THE EIGHT BILLION
                      by Richard Wilson

 The vizier told the King of New York: "It's time to go downtown, Your
Majesty."
  Because of the throng and the hubbub he spoke with his lips pressed to
the King's ear. The vizier, who was old, could remember when the little
throne-room had seemed crowded with a mere hundred courtiers in it.
Now, 40 years later, there were a thousand. He turned his head half right
and the King graciously turned his head to put his lips to the vizier's ear.
  "Is it really time?" the King asked. He made a happy, involuntary
gesture and dislodged the crown of his Queen. "Sorry dear."
  "What?" the Queen said. She retrieved the crown from the shoulder of
the first lady in waiting, which was as far as it had been able to fall. "We
can't hear a word you say."
   The King ignored her. The vizier got his lips back to the King's ear and
said, "Yes, Sire. Your gracious presence would be most welcome." He
spoke in the pre-arranged code.
   The circle of nobles closest to the King became aware that a discussion
of import was under way and fell silent. They shifted their feet a quarter
inch and inclined their heads.
  The vizier glared at them. "Hubba-hubba!" he barked.
   "Hubba-hubba!" they responded, and not until their chatter had
resumed did he again put his lips to the King's ear. "The Supervisors are
thinking of legalizing death," he said, knowing he would be overheard and
deliberately reviving an old rumor for the benefit of the eavesdropping
nobles.
  "We should not be displeased," the King said. "They could start right
here."
  "Under the plan the nobles would be exempt," the vizier said. "I think a
committee of nobles helped draft the plan."
  "That would be a pity," the King said, not bothering to get the vizier's
ear back. "Our wish would be to distribute such a blessing democratically,
if we may use that word. Hubba-hubba, there!"
  The nobles' conversation, which had dropped to a murmur, rose in
volume.
  "They were thinking of starting at the outskirts," the vizier said. "As you
know, the beneficent protection of immortality extends five hundred feet
beyond the borders of the county. The thought was to bring it to the very
edges, so that if anyone fell off the island he'd be gone, Pfut! like that.
There'd be a law against shoving, of course."
   "Very sound," the King said. "But what of those whose business takes
them beyond the borders? Some are authorized by us to travel to the
Kingdoms of Bronx or Richmond. We must not discourage trade, such
little as there is."
  Chimes sounded and the voice of the Royal Chef said: "Chow is now
down." He was a former mess sergeant.
  The voices of the nobles automatically rose again and there was a
shifting of feet as they braced themselves. Under cover of this the King
sought the vizier's ear and said: "Are they through downtown?" He
sounded excited.
  "Very close, Your Majesty. They wait only your presence."
  "We'll go right after chow."
   A mist began to descend from the feeder nozzles in the ceiling. "Odd
numbers inhale," the voice of the Chef said. "Deep breaths now. Exhale.
Even numbers inhale. Now out. Odd in, even out. Even in, odd out. Keep
the rhythm or you'll burst the walls." The Royal Chef talked to the nobles
as if they were half-witted privates.
  "Oh, damn," the King said. "Essence of plankton again."
  "Nourishing, though," the vizier said on the exhale. Then he breathed in
hungrily.
  "We keep forgetting whether we're odd or even," said the King, who had
been breathing at random to the discomfort of his chief minister. "We
know we have dispensation but we like to cooperate."
  "Your Majesty is odd; I'm even."
  "How Our Gracious Queen manages to get fat on this stuff I'll never
know," the King said. He turned to her. "Exhale, dear, while we're
inhaling."
  "What?" she said.
  "Never mind, dear." To the vizier he said: "Holy Moly. Can we start
now?"
  "To the Board of Supervisors' meeting, Sire?" It was on the agenda, and
the King must not seem to be rushing downtown.
  The King nodded and inch by inch they left, the vizier starting the cry
that the nobles took up: "Gutzin for the King! Gutzin for the King!"



  The nobles weren't the only idle ones.
  There were few jobs other than those connected with essential services
such as Communications (skyvision, grown-in radio), Waste Disposal (the
daily garbage rocket into space), Feeding, Health, Subways and Sports.
  Sports was really part of Communications but had insisted on its own
Dukedown. Thus it managed to perpetuate the fiction that its football,
baseball and hockey games were live, contemporary contests. Actually they
were all on tape or film and hardly a player was still alive.
   There was a sound reason. Spectator sports involving mass
transportation of people had long since had to be banned. It was no longer
possible to get 100,000 or more people in and out of Central Park
Stadium for a game—because there were already 800,000 people living
there permanently, stacked up in tiers.
