After breakfast, the women and children had been loaded onto buses to begin a tour of the city. At first it had seemed absurdly out of character. On the surface everything was so normal, and yet they were prisoners, ripped from their homes through treachery and death and carted off like so many cattle.

“This is one of our newest sections of the city,” Judy was saying, cutting into Madeline’s thoughts. “The city council has taken the city, section by section, and replaced all the homes that were here before Termination. It has been an expensive and lengthy project, but now the homes are modern, energy efficient, and attractive places for our people to live. Not only are the houses all heated by electricity, but the cars are electric and virtually all industry is powered by electricity.

“With only about two hundred thousand people in the Alliance of Four Cities—we call it the AFC—we obviously do not have everything as it was before.” She looked up into the rearview mirror and smiled. “My father still talks about coffee and cigarettes, but my mother says it was the best thing that ever happened to him. Other products found in warm climates, such as citrus fruit, bananas, pineapple, and several spices, we just do without. I would like to taste them some day. Rumor has it that an expedition may be sent south to see if any of those plants have survived and could be cultivated in greenhouses up here, but so far nothing has come of that.

“Metal products, especially aluminum and steel, are turned out in small quantities but are very limited and quite expensive. However, production is slowly expanding. We’ve reopened the copper mines around what used to be Butte, Montana, and have a large refinery near there.”

Curious in spite of herself, Madeline called to the cheerful young guide, “You say the cars are electric. Does that mean you don’t have petroleum?”

“No. We do have one fairly good-sized oil field in production east of here, near Browning. And there are several smaller areas. But most of that goes for the chemical and plastics industries. Our engineers have developed a heavy-duty, rechargeable battery, so virtually all vehicles in the AFC are electric.”

As the bus stopped at a traffic signal, Judy half turned in her seat and smiled back at her passengers. “The older people—those who lived before Termination—still complain a lot about what we don’t have, but as one writer put it, we have ice cream, television, and nylon stockings. What more could a person want?”

The bus turned a corner and entered a beautiful parkway with a center island of grass and flowers so brilliant that they dazzled the eye. About a block ahead of them, Madeline could see a quadrant lined on three sides with large, modern buildings of brick and glass.

“We are now entering Alliance Square,” Judy said proudly.