Equality: In the Year 2000 (Mack Reynolds) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги | Chapter Eight The Year 2, New Calendar #10

Chapter Eight The Year 2, New Calendar

Animal’s lives utterly depend upon green plants. Plants alone give us our food; they alone renew and refresh the air, they alone recycle organic wastes, and they alone store sunlight for our use. Plants must have ground space on which to grow. Buildings and roads are using it up at ever-faster speed… Therefore, those of us who build and pave are helping to plunge the planet into disaster. Obviously, then, since we can’t change the facts of life, we’ve got to change the way we pave and build. Buildings and roads below the living green surface of the land can restore ground space to life again.

—Malcolm B. Wells, Architect

Edith and Julian took the elevator to the car pool in the basement of the high-rise apartment building in which they lived.

He said, “This pyramid project you’re interested in simply floors me. I just don’t get the why of it.”

She looked amused. “When Father told you that only two percent of the population was needed in industry to produce an abundance for all, did you come to the conclusion that the remaining ninety-eight percent spent their time sitting before the Tri-Di television, guzzling beer and pushing pleasure buttons?”

“Pleasure buttons?”

She laughed. “It’s a branch of medical science that was experimented with for a time and then definitely dropped. I believe the experiments started with rats and monkeys back before you went into stasis. It was possible, electronically, to stimulate the areas of the brain relating to pleasure. By activating a button, the animal would experience the height of pleasure momentarily. Push the button again and the pleasure returned again, and over and over. Nothing else made any difference to them. Food, drink, even sex meant nothing. They would remain, pressing the button until they fell over from exhaustion, starvation, or dehydration.”

“Good God!” Julian exclaimed. “You mean that brain specialists can do that to humans as well?”

She nodded. “Can, but don’t. Not all the roads opened up by science are followed, Julian. So far as pleasure is concerned, we like to find it ourselves—normally. One of the ways is to create beauty. Much of the beauty in the world, created in the past, has been lost to us. We are attempting to recreate that which we can. For instance, did you know that of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, only the ruins of the Pyramid of Cheops is still in existence? All of the others we are attempting to rebuild: the Colossus of Rhodes, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Artemision at Ephesus, the Olympian Zeus statue originally by Phidias, the Pharos lighthouse.”

He simply stared at her in open-mouthed wonder.

The elevator had reached the car pool. Edith spoke into a screen, ordering a two-seater. Within moments it sped up to where they stood.

“I’ll drive,” she said. “I know all the coordinates.”

They got in and she deftly dialed their destination.

“Where are we going?” he asked as the automated car took off. He still wasn’t used to seeing the driver with hands not on the wheel.

“Our semi-permanent home is in what you used to call Maryland. A small town called Hopewell.”

“Semi-permanent?” he repeated. “Then you don’t own it?”

The car blended into the underground traffic, moving into the inner and fastest line.

She shook her head. “Nobody owns their homes now, Jule. It doesn’t make sense.”

“In my time, most of us—those who could afford to own them—took pride in our homes.”

“We take pride in them too as long as we remain in residence. That is, we beautify them, keep them as comfortable and attractive as we can. But we don’t tie ourselves down to one house, as a rule. Oh, some people do. Some live in the same dwelling all their lives. Certainly, there is no one to say them nay. But usually we rent our homes until some reason comes up that makes it practical to move.”

“Such as?”

“Well, look. Here you are a single man. It would seem unlikely that you would want a large house. Although housework is almost completely automated, there are still things that must be done. You rent a smallish house, or an apartment, in an area that is desirable to you, say in the mountains. Very well, after a time you meet a girl and form a permanent or semi-permanent arrangement with her. Obviously, a somewhat larger house is called for. Lo and behold, the following year she has a baby. A larger house is called for. Besides that, you’re getting tired of the mountains and move down to Florida for the beach and the fishing. It turns out she loves children and since you’re both genetically ideal, you are given the go-ahead to have another child. You decide you could use another room. So it goes for a few years and the first baby grows up and goes off on his own. Shortly the other child matures and leaves as well. There are just two of you now. You decide you’ve had enough of Florida anyway, and move down to one of the picturesque old Spanish Colonial towns in what was called Mexico before it was amalgamated into United America. By this time, your girlfriend is getting sick and tired of you and leaves. You are now single again, and a one-person house is in order. Doesn’t it make sense?”

