The Sixth Science Fiction Megapack

by Arthur C. Clarke

  His supervisor took it in in a flash and banged open the circuit to Service. To the genial face that appeared on the screen, he snapped: “Trace Hialeah, Boston and Kansas City—in that order, Micky.”

  Micky said: “Okay, pal,” and vanished.

  The supervisor turned to the youngster. “Didn’t know what to do?” he asked genially. “Don’t let it worry you. Next time you’ll know. You noticed the order of priority?”

  “Yes,” the boy gulped.

  “It wasn’t an accident that I gave it to him that way. First, Hialeah because it was the most important. We get the bulk of our revenue from serving the horse rooms—in fact, I understand we started as a horse wire exclusively. Naturally the horse-room customers pay for it in the long run, but they pay without pain. Nobody’s forcing them to improve the breed, right?

  “Second, Boston-New York trunk. That’s common-carrier while the Fair Grounds isn’t running up there. We don’t make any profit on common-carrier service, the rates are too low, but we owe it to the public that supports us.

  “Third, Kansas City-New York. That’s common carrier too, but with one terminal in Mob Territory. No reason why we should knock ourselves out for Regan and his boys, but after the other two are traced and closed, we’ll get around to them. Think you got it straight now?”

  “Yes,” the youngster said.

  “Good. Just take it easy.”

  * * * *

  The supervisor moved away to do a job of billing that didn’t need immediate doing; he wanted to avoid the very appearance of nagging the boy. He wondered too, if he’d really put it over, and decided he hadn’t. Who could, after all. It took years on the wires to get the feel. Slowly your motivation changed. You started by wanting to make a place for yourself and earn some dough. After years you realized, not with a blinding flash, but gradually, that you were working for quite another reason. Nice gang here that treats you right. Don’t let the Syndic down. The customers pay for their fun and by God, you see that they get it or bust a gut trying.

  * * * *

  On his way to the 101st Precinct station house, the ears of Charles Orsino burned as he thought of the withering lecture that had followed the blast on Gilby’s whistle. “Mister Orsino, is it or is it not your responsibility as team captain to demand that a dangerous ball be taken out of play? And did or did not that last burst from Mister Vladek beat the ball out of round, thus giving rise to a distinct possibility of dangerous ricochets?” The old man was right of course, but it had been a pocked and battered practice ball to start with; in practice sessions, you couldn’t afford to be fussy—not with regulation 18 inch armor steel balls selling for thirty dollars each at the pro shop.

  He walked between the two green lamps of the precinct station and dumped his bag on the sergeant’s desk. Immediately the sergeant started a tale of woe: “Mr. Orsino, I don’t like to bother you with the men’s personal troubles, but I wonder if you could come through with a hundred dollar present for a very deserving young fellow here. It’s Patrolman Gibney, seven years in the old 101st and not a black mark against him. One citation for shooting it out with a burglar and another for nabbing a past-post crook at Lefko’s horse room. Gibney’s been married for five years and has two of the cutest kids you ever saw, and you know that takes money. Now he wants to get married again, he’s crazy in love with the girl and his first wife don’t mind, she says she can use a helping hand around the house, and he wants to do it right with a big wedding.

  “If he can do it on a hundred, he’s welcome to it,” Charles said, grinning. “Give him my best wishes.” He divided the pile of bills into two orderly stacks, transferred a hundred dollars to one and pocketed the other.

  He dropped it off at the Syndic Building, had an uninteresting dinner in one of its cafeterias and went to his furnished room downtown. He read a chapter in F. W. Taylor’s—Uncle Frank’s—latest book, Organization, Symbolism and Morale, couldn’t understand a word he read, bathed and got out his evening clothes.

  * * * *

  A thin and attractive girl entered a preposterously-furnished room in the Syndic Building, arguing bitterly with a white-bearded, hawk-nosed old man.

  “My dear ancestor,” she began, with exaggerated patience.

  “God-damn it, Lee, don’t call me an ancestor! Makes me feel as if I was dead already.”

  “You might as well be for all the sense you’re talking.”

