The SF Hall of Fame Volume Two B (11 page)

The mayor looked up at her. It was no secret to her, or to
Hazleton either, that he loved her; they both knew, as well, the cruelly just Okie
law that forbade the mayor of an Okie city any permanent alliance with a
woman—and the vein of iron loyalty in Amalfi that would have compelled him to
act by that law even had it never existed. Until the sudden crisis far back in
the Acolyte cluster which had forced Amalfi to reveal to Hazleton the existence
of that love, neither of the two youngsters had suspected it over a period of
nearly nine decades.

But Dee was comparatively new to Okie mores, and was in
addition a woman. Only to know that she was loved had been unable to content
her long. She was already beginning to put the knowledge to work.

"Of course I promised," Amalfi said. "I've
delivered on my promises for nearly two thousand years, and I'll continue to do
so. The blunt fact is that the City Fathers would have me shot if I didn't—as
they nearly had Mark shot on more than one occasion. This planet will be our
home, if you'll give me just the minimum of help in winning it. It's the best
of all the planets we passed on the way in, for a great many reasons—including
a couple that won't begin to show until you see the winter constellations here,
plus a few more that won't become evident for a century yet. But there's one
thing I certainly can't give you, and that's immediate delivery."

"All right," Dee said. She smiled. "I trust
you, John, you know that. But it's hard to be patient."

"Is it?" Amalfi said, surprised. "Come to
think of it, I remember once during the tipping of He when the same thought
occurred to me. In retrospect the problem doesn't seem large."

"Boss, you'd better give us some substitute courses of
action," the city manager's voice cut in, a little coldly. "With the
possible exception of yourself, every man and woman and alley cat in the city
is ready to spread out all over the surface of this planet the moment the
starting gun is fired. You've given us every reason to think that that would be
the way it would happen. If there's going to be a delay, you have a good many
idle hands to put to work."

"Use straight work-contract procedure, all the way down
the line," Amalfi said. "No exploiting of the planet that we wouldn't
normally do during the usual stopover for a job. That means no truck-gardens or
any other form of local agriculture; just refilling the oil tanks, re-breeding
the Chlorella strains from local sources for heterosis, and so on."

"That won't work," Hazleton said. "It may
fool the Proctors, Amalfi, but how can you fool our own people? What are you
going to do with the perimeter police, for instance? Sergeant Paterson's whole
crew knows that it won't ever again have to make up a boarding squad or defend
the city or take up any other military duty. Nine tenths of them are itching to
throw off their harness for good and start dirt-farming. What am I to do with
them?"

"Send 'em out to your experimental potato patch on the
heath," Amalfi said. "On police detail. Tell 'em to pick up
everything that grows."

Hazleton started to turn toward the lift-shaft, holding out
his hand to Dee. Then he turned back.

"But why, boss?" he said plaintively. "What
makes you think that the Proctors suspect us of squatting? And what could they
do about it if they did?"

"The Proctors have asked for the standard
work-contract," Amalfi said. "They know what it is, and they insist
upon its observation, to the letter,
including
the provision that the
city must be off this planet by the date of termination. As you know, that's
impossible; we can't leave this planet, either inside or outside the contract
period. But we'll have to pretend that we're going to leave, up to the last
possible minute."

Hazleton looked stunned. Dee took his hand reassuringly, but
it didn't seem to register.

"As for what the Proctors themselves can do about
it," Amalfi said, picking up the earphone again, "I don't yet know.
I'm trying to find out. But this much I do know:

"The Proctors have
already
called the
cops."

Under the gray, hazy light in the schoolroom, voices and
visions came thronging even into the conscious and prepared mind of the
visitor, pouring from the memory cells of the City Fathers. Amalfi could feel
their pressure, just below the surface of his mind; it was vaguely unpleasant,
partly because he already knew what they sought to impart, so that the
redoubled impressions tended to shoulder forward into the immediate attention,
nearly with the vividness of immediate experience.

