The Years of the City

by Frederik Pohl

  When Ella came out of her office she was no longer raging, but there was a frozen anger, and when Bratislaw tried to question her she simply said, “Wait a while.” She sat him down next to the ruin of the mirror, and herself sat across the room, smoking and refusing to answer questions. When the doorbell at last rang she motioned to him to get it.

  It was two goons from the hiring hall.

  It was obvious that Ella had been expecting them. She didn’t get up, or slow down the pace of her smoking, or even look surprised. She just said, “Go along with them, Bratislaw. You’ve got no choice.” And then, just as the door was closing behind them, he heard, or thought he heard, one thing more:

  “Good luck.”

  Good luck was what he needed. Once they got him down to the basement garage they paused to work him over—not viciously, not with intent to maim; one held him while the other punched him half a dozen times in the belly and chest and kidneys, then they reversed roles and the other took his shots. It was bad, all right; it was as much pain as Bratislaw had ever felt, and when he was through vomiting and gasping they pushed him into their car with the world swimming around him.

  But they hadn’t broken any bones.

  It was because of that that, when the car pulled up next to the union headquarters and his captors led him to the private entrance in back Bratislaw did not resist. There was also the question of whether he would be able to, because their scientific punchup had left his entire torso radiant with pain. As the guard at the private entrance slammed the door behind them Bratislaw wondered if he would ever see the other side of it again; but that was only fear, not reason. Reason told him that if they wanted him dead they would have found some better place to do it in.

  They didn’t, evidently, want him dead—at least not yet. They didn’t even beat him any more. They took him to a room in the subbasement, and for a weird moment Bratislaw thought perhaps it was a clinic. Perhaps they were going to bandage him and poultice him and maybe even apologize to him for the misunderstanding. That was wrong, too. The clinic had other purposes. The two muscles sat down in one corner of the room and said nothing and did nothing further; the action was in the hands of three competent-looking people in white coats. They slipped a needle into Bratislaw’s rump and wrapped him with tubing and strapped him with damp pads on arms and neck; and for three hours one of them asked him questions, from a written sheet, while the other two studied the traces of instrument pens on rolling paper.

  They did not tell him anything at all. Not then, and not even when it was all over and they were whispering among themselves, while he was at last unstrapped and permitted to smoke a cigarette and the hazy, giddy numbness that had struck him as soon as the needle went into his skin began to go away. Some things they didn’t have to tell him, because the questions were themselves an answer. There had been a leak. Someone had evidence, somewhere, about the connection between Judge Margov and Ella Jennalec. The connection had something to do with an act of homosexual rape the judge had committed twenty-five years before; Ella was blackmailing him, and that was all new to Bratislaw. Perhaps the startlement when he was asked about that was the biggest factor in Bratislaw’s favor. At last one of them disappeared to another room to make a telephone call. While they waited for him to return Bratislaw had plenty of time to think; the clouds were lifting from his brain, the pain in his belly and ribs had not become less but had at least become familiar. He was in trouble. Ella was in trouble; she was suspended from all union offices, and therefore her personal attendant was down the tube no matter what else happened—no more job, no more draft exemption; the best he could hope for was that he would be allowed to live…

  And he was. Without explanation; without apology. He was taken to the same rear door and pushed out onto the sidewalk, and the door closed behind him.

  There was something he had to do. Whether doing it was smart was a whole other question. The answer would depend on how far and fast the word had spread. He pulled himself together, studied his face in a store window, brushed some dried flecks of something or other off his jacket, took his amulet off, wadded it with its chain in a pocket and walked around to the front entrance.

  The guard at the metal-detector nodded and waved him in through the private entrance. Vastly relieved, Bratislaw shook his head. “I just want to borrow your fluoroscope. We took this off a wise guy, and I want a look inside.”

  “Sure, Bratislaw.” The guard took the amulet and put it on the rolling belt; Bratislaw crowded up beside him and looked at the CRT.

