Cities in Flight

The party walked two blocks and then stopped while the big man located a cab post and pulled the phone from it. Barney objected at once.

“It’ll take a fleet of cabs to get us all to the Hall,” he complained. “And we can’t get enough guys into a hack to handle a prisoner, if he gets rough.”

“The kid won’t get rough. Go ahead and march your man over. I’m not going to walk another foot on this leg.”

Barney hesitated, but obviously the big man’s marked limp was an unanswerable argument. Finally he shrugged and herded the rest of his party around the corner. His boss grinned at Chris; but the boy looked away.

The cab came floating down out of the sky at the intersection and maneuvered itself to rest at the curb next to them with a finicky precision. There was, of course, nobody in it; like everything else in the world requiring an I.Q. of less than 150, it was computer-controlled. The world-wide dominance of such machines, Chris’s father had often said, had been one of the chief contributors to the present and apparently permanent depression: the coming of semi-intelligent machines into business and technology had created a second Industrial Revolution, in which only the most highly creative human beings, and those most gifted at administration, found themselves with any skills to sell which were worth the world’s money to buy.

Chris studied the cab with the liveliest interest, for though he had often seen them before from a distance, he had of course never ridden in one. But there was very little to see. The cab was an egg-shaped bubble of light metals and plastics, painted with large red-and-white checkers, with a row of windows running all around it. Inside, there were two seats for four people, a speaker grille, and that was all; no controls, and no instruments. There was not even any visible place for the passenger to deposit his fare.

The big press-gang leader gestured Chris into the front seat, and himself climbed into the back. The doors slid shut simultaneously from the ceiling and floor, rather like a mouth closing, and the cab lifted gently until it hovered about six feet above street level.

“Destination?” the Tin Cabby said cheerily, making Chris jump.

“City Hall.”

“Social Security number?”

“One five six one one dash zero nine seven five dash zero six nine eight two one seven.”

“Thank you.”

“Shaddup.”

“You’re welcome, sir.”

The cab lifted vertically, and the gang captain settled back into his seat. He seemed content for the moment to allow Chris to sight-see out the windows at the passing stubby towers of the flying city; he looked relaxed and a little indulgent, but a little wary, too. Finally he said:

“I need to dutch-uncle you a little, Red. I didn’t call a cab because of the leg—I’ve walked farther on worse. Feel up to listening?”

Chris felt himself freezing. Distracted though he was by all this enormous budget of new experience and the vast reaches of the unknown which stretched before him, the press-gang leader’s remark reminded him instantly of Kelly, and as instantly made him ashamed that he had forgotten. In the same rush of anger he remembered that he had been kidnapped, and that now there was no one left to take care of his father and the little kids but Bob. That had been hard enough to do when there had been two of them. It was bad enough that he would never see Annie and Kate and Bob and his father again, but far worse that they should be deprived of his hands and his back and his love; and worst of all, they would never know what had happened.

The little girls would only think that he and Kelly had run away, and wonder why, and mourn a little until they forgot about it. But Bob and his father might well think that he’d deserted them … most likely of all, that he had gone off with Scranton on his own hook, leaving them all to scrounge for themselves.

There was a well-known ugly term for that among the peasantry of the Earth, expressing all the contempt it felt for any man who abandoned his land, no matter how unrewarding it was, to tread the alien streets and star lanes of a nomad city: it was called, “going Okie.”

Chris had gone Okie. He had not done it of his own free will, but his father and Bob and the little girls would never know that. For that matter, it would never have happened had it not been for his own useless curiosity; and neither would the death of poor Kelly, who, Chris now remembered too, had been Bob’s dog.

The big man in the hard hat saw his expression close down, and made an impatient gesture. “Listen, Red, I know what you’re thinking. What good would it do now if I said I was sorry? What’s done is done; you’re on board, and you’re going to stay on board. We didn’t put the snatch on you either. If you didn’t know about the impressment laws, you’ve got your own ignorance to blame.”

“You killed my brother’s dog.”