Cities in Flight

“Because it’ll be ours,” Carrel said abruptly. Hazleton swung on him, obviously astonished; but Carrel’s rapt eyes did not see the older man. “Not only our planet—whichever one we choose—but our galaxy. Both the Magellanics are galaxies in little. I know; I’m a southerner, I grew up on a planet where the Magellanics went across the night sky like tornadoes of sparks. The Greater Magellanic even has its own center of rotation; I couldn’t see it from my home planet because we were too close, but from Earth it has a distinct Milne spiral. And both clouds are moving away, taking on their own independence from the main galaxy. Hell, Mark, it isn’t a matter of one planet. That’s nothing. We won’t be able to fly the city, but we can build spaceships. We can colonize. We can settle the economy to suit ourselves. Our own galaxy! What more could you want?”

“It’s too easy,” Hazleton said stubbornly. “I’m used to fighting for what I want. I’m used to fighting for the city. I want to use my head, not my back; your spaceships, your colonization, those things are going to be preceded by a lot of plain and simple weeding and plowing. There’s the core of my objection to this scheme, Amalfi. It’s wasteful. It commits us to a situation where most of what we’ll have to do will be outside of our experience.”

“I disagree,” Amalfi said quietly. “There are already colonies in the Greater Magellanic. They weren’t set up by spaceships. They were set up by cities. No other mechanism could have made the trip at all in those days.”

“So?”

“So there’s no chance that we’ll be able to settle down placidly and get out our hoes. We’ll have to fight to make any part of the Cloud our own. It’s going to be the biggest fight we’ve ever had, because we’ll be fighting Okies—Okies who probably have forgotten most of their history and their heritage, but Okies all the same, Okies who had this idea long before we did and who are going to defend their patent.”

“As they have a right to do. Why should we poach on them when a giant cluster would serve us just as well? Or nearly as well?”

“Because they are poachers themselves—and worse. Why would a city go all the way to the Greater Magellanic in the old days, when cities were solid citizens of the galaxy? Why didn’t they settle down in a giant cluster? Think, Mark! They were bindlestiffs. Cities who had to go to the Greater Magellanic because they had committed crimes that made every star in the main galaxy their enemies. You could name one such city yourself, and one you know must be out there in that cloud: the Interstellar Master Traders. And not only because Thor Five still remembers it, but because every sentient being in the galaxy burns for the blood of every last man on board it. Where else could it have gone but the Greater Magellanic, even though it starved itself for fifty years to make the trip?”

Hazleton began kneading his hands, slowly, but with great force. His knuckles went alternately white and red as his fingers ground over them.

“Gods of all stars,” he said. His lips thinned. “The Mad Dogs. Yes. They went there if they went any place. Now there’s an outfit I’d like to meet.”

“Bear in mind that you might not, Mark. The Cloud’s a big place.”

“Sure, sure. And there may be a few other bindlestiffs, too. But if the Mad Dogs are out there, I’d like to meet them. I remember being taken for one of them on Thor Five; that’s a taste I’d like to get out of my mouth. I don’t care about the others. Except for them, the Greater Magellanic is ours, as far as I’m concerned.”

“A galaxy,” Dee murmured, almost soundlessly. “A galaxy with a home base, a home base that’s ours.”

“An Okie galaxy,” Carrel said.

The silence sifted back over the city. It was not a contentious silence now. It was the silence of a crowd in which each man is thinking for and to himself.

“HAVE MESSRS. HAZLETON AND CARREL ANY FURTHER ADDITIONS TO THEIR PLATFORMS?” the City Fathers blared, their vodeur-voice penetrating flatly into every cranny of the hurtling city. As Amalfi had expected, the extended discussion of high policy had convinced the City Fathers that the election was for the office of mayor, rather than for that of city manager. “IF NOT, AND IF THERE ARE NO ADDITIONAL CANDIDATES, WE ARE READY TO PROCEED WITH THE TABULATION.”

For a long instant, everyone looked very blank. Then Hazleton too recognized the mistake the City Fathers had made. He began to chuckle.

“No additions,” he said. Carrel said nothing; he simply grinned, transported.

Ten seconds later, John Amalfi, Okie, was the mayor-elect of an infant galaxy.

CHAPTER EIGHT: IMT