“I suppose so,” he said. “Actually, in my time, too, we had a lot of people who were continually moving. But look, to get back to rebuilding the pyramid and all the Seven Wonders. If they’re destroyed, how can you recreate them?”

“It’s a problem, all right. Scholars are digging up every bit of information they can find. There are illustrations, some written descriptions. For instance, the lighthouse at Pharos was built back in Ptolemy’s day, before Christ, but it lasted until the 14th Century A.D. Many times it was depicted on pottery, on Egyptian tomb walls, on papyrus. We’ve got a pretty good idea of what the lighthouse looked like, and the Colossus of Rhodes which, by the way, didn’t straddle the harbor as it is sometimes illustrated. We’re having more trouble, actually, with the Roman Forum, which wasn’t one of the Seven Wonders, but we’re going to redo it anyway.”

“The Roman Forum! It must have covered several square miles, including the Colosseum. I’ve seen it.”

“Yes, of course. You see, it lasted for well over a thousand years. Now, do we reconstruct it as it was in the days of Lars Porsenna and the Etruscan reges, or as it looked during the time of Caesar and Augustus? In Nero’s day, or that of Marcus Aurelius when it was probably at the height of its beauty?”

“Next you’ll be telling me you’ve got a project for damming up the Mississippi River so it’ll flow backward over the Rocky Mountains,” he protested.

She just smiled. The car began to edge over to the slower lanes. Finally, it darted off onto a smaller road and shortly began to ascend a ramp. A red light flickered on the dash and Edith took over the controls. They emerged into the countryside. “You mean we’re here already?” Julian asked.

“We were doing about three hundred kilometers,” Edith said. “But we’re not quite there yet. However, this part of Maryland is so beautiful I thought you’d probably rather see the countryside than continue any longer in the underground. Frankly, I hate the darn things. It’s as though you’re in suspended animation. But, of course, if speed is the thing, they give it to you.”

“Three hundred kilometers? That’s about one hundred eighty miles an hour, isn’t it?”

“Something like that. It’s been so long since I’ve converted miles to kilometers that I’d have to think about it. Anyway, at that speed, with no stops, no hills, no turns, you can cross the whole country in a little more than ten hours.”

He had only twice before driven through the countryside sinee he had been brought out of hibernation. Once again it took him back to his youth, when his parents or some other relative had sometimes driven him through upper New England in the autumn.

The road was not even paved and the traffic so slight that he felt half-inclined to wave at another car when they passed. He estimated that at least nine-tenths of the traffic of this day was underground. He had already had it explained to him and he supposed it made sense. Unless you were out for some reason such as picnicking, fishing, or just a drive through the countryside, you took to the ultra-highways below ground and got to your destination in a fraction of the time. This road was more suited to a stately forty miles an hour, rather than one hundred eighty.

It was a beautiful day. After the ultra-efficiency high-rise building at the university city, the drive in the country was relaxing. From time to time they would pass a farm house, invariably so put together as to resemble a Hollywood set. Once or twice there were people on the porch or in the yard. Someone waved and Edith and Julian both waved back.

He said, “I thought you didn’t have small farms any more.”

“We don’t. Except for people who make it their hobby.”

“You mean none of these places puts in crops?”

“Some do. I’ve been considering taking a place like one of these after I’ve retired, or been bumped from my job. They grow their own things, receive pleasure from raising, canning, and drying their own products. Largely, they’re older people who remember and liked the old way of life. But some are younger folk who have simply taken it up as a hobby.”

“I thought almost everybody lived in high-rise apartment buildings like those at University City.”

“Oh, no, very few do. It’s a rather sterile way of life, really. The advantage of it in an institution as large as Julian West University City is that it enables a very large number of students to be in a comparatively small area. If they were spread out in individual homes the school area would have to cover several square miles of land and you’d waste all sorts of time getting from one place to another. Well, here we are.”

Julian looked about him. “I thought you lived in a town. Hopewell, or whatever you call it.”

“This is Hopewell.”

“Are you joking?” He looked out over the rolling hills with their numerous trees and other vegetation. But then, to his surprise, he could make out an occasional glint, as of sun on a window, and realized that a good deal of the vegetation was too neat to be simply virgin countryside such as they had been driving through for the past half hour.

Edith, really amused now, turned down a narrow side road, went around a hill, and drove into a small garage.

“Home again,” she said, getting out.

