Oath of Fealty Read online

  Total Present: 243,782

  Unrestricted Visitors in Mall: 31,293

  Visitors with Special Passes: 18,811

  Non-resident Workers: 114

  Unauthorized Visitors: 7

  Detained Prisoners: 1

  "Who's the prisoner?" Stevens demanded.

  Bonner looked thoughtful, then said, "A leaper. They've got him in Central Security. He's been under arrest for three hours. They'll let him go by midnight if nobody's free to interview him before that. Afraid we're holding one of your people in durance vile, Mac?"

  Words crawled on the screen again. How many residents are accommodated here?

  Design Goal: 275,000

  Now Resident: 247,453

  Resident in Outbuildings: 976

  "Roughly a quarter of a million, then," Sir George said.

  Bonner nodded. "In four square miles of building, or about ten square miles of buildings and grounds. That's about the highest population density ever achieved on Earth anywhere. Remember the studies a few years ago that proved that if you pack a lot of people into a small area they'd all go insane? Doesn't seem to have happened."

  MacLean Stevens chuckled. Bonner threw him a threatening look, then grinned.

  "Where did you have in mind building, Sir George?" Bonner asked.

  Reedy shrugged. "There are a number of possible sites. We have so much undeveloped land-"

  "Won't work," Stevens muttered. Bonner said nothing, and the two executives exchanged significant glances.

  Bonner is laughing about this, Reedy thought. Why? I'd expect Stevens to be negative about the whole idea, Lord knows he hates this whole complex -- do all Angelinos think that way? -- but what is this joke they share?

  And why, when three of these arcologies have been more or less failures, is Todos Santos apparently so successful despite being packed in among ten million enemies in Greater Los Angeles?

  IV. KINGS AND WIZARDS

  Where is the man who owes nothing to the land in which he lives? Whatever that land may be, he owes to it the most precious thing possessed by man, the morality of his actions and the love of virtue.

  -Jean Jacques Rousseau

  The guard turned with a puzzled expression. "Seems to be a glitch in Tunnel 0-8, Captain."

  "What kind of glitch?"

  "No visual."

  The duty captain frowned. "In 8? That's a critical area. Don't need intruders in 8 ... " He typed furiously on his console, then looked relieved. "MILLIE shows maintenance in that," he said. "With overtime authorized yet, the lucky beggars. Punch in an immediate repair request for the visuals."

  "Hell, it's near dinner time. They'll never get it fixed tonight."

  The captain shrugged. "If they don't, we'll send in a patrolman. Give 'em a chance, though. They're in there already, maybe they can take care of it." He looked at his readout screen again and nodded. "Looks all right. Nobody's opened any doors to the outside. Let me know when the visual comes on again."

  "Sure." The guard settled back and sipped coffee as the kaleidoscope began again.

  * * *

  Anthony Rand put down the, telephone with a grimace. It was always an unpleasant experience when Genevieve called, and he wasn't sure whether it was worse when they fought or when she tried to make up. Why the hell didn't she marry and get out of his life? She was no bloody use when he was trying to make a career; and when he hadn't risen fast enough to suit her, she'd walked out taking Zachary and two-thirds of his inadequate income with her. Now, of course, she wanted to come back.

  She doesn't want to live with me, she wants to live in Todos Santos, Tony thought. And I will be damned if she's going to come here and live like a goddam princess off my status.

  Of course she had a bribe to offer: Zach, aged eleven. And she had same good arguments. The boy needed his father, but Tony Rand didn't have time to raise a son-he barely had time to have the boy in for visits-and someone should take care of Zach, why not his mother? And maybe their breakup hadn't been quite so simple and one sided. She did have her side to the story- He squirmed a bit as his body remembered Genevieve, suddenly, against his will. Djinn had been wonderful in bed. It had been too long since he'd had a satisfying affair. No time for that; no time to make friends. Too bad you couldn't rent mistresses. He'd heard that was possible: that there were women who'd gladly pretend affection, be attentive when you wanted them to be and self-reliant when you had no time for them. He wished he knew where to find someone like that. It wasn't so much that he was afraid to ask, as that he hadn't any idea of whom to ask.

  Why not Genevieve? She was offering almost the same thing- no, I'll be damned first.

  His apartment was nothing like the others in Todos Santos. It was large, because his status rated a large place; but much of the space was concentrated in one enormous room. There was a small bedroom, but he seldom used it because it was too far from the drafting table; he'd forgotten a good idea once while stumbling from bedroom to drafting table, and that wasn't ever going to happen again.

  The drafting table dominated a whole side of the big room: a vast expanse of metal surface littered with drafting instruments and bordered by switches and buttons; when he drew on it, an image went into his computer files and was accessible in his office, or on a job site. Another wall held awards, framed scrolls and trophies. Books took up another. There wasn't room for all the books he needed-and where should he keep them, here or in his office suite? Better to get them read into the electronic brains of Todos Santos. Somehow, though, storing his books in computer memory hadn't conquered the mess: the room was still littered with letter trays full of papers, magazines (mostly unread but full of important articles he didn't want to miss) in half a dozen mahogany rack tables, unanswered letters spilling out of drawers. He was drowning in paper.

