For Us, The Living

by Robert Heinlein

  "Where are we going, Perry?"

  "I hadn't thought about it. Where would you suggest?"

  "Would you like to see San Francisco?"

  "Fine!"

  "Then let me set the course."

  "I can do it. I know this country." He located the South Fork of the American River and followed it by eye until it joined the Sacramento River. Presently Diana got up and went to the rear of the car. When they were approaching Sacramento she announced lunch. "Can't do," answered Perry. "I'm coming into traffic." She peered over his shoulder.

  "I'll set the robot to circle Sacramento and pick up the San Francisco beam. You mustn't fly in traffic until you have qualified in the rules. Now come to lunch."

  Hot soup. Stuffed eggs and celery. Oatmeal cookies and grapes. Cold milk. When it was inside Perry felt no desire to move. He lay on his stomach with his head over the edge of the lazy bench and watched the ground slip by the deck port. Diana regarded him lazily. Presently the ground changed to water.

  "Coming into San Francisco!" he cried, jumped to his feet and seated himself in the bow.

  "Don't touch the controls, Perry," Diana cautioned. "They are on full automatic." Perry didn't answer for they were slicing across the bay bridge.

  "Dian', is that the same bridge?"

  "I believe so."

  Perry looked proud. "They had engineers in my day, too."

  "Indeed they did."

  "Why, there is the Ferry Building. Don't tell me that has stood all these years."

  "No, that is a replica. It's a museum of California history."

  "There's Nob Hill! And the Fairmont Hotel."

  "You're right, but I don't see how you recognized it. It's only been there ten years."

  "I can see how it's not the same building. But it's in the right place." The car changed course and commenced leisurely to circle the city in a clockwise direction. Several other aircraft were in the same circle at the same speed.

  "The streets are decked over, aren't they? What's that moving under the glass decks?"

  "Those are the streets, with people traveling on them."

  "But how? I don't see any automobiles or other vehicles, yet they are going pretty fast."

  "The streets move in strips. The strip nearest the buildings goes five kilometers an hour, then next ten and so on to the middle. Those have seats on them and travel forty kilometers."

  "How about the end of the line?"

  "The end of the line? Oh, they travel in loops. If you stay on one you come back to where you started. The cross traffic is on a lower level, naturally. Shall we land, Perry?"

  His brow furrowed. "What do you think? I probably don't know how to behave. Besides I can't go into a city like this, can I?" He indicated his bare condition.

  "No real reason why you shouldn't, except to avoid being conspicuous. But the public kit you bought yesterday is by you in the locker under the bench you are sitting on." Diana dug it out, and gave it to him. Perry donned it. It consisted of a kilt of bright blue silk hung on a broad leather belt with pockets and hooks in it. A strap over one shoulder helped to support the belt. Slashes in the kilt were lined with bright silver stuff which glittered as he moved. The belt and strap were black with chromium fittings which matched his sandals. Diana surveyed him.

  "There. All set? Then I'll land us." Diana put the car down carefully through a maze of traffic onto a platform on Nob Hill. Before leaving the car she picked up a garment of her own and slipped it on. It was a Grecian tunic of black velvet, caught at the right shoulder with a jeweled silver clip. The right side hung open. The left shoulder and breast were bare. Perry whistled.

  "Dian', you look perfectly gorgeous in that outfit, but in my home town they would toss us in jail and throw away the key."

  "What for?"

  "Indecent exposure."

  "How silly. Let's go."

