Robert Silverberg The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame Volume One, 1929-1964

by Robert Silverberg

  "Now, about those demands of yours that the Transport Commission just threw back in your face—Can I speak freely?' "Sure you can, Shorty! You can trust us!"

  "Well, of course I shouldn't say anything, but I can't help but understand how you feel. The roads are the big show these days, and you are the men who make them roll.

  It's the natural order of things that your opinions should be listened to, and your desires met. One would think that even politicians would be bright enough to see that.

  Sometimes, lying awake at night, I wonder why we technicians don't just take things over, and—"

  "Your wife is calling, Mr. Gaines."

  "Very well." He flicked off the office intercommunicator and picked up a telephone handset from his desk. "Yes, darling, I know I promised, but— You're perfectly right, darling, but Washington has especially requested that we show Mr.

  Blekinsop anything he wants to see. I didn't know he was arriving today.... No, I can't turn him over to a subordinate. It wouldn't be courteous. He's Minister of Transport for Australia- I told you that.... Yes, darling, I know that courtesy begins at home, but the roads must roll. It's my job; you knew that when you roamed me. And this is part of my job

  That's a good girl. We'll positively have breakfast together. Tell you what, order horses and a breakfast pack and we'll make it a picnic. I'll meet you in Bakersfield—usual place. Good-by, darling. Kiss Junior good night for me."

  He replaced the handset, whereupon the pretty but indignant features of his wife faded from the visor screen. A young woman came into his office. As she opened the door, she exposed momentarily the words painted on its outer side: "Diego-Reno Roadtown, Office of the Chief Engineer." He gave her a harassed glance.

  "Oh, it's you. Don't marry an engineer, Dolores, marry an artist. They have more home life."

  "Yes, Mr. Gaines. Mr. Blekinsop is here, Mr. Gaines."

  "Already? I didn't expect him so soon. The Antipodes ship must have grounded early."

  "Yes, Mr. Gaines."

  "Dolores, don't you ever have any emotions?"

  "Yes, Mr. Gaines."

  "Hm-m-m, it seems incredible, but you are never mistaken. Show Mr. Blekinsop in."

  "Very good, Mr. Gaines."

  Larry Gaines got up to greet his visitor. Not a particularly impressive little guy, he thought, as they shook hands and exchanged formal amenities. The rolled umbrella, the bowler hat, were almost too good to be true. An Oxford accent partially masked the underlying clipped, flat, nasal twang of the native Australia.

  "It's a pleasure to have you here, Mr. Blekinsop, and I hope we can make your stay enjoyable."

  The little man smiled. "I'm sure it will be. This is my first visit to your wonderful country. I feel at home already. The eucalyptus trees, you know, and the brown hills—"

  "But your trip is primarily business?"

  "Yes, yes. My primary purpose is to study your roadcities and report to my government on the advisablity of trying to adapt your startling American methods to our social problems Down Under. I thought you understood that such was the reason I was sent to you."

  "Yes, I did, in a general way. I don't know just what it is that you wish to find out.

  I suppose that you have heard about our roadtowns, how they came about, how they operate, and so forth."

  "I've read a good bit, true, but I am not a technical man, Mr. Gaines, not an engineer. My field is social and political. I want to see how this remarkable technical change has affected your people. Suppose you tell me about the roads as if I were entirely ignorant. And I will ask questions."

  "That seems a practical plan. By the way, how many are there in your party?"

  "Just myself. My secretary went on to Washington."

  "I see." Gaines glanced at his wrist watch. "It's nearly dinner time. Suppose we run up to the Stockton Sector for dinner. There is a good Chinese restaurant up there that I'm partial to. It will take us about an hour and you can see the ways in operation while we ride."

  "Excellent."

  Gaines pressed a button on his desk, and a picture formed on a large visor screen mounted on the opposite wall. It showed a strong-boned, angular young man seated at a semicircular control desk, which was backed by a complex instrument board. A cigarette was tucked in one corner of his mouth.

  The young man glanced up, grinned, and waved from the screen. "Greetings and salutations, chief. What can I do for you?"

