Prisoners of Tomorrow (78 page)

“I said you were in too much of a hurry,” Jean said to Bernard. “Just think, all that work for nothing. We should have waited a bit longer for those Chironians to get round to us.”

Bernard shrugged. “What the hell? It’s done now. We needed the exercise.”

Marie walked across the room and gazed at the large screen. “Does this work?” she asked.

“I don’t know. We haven’t tried it yet,” Bernard answered. He raised his voice a fraction. “Anybody home? What do we have to do to get a computer in this place?” No response.

“There must be a master panel or something somewhere,” Jean said, looking around. “How about that?” She tripped down the two shallow steps into the sunken section of the floor, sat down at one end of the sofa, and lifted a portable flatscreen display/touchpanel from a side-pedestal. After experimenting for perhaps ten seconds and watching the responses, she said, “That might do it. Try again.”

“Is there a computer in the house?” Bernard called out.

“At your service,” a voice replied from the direction of the screen. “I answer to
Jeeves,
unless you want to make it something different.” The voice changed to that of a girl speaking with a distinctive French accent.
“Un petite française, possiblement?”
Then it switched to a guttural male—
“Karl, ze Bavarian butler, maybe?”—
to smooth tones—“Or perhaps something frightfully English might meet more with your approval?”—and finally back to its original American. “All planetary communications and database facilities at your disposal—public, domestic, educational, professional, and personal; information storage, computation, entertainment, instruction, tuition, reference, travel arrangements, accommodations, services, goods, and resources, secretarial assistance, and consultancy. You name it, I can handle it or put you in touch with the right people.”

Bernard raised his eyebrows. “Well, hello, Jeeves. How about all that? I guess you’d better stay who you are for the time being. How about giving us a rundown on this place for a start? For instance, how do you . . .”

Jean looked away as she heard the front door open. A few seconds later Jay arrived. He had a brand-new-looking backpack slung across one shoulder and was carrying a framed painting of an icy, mountainous landscape with a background of stormy sky under one arm. His expression was vaguely perplexed.

“Jay!” Jean exclaimed. “Did you find anywhere nice? What are those things?”

“Oh.” Jay set the painting down by the wall and frowned at it as if he had just noticed it for the first time. “I thought that might look nice in my room.” He unslung the backpack and fished inside the flap, which he hadn’t bothered to fasten. “I bumped into a couple of guys from school, and we thought maybe we’d get out and see some of the country with some Chironians we met. There’s a lot more of it around here than inside the GC module. So I got these.” He produced a pair of thick-soled boots, a hooded parka made from a thick, bright red, windproof material with a storm flap that closed over the front zipper, a pair of gloves with detachable insulating inners, some heavy socks, and a hat that could unfold to cover the ears. “We were thinking of going to the mountains across the sea,” he explained. “You can get there in a flyer from Franklin in about twenty minutes.”

Jean took the boots and turned them over in her hands. Then she picked up the parka, unfolded it, and studied it in silence for a couple of seconds. “But . . . these are
good,
Jay,” she said. A concerned expression spread over her face. “Where . . . how did you get them? I mean . . . what’s all this going to cost?”

Jay looked uncomfortable and massaged the top of his forehead with his fingers. “I know you’re not going to believe this, Ma,” he said. “But they’re not going to cost anything. Nothing seems to cost anything. I don’t understand it either, but—”

“Oh, Jay, don’t be silly. Come on now—tell me where all this came from.”

“Really—you just walk in and help yourself. That’s how they do things here . . . for everything.”

“What’s the problem?” Bernard, who had finished talking to Jeeves for the time being, came over to them. Marie followed close behind.

Jean looked at him with a worried face. “Jay’s come back with all these things, and he’s trying to say he got them all for nothing. He’s claiming that anyone can just help themselves. I’ve never heard such nonsense.”

Bernard gave Jay a stern look. “You don’t expect us to believe that, surely. Now, tell us where this stuff came from. I want the truth. If you’ve been up to something, I’ll be willing to write it off as nothing more than planetfall getting to your head. Now—are you sure there isn’t something you want to tell us?”

