The whole City seemed so different. It was less crowded for one thing—many people had died during the first few days of the War. There were no taxis, vans, or street-cleaning robots moving about, of course; but there were also no radios, no electric lights, no running water. Garbage was piled everywhere; rats and roaches scuttled underfoot. There was no more Dreamfood and people were living on canned goods. Gardens were springing up. On the whole, morale was good, but the outbreak of disease and famine seemed imminent. Some were leaving the City for the countryside, but not many . . . it was, after all, a long trip by foot with the constant threat of machine attack. There was some hope that people would be able to get into and start up the various utility plants, but as yet the Eastside and its factories was still under the machines' control.
Vernor and Alice had seen the galaxy spin yet they'd returned to Earth only a week after leaving it. Vernor still didn't understand how. Time—time was a crazy maelstrom. Sometimes he imagined this was all a hallucination, and that he'd awaken in the scale-ship, still in Alice's arms.
What had become of Professor Kurtowski in his Eastside hideout? No telling. But everyone knew about Mick Turner. While Vernor had been gone Mick had been busy organizing an underground network of revolutionaries to strike after Vernor's work with Phizwhiz was completed. They hadn't anticipated that Phizwhiz would turn against the human race, but they'd had the organization to take control of Dreamtown when the War started.
Vernor decided to walk to Dreamtown. He's only need to cross three blocks of machine-controlled territory to get there. He scrounged a meal and set off.
As he neared the machines' turf he saw fewer and fewer people. Finally he was all alone, walking down the middle of a deserted street toward Dreamtown with the aid of his crutch of plastic guardrail.
His partially healed leg was paining him considerably, and a bright mid-morning sun beat down on him. His senses should have been at a high pitch of attention, but somehow he felt drowsy and distant in the hot light.
With the suddenness of a hit of speed, a dog-sized cleaner robot sped out of a small street on his left, broadcasting Phizwhiz's electronic snarl. Vernor turned to face it, holding his staff at the ready. Although he didn't much care if he lived or died, he was eager to fight.
The robot was roughly hemispherical, and was sliding along supported by some type of field. When it was almost upon him, Vernor danced to one side, smashing downwards with his staff at the spot where he'd just been.
The robot, however, wasn't there. It had swerved as quickly as Vernor had moved, and now smashed into his legs . . . easily toppling him, caught unaware. The robot scooted up towards Vernor's head, and a cutting arc of electricity crackled into life between two stubby antennae on its smooth carapace.
As it moved towards his head the robot passed over his staff, which was lying on the ground. Vernor seized the opportunity to lift his end of the stick, tilting the domed machine up on one edge. Using his hands, Vernor quickly finished the job of flipping the robot over. Helpless to right itself, the machine began emitting a distress signal.
His hands slightly numb from the effects of the robot's support field, Vernor hurried on down the street. Dreamtown was still two blocks away.
The next cross-street was a main thoroughfare, and had two taxis patrolling it. They spotted Vernor as soon as he saw them, and accelerated towards him, blaring the Phizwhiz noise. This was going to be a tough one. If he could make it past these taxis there'd be maybe another small robot and then he'd be in Dreamtown. He'd go to Waxy's and have some weed with Mick—it'd be fine. With an effort Vernor wrenched his attention back to the present.
He was running across the intersection toward Dreamtown. The taxis were about twenty feet from him, heading towards him from either side. It looked like the taxi on the right might reach him first. Even though he wasn't fully clear on what his strategy was, some instinct told him to angle to the left.
It was only at the split second when the two taxis were evenly spaced at arm's length on either side of Vernor that he consciously understood his plan. Jump! He dug the end of his staff into the street and pole-vaulted.
For an instant he hung some five feet in the air, but that instant was long enough. The taxis, who had perhaps been counting on his body to cushion the blow, smashed into each other at the point where he'd just been. He landed on the hood of one and was thrown off as it spun away from the collision point.
It was quiet. Vernor picked himself up, suddenly feeling the pain in his leg again as the adrenalin faded. Limping badly, he retrieved his staff from the taxi's wreckage. "Thanks, Alice," he said softly.
One more small street and he'd be in Dreamtown. He could even see a person two blocks ahead. But there was bound to be a fucking robot patrolling that one small street in between. His leg was hurting badly and he was tired. Better not rest, there'd be more taxis coming, or maybe even a van. He shuffled forward, leaning heavily on his length of guard-rail.