  "Hi, Dave. You've got the evening watch, eh? I'm running up to the Stockton Sector for dinner. Where's Van Kleeck?"

  "Gone to a meeting somewhere. He didn't say."

  "Anything to report?"

  "No, sir. The roads are rolling, and all the little people are going ridey-ridey home to their dinners."

  "O.K.—keep 'em rolling."

  "They'll roll, chief."

  Gaines snapped off the connection and turned to Bleckinsop. "Van Kleeck is my chief deputy. I wish he'd spend more time on the road and less on politics. Davidson can handle things, however. Shall we go?"

  They glided down an electric staircase, and debouched on the walkway which bordered the north-bound five-mile-an-hour strip. After skirting a stairway trunk marked "Overpass to Southbound Road," they paused at the edge of the first strip.

  "Have you ever ridden a conveyor strip before?" Gaines inquired. "It's quite simple.

  Just remember to face against the motion of the strip as you get on."

  They threaded their way through homeward-bound throngs, passing from strip to strip. Down the center of the twenty-mile-an-hour strip ran a glassite partition which reached nearly to the spreading roof. The Honorable Mr. Blekinsop raised his eyebrows inquiringly as he looked at it.

  "Oh, that?" Gaines answered the unspoken question as he slid back a panel door and ushered his guest through. "That's a wind break. If we didn't have some way of separating the air currents over the strips of different speeds, the wind would tear our clothes off on the hundred- mile-an-hour strip." He bent his head to Blekinsop's as he spoke, in order to cut through the rush of air against the road surfaces, the noise of the crowd, and the muted roar of the driving mechanism concealed beneath the moving strips. The combination of noises inhibited further conversation as they proceeded toward the middle of the roadway. After passing through three more wind screens located at the forty, sixty, and eighty-mile-an-hour strips, respectively, they finally reached the maximum-speed strip, the hundred-mile-an-hour strip, which made the round trip, San Diego to Reno and back, in twelve hours.

  Blekinsop found himself on a walkway, twenty feet wide, facing another partition.

  Immediately opposite him an illuminated show-window proclaimed: JAKE'S STEAK HOUSE No. 4 The Fastest Meal on the Fastest Road!

  "To dine on the fly Makes the miles roll by!"

  "Amazing!" said Mr. Blekinsop. "It would be like dining in a tram. Is this really a proper restaurant?"

  "One of the best. Not fancy, but sound."

  "Oh, I say, could we—"

  Gaines smiled at him. "You'd like to try it, wouldn't you, sir?"

  "I don't wish to interfere with your plans—"

  "Quite all right. I'm hungry myself, and Stockton is a long hour away. Let's go in."

  Gaines greeted the manageress as an old friend. "Hello, Mrs. McCoy. How are you tonight?"

  "If it isn't the chief himself! It's a long time since we've had the pleasure of seeing your face." She led them to a booth somewhat detached from the crowd of dining commuters. "And will you and your friend be having dinner?"

  "Yes, Mrs. McCoy. Suppose you order for us—but be sure it includes one of your steaks."

  "Two inches thick—from a steer that died happy." She glided away, moving her fat frame with surprising grace.

  With sophisticated foreknowledge of the chief engineer's needs, Mrs. McCoy had left a portable telephone at the table. Gaines plugged it into an accommodation jack at the side of the booth, and dialed a number. "Hello—Davidson? Dave, this is the chief. />
  I'm in Jake's Steak House No. 4 for supper. You can reach me by calling 10-L-6-6."

  He replaced the handset, and Blekinsop inquired politely: "Is it necessary for you to be available at all times?"

  "Not strictly necessary," Gaines told him, "but I feel safer when I am in touch.

  Either Van Kleeck, or myself, should be where the senior engineer of the watch—

  that's Davidson this shift—can get hold of us in a pinch. If it's a real emergency, I want to be there, naturally."

  "What would constitute a real emergency?"

  "Two things, principally. A power failure on the rotors would bring the road to a standstill, and possibly strand millions of people a hundred miles, or more, from their homes. If it happened during a rush hour, we would have to evacuate those millions from the road—not too easy to do."

  "You say millions—as many as that?"

