Cities in Flight (73 page)

"I see," Amalfi said. He paused. This was going to be tougher to bring off than he had dreamed; in fact, he had his first doubt as to whether it could be brought off at all. "Are you aware, sir, that this planet is a hotbed of Stochasticism?"

Jorn's bushy eyebrows lifted slightly. "I know that the Stochastics are strongest and most numerous on New Earth," he said. "I have no way of knowing how deeply the philosophy has penetrated the populace of New Earth as a whole. It is one of the things I mean to see stamped out."

"You'll find that impossible. A mob of farm boys can't eradicate a major philosophical system."

"But how major is it?" Jorn said. "In terms of influence? I admit I have the impression that much of New Earth may be corrupted by it, but I have no certain knowledge that this is so. At the distance from New Earth that I am forced to operate, I may well be magnifying it in my mind, especially since it is so completely antithetical to the Word of God; it would be natural for me to assume that the homeland of Stochasticism is also a 'hotbed' of it. But I do not know this to be true."

"So you will risk the souls of the Warriors of God on the assumption that it is not true."

"Not necessarily," Jorn said. "Considering the forces for which you speak, Mr. Amalfi, it is so plainly to your advantage to exaggerate the influence of Stochasticism; your very use of the tool suggests that, since I cannot think you mean me any advantage. I suspect that in actuality the Stochastics, like intellectuals at all times and in all places, are largely out of touch with the general assumptions of the culture in which they are operating; and that the people of New Earth are no more Stochastics than they are Warriors of God or anything else describable as a school of thought. If any label applies, they are simply a people who are no longer describable as Okies." Amalfi sat there and sweated. He had met his match and he knew it.

"And if you are wrong?" he said at last. "If Stochasticism is as ingrained on this planet as I've tried to warn you it is?"

"Then," Jorn the Apostle said, "I must take the risk. My Warriors on New Earth are farm boys, as you have pointed out. I doubt that Stochasticism will make much headway with them; they will shrug it off, as contrary to common sense. They will be mistaken in that estimate, but how could they know that? Ignorance is the defense God the Father has given them, and I think it will be sufficient" There was the cue. Amalfi could only hope that it had not come too late.

"Very well," he said, rather more grimly than he had intended. "Events will put us both to the proof; there is no more to be said."

"No," Jorn said, "there is this much more: you may actually have meant to do me a service, Mr. Amalfi. If it so proves out, then I will give the devil his due-one must be honest even with evil, there is no other good course. What do you want of me?"

And thus the verbal sparring-match had come so quickly to full circle; and this time there was no way to remain ignorant of, let alone to evade, the purport of the question. It was not political; it was personal; and it had been intended that way from the beginning.

"You could return me three hostages which your blockading fleet is holding," Amalfi said. His mouth tasted of aloes. "A woman and two children."

"Had you asked for that in the beginning," Jorn the Apostle said, "I would have given it to you." Was it actually pity in his voice? "But you have placed their lives upon the block of your own integrity, Mr. Amalfi. So be it; if I become convinced that I must lose New Earth because of Stochasticism, I will return the three before I withdraw my blockading squadron; otherwise, not. And, Mr. Amalfi—"

"Yes?" Amalfi whispered.

"Bear in mind what "is at stake, and do not let your ingenuity overwhelm you. I know well that you are fabulously inventive; but human lives should not hang upon the success of a work of art. Go with God." The screen was dark.

Amalfi mopped his forehead with a trembling hand. With his last words, Jorn the Apostle had succeeded in telling the whole story of Amalfi's life, and it had not made comfortable listening.

Nevertheless, he hesitated only a moment longer. Though Jorn had probably already seen through the improvision which had occurred to Amalfi-late enough so that he had been unable to betray that, too, to Jorn over the Dirac for the universe to hear-there was no other course open but to try to carry it through. The alternative which Jorn had proposed actually came out to the same thing in the end: that of transforming a lie into the truth. If this was an art, as Amalfi had good reason to know it was, it was at the same time not a "work of art," but only a craft; it was Jorn himself now who was committing human lives to the dictates of a work of art, that elaborate fiction which was his religion.