  “All right, Lee.” He looked wounded and brave.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Edward—” She studied his face with suddenly-narrowed eyes and her tone changed. “Listen, you old devil, you’re not fooling me for a minute. I couldn’t hurt your feelings with the blunt edge of an axe. You’re not talking me into anything. It’d just be sending somebody to his death. Besides, they were both accidents.” She turned and began to fiddle with a semi-circular screen whose focus was a large and complicated chair. Three synchronized projectors bore on the screen.

  The old man said very softly: “And what if they weren’t? Tom McGurn and Bob were good men. None better. If the damn Government’s knocking us off one by one, something ought to be done. And you seem to be the only person in a position to do it.”

  “Start a war,” she said bitterly. “Sweep them from the seas. Wasn’t Dick Reiner chanting that when I was in diapers?”

  “Yes,” the old man brooded. “And he’s still chanting it now that you’re in—whatever young ladies wear nowadays. Promise me something, Lee. If there’s another try, will you help us out?”

  “I am so sure there won’t be,” she said, “that I’ll promise. And God help you, Edward, if you try to fake one. I’ve told you before and I tell you now that it’s almost certain death.”

  * * * *

  Charles Orsino studied himself in a three-way mirror.

  The evening suit was new; he wished the gunbelt was. The holster rode awkwardly on his hip; he hadn’t got a new outfit since his eighteenth birthday and his chest had filled out to the last hole of the cross-strap’s buckle since then. Well, it would have to wait; the evening would cost him enough as it was. Five bodyguards! He winced at the thought. But you had to be seen at these things and you had to do it right or it didn’t count.

  He fell into a brief reverie of meeting a beautiful, beautiful girl at the theater, a girl who would think he was interesting and handsome and a wonderful polo player, a girl who would happily turn out to be in the direct Falcaro line with all sorts of powerful relations to speak up for him.…

  Someone said on his room annunciator: “The limousine is here, Mr. Orsino. I’m Halloran, your chief bodyguard.”

  “Very well, Halloran,” he said casually, just as he’d practiced it in the bathroom that morning and rode down.

  The limousine was a beauty and the guards were faultlessly turned out. One was democratic with one’s chief guard and a little less so with the others. As Halloran drove, Charles chatted with him about the play, which was Julius Caesar in modern dress. Halloran said he’d heard it was very good.

  * * * *

  Their arrival in the lobby of the Costello created no sensation. Five bodyguards wasn’t a lot of bodyguards, even though there seemed to be no other Syndic people there. So much for the beautiful Falcaro girl. Charles chatted with a television director he knew slightly. The director explained to him that the theater was sick, very sick, that Harry Tremaine,—he played Brutus—made a magnificent stage picture but couldn’t read lines.

  By then Halloran was whispering in his ear that it was time to take their seats. Halloran was sweating like a pig and Charles didn’t get around to asking him why. Charles took an aisle seat, Halloran was across the aisle and the others sat to his side, front and rear.

  The curtain rose on “New York—A Street.”

  The first scene, a timekiller designed to let fidgeters subside and coughers finish their coughing, was a 3-D projection of Times Square, with a stylized suggestion of a public relations consultant’s office
“down in one” on the apron.

  When Caesar entered Orsino started, and there was a gratified murmur around the auditorium. He was made up as French Letour, one of the Mobsters from the old days—technically a hero, but one who had sailed mighty close to the wind. This promised to be interesting.

  “Peace, ho! Caesar speaks.”

  And so to the apron where the soothsayer—public relations consultant—delivered the warning contemptuously ignored by Letour-Caesar, and the spotlight shifted to Cassius and Brutus for their long, foreboding dialogue. Brutus’ back was to the audience when it started; he gradually turned—

  “What means this shouting? I do fear the people will choose Caesar for their king!”

  And you saw that Brutus was Falcaro—old Amadeo Falcaro himself, with the beard and hawk nose and eyebrows.

  Well, let’s see now. It must be some kind of tortured analogy with the Treaty of Las Vegas when Letour made a strong bid to unite Mob and Syndic and Falcaro had fought against anything but a short-term, strictly military alliance. Charles felt kind of sore about Falcaro not getting the title role, but he had to admit that Tremaine played Falcaro as the gutsy magnifico he had been. When Caesar re-entered, the contrast became clear; Caesar-Letour was a fidgety, fear-ridden man. The rest of the conspirators brought on through Act One turned out to be good fellows all, fresh and hearty; Charles guessed everything was all right and he wished he could grab a nap. But Cassius was saying:

  “Him and his worth and our great need of him—”

  All very loyal, Charles thought, smothering a yawn. A life for the Syndic and all that, but a high-brow version. Polite and dignified, like a pavanne at Roseland. Sometimes—after, say, a near miss on the polo field—he would wonder how polite and dignified the great old days actually had been. Amadeo Falcaro’s Third Year Purge must have been an affair of blood and guts. Two thousand shot in three days, the history books said, adding hastily that the purged were unreconstructed, unreconstructable thugs whose usefulness was past, who couldn’t realize that the job ahead was construction and organization.

  * * * *

  And Halloran was touching Charles on the shoulder. “Intermission in a second, sir.”

  They marched up the aisle as the curtain fell to applause and the rest of the audience began to rise. Then the impossible happened.

  Halloran had gone first; Charles was behind him, with the four other guards hemming him in. As Halloran reached the door to the lobby at the top of the aisle, he turned to face Charles and performed an inexplicable pantomime. It was quite one second before Charles realized that Halloran was tugging at his gun, stuck in the holster.

  The guard to the left of Charles softly said: “Jesus!” and threw himself at Halloran as the chief guard’s gun came loose. There was a .45 caliber roar, muffled. There was another that crashed, unmuffled, a yard from Charles’ right ear. The two figures at the head of the aisle collapsed limply and the audience began to shriek. Somebody with a very loud voice roared: “Keep calm! It’s all part of the play! Don’t get panicky! It’s part of the play!”

  The man who was roaring moved up to the aisle door, fell silent, saw and smelled the blood and fainted.

  A woman began to pound the guard on Charles’ right with her fists, yelling: “What did you do to my husband? You shot my husband!” She meant the man who had fainted; Charles peeled her off the bodyguard.

  Somehow they got into the lobby, followed by most of the audience. The three bodyguards held them at bay. Charles found he was deaf in his right ear and supposed it was temporary. Least of his worries. Halloran had taken a shot at him. The guard named Weltfisch had intercepted it. The guard named Donnel had shot Halloran down.

  He said to Donnel: “You know Halloran long?”

  Donnel, not taking his eyes from the crowd, said: “Couple of years, sir. He was just a guy in the bodyguard pool.”

  “Get me out of here,” Orsino said. “To the Syndic Building.”

  In the big black car, he could almost forget the horror; he could hope that time would erase it completely. It wasn’t like polo. That shot had been aimed.

  The limousine purred to a halt before the titanic bulk of the Syndic Building, was checked and rolled on into the Unrestricted Entrance. An elevator silently lifted the car and passengers past floors devoted to Alcohol Clerical, Alcohol Research, and Testing, Transport, Collections Audit and Control, Cleaning and Dying, Female Recruitment and Retirement, up, up, up, past sections and sub-sections Charles had never entered, Syndic member though he was, to an automatic stop at a floor whose indicator said: enforcement and public relations.

  It was only 9:45 P.M.; F. W. Taylor would be in and working. Charles said: “Wait here, boys,” and muttered the code phrase to the door. It sprang open.

  F. W. Taylor was dictating, machine-gun fashion, to a mike. He looked dog-tired. His face turned up with a frown as Charles entered and then the frown became a beam of pleasure.

  “Charles, my boy! Sit down!” He snapped off the machine.

  “Uncle—” Charles began.

  “It was so kind of you to drop in. I thought you’d be at the theater.”

  “I was, Uncle, but—”

  “I’m working on a revision for the next edition of Organization, Symbolism and Morale. You’d never guess who inspired it.”

