Cities in Flight

“Yes. I doubt that the Hruntans will attack us; they’re busy, and besides, they probably know that the police don’t love us, and will be too puzzled to call us an enemy of theirs right off the bat. As for the air—we’re maintaining a point naught two per cent spindizzy field. Not enough to be noticeable, but it changes the moment of inertia of our own atmosphere enough to prevent much of your air from getting in.”

“I don’t think I understand that,” Savage said. “But doubtless you know your own resources. I confess, Mayor Amalfi, that your city is a complete mystery to us. What does it do? Why are the police against you? Are you exiled?”

“No,” Amalfi said. “And the police aren’t against us exactly. We’re just rather low in the social scale; we’re migratory workers, interstellar hobos, Okies. The police are as obligated to protect us as they are to protect any other citizen—but our mobility makes us possible criminals by their figuring, so we have to be watched.”

Savage’s summary of his reaction to this was the woeful sentence Amalfi had come to think of as the motto of Utopia. “Things have changed so much,” the officer said.

“You should set that to music. I can’t say that I understand yet how you’ve held out so long, either. Haven’t you ever been invaded?”

“Frequently,” Savage said. His voice was half gloomy and half charged with pride. “But you have seen how we live. At best, we have beaten them off; at worst, we cannot be found. And the Hruntans themselves have made this planet a difficult place to live. Many of their landing parties succumbed to the results of their own bombing.”

“Still—”

“Mob psychology,” Savage said, “is something of a science with us—as it is with them, but we have developed it in a different direction. Combined with the subsidiary art of camouflage, it is a powerful weapon. By dummy installations, faked weather conditions, false high-radioactivity areas, we have thus far been able to make the Hruntans erect their invasion camps exactly on the spots we have previously chosen for them. It is a form of chess: one persuades, or lures, the enemy into entering an area where one can dispose of him in perfect safety and with a minimum of effort.”

He blinked up at the sun, nibbling at his lower lip. After a while he added, “There is another important factor. It is freedom. We have it. The Hruntans do not. They are defending a system which is ascetic in character—that is, it offers few rewards to the individual, even once it has triumphed. We on Utopia are fighting for a system which has personal rewards for us—the rewards of freedom. It makes a difference. The incentive is greater.”

“Oh, freedom,” Amalfi said. “Yes, that’s a great thing, I suppose. Still, it’s the old problem. Nobody is ever free. Our city is vaguely republican, it might even be Hamiltonian in one sense. But we aren’t free of the requirements of our situation, and never can be. As for efficiency in warfare being increased by freedom—I question that. Your people are not free now. A wartime political economy has to tend toward dictatorship; that’s what killed off the West back on Earth. Your people are fighting for steak tomorrow, not steak today. Well—so are the Hruntans. The difference between you exists as a potential, but—a difference which makes no difference is no difference.”

“You are subtle,” Savage said, standing up. “I think I can see why you would not understand that part of our history. You have no ties, no faith. You will have to excuse us ours. We cannot afford to be logic-choppers.”

He went down the stairs, his shoulders thrown back unnaturally. Amalfi watched him go with a rueful grin. The young man was a character; talking with him was like being brought face to face with a person from a historical play. Except, of course, that a character in a play is ordinarily understandable even at his queerest; Savage had the misfortune to be real, not the product of an artificer with an ax to grind.

Amalfi was reminded abruptly of Hazleton. Where was Hazleton, anyhow? He had gone off hours ago with that girl upon some patently trumped-up errand. If he didn’t hurry, he’d be trapped underground overnight. Amalfi did not mind working alone, but there were managerial jobs in the city which the mayor simply could not handle efficiently—and besides, Hazleton might be committing the city to something inconvenient. Amalfi went down to his office and called the Communications Room.