“Everything I’ve said is true,” Jay insisted. “There’s this big kinda market in town. It’s got just about everything, and you just walk in and take what you want. We got talking to some Chironians, and they showed us what you do. I don’t understand it either, but that’s how things work here.”

“Oh, Jay,” Jean groaned. “They were probably taking you for a ride to get a laugh out of it. At your age, you should know better.”

“They weren’t,” Jay protested. “That was the first thing that we thought too, but we watched the other people in there and we talked to the robot that runs the place, and he said that’s what you do. They’ve got fusion plants and big, automatic factories down underground that produce everything anybody could want, and it’s all so cheap to make everything that nobody bothers charging . . . or something like that. I can’t figure it out.”

“Is this the truth?” Bernard asked uncertainly with a strong note of suspicion in his voice.

“Of course it is.” Jay sighed wearily. “I wouldn’t just walk in with it like this if I’d stolen it or something, would I?”

“I bet he did,” Marie declared.

“Thanks a lot,” Jay said.

“I want to see this place. Is there any reason why you couldn’t take me back there right now?”

Jay sighed again. “I guess not. Let’s go. It’s one stop along the maglev line.”

“Can we go too?” Marie asked, evidently having forgotten her previous convictions. “I want to gets
lots
of things.”

“Oh, let your father go with Jay, dear,” Jean said. “You can help me finish up here. We can go and see it tomorrow.”

“Don’t you want to come along?” Bernard asked Jean. “It would get you out and give you a break.”

Jean shook her head and indicated Marie surreptitiously with her eyes. “It would be best if you went on your own. We’ve got plenty to do here.” Marie made a face but stayed quiet.

Bernard nodded. “Okay. We’ll see you later then. Maybe you’d better leave that stuff here for now, Jay. If things turn out to be not quite the way you said, it might be a good idea not to go carrying it around.”

Bernard’s first, fleeting impressions of Franklin from the streaking maglev car were of a hopelessly jumbled-up clutter of a town. Unlike the neat and orderly models of urban planning that had replaced the heaps of American rubble during the recovery after the Lean Years—with business, entertainment, industrial, and residential sectors segregated by green belts and tidy landsculpting—everything in Franklin seemed to be intermingled with no discernible rhyme or reason. Buildings, towers, houses, and unidentifiable constructions of all shapes, sizes, and colors were packed together, overlapping and fusing in some places while giving way to clumps of greenery and trees in others. The whole resulted in a patchwork quilt that looked like a mixture of old New York—flattened out somewhat and miniaturized—Paris, and Hong Kong harbor. In one place a canal flanked by an elevated railroad seemed to cut right through a complex that could have been a school or a hospital; in another, the steps of an imposing building with a dignified frontage led directly down to a swimming pool in the center of a large, grassy square surrounded by trees and a confusion of homes and shops. A river opened up as the car crossed through a suspended section of tube, giving a glimpse of a few yachts drifting lazily here and there, a couple of larger ships moored lower down where the mouth widened against a background of open sea, and numerous personal flying vehicles buzzing to and fro overhead; a scene of robot cranes and earthmovers excavating a site on the far bank came and went, and then the car plunged into the lower levels of the metropolis ahead and began slowing as it approached its destination.

“It’s a bit different from taking a cab round the Ring,” Jay remarked as the car eased to a halt.

“You can say that again,” Bernard agreed.

“Is this what the cities back on Earth were like?”

“Well . . . some of them, a long time ago, maybe. But not modern ones.”

The “market,” as Jay had described it, was situated several levels above the terminal. To get to it they used a series of escalators. A lot of people were milling about, dressed in all manner of styles and colors and reflecting the various races of Earth in more or less even proportions, which was to be expected since the genetic codes carried by the
Kuan-yin
had comprised a balanced mix of types. Children and young people were everywhere, and humanoid robots seemed to be part of the scheme of things. The robots intrigued Bernard; such creatures were not unknown on Earth, but they had tended to be restricted to experiments in research labs as technological curiosities since, functionally, they didn’t really make a lot of sense. Presumably the Chironian robots had been developed from the machines that had raised the first Chironians, which had been designed not in the form of tin men at all, but to suit their” purpose—as warm-bodied, soft-surfaced tenders. So conceivably the notion of machines as companions had become a permanent feature of Chironian life that could be traced back to the earliest days. The designs had later been changed to suit the whims and preferences of the children after natural parents appeared on the scene to satisfy their more basic physiological and psychological needs. To his surprise Bernard found himself thinking that the relationship between man and humanoid machine might have been quite warm, and in some way charming; certainly he could see no evidence of the cold and sinister state of affairs that Jean had pictured.