  Diana received a check from the parking attendant, and they started for the stairs. It was cold on the platform. Perry felt goose flesh form on his chest and a sharp wind fluttered his kilt. Diana appeared not to mind. But it was warm in the stairway. As they rode to the street level Perry glanced at the other passengers. Apparently he and Diana were sufficiently clad. Most of the women wore as much as Diana, but several of them wore more provocative clothes. Passing the seventh level he noticed leaning in a doorway marked CORECTIV MASAJ a big Scandinavian girl clad only in a bored look. No one seemed to take special note of her. The men's costumes were varied. Many of them wore coveralls of heavy cloth. These Perry judged to be mechanics from the platform. A goodly number were dressed much as Perry was. He noticed one old gentleman in a Roman toga, who read a newspaper as he rode. But in a moment they debarked at the street level and Perry was too busy to worry much about clothes. They were caught in a swirl of foot traffic at the landing which separated him from Diana. He felt a wave of panic as he looked for her and failed to find her. Then a little warm hand slipped into his and he heard her voice. "Let me hold your hand. I nearly got carried away." He looked down at her face and knew that she was being diplomatic, but he didn't care. He held her hand tightly.

  "What do you want to see, Perry?"

  "Gosh, I don't know. Suppose you show me around a bit. If I think of anything, I'll tell you."

  "All right." They proceeded along a wide corridor toward the street. The corridor was lined with brightly lighted little studio shops. Perry glanced at the displays as they walked. Most of the items seemed to be handcraft of various sorts, curios and beautiful things, some familiar in conception and use, some unintelligible. The Chinese, Japanese, and Indian shops seemed most familiar. In a few cases prices were marked. These seemed surprisingly high to him. He asked Diana about this.

  "Why, naturally they cost a lot, Perry. These things are handmade. They are worth whatever the artist asks for them, if you want them enough to pay his price. A lot of them are queer ducks though. If you appreciate something they have made and you can't afford to buy it, they may just give it to you."

  "But how can these hand workers compete with factory production?"

  "They don't compete. Their work is for people who appreciate individual creation. The value of the things they make has nothing to do with the cost of the materials or the usefulness of the article. They are aesthetic values, that can't be standardized."

  "Suppose people won't pay for an artist's work?"

  "In that case he can do as he likes—either go on creating and keep the results or give them away—or stop and do something else."

  "I didn't make myself clear. How can he go on creating if people won't buy?"

  "He lives on his heritage checks, or he works for pay part of the time and works at his art part of the time."

  Perry fell silent. They passed a row of public visiphone booths and came out on Mason Street. Perry had his first view of traffic on the moving ways and was made a little giddy by the sight. The crowds of people in front of him all appeared to be pedestrians but they moved at various speeds, those furthest away moving the fastest. It reminded him of times when, on a dance floor, he had whirled with a light-footed partner and then stopped suddenly. He glanced back at the adjacent building to steady himself. Then he looked back at the street. The movements gradually ordered themselves in his mind. He saw that each moving strip was about eight feet wide. He counted six strips to the middle of the street. The last strip carried a continuous bench on its far side and facing him. People were seated on this bench, reading, talking, and watching the life around them. Between their heads Perry saw flashing past in the opposite direction the heads of the passengers on the other side of the street. Overhead the glass canopy stretched from side to side from the window level of the second story, perhaps twenty feet in the air. On his left a pedestrians foot bridge arched daintily over the ways. From beneath the moving ways came a whisper and purr of machinery. Diana squeezed his hand. "Want to go for a ride?"

  "Sure! Baby ride merry-go-round." He started to step on the outer strip.r />
  "No, no, Perry! Face against the motion of the strip. And step on with the foot nearest the strip." Perry safely negotiated the first strip. "Come on, Perry, off the edge of the strip. Get inside the red stripes at once. Otherwise you might interfere with someone changing speeds."

  Perry looked down and saw that the center three feet of the strip was bounded by red stripes. Several people within earshot glanced toward them curiously at Diana's words, but turned quickly away, except for one small urchin about six years old who surveyed Perry with a slow dispassionate stare. The next four strips were traversed without trouble and they settled down on the cushions of the bench. Diana smiled at him. "All right?"

