“But then he’s had one child,” Jason pointed out. “His wife had to surrender their birth coupon when their first and only child came … but they’ve got that child. The law lets them have it. And there’re a million statutes protecting their safety.”
“Two adults, one child,” the clerk said. “So the black population is halved every generation. Ingenious. You have to hand it to Tidman; he solved the race problem, all right.”
“Something had to be done,” Jason said; he sat rigidly in his seat, studying the street ahead, searching for a sign of a pol-nat checkpoint or barricade. He saw neither, but how long were they going to have to continue driving?
“We’re almost there,” the clerk said calmly. He turned his head momentarily to face Jason. “I don’t like your racist views,” he said. “Even if you are paying me five hundred dollars.”
“There’re enough blacks alive to suit me,” Jason said.
“And when the last one dies?”
Jason said, “You can read my mind; I don’t have to tell you.”
“Christ,” the clerk said, and returned his attention to the street traffic ahead.
They made a sharp right turn, down a narrow alley, at both sides of which closed, locked wooden doors could be seen. No signs here. Just shut-up silence: And piles of ancient debris.
“What’s behind the doors?” Jason asked.
“People like you. People who can’t come out into the open. But they’re different from you in one way: they don’t have five hundred dollars … and a lot more besides, if I read you correctly.”
“It’s going to cost me plenty,” Jason said acidly, “to get my ID cards. Probably all I’ve got.”
“She won’t overcharge you,” the clerk said as he brought his quibble to a halt half on the sidewalk of the alley. Jason peered out, saw an abandoned restaurant, boarded up, with broken windows. Entirely dark inside. It repelled him, but apparently this was the place. He’d have to go along with it, his need being what it was: he could not be choosy.
And—they had avoided every checkpoint and barricade along the way; the clerk had picked a good route. So he had damn little to complain about, all things considered.
Together, he and the clerk approached the open-hanging broken front door of the restaurant. Neither spoke; they concentrated on avoiding the rusted nails protruding from the sheets of plywood hammered into place, presumably to protect the windows.
“Hang on to my hand,” the clerk said, extending it in the shadowy dimness that surrounded them. “I know the way and it’s dark. The electricity was turned off on this block three years ago. To try to get the people to vacate the buildings here so that they could be burned down.” He added, “But most of them stayed on.”
The moist, cold hand of the hotel clerk led him past what appeared to be chairs and tables, heaped up into irregular tumbles of legs and surfaces, interwoven with cobwebs and grainy patterns of dirt. They bumped at last against a black, unmoving wall; there the clerk stopped, retrieved his hand, fiddled with something in the gloom.
“I can’t open it,” he said as he fiddled. “It can only be opened from the other side, her side. What I’m doing is signaling that we’re here.”
A section of the wall groaningly slid aside. Jason, peering, saw into nothing more than additional darkness. And abandonment.
“Step on through,” the clerk said, and maneuvered him forward. The wall, after a pause, slid shut again behind them.
Lights winked on. Momentarily blinded, Jason shielded his eyes and then took a good look at her workshop.
It was small. But he saw a number of what appeared to be complex and highly specialized machines. On the far side a workbench. Tools by the hundreds, all neatly mounted in place on the walls of the room. Below the workbench large cartons, probably containing a variety of papers. And a small generator-driven printing press.
And the girl. She sat on a high stool, hand-arranging a line of type. He made out pale hair, very long but thin, dribbling down the back of her neck onto her cotton work shirt. She wore jeans, and her feet, quite small, were bare. She appeared to him to be, at a guess, fifteen or sixteen. No breasts to speak of, but good long legs; he liked that. She wore no makeup whatsoever, giving her features a white, slightly pastel tint.
“Hi,” she said.
The clerk said, “I’m going. I’ll try not to spend the five hundred dollars in one place.” Touching a button, he caused the section of wall to slide aside; as it did so the lights in the workroom clicked out, leaving them once again in absolute darkness.
From her stool the girl said, “I’m Kathy.”
“I’m Jason,” he said. The wall had slid shut, now, and the lights had come on again. She’s really very pretty, he thought. Except that she had a passive, almost listless quality about her. As if nothing to her, he thought, is worth a damn. Apathy? No, he decided. She was shy; that was the explanation.
“You gave him five hundred dollars to bring you here?” Kathy said wonderingly; she surveyed him critically, as if seeking to make some kind of value judgment about him, based on his appearance.
“My suit isn’t usually this rumpled,” Jason said.
“It’s a nice suit. Silk?”
“Yes.” He nodded.
“Are you a student?” Kathy asked, still scrutinizing him. “No, you’re not; you don’t have that pulpy pasty color they have, from living subsurface. Well, that leaves only one other possibility.”
“That I’m a criminal,” Jason said. “Trying to change my identity before pols and nats get me.”
“Are you?” she said, with no sign of uneasiness. It was a simple, flat question.
“No.” He did not amplify, not at that moment. Perhaps later.
Kathy said, “Do you think a lot of those nats are robots and not real people? They always have those gas masks on so you can’t really tell.”
“I’m content just to dislike them,” Jason said. “Without looking into it any further.”
“What ID do you need? Driver’s license? Police-file ident card? Proof of employment at a legal job?”
He said, “Everything. Including membership tab in the Musicians Union Local Twelve.”
“Oh, you’re a musician.” She regarded him with more interest, now.
“I’m a vocalist,” he said. “I host an hour-long TV variety show Tuesday night at nine. Maybe you’ve seen it. The Jason Taverner Show.”
“I don’t own a TV set any more,” the girl said. “So I guess I wouldn’t recognize you. Is it fun to do?”
“Sometimes. You meet a lot of show-biz people and that’s fine if that’s what you like. I’ve found them mostly to be people like anybody else. They have their fears. They’re not perfect. Some of them are very funny, both on and off camera.”
“My husband always used to tell me I have no sense of humor,” the girl said. “He thought everything was funny. He even thought it was funny when he was drafted into the flats.”
“Did he still laugh by the time he got out?” Jason asked.
“He never did. He was killed in a surprise attack by students. But it wasn’t their fault; he was shot by a fellow nat.”
Jason said, “How much is it going to cost me to get my full set of ID? You better tell me now before you start on them.”
“I charge people what they can afford,” Kathy said, once more setting up her line of type. “I’m going to charge you a lot because I can tell you’re rich, by the way you gave Eddy five hundred dollars to get you here, and by your suit. Okay?” Briefly she glanced in his direction. “Or am I wrong? Tell me.”
“I have five thousand dollars on me,” Jason said. “Or, rather, less five hundred. I’m a world-famous entertainer; I work a month every year at the Sands in addition to my show. In fact, I appear at a number of first-class clubs, when I can squeeze them into my tight schedule.”
“Gee,” Kathy said. “I wish I had heard of you; then I could be impressed.”