Foundation’s Friends

by Ben Bova

  Amy kept her eyes down, ignoring the other women and girls in the common stalls until she reached the rows of shower heads. Two women were entering the private stalls in the back. Amy’s mother had been allowed a private stall some years ago, a privilege her husband had earned for both of them after a promotion, but Amy was not allowed to use it. Other parents might have granted such permission, but hers were stricter; they did not want their daughter getting too used to privileges she had not earned for herself.

  She would take her shower now, and put her clothes in the laundry slot to be cleaned; the Personal would be more crowded after dinner. Amy sighed; that wasn’t the only reason to linger here. Her mother would have received the message from Mr. Liang by now. Amy was afraid to go home and face her.

  Four women were leaving the apartment as Amy approached. She greeted them absently, and nodded when they asked if she was doing well in school. These were her mother’s more intellectual friends, the ones who discussed sociology and settled the City’s political problems among themselves before moving on to the essential business of tips for stretching quota allowances and advice on child-rearing.

  Amy’s mother stepped back as she entered; the door closed. Amy had reached the middle of the spacious living room before her mother spoke. “Where are you going, dear?”

  “Er-to my room.”

  “I think you’d better sit down. We have something to discuss.”

  Amy moved toward one of the chairs and sat down. The living room was over five meters long, with two chairs, a small couch, and an imitation leather ottoman. The apartment had two other rooms as well, and her parents even had the use of a sink in their bedroom, thanks to her father’s Civil Service rating. They both had a lot to protect, which meant that they would scold her even more for her failures.

  “You took longer than usual getting home,” her mother said as she sat down on the couch across from Amy.

  “I had to shower. Oh, shouldn’t we be getting ready to go to supper? Father’ll probably be home any minute. “

  “He told me he’d be late, so we’re not eating in the section kitchen tonight. “

  Amy bit her lip, sorry for once that her family was allowed four meals a week in their own apartment. Her parents wouldn’t have been able to harp at her at the section kitchen’s long tables in the midst of all the diners there.

  “Anyway,” her mother continued, “I felt sure you’d want to speak to me alone, before your father comes home.”

  “Oh.” Amy stared at the blue carpet. “What about?”

  “You know what about. I had a message from your guidance counselor, Mr. Liang. I know he told you he’d be speaking to me.”

  “Oh.” Amy tried to sound unconcerned. “That.”

  “He says your grades won’t be good at the end of the quarter.” Her mother’s dark eyes narrowed. “If they don’t improve soon, he’s going to invite me there for a conference, and that’s not all.” She leaned back against the couch. “He also says you’ve been seen running the strips.”

  Amy started. “Who told him that?”

  “Oh, Amy. I’m sure he has ways of finding out. Is it true?”

  “Um.”

  “Well, is it? That’s even more serious than your grades. Do you want a police officer picking you up? Did you even stop to think about the accidents you might cause, or that you could be seriously injured? You know what your father said the first time he heard about your strip-running. “

  Amy bowed her head. That had been over two years ago, and he had lectured her for hours, but had remained unaware of her activities since then. I’m the best, she thought; every runner in the City knows about me. She wanted to shout it and force her mother to acknowledge the achievement, but kept silent.

  “It’s a stupid, dangerous game, Amy. A few boys are killed every year running the strips, and passengers are hurt as well. You’re fourteen now-I thought you were more mature. I can’t believe-”

  “I haven’t been running the strips,” Amy said. “I mean, I haven’t made a run in a while.” Not since a couple of hours ago, she added silently to herself, and that wasn’t a real run, so I’m not really lying. She felt just a bit guilty; she didn’t like to lie.

  “And your grades-”

  Amy seized at the chance to avoid the more hazardous topic of strip-racing. “I know they’re worse. I know I can do better, but what difference does it make?”

  “Don’t you want to do well? You used to be one of the best math students in your school, and your science teacher always praised-”

  “So what?” Amy could not restrain herself any longer. “What good is it? What am I ever going to use it for?”

  “You have to do well if you want to be admitted to a college level. Your father’s status may make it easier for you to get in, but you won’t last if you’re not well prepared.”

  “And then what? Unless I’m a genius, or a lot better than any of the boys, they’ll just push me into dietetics courses or social relations or child psychology so I’ll be a good mother someday, or else train me to program computers until I get married. I’ll just end up doing nothing anyway, so why should I try?”

  “Nothing?” Her mother’s olive-skinned face was calm, but her voice shook a little. “Is what I do nothing, looking after you and your father? Is rearing a child and making a pleasant home for a husband nothing?”

  “I didn’t mean nothing, but why does it have to be everything? You wanted more once-you know you did. You-you-”.

  Her mother was gazing at her impassively. Amy jumped up and fled to her room.

  She lay on her narrow bed, glaring up at the soft glow of the ceiling. Her mother should have been the first to understand. Amy knew how she once had felt, but lately, she seemed to have forgotten her old dreams.

