The World Turned Upside Down

The World Turned Upside Down by David Drake, Eric Flint, Jim Baen Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: The World Turned Upside Down by David Drake, Eric Flint, Jim Baen Read Free Book Online
Authors: David Drake, Eric Flint, Jim Baen
Tags: Science-Fiction
35-24-34 and enough this and that to make me feel like a matchstick drawing, a low, intimate voice and everything necessary to make plainer females think about pacts with the Devil. But I did not feel apprehensive; she was a groundhog and groundhogs don't count.
    "All city guides are girls," Mr. Dorcas explained. "Holly is very competent."
    "Oh, I'm sure," she answered quickly and went into tourist routine number one: surprise that a guide was needed just to find her hotel, amazement at no taxicabs, same for no porters, and raised eyebrows at the prospect of two girls walking alone through "an underground city."
    Mr. Dorcas was patient, ending with: "Miss Brentwood, Luna City is the only metropolis in the Solar System where a woman is really safe—no dark alleys, no deserted neighborhoods, no criminal element."
    I didn't listen; I just held out my tariff card for Mr. Dorcas to stamp and picked up her bags. Guides shouldn't carry bags and most tourists are delighted to experience the fact that their thirty-pound allowance weighs only five pounds. But I wanted to get her moving.
    We were in the tunnel outside and me with a foot on the slidebelt when she stopped. "I forgot! I want a city map."
    "None available."
    "Really?"
    "There's only one. That's why you need a guide."
    "But why don't they supply them? Or would that throw you guides out of work?"
    See? "You think guiding is makework? Miss Brentwood, labor is so scarce they'd hire monkeys if they could."
    "Then why not print maps?"
    "Because Luna City isn't flat like—" I almost said, "—groundhog cities," but I caught myself.
    "—like Earthside cities," I went on. "All you saw from space was the meteor shield. Underneath it spreads out and goes down for miles in a dozen pressure zones."
    "Yes, I know, but why not a map for each level?"
    Groundhogs always say, "Yes, I know, but—"
    "I can show you the one city map. It's a stereo tank twenty feet high and even so all you see clearly are big things like the Hall of the Mountain King and hydroponics farms and the Bats' Cave."
    "'The Bat's Cave,'" she repeated. "That's where they fly, isn't it?"
    "Yes, that's where we fly."
    "Oh, I want to see it!"
    "OK. It first . . . or the city map?"
    She decided to go to her hotel first. The regular route to the Zurich is to slide up and west through Gray's Tunnel past the Martian Embassy, get off at the Mormon Temple, and take a pressure lock down to Diana Boulevard. But I know all the shortcuts; we got off at Macy-Gimbel Upper to go down their personnel hoist. I thought she would enjoy it.
    But when I told her to grab a hand grip as it dropped past her, she peered down the shaft and edged back. "You're joking."
    I was about to take her back the regular way when a neighbor of ours came down the hoist. I said, "Hello, Mrs. Greenberg," and she called back, "Hi, Holly. How are your folks?"
    Susie Greenberg is more than plump. She was hanging by one hand with young David tucked in her other arm and holding the Daily Lunatic , reading as she dropped. Miss Brentwood stared, bit her lip, and said, "How do I do it?"
    I said, "Oh, use both hands; I'll take the bags." I tied the handles together with my hanky and went first.
    She was shaking when we got to the bottom. "Goodness, Holly, how do you stand it? Don't you get homesick?"
    Tourist question number six . . . I said, "I've been to Earth," and let it drop. Two years ago Mother made me visit my aunt in Omaha and I was miserable —hot and cold and dirty and beset by creepy-crawlies. I weighed a ton and I ached and my aunt was always chivvying me to go outdoors and exercise when all I wanted was to crawl into a tub and be quietly wretched. And I had hay fever. Probably you've never heard of hay fever—you don't die but you wish you could.
    I was supposed to go to a girls' boarding school but I phoned Daddy and told him I was desperate and he let me come home. What groundhogs can't understand is that they live in savagery. But groundhogs

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