Cities in Flight (50 page)

"These days, I seem to be tending toward thinking more and more like a human being, with human concerns. I don't feel like Hazleton the master conniver any more, except in flashes. The opposite change is taking place in you. You're becoming more and more alienated from human concerns. When you look at people, you see- machines. After a little more of this, we won't be able to tell you from the City Fathers."

Amalfi tried to think about it. He was very tired, and he felt old. It was not yet time for his anti-agathic shot, not by more than a decade, but knowing that he would probably not get it made the centuries he had already traversed weigh heavily upon his back.

"Or maybe I'm beginning to think that I'm a god," he said. "You. accused me of that on Murphy. Have you ever tried to imagine, Mark, how completely crippling it is to any man's humanity to be the mayor of an Okie city for hundreds of years? I suppose you have—"your own responsibilities aren't lighter than mine, only a little different. Let me ask you this, then: isn't it obvious- that this change in you dates from the day when Dee first came on board?"

"Of course it's obvious," Hazleton said, looking up sharply. "It dates from the Utopia-Gort affair. That's when Dee came on board; she was a Utopian. Are you about to tell me that she's to blame?"

"Shouldn't it also be obvious," Amalfi continued, with weary implacability, "that the converse change in me dates from the same event? Gods of all stars, Mark, don't you know that I love Dee, too?"

Hazleton froze and went white. He looked rigidly with suddenly blind eyes at the remains of Amalfi's miserable supper. After a long time, he laid his slide rule on the table as delicately as if it were made of spun sugar.

"I do know," he said, at long last. "I did know. But I didn't-want to know that I knew."

Amalfi spread his big hands in a gesture of helplessness he had not had to use for more than half a century. The city manager did not seem to notice.

"That being the case," Hazleton resumed, his voice suddenly much tighter, "that being so, Amalfi, I—"

He stopped.

"You needn't rush, Mark. Actually it doesn't change things much. Take your time."

"Amalfi-I want off."

Each evenly spaced word struck Amalfi like the strokes of a mallet against a gong, the strokes which, timed exactly to the gong's vibration period, drive it toward shattering. Amalfi had expected anything but those three words. They told him that he had had no real idea of how helpless he had become.

I want off was the traditional formula by which a starman renounced the stars. The Okie who spoke them cut himself off forever from the cities, and from the long swooping lines of the ingeodesics that the cities followed through space-time. The Okie who spoke them became planet-bound.

And-it was entirely final. The words were seared into Okie law. ‘I want off’ could never be refused-nor retracted.

"You have it," Amalfi said. "Naturally. I won't tax you with being hasty, since it's-too late."

"Thanks."

"Well, where do you want it? On the nearest planet, or at the city's next port of call?"

These, too, were merely the traditional alternatives, but Hazleton didn't seem to relish either of them. His lips were white, and beseemed to be trembling slightly.

"That," he said, "depends on where you're planning to go next. You haven't yet told me."

Hazleton's disturbance disturbed Amalfi, too, more than he liked to recognize. Mechanically, it would almost surely be possible for the ex-city manager to withdraw his decision; and mechanically, it would be possible to make the suggestion to Hazleton. Those three words had been neither overheard nor recorded as far as Amalfi knew, except a small chance-by the treacher, the section of the City Fathers which handled tablewaiting. Even there, however, the City Fathers wouldn't be likely to scan the treacher's memory bank more than once every five years. The treacher had nothing interesting to remember but the eating preference patterns of the Okies, and such patterns change slowly and, for the most part, insignificantly. No, the City Fathers need not know that Hazleton had resigned, not for a while yet.

But allowing the city manager to back down did not even occur to Amalfi; the mayor was too thoroughly an Okie for that. Had it been proposed to him, Amalfi would have objected that the uttering of those three words had put Hazleton as totally under Amalfi's smallest command as was a private in the city's perimeter police; and he could have shown reasons why subservience of that kind was now required of Hazleton. He could also have shown that those three words could never be actually revoked, however closely they were kept a secret between Hazleton and himself; if pressed, be could have shown that he could never forget them, aid that Hazleton couldn't either. He might have explained that, every time Amalfi decided against a plan of Hazleton's, the city manager would put it down to secret rancor against that smothered resignation. Or, being Amalfi, he might merely have noted that the conflict between the two men had already been deep-running, and that after Hazleton had said, "I want off," it would become outright pathological.

Actually, however, no one of these things entered his mind. Hazleton had said, "I want off." Amalfi was an Okie, and for an Okie, "I want off" is final.

"No," the mayor said, at once. "You've asked for off, and that's the end of it. You're no longer entitled to any knowledge of city policy or plans, except for what reaches you in the form of directives. Now's the time when you can use your training in thinking like me, Mark- obviously you'll have no difficulty in thinking like the City Fathers-because it'll be your only source of information on policy from now on."

"I understand," Hazleton said formally. He stood silent a moment longer. Amalfi waited.

"At the next port of call, then," Hazleton said.

"All right. Until then, you're outgoing city manager. Put Carrel back into training as your successor, and begin feeding the City Fathers predisposing data toward him now. I don't want any more fuss from them when the election is held than we had when you were elected."

Hazleton's expression became slightly more set. "Right."

"Secondly, get the city moving toward the perimeter to intersect the town you couldn't raise. I'll want an orbit that gives us logarithmic acceleration, with all the real drive concentrated at the far end. On the way, ready two work teams: one for a fast spindizzy assessment, the other to run up whatever's necessary on the mass chromatography equipment, whatever that may be. Include medium-heavy dismounting tools, below the graving dock size, but heavy enough to handle any job less drastic."

"Right."

"Also, ready Sergeant Andersen's squad, in case that city isn't quite as dead as it sounds."