  Amy’s mother, Alysha Barone, was something of a Medievalist. That wasn’t odd; a lot of people were. They got together to talk about old ways and historical bookfilms and the times when Earth had been humanity’s only home. They dwelled nostalgically on ancient periods when people had lived Outside instead of huddling together inside the Cities, when Earth was the only world and the Spacers did not exist.

  Not that any of them could actually live Outside, without walls, breathing unfiltered air filled with microorganisms that bred disease and eating unprocessed food that had grown in dirt; Amy shuddered at the thought. Better to leave the Outside to the robots that worked the mines and tended the crops the Cities demanded. Better to live as they did, whatever the problems, and avoid the pathological ways of the Spacers, those descendants of the Earthpeople who had settled other planets long ago. They could not follow Spacer customs anyway. In a world of billions, resources could not be wasted on private houses, spacious gardens and grounds, and all the rest. Alysha Barone, despite her somewhat Medievalist views, would not be capable of leaving this City except to travel, safely enclosed, to another.

  Her mother had, however, clung to a few ancient customs, with the encouragement of a few mildly unconventional friends. Alysha Barone had insisted on keeping her own name after her marriage to Ricardo Stein, and he had agreed when she asked that Amy be given both their names. The couple had been given permission to have their first child during their first year of marriage, thanks to their Genetics Values ratings, but Amy had not been born until four years later. Both Alysha and Ricardo had been statisticians in New York’s Department of Human Resources; it made sense to work for a promotion, gain more privileges, and save more of their quota allowances before having a child. They had ignored the chiding of their own parents and the friends who had accused them of being just a little antisocial.

  Amy knew the story well, having heard most of it from her disapproving grandmother Barone. The two had each risen to a C-4 rating before Alysha became pregnant; even then, astonishingly, they had discussed which of them should give up the Department job. Only the most antisocial of couples would have tried to keep two such coveted positions. There were too many unclassified peo
ple without work, on subsistence with no chance to rise, and others who had been relegated to labor in the City yeast farm levels after losing jobs to robots. Her parents’ colleagues would have made their lives miserable if they both stayed with the Department; their superiors would have blocked any promotions, perhaps even found a way to demote them. Someone also had to look after Amy. The infant could not be left in the subsection nursery all day, and both grandmothers had refused to encourage any antisocial activity by offering to stay with the baby.

  So Alysha had given up her job. Her husband might be willing to care for a baby, but he could not nurse the child, and nursing saved on rations. Ricardo had won another promotion a few years after Amy’s birth, and they had moved from their two-room place in the Van

  Cortlandt Section to this apartment. Now Amy’s father was a C-6, with a private stall in the Men’s Personal, a functioning sink in his room, larger quota allowances for entertainment, and the right to eat four meals a week at home.

  Her parents would have been foolish to give up a chance at all that. How useless it would have been for Alysha to hope for her position at the Department; they would have risked everything in the end.

  The door opened; her mother came inside. Amy sat up. Her small bed took up most of the room; there was no other place to sit, and Alysha clearly wanted to talk.

  Her mother seated herself, then draped an arm over Amy’s shoulders. “I know how you feel,” she said.

  Amy shook her head. “No, you don’t.”

  Her mother hugged her more tightly. “I felt that way myself once, but couldn’t see that I’d be any better off not trying at all. You should learn what you can, Amy, and not just so that you’ll be able to help your own children with their schoolwork. Learning will give you pleasure later, something you’ll carry inside yourself that no one can take from you. Things may change, and then-”

  “They’ll never change. I wish-Things were better in the old days. “

  “No, they weren’t,” her mother responded. “They were better for a few people and very bad for a lot of others. I may affect a few Medievalisms, but I also know how people fought and starved and suffered long ago, and the Cities are better than that. No one starves, and we can, generally speaking, go about our business without fearing violence, but that requires cooperation-we couldn’t live, crowded together as we are, any other way. We have to get along, and that often means giving up what we might want so that everyone at least has something. Still-”

  “I get the point,” Amy said bitterly. “Civism is good. The Cities are the height of human civilization.” She imitated the pompous manner of her history teacher as she spoke. “ And if I can’t get along and be grateful for what I’ve got, I’m just a pathological antisocial individualist. “

  Her mother was silent for a long time, then said, “There are more robots taking jobs away from people inside the Cities. The population keeps growing, and that means people will eventually have even less-we could see something close to starvation again. The Cities can’t expand much more, and that means less space for each of us. People may lash out at an occasional robot now, since they’re the most convenient targets for expressing resentment, but if we start lashing out at one another-” She paused. “Something has to give way. Even that small band of people who hope the Spacers will eventually let them leave Earth to settle another world know that.”

  Amy said, “They’re silly.”

  “Most would say so.”

