“Think he’s on the up-and-up? Or is he an organic provoker?”
“He can provoke all he wants,” Snick said. “We’ll have to pretend we’re just ordinary citizens, perfectly satisfied with the policies of the government, adhering to the official philosophy in every respect.”
“He can’t suspect us,” Cabtab rumbled. “If he is an organic, I mean. I think he’s just a professor, like he says. If he had any suspicions we were anything else than our cards say we are, the ganks’d be all over us.”
“I know that,” Duncan said. “Actually, the main thing I’m worried about is his boring us to death. He’s a monomaniac.”
“Of the deadly persuasion, you mean,” Snick said, and she laughed.
“He has given me something to think about,” Duncan said. He leaned back and closed his eyes. After a few minutes, he opened them to look through the window. The view was blurred now and would be for a long time. But it was being filmed, and the passengers could pull down an overhead screen and run the scenery in slow motion. Thus, they could barely see where they were but could view in detail where they had been.
13
At an average velocity of two hundred miles an hour, the train arrived in Chicago, State of Illinois, North American Department, at 1:30 P.M., Central Standard Time. Here the passengers disembarked and registered in rooms at the government-run Pilgrim’s Progress Hotel. Later, they toured the city on a bus. The taped voice informed the sightseers that Chicago was now reduced to a twenty-square-mile horizontal area but extended as much as a mile, here and there, vertically. Lakeshore Drive was now five miles inland from the original drive because the level of Lake Michigan had risen fifty feet. The entire city, in fact, was ringed by a seventy-foot-high lakewall.
The screen in front of the bus showed a map of the ancient limits of the city, a shocking sprawl, and the present limits. Where there had once been miles and miles of ugly factories and even uglier houses and apartment buildings were farms, forest reserves, artificial lakes, and recreation lodges.
Duncan and his companions went to bed early, rose at 11:30, went into the hotel cylinders, and came out the following Tuesday at ten minutes past midnight. After sleeping again, they rose at six in the morning, breakfasted, and boarded another express at 7:30 A.M.
Twelve hours later, having been sidetracked for three hours, the reason not explained, the train pulled into Amarillo, State of West Texas, at 7:30 P.M., Central Standard Time, 8:30 P.M., Mountain Standard Time.
“We should have taken the straight-through,” Snick said. “I’m weary of traveling.”
“What? And miss seeing this great country?” Duncan said.
“I also could have missed having a paralyzed ass.”
“There’s a disadvantage to everything,” he replied. “The ad-vantages in this situation more than make up for the drawbacks. At least, they do as far as I’m concerned.”
They were walking to the station entrance when she stopped and pointed into darkness at a complex of winking lights in the air. The reflection of the city lights vaguely outlined a long dark shape.
“Going by airship would have been more fun.”
“Only a privileged few are allowed to travel unstoned in them,” he said. “If we’d taken that, we’d have been just a part of the cargo. Anyway, dirigible travel is even slower.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m just tired, and I want to get to L.A.,” Panthea said.
The country around Amarillo was hot and humid and rampant with farms or large groves of jungle. But the city was domed, and the air within was fresh and comfortable. Duncan was delighted with the citizens’ garb. They had preserved the Western tradition; everybody looked like a cowboy or a cowlady. He doubted, however, that the original Texans would have admired the enormous brightly colored codpieces of the men or approved of women whose breasts were more often uncovered than covered by the jewel-sequined leather vests.
The following Tuesday, the train arrived in the State of Los Angeles. The last four hours were in the dark, but the screens showed the landscape as viewed in the bright sunshine. Because of the delays, unexplained, and an hour’s stop so the passengers could stretch their legs along the rim of the Grand Canyon, the train arrived at the terminal station, Pasadena, at 7:30 P.M. The three spent an hour in line waiting for their new ID cards because of a computer breakdown. The cards were just like the old ones except that they contained data re their status as citizens of the State of Los Angeles, Lower California Division, North American Department. After this, the passengers were bused to the Immigration Department Hotel, where, after the procedures for immigrants were explained to them, they were free to wander around until half an hour to midnight.
