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enough, desperate enough to fight."
The cop staggered a step backward. "You're talking nonsense. Madness!"
"Am I?"
"You can't survive out here without us, Elliot. The melanin treatments, the steroids, the hormones they'll cut off your
supply."
Leo shrugged massively. "I've got other sources, Frank. I don't need you people anymore."
"But you can't fight the World Government!"
"Can't we?" Leo advanced on him, step by step, and the cop retreated."You are the World Government, here in this
room. If I asked these boys behind you to wipe you out, how long do you think you'd stay alive?"
He backed into Lacey's gun. Lacey's hand trembled with the anticipation of squeezing the trigger.
"No," Leo commanded. "Let 'im go. Send this white-ass back where he come from."
' 'You're crazy, Elliot. The drugs must be affecting your brain. They'll come and get you ..."
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"Shee-it, man." Leo's voice went back to normal, and Lacey felt better for it. "We gonna come an' getyou. We got
more soldiers than you got, more guns, too. An' we know how t' use 'em. All over the world, man the underdogs are
gonna knock off the white-asses, wherever they are."
"That's crazy. Impossible." But the cop sounded scared and weak.
"Take 'im back where you found 'im," Leo said to Lacey. "An' see he gets back okay. No funny stuff. I know
COLONY " 99
he got a fancy gun on 'im. See he gets home with it still on 'im, catch?"
Feeling disappointed, Lacey tucked his own gun inside his belt and nodded. "I catch, Leo."
Lots of people have called me a dictator and worse. I suppose there may be some truth it in. Island One is a
democracy, legally. We have an elected council and every important issue is put to an electronic vote by the entire
population of the colony. It's easy enough to do that when the population is small and everybody's wired into the
communications net.
But a democracy works only as well as its citizens want it to. Most citizens are too busy doing other things to care
much about how their community is being managed.
See to it that they have jobs, that their garbage is collected regularly, and that the communications media are under
your control. Then you can become a pretty effective
dictator yourself, even in a democracy___
Cyrus S. Cobb, Tapes for an unauthorized autobiography
EIGHT
"Empty?" David asked. "What do you mean, It's empty?"
He and Evelyn were seated in one of the last rows of the crowded theater. Down on the circular stage, an exquisite
ballerina and her muscular partner were holding the capacity audience spellbound with a magnificentpas de deux from
"Sleeping Beauty."
"It's empty," Evelyn whispered to him, paying no attention to the dancers. "The whole bloody cylinder is empty."
Keeping his eyes on the stage, David whispered back, "It's a hollow shell?"
"No. It's landscaped. It's filled with a tropical jungle. But nobody's living in it! Nobody at all!"
The dancers were with the Bolshoi Ballet Company. They were performing in Moscow. Their images were being
transmitted electronically to Island One, where three-dimensional holograms made them appear as solid and real as if
they were actually physically present on the colony's stage.
A two-way computer feedback loop allowed the Island One audience's reaction mostly applause and shouts of
''Bravo!'' to meld with the reaction of the live audience in Moscow, so that there was emotional feedback between
the colony's audience and the performers, as well.
David turned and looked at Evelyn. She was watching his face, paying no attention to the ballet.
"Well?" she asked. "What do you think?"
102
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COLONY " 103
"Let's get out of here."
They had to push past a whole row of irate balletomanes, who growled and snarled as David and,Evelyn stumbled
over their toes. Finally they were out in the aisle. Evelyn strode toward the exit. David cast a final glance over his
shoulder at the lovely dancers.
Wish I could control my body that well,he thought. He had briefly tried dancing and found that he was much too
self-conscious for it. Even in the zero-gravity sections of the colony, where overweight grandmothers could execute
maneuvers that no Earthbound ballerina could even hope for, David had decided that ballet was not for him,
emotionally.
Outside the theater, he walked with Evelyn along a leisurely, winding footpath that led through one of the colony's
scattered villages and back toward her apartment complex.
"How do you know all this about Cylinder B?" David asked. "It's a restricted area."
With a slightly impish grin, Evelyn confessed, "I was there. I snuck in."
"You what? When?"
"This afternoon."
Most of the village shops were still open; it was early evening. David saw an outdoor cafe and gestured Evelyn to
one of its drum-sized round tables.
"How did you get in?" he asked as they sat down. "Access isn't permitted unless ..."
"I broke in," she said simply. "I had to find out what was going on in there, so I cracked a couple of electronic locks
and went in to take a look."
David's thoughts whirled. He sagged in the chair, not knowing what to say next.Broke in? Cracked the locks?
The speaker grille set into the tabletop buzzed. ' 'May we serve you?"
Evelyn flinched in surprise, but she immediately recovered herself. "Whisky and soda, please," she answered.
"With ice?" the speaker queried.
"One cube."
' 'Any particular brand of whisky?''
BEN BOVA " 104
"No, just a good unblended one."
"Thank you. Our sensors detect two persons seated at this table. May we serve you?"
"Sensors?" Evelyn looked slightly puzzled.
"A glass of rose wine, please," David said softly.
"Would you care to make a selection from our wine list?" A small square section of the tabletop lit up, revealing itself
as a viewing screen.
"No, thanks. Just a glass of the local rose. Any year except the most recent one will do."
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"Yes, sir."
The screen light went off. Evelyn tapped a fingernail against the speaker's tiny grille. "Is it off? Can he listen to us?"
David shook his head. "It's a computer. The whole cafe is run electronically. Even the waiters are robots."
He pointed to one of the "waiters." It looked to Evelyn like one of the tables, a hips-high plastic drum that had
somehow gotten loose and was rolling through the cafe on its own. A tray of drinks was resting on its flat top. It
stopped at a nearby table and the quartet of people sitting there helped themselves to the glasses and pitchers.
"That's a robot? I've never seen one before."
Evelyn watched as the robot trundled its way back toward the bar, inside the building, neatly threading its way
through the scattered outdoor tables and the crowd milling around the building's entrance.
"I know the cafeteria at the training center is almost completely automated," she said. "Are all the restaurants in the
villages, also?"
"Most of them. People don't come to Island One to take menial jobs. Our engineers had to develop these
special-purpose robots. They're not very bright, but they can do limited kinds of jobs. We're starting to sell them back
on Earth. Makes a little extra profit for the colony."
"Take more jobs away from people who need the work," Evelyn muttered.
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