Cities in Flight (28 page)

"If you don't like a man when he's in trouble, you probably never liked him at all," the perimeter sergeant agreed reflectively. "Well, I can't tell you very much more, all the same. In general terms, Amalfi is stalling in a way he hopes will give Lutz the idea that he's going to give in, but won't give the Argidae the same impression; the machines have run him up a set of key words that should convey the one thing to the colonists and the other to Scranton. Contact termination is only a week away, and if we can stall Lutz until the day before that-well, I can't say what we'll do. But generally, again, we'll move in there and deprive him of his marbles. That'll give us a day to get out of this system before the cops come running, and when they do catch us, at least they'll find that we have a fulfilled contract. Incidentally, it also gives us a day to Collect our pay—"

"OVERRIDE," the City Fathers said suddenly, without being asked anything at all.

"Woof! Sorry. Either I've already said one word too many, or I was going to. Can't say anything else, Chris."

"But I thought they never volunteered information!"

"They don't," Anderson said. "That wasn't volunteered. They are under orders from Amalfi to monitor talk about this situation and shut it up when it begins to get too loose. That's all I can say-and it's none of it the best news I ever spread."

Only a week to go-and the contract date, Chris realized for the first time, was exactly one day before his birthday. Everything was going to be gained or lost within the same three days: for himself, for Piggy and his two victims, for Scranton, for Argus III, for the city.

And again he knew, as surely as he knew his left hand from his right, that Amalfi's present plan was not going to work.

And again the rock upon which it was sure to founder was Frank Lutz.

Chris did not doubt that Amalfi could outsmart Lutz hands down in any face-to-face situation, but that was not what this was. He did doubt, and doubted most thoroughly, that any list of trigger words the City Fathers could prepare could fool Lutz for long, no matter how well they lulled the hundred eyes of Argus to sleep; the city manager of Scranton was educated, shrewd, experienced in the ways of politics and power—"and by now, on top of all that, he would be almost insane, suspicious. Suspicion of everyone had been normal for him even in good times; if he suspected his friends when things were going right. be would hardly be more trustful of his enemies in the very last days of a disaster.

Chris knew very little yet about the politics of Okie cities, but he knew his history. Also, he knew skunks; he had often marveled 'at the obduracy with which poor Kelly had failed to profit by his tangles with them. Maybe the dog had liked them; they are affectionate pets for a cautious master. But the human variety was not worth the risk. One look at Frank Lutz had taught Chris that.

And even supposing that Lutz did not shoot from the hip while. New York was still trying to stall, bringing down upon the city a rain of missiles or whatever other bombardment Scranton 'was able to mount; even supposing that Lutz was totally taken in by Amalfi's strategy, so that New York took his city away from him at the very last minute, without firing a shot or losing a man; even supposing all this-and it was an impossible budget of suppositions-Piggy and the two women prisoners would not survive it. In New York only Chris could know with what contempt Lutz treated the useless people aboard his own town; and only Chris could guess what short shrift he would give three putative refugees from a great city that did tolerate passengers.

Piggy's pitiful expedition was probably heaving slag right now. If Lutz' allowed them to live, more or less, through the next week, he would certainly have them executed the instant he saw his realm toppling, no matter how fast Amalfi moved Upon Scranton when the H-hour arrived-it takes no more than five seconds to order that hostages be sacrificed. That was the whole and only reason why the many wars of medieval Earth had gone on so many years after all the participants had forgotten why they had been started or, if they remembered, no longer cared: there was still ransom money to be made.

His guardian was already impatient of that kind of example, however. As for Amalfi and the City Fathers, they had made their position too clear to be worth appealing to now. Were Chris to go back to them, they would give him more than another No; such an approach would give them all the reasons they could possibly need to put Chris under a 24-hour watch.

Yet this time he knew they were wrong; and this time he planned very carefully, fighting off the constant conviction that these ancient men and machines could not possibly have made a mistake ... and would snap the switch on him at any moment.