  "Yes, indeed. There are twelve million people dependent on this roadway, living and working in the buildings adjacent to it, or within five miles of each side."

  The Age of Power blends into the Age of Transportation almost imperceptibly, but two events stand out as landmarks in the change: The invention of the Sun-power screen, and the opening of the first moving road. The power resources of oil and coal of the United States had— save for a few sporadic outbreaks of common sense—been shamefully wasted in their development all through the first half of the twentieth century. Simultaneously, the automobile, from its humble start as a one- lunged horseless carriage, grew into a steel-bodied monster of over a hundred horsepower and capable of making more than a hundred miles an hour. They boiled over the countryside, like yeast in ferment. In the middle of the century it was estimated that there was a motor vehicle for every two persons in the United States.

  They contained the seeds of their own destruction. Seventy million steel juggernauts, operated by imperfect human beings at high speed, are more destructive than war. In the same reference year the premiums paid for compulsory liability and property damage insurance by automobile owners exceeded in amount the sum paid the same year to purchase automobiles. Safe driving campaigns were chronic phenomena, but were mere pious attempts to put Humpty-Dumpty together again. It was not physically possible to drive safely in those crowded metropolises. Pedestrians were sardonically divided into two classes, the quick and the dead.

  But a pedestrian could be defined as a man who had found a place to park his car.

  The automobile made possible huge cities, then choked those same cities to death with their numbers. In 1900 Herbert George Wells pointed out that the saturation point in the size of a city might be mathematically predicted in terms of its transportation facilities. From a standpoint of speed alone the automobile made possible cities two hundred miles in diameter, but traffic congestion, and the inescapable, inherent danger of high-powered, individually operated vehicles canceled out the possibility.

  Federal Highway No. 66 from Los Angeles to Chicago, "The Main Street of America," was transformed into a superhighway for motor vehicles, with an underspeed limit of sixty miles per hour. It was planned as a public works project to stimulate heavy industry; it had an unexpected by-product. The great cities of Chicago and St. Louis stretched out urban pseudopods toward each other, until they met near Bloomington, Illinois. The two parent cities actually shrank in population.

  The city of San Francisco replaced its antiquated cable cars with moving stairways, powered with the Douglas-Martin Solar Reception Screens. The largest number of automobile licenses in history had been issued that calendar year, but the end of the automobile was in sight. The National Defense Act closed its era.

  This act, one of the most bitterly debated ever to be brought out of committee, declared petroleum to be an essential and limited material of war. The army and navy had first call on all oil, above or below the ground, and seventy million civilian vehicles faced short and expensive rations.

  Take the superhighways of the period, urban throughout their length. Add the mechanized streets of San Franciso's hills. Heat to boiling point with an imminent shortage of gasoline. Flavor with Yankee ingenuity. The first mechanized road was opened between Cincinnati and Cleveland.

  It was, as one would expect, comparatively primitive in design. The fastest strip moved only thirty miles per hour, and was quite narrow, for no one had thought of the possibility of locating retail trade on the strips themselves. Nevertheless, it was a prototype of the social pattern which was to dominate the American scene within the next two decades —neither rural nor urban, but partaking equally of both, and based on rapid, safe, cheap, convenient transportation.

  Factories—wide, low buildings whose roofs were covered with solar power screens of the same type that drove the road—lined the roadway on each side. Back of them and interspersed among them were commercial hotels, retail stores, theaters, apartment houses. Beyond this long, thin, narrow strip was the open countryside, where much of the population lived. Their homes dotted the hills, hung on the banks of creeks, and nestled between the farms. They worked in the "city," but lived in the

  "country"—and the two were not ten minutes apart.

  Mrs. McCoy served the chief and his guest in person. They checked their conversation at the sight of the magnificent steaks. Up and down the six-hundred-mile line, sector engineers of the watch were getting in their hourly reports from their subsector technicians. "Subsector One—check!" "Subsector Two—check!"

  Tensiometer readings, voltage, load, bearing temperatures, synchrotachometer readings —"Subsector Seven—check!" Hardbitten, able men in dungarees, who lived much of their lives down inside amidst the unmuted roar of the hundred-mile strip, the shrill whine of driving rotors, and the complaint of the relay rollers.