Being careful, this time, to cut the screen out of the circuit in advance, Amalfi called the Mayor's office.

"This is the Commissioner of Public Safety," he told the robot secretary. In ordinary times the machine would know well enough that there was no such office, but the confusion over there now must be such that the pertinent memory banks must by now have been by-passed; he felt reasonably confident that the phrase, a code alarm of long standing in the Okie days would get through to Hazleton; as in fact it did in short order.

"You are late calling in," Mark's voice said guardedly. "Your report is overdue. Can't you report your findings hi person?"

"The situation is too fluid to permit that, Mr. Mayor," Amalfi said. "At present I'm making rounds of the perimeter stations in the old city. Off-duty Warriors are trying to sightsee here, and of course with so much live machinery—"

"Who is that?" another voice said, farther in the background. Amalfi recognized it; it was the authoritative voice that had spotted the open phone when the Warriors had first arrested Hazleton. "We can't permit that!"

"It's the Commissioner of Public Safety, a man named de Ford," Hazleton said. Amalfi grinned tightly. De Ford had in actuality been* Hazleton's predecessor as city manager; he had been shot seven centuries ago. "And of course we can't permit^ that. Besides all the loose energy there is about the old city, much of it is derelict. De Ford, I thought you knew' that the Warriors' own general put the city off limits."

"I tell them that," Amalfi said, in a tone of injured patience. "They just laugh and say they're not Warriors on their own time."

"What!" said the heavy voice.

"That's what they say," Amalfi said doggedly. "Or else they say that they're nobody's man but their own, and that in the long run nobody owns anybody else. They sound like they've been sitting with some Village Stochastic, though they've got it pretty garbled. I suppose the philosophers don't try to teach the pure doctrine in the provinces."

"That's beside the point," Mark said sternly. "Keep them out of the city-that's imperative."

"I'm trying, Mr. Mayor," Amalfi said. "But there's a limit to what I can do. Half of them are toting spindillies, and you know what would happen if one of those things were fired over here, even once. I'm not going to risk that."

"Be sure you don't; but keep trying. I'll see what can be done about it from this end. There'll be further instructions; where can I reach you?"

"Just leave the call in the perimeter sergeant's office," Amalfi said. "I'll pick it up on my next round."

"Very good," Hazleton said, and clicked out. Amalfi set up the necessary line from the perimeter station to the control tower and sat back, satisfied for the moment, though with a deeper uneasiness that would not go away. The seed had been planted, and there was no doubt that Hazleton had understood the move and would foster it. It was highly probable that Jorn the Apostle had already ordered an inquiry made of his officers on Earth, questioning the substance of Amalfi's claims; they would of course report back that they had had no trouble of that kind, but the inquiry itself would sensitize them to the subject.

Amalfi turned on the tower's FM receiver and tuned for New Earth's federal station. The next step would be stiffer off-limits orders to Warriors on leave, and he wanted to be sure he heard the texts. Unless Jorn's officers phrased those orders with an unlikely degree of sophistication, they would result in some actual sightseers in the city-and of course there were no longer any perimeter sergeants, nor was there even a definable perimeter except in the minds of the City Fathers. Somebody was bound to get hurt.

That would be one incident 'de Ford' would not report: "I didn't hear about it. I'm sorry, but I can't be everywhere at once. I've been trying to fend these boys off from the City Fathers-they want to ask them a lot of questions about the history of ideas that would tie the machines up for weeks. I've been telling the boys that I don't know how to operate, the City Fathers, but if one of them points a spindilly at me and says 'Put me through, or else'-well—"

That speech would necessarily mark the demise of the 'Commissioner of Public Safety,' since it would almost surely result in the posting of a uniformed, on-duty Warrior patrol around or in the Okie city itself; Amalfi would then have to go underground, and the rest would be up to Mark. What, specifically, Hazleton would do could not be anticipated, nor did Amalfi want to know about it when it happened. One of the defects of the program was the fact that it was, as Jorn had suspected, based on a lie, whereas a good deception ought to contain some fundamental stone of truth to stub the toes of the sane and the suspicious. To put the matter with brutal directness, there was no possibility that the local Warriors would be corrupted by Stochasticism, and there never had been. Even if the program succeeded and Jorn withdrew his men, he would interrogate them closely before he gave Amalfi back his hostages; and if everything that he found out bore Amalfi's stamp it would be too consistent to be convincing. That was why Hazleton's improvisations had to be his own from here on out, and as unknown to Amalfi as possible until it was too late for Amalfi to undo them even had he wished to.