  Amy frowned. She knew about those people; they occasionally went Outside to play at being farmers or some such thing. She could not imagine how they stood it, or what good it did them. A City detective named Elijah Baley was the tiny band’s leader; maybe he thought the Spacers would help him. He had recently returned from one of their worlds, where they had asked him to help them solve a crime; maybe he thought Spacers could be his friends.

  Amy knew better. The Spacers had only used him. She thought of the Spacer characters she had seen in hyperwave and book-film adventures. They were all tall, handsome, tanned, bronze-haired people with eyes as cold as those of the legions of robots that served them. In the dramas, they might be friendly to or even love some Earthpeople, but in reality they despised the people of the Cities. They would never allow Earthfolk to contaminate their worlds or the others in this galaxy. They might use an Earthman such as Baley, but would only discard him afterward.

  “What I’m trying to say,” Alysha said softly, “is that change may come. Whatever disruptions it brings, it may also present opportunities, but only to people who are ready to seize them. “ Amy tensed a little; this was the most antisocial statement she had ever heard from her mother. “It would be better if you were prepared for that and developed whatever talents might be useful. When I worked for the Department, I knew what the statistics were implying-it’s impossible for even the most determined bureaucrat to hide the whole truth. I could see-but I’ve said enough.”

  “Mother-” Amy swallowed. “Are you going to tell Father what Mr. Liang said?”

  Alysha plucked at her long, dark hair, looking distressed. “I really should. I’ll have to if I’m called in for a conference, and then Rick will wonder why I didn’t mention it earlier. I won’t if you promise you’ll work harder.”

  Amy sighed with relief. “I promise.” She hoped she could keep that vow.

  “Then I’ll leave you to your studying. You have a little time before Rick gets home. “

  The door closed behind Alysha. Amy reached for her viewer and stretched out. Nothing would change, no matter what her mother said. Whatever Amy did, sooner or later she would, as her friend Debora Lister put it, wind up at the end of the line. She would be pushed to the end of the line when her teachers began to hint that certain studies would be more useful for a girl. She would be forced back again when college advisers pointed out that it was selfish to take a place in certain classes, since she would not use such specialized training for a lifetime, as a boy would. If she moved up the line then, she would only be pushed back later, when she married and had her own children.

  She could, of course, choose not to marry, but such a life would be a lonely one. No matter what such women achieved, people muttered about how antisocial they were and pitied them, which was probably preferable to outright resentment. She would have to live in one of the alcoves allotted to single people unless she was lucky enough to find a congenial companion and get permission for both of them to share a room.

  Alysha had wound up at the end of the line long ago, although later than most, and she had a loving husband to console her, which was a good thing. Even couples who hated each other would not willingly separate, lose status, and be forced into smaller quarters. Of course Alysha would hope that Amy might move up the line; she had nothing else in life except her husband and daughter.

  A fair number of women were like Alysha. Sublimated antisocial individualism-that was what a textbook-film Amy had scanned in the school library called it. Many women lived through their children, then their grandchildren, hoping they would rise yet knowing that there were limits on their ambitions. Their transferred hopes would keep them going, but they would also be aware that too much individual glory would only create hard feelings in others. That was one reason her parents refused to flaunt the privileges they had earned and used them reluctantly, with a faintly apologetic air.

  Men had different problems, which probably seemed just as troublesome to them. Some men cracked under the strain of having a family’s status resting entirely on them. The psychologists had terms for that syndrome, too.

  Amy saw what lay ahead only too clearly. Perhaps she shouldn’t have viewed those book-films on psychology and sociology, which were meant for adult specialists. Her parents would eventually have the second child they were allowed; except for tending to Amy and her father, and being sociable in ways that eased relations with neighbors and her husband’s colleagues, there was little else for Alysha to do. Small wonder many women even had childr
en to whom they weren’t entitled. When Amy was grown, her mother would be waiting for the inevitable grandchildren, and transfer her hopes to them. What a delusion it all was, pretending that your children wouldn’t be swallowed by the hives of the City while knowing that this was the way it had to be.

  Happy families, as the saying went, made for a better City; mothers and wives could go about their business feeling they were performing their civic duty. Amy’s mother would cling to her, and then to her children, and

  If this was how knowing a lot made people feel, maybe it was better to be ignorant, to settle for what couldn’t be changed.

  She folded her arms over her chest. She still had one accomplishment, and no one could take it from her; she was the best strip-runner in the City. She wouldn’t give that up, not until she was too old and too slow to race, and maybe that day would never come. If she made a mistake and died during a run, at least she’d be gone before she came to the end of the line. Her parents could have another child, maybe two, and the loss of one life would make no difference in a steel hive that held so many. She could even tell herself that she was making room for someone who would not mind being lost in the swarm.

  The psychology texts had terms for such notions, all of which made her feelings sound like a disease. Perhaps they were, but that was yet another reason not to care about what happened to her on the strips