Return From The Stars Part 5

"It varies. Sometimes twenty, sometimes five, or nothing."

"Aha. Thank you."

"Hal! Listen!"

"I'm listening."

"Let's not end it this way. . ."

"We're not ending a thing," I said, "because nothing ever began. Thanks for everything, Nais."

I put down the receiver. Living costs nothing? That interested me most at the moment. Did that mean that there were some things, some services, free of charge?

The telephone again.

"Bregg here."

"This is reception. Mr. Bregg, Omnilox has sent you a calster. I am sending it up."

"Thank you -- h.e.l.lo!"

"Yes?"

"Does one pay for a room?"

"No, sir."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing, sir."

"And is there a restaurant in the hotel?"

"Yes, there are four. Do you wish to have breakfast in your room?"

"All right, and. . . does one pay for meals?"

"No, sir. You now have the calster. Breakfast will be served in a moment."

The robot hung up, and I did not have time to ask where I was supposed to look for the calster. I had no idea what it looked like. Getting up from the desk, which, abandoned, immediately shrank and shriveled up, I saw a kind of stand growing out of the wall next to the door; on it lay a flat object wrapped in transparent plastic and resembling a small cigarette case. On one side it had a row of little windows, in them showed the number 1100 1000. At the bottom were two tiny b.u.t.tons labeled "1" and "0." I looked at it, puzzled, until I realized that the sum of five thousand had been entered in the binary system. I pressed the "1" and a small plastic triangle with the number 1 stamped on it fell into my hand. This, then, was a kind of stamping machine or press for money, up to the amount indicated in the windows -- the number at the top decreased by a unit.

I was dressed and ready to leave when I remembered about Adapt. I phoned and told them that I had been unable to find their man at the Terminal.

"We were getting worried about you," said a woman's voice, "but we learned this morning that you were staying at the Alcaron. . ."

They knew where I was. Why, then, had they not found me at the station? Planned that way, no doubt. I was supposed to get lost, so as to realize how rash my "rebellion" on Luna had been.

"Your information is correct," I replied politely. "At present I am going out to see the city. I'll report to you later."

I left the room; corridors flowed, silver and in motion, and the wall along with them -- something new to me. I took an escalator down and on successive floors pa.s.sed bars; one of them was green, as if submerged in water; each level had its own dominant color, silver, gold, already this had begun to annoy me. And after a single day! Odd that they liked it. Strange tastes. But then I recalled the view of the Terminal at night, I needed to get myself some clothes. With that decision I stepped out into the street. The sky was overcast, but the clouds were bright, high up, and the sun shone through them occasionally. Only now did I see -- from the boulevard, down the center of which ran a double line of huge palms with leaves as pink as tongues -- a panorama of the city. The buildings stood like islands, set apart, and here and there a spire soared to the heavens, a frozen jet of some liquid material, its height incredible. They were no doubt measured in whole kilometers. I knew -- someone had told me back on Luna -- that no one built them any more and that the rush to construct tall buildings had died a natural death soon after these had been put up. They were monuments to a particular architectural epoch, since, apart from their immensity, offset only by their slimness of form, there was nothing in them to appeal to the eye. They looked like pipes, brown and gold, black and white, transversely striped, or silver, serving to support or trap the clouds, and the landing pads that jutted out from them against the sky, hanging in the air on tubular supports, were reminiscent of bookshelves.

Much more attractive were the new buildings, without windows, so that all their walls could be decorated. The entire city took on the appearance of a gigantic art exhibit, a showcase for masters of color and form. I cannot say that I liked everything that adorned those twenty- and thirty-floor heights, but for a hundred-and-fifty-year-old character I was not, I dare say, overly stuffy. To my mind the most attractive were the buildings divided in half by gardens. Maybe they were not houses -- the fact that the structures were cut in the middle and seemed to rest on cus.h.i.+ons of air (the walls of those high-level gardens being of gla.s.s) gave an impression of lightness; at the same time pleasantly irregular belts of ruffled green cut across the edifices.

On the boulevards, along those lines of fleshlike palms, which I definitely did not like, flowed two rivers of black automobiles. I knew now that they were called gleeders. Above the buildings flew other machines, though not helicopters or planes; they looked like pencils sharpened at both ends.