  "Easy once you get the hang of it. Just Eliza crossing the ice." Diana gurgled. He watched with interest the passengers around him. The urchin who had favored Perry with his attention was now staring at the opposite bound traffic with his nose pressed against the glass backboard which rose above the back cushion of the bench. His mother steadied him with one hand while she talked with another woman. The traffic was fairly heavy and Perry watched them come and go with interest. His eye was caught by a plumpish middle-aged woman in a striking purple and white robe. She carried in her arms a bright-eyed shaggy terrier who wiggled and attempted to get down. The woman was looking back over her shoulder and talking to a companion. She collided with a man moving off the fifth strip, lost her balance and sat down very suddenly on her broad posterior just at the joint between the fourth and fifth strips where she lay, shrieking, while she turned slowly round and around. The terrier bounded away and attained the sixth strip, where he ran up and down barking at the passengers on the bench. As his mistress passed slowly out of sight, several other passengers helped her to her feet and brushed her off. Perry whistled to the dog, who acknowledged the overture by jumping to the bench beside him and applying a warm wet tongue to Perry's chin and neck, "Down, boy, down! That's enough." Perry grabbed his collar. "Now what do we do? We've been joined." He grinned. Diana rubbed the dog's head. Then she got up from the bench.

  "Come along and bring your friend." She moved quickly to the fifth strip, Perry close behind, then to the fourth and to the third. She stopped on the second. "We should see her soon." Presently the purple and white robe showed up on the fourth strip. Diana, Perry, and the dog moved to the third and boarded the fourth as the woman came abreast. She swooped down on the dog.

  "Chou-chou! Did mama's darling get lost? Was um fwightened?" She kissed its nose and hugged it. The dog wore an air of patient forbearance. "Thank the kind people, Chou-chou. They rescued you." She turned to Perry and Diana. Diana gave him a sidewise glance and tugged his belt. They skipped onto the fifth strip and quickly over to the sixth. Diana sat down and sighed deeply.

  "Safe at last." They sat for a while and watched the passing buildings. A few minutes later she pushed an elbow in his ribs. "Look over to your left." She whispered. The purple and white robe was some yards away moving along the strip towards them. "I think she's looking for us. Come along. Here's where we get off." They threaded quickly through the crowd toward the outer strip and were shortly on the stationary walk. "That was close."

  "Why was she looking for us?"

  "Maybe she wasn't, but I took no chances. I can't stand to be slobbered over."

  "What do we do now?" They were standing by the entrance of a large squat building of synthetic marble. Over the entrance Perry read UNITED STATS POST OFIS, Tub Stashon A. Diana followed his glance.

  "Want to see how the tubes work?"

  "Sure." They went inside, across a broad foyer and mounted a flight of stairs to a mezzanine. Diana led to the far side of the balcony. They leaned over a rail and looked down into a broad deep room whose floor level Perry judged to be below the street. Diana pointed down, and to the right.

  "See them coming in there. Then they go on the belt and are sorted." Canisters of various lengths but of a uniform thickness, about eighteen inches, streamed out of a round hole and were deposited one after the other on a conveyor belt. Every few feet a mechanism leaned over the belt. Occasionally relays would click and a broad hook would roll a canister off the belt and pull it onto another belt running crosswise underneath the first. The crosswise belts then carried the canisters off to the right and left...

  "Who operates the selectors?"

  "They are automatic. An electric eye scans the destination tag. If the appropriate symbol corresponds, the grabber swings out and hooks off the can. See that first selector that is so busy? The one with three arms? That takes all the San Francisco traffic. Its belts unload in another room about as big as this where they are sorted for the local stations."

  "I suppose the tubes run on compressed air."

  "Only on short jumps. On the trunk lines they shoot along in a partial vacuum floating in a magnetic field that pulls them along. They make tremendous speeds on the long jumps."

  "Suppose I wanted to mail a letter to New York. Would it ride in one of those cans all by itself?"

  "Yes, but there isn't much sense in writing a letter when you can call up on the visiphone, or write on the telautograph."

  "No, I suppose not. Say, I'd like to take one of those selectors to pieces."

  "Perhaps you can if you care to apply for permission. But there is nothing fancy about them. Seen enough?"

