Island Worlds by John Maddox Roberts, Eric Kotani Page B

politics of despair are generated. To get the other end of the spectrum, I hire out part-time to a catering firm that supplies waiters for rich people's parties in the silicon-and-wine territory. They like the feeling of having humans act as servants for them. I can pick up a lot by listening to them talk."
    "I'm surprised the McNaughtons haven't picked that up yet. They're still high-tech, only robot servants."
    Now they were at the base of the structure. The walls were covered with luminescent graffiti to a height of twenty feet. Splintered glass crunched under their feet as they walked through a wide entranceway from which the doors had long since disappeared. The entrance opened onto a huge atrium twenty stories in height. Lining the atrium were twenty elevator tubes. Four or five of the elevators seemed to be in working order. The other tubes were filled with several stories of trash cast in by upper-level dwellers.
    On the lowest levels, lurid neon and holographic signs enticed passersby into establishments catering to every possible taste. Bizarrely-costumed groups wandered about aimlessly. In the center of the atrium, a group of perhaps fifty persons in all-enveloping sackcloth robes and masked hoods constantly blew the same two notes on battered trumpets.
    "Slaves of the New Apocalypse," Fu said, nodding toward the horn-blowers. "They've been blowing those two notes in shifts for more than a year now. They figure if they keep it up long enough, God will notice and destroy the world and take them up to heaven."
    They mounted a stair to the second level, where entertainment was the order of the day or night. Everywhere, huddled against the walls or sprawled in the walkways, were the inert forms of drunks and druggies. Colored smokes emerged from dim doorways and the sound of music was raucous and unending. Holographic shills appeared outside entranceways and clamored for attention, promising untold delights to be had within.
    Most of the dense crowds wore the shabby clothing of the proles or the idiosyncratic uniforms of youth gangs. Some were in the native dress of whatever part of the world they had fled to come to this place. Dozens of languages were to be heard. Here and there were individuals or small groups in expensive, fashionable clothes; the bored rich out for low amusements among their inferiors. They were invariably accompanied by hulking bodyguards.
    Thor found it a disturbingly stimulating place. It was far livelier than the dismal streets outside, but its grotesque combination of gaiety and misery was disorienting. He leaned on a railing overlooking the atrium floor and nodded to a crowd of Francophone Asians filing into a restaurant. "What do they come here for?" he asked. "I mean, not just here, but L.A. Hell, all of the U.S. is headed down the tubes. That's no surprise, of course, what with the insane redistribution of productive middle-class income to dole-hungry lower classes, while upper classes are immune to serious taxation. Not to mention the socially self-destructive educational policies and the legislations catering only to the special interest groups. What draws all these immigrants here?"
    "Because, compared to whatever Third World hellhole they come from, this is still heaven."
    "It's appalling," Thor said. "What is there for them to do when they get here?"
    "Very little," Fu said, pushing back his hat, his eyes following a richly-dressed woman trailed by a security robot. "This country was always the immigrant's dream, but it was built by taking land away from Indians and giving it to the immigrants. When most of the Indian land was gone, there was industry opening up and needing lots of labor. Now that's gone, too.
    "The frontier's in space now, and space unfortunately isn't a frontier for the masses. If all the resources of the planet were devoted to building ships and sending out as many people as possible, it wouldn't put a dent in the annual birth rate." He shifted his grip on his