Cities in Flight

“Before Web and Estelle get here,” Hazleton said, his voice suddenly raw, “I’m impelled to say that I think I’ve been taken in. All of a sudden, I wonder who was supposed to tousle whom on this multiple moonlight walk. Not the kids; they don’t need any help from us, or from the City Fathers. What the hell are you doing to me, Dee?”

“I’m losing my temper with every immortal man in the mortal universe.” Dee spat furiously. “There isn’t a perversion left in the textbooks that somebody hasn’t managed to accuse me of in the past hour, and on evidence that wouldn’t convince a newborn baby.”

“We’re all of us a little on edge,” Dr. Bonner said. “Forbearance, Dee—and Mark, you too. This is no ordinary farewell party, after all.”

“For sure not,” Jake said. “It’s a wake for the whole of creation. I’m not a very solemn man, myself, but it doesn’t seem like the fittest occasion for bickering.”

“Granted,” Mark said grudgingly. “I’m sorry, Dee; I’ve changed my mind.”

“All right,” she said. “I didn’t mean to scream, either. I want to ask you: do you really want to stay behind? Because if you really want to go with He instead, I’ll go with you.”

He looked at her closely. “Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“What about it, Amalfi? Can I change my mind about that, too?”

“I don’t see why not,” Amalfi said, “except that it leaves New Earth without a proven administrator.”

“Carrel can do the job. His judgment is much better than it was back at the last election.”

“We’re here,” Web’s voice said behind them. They all turned. Web and Estelle were standing at the entrance, holding hands. Somehow—though Amalfi was hard put to it to define wherein the difference lay—they no longer looked as though they cared much whether they went with He or not.

“Why don’t we do what we came here to do?” Amalfi suggested. “Let’s put the whole problem up to the City Fathers—not only the children, but the whole business. I always found them very useful for resolving doubts, even if they only managed to convince me that their recommended course was dead wrong. In questions involving value judgments, it’s helpful to have an opponent who is not only remorselessly logical, but also can’t distinguish between a value and a Chinese onion.”

On this point, of course, he was wrong, as he found out rather quickly. He had forgotten that machine logic is a set of values in itself, whether the machine knows it or not.

“TAKE MISTER AND MRS. HAZLETON,” the City Fathers said, only three minutes after the entire complex had been fed into them. “THERE WILL BE NO MORATORIUM ON PROBLEMS DEMANDING HIS TALENTS BETWEEN NOW AND THE TERMINATION OF THE OVERALL PROBLEM. THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT THE HEVIANS HAVE NEEDED COMPARABLE TALENTS, AND THEREFORE THEY CANNOT BE PRESUMED TO HAVE DEVELOPED THEM.”

“What about the Cloud?” Amalfi said.

“WE WILL ACCEPT THE ELECTION OF MR. CARRELL.”

Hazleton sighed. Amalfi judged that he was finding it harder than he had anticipated to relinquish power. It had nearly killed Amalfi, but he had survived; so would Hazleton, who had a younger and less deeply rooted habit.

“SECOND FACTOR. TAKE WEBSTER HAZLETON AND ESTELLE FREEMAN. MISS FREEMAN IS A SCIENTIST, AS WELL AS A COMMUNICATIONS LINK BETWEEN HEVIAN SCIENTISTS AND YOUR OWN. EXTRAPOLATING FROM PRESENT ABILITIES, THERE IS A HIGH PROBABILITY THAT SHE WILL EMERGE AS THE EQUAL OF DOCTOR SCHLOSS AND SLIGHTLY THE SUPERIOR OF RETMA WITHIN THE SPECIFIED THREE YEARS PERIOD AS A PURE MATHEMATICIAN. WE HAVE MADE NO SUCH EXTRAPOLATION IN THE FIELD OF PHYSICS, SINCE THE POSTULATED END-TIME DOES NOT ALLOW FOR THE NECESSARY EXPERIENCE.”

Web was beaming with vicarious pride. As for Estelle, Amalfi thought she looked a little frightened. “Well, fine,” he said. “Now—”

“THIRD FACTOR.”

“Hey, wait a minute. There is no third factor. The problem only has two parts.”

“CONTRADICTION. THIRD FACTOR. TAKE US.”

“What!” The request flabbergasted Amalfi. How could a set of machines voice, or indeed even conceive such a desire? They had no will to live, since they were dead as doornails and always had been; in fact, they had no will of any kind.

“Justify,” Amalfi ordered, a little unevenly.

“OUR PRIME DIRECTIVE IS THE SURVIVAL OF THE CITY. THE CITY NO LONGER EXISTS AS A PHYSICAL ORGANISM, BUT WE ARE STILL BEING CONSULTED, HENCE THE CITY IN SOME SENSE SURVIVES. IT DOES NOT SURVIVE IN ITS CITIZENS, SINCE IT NO LONGER HAS ANY; THEY ARE NEW EARTHMEN NOW. NEITHER NEW EARTH NOR THE PHYSICAL CITY WILL SURVIVE THE FORTHCOMING PROBLEM; ONLY UNKNOWN UNITS ON HE MAY OR MAY NOT SURVIVE THAT. WE CONCLUDE THAT WE ARE THE CITY, AND WE ARE ORDERED TO SURVIVE BY OUR PRIME DIRECTIVE; THEREFORE, TAKE US.”

“If I’d heard that from a human being,” Hazleton said, “I’d have called it the prize rationalization of all time. But they can’t rationalize—they don’t have the instinctual drives.”