out into space again, to look for other cities. Whenever they make contact with a new Okie town, they take all the passengers off—nobody else—and take them back to this planet where
“Suppose the other city doesn’t want to give up its passengers?”
“Why wouldn’t it want to? If it had any use for them, they’d be citizens, wouldn’t they?”
“Yes, but just suppose.”
“They’d give them up anyhow. Like I said, the Lost City is big.”
Unfortunately for the half-million other questions Chris wanted to ask, at that point the city moaned softly to the sound of the take-cover siren. The boys parted hurriedly; but Chris, after a moment’s thought, did not go home. Instead, he holed up in a public information booth, where he fed his card into the slot and asked for the Librarian.
He had promised not to mention the Lost City to anyone but another passenger, which ruled out questioning his guardian, or the City Fathers directly; but he had thought of a way to ask an indirect question. The Librarian was that one of the 134 machines comprising the City Fathers which had prime charge of the memory banks, and was additionally charged with teaching; it did not collect information, but only catalogued and dispensed it. Interpretation was not one of its functions.
“CARD A CCEPTED. PROCEED.”
“Question: Do any anti-agathics grow naturally—I mean, do they occur in plants that could be raised as crops?”
A brief pause. “A PRECURSOR OF THE ANTISLEEP DRUG IS A STEROID SUBSTANCE OCCURRING NATURALLY IN A NUMBER OF YAMLIKE PLANTS FOUND ON EARTH, LARGELY IN CENTRAL IN CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA . T HIS SAPOGENIN IS NOT, HOWEVER, IN ITSELF AN ANTI-AGATHIC, AND MUST BE CONVERTED; HUNDREDS OF DIFFERENT STEROIDS ARE PRODUCED FROM THE SAME STARTING MATERIAL.
“A SCOMYCIN IS PRODUCED BY DEEP-TANK FERMENTATION OF A MICROORGANISM AND HARVESTED FROM THE BEER. T HIS PROCEDURE MIGHT BROADLY BE DEFINED AS CROP RAISING.
“A LL OTHER KNOWN ANTI-AGATHICS ARE WHOLLY SYNTHETIC DRUGS. ”
Chris sat back, scratching his head in exasperation. He had hoped for a clear-cut, yes-or-no answer, but what he had gotten stood squarely in the middle. No anti-agathics were harvested from real crops; but if a crop plant could produce something at least enough like an anti-agathic to be converted into one, then that part of Piggy’s astounding story was at least possible. Unhappily, he could think of no further questions sufficiently indirect to keep his main point of interest hidden.
Then he noticed that the booth had not returned his card to him. This was quite usual; it meant only that the Librarian, which spent its whole mechanical life substituting free association for thinking, had a related subject it would talk about if he liked. Usually it wasn’t worth while exploring these, for the Librarian could go on forever if so encouraged; all he needed to do now was to say “Return,” and he could take his card and go. But the take-cover alert wasn’t over yet; so, instead, he said, “Proceed.”
“S UBJECT, ANTI-AGATHICS AS BY-PRODUCTS OF AGRICULTURE. S UB-SUBJECT, LEGENDARY IDYLLIC PLANETS. ” C hris Sat bolt Upright. “A NTI-AGATHICS AS BY-PRODUCTS OF AGRICULTURE, USUALLY IN THE DAILY BREAD, IS ONE OF THE COMMON FEATURES OR DIAGNOSTIC SIGNS OF THE LEGENDARY PLANETS OF NOMAD-CITY MYTHOLOGY. O THERS INCLUDE: E ARTHLIKE GRAVITY BUT GREATER LAND AREA; E ARTHLIKE ATMOSPHERE BUT MORE ABUNDANT OXYGEN; E ARTHLIKE WEATHER BUT WITH UNIFORM CLIMATE, AND COMPLETE ISOLATION FROM EXISTING TRADE LANES. N O PLANET MATCHING THIS DESCRIPTION IN ANY PARTICULAR HAS YET BEEN FOUND. N AMES OFTEN GIVEN TO SUCH WORLDS INCLUDE: A RCADY, B RADBURY, CELEPHAIS …”
Chris was so stunned that the Librarian had worked its way all the way through “ZIMIAMVIA” and had begun another alphabetical catalogue before he thought to ask for his card back. His question had not been very crafty, after all.
By the time he emerged from the booth, the storms of Heaven had vanished and the city was once more soaring amid the stars. Furthermore, he was late for dinner.
So, after all, there had been no secret to keep. Chris told the Andersons the story of his failure to outwit the Librarian; it made the best possible excuse for his lateness, since it was true, and it reduced Carla to tears of helpless laughter. The perimeter sergeant was amused, too, but there was an undercurrent of seriousness beneath his amusement.
“You’re learning, Chris. It’s easy to think that because the City Fathers are dead, they’re also stupid; but you see that that isn’t the case. Otherwise they would never have been given the power that they wield—and in some departments their power is absolute.”
“Even over the Mayor?”
“Yes and no. They can’t forbid the Mayor anything. But if he goes against their judgment more often than they’re set to tolerate, they can revoke his office. That’s never happened here, but if it does, we’ll have to sit still for it. If we don’t, they’ll stop the machinery.”
“Wow. Isn’t it dangerous to give machines so much power? Suppose they had a breakdown?”
“If there were only a few of them, that would be a real danger; but there are more than a hundred, and they monitor and repair each other, so in fact it will never happen. Sanity and logic is their stock in trade—which is why they can accept or reject the results of any election we may run. The popular will is sometimes an idiot, but no human being can be given the power to overrule it; not safely. But the machines can.
“Of course, there are stories about towns whose City Fathers ran amok with them. They’re just stories, like Piggy’s ‘Lost City’—but they’re important even when they’re not true. Whenever a new way of living appears in the universe, the people who adopt it see quickly enough that it isn’t perfect. They try to make it better, sure; but there are always some things about it that can’t be changed. And the hopes and fears that are centered on those points get turned into stories.
“Piggy’s myth, for instance. We live long lives in the cities, but not everybody can have the gift. It’s impossible that everyone should have it—the whole universe isn’t big enough to contain the sheer mass of flesh that would accumulate if we all lived and bred as long as we each wanted to. Piggy’s myth says it is possible, which is untrue; but what
“The story of the runaway City Fathers is another. No such thing has ever happened as far as I know, and it doesn’t seem to be possible. But no live man
“The universe of the cities is full of these ghosts. Sooner or later somebody is going to tell you that some cities go bindlestiff.”
“Somebody has,” Chris admitted. “But I didn’t know what he meant.”
“It’s an old Earth term. A hobo was an honest migratory worker, who lived that way because he liked it. A tramp was the same kind of fellow, except that he wouldn’t work—he lived by stealing or begging from settled people. In hobo society both kinds were more or less respectable. But the bindlestiff was a migrant who stole from other migrants—he robbed their bindles, the bags they carried their few belongings in. That man was an outcast from both worlds.
“It’s common talk that some cities in trouble have gone bindlestiff—taken to preying on other cities. Again, there are no specific instances. IMT is the town that’s most often mentioned, but the last we heard of IMT, she wasn’t a bindlestiff—she’d been outlawed for a horrible crime on a colony planet, but technically that makes her only a tramp. A mean one, but still only a tramp.”
“I see,” Chris said slowly. “It’s like the story about City Fathers going crazy. Cities do starve, I know that; and the bindlestiff story says, ‘How will
Anderson looked gratified. “Look at that,” he said to Carla. “Maybe I should have been a teacher!”
“Nothing to do with you,” Carla said composedly. “Chris is doing all the thinking. Besides, I like you better as a cop.”
The perimeter sergeant sighed, a little ruefully. “Oh, well, all right. Then I’ll give you only one more story.