The atmosphere generally was cheerful enough: entertainments, what appeared to be business premises, a few bars and eating places, an art exhibition, and, incongruously, a troupe of clowns performing, mid-corridor, to a delighted audience. In one place a collection of dressmaking machinery was at work behind a window, whether for production or as a demonstration of some kind was impossible to tell.

Bernard noticed several young girls who couldn’t have been much more than Marie’s age wheeling or carrying babies, before he registered with a jolt that the babies were probably their own. Mixed with the shock of the realization came a twinge of relief that he had left Jean and Marie at home. Explaining this was going to require some delicate handling. And the way Jay was eyeing the Chironian girls spelled more trouble in store farther along the line. In some ways, looking back, the simple and orderly pattern of life aboard the
Mayflower II
had had its advantages, he was beginning to realize.

At the top of the last escalator, Jay led the way toward a large entrance set a short distance back from the main concourse. Above it was a sign that read:

MANDEL BAY
MERCHANDISE, FRANKLIN CENTER OUTLET

* * *

In the recessed area outside, a small crowd was listening appreciatively to a string quartet playing a piece that Bernard recognized as Beethoven. Suddenly, for a moment, Earth seemed less far away. Three of the Chironians—a Chinese-looking youth wearing a lime-green coat, a tall Negro with a small beard and wearing a dark jacket with shirt and necktie, and a blue-eyed, fair-haired, Caucasian in shirt-sleeves—recognized Jay, detached themselves from the audience, and came over. Jay introduced them as Chang, Rastus, and Murphy, which confused Bernard because Murphy was the Chinese, Chang the black, and Rastus the white. Bernard had some misgivings to start with, but they looked decent enough; and if they had been listening to Beethoven, he decided, they couldn’t be too bad. He glanced over his shoulder instinctively before remembering that the
May-flower II
was twenty thousand miles away, realized that he could afford to loosen up a little, and said, “I, er . . . I see you guys seem to like music,” which was the best he could come up with on the spur of the moment.

“That’s one of my sisters playing the cello,” Murphy informed him. (Was it? Oh, yes—the Chinese was Murphy.) Bernard looked over at the quartet. The cello player was olive-skinned with Mediterranean features.

“Oh . . . she’s very good,” Bernard said.

Murphy looked pleased. “Don’t you think it has a fine tone? It’s one of Chang’s. He makes them.”

“Very,” Bernard agreed. He didn’t really have a clue.

“These are the guys I was telling you about,” Jay said. “The ones who are with the group that’s going to the mountains.”

“You’d be welcome to come too if you want,” Rastus said.

Bernard managed a weak smile. “That’s a nice thought, but I’ve got a job to do. We’re still going to be busy for a while. Thanks anyway.” He thought for a few seconds. “I hope you’re not planning anything too tough out there. I mean, Jay hasn’t exactly had a lot of practice at that kind of thing. He’s never even seen a planet before.” Jay winced under his breath and looked away.

Chang laughed. “It’s okay. We won’t be going very high, and it’ll be more walking than anything else. There won’t be anything more risky than maybe a few daskrends showing up.”

“You can use a gun, can’t you, Jay?” Murphy asked.

“Well, yes, but. . .” Jay looked taken aback.

“We should have mentioned it,” Murphy said. “Bring one along. A forty-five or something like that would be best, if you’ve got one.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Bernard interrupted, raising a hand in alarm. “Just what the hell is this? What’s a das?—”

“Daskrend,” Murphy supplied. “Oh, they’re a kind of wolf but bigger, and they’ve got poison fangs. But they’re pretty dumb and no big deal to handle. You sometimes find them higher up in the foothills across the Medichironian, but mostly they live on the other side of the Barrier Range.”