If they knew what he was up to, they remained inactive, and kept their own counsel. He trudged out of the city the next night. Nobody tried to stop him. Nobody even seemed to see ,him go.

That was exactly what he had hoped for; but it made him feel miserably in the wrong, and on his own.

Ordinarily Chris would not have ventured into a strange wilderness at night; even under present circumstances, he would have left perhaps an hour before sunrise, leaving himself only enough darkness to put distance between himself and any possible pursuit. But on Argus III, he had several advantages going for him.

One of these was a homing compass, a commonplace Okie object the needle of which always pointed toward the strongest nearby spindizzy field. On most planets, cities tended to keep a fractional field going to prevent the local air from mixing with that of the city itself-and when the city was on a war footing, the generators would be kept running as a matter of course in case a, quick getaway should be needed. The gadget would point him away from New York for half his trip, and an ordinary magnetic compass would serve to show which way; thereafter, the homing compass would be pointing steadily toward Scranton.

The second advantage was light. Argus had no moon but it had the hundred eyes of the nearby blue-white giant suns of the cluster, and beyond them the diffuse light of the rest of the cluster, throughout this half of the year. The aggregate sky glow was almost twice as bright as Earthly moonlight-more than good enough to read by, and to cast sharp shadows, though not quite enough to trigger the color sensitivity of the human eye.

Most important of all, Chris knew pine woods and mountains. He had grown up among them.

He traveled light, carrying with him only a small pack containing two tins of field rations, a canteen and a change of clothing. The "fresh" clothes were those he had been wearing when he had first been transferred to New York; it had taken considerable courage to ask the City Fathers if they were still in storage, despite his knowledge that the machines never told what they knew unless asked. The request left behind a clue, but that really didn't matter; once Sgt. Anderson realized Chris was missing, he could be in little doubt about where he had gone.

By dawn he was almost over the crest of the range. By noon he had found himself a cave on the other side from which a small, ice-cold stream issued. He went very cautiously in this, as deep as he could go on his hands and knees, looking for old bones, droppings, bedding or any other sign that some local animal lived there. He found none, as he had expected; few animals care to make a home directly beside running water-it is too damp at night, and it attracts too many potential enemies. Then he ate for the first time and went to sleep.

He awoke at dusk, refilled his canteen from the stream, and began the long scramble down the other side of the range. The route he took was necessarily more than a little devious, but thanks to the two compasses he was never in any doubt about his bearings, for more than a few minutes at a time. Long before midnight, he caught his first glimpse of Scranton, glowing dully in the valley like a scatter of dewdrops in a spider's web. By dawn, he had buried his pack along with the New York clothes-by now more than a little dirty and torn-and was shambling cheerfully across the cleared perimeter of Scranton, toward the same street by which he had boarded the town willy-nilly so long ago. There were many differences this time, not the least of which was his possession of the necessary device for getting through the edge of the spin-dizzy field.

He was spotted at once, of course, and two guards came trotting out to meet him, red-eyed and yawning; obviously, it was near the end of their trick.

"Whatcha doin' out here?"

"Went to pick mushrooms," Chris said, with what he hoped was an idiotic grin. "Didn't find any. Funny kind of woods they got here."

One of the sleepy guards looked him over, but apparently saw nothing but the issue clothing and Chris's obvious youth. He cussed Chris out more or less routinely and said:

"Where ya work?

"Soaking pits."

The two guards exchanged glances. The soaking pits were deep, electrically heated holes in which steel ingots were cooled, gently and slowly. Occasionally they had to be cleaned, but it wasn't economical to turn the heat off. The men who did the job were lowered into the pits in asbestos suits for four minutes at a time, which was the period it took for their insulating wooden shoes to burst into flame; then they were hauled out, given ,new shoes, and lowered' into the pit again-and this went on for a full working day. Nobody but the mentally deficient could safely be assigned to such an inferno.

