Noise was a continual annoyance, unstoppable and inescapable. But Carmody knew that there was no cure for this, since the ancient art of soundproofing had been lost. It was urban man’s lot to listen, a captive audience, to the arguments, music and watery gurglings of his adjacent neighbors. Even this torture could be alleviated, however, by producing similar sounds of one’s own.
Going to work each day entailed certain dangers; but these were more apparent than real. Disadvantaged snipers continued to make their ineffectual protests from rooftops and occasionally succeeded in potting an unwary out-of-towner. But as a rule, their aim was abominable. Additionally, the general acceptance of lightweight personal armor had taken away most of their sting, and the sternly administered state law forbidding the personal possession of surplus cannon had rendered them ineffectual.
Thus, no single factor can be adduced for Carmody’s sudden decision to leave what was generally considered the world’s most exciting megapolitan agglomeration. Blame it on a vagrant impulse, a pastoral fantasy, or on sheer perversity. The simple, irreducible fact is, one day Carmody opened his copy of the Daily Times-News and saw an advertisement for a model city in New Jersey.
“Come live in Bellwether, the city that cares,” the advertisement proclaimed. There followed a list of utopian claims which need not be reproduced here.
“Huh,” said Carmody, and read on.
Bellwether was within easy commuting distance. One simply drove through the Ulysses S. Grant Tunnel at 43rd Street, took the Hoboken Shunt Subroad to the Palisades Interstate Crossover, followed that for 3.2 miles on the Blue-Charlie Sorter Loop that led onto U.S. 5 (The Hague Memorial Tollway), proceeded along that a distance of 6.1 miles to the Garden State Supplementary Access Service Road (Provisional), upon which one tended west to Exit 1731A, which was King’s Highbridge Gate Road, and then continued along that for a distance of 1.6 miles. And there you were.
“By jingo,” said Carmody, “I’ll do it.”
And he did.
King’s Highbridge Gate Road ended on a neatly trimmed plain. Carmody got out of his car and looked around. Half a mile ahead of him he saw a small city. A single modest signpost identified it as Bellwether.
This city was not constructed in the traditional manner of American cities, with outliers of gas stations, tentacles of hot-dog stands, fringes of motels and a protective carapace of junkyards; but rather, as some Italian hill towns are fashioned, it rose abruptly, without physical preamble, the main body of the town presenting itself at once and without amelioration.
Carmody found this appealing. He advanced into the city itself.
Bellwether had a warm and open look. Its streets were laid out generously, and there was a frankness about the wide bay windows of its store-fronts. As he penetrated deeper, Carmody found other delights. Just within the city he entered a piazza, like a Roman piazza, only smaller; and in the center of the piazza there was a fountain, and standing in the fountain was a marble representation of a boy with a dolphin, and from the dolphin’s mouth a stream of clear water issued.
“I do hope you like it,” a voice said from behind Carmody’s left shoulder.
“It’s nice,” Carmody said.
“I constructed it and put it there myself,” the voice told him. “It seemed to me that a fountain, despite the antiquity of its concept, is aesthetically functional. And this piazza, with its benches and shady chestnut trees, is copied from a Bolognese model. Again, I did not inhibit myself with the fear of seeming old-fashioned. The true artist uses what is necessary, be it a thousand years old or one second new.”
“I applaud your sentiment,” Carmody said. “Permit me to introduce myself. I am Edward Carmody.” He turned, smiling.
But there was no one behind his left shoulder, or behind his right shoulder, either. There was no one in the piazza, nobody at all in sight.
“Forgive me,” the voice said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?” Carmody asked.
“Knew about me.”
“Well, I don’t,” Carmody said. “Who are you and where are you speaking from?”
“I am the voice of the city,” the voice said. “Or to put it another way, I am the city itself, Bellwether, the actual and veritable city, speaking to you.”
“Is that a fact?” Carmody said sardonically. “Yes,” he answered himself, “I suppose it is a fact. So all right, you’re a city. Big deal!”
He turned away from the fountain and strolled across the piazza like a man who conversed with cities every day of his life, and who was slightly bored with the whole thing. He walked down various streets and up certain avenues. He glanced into store windows and noted houses. He paused in front of statuary, but only briefly.
“Well?” the city of Bellwether asked after a while.
“Well what?” Carmody answered at once.
“What do you think of me?”
“You’re okay,” Carmody said.
“Only okay? Is that all?”
“Look,” Carmody said, “a city is a city. When you’ve seen one, you’ve pretty much seen them all.”
“That’s untrue!” the city said, with some show of pique. “I am distinctly different from other cities. I am unique.”
“Are you indeed?” Carmody said scornfully. “To me you look like a conglomeration of badly assembled parts. You’ve got an Italian piazza, a couple of Greek-type buildings, a row of Tudor houses, an old-style New York tenement, a California hot-dog stand shaped like a tugboat and God knows what else. What’s so unique about that?”
“The combination of those forms into a meaningful entity is unique,” the city said. “These older forms are not anachronisms, you understand. They are representative styles of living, and as such are appropriate in a well-wrought machine for living. Would you care for some coffee and perhaps a sandwich or some fresh fruit?”
“Coffee sounds good,” Carmody said. He allowed Bellwether to guide him around the corner to an open-air cafe. The cafe was called “O You Kid” and was a replica of a Gay Nineties’ saloon, right down to the Tiffany lamps and the cut-glass chandelier and the player piano. Like everything else that Carmody had seen in the city, it was spotlessly clean, but without people.
“Nice atmosphere, don’t you think?” Bellwether asked.
“Campy,” Carmody pronounced. “Okay if you like that sort of thing.”
A foaming mug of cappuccino was lowered to his table on a stainless steel tray. Carmody sipped.
“Good?” Bellwether asked.
“Yes, very good.”
“I rather pride myself on my coffee,” the city said quietly. “And on my cooking. Wouldn’t you care for a little something? An omelette, perhaps, or a soufflé?”
“Nothing,” Carmody said firmly. He leaned back in his chair and said, “So you’re a model city, huh?”
“Yes, that is what I have the honor to be,” Bellwether said. “I am the most recent of all model cities; and, I believe, the most satisfactory. I was conceived by a joint study group from Yale and the University of Chicago, who were working on a Rockefeller fellowship. Most of my practical details were devised by M.I.T., although some special sections of me came from Princeton and from the RAND Corporation. My actual construction was a General Electric project, and the money was procured by grants from the Ford and Carnegie Foundations, as well as several other institutions I am not at liberty to mention.”