“But what?” Jimmy Glenn squeaked in his cracking voice. “Don’t hang us up!”
“Well . . .” Ron searched for the best words. “They sort of—well, for one thing, they dress differently. Sharp. Like they want to be seen. I guess that’s it. They know what it’s all about, and they like it!”
“Not like Sally-Ann.”
“That dimwit.”
Ron went on, “They want guys to notice them. They even stare right back at you when you look them over.”
One of the boys laughed. “Dude, I’m going to talk my dad into taking me to New York City before the summer’s over.”
“Your dad must be okay, Ron—taking you to the City.”
“Hey, he likes it too, you know,” Ron answered.
“Is the City really that great, Ron? I mean, for real?”
Ron smiled. He had an even-featured, good-looking face. Like all the boys around the pool, his teeth were straight, his eyes were clear, his lean teenaged body was strong and unblemished, thanks to a lifetime of carefully regulated diet, vitamins, exactly eight hours’ sleep each night, and the school’s physical fitness programs.
“It’s the only city they open up, isn’t it?” Ron answered with a question. “All the other cities have been closed down, haven’t they?”
“There’s still a couple cities open out West,” said Reggie Gilmore.
“They’re just little ones.”
“San Francisco’s not so little!”
“Yeah, but Mr. Armbruster in Social Consciousness class said the Government was going to close down San Francisco next year, too. They had an epidemic there this summer.”
“It’s a lot better out here in the Tracts,” one of the boys said. “We’re safer and healthier.”
“You get an A for social consciousness, Leroy!”
All the boys laughed, except Leroy, who knew that all believed the same way he did, even though they kidded him for admitting it openly.
“New York is wild,” Ron said, taking over the conversation again. “The streets are jammed with people. You can hardly walk. Stores everyplace. Not just shopping centers, but all over the place! You can buy anything from clothes to stereo TVs without walking more than a block.”
“But it’s real unsanitary, isn’t it?”
Ron nodded. “Absolutely! The streets are filthy. How can you keep them clean, with so many people pushing around everyplace? And they’ve got old-fashioned gas-burning cars in the streets. The pollution! And the noise! The cars and horns and people talking and shouting . . . it’s crazy. No wonder they only keep the City open during summer vacation. It’s too unsanitary for people to live in New York all year ’round.”
“Where do all the people go, after the summer’s over?”
“Back to the Tracts, dumbhead! Just like Ron and his dad, right?”
“That’s right,” Ron said. “They close the City after Labor Day and everybody goes back to their homes. Then the next spring they open it up again, for the vacation season.”
“Man, I’d like to spend a summer there!”
“Can’t. They only allow you to stay two weeks, at the most.”
“Two weeks, then. Cheez!”
The boys were silent for a few moments, and the night was silent with them. No crickets, no mosquitos, no sounds of life at all. Nothing except the darkness and the softest humming of the methane-fueled generator, which provided electric power once the sun went down.
Ron splashed at the water with his feet.
“The girls are really terrific, huh?”
With a laugh, he answered, “More than that. They’ve got something they call bedicabs driving around along the streets. With a meter and everything.”
“What’s that for?” Jimmy asked.
The other guys hooted at him.
“Ohhh!” Jimmy finally got it. “Okay, so I’m a slow learner. Do they charge by the mile or the hour?”
After they quieted down again, Ron resumed, “When you leave Manhattan Dome and start out for the train station to go home, they put you on a special bus—it’s sort of like an ambulance. They take off all your clothes and get rid of them. Then they make you shower and they cleanse you with all sorts of special stuff. You have to stick a tube down your nose and all the way into your lungs—”
“Yuchk!”
“Yeah, but you’ve got to get rid of the carcinogens you breathed in while you were in the City. And the germs. You pick up enough germs to start an epidemic back home, the medic told us.”
“Well, cancel my trip. I’m not going through that.”
“I am,” Ron said. “I’m going back to New York City before they close it for the winter.”
“You are?”