There was indeed a repair robot patrolling the last street he had to cross. Vernor hugged a wall and peered around the corner, watching the robot's movements. When it seemed to be as far away as it was likely to get, he set off across the intersection with an uneven trot.
Quickly the machine spotted him came after him. Vernor felt tired and dizzy, but he beat the repair robot across the narrow street. He went into the next block and leaned, panting, against a building, unable to run further just now.
To his right Vernor could see Dreamtown. He recognized a few buildings and now he could actually see several people, although the closest was over a block away. To his left was the corner around which the repair robot would inevitably come. He raised his crutch and poised himself to smash the machine when it appeared.
With a sudden blast of noise it was upon him. This one was bigger than the first one, and had a nasty-looking set of tools projecting from its shell. Vernor connected with the machine's prismed photo-cells, breaking one.
Using a pincer-like appendage, the robot plucked the staff from Vernor's grasp before he could raise it to strike again. The staff clattered into the street and the robot backed up, then charged. Vernor was ready, and did a bull-fight number, sidestepping the machine at the last instant.
But now the only option was flight. He started running at top speed for Dreamtown. Suddenly his left leg gave out and he fell. The robot caught up rapidly and stopped next to Vernor's head.
A wicked metal cutting edge struck at his throat, but he managed to catch and hold the mechanical arm. Another arm, bearing a screw-driver end, appeared and began hacking away. He fended it off as well as he could, but it was making deep cuts in both his arms. Finally the robot wrenched the cutting blade free of Vernor's grasp.
He sank back with a sigh. This was it. The blade came angling towards his neck and . . .
Stopped. There was a sizzling sound from a bright hole which had appeared in the robot's shell. A laser beam. Someone had shot the robot.
Strong hands helped Vernor to his feet. "You must want to get to Dreamtown pretty bad," said a woman's voice. Vernor turned to see her.
"Oily Allie!" he exclaimed.
"Vernor! We've been waiting for you." Allie pulled him to his feet and patted him on the back. As always, her dark, greasy hair was a tangle of spikes. "Wait till Mick sees you!"
They started towards Dreamtown, Vernor leaning heavily on Oily Allie. "Yeah, we got a sort of border patrol here," Allie explained. "Otherwise Phizwhiz'd be chipping away at our territory. Usually we don't rescue people, but after I saw the job you did on the taxis it seemed like a shame to let that one little robot finish you off. I hadn't even recognized you. Good thing I saved you. You're a hero, Vernor."
"For what?" Vernor asked weakly. His arms were bleeding badly and his leg seemed to be completely broken again.
"For what?" Allie repeated. "For what? For making Phizwhiz go nuts! Sure some people miss the old life, watching Hollows all day long, but I love it like this." To demonstrate, Oily Allie spun around and blasted the lifeless robot again with the heavy laser she cradled with her right arm. "Ftoom!" said Allie.
For an instant Vernor's weight was on his broken leg. An explosion went off behind his eyeballs and he fainted.
When he awoke he was on a bed. It was dark, and a young woman was sitting near him. His wounds had been dressed and his leg was in a casing of rigid plastic foam. He felt pretty good.
"Where am I?" he asked.
"Hi," said the young woman. "You're about two blocks from where you collapsed. Allie brought you and we fixed you up. Do you want some food?" She offered him a tube of Dreamfood. Green. Aaaahh.
After eating Vernor sat up. "What time is it?"
"About nine. You've been out since noon." She was pretty. He tried to get up, but she pushed him back. "Stay here. Allie will come for you in the morning. You need more rest."
"O.K." he said, relaxing back towards sleep. His last thought was a sense of gratitude that he felt well enough to want to fuck his nurse.
That night Vernor dreamed of swimming in a phosphorescent sea. There was a group of fish chasing each other in a circle. Each fish was bigger than the next. Each fish had its mouth open to swallow the one in front of it, and each was swimming rapidly away from the open mouth snapping at its tail.
The speed of the Circular Scale increased. Finally there was an articulated gulp as each of the fish was swallowed by the one behind it. And then silence.
Vernor was alone, drifting amorphous in the peaceful sea.