He followed her, not having the vaguest idea what was to come. They emerged into a patio, sunk perhaps some twenty feet beneath ground level. Looking up, he could see trees, bushes, flowers, and grass, on what could only be called the roof of the building. Various rooms opened off the patio, all many-windowed in order to take advantage of the sunlight.

Edith led the way. “This is the living room.”

It was a large room, possibly twice the size of that in the Leete apartment. The far side consisted mainly of a window under a cantilever, which was also covered with vegetation. Julian looked out over the wooded valley. If there were other houses of this type in the vicinity, he couldn’t see them.

With mounting amazement, he took in the furniture, the art work. It was a comfortable, well-lived-in room. He asked, “Is this whole building underground?”

Edith went over to the auto-bar. “Beer? I’m thirsty from our drive. Yes, all the houses in Hopewell are underground. In fact, so are most of the houses in United America. We leave the surface for plant life, for wild animal life. For nature in general.”

He flopped down in one of the chairs, looking as bewildered as he felt.

She laughed again, without ridicule, and handed him a glass of beer.

But then the small frown he loved so much brought two light wrinkles to her forehead. “Surely you must have had some underground buildings back in the middle of the last century.”

“We might have had a few—parking lots and so forth. But as far as homes are concerned, offhand all I can remember are some caves in Southern Spain that the gypsies used to live in. Come to think of it, they were amazingly comfortable. They held flamenco dances in them for the tourists.”

“I think Father still has an old brochure by Malcolm B. Wells. I suppose you’ve heard of him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s possible he’s still alive. I guess he was pushing fifty when you went into stasis. He was one of the most progressive architects of your time. Now let me see…” She went over to one of the bookcases and began searching. “Father keeps quite a few old books. He likes to mark them up with notes.”

“I thought you had to do all of your reading on the Library Booster Screen.”

“Oh, no. Any book in the data banks can be printed up at a very low credit charge and delivered to you. Here we are.”

She reached up and selected a rather well-worn brochure, which she handed to him.

“Read this while I activate the house and get a few things done.”

“Activate the house?”

“We turn it off when no one is in residence. And we’ll be wanting to eat and so forth. Besides, it’s a little musty; no one has been here for several months. We’ve all been caught up in your revival and your first few weeks in this century.”

Julian took a deep slug of his beer and began to read.

UNDERGROUND ARCHITECTURE

I can just picture some smelly old bastard, club in hand, the conventional caveman of the comic strips, a prototype Fred Flintstone, surprised at seeing a cave for the first time in his life. It must not have been very many minutes later that the idea of underground architecture was born.

That was perhaps a million years ago, long before modern man, as we know him, evolved. Since that time, of course, man has not exactly been standing still. Not only has he invented war and bigotry (and the religions to excuse them), and learned how to lay continents bare and to overbreed himself, but he has also invented or discovered many, many kinds of shelter other than the cave. Still, architecture —really great architecture —remains, as it began, an earth art; an expression, fashioned in the earth’s own materials, of the particular culture in which the man-architect lives. And despite great advances in the techniques of building above ground, man has never completely abandoned underground construction. Fossilized remains from every age, from every continent, prove that man has continued to avail himself of this most ancient of architectures.

Now, though, suddenly, for the first time, in this Twentieth Century, in the face of unchecked population growth, all earth-life faces the prospect of extinction because of man’s too rapid successes. He has at last begun to crowd himself from the surface of the planet. But now, too, for the first time, he has both the awareness and the ability needed to undo some of the earth-damage he has done. Faced with the problems of air and water pollution, water shortages, desperate overcrowding, a disappearing countryside, exhausted soils, and vast famines, man is forced to reappraise many long unquestioned ideas about his relation to the life-giving earth.

Out of this reappraisal whole new professions are evolving. Today, the growing importance of city planning, demography, soil, water, and wildlife conservation, and the overall science of ecology attest to man’s new awareness of the land crisis and his disappearing natural heritage.

Underground architecture for the purpose of conservation is but one expression of this new land ethic. Buildings already planned for construction in many parts of the United States will use the new practice of re-establishing balanced, natural-type soils above a man-made structure. Then, plant materials selected for both natural beauty and appropriateness to their region will be established on the roofs of the structures so that in the shortest possible number of years, thriving little biotic communities requiring no human maintenance will start to reappear. Future forests.