  The Board of Supervisors' meeting was scheduled to discuss an incident
which had occurred on the Harlem River Overbuild.
  The 63 supervisors were jammed erect in their meeting room, which
had once been a secretary's office in the County Building.
   There was no room to sit down, even for the King, who stood near a
window from which he had a good view of the teeming, spiry colossus he
ruled.
   The supervisors nearest him were all talking at once, taking advantage
of the King's rare visit to advance their private causes. The King listened
politely but his mind obviously was downtown.
  "I said we can handle it," the Chairman shouted to the vizier. "All we
have to do is coordinate menus with the King of the Bronx. His people
come crowding across the line when we have parabeef mist and they only
have plankton. Our people get trampled. Then they fight. That's what
happened at the Overbuild. Near-riot."
  "I hear there are people who never have plankton," the vizier said.
"They circulate around the kingdoms and know just where to be at
chowdown. There must be a leak from the Royal Kitchens."
 "We'll look into it but it would be better to coordinate. Then it wouldn't
matter where they were." The Chairman asked: "Have you visited
maternity lately? They're delivering them like shad roe."
  "Sounds like an enforcement-problem there," the vizier said
impatiently, with a look across to the King, who had obviously had the
word that a breakthrough was near in Project Mohole. "Holy Moly," he
had said, hadn't he?
   "How do you mean, enforcement?" the Chairman asked. "You can't
legislate a pregnancy stretchout. Nine months and there they are. And the
incidence of multiple births is rising, I might add."
  "I'm talking about the mating berths," the vizier said. "I know the
permits are supposed to be rigidly controlled but I think a shakeup would
be in order among the keepers of the keys."
  "That's not it. The problem is I.I."
  "I.I.?"
   "Illegal impregnation. They tell me it's flourishing. Especially at the
compulsory sex education lectures. Jam them in like that, co-ed, and then
talk about it, and things are bound to happen."
  "Shocking," said the vizier, who was unshockable.
  "The younger generation seems to be taking it as a matter of course. I've
heard one youngster say to another, 'I got a standing start.'"
  "Really, Mr. Chairman?" It was an old skyvision joke, actually.
 "Facts are facts, Your Excellency. And people are people. Every last
mother's son of the eight billion of them."
  "Eight billion? I didn't think we were anywhere near that figure." "As of
the noon census estimate," the Chairman said. "It's eight billion, one
million forty-two thousand some odd. I tell you, they're like shad roe."



  The skyscraper office buildings had long since been taken over as
dwellings. This followed naturally after big business fled, driven away by
increasing taxes and traffic congestion. No one had really counted noses,
but it was considered likely that the office buildings were being utilized at
maximum efficiency—between four and eight families could fit
comfortably into a suite of offices formerly occupied by one executive and
two secretaries. Maybe even 16 or 32 families could squeeze in if you
considered the number of high-ceilinged offices which had been duplexed,
at least to the extent of stacking up the sleepers in rooms cut horizontally
in half.



   The vizier got the King away from the supervisors by crying: "We're
late! Gutzin! Gutzin for the Kingl"
  What they were late for was the annual Mingle Day. The King obviously
was determined to go through with it on his way downtown.
   Its full name was Mingle with the Masses Day. The law decreed that
once each year the King and Queen, accompanied by their first minister,
the vizier, must go forth among the multitude to see how unbearable
things had become and to listen to complaints.
   The vizier dreaded every second of Mingle Day and in recent years had
tried to beg off on various pretexts, none of which the King had found
acceptable. The King rather enjoyed the custom; he slithered amiably
through the crush in his Silicoat, smiling, chatting, shaking hands, signing
autographs and generally having a royal time. The vizier did the work.
   The Queen, who had joined the King after the meeting, was not so good
at slithering, due to her girth, but she was game. Her way was to fix a
smile on her face and maintain a steady pace, relying on the agility of her
subjects to avoid touching her royal person with their hands, as protocol
required. She also wore one of the plastic Silicoats which a clever
Japanese commuter had developed early in the history of overpopulation.
The Queen called it her slipcover.
  The vizier had no such protection. His job was to stand still for the
populace and record their complaints. These came at him from all sides as
he aimed a button mike at the complainer's lips, cutting him off after 15
seconds, then moving on to the next. Thus the vizier constantly fell behind
and had to make wild dashes through virtually solid flesh to regain his
place behind Her Majesty.
