Robots and Empire (Page 118)

"I should think everyone would get lost."

"Of course not. Everyone knows his own neighborhood here, as anywhere else. Even strangers need only follow the signs."

"I suppose all the walking, that people are forced to do must be very good for them physically," said Gladia dubiously.

"Socially, too. There are people in the corridors at all times and the convention is that you stop to exchange words with anyone you know and that you greet even those you don’t know. Nor is walking absolutely necessary. There are elevators everywhere for vertical travel. The main corridors are transways and move for horizontal travel. Outside the building, of course, there is a feeder line to the Expressway network. That’s something. You’ll get to ride it."

"I’ve heard of them. They have strips that you walk across and that drag you along faster and faster – or slower and slower – as you move from one to another. I couldn’t do that. Don’t ask me to."

"Of course you’ll be able to do it," said D.G. genially. "I’ll help you. If necessary, I’ll carry you, but all it takes is a little practice. Among the Earthpeople, kindergarten children manage and so do old people with canes. I admit Settlers tend to be clumsy about it. I’m no miracle of grace myself, but I manage and so will you."

Gladia heaved an enormous sigh. "Well, then, I’ll try if I have to. But I tell you what, D.G., dear. We must have a reasonably quiet room for the night. I want your ‘Drone of the City’ muted."

"That can be arranged, I’m sure."

"And I don’t want to have to eat in the Section kitchens."

D.G. looked doubtful. "We can arrange to have food brought in, but really it would do you good to participate in the social life of Earth. I’ll be with you, after all."

"Maybe after a while, D.G., but not just at first – and I want a Personal for myself."

"Oh, no, that’s impossible. There’ll be a washbasin and a toilet bowl in any room they assign us because we have status, but if you intend to do any serious showering or bathing, you’ll have to follow the crowd. There’ll be a woman to introduce you to the procedure and you’ll be assigned a stall or whatever it is they have there. You won’t be embarrassed. Settler women have to be introduced to the use of Personals, every day of the year. – And you may end up enjoying it, Gladia. They tell me that the Women’s Personal is a place of much activity and fun. In the Men’s Personal, on the other hand, not a word is allowed spoken. Very dull."

"It’s all horrible," muttered Gladia. "How do you stand the lack of privacy?"

"On a crowded world, needs must," said D.G. lightly. "What you’ve never had, you never miss. – Do you want any other aphorisms?"

"Not really," said Gladia.

She looked dejected and D.G. put an arm about her shoulder. "Come, it won’t be as bad as you think. I promise you."

84

It was not exactly a nightmare, but Gladia was thankful to her earlier experience on Baleyworld for having given her a preview of what was now a veritable ocean of humanity. The crowds were much larger here in New York than they had been on the Settler world, but on the other hand, she was more insulated from the herd here than she had been on the earlier occasion.

The government officials were clearly anxious to be seen with her. There was a wordless, polite struggle for a position near enough to her to be seen with her on hypervision. It isolated her, not only from the crowds on the other side of the police lines, but from D.G. and from her two robots. It also subjected her to a kind of polite jostling from people who seemed to have an eye only on the camera.

She listened to what seemed innumerable speeches, all mercifully brief, without really listening. She smiled periodically, both blandly and blindly, casting the vision of her implanted teeth in all directions indiscriminately.

Gladia went by ground-car through miles of passageways at a crawl, while an uncounted ant heap lined the walkways, cheering and waving as she passed. (She wondered if ever a Spacer had received such adulation from Earthpeople and was quite confident that her own case was entirely unprecedented.)

At one point, Gladia caught sight of a distant knot of people gathered round a hypervision screen and momentarily had an undoubted glimpse of herself upon it. They were listening, she knew, to a recording of her speech on Baleyworld. Gladia wondered how many times and in how many places and before how many people it was being played now, and how many times it had been played since she gave it, and how many times it would yet be played in the future, and whether anything at all had been heard of it on the Spacer worlds.

Might she, in fact, seem a traitor to the people of Aurora and would this reception be held to be proof of it?

She might – and it might – and she was beyond caring. She had her mission of peace and reconciliation and she would follow it wherever it led without complaint – even to the unbelievable orgy of mass bathing and shrilly unconscious exhibitionism in the Women’s Personal that morning. (Well, without much complaint.)

They came to one of the Expressways that D.G. had mentioned, and Gladia gazed in open horror at the endless snake of passenger cars that passed – and passed – and passed – each with its load of people who were on business that could not be postponed for the motorcade (or who simply didn’t want to be bothered) and who stared solemnly at the crowds and the procession for the few moments they remained in sight.

Then the ground-car plunged downward under the Expressway, through a short tunnel that in no way differed, from the passage above (the City was all tunnel), and up again on the other side.

And eventually the motorcade came to an end at a large public building that was mercifully more attractive than the endlessly repetitious blocks that represented the units of the City’s residential section.