Cities in Flight

IT WAS HOT on the Hevian hillside in the post-noon glare of the great Cepheid about which the planet was now orbiting at the respectful distance of thirty-five astronomical units—thirty-five times the distance of old Earth from the Sun. At this distance the star, which had a mean absolute magnitude of plus one, was barely tolerable at the peak of its eight-day cycle; at the bottom of the cycle, when the star’s radiation had dropped by a factor of 25, it got cold enough on He to nip one’s ears—far from an ideal situation for a predominantly agricultural planet, but the Hevians did not expect to remain in the vicinity for as long as one growing season.

Web and Estelle lay in the long grass of the hillside under the hot regard of that swollen star and slowly got their breaths back. Web in particular was glad for the recess. The morning had begun in sober exploration of Fabr-Suithe, He’s greatest monument to its own past, and He’s present center of pure philosophy; thus far it was the only place they had found on He which they were allowed to explore by themselves, by both the adult Hevians and their own people. This morning, however, this freedom had had an unexpected but logical consequence: they had found that Fabr-Suithe was also one of the few cities on He where Hevian children were free to roam. Elsewhere there were far too many machines vital to the life of the planet as a whole; the Hevians could not afford the chance that children might get into the works, nor, with their sparse population, could they afford the loss of even a single life.

Web and Estelle had changed into the chiton-like Hevian costume the moment they had been told that they would be allowed to explore the city, albeit in very limited terms, but it did not take the Hevian youngsters long to penetrate this disguise, since Web and Estelle spoke their language only in a most rudimentary way. This language block was in part a nuisance—for although most adult Hevians spoke the mixture of English, Interlingua and Russian which was the bêche-de-mer of deep space, learned long ago from the Okies, none of the children did—but it was also a blessing, since it precluded any extensive interrogation of Web and Estelle about their own world, culture and background. Shortly, instead, they found themselves involved in an elaborate chase game called Matrix, rather like run-sheep-run combined with checkers except that it was three-dimensional, for it was played in a twelve-story building with transparent floors so that one could always see the position of the other players, and with strategically placed spindizzy and friction-field shafts for fast transit from one floor to another. Web was the first to develop the suspicion that the building had either been designed for the game or had been totally abandoned to it, for the transparent floors were appropriately ruled, and the structure otherwise did not seem to contain anything or to be used for any other purpose.

Web had found the game itself exhilarating at first, but rather baffling too, and he was generally the first player to be eliminated. Had it not been for an impromptu change in the rules, he would have been It in nearly every new round, and even under the aegis of the new rules he did not make a very brave showing. Estelle, on the other hand, took to Matrix as though she had been born in the game, and within half an hour her lanky-legged, slender figure, as bosomless and hipless as any of the boys’, was darting in and out of the kaleidoscope of running figures with inordinate grace and swiftness. When time was called for lunch, Web’s laboring lungs and bruised ego more than welcomed the chance to escape from the city entirely for the hot stillness of the fallow hills.

“They’re nice; I like them,” Estelle said, rising to one elbow to attack, meditatively, a gourd-shaped green and silver melon which one of the Hevian boys had given her, apparently as a prize. At the first bite, there was a low but prolonged hiss, and the air around them became impregnated with a fragrance so overwhelmingly spicy that Estelle had to sneeze five times in quick succession. Web began to laugh, but the laughter ended abruptly in a paroxysmal sneeze of his own.

“They love us,” he said, wiping his eyes. “You’re so good at their game, they’ve given you a sneeze-gas bomb to keep you from playing it any longer.”

The odor diminished gradually, carried off by what little breeze there was. After a while Estelle cautiously put two thumbs into the wound she had made and broke the melon open. Nothing else happened; the odor was now tolerable, and then abruptly became both barely detectable and overpoweringly mouth-watering. Estelle handed him half. He bit into the crisp white pulp more deeply than he had intended. The result made him close his eyes; it tasted like quick-frozen music.

They finished it in reverent silence and, wiping their mouths on their chitons, lay back. After a while, Estelle said: