“Fourth and last question,” he said. “If a City knew about your radiation defenses all along, what would be their reason for attacking you this way?”
“Our first idea was that it was just plain desperation―they had to do something and there wasn’t anything they could do that would work, so they just did something that wouldn’t. Or maybe they hoped they’d be able to hold the mines long enough to get some metal out, even though they knew it was foolish to hope.”
“That was your first idea. What was your second?”
She hesitated. “You remember what I told you, that the Cities cannibalized each other for a while, the big ones draining population away from the little ones and reclaiming their metals―and you remember I said that had gone as far as it could?”
“Yes.”
“Well, when the big fish have eaten up all the little fish, they can eat each other till there’s just one big fish left.”
“And?” asked Alvah tensely.
“And maybe one City might think that, if they got us to make war on another, they could step in when the fighting was over and get all the metals they’d need to keep them going for years. So they might send raiding parties out in the other City’s uniforms, and condition them to think they really were from that City. Was that what happened, Alvah?”
ALVAH nodded reluctantly. “I don’t understand it. They must have started planning this as soon as I stopped communicating. It doesn’t make sense. They couldn’t be that desperate ―or maybe they could. Anyway, it’s a dirty stunt. It isn’t like New York.”
She said nothing―too polite to contradict him, Alvah supposed.
Down at the end of the hall, Angus was beginning to look impatient. Alvah said, “So now you’ll pull New York down?”
“Alvah, it may sound funny, but I think you know this, really ―you’re doing your people a favor.”
“If that’s so,” he said wryly, “then New York was ‘really’ trying to do one for Chicago.”
“I was hoping you’d see that it doesn’t matter. It might have been Chicago that went first, or Denver, or any of the others, but that isn’t important―they all have to go. What’s important is the people. This may be another thing that’s hard for you to accept, but they’re going to be happier, most of them.
And maybe she was right, Alvah thought, if you counted in everybody, labor pool, porters and all. Why shouldn’t you count them, he asked himself defiantly ―they were people, weren’t they? Maybe the index of civilization was not only how much you had, but how hard you had to work for it―incessantly, like the New Yorkers, holding down two or three jobs at once, because the City’s demands were endless―or, like the Muckfeet, judiciously and with honest pleasure.
“Alvah?” said the girl. She put her question no more explicitly than that, but he knew what she meant.
“Yes, Beej,” replied Alvah Gustad, Muckfoot.
VIII
ON the Jersey flats, hidden by a forest of traveler trees, a sprawling settlement took form ― mile after mile of forcedgrowth dwellings, stables, administration buildings, instruction centers. It was one of five. There was another farther north in Jersey, two in the Poconos and one in the vestigial state of Connecticut.
They lay empty, waiting, their roofs sprouting foliage that perfectly counterfeited the surrounding forests. Roads had been cleared, converging toward the City, ending just short of the half-mile strip of wasteland that girdled New York, and it was there that Alvah stood.
He found it strange to feel himself ready to walk unprotected across that stretch of country, knowing it to be acrawl with tiny organisms that had been developed not to tolerate Man’s artificial buildings, whether of stone, metal, cement or plastics, but crumbled them all to the ground. Stranger still to be able to visualize the crawling organisms without horror or disgust.
But the strangest of all was to be looking at the City from this viewpoint. The towers stared back at him across the surrounding wall, tall and shining and proud, the proudest human creation―a century ago. Pitifully outdated today, the gleaming Cities fought back, unaware that they had lost long ago, that their bright spires and elaborate gadgets were as antiquated as polished armor would have been against a dun-painted motorized army.
“I wish I could go with you,” said Beej from the breathing forest at his back.
“You can’t,” Alvah said without turning. “They wouldn’t let you through the gate alive. They know me, but even so. I’m not sure they’ll let me in after all this time. Have to wait and see.”
“You know you don’t have to go. I mean―”
“I know what you mean, said Alvah unhappily, and you’re right. But all the same, I do have to go. Look, Beej, you’ve got that map I drew. It’s a ten-to-one chance that, if I don’t make the grade, they’ll put me in the quarantine cells right inside the wall. So you’re not to worry. Okay?”
“Okay,” she promised, worried. He kissed her and watched her fade back into the forest where the others were―Bither and Artie Brumbacher and a few others from home, the rest Jerseys and other clansmen from the Sea board Federation―cheerful, matter-of-fact people who were going to bear most of the burdens of what was coming, and never tired of reminding the inlanders of the fact.
He turned and walked out across the wasteland, crunching the dry weeds under his feet.
THERE was a darning moat around the City and, beyond the moat, high in the wall, a closed gateway―corroded tight, probably: it was a very long time since the City had had any traffic except by air. But there was a spy tower above the gate. Alvah walked up directly opposite its bulbous idiot eyes, waved, and then waited.
After a long time, an inconspicuous port in the tower squealed open and a fist-sized dark ovoid darted out across the flames. It came to rest in midair, two yards from Alvah, clicked and said crisply, “State your name and business.”
“Alvah Gustad. I just got back from a confidential mission for the City Manager. Floater broke down, communicator, everything. I had to walk back. Tell him I’m here.”
The ovoid hovered exactly where it was, as if pinned against the air. Alvah waited. When he got tired of standing, he dropped his improvised knapsack on the ground and sat on it. Finally the ovoid said harshly, in another voice, “Who are you and what do you want?”
Alvah patiently gave the same answer.
“What do you mean, broke down?”
“Broke down,” said Alvah. “Wouldn’t run any more.”
Silence. He settled himself for another long wait, but it was only five minutes or thereabouts before the ovoid said, “Strip.”
When he had done so, the gate opposite broke open with a scream of tortured metal and ground itself back into a recess in the wall. The drawbridge, a long rust-pitted tongue of metal, thrust out and down to span the moat, a wall of flame on either side of it.
Alvah walked across nimbly, the metal already hot against his naked soles, and the drawbridge whipped back into its socket. The gate screamed shut.
THE room was the same, the anthems were the same. Alvah, disinfected, shaved all over and clad in an airtight glassine overall with its own air supply, stopped short two paces inside the door. The man behind the Manager’s desk was not Wytak. It was jowly, red-faced Ellery McArdle, Commissioner of the Department of War.
One of the guards prodded Alvah and he kept going up to the desk. “Now I think I get it,” he said, staring at McArdle. “When―”
McArdle’s cold gaze flickered. Then his heavy head dropped forward a trifle, and he said, “Finish what you were saying, Gustad.”
“I was about to remark,” Alvah said, “that when Wytak’s pet project flopped, he lost enough support to let you impeach him. Is that right?”