  The image slid into view, the hard, dark picture of the gold chain, and the ghost of the amulet.

  But the ghost had a skeleton. Two tiny reels, some wiring, a solid blot that was probably the recording head, the filmy outline of magnetic tape.

  “Looks like you caught yourself a bugger,” said the guard, smiling enviously.

  “I guess so,” said Bratislaw, trying to look triumphant when what he wanted to do was scream, or run, or hit something. Failing any of those, what he wanted most of all was a confrontation with the person who had got him into this mess. He wanted it badly, and right away.

  VI

  It was Heidi’s good luck that she wasn’t at home. All he found was a note on the CRT:

  NIGHT SHIFT—I’LL BE BACK AROUND FIVE A.M.

  But Bratislaw couldn’t wait until five A.M. He couldn’t go out again the way he was, either, so he stripped the clothes off his aching body, stood under the healing hot shower as long as the timer would allow and dressed clean. Halfway through he poured himself five ounces of Scotch and sipped at it. It made him realize he hadn’t eaten for nearly ten hours, so he broke two eggs into a pan; but before they had begun to cook he had changed his mind. He dumped the mess into the organic disposer, swallowed the rest of the Scotch and went downstairs to hail a cab.

  The driver grumbled all the way out through Brooklyn about having to leave a fare in the middle of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Bratislaw didn’t even listen. He was icy calm and walled inside his own thoughts, which were unpleasant. When they arrived at the pylon he thrust the money at the woman there, didn’t wait for change and headed for the pier elevator. “You got a pass, Mac?” the guard asked, but Bratislaw had his story all prepared. He shook his head.

  “No pass, friend, but it’s kind of emergency. See, my wife’s a controller topside. She’s pregnant and she left her medicine at home. I sure don’t want anything to go wrong. It’s our first—”

  Whether the guard was convinced or not Bratislaw could not tell, but at least that got him into the elevator and up to the working levels. He had not expected to be let into the control tower itself, and wasn’t. But he was put in a visitors’ room with thick bulletproof glass between him and the controllers’ room. He could see Heidi before a multicolored console, fingers dancing over a keyboard, speaking into the microphone pinned to her blouse. When the guard spoke to her she glanced up at Bratislaw and nodded.

  A few minutes later her relief took over and she joined him in the room. “Hi, honey, what’s up? I’ve only got ten minutes—this’ll be my pee break.”

  “What’s up,” he said, “is you bugged me. I’ve been carrying a taper around in that amulet you gave me. You pretty nearly got me killed, and it could happen yet.”

  She nodded. It wasn’t a frightened nod, or an apologetic one—not even a startled one; it was as though he had told her that the co-op had been out of swordfish and so he’d got salmon steaks for their dinner that night. Information received, reaction none. She sat down on a bench facing him and folded her hands in her lap. “I was afraid they’d suspect you sooner or later,” she said.

  “Suspect me! They fucking pulverized me! They even scopped me.”

  She was nodding again in that same absent way. “Yes, I thought that might happen too. So it was better if you didn’t know about the bug. That way you wouldn’t have to try to lie.”

  “Heidi!”

  Her expression still did not change, b
ut two tears were gathering on her eyelids. She took a deep breath and said, “I’ve thought about what would happen when you found out—when they caught you, or whatever. You’re entitled to know what it’s all about.” He laughed, sharp and bitter, but she did not respond, simply kept on with her prepared address. “Your boss is going to hold a pistol to the city’s head. She wants to abolish the Universal Town Meeting, and she’s going to do something violent.”

  “Come on, Heidi! Of course she’s against it, but that doesn’t prove she’s going to do anything illegal.”

  “Proof was the trouble. My sister didn’t have any,” said Heidi, and the tears that slipped down her cheeks were replaced by two new ones. “She got that amulet made and she wanted me to get you to wear it. I refused. Then when Ella Jennalec had her beaten up—”

  “She didn’t!”

