The parking lot attendant walked up and touched his cap by way of greeting.
"Good morning, Mr. Frost. Looks like heavy traffic."
And indeed it did. The traffic lanes were filled, bumper to bumper, with tiny cars almost identical with the one that Frost had parked. Their plastic bubble domes glinted in the morning sun and from where he stood he could catch the faint electric whining of the many motors.
"The traffic's always heavy," he declared. "And that reminds me. You better take a look at my right-hand buffer. Another car came too close for comfort."
"Might have been the other fellow's buffer," the attendant said, "but it won't hurt to check on it. And what about the padding, Mr. Frost? It can freeze up, you know."
"I think it's all right," said Frost.
"I'll check it anyhow. Won't take any time. No sense in taking chances."
"I suppose you're right," said Frost. "And thank you, Tom."
"We have to work together," the attendant told him. "Watch out for one another. That slogan means a lot to me. I suppose someone in your department wrote it."
"That is right," said Frost. "Some time ago. It is one of our better efforts. A participation motto."
He reached inside the car and took the briefcase off the seat, tucked it underneath his arm. The package of lunch that he carried in it made an untidy bulge.
He stepped onto the elevated safety walk and headed along it toward one of the several plazas built all around the towering structure of Forever Center. And now, as he always did, and for no particular reason that he could figure out, he threw back his head and stared up at the mile-high wall of the mighty building. There were times, on stormy mornings, when the view was cut off by the clouds that swirled about its top, but on a clear morning such as this the great slab of masonry went up and up until its topmost stories were lost in the blue haze of the sky. A man grew dizzy
looking at it and the mind reeled at the thought of what the hand of man had raised.
He stumbled and only caught himself in the nick of time. He'd have to stop this crazy staring upward at the building, he told himself, or, at least, wait to do it until he reached the plaza. The safety walk was only two feet high, but a man could take a nasty tumble if he didn't watch himself. It was not impossible that he might break his neck. He wondered, for the hundredth time, why someone didn't think to protect the walks with railings.
He reached the plaza and let himself down off the safety walk into the jam-packed crowd that struggled toward the building. He hugged the briefcase tight against him and tried, with one hand, to protect the bulge that was his sack of lunch. Although, he knew, there was little chance of protecting it. Almost every day it was crushed by the pack of bodies that filled the plaza and the lobby of the building.
Perhaps, he thought, he should go without the usual milk today. He could get a cup of water when he ate his lunch and it would do as well. He licked his lips, which suddenly were dry. Maybe, he told himself, there was some other way he might save the extra money. For he did like that daily glass of milk and looked forward to it with a great deal of pleasure.
There was no question about it, however. He'd have to find a way to make up for the cost of energizing the buffer on the car. It was an expense he had not counted on and it upset his budget. And if Tom should find that some of the padding would have to be replaced, that would mean more money down the drain.
He groaned a bit, internally, as he thought about it. Although, he realized, a man could not take any sort of chances—not with all the drivers on the road.
No chances—no chances of any kind that would threaten human life. No more daredeviltry, no more mountain climbing, no more air travel, except for the almost foolproof helicopter used in rescue work, no more
auto racing, no more of the savage contact sports. Transportation made as safe as it could be made, elevators equipped with fantastic safety features, stairways safeguarded with non-skid treads and the steps themselves of resilient material… everything that could be done being done to rule out accident and protect human life. Even the very air, he thought, protected from pollution—fumes from factories filtered and recycled to extract all irritants, cars no longer burning fossil fuels but operating on almost everlasting batteries that drove electric motors.
A man had to live, this first life, as long as he was able. It was the only opportunity that he had to lay away a competence for his second life. And when every effort of the society in which he lived was bent toward the end of the prolongation of his life, it would never do to let a piece of carelessness or an exaggerated sense of economy (such as flinching at the cost of a piece of padding or the re-energizing of a buffer) rob him of the years he needed to tuck away the capital he would need in the life to come.
He remembered, as he inched along, that this was conference morning and that he'd have to waste an hour or more listening to B.J. sound off about a lot of things that everyone must know. And when B.J. was through, the heads of the various departments and project groups would bring up problems which they could solve without any help, but bringing them up as an excuse to demonstrate how busy and devoted and how smart they were. It was a waste of time, Frost told himself, but there was no way to get out of it. Every week for several years, ever since he had become head of the public relations department, he had trooped in with the rest of them and sat down at the conference table, fidgeting when he thought of the work piled on his desk.
Marcus Appleton, he thought, was the only one of them who had any guts. Marcus refused to attend the conferences and he got away with it. Although, perhaps, he was the only one who could. Security was a
somewhat different proposition than the other departments. If security was to be effective, it had to have a somewhat freer hand than was granted any of the other people of Forever Center.
There had been times, he recalled, when he had been tempted to lay some of his problems on the table for consideration at the meetings. But he never had and now was glad he hadn't. For any of the contributions and suggestions made would have been entirely worthless. Although that would not have prevented people from other departments claiming credit, later, for any effective work that he had been able to turn out.
The thing to do, he told himself, as he had many times before, was to do his work, keep his mouth shut and lay away every penny that he could lay his hands upon.
Thinking about his work, he wondered who had thought up the slogan chalked on the red brick wall. It was the first time he had seen it and it was the most effective one so far and he could use the man who had dreamed it up. But it would be a waste of time, he knew, to try to find the man and offer him the job. The slogan undoubtedly was Holies work and all the Holies were a stiff-necked bunch.
Although what they hoped to gain by their opposition to Forever Center was more than he could figure. For Forever Center was not aimed against religion, nor against one's faith. It was no more than a purely scientific approach to a biological program of far-reaching consequence.
He struggled up the stairs to the entrance, sliding and inching his way along, and came into the lobby. Bearing to the right, he slid along, foot by foot, to reach the hobby stand that was flanked on one side by the tobacco counter and on the other by the drug concession.
The space in front of the drug counter was packed. People stopping on their way to work to pick up their dream pills—hallucinatory drugs—that would give them
a few pleasant hours come evening. Frost had never used them, never intended to—for they were, he thought, a foolish waste of money, and he had never felt that he really needed them.