“If you have business there, you’re told how to find it, I suppose,” said Derec glumly. “We should have asked R. David how to get there.”
The expressway was not straight, and as Derec looked down now, he saw that the local had spun off; another came in, made a turn, and paralleled the expressway in its place. A storefront gave way to a palatial entry that faced the oncoming expressway obliquely; above the entry was a glowing marquee on which the back view of a woman wearing tight pants appeared. She vanished, replaced by the slogan IF I WIGGLE. She reappeared, peering archly over her shoulder at the viewer: WILL YOU FOLLOW?
Derec supposed that there were as many people in view as there had been in the kitchen, and the ways were not half full, maybe not a quarter full. “Rush hour must be when the ways are full,” he said.
“Yes. If they all go to work at the same time-” Ariel said, and he snapped his fingers.
“Rush, indeed.” They looked about and tried to picture the swarming mobs going up and down the strips multiplied by three or four.
“You know,” said Ariel, “Daneel Olivaw might have sat on this very platform, or at least ridden this very way.”
Derec nodded. He had no memory of ever having met the famous humaniform robot, Daneel Olivaw. Daneel was designed to look exactly like a man-like Roj Nemmenuh Sarton, in fact, who had built his body. He had helped the Earthman, Plainclothesman Elijah Baley, solve the murder of Dr. Sarton, and later had gone to Solaria, where he had helped Baley solve another murder.
Han Fastolfe had built two humaniforms, the first with Sarton’s help. The intricate programming that enabled a humaniform to play the part of a human being, hampered as it was by the Three Laws, was a triumph of robotics that had never been recreated. Fastolfe had refused to make more than two such robots, and one had been deactivated. Daneel Olivaw, he supposed, was still extant, somewhere on Aurora.
“Look at that hat. “
Derec looked, then gaped. They had seen odd hats all along, but this woman’s head was a flower garden, except that many of the “flowers” were bows. As in all Earthly hats, though, there was a prominent band for the insertion of the rating ticket that entitled them to such things as a seat during rush hour.
“You know, maybe some of these people know the way to the port,” Ariel said.
That was a thought Derec had hoped she wouldn’t have, but he nodded tightly. Frankly, he didn’t want to speak to anyone. Perhaps because they were Earthers and he was a Spacer-with all his prejudices intact. It was a sore point with him that only Earth was exploring and settling new planets. It was not that he objected to Earth’s doing that, he objected that the Spacer worlds weren’t. Not these people’s fault, but-
Standing up, he leaned out and got the attention of a young man-a little older than himself, he thought-who was making his way toward an unoccupied platform.
“Pardon me, sir, could you direct us to the spaceport?”
The other’s rather blank expression broke into one of handsome good cheer. “Hey, gato, you do the Spacer accent ex good!” he exclaimed. “Too bad you don’t have the fabric to match, but that speech’ll get you on any subetheric for the asking!”
Derec concealed his confusion, lifted an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“Oh, ex, ex, that haughty look’s the highest!” The other glanced around, lost his cheer, and said quietly, “But, look, this’s fun and all, but I wouldn’t try that speech in Yeast Town, savvy?” And with that, he was gone.
They looked at each other and shook their heads, dumbfounded.
“Do you think you could ape that-that speech of his?” Derec asked. Ariel shook her head again.
They were in a much more exalted district than Webster Groves; this Old Town Sector looked spanking new, with neat, clean, shiny buildings and prosperous-looking shops. Places of entertainment seemed more common and more lavish, as if the people who lived here had more leisure and more ration points, or money, or whichever it took, for entertainment.
“What did he mean, ‘subetherics’?”
Derec thought a moment. “Hyperwave broadcasts, I think. I’m not up on that technology, but I think at one time hyperwave transmission was called that. Probably cheaper than piping cables through all these man-made caves.”
Derec’s voice thinned as he glanced up to where the sun should be but wasn’t. Steadying his voice, he added, “I think he meant we could be entertainment stars pretending to be Spacers for Earther novels. “
They grinned at each other.
“What does the ‘ST’ mean?” Neither knew.
“Derec, we’re getting a long way from…home-kitchen. Maybe we should turn around and go back.”
Derec wasn’t happy about that either, but was reluctant to give up.
“Maybe one more try,” he said.
He looked around for someone to ask, and was struck by the buildings in this new sector. They seemed industrial; blank fronts, a minimum of signs, a lot of which didn’t even glow. All the color and gaiety seemed to have gone out of the City. Half the people on the ways had left in Old Town Sector, and no wonder.
Those who remained were far less prepossessing. They were poorly dressed and few wore hats, which meant, as Derec had gathered, that they had no passes for platform rides. Low ratings, like he and Ariel.
“What’s that funny smell?” Ariel asked.
Derec sniffed, became aware of an odor. Not bread. “Something living. Maybe the ventilators don’t work so good here.”
“You mean we’re smelling people?”
Derec felt a little sick himself at the thought.
“Pardon me, sir, could you direct me to the spaceport?” he asked a sullen man.
“Buzz off, gato.”
Seething, Derec waited for another prospect. A woman seized a seat on a platform with such an angry, triumphant expression that he crossed her off. Then a group of young men and women approached, four men and two women, the latter in gaudy, tight pants, the former all in brown corduroy. Derec repeated his question.
The first man looked at him sharply. “Whattaya tryina pull, gato? Spaceport! Spacer speech! Whod’ya thinkya are, huh?”
Clamping his jaw on his anger, Derec said, “I merely asked-”
“Oh, you merely ahsked, didja, haughty har? Whod’ya thinkya are, I asked you, gato.”
“I just wanted-”
“Clamp down, haughty har, don’t go gittin’ high horse with me. Keep a civil tongue, and also a polite face, hear?”
Seething, Derec fought for control. and another Earther spoke. He had a warm, dark-brown complexion and the eyes of a hawk: racial types had remained more distinct on Earth than on the Spacer worlds.
“Hey, Jake, I think he’s rilly a Spacer. Both of ‘em. Lookit those ex fabrics.”
He and Ariel were wearing plain shipsuits of synthetic fabric, a quiet, glossy substance in different shades of gray, hers lighter than his. Nobody had remarked on their clothes before, but nobody had looked closely at them.
Jake stared in amazed disbelief. “Naw!”
“Yeah, Jake,” one of the women shrilled, looking closely at Ariel. “And look at ‘em, both of ‘em-tall and handsome, like. Spacers!”
“Spacers!” said Jake in almost reverent tones. His eyes sharpened. “I always wanted t’meet a Spacer. Just to tell’em what I think of ‘em!”
“Yeah!”
“You think you’re so smart, doin’ your little social science investigation of ‘Earther’ society, huh, Spacer?” This time it sounded like a spit.
Derec’s anger cooled in apprehension; Ariel had unobtrusively taken his arm. “Thanks for your help, but we’ve got to be going.”
Again his accent aroused their ire.
They all began to jabber hostilely as he and Ariel stepped to one side, were struck by the wind, and fell behind on their slower strip.
“Stop! We ain’t done talkin’ atya!” cried Jake, and the Earthers swarmed off the platform level and started down.