PIGEON CITY 10:

"This way, please," Irene said, walking briskly by them. Her voice was curiously deadened by the carpet, the walls, the very efficiency of that velvety atmosphere.

"Come on!" Raisin Face hissed as she caned her way in behind their guide.

"There is no need to whisper," Irene said airily. She seemed at home and unimpressed by the opulence that so overwhelmed the new comers. Curtiss felt a twinge of envy; it was the same jealousy to which he had become accustomed to those lonely summer mornings back on the roof with his pigeons.

He watched Irene as she selected a cubicle and offered them seats. "She's so confident," Curtiss thought to himself. He realized that Raisin Face had made a strong point when she said they were all behaving essentially the same way they always had. He looked at Allen, and saw that his friend was glaring at everyone and everything. He knew Allen was probably planning something at this very moment. And he recalled the way he himself had turned away from Irene in the hall and mumbled, "People change . . ."

"Do they?" He suddenly said aloud, and Irene glanced at him. He had lost a friend. Maybe she would understand, he had been frightened, the surroundings, so totally unfamiliar . . .

"Please sit down," Irene said formally. Raisin Face eagerly took a seat. Her chair went "poshhhh," and she smiled gummily.

Irene left them in the cubicle. "I'll be right back," she said. Her voice had lost all of the former sunny, breezy sparkle. Curtiss hung his head in shame and the rest of the group folded their hands on the table.

Irene returned with three of four tapes. Taking a chair at the head of the table she said, "I want you to see these, you will find that they explain themselves." She sounded like an eduvision announcer, and Curtiss wanted to weep.

A soft whistle sounded and throughout the room, hundreds of chairs clicked as everyone turned to face the big board. The library assumed an auditorium aspect. Curtiss and the rest of his group followed suit. The screen went blank, paused and flickered to life. It showed a hallway. It was narrow. The walls seemed to be metal. Thick yellow gas of the same type used in reclamation seethed and boiled along the floor of the corridor, evilly swirling. Allen and the others wrinkled their noses - remembering.

The camera seemed to be focusing on a shadowy figure somewhere in the gas. There was no sound; just the ever clarifying image of what they now could see was a man. Clinging to a ladder and reaching for something over the rising mustard cloud of gas. His face, there was something about the panic in his eyes that wasn't exactly right. Something . . . concentration. This trapped man was not giving in. Terrified, but unbeaten . . .

Curtiss was the first to recognize Franklyn. He jumped to his feet and stared helplessly while the fugitive hung to the ladder and reached out toward what seemed to be an inverted brass flower in the middle of the ceiling. He reached and stretched. In his hand he held a lighted match. The flame was painfully small.

"What's he doing?" Curtiss cried.

"He's trying to set off the sprinkler system," Allen said softly from his chair.

The gas was rising. Franklyn turned to the camera, and he seemed to be shouting something. Suddenly, he released his perch and disappeared into the swirling, angry clouds.

The screen went blank. There was a collective sigh throughout the room, and the board resumed its posting of information. The swivel chairs clicked again as people went back to their positions.. Allen turned to Irene's chair. It was empty.

Curtiss was looking through the tapes Irene had left on the table. They were bundled together with an inch-wide plastistrip on which was printed: "Mass Reclamation." The individual reels were marked with neighborhoods. "Bedford Stuy" was one of the oldest: "Harlem" was the most recent.

"Let's see the Harlem tape," Raisin Face said when the bundle was passed to her.

"Do you know how to work these things?" Allen asked.

"I'll set them up for you." A voice had suddenly joined the group from behind. They whirled in their chairs, and Carol smiled a greeting, reaching for the tapes.

"Irene went to get her brother. He belongs in number 3 with us," she confided as their screen lit up with shots of last night's riot.

There was Curtiss' smashed coop on the mechi-engine. The street was filled with familiar faces. They saw again the looting and breaking, the fire, and then finally, the people, all but two of them, frozen with fear at random places, the arrival of the mechivans, and the voice of a white narrator chanting hypnotically off camera: "This is the face of the greedy, the ignorant and the destructive." The tape ended.

"Whitey," Allen whispered, and Carol smiled.

"Don't blame Whitey," she said.

"Who are we supposed to blame? Ourselves?"

"No, Allen," Carol replied. "Why do you have to blame someone?"

"You aren't for real, are you?" Curtiss began, but Allen put his hand on Curt's arm.

"Don't even bother to answer her man," he said.

Carol smiled patiently. "Around the turn of the century, in the cities, do you know how many jobs the old 30-hour-a-week system had provided?"

