Cities in Flight (65 page)

Temporarily, however, the fates allowed him to shelve that part of the problem; for Jake was waiting for him again in the computation section, in a state of excitement so febrile that the sight of his daughter and Web tagging behind Amalfi barely raised his eyebrows.

"You're just in time," he said as though there had been some prior appointment.- "You recall the nova I was talking to you about? Well, it isn't a nova at all, and at this point it's no longer an astronomical problem; in fact, it's your problem."

"What do you mean?" Amalfi said. "If it isn't a nova, what is it?"

"Just what I was asking myself," Jake said. One of his more irritating failings was his inability to get to a point by any but a pre-selected route. "I have a remarkable collection of spectrographs for this thing; if you looked at them without any clue as to what they were, you'd think they represented a stellar catalogue, rather than a single object-and a catalogue containing stars from all over the Russell diagram, too. On top of which, all of them show a blue shift in the absorption lines, particularly in the lines contributed by New Earth's own atmosphere, which made no sense whatsoever, up to now."

"It still doesn't make any sense to me," Amalfi admitted.

"All right," Jake said, "try this on for size; when the spectra turned out to be far too dim for an object of the apparent magnitude of this thing-remember, it's been getting brighter all the time-I asked Schloss and his crew to neglect anti-matter long enough to do a wave-trap analysis of the incoming light. It turns out to be about seventy-five per cent false photons; the thing must be leaving behind a tremendous contrail, if we were only in a position to see it—"

"Spindizzies!" Amalfi shouted. "And under damn near full deceleration! But how could an object that size-no, wait a minute; do you actually know the size yet?"

The astronomer chuckled, a noise which from Jake never failed to remind Amalfi of a demented parrot. "I think we have the size, and all the rest of the answers, at least as far as astronomy is concerned," he said. "The rest, as I said, is your problem. The thing is a planetary body, roughly seventy-five hundred miles in diameter, and much closer than we thought it was-right now, in fact, it's actually inside the Greater Magellanic, and coming our way, directly for the system of New Earth. The change in spectra simply means that it's shining by the reflected light of the different suns it's passing, and the blue shift in the Frauenhofer lines strongly suggests an atmosphere very much like ours. I don't know offhand what that reminds you of, but I know what it should remind you of-and the City Fathers agree with me."

Web Hazleton could contain himself no longer. "I know, I know! It's the planet He! It's coming home! Isn't that it, Mr. Mayor?"

The boy knew his city history well; nobody from the old days could have been confronted with such a set of data as Jake had just trotted out without responding with the same wild surmise. The planet He had been one of the city's principal jobs of work, the outcome of which, for very complicated reasons, had entailed the installation on the planet itself of a number of spindizzies sufficient to rip He from her orbit around her home sun and send her careening, wholly out of control, out of the galaxy and into intergalactic space. The city had been carried a considerable distance with her, enabling it to re-enter the galaxy far away from any area where New York, N. Y., was being actively sought by the cops, but it had been a near thing. She. herself, presumably, had been hurtling toward the Andromeda galaxy ever since that moment in 3850 when she and the city had parted company, each vanishing to the other as abruptly and finally as a blown-out candle-flame.

"Let's not jump to conclusions," Amalfi said. "The tipping of He took place only a century and a half ago-and at that time the Hevians didn't have the technology or the resources to master controlled spindizzy flight; in fact, they weren't very far from being savages. Smart savages, I grant you, but still savages. Is this planet that's coming our way truly dirigible, or don't you know yet?"

"It looks that way," lake said. "That's what first tipped me off that there was something unnatural about the object. It kept changing velocity and line of flight erratically-in fact, in a totally irrational way, unless one assumed that the changes were in fact rational. Whoever they are, they know enough to prevent that world of theirs from zigging when they want to zag. And they're headed our way, Amalfi."

"Have you made any attempt to get in touch with them, whoever they are?" Amalfi said.