Superimposed upon the indefinite outlines of the schoolroom,
cities soared across Amalfi's vision, cities aloft, in flight, looking for
work, cracking their food from oil, burrowing for ores the colonial planets
could not reach without help, and leaving again to search for work; sometimes
welcomed grudgingly, sometimes driven out, usually underpaid, often potential
brigands, always watched jealously by the police of hegemon Earth; spreading, ready
to mow any lawn, toward the limits of the galaxy-He waved a hand annoyedly
before his eyes and looked for a monitor, found one standing at his elbow, and
wondered how long he had been there—or, conversely, how long Amalfi himself had
been lulled into the learning trance.

"Where's Karst?" he said brusquely. "The
first serf we brought in? I need him."

"Yes, sir. He's in a chair toward the front of the
room." The monitor—whose function combined the duties of classroom
supervisor and nurse—turned away briefly to a nearby wall server, which opened
and floated out to him a tall metal tumbler. The monitor took it and led the
way through the room, threading his way among the scattered couches. Usually
most of these were unoccupied, since it took less than five hundred hours to
bring the average child through tensor calculus and hence to the limits of what
he could be taught by passive inculcation alone. Now, however, every couch was
occupied, and few of them by children.

One of the counterpointing, subaudible voices was murmuring:
"Some of the cities which turned bindlestiff did not pursue the usual
policy of piracy and raiding, but settled instead upon faraway worlds and
established tyrannical rules. Most of these were overthrown by the Earth
police; the cities were not efficient fighting machines. Those which withstood
the first assault sometimes were allowed to remain in power for various reasons
of policy, but such planets were invariably barred from commerce. Some of these
involuntary empires may still remain on the fringes of Earth's jurisdiction.
Most notorious of these recrudescences of imperialism was the reduction of Thor
V, the work of one of the earliest of the Okies, a heavily militarized city
which had already earned itself the popular nickname of 'the Mad Dogs.' The
epithet, current among other Okies as well as planetary populations, of course
referred primarily—"

"Here's your man," the monitor said in a low
voice. Amalfi looked down at Karst. The serf already had undergone a
considerable change. He was no longer a distorted and worn caricature of a man,
chocolate-colored with sun, wind and ground-in dirt, so brutalized as to be
almost beyond pity. He was, instead, rather like a fetus as he lay curled on
the couch, innocent and still perfectible, as yet unmarked by any experience
which counted. His past—and there could hardly have been much of it, for
although he had said that his present wife, Eedit, had been his fifth, he was
obviously scarcely twenty years old—had been so completely monotonous and implacable
that, given the chance, he had sloughed it off as easily and totally as one
throws away a single garment. He was, Amalfi realized, much more essentially a
child than any Okie infant could ever be.

The monitor touched Karst's shoulder and the serf stirred
uneasily, then sat up, instantly awake, his intense blue eyes questioning
Amalfi. The monitor handed him the metal tumbler, now beaded with cold, and
Karst drank from it. The pungent liquid made him sneeze, quickly and without
seeming to notice that he had sneezed, like a cat.

"How's it coming through, Karst?" Amalfi said.

"It is very hard," the serf said. He took another
pull at the tumbler.

"But once grasped, it seems to bring everything into
flower at once. Lord Amalfi, the Proctors claim that IMT came from the sky on a
cloud. Yesterday I only believed that. Today I think I understand it."

"I think you do," Amalfi said. "And you're
not alone. We have serfs by scores in the city now, learning—just look around
you and you'll see. And they're learning more than just simple physics or
cultural morphology. They're learning freedom, beginning with the first
one—freedom to hate."

"I know that lesson," Karst said, with a profound
and glacial calm. "But you awakened me for something."

"I did," the mayor agreed grimly. "We've got
a visitor we think you'll be able to identify: a Proctor. And he's up to
something that smells funny to me and Hazleton both, but we can't pin down what
it is. Come give us a hand, will you?"

"You'd better give him some time to rest, Mr.
Mayor," the monitor said disapprovingly. "Being dumped out of
hypnopaedic trance is a considerable shock; he'll need at least an hour."

Amalfi stared at the monitor incredulously. He was about to
note that neither Karst nor the city had the hour to spare, when it occurred to
him that to say so would take ten words where one was plenty.
"Vanish," he said.

The monitor did his best.

