Cities in Flight

“Come on out,” he said tersely. “The job’s mostly done.”

Chris followed Frad out into the half-light of the warehouse, which seemed brilliant after the stuffy inkiness of the hole, and thence into the intolerable brilliance of late-afternoon sunlight.

“What happened to Frank Lutz?” he said breathlessly.

Frad stared straight ahead, and when he replied, his voice was totally devoid of expression.

“We got rid of him. The subject is closed.”

Chris shied off from it hastily. “What happens now?”

“There’s still a little mopping up to do, and we could use some help. If you called your friends now, we could let them in—as long as Amalfi doesn’t send a whole boarding squad.”

“No, just two men.”

Frad nodded. “Two good men in full armor should flatten things out in a day or so at the most.” He hailed a passing Tin Cab. As it settled obediently beside them, Chris saw that there were several inarguable bullet holes in it. How old they were was of course impossible to know, but it was Chris’s guess that they hadn’t been there for as much as a week. “I’ll get you to the radio and you can take it from there. Then it’ll be time to get the deal drawn up.”

And that would be the moment that Chris had been dreading above all others—the moment when he would have to talk to Anderson and Amalfi, and tell them what he had done, what he had started, what he had committed them to.

There was no doubt in his mind as to how he felt about it. He was scared.

“Come on, hop in,” Frad said. “What are you waiting for?”

CHAPTER TWELVE: An Interview With Amalfi

THE CITY was still administered, with due regard for tradition, from City Hall, but its control room was in the mast of the Empire State Building. It was here that Amalfi received them all—Chris, Frad, and Sgts. Anderson and Dulany—for he had been occupying it around the clock while the alert had been on, as officially it still was. It was a marvelous place, jammed to the ceilings with screens, lights, meters, automatic charts, and scores of devices Chris could not even put a name to; but Chris was more interested in the Mayor.

Since he was at the moment talking to Frad, Chris had plenty of opportunity to study him.

The fabulous Amalfi had turned out to be a complete surprise. Chris could not say any more just what kind of man he had pictured in his mind. Something more stalwart, lean and conventionally heroic, perhaps—but certainly not a short barrel-shaped man with a bull neck, a totally bald head and hands so huge that they looked as though they could crush rocks. The oddest touch of all was the cigar, held in the powerful fingers with almost feminine delicacy, and drawn on with invariable relish. Nobody else in the city smoked— nobody else—because there was no place in it to grow tobacco. The cigar, then, was more than a badge of office; it was a symbol of the wealth of the city, like the snow imported from the mountains by the Roman emperors, and Amalfi treated it like a treasure, not a habit. When he was thinking, he had an odd way of holding it up and looking at it, as though everything that was going on in his head was concentrated in its glowing coal.

He was saying to Frad: “The arrangements with the machinery are cumbersome, but not difficult in principle. We can lend you our Brood assembly until she replicates herself; then you reset the daughter machine, feed her scrap, and out come City Fathers to the number that you’ll need—probably about a third as many as we carry, and it’ll take maybe ten years. You can use the time feeding them data, because in the beginning they’ll be idiots except for the computation function.

“In the meantime we’ll refigure your job problem on our own machines. Since we’ll trust the answer, and since Chris says you’re a man of your word, that means that of course we’ll underwrite your contract with the Argidae.”

“Many thanks,” Frad said.

“Not necessary,” Amalfi rumbled. “For value received. In fact we got more than we’re paying for—we learned something from you. Which brings us to our drastic friend Mr. deFord.” He swung on Chris, who tried unsuccessfully to swallow his heart. “I suppose you’re aware, Chris, that this is D-day for you: your eighteenth birthday.”

“Yes, sir. I sure am.”

“Well, I’ve got a job for you if you want it. I’ve been studying it ever since it was first mentioned to me, and all I can say is, it serves you right.”

Chris swallowed again. The Mayor studied the cigar judiciously.

“It calls for a very odd combination of skills and character traits. Taking the latter first, it needs initiative, boldness, imagination, a willingness to improvise and take short-cuts, and an ability to see the whole of a complex situation at a glance. But at the same time, it needs conservative instincts, so that even the boldest ideas and acts tend to be those that save men, materials, time, money. What class of jobs does that make you think of so far?”

“M ILITARY GENERAL OFFICERS,” the City Fathers promptly announced.