Cities in Flight

“But you’re the happy accident of that crew right now, Chris. The City Fathers say that your history aboard Scranton shows that you know something about the town. Amalfi wants to mine that knowledge. Want to tackle it?”

“I—I’ll try.”

“Good.” The perimeter sergeant turned to the miniature tape recorder at his elbow. “Here’s a complete transcript of everything we’ve heard from Argus Three so far. After you’ve heard it and made any comments that occur to you, Amalfi will begin to feed us the live messages, from the bridge. Ready?”

“No,” Chris said, more desperately than he could ever have imagined possible for him. “Not yet. My head is about to bust already. Do I get off from school while this is going on? I couldn’t take it, otherwise.”

“No,” Anderson said, “you don’t. If a live message comes through while you’re in class, we’ll pull you out. But you’ll go right back in again. Otherwise your schooling will go right on just as before, and if you can’t take the new burden, well, that’ll be too bad. You’d better get that straight right away, Chris. This isn’t a vacation, and it isn’t a prize. It’s a job, for the survival of the city. Either you take it or you don’t; either way, you get no special treatment. Well?”

For what seemed to him to be a long time, Chris sat and listened to his echoing Okie headache. At last, however, he said resignedly:

“I’ll take it.”

Anderson snapped the switch, and the tape began to run on the spools.

The earliest messages, as Anderson had noted, were vague and brief. The later ones were longer, but even more cryptic. Chris was able to worry very little more information out of them than Amalfi and the City Fathers already had. As promised, he spoke to Amalfi—but from the Andersons’ apartment, through a hookup which fed what he had to say to the mayor and to the machines simultaneously.

The machines asked questions about population, energy resources, degree of automation and other vital matters, not a one of which Chris could answer. The Mayor mostly just listened; on the few occasions when his heavy voice cut in, Chris was unable to figure out what he was getting at.

“Chris, this railroad you mentioned; how long before you were born had it been pulled up?”

“About a century, sir, I think. You know Earth went back to the railroads in the middle two thousands, when all the fossil fuels ran out and they had to give up the highways to farmland.”

“No, I didn’t know that. All right, go ahead.”

Now the City Fathers were asking him about armament. He had no answer for that one, either.

There came a day, however, when this pattern changed suddenly and completely. He was, indeed, pulled out of class for the purpose, and hurried into a small anteroom containing little but a chair and two television screens. One of the screens showed Sgt. Anderson; the other, nothing but a testing pattern.

“Hello, Chris. Sit down and pay attention; this is important. We’re getting a transmission from the tramp city. We don’t know whether it’s just a beacon or whether they want to talk to us. Amalfi thinks it’s unlikely that they’d be putting out a beacon in their situation, regardless of the law—they’ve broken too many others already. He’s going to try to raise them, now that you’re here; he wants you to listen.”

“Right, sir.”

Chris could not hear his own city calling, but after only a few minutes—for they were quite close to Argus Three now—the test pattern on the other screen vanished, and Chris saw an odiously familiar face.

“Hullo. This here’s Argus Three.”

“ ‘This here’ is not Argus Three,” Amalfi’s deep voice said promptly. “ ‘This here’ is the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and there’s no point in your hiding it. Get me your boss.”

“Now wait a minute. Just who do you think—”

“This here

is New York, New York, calling, and I said, ‘Get me your boss.’ Go do it.”

The face by now was both sullen and confused. After a moment’s hesitation, it vanished. The screen flickered, the test pattern came back briefly, and then a second familiar face was looking directly at Chris. It was impossible to believe that the man couldn’t see him, and the idea was outright frightening.

“Hello, New York,” he said, affably enough. “So you’ve got us figured out. Well, we’ve got you figured out, too. This planet is under contract to us; be notified.”

“Recorded,” Amalfi said. “We also have it a matter of record that you are in Violation. Argus Three has made a new contract with us. It’d be the wisest course to clear ground and spin.”

The man’s eyes did not waver. Chris realized suddenly that it was an image of Amalfi he was staring at, not at Chris himself. “Spin yourself,” he said evenly. “Our argument is with the colonists, not with you. We don’t spin without a Vacate order from the cops. Once you mix into this, you may find it hard to mix out again. Be notified.”

“Your self-confidence,” Amalfi said, “is misplaced. Recorded.”

The image from Scranton contracted to a bright point and vanished. The Mayor said at once: