«You come with me,» she said. «I’ll take you to your place. On the way I can give you a lining o’ what the world’s like these days.»
«Now, wait,» objected Phil.
«Wait yourself,» she chuckled. «I know you, you ol’ professor. You’d stuff him so full o’ precise information he wouldn’ know his charge from a Dirac hole. What he needs right now is facts, not data.»
«An’ someone to snuggle with,» Sam teased.
She made a face at him. Joe grinned. «What’s the use o’ being the Pres’dent’s daughter, Tom, if she can’ get to know you ahead of all the other girls?» he said. «You’re going to be the most chased bachelor on this planet, in case you hadn’ guessed.»
As a matter of fact, Barlow had guessed, but it was pleasant to have his anticipations borne out.
There was a little more conversation, then he left the room with the young woman. They went through a very ordinary door and down a very ordinary hall to an underground garage. Gray-clad men, shaven-headed, bowed to Amily with extreme deference and wheeled forth a small, brightly colored, teardrop-shaped machine. The seats, within a transparent canopy, were luxurious. She punched controls and leaned back. Under some kind of automatic piloting, the vehicle whirred up a ramp and into the air.
From above, Barlow saw endless miles of buildings. The effect was more like Chicago than any futuristic megalopolis: drab, dirty cubicles, with nearly solid streams of pedestrians moving through the canyons between. Enormous vehicles, freight and passenger, rumbled on elevated ways which sometimes ducked below ground. Only a few private cars were to be seen, flitting like the one which bore him over the city.
«What’s the population?» he asked slowly.
Amily shrugged. «Who knows? For the whole world, maybe fifteen billion.»
He whistled. A fifth of that number had been obscene enough when he departed his own century. However, progress must have been made in food production: algae, ocean farming, and whatnot. He was pleased to note that the air was free of smog. Probably exhaustion of chemical fuels had forced total conversion to atomic-electrical power.
Still, fifteen billion! He asked about other planets, and was a trifle saddened, but not surprised, to hear that they were visited about as often and as significantly as Pago Pago or Antarctica had been in his day.
«What sort of government do you have?» he inquired.
Amily’s laugh was as musical a sound as he had ever heard. «True scientist, you! First you find out ‘bout Mars, then ‘bout affairs at home! Well, if I ’member my hist’ry right, you had many sep’rate countries in the twentieth century. That was before the Atomic Wars, no? All one country now, the United World Republics. How else could fifteen billion people survive?»
«And I suppose all the races are equal?»
«What? I don’ un’erstan’.»
With some effort, he got across to her the idea that secondary physical characteristics had once been considered important. She was as startled and amused to hear of race riots as he had once been to learn of blood spilled by early Christians over the iota distinguishing homoousian from homoiousian.
«That’s cheering,» he said. «As I’d hoped.» She regarded him closely, for minutes while the aircar whispered through an April sky the color of her eyes. «Your message was never clear as to why you left,» she said.
He looked away, down to the brick and concrete earth, up again to clouds. «It’s hard to explain. Disgust would be the simplest word. I had no close personal ties after my mother died. And I saw freedom being crushed in most of the world, rotted and vulgarized in my own country; I read interviews with allegedly sane leaders, who spoke calmly of incinerating some tens of millions of women and children, if national policy so demanded. What had I to lose?»
She grimaced. «You did wisely, Tom. I won’er why so few others did the same. But then, there were the Atomic Wars, an’ all their aftermath. Not much chance for escape. Nowadays, not much incentive. Who, with access to a time accelerator, ‘d want to leave this world?»
He watched her, healthy, serene, and beautiful, and thought: Who, indeed? Of course he hadn’t found any Utopia, but he hadn’t been so naive as to expect that. It was enough to have found hope. He took out another cigarette, offered her one, and was politely refused. «Very few people use tobacco,» she said. «Maybe jus’ ’cause how expensive ’tis. But if you want, ’s your own affair.»
«The supremely civilized art,» he said. «Minding one’s own business.»
She gave him a long, sidewise look. «Could be my business too,» she murmured. «You’re a han’some buddo, Tom.»
The drug didn’t slow down his pulse much.
He steered the conversation toward herself. She told him she was interested in sports and theatricals. Another bit of semantic confusion straightened itself out after he realized that «amateur performances» would have been a redundant phrase. All art nowadays was amateur, in the sense of being done for love (and, admittedly, social prestige) by people who had no need to do it for money. The mass-produced entertainment of Barlow’s birth century was long forgotten. He was not displeased to learn that scientific research, as opposed to technology and engineering, was classed among the arts. Amily voiced a few opinions on Shakespeare’s real intent in Hamlet and Lear, which might be banal to her contemporaries but to Barlow were so novel and perceptive that he felt this would prove one of the great artistic eras.
«But I did expect more change,» he said. «More inventions, especially. What I’ve seen looks less than fifty years in advance of my period. No offense,» he hastened to add.
Her expression was puzzled rather than hurt. «Why should there be change? Isn’ this aircar good enough?»
Perhaps these folk were only rationalizing a static technology forced on them by swollen population and dwindled resources. Obviously capitalism such as Barlow’s America had known, with its inherent need to innovate, was extinct. But he didn’t mind. So much so-called progress had been sheer hokum anyhow. Let the world take a thousand years to digest the authentic advances of the Industrial Revolution; give the simple graces of living a chance to catch up.
The car glided down to a platform on the fiftieth floor of a skyscraper. The surrounding buildings were as hideous as most of the continent-wide city; but this tower stood clean and proud, its starkness relieved by colorful beds of mutated flowers on each terrace. «So many men wanted to sponsor you, we set up a fund an’ got a special place,» said Amily. She squeezed his arm. «But I saw you first, ‘member.»
With that buildup, he was surprised at the modesty of the apartment: two smallish rooms, plus bath and kitchenette. Amily showed him how to operate the gadgets, which were little different from those he knew. He was more interested in the quiet good taste of the interior decoration. The bookshelves were filled with finer volumes than he was accustomed to, most of them handbound. He wouldn’t have much trouble getting used to the spelling, he saw. A music library ranged from medieval chants to modern symphonies almost as foreign to his ear; but in between he found many old friends, and when he tried out part of the Beethoven Ninth, he had never heard it better performed.
«I think you’re hungry,» said the girl. She opened a built-in refrigerator. «Lemme make you a san’wich.» The meat was exotic, the bread far tastier than that library paste sold under the name in Barlow’s milieu. He ate with pleasure, downing a bottle of excellent beer.
«Might be best you nap now,» she said. «Been a strain, I know.»
«I feel fine,» he said, rising.
«Tha’s jus’ the tranquistim,» she warned. «Tonight’ll be a big do. Last till all hours.»
He edged closer. She stayed where she was. Her eyelashes fluttered, long and smoky against smooth sunbrowned cheeks. «I can rest tomorrow,» he said.