Cities in Flight (47 page)

"Very well," the woman said with concentrated vicious-ness. "You'll hear from me again, Okie."

The King was looking at Amalfi with an unreadable, but certainly unfriendly, expression. If Amalfi's guess was right, the King thought Amalfi was somewhat overdoing Okie solidarity. It might also be occurring to him that the expression of so much independence might be a bid for power within the jungle itself. Yes, Amalfi was sure that that, at least, had occurred to the King.

The hiring of the class B cities was now all that remained, but nevertheless it took quite a while to get started. The woman, it emerged, was more than a trader; she was an entrepreneur of some importance. She wanted the cities, twenty of them, each for the same identical piece of dirty work: working low-grade carnotite lies on a small planet too near a hot star. Twenty mining cities working upon such a planet would reduce it to as small and sculptured a lump of trash as a meteorite before very many months. The method, obviously, was to get the work done fast without paying more than a pittance for it.

Then, startlingly, while the woman was still making up her mind, the voice came through. It was weak and indistinct, and without any face to go with it.

"We'll take the job. Take us."

There was a murmuring from the screens, and across some of the faces there the same shadow seemed to run. Amalfi checked the tank, but it told him little. The signal had been too weak. All that could be made certain was that the voice belonged to some city far out on the periphery of the jungle-a city desperate for energy.

The Acolyte woman seemed momentarily nonplussed. Even in a jungle, Amalfi thought grimly, some crude rules had to be observed; evidently the woman realized that to slowly enough so that it won't be apparent in any tank that we're moving counter to the general tendency. Also, get me a fix on that outfit on the outside that broke ranks if you possibly can. If, you can't do it without attracting attention, drop the project at once."

"Right."

"By Hadjji's nightshirt you've got a lesson coming!" the woman was exclaiming. "The whole deal is off for today. No jobs, not for anybody. I'll come back in a week. Maybe by then you'll have some common sense back. Lieutenant, let's get the hell out of here."

That, however, proved to be a difficult assignment. There was a sort of wave front of heavy-duty cities between the Acolyte ships and open space, expanding outward into the darkness where the weaklings shivered. In that second frigid shell most of the class C cities were panicking; and, still farther out, the brilliant green sparks of the cities whose promised jobs had just been written off were plunging angrily back toward the main cloud.

The reception hall was a bedlam of voices, mostly those of mayors trying to establish that they had not been responsible for the break in the wage line. Somewhere several cities were still attempting to shout new bids to the Acolyte woman under cover of the confusion. Through it all the voice of the King whirled like a bull-roarer.

"Clear the sky!" Lerner shouted. "Clear it up out there, by—"

As if in response, the tank suddenly crackled with hair-thin sapphire tracers. The static of the scattered mesotron rifle fire rattled audio speakers, cross-hatched the desperate, shouting faces on the screens. Terror, the terror of a man who finds suddenly that the situation he is in has always been deadly, turned Lieutenant Lerner's features rigid. Amalfi saw him reach for something.

"All right, Hazleton, spin!"

The defective spindizzy sobbed, and the city moved painfully. Lerner's elbow jerked back toward his midriff, and from his ship came the pale guide light of a Bethe blaster.

Seconds later, something went up in the white agony of a fusion explosion-something so far off from the center of the riot that Amalfi first thought, with a shock of fury, that Lerner had undertaken to destroy Okie cities unselectively, simply to terrorize. Then the look on Lerner's face told him that the "shot had been fired at random. Lerner was as taken aback as Amalfi, and seemingly for much the same reasons, at the death of the unknown bystander.

The depth of the response surprised Amalfi anew. Perhaps there was hope for Lerner yet.

Some incredible fool of an Okie was firing on the cop now, but the shots fell short; mesotron rifles were not primarily military instruments, and the Acolytes had almost worked free of the jungle. For a moment Amalfi was afraid that Lerner would fling a few vindictive Beth6 blasts back into the pack, but evidently the cop was recovering the residue of his good sense; at least, no more shots came from the command cruiser. It was possible that he had realized that any further exchange of fire would turn the incident from a minor brawl to a mob uprising which would make it necessary to call in the Acolyte navy.

