Cities in Flight

“Nobody else is running for it because they wouldn’t know what to do with it after they got it,” Amalfi said steadily. “I don’t know what to do with it myself. The office of mayor is an anachronism in this Cloud. Nobody has asked me to do anything or to say anything or to appear anywhere or to be in any other way useful in I don’t know how many years. I occupy an honorary office, and that’s all. As everybody knows, you are the man that is actually running this Cloud, and that’s as it should be. It’s high time you took over in name, as well as in fact. I’ve given everything I could give to the initial organizing job, and my talents are unsuitable to the situation as it now stands; everybody on New Earth knows that, and it would be healthier if they’d put a name to it. Otherwise, Mark, how long could I be allowed to go on in the job? Apparently forever, under your present assumptions. This is a new society; suppose I should go right on being its titular leader for another thousand years, as is entirely possible? A thousand years during which a new society continues to give lip-service to the same old set of attitudes and ideas that I represented when they meant something? That would be unsane; and you know it. No, no, it’s high time you took over.”

Hazleton was silent for quite a long time. At last he said:

“I can see that. In fact, I’ve thought of it several times myself. Nevertheless, Amalfi, I have to say that this whole proposition distresses me a good deal. I suppose the matter of the mayoralty would settle itself out almost automatically; that wasn’t a real objection. What bothers me is the exit you’re contriving for yourself, not only because it’s dangerous—which it is, but that wouldn’t make any difference to you and I suppose it shouldn’t make any difference to me—but because it’s dangerous to no purpose.”

“It suits my purposes,” Amalfi said. “I don’t see that there are any other purposes to be suited, at this juncture. If I did, I wouldn’t go, Mark; you know that; but it seems to me that I am now, for the first time in all my life, a free agent; hence I may now do what I will do.”

Hazleton shrugged convulsively. “And so you may,” he said. “I can only say that I wish you wouldn’t.”

Dee bowed her head and said nothing.

And the rest was left unsaid. That Dee and Mark would be personally bereaved if Amalfi persisted on his present course, for their different reasons, was an obvious additional argument which they might have used, but they came no closer to it than that; it was the kind of argument which Hazleton would regard as pure emotional blackmail, precisely because it was unreasonably powerful, and Amalfi was grateful to him for not bringing it to bear. Why Dee had not was more difficult to fathom; there had been a time when she would have used it without a moment’s hesitation; and Amalfi thought he knew her well enough to suspect that she had good reasons for wanting to use it now. She had been waiting for the founding of New Earth for a long time, indeed, almost since she had come on board the city, and anything that threatened it now that she had children and grandchildren should provoke her into using every weapon at her command; yet, she was silent. Perhaps she was old enough now to realize that not even John Amalfi could steal from her an entire satellite galaxy; at any event, if that was what was on her mind, she gave no inkling of it, and the evening in Hazleton’s house ended with a stiff formality which, cold though it was, was far from the worst that Amalfi had expected.