  Davidson studied the moving model of the road, spread out before him in the main control room at Fresno Sector. He watched the barely perceptible crawl of the miniature hundred-mile strip and subconsciously noted the reference number on it which located Jake's Steak House No. 4. The chief would be getting into Stockton soon; he'd give him a ring after the hourly reports were in. Everything was quiet; traffic tonnage normal for rush hour; he would be sleepy before this watch was over.

  He turned to his cadet engineer of the watch. "Mr. Barnes."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I think we could use some coffee."

  "Good idea, sir. I'll order some as soon as the hourlies are in."

  The minute hand of the control board chronometer reached twelve. The cadet watch officer threw a switch. "All sectors, report!" he said, in crisp, self-conscious tones.

  The faces of two men flicked into view on the visor screen. The younger answered him with the same air of acting under supervision. "Diego Circle—

  rolling!"

  They were at once replaced by two more. "Angeles Sector—rolling!"

  Then: "Bakersfield Sector—rolling!"

  And: "Stockton Sector—rolling!''

  Finally, when Reno Circle had reported, the cadet turned to Davidson and reported: "Rolling, sir."

  "Very well—keep them rolling!"

  The visor screen flashed on once more. "Sacramento Sector—supplementary report."

  "Proceed."

  "Cadet Engineer Guenther, while on visual inspection as cadet sector engineer of the watch, found Cadet Engineer Alec Jeans, on watch as cadet subsector technician, and R. J. Ross, technician second class, on watch as technician for the same subsector, engaged in playing cards. K was not possible to tell with any accuracy how long they had neglected to patrol their subsector."

  "Any damage?"

  "One rotor running hot, but still synchronized. It was jacked down, and replaced."

  "Very well. Have the paymaster give Ross his time, and turn him over to the civil authorities. Place Cadet Jeans under arrest and order him to report to me."

  "Very well, sir."

  "Keep them rolling!"

  Davidson turned back to control desk and dialed Chief Engineer Games'r />
  temporary number.

  "You mentioned that there were two things that could cause major trouble on the road, Mr. Gaines, but you spoke only of power failure to the rotors."

  Gaines pursued an elusive bit of salad before answering. "There really isn't a second major trouble—it won't happen. However—we are traveling along here at one hundred miles per hour. Can you visualize what would happen if this strip under us should break?"

  Mr. Blekinsop shifted nervously in his chair. "Hm-m-m! Rather a disconcerting idea, don't you think? I mean to say, one is hardly aware that one is traveling at high speed, here in this snug room. What would the result be?"

  "Don't let it worry you; the strip can't part. It is built up of overlapping sections in such a fashion that it has a safety factor of better than twelve to one. Several miles of rotors would have to shut down all at once, and the circuit breakers for the rest of the line fail to trip out before there could possibly be sufficient tension on the strip to cause it to part.

  "But it happened once, on the Philadelphia-Jersey City road, and we aren't likely to forget it. It was one of the earliest high-speed roads, carrying a tremendous passenger traffic, as well as heavy freight, since it serviced a heavily industrialized area. The strip was hardly more than a conveyor belt, and no one had foreseen the weight it would carry. It happened under maximum load, naturally, when the highspeed way was crowded. The part of the strip behind the break buckled for miles, crushing passengers against the roof at eighty miles per hour. The section forward of the break cracked like a whip, spilling passengers onto the slower ways, dropping them on the exposed rollers and rotors down inside, and snapping them up against the roof.

  "Over three thousand people were killed in that one accident, and there was much agitation to abolish the roads. They were even shut down for a week by presidential order, but he was forced to reopen them again. There was no alternative."

  "Really? Why not?"

  "The country had become economically dependent on the roads. They were the principal means of transportation in the industrial areas— the only means of economic importance. Factories were shut down; food didn't move; people got hungry—and the president was forced to let them roll again. It was the only thing that could be done; the social pattern had crystallized in one form, and it couldn't be changed overnight. A large, industrialized population must have large-scale transportation, not only for people, but for trade."