  He envied the quiet efficiency of Preston Sanders or Art Bonner or Frank Mead. Their assistants almost invisibly took care of details. Tony had never been able to manage that. It wasn't that he didn't have good people. Alice Strahler was a good engineer and executive assistant, and Tom Golden ran the procurement division, and- But good as his staff people were, it wasn't enough. They might protect him from mere details-but far too often he'd found that details were the key to the problem. He had to follow the minutiae, because he didn't know what would turn out to be vital.

  That led to his development of robot probes; small devices with cameras and sound equipment which could move freely through Todos Santos under Rand's direct control. If he sent out two or three of the small teleoperated devices (he called them Arr-twos after the small droid in Star Wars), Rand could effectively be in several places at once, see machinery and construction details in real time from both above and below, and generally explore without leaving his bedroom.

  Good as the Arr-twos were, with their full two-way communications and their TV screen to show Rand's face, he'd found it necessary to get out and talk to the technicians and carpenters and pipe fitters and maintenance people; talk to them himself, because most construction people didn't like talking to an Arr-two even with Rand's TV image.

  And he had to go himself. His subordinates, even the best ones, didn't seem able to recognize an important point when they heard it. And getting around Todos Santos took time, which meant that the journals and magazines and letters piled up until he was hopelessly behind-

  The phone rang. Genevieve again? he wondered. What in hell does she want this time? "Hello," he barked at the empty room.

  "Strahler here, Chief," the phone speaker said.

  Uh oh. Alice wouldn't call about something trivial. "Oh, ah, yeah, hello."

  "Sorry to bother you at dinner time. We have a problem on that carbon filament reinforcing lattice. Medland can't deliver on time."

  "Sir?"

  "Nothing. We need that stuff." Boy do we ever need it, and it's completely out of our control, damn it all to hell! How would we handle this if we were a space colony? Or a starship? "Alice, the schedule's godawful tricky,
and-"

  "That's why I called," Strahler said. "I tried alternate sources. Farbenwerke has the best delivery schedule, but it's still a four week delay. But I did find a condominium going up in Diamond Bar that has enough to take care of us for a month, and they've got a strike so they don't need it right now. We can buy theirs and have Farbenwerke ship ours to Diamond Bar-but they'll want a premium."

  "Sounds like you've done your homework," Tony said.

  "Yeah. But it'll cost us," she said. "Rescheduling around a four-week delay costs one point six million. The Diamond Bar deal costs nine hundred thousand. I can't find any other choices."

  "Pretty clear what we have to do," Rand said.

  "Yes. Shall I talk to the comptroller?"

  "Yeah. Do that. Say, this is Tom's job, not yours."

  "Mr. Golden has an anniversary party," Strahler said. "His wife would leave him if he missed it. So I took it."

  "Thanks, Alice. Okay, make the deal."

  "Sure will. Good night."

  "Good night," Rand said. "Finished with phone." An expensive call, he thought. Nine hundred thousand bucks, no small sum. Oh, well. Alice and Tom would take care of it. That was the kind of thing he thought of as a detail, no matter how much money might be involved; somebody else could handle it. But if he hadn't got his hands dirty working on the sewage treatment system, he'd never have found out that the instrumentation pathway wasn't workable until the system was finished. He shuddered at the memory. They'd have had to tear out a concrete wall and delay completion of the new residential wing. .

  It was only by accumulating details that you found something like that-and the way the details fit together wasn't at all obvious, which meant there was no rational filing system for them, resulting in the mess in his apartment (his office was kept relatively neat) because you never knew when you'd need an old memo or an article.

  Maybe, Rand thought; maybe if I had an implant? Is that how Bonner keeps track of everything? But Pres manages without one, and so does Mead.

  He put on a clean shirt. It was time to meet Bonner and Stevens and, what was his name? Reedy. Time to meet them for dinner.

  The dining hall was large enough for six thousand people and served an entire level. Holographic panels along one entire wall gave the impression that it looked out over the sea; sailboats moved on the Bay, and lights winked as sunset shadowed Catalina Island in the distance. The great bulk of the iceberg in the Santa Monica harbor was outlined against the dying sunlight, a mountainous island that shone too brightly to be stone.

  "That's lovely," Sir George said. "And quite realistic."

  "It ought to be," MacLean Stevens told him. "They've piped the view inside."

  "Yep. Real time," Rand said proudly. "Cost less than moving the dining hall. There's never enough outside view area, and-" He cut himself off. He hadn't come to talk, but to listen. That was going to take careful control; he'd been told he talked too much, and he supposed it was true, although he never said anything he wouldn't have wanted said to him if he didn't know the information.

  And certainly he had reason to be pleased at Reedy's response:

  appreciative silence, and another close look at the holographs. "Pity the ceiling is so low," Reedy observed finally. "But even so the illusion is nearly perfect."