Duncan, however, went to bed at nine. Though tired, he could not sleep. The narrow room was too confining, and Cab-tab, on the bunk beneath his, snored loudly. For some reason, he rejected the use of the morpheus. Perhaps he felt he was getting too dependent on it. Visions of the journey kept flashing on the monitor of his mind, especially those of Arizona and New Mexico. At least a quarter of the area of these states was covered by enormous solar panels, the power from which furnished twelve states with light and heat. Interspersed among the gigantic sunflashing structures were jungles. The Southwest had always had a hot climate, but the rains of twelve thousand obyears ago were returning. The soil, where not shadowed by panels, had given birth to a vivid green and tall tangle that looked like lowlands Central America.
The rainclouds that made vegetation flourish also made the Southwest less sunny, but clear skies were frequent enough to justify the solar panels—so far.
Phoenix had been a collection of great domes connected by transparent passageways. The domes were polarized against the sunlight when necessary, and the mountains around it had long ago been leveled. The debris had been piled twenty miles away to make a new landmark, Mount Remove.
Duncan finally oozed into a sleep shot with dreams fractured by near-nightmares. These were not so much “personal” as “historical.” They seemed to osmose from his ancestral memories, which, of course, did not exist. Nevertheless, there was no other explanation, which did not mean that there was none. They might have been evoked by the documentary he had watched while on the train, though something else could have been their midwife. Whatever their cause, and no one knew what thousands of single items formed a flashing-by complex to screw the dreams upward to the conscious of his unconscious, they formed a forward-speed pageant.
Perhaps it was the journey across the continent that pushed the RERUN button.
History was a nightmare, and his nightmare was history.
Who could have predicted that, in the early part of the twenty-first century, gunpowder and rocket fuel would be unusable in war? Or that in World War III internal combustion engines could be rendered inoperable? Or that the chief weapons would be, in the early stages of the war, swords, spears, crossbows, gas-powered guns, lasers, and steam-operated machine guns? That airplanes could not be used and lighter-than-air craft were too vulnerable? That tanks had to operate by nuclear fuel or coal?
Who could have foreseen that the chairman of the Communist party of China, Wang Shen, would see the potential in this change of transportation and weaponry and would declare war on the U.S.S.R.? Or that, in twelve years, using the armies of the conquered countries, Wang Shen would conquer the world and establish a world government? Or that his son, Sin Tzu, would found the New Era, an age that renounced the ideologies of communism and capitalism except as they applied to his brave new world? Or that, before he died, he would use the invention of “stoning” to build something completely unique in history. The seven-day world.
Air and water and earth were now clean. Immense forests had been planted to restore the oxygen—carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere, though that had taken a thousand years and the oceans were still rising. The tropical belts of rain forests were even larger in area than they had been in the early nineteenth century.
No one was now h
ungry or badly housed, and education was available for everyone. No one had to go without medicine or doctors or hospital care, all of which were of the highest quality possible. Armies, navies, and air forces were like dinosaurs, extinct. The last war had taken place two thousand obyears ago. Murder, assault, rape, and child abuse still existed, but the rate of occurrence was the lowest in the history of humankind.
All of this had, however, been achieved at a price. It had cost the most for those involved in World War III and the formation of the New Era. But there were those now living who believed that they were also paying a price. None of the great benefits of the New Era could exist without the seven-day system and the smothering surveillance of satellite, sensor, and police, the last euphemistically termed the organics.
Or so the government claimed. But men and women like Duncan thought differently. The highly artificial seven-day world had been around so long that it seemed natural to most citizens. These truly believed that it was absolutely necessary for the greatest good of society that every person be closely watched so that no one could escape punishment for crimes against society. The heavy surveillance was sometimes irksome or inconvenient, but the resulting safety and ease of mind made this more than just endurable. And if truth mist made it impossible for anyone to get away with lying, wasn’t that the way it should be?
The government officials were also required to be misted before being employed or if their conduct was in doubt. But what if those who did the misting lied about the results?