  “She did, and if you think about it you’ll know she did. Anyway, Lucy can’t do it any more. I have to do it for her. I’ve given every one of your tapes to the D.A.”

  Bratislaw gasped, appalled, “They’ll kill me!”

  “They’ll give you protection if you agree to be a friendly witness.”

  “I’ll be a friendly corpse!”

  Steadfastly Heidi said, “You have to take that chance, Jeff.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m sorry, Jeff, but if I had to do it over again, I’d do it. Now we pregnant women have our problems, so I’d better use the rest of my break the way it was meant.”

  Bratislaw slept little that night. Before daylight he was up and dressed and out of the apartment, because he did not want to see his wife again. It wasn’t that there were not things he wanted to say to her. What he feared was the things he might do to her.

  That was not all he feared, for the day that was just dawning, in rain and wind, was full of things to be feared. The chances were excellent that he was now unemployed; what would that do to his draft status? Surely Heidi would now tell the D.A. that he knew about the tapes; subpoenas would be flying, and what would he do about the one with his name on it? He nursed a cup of coffee in a diner on the far West Side, gazing out at the skeletal dome building over the river and the rain lashing at it, and thought bleakly that none of those things were the worst. The worst was that when Jennalec found out what had actually happened the thugs would no longer want information from him. They would want his life. And this day just beginning might quite possibly be the last he would ever see.

  It took all the courage Bratislaw had to show up at Ella Jennalec’s apartment at seven-thirty that morning.

  But the funny thing was that the day that had begun so badly brightened fast. Jennalec wasn’t apologetic. The most you could say was that she was just, or trying to be, but it was more than Bratislaw had expected. “Mistakes happen, Jeff,” she said, standing by the table, a slice of toast in one hand, hot coffee in the other. “Hazards of the trade. They thought it might be you that was talking.”

  Bratislaw opened his mouth, but she kept on talking. “You better not work for me any more though, Jeff. Pity. I’ll miss you. But you wanted high steel work anyway, didn’t you? And they’re putting on extra shifts. The man you want to see is Woody Vult up at Governor’s Island; he’s expecting you, better get up there right away.”

  And ninety minutes later Jeff Bratislaw was working on the dome itself.

  The rain was only an occasional sprinkle now, blown one way or another with the veering wind. Not a good day to go up on the bulging whaleback of steel framing that lay before Bratislaw, but the other men didn’t seem worried about it and the foremen shooed them all into the lift cage together. Bratislaw felt his chest try to settle into his gut as the acceleration hit. The lift wasn’t straight up. It was up and over the great ground bulge of the skeletal dome, changing thrust as they climbed. The cage was gimbaled inside its split-cylinder shell, so the floor remained down. But the shell rocked like a carnival ride.

  They stopped less than a third of the way up and the men spilled out onto a stage. Bratislaw felt a hand on his shoulder. “You, too,” said the foreman. “Shoe up!” And then, watching Bratislaw turn the dish-shaped plastic over in his hands in puzzlement, “Oh, shit. Come over here, you!” Out of earshot of the others, negligently touching with one hand a cable that Bratislaw was clinging to for dear life: “You ever been on the high steel before? No, I thought not. Damn that Ella!” He glared furiously at the other men, chattering among themselves, his face scowling while he thought. It was a dark face but not Negroid, and his accent was more New England than black. “I’ve got two choices. I can kick your ass off here. That’s what I ought to do. Or I can take a chance that you’ll kill yourself. Which do you want?”

  What Bratislaw wanted he didn’t want to say, since it was to be off that place where the wind thrust raggedly in all directions and the vents moaned and whistled and screamed. Woody Vult gave him what he said was the easiest job on the shell. It was to attach bundles of optical fibers to the structural members of the dome. When stressed, the transmission of laser-light through them varied and the strain registered on monitors below; when they broke, it called for a repair crew. So Bratislaw went out with his bowl-shaped shoes laced to his boots and a reel of colored sticky tape over one shoulder, dragging the fibers behind him as he pulled and rappelled himself across the dome with the handlines. It was a job for a man with at least three hands, preferably a man, like Vult, with Mohawk ancestry. Bratislaw had none of those. What he had was a determination to stick with it, and for the first hour, as he clung desperately and sweated fiercely and shook with fright, it didn’t seem enough.

