Cities in Flight

“All right,” Dee said. She smiled. “I trust you, John, you know that. But it’s hard to be patient.”

“Is it?” Amalfi said, not much surprised. “Come to think of it, I remember when the same thought occurred to me, back on He. In retrospect the problem doesn’t seem large.”

“Boss, you’d better give us some substitute courses of action,” Hazleton cut in, a little coldly. “With the possible exception of yourself, every man, woman, and alley cat in the city is ready to spread out all over the surface of this planet the moment the starting gun is fired. You gave us every reason to think that that would be the way it would happen. If there’s going to be a delay, you have a good many idle hands to put to work.”

“Use straight work-contract procedure all the way down the line. No exploiting of the planet that we wouldn’t normally do during the usual stopover for a job. That means no truck gardens or any other form of local agriculture; just refilling the oil tanks, re-breeding the Chlorella strains from local sources for heterosis, making up our water losses, and so on. The last I heard, we were still using the Tx 71105 strain of Chlorella pyrenoidosa; that’s too high-temp an alga for a planet with a winter season, like this one.”

“That won’t work,” Hazleton said. “It may fool the Proctors, Amalfi, but how can you fool your own people? What are you going to do with the perimeter police, for instance? Sergeant Anderson’s whole crew knows that it won’t ever again have to make up a boarding squad or defend the city or take up any other military duty. Nine-tenths of them are itching to throw off their harness for good and all and start dirt farming. What am I going to tell them?”

“Send ’em out to your experimental patch on the heath,” Amalfi said, “on police detail. Tell ’em to pick up everything that grows.”

Hazleton started to turn toward the lift shaft, holding out his hand to Dee. Then, characteristically, he had a third thought and turned back.

“But why, boss?” he said plaintively. “What makes you think the Proctors suspect us of squatting? And what could they do about it if we did?”

“The Proctors have asked for the standard work contract,” Amalfi said. “They knew what it was, they got it, and they insist upon its observation, to the letter— including the provision that the city must be off this planet by the date of termination. As you know, that’s impossible; we can’t leave this planet at all. But we’ll have to pretend that we’re going to leave up to the last possible minute.”

Hazleton looked stubborn. Dee took his hand reassuringly, but it didn’t seem to register.

“As for what the Proctors themselves can do about it,” Amalfi said, picking up the earphones again, “I don’t know. I’m trying to find out. But this much I do know:

“The Proctors have already called the cops.”

Under the grey, hazy light in the schoolroom, neutral light which seemed cast like a cloak along the air rather than to illuminate it, voices and visions came thronging even into the conscious and prepared mind of the visitor, pouring from the memory cells of the City Fathers. Amalfi could feel their pressure, just below the surface of his mind; it was vaguely unpleasant, partly because he already knew what they sought to impart, so that the redoubled impressions tended to shoulder forward into the immediate attention, nearly with the vividness of immediate experience.

He waved a hand before his eyes in annoyance and looked for a monitor, found one standing at his elbow, and wondered how long he had been there—or, conversely, how long Amalfi himself had been lulled into the learning trance.

“Where’s Karst?” he said brusquely. “The first serf we brought in? I need him.”

“Yes, sir. He’s in a chair toward the front of the room.” The monitor—whose function combined the duties of classroom supervisor and nurse—turned away briefly to a nearby wall treacher, which opened and floated out to him a tall metal tumbler. The monitor took it, and led the way through the room, threading his way among the scattered couches. Usually most of these were unoccupied, since it took less than 500 hours to bring the average child through tensor calculus and hence to the limits of what he could be taught by passive inculcation alone. Now, however, every couch was occupied, and few of them by children.