Allen glared at her as though she were crazy.

"But you don't know there were more make-work projects than there were real jobs? And you do know the cities were falling apart? The people were turning on and blaming each other. Nothing would stop them. It was and is the way of Nature."

Allen had been shifting restlessly in his seat, but he could stand it no longer. "The way of Nature!" he shouted. "Why don't you cut this out and let us know what the hell is going on?" He pounded the table with his fist and the people in the cubicles around them stopped to watch with an amused sort of mild interest. Allen glared back at them.

"What are you supposed to be doing?" Allen said, and he suddenly reached across a cubicle wall, snatching a clipboard before his startled victim could react.

Allen began to leaf through the man's papers, and he was pleased to notice more and more people turning in their chairs to watch. He looked mischievously at Curt, and Curtiss was almost certain Allen's eyes sparkled with secret glee.

Carol nodded to the man from whom Allen had taken the board and he smiled wearily before turning around and resuming his work. Throughout the hall, everyone was going back to their projects. Allen stood, stunned and alone for a few seconds, and then he flopped to his chair still clutching the clipboard.

"Allen, please try to bear with us," Carol was saying.

"What is this place?" Allen muttered.

"Our library." Carol folded her arms and waited.

"What do you do here?" Allen looked up at her like a child.

"We receive tapes and store them, we annotate and dub them, and we write scripts for them."

Allen blinked and looked at Curtiss. Curtiss' eyes were wide.

"We know what approach is the most effective, having the same backgrounds," Carol said almost patriotically.

"You witch," Allen whispered.

Carol continued. "If the people are satisfied to live in the ghetto, we let them. But the ones who aren't intimidated, who aren't satisfied to remain in their areas, who create some sort of disturbance - we bring them in and test them."

"Witch," Allen said a little louder and his eyes were growing hot.

Carol broke off and looked at him calmly. "Fascinating how you must hate," she murmured appreciatively.

Allen rose in his chair and stared at her blindly.

"Would you like to see another tape?" Carol invited. She didn't wait for an answer. The small eduscreen was glowing again. Curtiss and Raisin Face watched. Allen pivoted stiffly and faced the screen.

There had been a disturbance of some sort. The camera revealed a burned-out shell of a smoking building that seemed to have been a theater. A street sign showed the location to be "Queens Boulevard and 71st Avenue." People stood around dumbly waiting for assembly There were the familiar mechivans; the doors stood ajar.

Curtiss shuddered involuntarily, and then he looked, rubbed his eyes and looked again. These people were white! He hadn't noticed at first, perhaps because he was almost conditioned to seeing white people on eduvision, perhaps it was because the pattern of the negative reinforcement tapes was such a familiar one, but there they were, white people. And they were being reclaimed! A narrator began to speak off camera. The voice of a black woman, and she was saying: "This is the fate of the greedy, the ignorant, the selfish . . ."

The tape ended. Curtiss sat startled for a moment, and then he said, "That voice, that voice was familiar . . . " and he looked up toward the ceiling.

Carol laughed. "I always wanted to be an actress," she said as though confessing a nice secret.

"Where are the white people taken?" Raisin Face asked timidly.

Carol paused and moistened her lips. She obviously enjoyed her job as narrator and guide. "Separate but equal facilities, Long Island City," she announced. Her eyes sparkled proudly.

Allen stood, looking off into space. "Never," he murmured. "I'll never go along with any of it." His eyes were going vacant.

Curtiss looked anxiously to Carol. "Will he be all right?" he asked.

"Of course he'll be all right!" she snapped. "You, his best friend should know it."

"I should?" Curtiss whispered.

Allen looked blankly from one to the other.

"You know how he is," Carol said patiently. "We had no idea he would blow up a block of buildings and start a riot, but we've been watching him for a long time. Here we have the facilities Allen and the creatives like him need."

Allen's eyebrows went up, but he said nothing.

Carol watched him and smiled with satisfaction. "Yes," she went on. "Equipment, storerooms full of information, assistants, I could go on and on."

"I can do what I want?" Allen said suddenly.

"Sure you can," Carol replied. "You can even go back to your ghetto and try to liberate the people there if you like. You would have to spend some time at the, what was it? The farm? But you can go back, or you can stay."

Allen looked undecided. Carol put her hands on his shoulders and looked steadily into his eyes. "We need you, Allen," she said. "We need your drive, your energy to help us run the city. You are a leader, and we want you. Will you stay and help?"

Curtiss wasn't sure, but he thought he saw Allen wink quickly before he replied. "Yes," he sad at last.

Click HERE for Part I