"No, indeed. In fact, I haven't even told anybody else about it yet. Not even Mark. Somehow it struck me as peculiarly your baby."

"That was just a waste of pussyfooting, Jake. Dr. Schloss isn't an idiot; surely he can read his own figures as well as you can and draw obvious conclusions from the very question you asked Mm; he must have told Mark by now, and a good thing, too. Mark is probably calling your object right now; let's go directly up to the control room and find out."

They made an oddly assorted procession through the haunted streets of the Okie city: the bald-headed keg-chested mayor with his teeth deeply sunk in a dead cigar, the bird-like and slightly crestfallen astronomer, the bright-eyed skipping youngsters now darting ahead of them, then falling behind to wait to be shown the way. Their eagerness moved Amalfi unexpectedly, bringing home to him the realization that their dream of the city back in flight had always been, like this, a very fragile one; and that this incoming dirigible planet, whatever else it might portend, would probably put the quietus to it, serious business and the dull cold morning light it thrived in being immemorially fatal to dreams.

On an impulse, he stopped at a station that he knew and called for an aircab, partly, he assured himself, to see whether or not the City Fathers still considered that service worth maintaining at this stage in the city's long death. In due course one came, to the obvious delight of the children, leaving Amalfi with the rueful realization that his had not been a fair test; a million years from now, with the last ergs of energy remaining in the pile, the City Fathers would of course still send a cab for the mayor; if he wanted to know whether or not the entire garage was still alive, he would have to ask the City Fathers directly. But Web and Estelle were so delighted at soaring through the silent canyons of the city in the metal and crystal bubble, and in exploring the limited and very respectful repartee of the Tin Cabby, that they fell entirely off their precarious adolescent dignity with squeals of laughter, alternating with gasps of not very real alarm as the cab cut around corners and came close to grazing the structures of the city which familiarity had worn smooth to the point of contempt inside the Tin Cabby's flat little black box of a brain. It was, in a way, a shame that the youngsters were unable to make out, even had they known where to look for it, the graven letters of the city's ancient motto-MOW YOUR LAWN, LADY?-if only for the sense it might have given them of the reason why Okie cities once flew; but the motto had become unreadable a long time ago, as its meaning had become obliterated soon after. Only the memory remained to remind Amalfi that were the city ever to go aloft again-which, suddenly, he did not even believe-it would not be for the purpose of mowing lawns for hire; there were no more; that was all over and done with.

The control room in City Hall muted the children considerably, as well it might, for no one much below the age of a century had ever been allowed in it before, and the many screens which lined its walls had seen events in a history unlikely to be matched for drama (or even simple interest) in any imaginable future saga of New Earth. In this dim stagnant-smelling room the very man who was with them now had watched the rise and fall of a galaxy-dominating race-of which, to be sure, these children were genetically a part, but whose inheritors they could never be; history had passed them by.

"And don't touch anything," Amalfi said. "Everything in this room is alive, more or less. We've never had the time to disarm the city totally; I'm not even sure we'd know how to go about it now. That's why it's off limits. You'd better come stand behind me. Web and Estelle, and watch what I do; it'll keep you out of reach of the boards."

"We won't touch anything," Web said fervently. "I know you won't, intentionally. But I don't want any accidents. Better you learn how to run the board from scratch; come stand right here-you too, Estelle-and call your grandfather's house for me. Touch the clear plastic bar-that's it, now wait for it to light up. That lets the City Fathers know that you want to talk to somebody outside the city; that's very important; otherwise they'd give you a long argument, believe you me. Now you see the five little red buttons just above the bar; the one you touch is number two; four and five are ultraphone and Dirac lines, which you don't need for a local call. One and three are inside trunk lines, which is why they're not lit up. Go ahead, push it."

Web touched the glowing red stud tentatively. Over his head, a voice said: "Communications."

"Now it's my turn," Amalfi said, picking up the microphone. "This is the mayor. Get me the city manager, crash priority." He lowered the microphone and added, "That requires the Communications section to scan for your grandfather along all of the channels on which he's known to be available, and send him a 'call-in' signal wherever he may be; New Earth Hospital has much the same call-in system for its doctors."