On the walkways were a few people, but not as many as there had been in the city a hundred years earlier. There had been a marked easing of traffic, pedestrian especially, perhaps because of the multiplication of levels, for beneath the city that I had seen spread successive, lower, subterranean tiers, with streets, squares, stores -- a corner infor told me, for example, that it was best to shop at the Serean level. It was a first-rate infor, or maybe by now I was expressing myself better, because it gave me a little plastic book with four fold-outs, maps of the city's transit system. When I wanted to go somewhere, I touched the silver-printed name -- street, level, square -- and instantly on the map a circuit of all the necessary connections lit up. I could also travel by gleeder. Or by rast. Or -- finally -- on foot; therefore, four maps. But I realized now that traveling on foot (even with the moving walkways and escalators) often took many hours.

Serean, unless I was mistaken, was the third level. And again the city astounded me: coming out of the tunnel, I found myself not underground but on a street beneath the open sky, in the full light of the sun; in the center of a square grew great pines, farther off the striped spires took on a blue tint, and, in the other direction, behind a small pool in which children were splas.h.i.+ng, riding the water with colorful little bikes, there stood a white skysc.r.a.per, cut by palm-green bands and with a most peculiar caplike structure, s.h.i.+ning like gla.s.s, on its summit. I regretted that there was no one I could ask about this curiosity; then suddenly I remembered -- or, rather, my stomach reminded me -- that I had not eaten breakfast, for I had completely forgotten that it was to be sent to my room at the hotel, and I had left without waiting for it. Perhaps the robot at reception had made a mistake.

Back, then, to the infor; I no longer did anything without first checking out exactly what and how, and in any event the infor could also reserve a gleeder for me, although I was not about to ask for one yet, since I did not know how to get inside the thing, let alone what to do after that; but I had time.

In the restaurant, one look at the menu and I saw that it was complete Greek to me. I firmly asked for breakfast, a normal breakfast.

"Ozote, kress, or herma?"

Had the waiter been human, I would have asked him to bring what he himself preferred, but it was a robot. It could not matter to a robot.

"Is there coffee?" I asked uneasily.

"There is. Kress, ozote, or herma?"

"Coffee, and. . . well, whatever goes best with coffee, that, uh. . ."

"Ozote" it said and went away.

Success.

It must have had everything prepared, for it returned immediately, and with such a heavily loaded tray that I supected some trick or joke. But the sight of the tray made me realize, apart from the bons I had eaten the day before, and a cup of the notorious brit, I had eaten nothing since my return.

The only familiar thing was the coffee, which was like boiled tar. The cream was in tiny blue specks and definitely came from no cow. I wished I could have observed someone, to see how to eat all this, but apparently the time for breakfast was over, because I was alone. Small plates, crescent-shaped, contained steaming ma.s.ses from which protruded things like matchsticks, and in the middle was a baked apple; not an apple, of course, and not matchsticks, and what I took for oatmeal began to rise at the touch of a spoon. I ate everything; I was, it turned out, ravenous, so that the nostalgia for bread (of which there was not a trace) came to me only later, as an afterthought, when the robot appeared and waited at a distance.

"What do I pay?" I asked it.

"Nothing, thank you," it said. It was more a piece of furniture than a mannequin. It had one round eye of crystal. Something moved about inside, but I could not bring myself to peer into its stomach. There was not even anyone for me to tip. I doubted that it would understand me if I asked it for a paper; perhaps there were none now. So I went out shopping. But first I found the travel agency -- a revelation. I went in.

The large hall, silver with emerald consoles (I was getting tired of these colors), was practically empty. Frosted-gla.s.s windows, enormous color photographs of the Grand Canyon, the Crater of Archimedes, the cliffs of Deimos, Palm Beach, Florida -- done in such a way that, looking at them, one had the impression of depth, and even the waves of the ocean moved, as if these were not photographs but windows opening onto actual scenes. I went to the counter with the sign EARTH.

Sitting there, of course, was a robot. This time a gold one. Rather, gold-sprinkled.

"What can we do for you?" it asked, It had a deep voice. If I closed my eyes, I could have sworn that the speaker was a muscular, dark-haired man.

"I want something primitive," I said. "I've just returned from a long journey, a very long one. I don't want too much comfort. I want peace and quiet, water, trees, there could be mountains, too. Only it should be primitive and old-fas.h.i.+oned. Like a hundred years ago. Do you have anything like that?"

