“Fifty,” he pronounced carefully. “Gimme—give me fifty dollahs.”
Ron tried to remember if his father had paid anything at the entrance booth. “But why?”
“Look kid, you ain’t eighteen. Ya want me to believe you’re eighteen, gimme fifty. Otherwise, go home. Now c’mon, you’re holdin’ up the line.”
Ron blinked at him. “But that’s illegal! You can’t—”
“Ya wanna get in or ya wanna go home? C’mon, there’s lotsa people waitin’.”
Ron looked around. The people in line were glaring at him, angry, hot, and impatient. There was a policeman nearby, tall and official-looking in his uniform and helmet. But he was carefully looking in the other direction.
Ron tore the plastic wrapping off his package of bills and pulled out a fifty. He slid it across the counter.
“Welcome t’ Fun City,” said the man in the booth in a flat, totally automatic way.
The little gate at the far end of the booth clicked open and Ron stepped through. He was now officially in New York City.
“Watch it!”
A porter in an electric wagon piled high with luggage zipped past him. Ron had to jump back to get out of the way.
Ron pushed through the crowd and made it outside to the street. The throngs here were even thicker and noisier, pushing and shouldering along the sidewalk. Everyone was going someplace. Someplace important, too, from the busy looks on their faces. At the curb was a line of cabs, and people poured into them. Cars were charging down the street. They pulled up short when the traffic light turned red, then roared for the next light as soon as it flashed green again. Bumpers banged but nobody seemed to care or even notice.
These cars weren’t the safe, quiet electrics that were used in the Tracts. These smoked and went vrooom! when they started up. Unsanitary, Ron told himself. They make a terrible amount of pollution. Still, he yearned to drive one.
Down the street he rushed. He couldn’t walk slowly because the crowd pushed him along, move, move, move. Doesn’t matter where you’re going or why. Just keep moving or they’ll trample over you.
A little old lady with a sweet smile and an umbrella passed him, heading the other way. She was holding a leash that was attached to the collar of the biggest dog Ron had ever seen. Walking a dog, on a public street! In the daytime! Back home, you couldn’t take a dog out on the street at all. You could only walk him in the park, or on your own property, and then only at night.
It wasn’t until after the lady with the dog had passed that Ron thought about her umbrella. It took him a minute to figure out what the odd-looking thing was. Back home, with the Weather Control Force in charge of everything, you always knew well in advance when it was going to rain. And here, under Manhattan Dome, why would anyone need an umbrella at all?
He glanced upward. Yes, the Dome was still up there. He could see its gray steel framework, like a giant spiderweb, far, far above. It was almost lost in the haze of smog that hung above the street.
Two blocks down the street Ron found a clothing store. The windows looked great. Real live models walking up and down inside the windows, talking to one another, tossing a ball around, laughing and waving to the crowd. A bunch of people had gathered in front of the window to watch them. Ron fought his way past the stream of people walking down the street and got to the edge of the crowd at the window. He was tall enough to see over the heads of most of them.
The girls were fantastic! Shorts and little sleeveless tops that barely covered their figures. Not at all like the girls back at the Tracts, with their shapeless prefaded sloppy clothes and their constant challenging in the classroom and the athletic field. Ron grinned at these girls and they smiled right back. Every few minutes a new model would come into the window and one of the others would leave. To change into a new outfit, Ron guessed.
The window must have been soundproofed, because Ron could see the models moving their lips, talking, but he couldn’t hear them at all. The people in the crowd were yelling things to them, but they paid no attention. Some of the things that the grown men said to those girls . . . Ron was surprised at first, then he got sore. Dirty old cruds, he said to himself.
Ron began to notice the clothes that the boys were modeling. Wild. Leather, and macho-looking real metal zippers. Snug-fitting. Boots. Stripes. Glancing down at his own loose, pale green zipsuit, Ron started to feel like a real country dork. A plastic imitation. He nodded once to himself and then pushed his way through the crowd to the store’s entrance.
Inside it was much quieter. And cool. The air felt pleasant and clean. It even smelled good.
And there were human people in there to wait on you! Not the automatic machines like they had in the stores back home. Instead of talking to a dumb computer, there were people here to listen to you and make suggestions.
They were men, mostly. Some of them were young, in their twenties. But most of them were older. Gray hair, getting heavy, but smiling and ready to help a dumb kid from the Tracts.
They measured Ron: arms, legs, chest, waist, neck. They fussed all around him and brought out some of the models from the window to show him different kinds of outfits. A few of the girls from the window hung around, too, watching and smiling.
When Ron strutted out of the store, he was dressed in a black polyester suit with silver emblems on the shoulders. His boots were real synthetic leather. He felt about eighteen feet tall.
He was also three hundred dollars lighter. Under his arm he clutched a plastic box that contained another entire outfit, plus his old green zipsuit, wrinkled and tossed in only for the trip back home.
Now I look like a real New Yorker, he told himself as he strode down the street. Everyone else was dressed in very ordinary clothes. Tourists. Vistors. Ron noticed how they all stared at his outfit. He grinned. He pictured himself as an Executive, one of the men who used to live high up in a skyscraper before the City was closed and evacuated. His grin widened.
Further down the street was a movie theater. It was showing old-time films. The big signs flashing above the entrance said: MURDER! FIGHTS! WAR! SEX! There were no theaters at home. TV was everything, and kids weren’t allowed to watch anything more exciting than the six o’clock news.
It cost another twenty dollars, but Ron didn’t care. He sailed right into the theater. It was completely dark inside, and he bumped into several chairs and people before he could find an empty seat for himself.
For four hours he watched exactly what the signs outside had promised. Blood and fighting. Beautiful girls and handsome men. War and all sorts of thrilling adventures. One of the films starred two guys named Redman and Newford, or something like that. They were terrific.
People got up and left and other people came in. Ron ignored them, his eyes locked on the screen. He watched people shoot each other, make love, fight wars that were much more exciting and fun than the warfare in South America. He saw doctors, policemen, killers, and each girl was better-looking than the last one.
Somebody stepped on his foot.
“Oh! Sorry.”
Ron looked up at the person who had done it. She came into the aisle and sat in the seat next to his. In the changing, colored light from the movie screen, Ron could see that she was about his own age. And kind of pretty.
“I’m awful sorry. Hope I didn’t hurt your foot.”
“No, it’s all right.”
She didn’t say anything else, and Ron went back to watching the screen. But he kept glancing at her. She was very pretty. And dressed sharp, too. He wanted to talk to her, to say something, anything, just to start a conversation. But his tongue was frozen. He didn’t know where to begin.
He was watching her now, not the movie. She was looking straight ahead, at the screen, and smiling slightly.
She doesn’t even know I’m sitting next to her. Ron felt miserable.