  "I guess so. What now?"

  Diana glanced at a chronometer on the wall. "It's ten minutes past thirteen. We could run out to the rocket port if you like."

  "Say, that's fine. Let's go!" They went back to street level and rode the first strip to an intersection where they dropped down one flight to the crosstown shuttle. This they took to a station marked TUB EKSPRES TU ROKET PORT. An attendant sealed them in a cylinder containing heavily cushioned chairs. Diana sat down and laid her head back against a head rest and told Perry to do likewise. A light glowed above them for a few seconds, then cut off. Perry suddenly felt very heavy and was pressed into the cushions. Then he was suddenly normal weight again.

  "Brace your feet, Perry." The sudden increase in weight pressed him forward this time. Then normal weight returned and the door opened.

  "Where are we?"

  "At the port, about fifteen kilometers south of town."

  "San Mateo?"

  "No, west of there near Pillar Point." They climbed out and proceeded up a ramp to a waiting room, where swarms of people moved about and clustered at the far end. Diana glanced at an illuminated notice board and then at the chronometer beside it. "Hurry, Perry. We are just in time."

  "For what?"

  "The Antipodes Express. It arrives from New Zealand in four minutes. Hurry." He followed her up a ramp into a gallery with windows facing the field. Several sightseers were already there. Diana turned to one of them, a boy about twelve. "Is she in sight yet?"

  "Uh huh, she's circling. See?" He pointed for them. Diana and Perry squinted at the sky.

  "I'm afraid I can't make her out."

  "She's there all right. There go the field lights. The screens'll be up any minute now."

  "What kind of screens?" Perry inquired. The boy looked at him curiously.

  "Say, you haven't been around much, have you? These kind of screens." Dark amber glass shutters were settling over the view windows. "You look at a rocket blast with your naked eyes and you'll wish you hadn't."

  "Thanks, son. I don't know much about rockets."

  "I do. I'm going to be a rocket pilot when I grow up. There she comes. She's the good old Southern Cross. See how pretty she rides? That's old Marko himself. He don't bounce 'em." The ship, a faint silvery sliver, circled toward the earth. She rode with her bow lifted perhaps twenty degrees, and her tail jets streaming behind her.

  "Looks as if she were climbing."

  "No, no." Superior Knowledge was faintly scornful. "He's riding her in on her tail. Old Marko don't pull out the plug till he's ready." The ship circled again lower down and on a narrower course. The tail jets snuffed out, then a brilliant light flared f
rom her keel. "There goes her belly blast. Oh boy!" The youngster's eyes shone. The blast reached down toward the earth. Soon it splashed around the field. Steadily the ship lowered until the blast was almost point blank and the splash filled the halfmole landing circle and concealed the ship. Then the blast ceased and the ship lay before them. The boy chortled. "Did you see that? Just as steady as a rock on her good old gyros. And he just slid her down like sliding down a rope. Not even a side jet. Not once! What he aims at, he hits. Marko's going to drive one to the Moon someday; you wait and see. And I bet I'll go along, too."

  A little cart was rolling out toward the ship and unfurling a long matting as it went. Perry asked the lad about it.

  "That's the asbestos rug. You wouldn't want to walk on that field in those sandals after the belly blast hits it. You'd fry. The cart's just the baggage cart." They watched the passengers debark,then strolled about the station for a few minutes.

  "Any place else you want to go, Perry?" Diana presently inquired.

  "Have you any suggestion?"

  "I'm getting a little weary of the crowds. Let's get back." Fifteen minutes later they were on the platform where they had left the Cloud Horse. Diana surrendered her receipt and her car was run out onto the take-off flat. Inside, she shucked off her tunic and tossed it on the bench and had the car in the air before Perry was out of his belt and comfortably settled. Once seated he lit a cigarette and handed it to her. "Where are we going?"

  "Would you like to go swimming?"

  "Swell. Where?"

  "I know a little cove down near Monterey that is sheltered from the wind. The water may be a bit chilly."