Not even the Acolytes could want that, for it would end in cutting off their supply of skilled labor.

The city's spindizzies cut out. Lurid, smoky scarlet light leaked down the stone stairwell which led out of the reception hall to the belfry;

"We're parked near the stinking little star, boss. We're less than a million miles out from the orbit of the King's own city."

"Good work, Mark. Break out a gig. We're going calling."

"All right. Anything special in the way of equipment?"

"Equipment?" Amalfi said, slowly. "Well-no. But you'd best bring Sergeant Anderson along. And Mark—"

"Yes?"

"Bring Dee, too."

The center of government of the King's city was enormously impressive: ancient, stately, marmoreal. It was surrounded on a lower level by a number of lesser structures of equally heavy-handed beauty. One of these was a heavy, archaic cantilever bridge for which Amalfi could postulate no use at all; it spanned an enormously broad avenue which divided the city in two, an avenue which was virtually untraveled; the bridge, too, carried only foot traffic now, and not much of that.

He decided finally that the bridge had been retained only out of respect to history. These seemed to be no other sentiment which fitted it, since the normal mode of transportation in the King's city, as in every other Okie city, was by aircab. Like the City Hall, the bridge was beautiful; possibly that had spoken for its retention, too.

The cab rocked slightly and grounded. "Here we are, gentlemen," the Tin Cabby said. "Welcome to Buda-Pesht."

Amalfi followed Dee and Hazleton out onto the plaza. Other cabs, many of them, dotted the red sky, homing on the palace and settling near by.

"Looks like a conclave," Hazleton said. "Guests from outside, not just managerial people inside this one city; otherwise, why the welcome from the cabby?"

"That's my guess, too, and I think we're none too early for it, either. It's my theory that the King is in for a rough time from his subjects. This shoot-up with Lerner, and the loss of jobs for everybody, must have lowered his stock considerably. If so, it'll give us an opening."

"Speaking of which," Hazleton said, "where's the entrance to this tomb, anyhow? Ah-that must be it."

They hurried through the shadows of the pillared portico. Inside, in the foyer, hunched or striding figures moved past them toward the broad, ancient staircase, or gathered in small groups, murmuring urgently in the opulent dimness. This entrance hall was marvelous with chandeliers; they did not cast much light, but they shed glamour like a molting peacock.

Someone plucked Amalfi by the sleeve. He looked down. A slight man with a worn Slavic face and black eyes which looked alive with suppressed mischief stood at his side.

"This place makes me homesick," the slight man said, "although we don't go in for quite so much sheer mass on my town. I believe you're the mayor who refused all offers, on behalf of a city with no name. I'm correct, am I not?"

"You are," Amalfi said, studying the figure with difficulty in the ceremonial dimness. "And you're the mayor of Dresden-Saxony: Franz Specht. What can we do for you?"

"Nothing, thank you. I simply wanted to make myself known. It may be that you will need to know someone, inside." He nodded in the direction of the staircase. "I admired your stand today, but there may be some who resent it. Why is your city nameless, by the way?"

"It isn't," Amalfi" said. "But we sometimes need to use our name as a weapon, or at least as a lever. We hold it in reserve as such."

"A weapon! Now that is something to ponder. I will see you later, I hope." Specht slipped away abruptly, a shadow among shadows. Hazleton looked at Amalfi with evident puzzlement.

"What's his angle, boss? Backing a longshot, maybe?"

"That would be my guess. Anyhow, as he says, we can probably use a friend in this mob. Let's go on up."

In the great hall, which had been the throne room of an empire older than any Okie, older even than space flight, there was already a meeting in progress. The King himself was standing on the dais, enormously tall, bald, scarred, terrific, as shining black as anthracite. Ancient as he was, his antiquity was that of some, featureless, eventless, an antiquity without history against the rich backdrop of his city. He was anything but an expectable mayor of Buda-Pesht; Amalfi strongly suspected that there were recent bloodstains on the city's log.

