Уолтер Тевис - The Steps of the Sun

The elevator had been double-checked. Workmen had taken it up and down a dozen times. But there was a lot of embarrassed tension among us. Then there were rumblings beneath our feet, a sturdy whine overhead, and we began moving upward.

“Well, for one thing,” the Deputy Mayor said, trying to break the tension, “the Maintenance Workers’ Union is solidly Democratic.”

The rest of us said nothing, but as we approached the top floors the ride began to smooth out and I started feeling an exhilaration like blasting off for Fomalhaut two years before. I stood with the four of them silent in the middle of that freshly painted car with its polished brass handrails and its gray floor, and the old rush of fast travel expanded my soul for a moment. As we slowed near the top I felt Isabel’s hand take mine and squeeze it. The car stopped, the door hummed open and we stepped out onto a red carpet laid on a floor still covered with scuffmarks from the last group of tourists to leave, thirty years before. Someone had opened a few windows, but the air was still musty. There were graffiti on the walls—one could have been an imprecation from a hidden tomb. DEATH TO INTERLOPERS it read, in spray-paint orange under a veil of dust. There was a crew of a half-dozen workmen cleaning up. I hoped they would get that one off soon. Heavy blinds covered the windows we faced; it was west that way, and the late-afternoon sun in June would be blinding. I started to head back around to where I could look out to the east, but Isabel put her hand on my arm and said, “Take it easy, Ben. Let’s wait a few minutes.”

“Okay,” I said, remembering my breakneck rush onto Belson. “Let’s get a drink.” A bar was being set up under the shaded windows and several bottles and some glasses were already out.

Isabel was looking around her, at the long-closed souvenir stand, the grimy coffee urns, the high-ceilinged room with metal girders overhead, and the yellowing photograph of Manhattan on the wall above the elevator—Manhattan as it was around 2025, with all the Japanese skyscrapers. Above this was written in faded letters: OBSERVATION DECK.

We went to the bar and she handed me a canape. As I gave her a drink I noticed the light on the window blinds wasn’t so bright anymore; the sun must be hidden by another tall building. I walked a few steps over and pulled the cord. There had been a lot of talking in the room, with the laborers and two foremen and the Deputy Mayor and his secretary and a holovision crew that was just getting their equipment out of the elevator. But when the blind began to go up a hush spread itself around me. Before I looked out myself I glanced around the room. Everyone was staring toward the window.

I turned and there it was: the New York skyline. The sun glowed from behind the cylinder of the Bank of Hangchow, and its light made quasi-silhouettes of the giant old buildings of the West Side—all of them empty but still astounding to see from this solid old masterpiece of a skyscraper: those solemn black shapes, pushed skyward in turn-of-the-century confidence, almost all of them taller than the one we stood on.

“My God,” Isabel said finally. “It’s New York City!”

Somebody laughed softly and the silence was swallowed again in chatter. More people kept coming from the elevator. Ice tinkled all over now. A five-piece band was setting up in a room behind us; above the other hubbub came the occasional spurt of a trumpet, the nervous clang of a cymbal. I walked around the tower several times, looking out toward the Hudson and the East River and the southern tip of the island. A few weak lights down near street level came on—the twenty-watt fluorescents we had all lived with for a third of a century, but all the upper stories remained dark. At the northern end of the deck, facing uptown, was a table draped with red, white and blue bunting and faced by rows of chairs. On it sat the black switchbox and a microwave transmitter dish like a tea saucer aimed toward New Jersey. The switch had been locked into the “off” position with a key. I looked at my watch; fifty more minutes. Booming male laughter was coming from the anteroom. I turned and walked in. Sticking up over the crowd was L’Ouverture’s shiny black head, his big toothy smile. He was stretching his long arms out and laughing while several other people looked up admiringly. He did look beautiful, in a pale-blue seersucker suit with a crisp white shirt and red tie.

Just then he saw me coming. “ Benjamin! ” he shouted. “Benjamin Belson, Intergalactic Pirate.”

People pulled away to let me pass. I walked up to him. “Piracy is as piracy does, L’Ouverture,” I said. I heard my voice. It sounded dangerous.

“Ben,” he said, his arms still out above heads, “I’m not even a senator anymore. You’ve got your spaceship and I’m in commerce. Let me congratulate you.”

I was right up to him now, looking up at his flawlessly shaved face, the bright silk of his necktie, smelling his cologne and hearing the rustle of his suit as he now brought his grotesquely long arms down from the gesture my arrival had attracted. “L’Ouverture,” I said, “I accept your congratulations.” Then I thought, What the hell . I handed my drink to someone and put my arms around Baynes. His arms came around me. We hugged hard for a long time and I could feel the warmth of his enormous hands across my shoulders. “Ben,” he whispered in my ear, lowering his head to say it, “you are a child of mine after all.”

I pulled back and looked up at him. “If I am,” I said, “I’ve left home for good.”

He smiled benignly. “What could be more in tune with the order of things?”

“I’ll get you a drink,” I said. The Mayor arrived and the holo filming began. During a lull in that he handed me a pair of Xerograms and I pressed them on. One was a formal thank you from President Weinberg with a White House logo glowing in gold on its projection; the other was in strong calligraphy: “I am pleased with my son,” it said. “Your journey has relighted the world.” The Mayor tapped my arm, ready to begin his speech. I followed him to the dais and stood at the bunting-draped table. Someone had unlocked the power switch. Isabel sat in the front row in her blue dress; she looked smart and strong.

The Mayor went on longer than I had expected and I began to get impatient. He talked about the simultaneous ceremonies in Boston, Dallas and Chicago, about the new electric heating that would soon be flowing into Montreal and Vancouver, about Juno uranium plants scheduled for Zimbabwe and Rio and Paris, about the new reciprocity in U.S. relations with China, while I stood with impatience, wanting to get on with it and occasionally slipping a look at my watch. For a moment I became appalled at myself. Did the road of excesses lead only back to this? Had I lost my impotence and quieted my rages only to become another impatient rich man with a distended ego? I looked down at myself. There was my Ralph Lauren cotton jacket of midnight blue, my Bert Pulitzer shirt, my blue silk Marley tie, my gray trousers gently resting their cuffs on English shoes. Under all this a body still firm and a set of genitals no longer in spiritual orbit. I looked up and there was Isabel with a light smile on her lips, looking not at me but at the dull man at my side. Had it all only come to this, then: the speech of a politician, expensive clothes, and boredom?

In a seat behind Isabel a relaxed-looking man whom I didn’t recognize shifted his weight in his chair. He glanced down toward his watch. I looked around the room, from well-dressed person to well-dressed person: others were restless too. L’Ouverture, the biggest man there, sat in the back row looking bored out of his skull.