  Art Bonner laughed, a short polite sound. Tony Rand had no trouble reading Bonner's mind: the cost of the holographic walls had been high enough without using up valuable space to give high ceilings to the Common rooms. Rand had suggested it and got nowhere.

  Art hadn't wanted the holographs, either, but Tony insisted- and brought them in under budget, too. He was proud of that. The Commons wouldn't be nearly so nice without that illusion of looking out- The room was filled with the buzz of conversation and clicking plates. There were the random sounds of people in motion. "A good bit less noise than I'd have imagined for this many diners," Reedy said.

  Rand was about to tell him about the acoustic design: wails subtly not parallel, indentations at key places, and the rest, but Reedy wasn't listening.

  "Custom again," MacLean Stevens said. "Deeply ingrained custom. Developed pretty rapidly, too."

  "Doubtless there is selectivity," Reedy said. "Those who can't adapt won't stay long."

  "The idea is to adapt the habitat to the inhabitants' needs," Art Bonner said.

  "You seem to have done well," Reedy replied.

  The tables were long and narrow, with a pair of moving beltways down the center. Dirty dishes came from their right, and a continuous stream of food and beverages and clean utensils poured from some cornucopia to the left. "Take a place," Art Bonner said. "You can choose your own company, or wait for someone to choose you."

  "No reservations?" Reedy asked.

  "No. It's a random proposition." Bonner led them to an empty stretch at a long table. "Scheduling's going to catch hell for this if it doesn't fill up." He paused for a moment to stare at nothing.

  That's the value of that implant, Rand thought. He's just made a note, with all the details, and tomorrow MILLIE will remind him to think about schedules.

  Reedy waited until he saw Bonner was attentive again. Then he said, "How can you plan without reservations?"

  Bonner shrugged. "We manage."

  Stevens's voice was carefully controlled as he said, "Residents must take a certain number of meals in the Commons. They're not only charged for them as part of the services, but they pay extra if they skip out too many times. With that incentive it's a simple matter of queuing theory mathematics."

  "Not all that simple," Rand said.

  Reedy frowned. "That doesn't seem very pleasant."

  They took seats, Reedy and Bonner on one side of the table, Rand and Stevens on the other. The moving dishes and foods seemed to distract Reedy and made it hard for him to talk across the table. Bonner didn't seem to notice.

  "You'll find clean plates coming along any second," Bonner said. "I think you'll like the meal, and certainly it's efficient." Pause. "Tonight's was only seven dollars twenty-eight cents per person that we'll serve, assuming the projection's right. If you see something you like, just take it. When you've served yourself, put the rest back on the conveyor."

  "Is that sanitary?" Reedy asked.

  "Certainly." Bonner snared a covered dish of chicken fricassee. "There are no more than four portions in a dish to begin with. And we've empirical evidence, too. Check our absenteeism due to minor illness-"

  Reedy looked thoughtful. "Quite low," he said.

  "Check the LA rate for comparison. Not that they have as good data as we have, but it gives you an idea."

  Rand watched them carefully. In his office he could have got the same data just as quickly, but here he would have to take out his pocket communications terminal, type in the question, and read the answer. Reedy and Bonner simply thought the question and got the answer piped into their heads without interrupting the conversation.

  "There's another reason for no more than four portions to a dish," Rand said. "If the FROMATES do get in and poison some dishes they won't kill many people-"

  "Oh dear. Is there much chance of that?" Reedy asked. He seemed to have lost his appetite.

  "Almost none," Rand assured him. "The security agents watch all the time." He waved toward the low ceiling.

  Reedy glanced around nervously, as if feeling eyes on the back of his neck. Then plates and silver came past and he took them. Bonner handed him Hungarian goulash, and vegetables and bread quickly followed. There was tea and coffee, and milk, and water, and fruit juice. The goulash was hot and smelled deliciously of paprika.

  Rand ate eagerly, but Reedy was still hesitant.

  "Gets to you, doesn't it?" MacLean Stevens said gently. He began to eat. "Not much you can do about it, so enjoy your meal."

  "About what?" Rand asked.

  "Being watched all the time."

  "But we're not watched all the time," Rand said. "The guards follow a random surveillance pattern."

&nbs
p; "What do you do if you catch them?" Reedy asked. "Saboteurs. Or even just pickpockets."

  Bonner snorted. "That's a sore subject. What happens is, we turn them over to Mac's police, and they let them go."

  Sir George lifted an eyebrow. "Really, Mr. Stevens?"

  "Not quite-"

  "Close enough," Bonner said. "Let's suppose we catch an Angelino with his hand in a stockholder's pocket. Suppose we've got him dead to rights, a dozen witnesses. We call the LA police. They come get him. One of the District Attorney's people comes out and takes statements. So far so good.

  "But now the Public Defender gets in the act. It'll be some bright youngster just out of law school, anxious to make a reputation. So we get delays. Continuances. Every time the victim and our witnesses show up, the Public Defender isn't available. Schedule conflict. Something. Until the day the victim isn't available, and wham! That's the day they insist on a speedy trial."