"If you desire it, we must have it. The Rocky Mountains. Fort Plumm. Majorca. The Antilles."

"Something closer," I said. "Yes . . . within a radius of a thousand kilometers. Is there anything?"

"Clavestra."

"Where is that?"

I had noticed that I had no difficulty conversing with robots, because absolutely nothing surprised them. They were incapable of surprise. A very sensible quality.

"An old mining settlement near the Pacific. The mines have not been in use for almost four hundred years. Interesting excursions on walkways underground. Convenient ulder and gleeder connections. Rest homes with medical care, villas to rent, with gardens, swimming pools, climate conditioning; our local office organizes all kinds of activities, excursions, games, social gatherings. Also available -- real, moot, and stereon."

"Yes, that might suit me," I said. "A villa with a garden. And there has to be water. A swimming pool, you said?"

"Naturally, sir. A swimming pool with diving boards. There are also artificial lakes with underwater caves, a well-equipped facility for divers, underwater shows. . ."

"Never mind about the shows. What does it cost?"

"A hundred and twenty ets a month. But if you share with another party, only forty."

"Share?"

"The villas are very s.p.a.cious, sir. From twelve to eighteen rooms -- automatic service, cooking done on the premises, local or exotic, whichever you prefer. . ."

"Yes. I just might ... all right. My name is Bregg. I'll take it. What is the name of the place? Clavestra? Do I pay now?"

"As you wish."

I handed it my calster.

It turned out that only I could operate the calster, but the robot was not in the least surprised by my ignorance. More and more I was beginning to like them. It showed me what I had to do so that only one disc, with the correct number stamped on it, came out. The numbers in the windows at the top were reduced by the same amount, showing the balance of the account.

"When can I go there?"

"Whenever you wish. At any moment."

"But -- with whom am I sharing the villa?"

"The Margers. He and she."

"Can you tell me what sort of people they are?"

"Only that they are a young married couple."

"Hm. And I won't disturb them?"

"No. Half of the villa is up for rent, and you will have an entire floor to yourself."

"Good. How do I get there?"

"By ulder would be best."

"How do I do that?"

"I will have the ulder for you on the day and hour you designate."

"I'll phone from my hotel. Is that possible?"

"Certainly, sir. The payment will be reckoned from the moment you enter the villa."

When I left, I already had the vague outline of a plan. I would buy books and some sports equipment. Most important were the books. I should also subscribe to some specialized journals. Sociology, physics. No doubt a ma.s.s of things had been done in the past hundred years. And yes, I had to buy myself some clothes.

But again I was sidetracked. Turning a corner, I saw -- I didn't believe my eyes -- a car. A real car. Perhaps not exactly as I remembered it: the body was designed all in sharp angles. It was, however, a genuine automobile, with tires, doors, a steering wheel, and behind it stood others. Behind a large window; on it, in big letters: ANTIQUES. I went inside. The owner, or salesman, was a human. A pity, I thought.

"May I buy a car?"

"Of course. Which one would you like?"

"Do they cost much?"

"From four hundred to eight hundred ets."

Stiff, I thought. Well, antiques weren't cheap.

"And can one travel in it?" I asked.

"Naturally. Not everywhere, true -- there are local restrictions -- but in general it's possible."

"And what about fuel?" I asked cautiously, for I had no idea what lay beneath the hood.

"No problem there. One charge will last you for the life of the car. Including, of course, the parastats."

"All right," I said. "I would like something strong, durable. It doesn't have to be big, just fast."

"In that case I would suggest this giabile or that model there. . ."

He led me down a big hall, along a row of machines, which shone as if they were really new.

"Of course," the salesman continued, "they can't compare with gleeders, but, then, the automobile today is no longer a means of transportation. . ."

What is it, then? I wanted to ask, but said nothing.

"All right," I said, "how much does this one cost?" I pointed to a pale blue limousine with silver recessed headlights.

"Four hundred and eighty ets."

"But I want to have it at Clavestra," I said. "I have rented a villa there. You can get the exact address from the travel office, here, on this street."

"Excellent sir. It can be sent by ulder; that will not cost anything."

"Really? I'll be going there by ulder."

"Give us the date, then, and we will put it in your ulder. That would be simplest. Unless you would prefer. . ."

"No, no. Let it be as you say."