"Right," Hazleton said again.

"That's it," Amalfi said.

Hazleton nodded stiffly, and made as if to turn. Then, astonishingly, his stiff face exploded into a torrential passion of speech.

"Boss, tell me this before I go," he said, clenching his fists. "Was all this to push me into asking for off? Couldn't you think of any way of keeping your plans to yourself but kicking me out-or making me kick myself out? I don't believe this love story of yours, damned if I do. You know I'll take Dee with me when I disembark. And the Great Renunciation is just slop, just pure fiction, especially coming from you. You aren't any more in love with Dee than I am with you—"

And then Hazleton turned so white that Amalfi thought for a moment that the man was about to faint.

"Score one for you, Mark," Amalfi said. "Evidently I'm not the only one who*s staging a Great Renunciation."

"Gods of all stars, Amalfi!"

"There are none," Amalfi said. "I can't do anything more, Mark. I've said good-by to you a hell of a lot of times, but this has to be the last time-not by my election, but by yours. Go and get the jobs done."

Hazleton said, "Right." He spun and strode out. The door reached full dilation barely in time.

Amalfi sighed as deeply as a sleeping child. Then he nipped the treacher switch from set to clear. The treacher said, "Will that be all, sir?"

"What do you want to do, poison me twice at the same meal?" Amalfi growled. "Get me an ultraphone line."

The treacher's voice changed at once. "Communications," it said briskly.

"This is the mayor. Raise Lieutenant Lerner, Forty-fifth Acolyte Border Security Group. Don't give up too easily; that was his last address, but he's been upgraded since. When you get him, tell him you're speaking for me. Tell him also that the cities in the jungle are organizing for some sort of military action, and that if he can get a squadron in here fast enough, he can break it up. Got it?"

"Yes, sir." The Communications man read it back. "If you say so, Mayor Amalfi."

"Who else would say so? Be sure Lerner doesn't get a fix on us. Send it pulse-modulated if you can."

"Can't, boss. Mr. Hazleton just put us under way. But there's a powerful Acolyte AM ultraphone station somewhere near by. I can get our message into synch with it, and make the cop's detectors focus on the vector. Is that good enough?"

"Better, even," Amalfi said. "Hop to it."

"There's one other thing, boss. That big drone you ordered last year is finally finished, and the shop says that it has Dirac equipment mounted in it and ready to go. I've inspected it and it looks fine, except that it's as big as a lifeship and just as detectable."

"All right, good; but that can wait. Get the message out."

"Yes, sir."

The voice cut out entirely. The incinerator chute gaped suddenly, and the dishes rose from the table and soared toward the opening in solemn procession. The goblet of wine left behind a miasmic trail, like a miniature comet.

At the last minute, Amalfi jerked out of his reverie and made a wild grab in mid-air; but he was too late. The chute gulped down that final item and shut again with a satisfied slam.

Hazleton had left his slide rule upon the table.

The space-suited party moved cautiously and with grim faces through the black, dead streets of the city on the periphery. At the lead, Sergeant Anderson's hand torch flashed into a doorway and flicked out again at once.

No other lights whatsoever could be seen in the dark city, nor had there been any response to calls. Except for a weak spindizzy field, no power flowed in the city at all, and even the screen was too feeble to maintain the city's air pressure above four pounds per square inch-hence the space suits.

Inside Amalfi's helmet O'Brian's voice was saying, "The second phase is about to start in the jungle, Mr. Mayor. Lerner moved in on them with what looks from here like all of the Acolyte navy he dared to pull out of the cluster itself. There's an admiral's flagship in the fleet, but all the big brass is doing is relaying Lerner's suggestions in the form of orders; he seems to have no ideas of his own."

"Sensible setup," Amalfi said, peering ahead unsuccessfully in the gloom.

"As far as it goes, sir. The thing is, the squadron itself is far too big for the job. It's unwieldly, and the jungle detected it well in advance; we stood ready to give the alarm to the King as you ordered, but it didn't prove necessary. The cities are drawing up in a rough battle formation now. It's quite a sight, even through the proxies. First time in history, isn't it?"

"As far as I know. Does it look like it'll work?"

"No, sir," the proxy pilot said promptly. "Whatever organization the King's worked out, it's functioning only partially, and damn sloppily. Cities are too clumsy for this kind of work even under the best hand, and his is a long way from the best, I'd judge. But we'll soon see for ourselves."

"Right. Give me another report in an hour." Anderson held up his hand and the party halted. Ahead was a huge pile of ultimately solid blackness, touched deceptively here and there with feeble stars where windows threw back reflections. Far aloft, however, one window glowed softly with its own light.

The boarding-squad men deployed quickly along opposite sides of the street while the technics took cover. Amalfi sidled along the near wall to where the sergeant was crouching.

"What do you think, Anderson?"

"I don't like it, Mr. Mayor. It stinks of mouse traps. Maybe everybody's dead and the last man didn't have the strength to turn out the light. On the other hand, just one light left burning for that reason, in the whole city?"

"I see what you mean. Dulany, take five men down that side street where the facsimile pillar is, follow it until you're tangent to the corner of this building up ahead, and stick out a probe. Don't use more than a couple of micro-volts, or you might get burned."

"Yessir." Dulany's squad-the man himself might best be described as a detector-detector-slipped away soundlessly, shadows among shadows.

"That isn't all I stopped us for, Mr. Mayor," Anderson said. "There's a grounded aircab just around the corner here. It's got a dead passenger in it. I wish you'd take a look at him."

Amalfi took the proffered torch, covered its lens with the mitten of his suit so that only a thin shred of light leaked through and played it for half a second through the cab's window. He felt his spine going rigid.

Wherever the light touched the flesh of the hunched corpse, it-glistened.