Images exploded from the dark, and faces spun out of the blackness that lies at the base of all thought, out of the dark emptiness that somehow gives birth to fullness. Faces spun by, the faces of his forefathers and foremothers who had fought in the great battles of Canada and the United States of America. All were twisted with the heat and red of fear and bravery and battle, and all were smoothed out into pale death. Some were North American Caucasians; some, Asiatics, Africans, Europeans, and South Americans. Duncan was descended from those who had shed their blood for Wang Shen and also for the United States, ancestors who had tried to kill one another.
Then the final war to end all wars was ended, and the survivors struggled to live and to have children and to keep their children alive. Children were crying, their faces drawn and fearful, their hands stretched out for food, when Duncan was snapped from the nightmares by the wall-screen alarm.
“Oh, God!” Cabtab moaned in the bunk below Duncan’s. “Another day! Before it ends, we’ll be in L.A. What then? More of the same?”
The padre had also been having nightmares.
14
Los Angeles, however, looked that morning like a pleasant, and in some respects erotic, dream.
Duncan and his companions had gone through more admittance procedures, this time at the Immigration Department in L.A., and then had taken the elevator to the top floor. This was on a level with the peak of Mount Wilson, where long ago an observatory had stood. Now the governor of Los Angeles lived in a mansion there. The three had a splendid view of the Pacific Ocean, which filled the great basin. The old metropolis had disappeared under the waves, most of it buried in mud or washed away. It was the third city to be built there, the first having been destroyed by fire in World War III and the second tumbled by the Great Earthquake and then burned.
Now, rising from deep-sunk pylons, many varicolored towers glittered in the clear air and bright sunshine. These were interconnected by bridges at many floors, and a four-level bridge led through a great cut in the Hollywood Hills to the valley beyond. Pedestrians, bicyclists, tricyclists, electric buses, and a few electric automobiles filled the bridges.
Westward, the sea and the sea-filled basin flashed with thousands of automated freight vessels and manned craft. Eastward, the water-surrounded towers and the interconnecting bridges gave way finally to the foothills of the mountains. Southward, the sea-girded towers extended for fifteen miles. The Baldwin Hills were a thousand years gone, used for fill in the dikes that had kept the ocean out until the second great earthquake. To the north, only four towers rose into view from beyond the Hollywood Hills.
“Beautiful,” Snick murmured. “I think I’m going to like it here.”
“It’s the citizens that make a place beautiful,” Duncan said. “Ugly citizens, ugly city, no matter how fabulous the architecture and how clean the streets are. Some of the locals are going to be very ugly indeed if they find out who we really are.”
“There’s where we’ll be living,” Cabtab said, pointing to the west. “The La Brea Complex Tower, twentieth floor, west super block neighborhood.”
At that moment, a woman who had been standing near them, though not within earshot, approached them. She was about thirty subyears of age, of middle height, pretty, dark-skinned, and with blonde hair and blue eyes that had probably been dark before depigmentation. She wore a tight cerulean-blue blouse and skirt, nothing beneath, and yellow, very high-heeled shoes. Her handbag, canary-yellow with black spots, was shaped like a leopard. A tiny black right-handed swastika, marking her as a Buddhist of the Original Gautama sect, was tattooed on her forehead.
Duncan looked at her because it seemed obvious that she was going to speak to them. Instead, she passed them, but she slipped something into his hand. He pushed back his impulse to call after her, turned so that his back was to the pedestrians, and looked at the card.
WILL MEET YOU THREE AT 9:00 P.M. AT THE SNORTER. RUB THIS.
Duncan read it three times, then slid the palm of his hand across its face. The words disappeared. He stuck the blank card into a pocket and whispered what he had read to his colleagues.
“Where in hell is the Snorter?” Cabtab said.
They went to a directory booth around the corner, and after Duncan questioned the machine, its screen glowed the answer.
“It’s a tavern near the west rim in the west block neighborhood of the La Brea Complex.”
“We can read,” Snick said.
“God save us from the snippy,” Cabtab moaned.
Panthea ignored him. “Well, we have been contacted. Let’s go to the complex and get settled in. Tomorrow we’ll be busy with job-adjustment.”
