Cities in Flight

“One moment,” Specht’s voice cut in again. “Before we vote, I for one want to know who it is that has been advising us. Buda-Pesht we know. But— who are you?”

There was instant dead silence in the throne room.

The question was loaded, as everyone in the hall knew. Prestige among Okies depended, in the long run, upon only two things: time aloft and coups recorded by the interstellar grapevine. Amalfi’s city stood high on both tallies; he had only to identify his city, and he would stand at least an even chance of carrying the voting. Even while nameless, for that matter, the city had earned considerable kudos in the jungle.

Evidently Hazleton thought so, too, for Amalfi could see the frantic covert hand signals he was making. Tell ’em, boss. It can’t miss. Tell ’em!

After a long, suspended heartbeat, the mayor said, “My name is John Amalfi, Mayor Specht.”

A single broad comber of contempt rolled through the hall.

“Asked and answered,” the King said, showing his ragged teeth. “Glad to have you aboard, Mister Amalfi. Now if you’ll get the hell off the platform, we’ll get on with the voting. But don’t be in any hurry to leave town, Mister Amalfi. I want to talk to you, man to man. Understand?”

“Yeah,” Amalfi said. He swung his huge bulk lightly to the floor of the hall, and walked back to where Dee and Hazleton were standing, hand in hand.

“Boss, why didn’t you tell ’em?” Hazleton whispered, his face hard. “Or did you want to throw the whole show away? You had two beautiful chances, and you muffed ’em both!”

“Of course I muffed them. I came here to muff them. I came here to dynamite them, as a matter of fact. Now you and Dee had better get out of here before I have to give Dee to the King in order to get back to our city at all.”

“You staged that, too, John,” Dee said. It was not an accusation; it was simply a statement of fact.

“I’m afraid I did,” Amalfi said. “I’m sorry, Dee; it had to be done, or I wouldn’t have done it. I was also sure that I could fox the King on that point, if that’s any consolation to you. Now move, or you will be sunk. Mark, make plenty of noise about getting away.”

“What about you?” Dee said.

“I’ll be along later. Git!”

Hazleton stared at Amalfi a moment longer. Then he turned and pushed back through the crowd, the frightened, reluctant girl at his heels. His method of being very noisy was characteristic of him: he was so completely silent that everyone within sight of him knew that he was making a getaway; even his footsteps made no sound at all. In the surging hall his noiselessness was as conspicuous as a siren in church.

Amalfi stood his ground long enough to let the King see that the principal hostage was still on hand, still obeying the letter of the King’s order. Then, the moment the King’s attention was distracted, he faded, moving with the local current in the crowd, bending his knees slightly to reduce his height, tipping his head back to point his conspicuous baldness away from the dais, and making only the normal amount of sound as he moved—becoming, in short, effectively invisible.

By this time the voting was in full course, and it would be five minutes at the least before the King could afford to interrupt it long enough to order the doors closed against Amalfi. After Hazleton’s and Dee’s ostentatiously alarmed exits, an emergency order in the middle of the voting would have made it painfully obvious what the King was after.

Of course, had the King had the foresight to equip himself with a personal transmitter before mounting the dais, the outcome might have been different. The King’s failure to do so strengthened Amalfi’s conviction that the King had not been mayor of Buda-Pesht long, and that he had not won the post by the usual processes.

But Dee and Hazleton would get out all right. So would Amalfi. On this limited subject, Amalfi had been six jumps ahead of the King all the way.

Amalfi drifted toward the part of the crowd from where, roughly, he estimated that the voice of the mayor of Dresden-Saxony had been coming. He found the worn, birdlike Slav without difficulty.

“You keep a tight holster-flap on your weapons,” Specht said in a low voice.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Mayor Specht. You set it up beautifully. It might cheer you up a bit to know that the question was just the right one, all the same, and many thanks for it. In return I owe you the answer; are you good at riddles?”

“Riddles?”

“Raetseln ,” Amalfi translated.

“Oh—conundrums. No, but I can try.”

“What city has two names twice?”

Evidently Specht did not need to be good at riddles to come up with the answer to that one. His jaw dropped. “You’re N—” he began.

Amalfi held up his hand in the conventional Okie FYI sign: “For your information only.” Specht gulped and nodded. With a grin, Amalfi drifted on out of the palace.

There was a lot of hard work still ahead, but from now on it should be all downhill. The “march” on Earth would be carried in the voting.