CHAPTER 22

 

 

Carmody was standing on a neatly trimmed plain, beneath a blue sky, with a golden-yellow sun overhead. He looked around slowly. Half a mile ahead of him he saw a small city. This city was not constructed in the common manner of an American city – with outliers of gas stations, tentacles of hot-dog stands, fringe of motels, and a protective shell of junkyards; but rather, as some Italian hill towns are fashioned, and some Swiss villages as well, suddenly rising and brusquely ending, without physical preamble or explanation, the main body of the town presenting itself all at once and without amelioration.

Despite its foreign look, Carmody felt sure that he was looking at an American city. So he advanced upon it, slowly and with heightened senses, prepared to flee if anything was amiss.

All seemed in order, however. The city had a warm and open look; its streets were laid out generously, and there was a frankness about the wide bay windows of its store fronts. As he penetrated deeper, Carmody found other delights, for just within the city he entered a piazza, just like a Roman piazza, although much smaller; and in the middle of the piazza there was a fountain, and standing in the fountain was the marble representation of a boy with a dolphin, and from the dolphin’s mouth a stream of clear water issued.

‘I do hope you like it,’ a voice said from behind Carmody’s left shoulder.

Carmody did not jump with alarm. He did not even whirl around. He had become accustomed to voices speaking from behind his back. Sometimes it seemed to him that a great many things in the galaxy liked to approach him that way.

‘It’s very nice,’ Carmody said.

‘I constructed it and put it there myself,’ the voice said. ‘It seemed to me that a fountain, despite the antiquity of the concept, is aesthetically functional. And this piazza, with its benches and shady chestnut trees, is copied from a Bolognese model. Again, I did not inhibit myself with the fear of being old-fashioned. The true artist, it seems to me, uses what he finds necessary, be it a thousand years old or one second new.’

‘I applaud your sentiment,’ Carmody said. ‘Permit me to introduce myself. I am Thomas Carmody.’ He turned, smiling, his hand outstretched. But there was no one behind his left shoulder, or behind his right shoulder, either. There was no one in the piazza, nobody at all in sight.

‘Forgive me,’ the voice said. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought you knew.’.

‘Knew what?’ Carmody asked.

‘Knew about me.’

‘Well, I don’t,’ Carmody said. ‘Who are you and where are you speaking from?’

‘I am the voice of the city,’ the voice said. ‘Or to put it another way, I am the, city itself, the veritable city, speaking to you.’

‘Is that a fact?’ Carmody said sardonically. ‘Yes,’ he answered himself, ‘I suppose it is a fact. So all right, you’re a city. Big deal!’

The fact was, Carmody was annoyed. He had encountered too many entities of great magnitude and miraculous power. He had been one-upped from one end of the galaxy to the other. Forces, creations and personifications had jumped out at him without cessation, causing him time and time again to lose his cool. Carmody was a reasonable man; he knew there was an interstellar pecking order, and that humans did not rate very high on it. But he was also a proud man. He believed that a man stood for something, if only for himself. A man couldn‘t very well go around all the time saying ‘Oh!’ and ‘Ah!’ and ‘Bless my soul!’ to the various inhuman entities that surrounded him; he couldn‘t do that and keep any self-respect. Carmody cared more than a little for his self-respect. It was, at this point, one of the few things he still possessed.

Therefore, Carmody turned away from the fountain and strolled across the piazza like a man who conversed with cities every day of his life, and who was slightly bored with the whole thing. He walked down various streets and up certain avenues. He glanced into store windows and noted the size of houses. He paused in front of statuary, but only briefly.

‘Well?’ the city said after a while.

‘Well what?’ Carmody answered instantly.

‘What do you think of me?’

‘You’re OK,’ Carmody said.

‘Only OK?’

‘Look,’ Carmody said, ‘a city is a city. When you’ve seen one, you’ve pretty much seen them all.’

‘That’s untrue!’ the city said, with some show of pique. ‘I am distinctly different from other cities. I am unique.’