"Awright, feeb, get back on the job. And don't come out here no more, get me? You're lucky we didn't shoot you."

Chris ducked his head, grinned, and ran. A minute later, he was twisting and dodging through the shabby streets. Despite his confidence, he was a little surprised at bow well he remembered them.

The hidey hole among the crates was still there, too, exactly as he and Frad had last left it, even to the stub of candle. Chris ate his other tin of field rations, and sat down in the darkness to wait.

He did not have to wait long, though the time seemed endless. About an hour after the end of the work day, he heard the sounds of someone threading the labyrinth with sure steps; and then the light of the flash came darting in upon him.

"Hi, Frad," he said. "I'm glad to see you. Or I will be, once you get that light out of my eyes."

The spoor of the flashlight beam swung toward the ceiling. "It that you, Chris?" Fred's voice said. "Yep, I see it is. But you must have grown a foot."

"I guess I have. I'm sorry I didn't get here sooner."

The big man sat down with a grunt. "Never thought you'd make it at all-it was just a hunch, once I heard who it was we were up against. I hope you're not trying to switch sides, like those other three idiots."

"Are they still alive?" Chris said with sudden fear.

"Yep. As of an hour ago. But I wouldn't put any money on them lasting. Frank is getting wilder by the day-I used to think I understood him, but not any more. Is that what you're here for-to try and sneak those kids out? You can't do it."

"No," Chris said. "Or, anyhow, not exactly. And I'm not trying to switch sides, either. But we were wondering why you let your city manager get you into this mess. Our City Fathers say he's gone off his rocker, and if the machines can see it, you ought to be able to. In fact, you just said you did."

"I've heard about those machines of yours," Frad said slowly. "Do they really run the city, the way the stories say?"

"They run most of it. They don't boss it, though; the Mayor does that."

"Amalfi. Hmm. To tell you the truth, Chris, everybody knows that Frank's lost control. But there's nothing we can do about it. Suppose we threw him out-not that it'd be easy-where'd we go from there? We'd still be 'in the same mess." -

"You wouldn't be at war with my town any more," Chris suggested.

"No, and that'd be a gain, as far as it went. But we'd still be in the rest of the hole. Just changing a set of names won't put any money in the till, or any bread in our mouths." He paused for a moment and then added bitterly, "I suppose you know we're starving. Not me, personally-Frank feeds his own-but I don't eat very well either when I have to look at the faces I meet on the streets. Frank's big play against Amalfi is crazy, sure-but except for that we've got no hope."

Chris was silent. It was what he had expected to find, but that made the problem no easier.

"But you haven't answered my question," Frad said. "What are you up to? Just collecting information? Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut."

"I'm trying to promote revolution," Chris said. It sounded embarrassingly pompous, but he couldn't think of any other way to put it. He was also trying to avoid saying anything which would be an outright lie, but from this point onward that was going to be increasingly difficult. "The Mayor says you must have flunked your contracts because you don't have any machines to judge them. Evidently that happens a lot of times to small cities that don't have computer control. And the City Fathers say you could have done this job."

"Now wait a minute. Let's take this one step at a time. Suppose we got 'rid of Frank and patched things up with Amalfi. Could we get some help from your City Fathers on reorganizing the job?"

Now the guesswork had to begin, to be followed rapidly by the outright lying. "Sure you could. But we'd have to have our people back first-Piggy Kingston-Throop and the two women."

Fred made a quick gesture of dismissal in the dim light. "I'd do that for a starter, not as part of a deal; But look, Chris, this is a complicated business. Your city landed here to do the job we defaulted on. If we do it after all, then somebody doesn't get paid. Not a likely deal for Amalfi to make."

"Mayor Amalfi isn't offering any deal yet. But Frad, you know what our contract with Argus is like. Half of it is to do the job you didn't do, sure. But the other half of it is to get rid of Scranton. If you turn into a decent town instead of a bindlestiff, we'll get that part of the money and it's the bigger part, now. Naturally the Mayor'd rather do it by finagling than by fighting-if we fight, we'll need all the money and more just to pay for the damages both of us. Isn't that logical?"

