Cities in Flight

“Sit down, please,” Amalfi said contritely. “I had forgotten that aging is not everywhere known to be an anomaly, a decrease in the cell-building efficiency of the body which can be circumvented if you know how. It was conquered a long time ago—before interstellar flight, in fact. But the pharmaceuticals involved have always been in very short supply, shorter and shorter as man spread through the galaxy. Less than a two-thousandth of one per cent of our present population can get the treatment now, and most of the legitimate trade goes to the people who need life-extension the most—in other words, to people who make their living by traveling long distances in space. The result is that an ampule of any anti-agathic, even the least efficient ones, that a spaceman thinks he can spare can be sold for the price the seller asks. Not a one of the anti-agathics has ever been synthesized, so if we could harvest here—”

“That is enough; it is not necessary that I understand more,” Miramon said. He squatted reflectively, evidently having abandoned the chair as an impediment to thought. “All this makes me wonder if you are not from the Great Age after all. Well—this is difficult to think about reasonably. Why would your culture object to your being rich?”

“It wouldn’t, as long as we came by it honestly. We’ll have to show that we worked for our riches—otherwise we’ll be suspected of having peddled cut drugs on the black market, at the expense of the rank-and-file people on board our own city. We’ll need a written agreement with you. A permission.”

“That is clear,” Miramon said. “You will get it, I am sure. I cannot grant it myself. But I can predict what the priests will ask you to do to earn it.”

“What, then? This is just what I want to know. Let’s have it.”

“First of all, you will be asked for the secret of this … this cure for death. They will want to use it on themselves, and hide it from the rest of us. Wisdom, perhaps; it would make for more desertions otherwise—but I am sure they will want it.”

“They can have it, but I think we’ll see to it that the secret leaks out. The City Fathers know the therapy, and you have so rich a supply of the drugs here that there’s no reason why you shouldn’t all get it.” Privately, Amalfi had an additional reason: If He reached the other side of the Rift eventually with enough anti-agathics to extend coverage much among the galaxy’s general population, there would be all kinds of economic hell to pay. “What next?”

“You will be asked to wipe out the jungle.”

Amalfi sat back, stunned, and mopped his bald head. Wipe out the jungle! Oh, it would be easy enough to lay waste to almost all of it—even to give the Hevians energy weapons to keep those wastes clear—but sooner or later the jungle would come back. The weapons would short out in the eternal moisture; the Hevians would not take proper care of them, would not be able to repair them—how would the brightest Greek have repaired a shattered X-ray tube, even if he had known what steps to take? The technology didn’t exist.

No, the jungle would come back. And the cops, in pursuit of the bindlestiff on the city’s own Dirac alarm, would eventually come to He to see whether or not the Okies had fulfilled their contract—and would find the planet as raw as ever. Good-by to riches. This was jungle climate. There would be jungles here until the next Draysonian catastrophe, and that was that.

“Excuse me,” he said, and reached for the control helmet. “Get me the City Fathers,” he said into the mouthpiece.

“SPEAK,” the spokesman vodeur said after a while.

“How would you go about wiping out a jungle?”

There was a moment’s silence. “SODIUM FLUOSILICATE DUSTING WOULD SERVE. IN A WET CLIMATE IT WOULD CREATE FATAL LEAF BLISTER. HARDIER WEEDS COULD BE SPRAYED WITH 2,4-D. OF COURSE THE JUNGLE WOULD RETURN.”

“That’s what I meant. Any way to make the job stick?”

“NO, UNLESS THE PLANET EXHIBITS DRAYSONIANISM.”

“What?”

“NO, UNLESS THE PLANET EXHIBITS DRAYSONIANISM. IN THAT CASE ITS AXIS MIGHT BE REGULARIZED. IT HAS NEVER BEEN TRIED, BUT THEORETICALLY IT IS QUITE SIMPLE; A BILL TO REGULARIZE EARTH’S AXIS WAS DEFEATED BY THREE VOTES IN THE EIGHTY-SECOND COUNCIL, OWING TO THE OPPOSITION OF THE CONSERVATION LOBBY.”

“Could the city handle it?”

“NO. THE COST WOULD BE PROHIBITIVE. MAYOR AMALFI, ARE YOU CONTEMPLATING TIPPING THIS PLANET? WE FORBID IT! EVERY INDICATION SHOWS—”

Amalfi tore the helmet from his head and flung it across the room. Miramon sprang up in alarm.

“Hazleton!”

The city manager shot through the door as if he had been kicked through it on roller skates. “Here, boss—what’s the—”

“Get down below and turn off the City Fathers— fast, before they catch on and do something! Quick, man—”

Hazleton was already gone. On the other side of the room, the phones of the helmet squawked dead data in anxious, even syllables.

Then suddenly they went silent.