Drinks from clear across the galaxy! How about that?
So Al started walking. It was a lovely day.
The sidewalk was so wide it was more like a boulevard in itself; there were no paving slabs, instead the whole strip had been made from a seamless sheet, a material which was a cross between marble and concrete. Luxuriant trees sprouted up through craters in the surface every forty yards or so, their two-foot sprays of floppy oval flowers an impossible shade of metallic purple.
He spotted a few trashcan-sized trucks trundling sedately among the walkers enjoying the late-morning sunshine, machinery smoother than Henry Ford had ever dreamed of. Utility mechanoids, Lovegrove told him, cleaning the sidewalk, picking up litter and fallen leaves.
The base of each skyscraper was given over to classy delis and bars and restaurants and coffee shops; tables spilled out onto the sidewalk, just like a European city. Arcades pierced deep into the buildings.
From what Al could see, it was the same kind of rich man’s playground setup on the other side of the street, maybe a hundred and fifty yards away. Not that you could walk over to be sure, there was no way past the eight-foot-high glass and metal barrier which lined the road.
Al stood with his face pressed to the glass for some time, watching the silent cars zoom past. Big bullets on wheels. All of them shiny, like coloured chrome. You didn’t even have to steer them no more, Lovegrove told him, they did it themselves. Some kind of fancy electrical engine, no gas. And the speed, over two hundred kilometres an hour.
Al knew all about kilometres; they were what the French called miles.
But he wasn’t too sure about using a car that he couldn’t drive himself, not when it travelled that fast. And anyway, his presence seemed to mommick up electricity. So he stuck to walking.
The skyscrapers gave him vertigo they were so tall, and all you could see when you looked up at them was reflections of more skyscrapers. They seemed to bend over the street, imprisoning the world below. Lovegrove told him they were so high that their tops were designed to sway in the wind, rocking twenty–thirty metres backwards and forwards in slow motion.
“Shut up,” Al growled.
The leprechaun curled up tighter, like a knotted snake.
People looked at Al—his clothes. Al looked at people, fascinated and jubilant. It was a jolt seeing blacks and whites mixing free, other types too, light-skinned Mediterranean like his own, Chinese, Indian. Some seemed to have dyed their hair completely the wrong colour. Amazing.
And they all appeared so much at ease with themselves, owning a uniform inner smile. They had a nonchalance and surety which he’d never seen before. The devil which drove so many people back in the twenties was missing, as if the city elders had abolished worry altogether.
They also had astonishingly good health. After a block and a half Al still hadn’t seen anyone remotely overweight. No wonder they wore short clothes. A world where everyone was in permanent training for the big game, even the seventy-year-olds.
“You still got baseball, ain’t you?” Al muttered under his breath.
Yes, Lovegrove confirmed.
Yep, paradise all right.
After a while he took off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder. He’d been walking for a quarter of an hour, and it didn’t look as if he’d got anywhere. The massive avenue of skyscrapers hadn’t changed at all.
“Hey, buddy,” he called.
The black guy—who looked like a prizefighter—turned and gave an amused grin as he took in Al’s clothes. His arm was around a girl: Indian skin, baby blonde hair. Her long legs were shown off by a pair of baggy culottes.
Cutie pie, Al thought, and grinned at her. A real sweater girl. It suddenly struck him that he hadn’t hit the sack with a woman for six centuries.
She smiled back.
“How do I call a cab around here?”
“Datavise the freeway processors, my man,” the black guy said expansively. “City runs a million cabs. Don’t make a profit. But then that’s what us dumb taxpayers are for, to make up the shortfall, right?”
“I can’t do the data thing, I ain’t from around here.”
The girl giggled. “You just get off a starship?”
Al tipped the rim of his fedora with two fingers. “Kind of, lady. Kind of.”
“Neat. Where you from?”
“Chicago. On Earth.”
“Hey, wow. I never met anyone from Earth before. What’s it like?”
Al’s grin lost its lustre. Je-zus, but the women here were forward. And the black guy’s thick arm was still draped over her shoulder. He didn’t seem to mind his girl making conversation with a total stranger. “One city’s just like another,” Al said; he gestured lamely at the silver skyscrapers, as if that was explanation enough.
“City? I thought you only had arcologies on Earth?”
“Look, you going to tell me how to get a fucking cab, or what?”
He’d blown it. The moment he saw the man’s expression harden, he knew.
“You want us to call one for you,
“Sure,” Al bluffed.
“Okay. No problem. It’s done.” A phony smile.
Al wondered exactly what it was the man had actually done. He didn’t have no Dick Tracy wrist radio to call for a cab or anything. Just stood there, smiling, playing Al for a sucker.
Lovegrove was filling Al’s head with crap about miniature telephones in the brain. He had one fitted himself, he said, but it had packed up when Al possessed him.
“Going to tell me about Chicago now?” the girl asked.
Al could see how worried she was. Her voice, mannerisms, the way she had merged into her man’s encircling arm. They all telegraphed it, and he knew how to read the signs. Fear in other people was wholly familiar.
He thrust his face forwards toward the black guy, snarling at the wiseass bastard. Just for an instant three long scars pulsed hotly on his left cheek. “Gonna remember you, cocksucker. Gonna find you again. Gonna teach you
“Bastard Retro!” The man swung a punch.
Even if Lovegrove’s body hadn’t been enhanced with the energistic power which possessing souls exuded in the natural universe Al would probably have beaten him. His years in Brooklyn had pitched him into countless brawls, and people had quickly learned to steer clear of his awesome temper.
Al ducked instinctively, his right fist already coming up. The blow was focused, mentally and physically. He struck the man perfectly, catching him on the side of his jaw.
There was an ugly sound of bone shattering. Dead silence. The man flew backwards five yards through the air, hitting the sidewalk in a crumpled sprawl. He slid along the carbon concrete composite for another couple of yards before coming to rest, completely inert. Blood began to splatter from his mouth where serrated bone had punctured his cheek and lip.
Al stared, surprised. “Goddamn!” He started to laugh delightedly.
The girl screamed. She screamed and screamed.
Al glanced around, suddenly apprehensive. Everyone on the broad sidewalk was looking at him, at the injured black guy. “Shut up,” he hissed at the loopy broad. “Shut up!” But she wouldn’t. Just: scream, and scream, and scream. Like it was her profession.
Then there was another sound, cutting through her bawling, rising every time she took a breath. And Al Capone realized it wasn’t just handguns he could recognize after six hundred years. Police sirens hadn’t changed much either.
