Cities in Flight

The whole of the residential area to Amalfi’s eyes swarmed with pets. Those to whom freedom to run was paramount, frisked and scuttered, in the wide lanes. Few of them ventured onto the wheel-ways, and those who did were run down instantly, but four-footed animals were a constant and undignified hazard to walkers. By day raffish dogs stopped just short of bowling strangers over, but leaped to brace forepaws on the shoulders of anyone they knew—and everyone, including, seemingly, all the dogs of New Manhattan, knew Amalfi. An occasional svengali from Altair IV—originally a rare specimen in the flying city’s zoo, but latterly force-budded in New Earth labs during the full-fertility program of 3950, when every homesteader’s bride had her option of a vial of trilby water or a gemmate svengali and frequently wound up with both among the household lares and penates; the half-plant, half-animal, even nowadays a not infrequent pet—took the breeze and hunted in the half-light of dawn or dusk. A svengali lay bonelessly in mid-lane and fixed its enormous eyes on any moving object until something small enough and gelid enough to ingest might blunder near. Nothing suitable ever did, on New Earth. The two-legged victim tended to drift helplessly into that hypnotic stare until the starer got stepped on; than the svengali turned mauve and exuded a protective spray which might have been nauseating on Altair IV, but on New Earth was only euphoric. Sudden friendships, bursts of song, even a brief and deliriously happy crying jag might ensue, after which the shaken svengali would undulate back indoors to rest up and be given, usually, a bowl of jellied soup.

By night in the walkways of New Manhattan, it was cats, catching with sudden claw at floating cloak or fashionable sandal-streamer. Through the air of the town sizable and brightly colored creatures flew and glided: singing birds, squawking birds, talkers and mutes, but pets every last one of them. Amalfi loathed them all.

When he walked anywhere—and he walked almost everywhere, now that the city’s aircabs were no more—he more than half-expected to have to free himself from the embraces of a burbling citizen or a barking dog before he got where he was going. The half-century old fad for household pets had arisen after the landing, and after his effectual abdication. What time-wasting quirk had moved so many pioneers’ descendants to adopt the damnable svengalis as pets was beyond Amalfi.

He made it home from the Hazletons’ without any such encounter; instead, it rained. He wrapped his cloak more tightly around him and hastened, muttering, for his own square uncompromising box of a dwelling before the full force of the storm should be let loose; his house and grounds were sheltered by a 0.02 per cent spindizzy field—the New Earthmen called the household device a “spindilly,” a name which Amalfi loathed but put up with for the sake of, as Dee had once put it, “not knowing enough to come out of the rain.” He had growled at her so convincingly for that that she had never brought up the subject again, but she had put her fingers on it all the same.

Amalfi reached his entrance lane and laid his palm on the induction switch which softened the spindilly field just enough to let him through in a spatter of glistening drops, and noted with the grim dissatisfaction that was becoming natural to him that the storm had slacked off and would be over in minutes. Inside, he made a drink and stood, rubbing his hands, looking about him. If his house was an anachronism, well, he liked it that way, insofar as he liked anything on New Earth.

“What’s wrong with me?” he thought suddenly. “People’s pets are their own business, after all. If practically everybody else likes weather, what difference does it make if I don’t? If Jake doesn’t even take an interest, nor Mark either for that matter—”

He heard the distant, endlessly comforting murmur of the modified spindizzy under his feet alter momentarily; someone else had chosen to come in out of the rain. His visitor had never been there at that hour before, and had indeed never been there before alone, but he knew without a moment’s doubt who had followed him home.

CHAPTER TWO: Nova Magellanis

“YOU’LL have to make me more welcome than that, John,” Dee said.

Amalfi said nothing. He lowered his head like a bull contemplating a charge, spread his feet slightly, and clasped his hands behind him.

“Well, John?” Dee insisted gently.

“You don’t want me to go,” he said baldly. “Or, you suspect that if I do go, Mark just may throw up the managership and New Earth along with it and take off with me.”

Dee walked slowly all the way across the room and stood, hesitating, beside the great deep cushion. “Wrong, John, on both counts. I had something else altogether in mind. I thought—well, I’ll tell you later what I thought. Right now, may I have a drink?”