The directory told them what buses and transfers to take. They rode over bridges that were probably swaying in the wind but gave no indication of doing so to those on it. The bridges ran from building to building, sometimes through them, sometimes around them. The pageant of street traffic and the beautiful sailing boats far below them would normally have held their interest. They, however, were concerned about the message.
Cabtab, who had taken an empty bench behind them, leaned his head between them. He whispered, “I hope they’ll let us in on their main purpose, what they hope to accomplish. I don’t like working in the dark.”
“Don’t get too nosy,” Duncan said. “It’s dangerous.”
“Damn it!” Snick said. She was biting her lower lip and frowning. “It’s so unjust! I only wanted to be a very good organic, the best I could be. And I don’t want to be an outlaw!”
“Those are dangerous feelings, too,” Duncan said. “Best to keep them to yourselves. I know nothing of the people we have to work with, of course. But I’m sure they want enthusiasm, fanaticism, probably. You show reluctance, kick against the pricks, and you might end up stoned again and deep in the ocean where you’ll never be found.”
“I know that, but I hate injustice! I just…oh, well!”
She was silent during the rest of the trip.
Duncan did not speak much nor did he really appreciate the stimulating views from the high bridges. He was zeroed in on his feelings for Panthea Snick. This dark and pretty little woman with the sometimes abrasive personality was not somebody he should be so strongly attracted to. Yet he was. So what was he to do about it?
At this time, he did not know how she felt about him. Probably, she was not at all attracted to him. But why not ask her if she was?
No. That might put her off. He would wait. Let her fee
lings for him, if they were at all favorable, develop.
The trouble with that attitude was that he was not as patient as he would like to be. Take just now, for instance. He would like to lean over, put his arms around her, and kiss her.
He looked away from her and said, softly, “Ah!”
“What?” Cabtab said.
“Nothing.”
The bus halted on the tenth floor of the La Brea Complex Tower. The three, their bags in hands, got off. They walked along the gently curving exterior through the thick flow of people wearing brightly colored clothes until they came to a public lobby. Inside this enormous chamber with its many shops, they took an elevator to the floor. Leaving the cage, they walked to a moving strip, one of many which ran down the center of the circle forming this level. After half a mile, they worked their way across the moving walks to a stationary walk on the edge of the strips. They entered another huge room, one partly devoted to the reception of immigrants. They got into a line before a desk and eventually were interviewed by an official. Having satisfied her, they took a bus to their assigned apartments. Duncan’s was large and on the outer wall of the tower, giving him an excellent view. The seven cylinders in his apartment held Saturday’s through Monday’s occupants; the others were empty. Evidently, the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday immigrants had not arrived. The ID plaques of the cylinders indicated that two were from Wales, one was from Indonesia, and one was from Albania. This accorded with the little that Duncan knew of the national makeup of the new tenants of the west super block. Most immigrants had come from these nations, but the faces were like those he knew in Manhattan and New Jersey. Most citizens of Earth had both Chinese and Asiatic Indian ancestors, and it was said that the faces of Congolese citizens looked just like those of Sweden. That was something of an exaggeration, but it was near enough to the reality to be believed by everyone.
The global melting pot begun by Wang Shen was well on its way to boiling. Nationalism and racism were wiped out, though, some thought, at the price of variety. The immigrants brought here, mostly unmarried or childless, were supposed to marry and have children whose mixture would be even more complex than those of their parents. The index of mixture that had already occurred was apparent from the languages that the majority of newcomers spoke. Welsh had long been extinct; most people in Wales spoke Bengali, a language that would itself be dead in two generations or less. Albanians spoke a descendant of Cantonese. Both groups, like everybody else, could also use Loglan, the synthetic worldwide speech, though only when they had to do so, and all had learned English in school. The Conqueror, Wang Shen, and his son had had a great love and admiration for that tongue. As a result, one-fourth of the world had been born to it. Unfortunately, Indonesian English, for example, was not always completely intelligible to speakers of Norwegian English, even though the mass media of the world used Standard English.