Equality: In the Year 2000

She just smiled. The car began to edge over to the slower lanes. Finally, it darted off onto a smaller road and shortly began to ascend a ramp. A red light flickered on the dash and Edith took over the controls. They emerged into the countryside. “You mean we’re here already?” Julian asked.

“We were doing about three hundred kilometers,” Edith said. “But we’re not quite there yet. However, this part of Maryland is so beautiful I thought you’d probably rather see the countryside than continue any longer in the underground. Frankly, I hate the darn things. It’s as though you’re in suspended animation. But, of course, if speed is the thing, they give it to you.”

“Three hundred kilometers? That’s about one hundred eighty miles an hour, isn’t it?”

“Something like that. It’s been so long since I’ve converted miles to kilometers that I’d have to think about it. Anyway, at that speed, with no stops, no hills, no turns, you can cross the whole country in a little more than ten hours.”

He had only twice before driven through the countryside sinee he had been brought out of hibernation. Once again it took him back to his youth, when his parents or some other relative had sometimes driven him through upper New England in the autumn.

The road was not even paved and the traffic so slight that he felt half-inclined to wave at another car when they passed. He estimated that at least nine-tenths of the traffic of this day was underground. He had already had it explained to him and he supposed it made sense. Unless you were out for some reason such as picnicking, fishing, or just a drive through the countryside, you took to the ultra-highways below ground and got to your destination in a fraction of the time. This road was more suited to a stately forty miles an hour, rather than one hundred eighty.

It was a beautiful day. After the ultra-efficiency high-rise building at the university city, the drive in the country was relaxing. From time to time they would pass a farm house, invariably so put together as to resemble a Hollywood set. Once or twice there were people on the porch or in the yard. Someone waved and Edith and Julian both waved back.

He said, “I thought you didn’t have small farms any more.”

“We don’t. Except for people who make it their hobby.”

“You mean none of these places puts in crops?”

“Some do. I’ve been considering taking a place like one of these after I’ve retired, or been bumped from my job. They grow their own things, receive pleasure from raising, canning, and drying their own products. Largely, they’re older people who remember and liked the old way of life. But some are younger folk who have simply taken it up as a hobby.”

“I thought almost everybody lived in high-rise apartment buildings like those at University City.”

“Oh, no, very few do. It’s a rather sterile way of life, really. The advantage of it in an institution as large as Julian West University City is that it enables a very large number of students to be in a comparatively small area. If they were spread out in individual homes the school area would have to cover several square miles of land and you’d waste all sorts of time getting from one place to another. Well, here we are.”

Julian looked about him. “I thought you lived in a town. Hopewell, or whatever you call it.”

“This is Hopewell.”

“Are you joking?” He looked out over the rolling hills with their numerous trees and other vegetation. But then, to his surprise, he could make out an occasional glint, as of sun on a window, and realized that a good deal of the vegetation was too neat to be simply virgin countryside such as they had been driving through for the past half hour.

Edith, really amused now, turned down a narrow side road, went around a hill, and drove into a small garage.

“Home again,” she said, getting out.

He followed her, not having the vaguest idea what was to come. They emerged into a patio, sunk perhaps some twenty feet beneath ground level. Looking up, he could see trees, bushes, flowers, and grass, on what could only be called the roof of the building. Various rooms opened off the patio, all many-windowed in order to take advantage of the sunlight.

Edith led the way. “This is the living room.”

It was a large room, possibly twice the size of that in the Leete apartment. The far side consisted mainly of a window under a cantilever, which was also covered with vegetation. Julian looked out over the wooded valley. If there were other houses of this type in the vicinity, he couldn’t see them.

With mounting amazement, he took in the furniture, the art work. It was a comfortable, well-lived-in room. He asked, “Is this whole building underground?”

Edith went over to the auto-bar. “Beer? I’m thirsty from our drive. Yes, all the houses in Hopewell are underground. In fact, so are most of the houses in United America. We leave the surface for plant life, for wild animal life. For nature in general.”

He flopped down in one of the chairs, looking as bewildered as he felt.

She laughed again, without ridicule, and handed him a glass of beer.

But then the small frown he loved so much brought two light wrinkles to her forehead. “Surely you must have had some underground buildings back in the middle of the last century.”

“We might have had a few—parking lots and so forth. But as far as homes are concerned, offhand all I can remember are some caves in Southern Spain that the gypsies used to live in. Come to think of it, they were amazingly comfortable. They held flamenco dances in them for the tourists.”

“I think Father still has an old brochure by Malcolm B. Wells. I suppose you’ve heard of him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s possible he’s still alive. I guess he was pushing fifty when you went into stasis. He was one of the most progressive architects of your time. Now let me see…” She went over to one of the bookcases and began searching. “Father keeps quite a few old books. He likes to mark them up with notes.”

“I thought you had to do all of your reading on the Library Booster Screen.”

“Oh, no. Any book in the data banks can be printed up at a very low credit charge and delivered to you. Here we are.”

She reached up and selected a rather well-worn brochure, which she handed to him.

“Read this while I activate the house and get a few things done.”

“Activate the house?”

“We turn it off when no one is in residence. And we’ll be wanting to eat and so forth. Besides, it’s a little musty; no one has been here for several months. We’ve all been caught up in your revival and your first few weeks in this century.”

Julian took a deep slug of his beer and began to read.

UNDERGROUND ARCHITECTURE

I can just picture some smelly old bastard, club in hand, the conventional caveman of the comic strips, a prototype Fred Flintstone, surprised at seeing a cave for the first time in his life. It must not have been very many minutes later that the idea of underground architecture was born.

That was perhaps a million years ago, long before modern man, as we know him, evolved. Since that time, of course, man has not exactly been standing still. Not only has he invented war and bigotry (and the religions to excuse them), and learned how to lay continents bare and to overbreed himself, but he has also invented or discovered many, many kinds of shelter other than the cave. Still, architecture — really great architecture —remains, as it began, an earth art; an expression, fashioned in the earth’s own materials, of the particular culture in which the man-architect lives. And despite great advances in the techniques of building above ground, man has never completely abandoned underground construction. Fossilized remains from every age, from every continent, prove that man has continued to avail himself of this most ancient of architectures.

Now, though, suddenly, for the first time, in this Twentieth Century, in the face of unchecked population growth, all earth-life faces the prospect of extinction because of man’s too rapid successes. He has at last begun to crowd himself from the surface of the planet. But now, too, for the first time, he has both the awareness and the ability needed to undo some of the earth-damage he has done. Faced with the problems of air