Island Worlds by John Maddox Roberts, Eric Kotani Page A

and the decay of the inner cities. Touted as "the housing of the Twenty-First Century," the Watts development had called for the razing of an immense slum and replacing it with a forty-story structure of near self-sufficiency. The upper levels were mostly for housing, the lower levels being devoted to shopping malls, entertainment arcades, schools, public services, even light manufacturing. It was to lead the way in solving the urban problems of a century.
    Now it was a run-down, outdated slum area. It had been outdated before its completion. Such structures were too laborious to construct and could not keep up with the tide of immigration. In its early years, there had been fierce competition for housing in the Watts development. Now even the L.A. Police were reluctant to enter it.
    As they slid from the freeway into the web of streets surrounding the development, Thor took manual control of the little vehicle. Fu pointed to a flashing sign which shifted to several languages in turn. The English part read: "Safe Parking." There was also an image of a car inside a stylized cage: the universal illit symbol for a guarded parking facility. They drove into the small lot and were stopped by a boy who stood in the center of the drive approach, holding a fire ax at port arms. As they climbed from the car, another boy, perhaps fourteen years old, emerged from a shack next to the drive. Inside the shack, they could see a group of younger boys and girls, most of them with holo masks on their faces.
    "You going into the Big W?" the boy asked. He wore a coverall of red imitation leather and had a chromed ball-peen hammer thonged to his chain-belt. His shaven scalp was covered by a tattooed spider and contact film transformed his eyes to scarlet orbs.
    "For a couple of hours," Fu said. "How much?"
    "Two C," the boy said, rubbing the thumb and fingers of his raised right hand in the gesture which had appeared coincidentally with the invention of paper money.
    "Capitalist pig!" Fu protested. "Quarter-C, tops."
    The boy grinned, displaying teeth enameled the color of blood. "One C, exploiter of the masses. Less buys less protection."
    "Three-quarter C, enemy of the people," Fu said.
    "Done," the boy said. "Three-quarter C for two hours. For every hour or partial hour after that, one half C. After ten hours, we declare you dead and ransom the car back to the rental company."
    "Agreed," Fu said.
    "Three-quarter C in advance. " The boy took a slotted credit box from his belt and Thor thrust his card into it, transferring seventy-five dollars. The boy in red turned and said something to the ax-bearer, speaking fast in a dialect Thor couldn't follow, although it seemed to have some English words in it. The other boy tossed his ax into the back of the car, climbed in and drove the little vehicle into a caged area. There were several other conveyances there, some of them expensive models. Thor and Fu began to walk the two blocks to the Watts development.
    "What was that language that little bandit was speaking?" Thor asked.
    "Yankrainian. It's a youthspeak like Burmex, used by the twelve-to-sixteen crowd. There's two L.A. holo stations that use nothing else. On your toes, now. We're in Injun country."
    A sour smell hung over the whole district, as if the sanitation systems had been failing for years. There were few people on the streets at this hour, and they displayed little curiosity toward Thor and his companion. The general attitude was one of dejected apathy,
    "Stop looking around like you were expecting these poor losers to jump us," Fu said. "Relax. Nobody's going to bother us except groups of three or more. The gangs mostly hang out inside the complex."
    "And that's where we're going," Thor said uneasily.
    "You want to see what's happening, you have to take the risks." The hulking building was getting closer, looking more like a cliff than an artifact.
    "Do you come down here often?" Thor asked.
    "Maybe once a month. Down here is where the