes.
Therefore I was forced to postpone hope of rescue till a remote and improbable future; and though the thought was never far from my mind, I gave myself to more immediate concerns.
Before I had been Ventilating Engineer for many "wakes," I began to turn my attention to a project so vast, so ambitious, so astonishing in its possibilities that I might have been deemed a madman merely to conceive of it. It was the Ventilation Strike which had first put the idea into my mind; and while in the beginning it had seemed too fantastic for consideration, the idea kept recurring and haunted me by day and in my dreams, until at length I weighed its advantages dispassionately, and decided that it was not so impractical as it had seemed. And thereupon I took the first steps toward that upheaval later known as the Ventilating Revolution.