  “I’m sure I wouldn’t, Uncle. Uncle—”

  “Old Thornberry, President of the Chase National. He had the infernal gall to refuse a line of credit to young McGurn. Bankers! You won’t believe it, but people used to beg them to take over their property, tie up their incomes, virtually enslave them. People demanded it. The same way they demanded inexpensive liquor, tobacco and consumer goods, clean women and a chance to win a fortune and our ancestors obliged them. Our ancestors were sneered at in their day, you know. They were called criminals when they distributed goods and services at a price people could afford to pay.”

  “Uncle!”

  “Hush, boy, I know what you’re going to say. You can’t fool the people forever! When they’d had enough hounding and restriction, they rose in their might.

  “The people demanded freedom of choice, Falcaro and the rest rose to lead them in the Syndic and the Mob and they drove the Government into the sea.”

  “Uncle Frank—”

  “From which it still occasionally ventures to annoy our coastal cities,” F. W. Taylor commented. He warmed to his subject. “You should have seen the old boy blubber. The last of the old-time bankers, and they deserved everything they got. They brought it on themselves. They had what they called laissez-faire, and it worked for awhile until they got to tinkering with it. They demanded things called protective tariffs, tax remissions, subsidies—regulation, regulation, regulation, always of the other fellow. But there were enough bankers on all sides for everybody to be somebody else’s other fellow. Coercion snowballed and the Government lost public acceptance. They had a thing called the public debt which I can’t begin to explain to you except to say that it was something written on paper and that it raised the cost of everything tremendously. Well, believe me or not, they didn’t just throw away the piece of paper or scratch out the writing on it. They let it ride until ordinary people couldn’t afford the pleasant things in life.”

  “Uncle—”

  * * * *

  A cautious periscope broke the choppy water off Sea Island, Georgia. At the other end of the periscope were Captain Van Dellen of the North American Navy, lean as a hound, and fat little Commander Grinnel.

  “You might take her in a little closer, Van,” said Grinnel mildly.

  “The exercise won’t do you any lasting damage,” Van Dellen said. Grinnel was very, very, near to a couple of admirals and normally Van Dellen gave him the kid-glove treatment in spite of ranking him. But this washis ship and no cloak and dagger artist from an O.N.I. desk was telling him how to con it.

  Grinnel smiled genially at the little joke. “I could call it a disguise,” he said patting his paunch,
“but you know me too well.”

  “You’ll have no trouble with a sea like this,” Van Dellen said, strictly business. He tried to think of some appropriate phrase to recognize the danger Grinnel was plunging into with no resources except quick wits, a trick ring and a pair of guns. But all that bubbled up to the top of his head was; thank God I’m getting rid of this bastardly little Sociocrat. He’ll kill me some day if he gets a clean shot and the chance of detection is zero. Thank God I’m a Constitutionist. We don’t go in for things like that—or do we? Nobody ever tells me anything. A hack of a pigboat driver. And this little bastard’s going to be an admiral some day. But that boy of mine’ll be an admiral. He’s brainy, like his mother.

  Grinnel smiled and said: “Well, this would be it, wouldn’t it?”

  “Eh?” Van Dellen asked. “Oh. I see what you mean. Chuck!” he called a sailor. “Break out the Commander’s capsules. Pass the word to stand by for ejection.”

  The Commander was fitted, puffing, into the capsule. He growled at the storekeeper: “You sure this was just unsealed? It feels sticky already.”

  A brash jayee said: “I saw it unsealed myself three minutes ago, Commander. It’ll get stickier if we spend any more time talking. You have”—he glanced at his chronometer—“seventeen minutes now. Let me snap you in.”

  The Commander huddled down after a searching glance at the jayee’s face which photographed it forever in his memory. The top snapped down. Some day—some happy day—that squirt would very much regret telling him off. He gave an okay sign to Van Dellen who waved back meagerly and managed a smile. Three crewmen fitted the capsule into its lock.

  Foomf!

  It was through the hatch and bobbing on the surface. Its color matched the water’s automatically. Grinnel waggled the lever that aimed it inshore and began to turn the propellor crank. He turned fast; the capsule—rudders, crank, flywheel, shaft and all—would dissolve in approximately fifteen minutes. It was his job to be ashore when that happened.

  And ashore he’d be practically a free agent with the loosest sort of roving commission, until January 15th. Then his orders became most specific.