After the Collapse by Paul di Filippo Read Free Book Online

stranger, the Kodiak Kangemus unsheathed their long thick claws a few inches. The awesome display brought the man to a halt a few meters away. He spoke, looking up and shielding his eyes against the sun.
    “Hail, wardens! My name is Brost, and these comrades of mine are Kemp and Sitgrave, my assistants. As the Mayor of Chicago, I welcome you to our fair city.”
    Pertinax studied Brost from above, seeing a poorly shaven, sallow baseline Homo sapiens with a shifty air about his hunched shoulders. Some kind of harsh perfume failed to mask completely a fug of fear and anxiety crossing the distance between Brost and Pertinax’s sharp nostrils.
    Sylvanus, as eldest, spoke for the wardens. “We accept your welcome, Mayor Brost. But I must warn you that we are not here for any simple cordial visit. We have good reason to believe that certain factions among your people are planning to tamper with the tropospheric mind. We have come to investigate, and to remove any such threats we may discern.”
    The Mayor smiled uneasily, while his companions fought not to exchange nervous sidelong glances among themselves.
    “Tamper with those lofty, serene intelligences, who concern themselves not at all with our poor little lives? What reason could we have for such a heinous assault? No, the charge is ridiculous, even insulting. I can categorically refute it here and now. Your mission has been for naught. You might as well save yourself any further wearisome journeying by camping here for the night before heading home. We will bring you all sorts of fine provisions—”
    “That cannot be. We must make our own investigations. Will you allow us access to your village?”
    Mayor Brost huddled with his assistants, then faced the wardens again. “As I said, the city of Chicago welcomes you, and its doors are open.”
    Pertinax repressed a grin at the Mayor’s emphasis on “city,” but he knew the other wardens had caught this token of outraged human dignity as well.
    With much back-and-forward-and-back maneuvering, the driver finally succeeded in turning around the steam cart. Matching the gait of their hoppers to the slower passage of the cart, the wardens followed the delegation back to “Chicago.”
    Beginning with outlying cabins where half-naked children played in the summer dust of their yards along with mongrels and livestock, and continuing all the way to the “city” center, where a few larger buildings hosted such establishments as blacksmiths, saloons, public kitchens and a lone bath house, the small collection of residences and businesses that was “Chicago”—scattered along the lake’s margins according to no discernible scheme—gradually assembled itself around the newcomers. Mayor Brost, evidently proud of his domain, pointed out sights of interest as they traversed the “urban” streets, down the middles of which flowed raw sewage in ditches.
    “You see how organized our manufactories are,” said Brost, indicating some long low windowless sheds flanked by piles of waste byproducts: wood shavings, coal clinkers, metal shavings. “And here’s the entrance to our mines.” Brost pointed to a shack that sheltered a pit-like opening descending into the earth at a slant.
    “Oh,” said Cimabue, “you’re smelting and refining raw metals these days?”
    Mayor Brost exhibited a sour chagrin. “Not yet. There’s really no need. We feel it’s most in harmony with, uh, our beloved mother earth to recycle the buried remnants of our ancestors’ civilization. There’s plenty of good metal and plastic down deep where the Upflowered sequestered the rubble they left after their redesign of the globe. Plenty for everyone.”
    “And what exactly is your population these days, Mayor?” inquired Tanselle.
    “Nearly five thousand.”
    Tanselle shook her head reflectively, as if to say, thought Pertinax, Would that it were even fewer .
    After some additional civic boosterism the party—considerably enlarged by various