Karst looked intently at the judas. The man on the screen
had his back turned; he was looking into the big operations tank in the city
manager's office. The indirect light gleamed on his shaven and oiled head.
Amalfi watched over Karst's left shoulder, his teeth sunk firmly in a new
hydroponic cigar.

"Why, the man's as bald as I am," the mayor said.
"And he can't be much past his adolescence, judging by his skull; he's
forty-five at the most. Recognize him, Karst?"

"Not yet," Karst said. "All the Proctors
shave their heads. If he would only turn around ... ah. Yes. That's Heldon. I
have seen him myself only once, but he is easy to recognize. He is young, as
the Proctors go. He is the stormy petrel of the Great Nine—some think him a
friend of the serfs. At least he is less quick with the whip than the
others."

"What would he be wanting here?"

"Perhaps he will tell us." Karst's eyes remained
fixed upon the Proctor's image.

"Your request puzzles me," Hazleton's voice said,
issuing smoothly from the speaker above the judas. The city manager could not
be seen, but his expression seemed to modulate the sound of his voice almost
specifically: the tiger mind masked behind a pussy-cat purr as behind a
pussy-cat smile. "We're glad to hear of new services we can render to a
client, of course. But we certainly never suspected that antigravity mechanisms
even existed in IMT."

"Don't think me stupid, Mr. Hazleton," Heldon
said. "You and I know that IMT was once a wanderer, as your city is now.
We also know that your city, like all Okie cities, would like a world of its
own. Will you allow me this much intelligence, please?"

"For discussion, yes," Hazleton's voice said.

"Then let me say that it's quite evident to me that
you're nurturing an uprising. You have been careful to stay within the letter
of the contract, simply because you dare not breach it, any more than we; the
Earth police protect us from each other to that extent. Your Mayor Amalfi was
told that it was illegal for the serfs to speak to your people, but
unfortunately it is illegal only for the serfs, not for your citizens. If we
cannot keep the serfs out of your city, you are under no obligation to do it
for us."

"A point you have saved me the trouble of making,"
Hazleton said.

"Quite so. I'll add also that when this revolution of
yours comes, I have no doubt but that you'll win it. I don't know what weapons
you can put into the hands of our serfs, but I assume that they are better than
anything we can muster. We haven't your technology. My fellows disagree with
me, but I am a realist."

"An interesting theory," Hazleton's voice said.
There was a brief pause. In the silence, a soft pattering sound became evident.
Hazleton's fingertips, Amalfi guessed, drumming on the desk top, as if with
amused impatience. Heldon's face remained impassive.

"The Proctors believe that they can hold what is
theirs," Heldon said at last. "If you overstay your contract, they
will go to war against you. They will be justified, but unfortunately Earth
justice is a long way away from here. You will win. My interest is to see that
we have a way of escape."

"Via spindizzy?"

"Precisely." Heldon permitted a stony smile to
stir the corners of his mouth. "I'll be honest with you, Mr. Hazleton. If
it comes to war, I will fight as hard as any other Proctor to hold this world
of ours. I

come to you only because you can repair the spindizzies of
IMT. You needn't expect me to enter into any extensive treason on that
account."

Hazleton, it appeared, was being obdurately stupid. "I
fail to see why I should lift a finger for you," he said.

"Observe, please. The Proctors will fight, because they
believe that they must. It will probably be a hopeless fight, but it will do
your city some damage all the same. As a matter of fact, it will cripple your
city beyond repair, unless your luck is phenomenal. Now then: none of the
Proctors except one other man and myself know that the spindizzies of IMT are
still able to function. That means that they won't try to escape with them,
they'll try to knock you out instead. But with the machines in repair, and one
knowledgeable hand at the controls—"

"I see," Hazleton said. "You propose to put
IMT into flight while you can still get off the planet with a reasonably whole
city. In return you offer us the planet, and the chance that our own damages
will be minimal. Hm-m-m. It's interesting, anyhow. Suppose we take a look at
your spindizzies, and see if they're in operable condition. It's been a good
many years, without doubt, and untended machinery has a way of gumming up. If
they can still be operated at all, we'll talk about a deal. All right?"