It was a lecture about Chung Kuo and City Earth. Images of the vast hivelike structure appeared and then vanished. Exteriors, cutaways, sections. The first glimpse these children had ever had of the environment built above the Clay.
As T'ai Cho talked his way through the sequence of images he wondered whether they ever dreamed themselves back there, beneath the vast, overtowering pile of the City. How strange that would be. How would they feel? Like bugs beneath a house, perhaps. Yes, looking at these images even he felt awed; How, then, did it strike them? For this was their first sight of it—their first glimpse of how insignificant they were: how small the individual, how vast the species, Man. A City covering the Earth like a glacier, broken only by ocean and mountain and plantations. A species almost forty billion strong.
Yes, he could see the awe in the faces of the two boys seated across from him. Their mouths were open wide in wonder and their eyes were screwed up, trying to take it all in. Then he glanced down at the small, dark-haired head just below his lectern and wondered what Kim was thinking.
"It's too big," Kim said suddenly.
T'ai Cho laughed. "It's exactly as big as it is. How can that be too big?"
"No." Kim turned and looked up at him, his dark eyes burning with intensity. The other boys were watching him carefully. "I didn't mean that. Just that it's too vast, too heavy a thing to stand on its pillars without either collapsing or sinking into the earth."
"Go on," said T'ai Cho, aware that something important was happening. It was like the construction of the viewing tube, but this time Kim was using concepts as his building blocks.
"Well, there are three hundred levels in most places, right?"
T'ai Cho nodded, careful not to interrupt.
"Well, on each of those levels there must be thousands, perhaps millions, of people. With all their necessities. Food, clothing, transportation, water, machines. Lots of machines." Kim laughed softly. "It's ridiculous. It just can't be. It's too heavy. Too big. IVe seen for myself how small the pillars are on which it all rests."
"And yet it is," said T'ai Cho, surprised by that single word small and what it implied. Kim had grasped at once what the others had failed even to see: the true perspectives of the City. His imagination had embraced the scale of things at once. As if he'd always known. But this next was the crucial stage. Would Kim make the next leap of understanding?
T'ai Cho glanced across at the other boys. They were lost already. They hadn't even seen there was a problem.
"It exists?" Kim asked, puzzled. "Just as you've shown us?"
"Exactly. And you might also consider that there are vast factories and foundries and masses of other industrial machinery distributed among its many levels. At least one level in twenty is used for warehousing. And there are whole levels which are used to store water or process waste matter."
Kim's face creased into a frown of intense concentration. He seemed to stare at something directly in front of him, his brow puckering, his eyes, suddenly sharply focused.
"Well?" T'ai Cho prompted when the silence had extended uncomfortably.
Kim laughed. "You'll think I'm mad. ..."
"No. Try me."
"Well ... it must be something to do with its structure. But that can't be the whole of it." Kim seemed almost in pain now. His hands were clenched tightly and his eyes were wide and staring.
T'ai Cho held his breath. One step further. One small but vital step.
"Then it must be built of air. Or something as light as air but—but as tough as steel."
As light as air and as tough as steel. A substance as strong as the bonding between the atoms and so light that three hundred levels of it weighed a fraction of a single layer of clay bricks. A substance so essential to the existence of City Earth that its chemical name was rarely used. It was known simply as ice. Ice because, in its undecorated state, it looked as cold and fragile as the thinnest layer of frozen water. "Corrugated" layers of ice— only a few hundred molecules thick—formed the levels and walls of City Earth. Molded sheets of ice formed the basic materials of elevators and bolts, furniture and pipework, clothing and conduits, toys and tools. Its flexibility and versatility, its cheapness and durability, had meant that it had replaced most traditional materials.
City Earth was a vast palace of ice. A giant house of cards, each card so unbelievably thin that if folded down the whole thing would be no thicker than a single sheet of paper.
Slowly, piece by piece, T'ai Cho told Kim all of this, watching as the boy's face lit with an inner pleasure. Not air but ice! It made the boy laugh with delight.
"Then the pillars hold it down!" he said. "They keep it from flying away!"
SOREN BERDICHEV glanced up from the pile of papers he was signing.
"Well, Blake? You've seen the boy?"
His Head of Personnel hesitated long enough to make Ber-dichev look up again. Blake was clearly unhappy about something.
"He's no use to us, then?"
"Oh, quite the contrary, sir. He's everything the report made him out to be. Exceptional, sir. Quite exceptional."
Berdichev set the brush down on the inkstone and sat back, dismissing the secretary who had been hovering at his side.
"Then you've done as we agreed and purchased the boys contract?"
Blake shook his head. "I'm afraid not, sir."
"I don't understand you, Blake. Have you let one of our rivals buy the boy?"
"No, sir. Director Andersen offered us an exclusive rights contract."
"Then what's the problem? You offered him the sum I authorized? Five million yuan?"
"I did. . . ." Blake swallowed. "In fact, I raised the offer to eight million."
Berdichev smiled coldly. "I see. And you want me to sanction the increase?"
"No, sir. That's it, you see. Andersen turned me down flat."
"What?" Berdichev sat forward, his eyes, behind the tiny pebble glasses, wide with anger. "Eight million and he turned us down?"
"Yes, sir. He said he wanted twenty million minimum, or no contract."
Berdichev shook his head slowly, astonished. "And you walked away, I hope?"
Blake lowered his head. There was a definite color in his cheeks now. Berdichev leaned forward and yelled at him.
"Come on, man! Out with it! What's all this about?"
Blake looked up again, his whole manner hesitant now. "I—I promised Andersen I'd come back to you, sir. I said I'd ask you to agree to the deal."
"You what?" Berdichev laughed incredulously. "Twenty million yuan for a six-year-old boy? Are you mad, Blake?"
Blake met his eyes determinedly. "I believe he's worth it, sir. Every last jen of it. I would not have dared come back to you unless I believed that."
Berdichev shook his head. "No . . . twenty million. It's out of the question."
Blake came forward and leaned over the desk, pleading with his superior. "If only you saw him, sir—saw him for yourself— you'd understand. He's like nothing I've ever come across before. Voracious, he is—just hungry to learn things. Really, sir, if you'd only see him!"
Berdichev looked down at where Blake's hands rested on the edge of the desk. Blake removed them at once and took a step back, straightening up.
"Is that all, Blake?"
"Please, sir. If you'd reconsider. If you'd take the time—"
"You know that I haven't the time," he snapped back, irritated now by Blake's persistence. He picked up the brush angrily. "The murder of the T'ang's son has thrown everything into flux. The market's nervous and I have meetings all this week to calm things down. People need reassuring, and that takes time." He looked up at his Personnel Manager again, his face hard and angry. "No, Blake, I really haven't the time."
"Forgive me, sir, but I think you should make time in this instance."