He was, in fact, considerably more than a cop, for the city’s police force was also its defense force—and its Marines, should the need for a raid or a boarding party ever arise. Technically, there were many men on the force who were superior to the perimeter sergeant, but Anderson and one counterpart, a dark taciturn man named Dulany, headed picked squads and were nearly independent of the rest of the police, reporting directly to Mayor Amalfi.
It was this fact which opened the first line of friendly communication between Chris and his guardian. He had not yet even seen Amalfi with his own eyes. Although everyone in the city spoke of him as if they knew him personally, here at last was one man who really did, and saw him several times a week. Chris was unable to restrain his curiosity.
“Well, that’s just the way people talk, Chris. Actually hardly anyone sees much of Amalfi, he’s got too much to do. But he’s been in charge here a long time and he’s good at his job; people feel that he’s their friend because they trust him.”
“But what is he
“He’s complicated—but then most people are complicated. I guess the word I’m groping for is ‘devious.’ He sees connections between events that nobody else sees. He sizes up a situation like a man looking at a coat for the one thread that’ll make the whole thing unravel. He has to—he’s too burdened to deal with things on a stitch-by- stitch basis. In my opinion he’s killing himself with overwork as it is.”
It was to this point that Chris returned after his upsetting argument with Piggy. “Sergeant, the other day you said that the Mayor was killing himself with overwork. But the City Fathers told me he’s several centuries old. On the drugs, he ought to live forever, isn’t that so?”
“Absolutely not,” Anderson said emphatically:
“No,” Chris admitted. “School hasn’t covered them yet.”
“Well, the memory banks can give you the details—I’ve probably forgotten most of them. But generally, there are several antiagathics, and each one does a different job. The main one, ascomycin, stirs up a kind of tissue in the body called the reticuloendothelial system—the white blood corpuscles are a part of it—to give you what’s called ‘nonspecific immunity.’ What that means is that for about the next seventy years, you can’t catch any infectious disease. At the end of that time you get another shot, and so on. The stuff isn’t an antibiotic, as the name suggests, but an endotoxin fraction—a complex organic sugar called a mannose; it got its name from the fact that it’s produced by fermentation, as antibiotics are.
“Another is TATP—triacetyltriparanol. What this does is inhibit the synthesis in the body of a fatty stuff called cholesterol; otherwise it collects in the arteries and causes strokes, apoplexy, high blood pressure and so on. This drug has to be taken every day, because the body goes right on trying to make cholesterol every day.”
“Doesn’t that mean that it’s good for something?” Chris objected tentatively.
“Cholesterol? Sure it is. It’s absolutely essential in the development of a fetus, so women have to lay off TATP while they’re carrying a child. But it’s of no use to men—and men are far more susceptible to circulatory diseases than women.
“There are still two more anti-agathics in use now, but they’re minor; one, for instance, blocks the synthesis of the hormone of sleep, which again is essential in pregnancy but a thundering nuisance otherwise; that one was originally found in the blood of ruminant animals like cows, whose plumbing is so defective that they’d die if they lay down.”
“You mean you
“Haven’t got the time for it,” Anderson said gravely. “Or the need any longer, thank goodness. But ascomycin and TATP between them prevent the two underlying major causes of death: heart diseases and infections. If you prevent those alone, you extend the average lifetime by at least two centuries.
“But death is still inevitable, Chris. If there isn’t an accident, there may be cancer, which we can’t prevent yet —oh, ascomycin attacks tumors so strongly that cancer doesn’t kill people any longer, in fact the drug even offers quite a lot of protection against hard radiation; but cancer can still make life so agonizing that death is the only humane treatment. Or a man can die of starvation, or of being unable to get the anti-agathics. Or he can die of a bullet—or of overwork. We Uve long lives in the cities, sure;
This, at last, was the opportunity Chris had been hoping for, though he still hardly knew how to grasp it.
“Are—are the drugs ever stopped, once a man’s been made a citizen?”
“Deliberately? I’ve never heard of such a case,” Anderson said, frowning. “Not on our town. If the City Fathers want a man dead, they shoot him. Why let him linger for the rest of his seventy-year stanza? That would be outrageously cruel. What would be the reason for such a procedure?”
“Well, no tests are foolproof. I mean, supposing they make a man a citizen, and then discover that he really isn’t—uh—as big a genius as they thought he was?”
The perimeter sergeant looked at Chris narrowly, and there was quite a long silence, during which Chris could clearly hear the pulsing of his own blood in his temples. At last Anderson said slowly:
“I see. It sounds to me like somebody’s been feeding you spin-dizzy whistle. Chris, if only geniuses could become citizens, how long do you think a city could last? The place’d be depopulated in one crossing. That isn’t how it works at all. The whole reason for the drugs is to save skills—and it doesn’t matter one bit what the skills are. All that matters is whether or not it would be logical to keep a man on, rather than training a new one every four or five decades.
“Take me for an example, Chris. I’m nobody’s genius; I’m only a boss cop. But I’m good at my job, good enough so that the City Fathers didn’t see any reason to bother raising and training another one from the next generation; they kept this one, which is me; but a cop is, all the same, all I am. Why not? It suits me, I like the work, and when Amalfi needs a boss cop he calls me or Dulany—not any officer on the force, because none of them have the scores of years of experience at this particular job that we do under their belts. When the Mayor wants a perimeter sergeant he calls me; when he wants a boarding squad he calls Dulany; and when he wants a specific genius, he calls a genius. There’s one of everything on board this town—partly because it’s so big—and so long as the system works, no need for more than one. Or more than X, X being whatever number you need.”
Chris grinned. “You seemed to remember the details all right.”
“I remembered them all,” Anderson admitted. “Or all that they gave me. Once the City Fathers put a thing into your head, it’s hard to get rid of.”
As he spoke, there was a pure fluting sound, like a brief tune, somewhere in the apartment. The perimeter sergeant’s heavy head tipped up; then he, too, grinned.
“We’re about to have a demonstration,” he said. He was obviously pleased. He touched a button on the arm of his chair.
“Anderson?” a heavy voice said. Chris thought instantly that the father bear in the ancient myth of Goldilocks must have sounded much like that.
“Yes—Here, sir.”
“We’re coming up on a contract. It looks fairly good to me and the City Fathers, and I’m about to sign it. Better come up here and familiarize yourself with the terms, just in case: This’ll be a rough one, Joel.”
“Right away.” Anderson touched the button, and his grin became broader and more boyish than ever.
“The Mayor!” Chris burst out.
“Yep.”
“But what did he mean?”
“That he’s found some work for us to do. Unless there’s a hitch, we should be landing in just a few days.”
CHAPTER SIX: A Planet Called Heaven
NOTHING could be seen of Heaven from the air. As the city descended cautiously, the spindizzy field became completely outlined as a bubble of boiling black clouds, glaring with blue-green sheets and slashes of lightning, and awash with streams of sleet and rain. At lower altitude the sleet disappeared, but the rain increased.