  But as the day warmed and the sun came out, it began to seem not so bad. Bratislaw had never been so high in the open. Five hundred feet below the bridge and the river were toys; out across Brooklyn and Queens he could see planes taking off and landing and a thin knife-edge of blue that might be the Atlantic Ocean. All around him, on the swell of the dome, he could see other crews at work, sliding in the transparent panels and tacking them down, rappelling themselves with a grace and ease he so desperately envied. He couldn’t do that. His grip on the lifelines was still tetanic. The others didn’t fail to notice it, and when he returned for more cables every half hour or so he was the butt of jokes. Sometimes advice, too, or even information: “One hand for you, one hand for the job—never forget it!” “Every hundred feet up means one extra mile per hour wind.” “Push is cube of wind speed—twice as much wind, eight times as much push—you wait till it gets strong, boy!” And always, from the foreman, “You guys get your ass moving! We got a schedule to meet!”

  The schedule wasn’t important, really—construction jobs are never on schedule. What was important was the weather. If the dome had been covered in on time there would have been no problem, for once it had its integrity it was aerodynamically proof against winds of a hundred and fifty miles an hour—more than had ever been recorded anywhere near New York by far. But with half the hexagonal panels in place and half missing, a really big wind would get right under and scoop it up. It would become an airfoil on its way to Oz—with, to be sure, hell’s own mess of catastrophes left behind as pylons fell and cables snapped and great acre-sized sails tumbled and scraped across the city. So far the weather had spared them. But it was storm time.

  “You! Bratislaw! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” It was the foreman, Vult, scuttling up behind him. “Jesus, look at the way you’ve put them in, so loose the whole damn dome’ll come down before they register!”

  For nearly half an hour Bratislaw had been concentrating on the work and the odd sense of satisfaction it gave him to be up so high and fear it so little, but all of a sudden he realized he was fifty stories high in a growing wind. “I’ll do it over,” he gasped.

  “You’ll do shit! I’ll get somebody who knows what he’s doing! Anyway, you’re transferred up.”

  “Transferred up?”

  “What I said! Jennalec wants you on top, and she sent somebody to get you.” And Bratislaw turned and loo
ked past the foreman, and there coming toward them along the lifelines was Tiny Martineau.

  If Bratislaw had thought fast he could have told the foreman to stick his job up his nose and made a safe, if unheroic, retreat. He didn’t think fast. By the time he decided that was what he wanted to do the foreman was well out of earshot and Martineau was grinning. “Up you go,” he said comfortably, interposing his body between Bratislaw and the way down. Although the cast was off, he still favored that leg.

  “Look, Tiny,” Bratislaw began, measuring him for size. He wasn’t as big as Martineau but the difference wasn’t much. In a fair fight they’d come out even enough—

  “Up,” grinned Martineau, and showed the blade in his hand. It was a sleeve knife, razor sharp. The fight would not be fair. Bratislaw edged back and up, his eyes fixed on the steel.

  “Tiny,” he said, “you and Ella’ve got this all wrong. I don’t know what you think, but I’ll never testify!”

  “Right,” said Tiny cheerfully. “Just keep going up and we won’t have any trouble.”

  That did not seem likely to Bratislaw, especially as there wasn’t anything he could see up higher along the dome that was worth going to. They were getting out of the area where the plastic had been put in place, and his snowshoes had become useless. “I can’t go any farther than this, Tiny,” he said.

  “Sure you can. Take off the shoes. We don’t have much farther to go.”

  Bratislaw, one hand on the cable, bent down to release the lashings with the other. He kept his eyes on Martineau. It wasn’t hard to do; there wasn’t anybody else around to look at, and Martineau obligingly kept his distance.