It was hell on thieves and fences while it lasted.
Luckily, society moved on to another fashion in about twenty years. But once you start customizing buildings, things that are designed to last several hundred years, it hardly makes sense to stop. What are you going to do? Park your new boxy glass monstrosity next to a structure that looks like a butterfly on the back of a turtle? There goes the neighborhood.
On Oberon, if you don't like the neighborhood, so the saying goes, just wait half an hour.
New buildings went up amazingly fast. They were all designed and built, on the Noon Arc, anyway, at a place called—I'm not making this up—Squiggle City. Supposedly an architect brought his four-year-old daughter in to work one day. Playing with her crayons, the kid produced the kind of picture a child that age will. Squiggles. The drawing got into the production line by accident and alakazam! Three days later it rolls off the line, ready to be lived in by some seriously deranged people. One of those urban legends that probably isn't true but ought to be.
It struck me as confusing enough already. But when the wheel was complete, people like Poly could probably just wait awhile, and their commuting problems would be solved. Unless those snobby Mad Dogs threw up some sort of zoning barriers against those folks from the other side of the tracks. Did you see the building that moved in next door last night, Marge? Well! Don't they know that their sort aren't welcome here? Somebody should do something, really! I mean, I'm as tolerant as the next person, but would you want one to subdivide with your sister?
So the view from my window was a marvelous one, but not one I could really describe. Many, many big structures, a few that actually resembled things you've seen in other cities, or in history books. I'd send you a postcard, but by the time it got to you everything would have changed.
Not quick as a wink, you realize. This was no Cross-Crisium Dash here. No need to fasten one's seat belt. If they did race these things (and one day someone will, you can count on it) you wouldn't need a high-speed camera at the finish line. Any garden-variety snail would give the Othello Hotel a run for its money. No, what happened was, you'd look out the window and nothing would happen. Your mind would tend to wander, and then you realize that you can't find that green-and-yellow mushroom-shaped apartment house that was there just a minute ago. Did it slide behind the Criminal Courts Building?
Quite a view. And I was paying well for it, too.
The Othello was a reincarnation of an Old Oberon hotel I had stayed at in my salad days. It was taller, and more modern, and most of the character of the original had been retained. The theme was Hollywood Moorish: guys in bloomers and turbans, girls in translucent harem pants and veils. They'd brought most of Rick's Casablanca over intact, including the famous long wood bar where many celebrities had carved their names.
I had a suite on the fortieth floor that was costing me a fortune. Normally I wouldn't stay at a place this posh, but I had figured out that if I was to come up with the money for passage to Luna in time for rehearsals, I was going to have to run some sort of scam. For that you need a front, and you can't put on a front if you're staying in a rattrap. But for it to be cost-effective the scheme would have to be run during the next seven days, or the suite would no longer be cost-effective. In short, I'd be tapped out.
Ah, but what a magnificent echo of the good old days it was! I waded through the deep carpet to the bedroom door. Poly was stretched out facedown, nude, snoring softly. Her bare feet hung just over the edge of the bed. Her legs were slightly apart, pointing at me. There was something to be said for the idea of pitching a tent in this very spot, spending the next three or four days just looking at her. Put up one of those tourist guideposts: A KODAK VIEWPOINT! TAKE SNAPVID PICS HERE!
We'd spent a pleasant hour in the Olympic-size spa pool, doing laps, playing hide the soap. Then we'd retired to this huge bed for some serious fornication. She'd been fascinated by my reversible willie. Young, so young. But very eager to learn. For that matter, she did a little teaching herself. When she finally got done with the violin lesson I felt better than I had for the best part of a year. And I'd learned a little about her very special brand of bluegrass fiddling.
Now she was asleep, and the temptation to pounce on her again was almost unbearable. But it seemed best to let her sleep a bit longer. I pulled the bedroom door shut gently, and went back to my telephoning. Or I tried to. When I picked it up and put it to my ear, ready to say the number, it started speaking to me.
"Stop your evil ways before it is too late," someone said.
And I did a B-picture take: holding the phone out in front of me, peering down at it with a frown. That's how cliches become cliches, folks.
"Who is this?"
"Would you believe... the voice of your conscience?"
My next logical step would be to hurl the offending appliance across the room. But that voice sounded familiar. So I rummaged around in my old scripts and came up with another stale line.
"What are you doing on my telephone? Go away, right now."
"I'll never go away," said the voice. "You used to know the way of righteousness, but you strayed. Now all the bad things you've done are coming back to haunt you. Ha-ha-ha-HAH-ha! Ha-ha-ha-HAH-ha!"
I felt all the malenky little hairs on my body stand on end. It was my voice. That is, the voice of Sparky, which I hadn't used in seventy years.
"Elwood, this is you, isn't it?" Hell, I know I'm crazy, but I'm functional. When I hear voices, there's always a body to go with them. Elwood had never phoned me before, and I didn't like what it might mean if he was starting now.
But Elwood had never shown any talent at altering his voice, either.
"Who is Elwood?" The voice no longer sounded like me. It hadn't at first, either. It was only the line about things coming back to haunt me that had sounded like Sparky.
"Who are you?"
"I am the voice of reason, the clarion call of compassionate consideration, the stern summons of responsibility, the cleansing catharsis of admission. I am the short arm of the law. I am the Oberon II Planetary Computer, and I am here to submit to you a onetime offer of limited clemency if you will heed the call of righteousness and turn yourself in for your felonies and various misdemeanors."
I put the handset down carefully on the table. Maybe I could creep out quietly.
"I'll speak to you this way, if you prefer," the voice said, coming from the ceiling now. I hastily picked up the phone again. I didn't want the OPC to wake up Poly.
"How much trouble am I in?" I asked.
"If you are a Christian, I'd say your immortal soul is in great jeopardy."
"I'm not a Christian."
"I didn't think so. Then you could be piling up a great deal of bad karma. Your next incarnation may be not entirely to your liking."
"I don't believe that, either."