Cities in Flight

So if Chris was stuck with the city, he reasoned, he might as well be a citizen. There was no point in being a passenger when he had no idea where he was going, or whether it would be worth the fare when he got there. Being a citizen, on the other hand, sounded as though it conferred some privileges; it would be worth while knowing what they were. It would also be worth knowing whether or not the two terms the machine had used carried some special technical meaning of which he ought to be wary.

“Who’m I talking to?”

“THE CITY F ATHERS.”

This reply nearly threw him completely off course; he tabled the baker’s dozen of questions it raised only by a firm exercise of will. What was important about it right now was that it told him that he was talking to a responsible person—whatever the meaning of “Person” might be when one is dealing with a machine with a collective personality.

“Am I entitled to ask questions too?”

“Y ES, WITHIN LIMITS IT WOULD TAKE TOO LONG TO DEFINE FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS INTERVIEW. IF YOU ASK US QUESTIONS, WE WILL AT PRESENT EITHER ANSWER OR NOT ANSWER.”

Chris thought hard. The City Fathers, despite their mention of time limitations, waited him out without any evidence of impatience. Finally he said:

“What’s the most important single difference between a passenger and a citizen?”

“A CITIZEN LIVES AN INDEFINITELY PROLONGED LIFE. ”

Nothing they could have said could have been farther from any answer that Chris might have expected. It was so remote from anything he had ever thought or read about that it was almost meaningless to him. Finally he managed to ask cautiously: “How long is indefinitely?”

“I NDEFINITELY LONG. O UR PRESENT MAYOR WAS BORN IN 2998. T HE AGE OF THE OLDEST CITY MAN OF WHOM WE HAVE ANY RECORD IS FIVE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN YEARS, BUT IT IS STATISTICALLY DEFENSIBLE TO ASSUME THAT THERE ARE SEVERAL OLDER SPECIMENS, SINCE THE FIRST OF THE ANTIDEATH DRUGS WAS DISCOVERED IN THE YEAR 2018.”

Antideath drugs! The dose was now entirely too big to swallow. It was all Chris could do to cling to the one microgram of it that seemed to have some meaning for him right now: that were he to live a long time—a very long time—he might some day find his way back home, no matter how far he had wandered in the meantime. All the rest would have to be thought through later. He said:

“I want to be a citizen.”

“I T IS REQUIRED THAT WE INFORM YOU THAT YOU ARE PERMITTED TO CHANGE YOUR MIND UNTIL YOUR EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY, BUT THAT A DECISION TO BECOME A PASSENGER MAY NOT THEREAFTER BE RESCINDED, EXCEPT BY SPECIAL ORDER OF THE MAYOR.” A thin slot which Chris had not noticed until now suddenly spat out upon the banquette a long white card. “T HIS IS YOUR CITY REGISTRATION, WHICH IS USED TO OBTAIN FOOD, CLOTHING, HOUSING AND OTHER NECESSITIES. W HEN IN IS REJECTED ON PRESENTATION, YOU WILL KNOW THAT THE GOODS OR SERVICES YOU HAVE CLAIMED HAVE BEEN DISALLOWED. T HE CARD IS INDESTRUCTIBLE EXCEPT BY CERTAIN SPECIAL TECHNIQUES, BUT WE ADVISE YOU NOT TO LOSE IT, SINCE FOUR TO SIX HOURS WILL ELAPSE BEFORE IT CAN BE RETURNED TO YOU. I T IS PRESENTLY VALIDATED FOR ACCELERATED SCHOOLING. IF YOU HAVE NO FURTHER QUESTIONS, YOU MAY LEAVE. ”

The accelerated schooling to which the City Fathers had remanded Chris did not at first seem physically strenuous at all. In fact it seemed initially to be no more demanding than sleeping all day might be. (This to Chris was a Utopian notion; he had never had the opportunity to try sleeping as a career, and so had no idea how intolerably exhausting it is.)

The “schoolroom” was a large, grey, featureless chamber devoid of blackboard or desk; its only furniture consisted of a number of couches scattered about the floor. Nor were there any teachers; the only adults present were called monitors, and their duties appeared to be partly those of an usher, and partly those of a nurse, but none pertinent to teaching in any sense of the term Chris had ever encountered. They conducted you to your couch and helped you to fit over your head a bright metal helmet which had inside it what seemed to be hundreds of tiny, extremely sharp points which bit into your scalp just enough to make you nervous, but without enough pressure to break the skin. Once this gadget, which was called a toposcope, was adjusted to their satisfaction, the monitors left, and the room began to fill with the grey gas.

The gas was like a fog, except that it was dry and faintly aromatic, smelling rather like the dried leaves of mountain laurel that Bob had liked to add sparingly to rabbit stews. But like a thick fog, it made it impossible to see the rest of the room until the session was over, when it was sucked out with a subdued roar of blowers.