   It was unfortunate that the word that it was time to go downtown fell
on Mingle Day, but there had been no way of knowing exactly when the
breakthrough would take place. The secret project—boring into the
bedrock in search of a legendary vast cavern capable of being converted
into living space—had been pushed ahead with all possible speed and now
only the King's presence was needed to complete it.
  But he must give no appearance of haste lest he prematurely reveal the
secret. One could not be sure the Mohole project would be a success, even
after the breakthrough.
  Within minutes of the time the royal VTO had set the royal party down,
the normal crush had progressed from unbearable to next to impossible.
   As always, the temper of the crowd changed as it flowed past the King,
who received affection, to the Queen, who was accorded respect, to the
vizier, who got the complaints.
  Some of the complaints were more in the nature of suggestions and
used up less than the maximum 15 seconds, such as "Drop dead, Jack," or
"Go - - - -, you old - - - -."
   The vizier rather welcomed these brief imperatives, which helped him
make up the time lost in recording the comments of those who took their
full quarter minute.
   Another suggestion he had been hearing frequently in recent years was
"Invade Brooklyn; they got lots of room there."
  Brooklyn was probably worse off than Manhattan. People had been
breeding in Brooklyn in greater numbers, and for decades longer, than in
Manhattan and, though interborough statistics were secret, it was
doubtful whether Manhattan could survive a man-to-man war with
Brooklyn, should the unthinkable ever become think-about-able.
  It was likely that the invade-Brooklyn advocates had been subtly misled
by the titles of the boroughs' respective rulers into thinking Brooklyn
would be a pushover for Manhattan. What the confusion stemmed from,
probably, was that Brooklyn had only a Prince, whereas Manhattan had a
King. (Nobody suggested invading the Bronx, which also had a King.)
  The situation went back to the founding of the dynasties, which had
their origin in a newspaper promotion.
  One year the journalistic colossus, the Daily News, turned from the
various publicity queens it had sponsored over the decades and let its
readers choose a king.
   By chance the winner, in addition to being the handsomest of the
candidates, possessed a good brain and a fine speaking voice. Thus the
mayor, to whom the Daily News had given its powerful support in his
election campaign, was delighted to agree to turn over to the "king" some
of his ceremonial duties.
  Now, therefore, it was the "king" who rode with visiting heads of state
up Broadway-High (the upper-level road through the financial district)
under the simulated ticker-tape showers, who spoke at Knights of
Columbus and United Jewish Appeal functions, who opened new old
people's homes, who attended banquets for important business
organizations and who went to crucial ball games. As a result the mayor
had more time for his job and family.
   So well did the "king" carry out his duties that he was overwhelmingly
re-elected in the newspaper's poll the following year. In time the quotation
marks were withdrawn from around his title, first by the Daily News and
then even by the more conservative papers, which had given up trying to
ignore this creation of their rival. Finally the King, elevated to
capitalization and assured of permanent employment and a salary
commensurate with his position, became known simply as the King of
New York. New York County (Manhattan), that is.
   Similarly, after another newspaper promotion, there was elected a
Queen of Queens (County), an euphonious title. But naturally the
promotion to name a King of Kings (every schoolchild surely knows that
Brooklyn is Kings County) had to be aborted as blasphemous. Brooklyn
chose a Prince instead. His inferior-sounding title notwithstanding, the
Prince of Brooklyn was co-equal with the Queen of Queens and the Kings
of New York, Bronx and Richmond.
   In New York one year, the mayor failed the city in a crisis which the
King quietly solved. Soon afterwards the King ousted the mayor from
power in a gentlemanly coup. The four other counties being agreeable, the
post of mayor was abolished and the Kings, Queens and Prince took over
as heads of the autonomous county governments. Later their children
succeeded them, either because they had been treated as royalty anyway
or through the lethargy of the electorate, and the posts became hardly
hereditary, as in the old-fashioned monarchies.
   The current monarch in Manhattan was King V, the fifth in his line. By
this time they had dropped their common names and started putting on
airs, such as talking in the first person plural.



   "The plankton ain't what it used to be," a new complainer said to the
vizier. "Look into that, will ya?"
  "I certainly shall, sir. Next." He was within a yard of the Queen's ample
rear.
   "The skyvision stinks lately," another said. "Not to mention the way the
stars shine through from the back. They even let the moon get in once in a
while. Then you can't see nothing."