It was indeed a poor piece of fiction upon which to hang the lives of Dee and Web and Estelle; but he had to make do with what he had.

It appeared to be working. Within the week, all Warrior leaves were cancelled in favor of special 'orientation devotions' at which attendance was mandatory. Though there was no direct way to tell whether or not the Warriors resented the cancellation of their leaves to secure their faith, the predicated accident inside the city happened the next day, and the 'Commissioner of Public Safety' was promptly taxed by Hazleton to explain how he had allowed it to happen; Amalfi trotted forth the prepared lie, and retreated to an ancient communications sub-station deep in the bowels of the City Fathers themselves.

The Warrior patrol was roving through the Okie city the very next day, and Amalfi was isolated; the rest had to be up to Hazleton.

By the end of that week, the Warriors had been ordered to turn in their spindillies for regulation police stun-guns, and Amalfi knew that he had won. When a conquering army is disarmed by its own officers, it is through; in a while it will begin to tear itself apart, with very little help from outside. When that order of the day got back to Jorn, he would act, and act rapidly; Hazleton had evidently been a little too thorough as was his custom. But there was nothing that Amalfi could do now but wait.

The last Warrior blockade ship had barely touched down before Web and Estelle were scrambling out of the airlock and making straight for Amalfi.

"We have a message for you," Estelle said, out of breath, her eyes preternaturally wide. "From Jorn the Apostle. The ship's captain said to bring it to you right away."

"All right, there's not that much hurry," Amalfi growled, to hide his apprehension. "Are you all right? Did they take proper care of you?"

"They didn't hurt us," Web said. "They were so proper and polite, I wanted to kick them. They kept us in a stateroom and gave us tracts to read. It got pretty boring after a while, just reading tracts and playing tic-tac-toe on them with grandmother." Suddenly, he could not help grinning at Estelle; obviously he had gotten away with something in those quarters, all the same.

Amalfi felt a vague emotional twinge, though he was unable to identify just what kind of emotion it was; it passed too quickly. "All right, good," he said to Estelle. "Where's the message?"

"Here." She passed over a yellow flimsy, torn from the ship's Dirac printer. It said:

XXX CMNDR SSG GABRIEL SPG

32 JOHN AMALFI N EARTH V HSTGS RPT 32

I AM GIVING YOU BENEFIT OF DOUBT, RPT DOUBT. YOU ALONE KNOW TRUTH. IF THIS DEFEAT SOLELY YOUR INVENTION BE SURE THE END IS NOT YET. BUT IT WILL BE SOON.

JORN APOSTLE OF GOD

Amalfi crumpled the flimsy and dropped it onto the flaked concrete of the spaceport.

"And so it will," he said.

Estelle looked down at the wad of yellow paper, and then back at Amalfi's somber face. "Do you know what he means?" she said.

"Yes, I know what he means, Estelle. But I hope you never do."

Nor did Estelle ever know-though in the long run she was in no doubt about it in her own mind-that the first break in the problem of how to cross the information-barrier of the coming Ginnangu-Gap sprang from her suggestion to her father- that to know No-Man's-Land, one must study it with bullets. Web and Estelle were, after all, only children, and in the ensuing years nobody had any time to spare for children; they were far too gone in the fever of putting together the immaterial object which would be their bullet across No-Man's-Land into the vast, complementary, opposite infinity of the universe of antimatter. For the time being, speculation had been abandoned in favor of fact-finding; what was needed was some direct assessment of the contemporary energy level of the anti-matter universe; once that was known, one could hope to date precisely the coming moment of catastrophe, and know how much or how little time one had left to make such preparations for going down into death as one could bring oneself to think meaningful in the face of an imminent and complete cancellation of all meaning-and of the time of experience which alone gave meaning to the concept of meaning.