But roads weren’t really important. You could use less land and shift more people with a hover train riding concrete pylons, or for long distances you would fly.
When this road, with its opulent curves, came to a rise in the ground, its builders had contrived to give the impression that it eased itself up to let the hill pass beneath. Elegant, certainly. Yet so wasteful Eight lanes in each direction, not because there was so much traffic, only because that much margin must be allowed for human error!
Thinking of speed . . . . He repressed a start as he looked at the speedometer. Oh. yes. Not k.p.h., but m.p.h; the Americans had resolutely clung to their antiquated feet. yards and miles just as they had clung to Fahrenheit when the rest of the world abandoned it. Even so, he hoped that Tuipin was a reasonably competent driver. He himself had never attempted to guide a land-vehicle at such velocity.
Now. finally, Turpin was addressing him: “Cigarette?”
“Please.” It would be interesting to try American tobacco. But he found it hot, dry, and lacking in aroma.
Ahead, a lighted beacon warned traffic to merge into the left lanes, and shortly, as the car slowed, he saw something that confirmed his worst fears: a wreck involving two trucks and a private car around which a gang of black men were busy with chains, jacks, and cutting torches. On the center divide an ambulance-crew waited anxiously to be offered a cargo.
When was someone last killed on the roads, Back There?
He watched Turpin covertly as they passed the spot, and read no emotion whatever on his face.
Well, to sustain his pretense for so long, obviously he must have had to repress his natural reactions . . .
Yet Sheklov found the explanation too glib to be convincing.
Then, a little farther on, they encountered another gang of workmen, also black. being issued with tools from a truck on the hard shoulder. Some of them were setting up more beacons. That was a phenomenon Sheklov had been briefed about: a “working welfare” project Obviously they were here to repair the road; equally obviously, the road didn’t need repairing. But it conformed to the American ideal: You don’t work, you don’t eat.
He felt a surge of pride as he reflected on the superior efficiency of a planned economy. Then, sternly, he dismissed the thought. The system must work. otherwise human beings could not tolerate it. It was not for him to say that it oughtn’t to work. Enclosed isolated, offensively conceited, the Americans were still human, and what they did among themselves was ipso facto to be respected as part of the vast repertoire of human potential.
Drawing a deep breath. he closed his eyes for a moment. Words formed in memory; they said, “O Dhananjaya,
abandoning attachment and regarding success and failure alike, be steadfast in Yoga and perform thy duties.”
And his duty at present was to be Donald Paton Holtzer, who had never heard of the Blessed Lord’s Song.
There was considerable traffic on the move. He saw hundreds of cars, mostly as they were left behind. because Turpin had clearance for the fastest lanes, but two or three times howling monsters tore past them illegally on the inside, and once they were overtaken by a patrolman on a racer with his siren howling like a soul in torment.
The roads, while still in usable condition, were being torn up and re-made. So too the cars were destined for a short, short life. Everything about this silent limousine of Turpin’s was ultra-modern, including its schedule of obsolescence. Approximately six months old, it was already as close to the scrap yard as to the factory.
And from the scrap yard its elements would go to the factory again.
Talk about taking in each other’s washing …. But he slapped that down in his mind, too.
Now and then they passed-in sight of enormous housing developments, and Sheklov also studied these carefully. Apartments stacked in towering blocks. Gardens around them, or parks. Trees in neat lines, force-grown with Para gibberellins. He found them attractive, but somehow flawed-perhaps by the way they resembled one another, as though they had been mass-produced complete with occupants. They were becoming shabby. His briefings had included a thorough conspectus of the cycle of American fads and fashions, and he was able to date them as having been built about twenty-five years ago-just about the time, indeed, that Turpin was planted in the States. ,