‘Are you indeed?’ Carmody said scornfully. ‘To me you look like a conglomeration of badly assembled parts. You’ve got an Italian piazza, a couple Greek-type statues, a row of Tudor houses, an old-style New York tenement, a California hot-dog stand shaped like a tugboat, and God knows what else. What’s so unique about that?’

‘The combination of those forms into a meaningful entity is unique,’ the city said. ‘I present variety within a framework of inner consistency. These older forms are not anachronisms, you understand; they are representative styles of living and as such are appropriate in a well-wrought machine for living.’

‘That’s your opinion,’ Carmody said. ‘Do you have a name, by the way?’

‘Of course,’ the city said. ‘My name is Bellwether. I am an incorporated township in the State of New Jersey. Would you care to have some coffee and perhaps a sandwich or some fresh fruit?’

‘The coffee sounds good,’ Carmody said. He allowed the voice of Bellwether to guide him around the corner to an open-air café. The café was called ‘O You Kid’ and was a replica of a Gay Nineties saloon, right down to the Tiffany lamps and the cut-glass chandelier and the player piano. Like everything else that Carmody had seen in the city, it was spotlessly clean, but without people.

‘Nice atmosphere, don’t you think?’ Bellwether asked.

‘Campy,’ Carmody pronounced. ‘OK if you like that sort of thing.’ A foaming mug of cappuccino was lowered to his table on a stainless-steel tray. ‘But at least the service is good,’ Carmody added. He sipped the coffee.

‘Good?’ Bellwether asked.

‘Yes, very good.’

‘I rather pride myself on my coffee,’ Bellwether said quietly. ‘And on my cooking. Wouldn’t you like a little something? An omelette, perhaps, or a soufflé?’

‘Nothing,’ Carmody said firmly. He leaned back in his chair and said, ‘So you’re a model city, huh?’

‘Yes, that is what I have the honour to be,’ Bellwether said. ‘I am the most recent of all model cities and, I believe, the most satisfactory. I was conceived by a joint study group from Yale and the University of Chicago, who were working on a Rockefeller fellowship. Most of my practical details were devised by MIT, although some special sections of me came from Princeton and from the RAND Corporation. My actual construction was a General Electric project, and the money was procured by grants from the Ford Foundation, as well as several other institutions I am not at liberty to mention.’

‘Interesting sort of history,’ Carmody said, with unbearable nonchalance. ‘That’s a Gothic cathedral across the street, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, completely Gothic,’ said Bellwether. ‘Also, interdenominational and open to all faiths, with a designed seating capacity for three hundred people.’

‘That doesn’t seem like much for a building that size.’

‘It’s not, of course. But my idea was to combine awesomeness with cosiness. Many people liked it.’

‘Where are the people, by the way?’ Carmody asked. ‘I haven’t seen any.’

‘They have left,’ Bellwether said mournfully. ‘They have all departed.’

‘Why?’ Carmody asked.

Bellwether was silent for a while, then said, ‘There was a breakdown in city-community relations. A misunderstanding, really; or perhaps I should say, an unfortunate series of misunderstandings. I suspect that rabble-rousers, played a part in the exodus.’

‘But what happened, precisely?’

‘I don’t know,’ Bellwether said. ‘I really don’t know. One day they simply all left. Just like that! But I’m sure they’ll be back.’

‘I wonder,’ Carmody said.

‘I am convinced of it,’ Bellwether said. ‘But for the nonce, why don’t you stay here, Mr Carmody?’

‘Me? I really don’t think –’

‘You appear to be travel-weary,’ Bellwether said. ‘I’m sure the rest would do you good.’

‘I have been on the move a lot recently,’ Carmody admitted.

‘Who knows, you might find that you liked it here,’ Bellwether said. ‘And in any event, you would have the unique experience of having the most modern, up-to-date city in the world at your service.’

‘That does sound interesting,’ Carmody said. ‘I’ll have to think about it.’

He was intrigued by the city of Bellwether. But he was also apprehensive. He wished he knew exactly what had happened to the city’s occupants.