Underground architecture, though but one of many far-reaching conservation practices, promises measurable relief in many areas. In the Cherry Hill (Greater Philadelphia) area, for instance, a forty-five-inch annual rainfall amounts to over one million gallons of rainfall per acre each year. Obviously, then, for each acre made impervious by conventional construction (blacktop and roofing materials), over one million gallons of life-giving rain water are wasted each year, sent coursing down streams never intended to accommodate such surges, eroding banks, destroying plants and animal habitats, and finally carrying to the ocean rich topsoils, mineral nutrients, and bacteria that were built up on the land during those long centuries before modern man learned to pave. Underground architecture can prevent such damage by keeping its paved surfaces hidden from the rain. With a young forest to catch it, most of the rainfall on such structures will be held by the foliage and the deep humus layers, some of the water to be used by the plants and animals on the site, and the rest piped directly to the underground reserves now being robbed by conventional construction practices. But not all underground structures need have forests above them. In the West, where drier conditions prevail, hardy natural grasses and wildflowers can adorn such buildings just as they once adorned the prairies themselves. Parks, farms, meadows, and recreational areas can be established above these new buildings. A shopping center designed for the Philadelphia area, for instance, will have an 18-hole golf course above its skylighted stores and parking lots.

Further, underground architecture offers us many immediate, practical advantages. Because of the earth’s rather constant fifty-five-degree underground temperature (measurable in caves throughout the world), very little heating and even less air conditioning will be required in such buildings. This, plus almost no need for outside maintenance, snow removal, or lawn sprinklers, add up to considerable savings. In addition such intangibles as isolation from both outside noises and atmospheric radioactivity offer further incentives to build this way. The prospect that we may once more find the great green out-of-doors at our doorsteps makes hoped-for increases in leisure time seem even more appealing.

But the words “underground architecture” often tend to repel the people who hear them. Having been exposed too many times to the depressing look of our subways and highway tunnels, or to leaky basements and cold, damp caves, people tend to view the real advantages of this new architecture with great skepticism. Most people will agree that such land-wasters as parking lots could go below ground. And many will even concede that some of our freeways, shopping centers —even our factories and offices —belong there too (in addition to railroad yards, refineries, and museums). But the thought of living underground in a windowless, artificial environment is to them the ultimate perversion of man’s role on earth.

Man, they say, was meant to live in the sun and air, to be involved in the seasons, to know night and day. Fortunately, most advocates of this new architecture heartily agree.

When architects propose windowless, wholly underground buildings, they are not planning housing.

Wonderful underground houses have been designed that always open onto sunny, sunken courtyards or project from the sides of hills in order that their rooms can be adequately day-lighted. Such underground buildings will be perfectly dry, and by natural methods will tend to keep the humidity level in the healthful forty to fifty percent range.

Whether or not underground architecture will ever be applied to the downtown areas of our large cities, the fact remains that it has definite application everywhere else. It offers hope that the great, blighted areas around our cities and along our highways may someday become green and beautiful again.

But underground architecture is no cure-all. It is only one way—one legitimate way —of bowing to the great life cycle we’re so quickly destroying. Though it has been endorsed by many ecologists and landscape architects, the idea has drawn fire from some who misunderstand it, who fear that it will result in a kind of non-architecture. Regardless, the idea is gaining in popularity each day as more and more people begin to wonder about the blight they see all around them.

Until now, man has always gone underground only for selfish reasons —security, bomb-proofing, or the novelty of dialing his own lighting and “weather” effects. If he continues to build for such reasons he may well create underground structures as ugly and as destructive as those above ground, but if he can find a new respect for the miracle of life—for all of the myraid life forms to which he is related-he may produce an architecture that his descendants will treasure …

Edith returned when he was barely halfway through, but took a chair and remained silent, sipping her beer.

He looked up finally and gestured with the pamphlet. “I don’t know. I suppose it makes sense. It just comes as a surprise. How many houses are there like this in Hopewell?”

“Several hundred, I would imagine.”

“But where are your stores, your community buildings, your car pool? Or bars, restaurants? And don’t you have any sports facilities in a town this big? Swimming pool, tennis courts?”

“They’re all underground too, built into the hillsides, sunk below the surface. To the extent possible, we try to avoid any view of man’s work. This is the manner in which most people live in America now. In small communities, in areas of beauty, but where modern agriculture isn’t very practical. Oh, we have fruit orchards here and there, and the machines come out at night and tend them and harvest them in season; but basically this is residential area.”

He shook his head. “I’ll have another drink. A stiffer one this time,” he said, coming to his feet.