   "I'll take it up with the Royal Communication Commission," the vizier
said. "It's ridiculous to be expected to look at the rnoon when it's skyvision
time, isn't it?"
  He was a step closer to the Queen, who was virtually at the King's elbow.
  "Holy Moly," a strange voice said in his ear.
  The vizier looked around sharply. A grinning, crafty-faced man said:
"Means something to you, don't it? What are you trying to hide from us,
Viz? You're not digging for gold, that's for sure."
  "Digging?"
   Others in the crowd echoed the word. The two syllables flew off in all
directions.
  "Downtown," the man said meaningfully. "You know where and why.
How about telling the rest of us?"
  The King and Queen had gone ahead and were already separated from
the vizier by thousands of people.
  "What is it?" the crafty-faced man persisted; "an escape-hatch for
higher-ups?"
  "Whatever is done is done for all," the vizier declared, but the truth
sounded unconvincing. He was surrounded by unfriendly faces.
  Suddenly a knife appeared in the hand of the crafty man.
  The vizier sucked in his breath, less from fear than from shock. Never
had he seen a weapon outside the Royal Armory.
  "Take us downtown," the man said. "We'll help you dig."
   Then, as if miraculously, the broad, beloved, Silicoated figure of the
Queen slid majestically through the multitude, who fell back respectfully
for her.
  She fixed the crafty man with an imperial eye and said: "How dare you
threaten Our Minister?" To no one in particular she said: "Seize the
malefactor."
  Instantly, as he tried to hide the knife and slink away, he was grabbed
by his erstwhile cronies.
   The Queen whispered to the vizier: "We heard everybody saying
'digging' and came at once."
   Then the King was also there, at the side of his Queen and minister. The
vizier had never loved them more.
  "Our people," the King said softly, confident that his words would be
carried swiftly through the multitude; "we deplore this attempted violence
against our honored minister because we deem any such action an attack
on ourselves." There was a horrified murmur from the nearer edges of the
vast pack of humanity.
  "But worse," the King went on, "our heart is sore to think that anyone
would impute to us a selfish motive. Therefore we invite each of you to go
downtown with us."
  When some of the excitement generated by this statement had died
down he continued: "The project has been kept secret for one reason only:
the possibility that it would fail, thus dashing hopes prematurely raised."
  Somehow they got downtown, the teeming swarm of them, coursing
excitedly along.
   As they went the King explained Project Moly. His words, carried from
group to group, told of the thrilling possibility that there were vast caverns
below, where a man and his family might have space—room to breathe—a
little privacy.
  It mattered little that such space would be underground. Nine-tenths of
the people already lived at lower or inner levels of vast surface honeycombs
where the sun was never seen.
  Finally they were "downtown." At the King's bidding, many hundreds
were allowed through the doors of the huge warehouse whose cellar had
become a massive excavation. Others formed human pyramids, took turns
peering in through windows high above street level and told those below
what they saw.
  The chief digger led the King down the slope to the excavated depths.
  The moment was at hand. The King rolled up his sleeves, grasped the
pickaxe firmly with two hands and sank its point into a tissue-thin
partition. It went through.
  Great cheers went up. The King stepped back and workmen enlarged
the hole.
   It was obvious, as the scientists had forecast, that there were great
caverns below and that they were capable of holding millions —perhaps
billions—of people.
  For several blessed moments the King and his people stared with awe
and silent thanksgiving into the yawning, empty depths.
  But soon, first with a whisper, then with a murmur and finally with
shouts and cheers similar to those voiced by the Manhattanites only
minutes ago, there issued from the depths of the cavern, from cracks and
crevices where they must have been hiding and watching, scores, then
hundreds of ugly livid people who looked as if neither they nor their
ancestors had ever known the sun.
   Sensing daylight above, although only the most diffuse of rays could
have penetrated these deep workings, the livid people, their sunken eyes
asquint and obviously hurting, streamed up along the sloping tunnel as
relentlessly as a rising tide in the Bay of Fundy.
  Now there were thousands of them—hundreds of thousands.
  Ragged, thin, barefoot, their voices a babble of thanksgiving, they
pattered past the King and his subjects, who pressed back against the rock
wall as the gray tide flowed by.
  Their tongue was strange but some root it had in common with the
King's English made it possible for him to understand them.
   They were saying that their quest had ended; that their prayers to a
dimly-remembered topside god had been answered; that their upward
borings had not been in vain and that there was surely room at the surface
for the teeming, expanding population of the gray people who had been
inhabiting the caverns inside the Earth —all eight billion of them.