"Can we hear him being called?" Estelle said.

"Yes, if you like," Amalfi said. "Here, take the microphone, and put your finger on the two-button as Web did. There."

"Communications," the invisible speaker again said briskly.

"Say, 'Reprise, please'," Amalfi whispered.

"Reprise, please," the girl said.

Immediately the air of the ancient room was filled with a series of twittering pure tones and chords, as though every shadow hid a bird with a silver throat. Estelle almost dropped the microphone; Amalfi took it from her gently.

"Machines don't call for people by name," he explained. "Only very complicated machines, like the City Fathers, are able to speak at all; a simple computer like the Communications section finds it easier to use musical tones. If you listen a while, you'll begin to hear a kind of melody; that's the code for Web's grandfather; the harmonies represent the different places where the computer is looking for him."

"I like it," Estelle said. At the same instant the pipings of the invisible birds came to an end with a metallic snap, and Mark Hazleton's voice said in the middle of the air: "Boss, are you looking for me?"

Amalfi lifted the microphone back to his lips with a grim smile, the children instantly forgotten.

"You bet I am. Are you on top of this dirigible planet which seems to be heading for us?"

"Yes; I didn't know you were interested. In fact I didn't know that it was a planet instead of a star until yesterday, when Schloss and Carrel came in to see me about it." Amalfi threw Jake a meaningful glance. "I gather you're calling me from the city; what do the City Fathers think?"

"I don't know, I haven't talked to them," Amalfi said. "But Jake is here, and he's come to the obvious conclusion, as I'm sure you have. What I want to know is, have you or Carrel made any attempt to communicate with this object?"

"Yes, but I can't say that it's been very fruitful," Hazleton's voice said. "We've called them four or five times on the Dirac, but if they've answered us, it's gotten lost in the general babble of Dirac 'casts we're surrounded with from the home galaxy. It puzzles me a little bit; they do seem to be homing on us, without any question, but it's hard to imagine what kind of signal from us they could be using to guide on."

"Do you really think that this is He come back again?" Amalfi said cautiously.

"Yes, I think I do," Hazleton said, with apparent equal caution. "I don't see what other conclusion one could come to with the data as they stand now."

"Then use your head," Amalfi said. "If this really is He, you'll never be able to reach it with a Dirac 'cast. While we were on He, we never even let the Hevians hear a Dirac 'cast, or see a Dirac transmitter; they had no reason to suspect that any such universal transmitter even existed, or could exist. And if by the same token this is not He, but some exploring vessel coming in toward us for the first time from another galaxy, and out of an entirely different culture than any we know, then it's obvious that they cannot have the Dirac, otherwise they would have heard every one of the millions of Dirac messages which have gone out from our galaxy since the day they found the device. Try the ultraphone instead."

"He didn't have the ultraphone either, when last we saw it," Hazleton's voice said amusedly. "And if we don't know how to drive an ultraphone carrier through a spin-dizzy screen, I very much doubt that they do. If we're going to go all the way back to methods of communications as primitive as that, shouldn't we first try wigwagging?"

"I think probably there is an ultraphone message from that planet on its way here," Amalfi said. "It would be the part of common sense to precede such a flight as that planet is conducting into so densely populated an area as the Greater Magellanic Cloud with a general identification signal, which you could hardly do with a Dirac signal in any event; a signal which is received uniformly everywhere simultaneously with its being sent is not a proper beacon signal. It doesn't matter whether this is He or a visitor coming to us from the entirely unknown; they will be sending some sort of pip in advance, which they would absolutely have to do by ultraphone, there being no other way to do it, and if this requires them to work out a way to punch an ultraphone signal through a spindizzy screen, then they will have done so and you should be listening for it; and you can put a return signal through the same hole." He took a deep breath. "At the very least, Mark, stop wasting my time telling me it's impossible before you've even tried it."