"Hmm. I guess it is. But if you want to keep me reasonable, you'd better lay off that word 'bindlestiff.' It's true enough, but it makes me mad all the same. Either we treat as equals, or we don't treat."

"I'm sorry," Chris said. "I don't know a lot about this kind of thing. The Mayor would have sent somebody else if he'd had anybody who could have gotten in. But there wasn't anyone but me."

"Okay. I'm edgy, that's all. But there's one thing more and that's the colonists. They're not going to trust us just because we've gotten rid of Frank. They don't know that he's the problem, and they'll have no better reason to trust the next city manager. If we're going to get back tin mining part of the contract, Amalfi will have to guarantee it. Would he do that?"

Chris was already in far deeper waters than his conscience could possibly justify.' He knew abruptly that he could push no farther into the untrue and the unknown.

"I don't know, Frad. I never asked, and he didn't say. I suppose he'd have to ask the City Fathers for an opinion first-and nobody knows what they might say."

Frad squatted and thought about it, smacking one fist repeatedly into the other palm. After a moment, he seemed about to ask another question, but it never got out.

"Well," he muttered finally, "every deal has one carrot in it. I guess we take the chance. You'll have to stay here, Chris. I can knock Barney's and Huggins' heads together easy enough, but Frank's something else again. When the shooting really starts, he might turn out to be a lot faster than I am-and besides, he won't care what else he hits. If I manage to dump him I'll come back for you soon enough-but you'd better stay out of sight until it's over."

Chris had expected nothing else, but the prospect of again missing all the excitement, while he simply sat and waited, disappointed him all the same, However, it also reminded him of something.

"I'll stay here. But, Frad, if it doesn't look as if it's working, don't wait till it's hopeless. Let me know and I'll try to get help."

"Well ... all right. But better not to have any outsiders visible if it's going to stick. If anybody in this town sees New York's finger in this even people who hate Frank'll be on his side again. We're all a little crazy around here lately."

He stood up, his face somber, and picked up the flashlight.

"I hope you've got the straight goods," he said. "I don't like to do this. Frank trusts me-I guess I'm the last man he does trust. And for some reason I always liked him, even though I knew he was a louse from the very beginning. Some guys hit you that way. It's not going to be fun, stabbing him in the back. He's got it coming sure but all the same I wouldn't do it if I didn't trust you more."

He swung to the exit into the labyrinth. Chris swallowed and said: "Thanks, Frad. Good luck."

"Sit tight. I'll see you."

Of necessity, Chris did not stay in the hole every minute of the day, but even so 'he found that he quickly lost track of the passage of time. He ate when he seemed to need to-though most of the food had been removed from the hide-out, Frad had missed one compact cache-and slept as much as possible. That was not very much, however, for now that he was inactive he found himself a prey to more and more anxiety and tension, made worse by his total ignorance of what was going on outside.

Finally he was convinced that the deadline had passed. Alter all, all possibility of sleep vanished from minute to minute he awaited the noises of battle joined, or the deepening drone 'which would mean that Scranton was carrying him off again. The close confines of the hole made the tension even more nightmarish. At the first faint sound in the labyrinth, he jumped convulsively, and would have started like a hare had there been any place to run to.

In the uncertain light of the flash, Frad looked ghastly: he had several days' growth of beard and was haggard with sleeplessness. In addition, he had a beautiful black eye.

"Come on out," he said tersely. "The job's mostly done."

Chris followed Frad out into the half-light of the warehouse, which seemed brilliant after the stuffy inkiness of the hole, and thence into the intolerable brilliance of late-afternoon sunlight.

"What happened to Frank Lutz?" he said breathlessly.

Frad stared straight ahead, and when he replied, his voice was totally devoid of expression.