Nevertheless, the King held the rebellious Okies under control without apparent effort. His enormous gravelly voice roared down about their heads like a rockslide, overwhelming them all with its raw momentum alone. The occasional bleats of protest from the floor sounded futile and damned against it, like the voices of lambs objecting to the inevitable avalanche.

"So you're mad!" he was thundering. "You got roughed up a little and now you're looking for somebody to blame it on! Well, I'll tell you who to blame it on! I'll tell you what to do about it, too. And by God, when I'm through telling you, you'll do it, the whole pack of you!"

Amalfi pushed through the restive, close-packed mayors and city managers, putting his bull shoulders to good use. Hazleton and Dee, hand in hand, tailed him closely. The Okies on the floor grumbled as Amalfi shoved his way forward; but they were so bound up in the King's diatribe, and in their own fierce, unformulated resistance to the King's battering-ram leadership tactics, that they could spare nothing more than a moment's irritation for Amalfi's passage among them.

"Why are we hanging around here now, getting pushed around by these Acolyte hicks?" the King roared. "You're fed with it. All right, I'm fed with it, too. I wouldn't take it from the beginning! When I came here, you guys were bidding each other5 down to peanuts. When the bidding was over, the city that got the job lost money on it every time. It was me that showed you how to organize. It was me that showed you how to stand up for your rights. It was me that showed you how to form a wage line, and how to hold one. And it's going to be me that'll show you what to do when a wage line breaks up."

Amalfi reached behind him, caught Dee's hand, and drew her forward to stand beside him. They were now in the front row of the crowd, almost up against the dais. The King saw the movement; he paused and looked down. Amalfi felt Dee's hand tighten spasmodically upon his. He returned the pressure.

"All right," Amalfi said. When he was willing to let his voice out, he could fill a considerable space with it. He let it out. "Show, or shut up."

The King, who had been looking directly down at them, made a spasmodic movement-almost as if he had been about to take one step backwards. "Who the hell are you?" he shouted.

"I'm the mayor of the only city that held the line today," Amalfi said. He did not seem to be shouting, but somehow his voice was no smaller in the hall than the King's. A quick murmur went through the mob, and Amalfi could see necks craning in his direction. "We're the newest-and the biggest-city here, and this is the first sample we've seen of the way you run this wage bidding. We think it stinks. We'll see the Acolytes in hell before we take their jobs at any of the prices they offer, let alone the low pay levels you set."

Someone near by turned and looked at Amalfi slantwise. "Evidently you folks can eat space," the Okie said dryly.

"We eat food. We won't eat slops," Amalfi growled. "You up there on the platform-let's hear this great plan for getting us out of this mess. It couldn't be any worse than the wage-line system-that's a cinch."

The King began to pace. He whirled as Amalfi finished speaking, arms akimbo, feet apart, his shiny bald cranium thrust forward, gleaming blankly against the faded tapestries.

"I'll let you hear it," he roared. "You bet I'll let you hear it. Let's see what your big talk comes to after you know what it is. You can stay behind and try to work boom-time wages out of the Acolytes if you want; but if you've guts, you'll go with us."

"Where to?" Amalfi said calmly. "We're going to march on Earth." There was a brief, stunned silence. Then a composite roar began to grow in the hall.

Amalfi grinned. The sound of the response was not exactly friendly.

"Wait!" the King bellowed. "Wait, dammit! I ask you- what's the sense in our fighting the Acolytes? They're just local trash. They know just as well as we do that they couldn't get away with their slave-market tactics and their private militia and their-shoot-ups if Earth had an eye on 'em."

"Then why don't we holler for the Earth cops?" someone demanded.

"Because they wouldn't come here. They can't. There must be Okies all over the galaxy that are taking stuff from local systems and clusters, stuff like what we're taking. This depression is everywhere, and there just aren't enough Earth cops to be all over the place at once.