Dean Ing & Mack Reynolds

by Deathwish World(lit)

  The three came up to the desk and MacDonald spoke in French, then brought forth several papers and put them before the other. The Mokkadem took them up and looked expressionlessly at Frank Pinell for a long moment, then down at the papers. MacDonald took from his pocket a small gold coin and put it on the desk. The Moroccan swept it with a fat hand into his top desk drawer and grunted.

  "That came from you," the IABI man told his charge. "We'll settle later."

  Frank sucked in breath but said nothing. It was their top, all he could do was let them keep spinning it.

  The Moroccan official took up a rubber stamp and banged it on several of the papers, handed two of them to Frank, and put the rest in his desk. He looked up at MacDonald, then over to Frank, then returned to scanning the tattered pornographic magazine he had been perusing when they entered.

  Frank said, "You mean that's all? That's all that's involved in my entering this country for good?"

  They turned and left. As they went, Roskin said to him, "Not quite. Tomorrow morning you go to police headquarters on the Place de Mohammed Fifth and register. They'll want to see your papers, photograph and fingerprint you, find out where you're staying. Every time you move, you have to report your new address."

  "That brings us to my money," Frank said.

  MacDonald brought forth a booklet, opened it, and took a stylo from the pocket of his shirt. "Sign this receipt," he said.

  Frank scanned it quickly. One thousand pseudo-dollars in gold Swiss francs.

  As he signed, he said, "What do they use as a means of exchange in Tangier?"

  "They use currency," Roskin said. "In Morocco, it's the dirham. Five dirham are approximately one pseudo-dollar."

  MacDonald returned his receipt booklet to his pocket, brought forth some small gold coins, and counted them out into Frank's outstretched hand. "There's your severance pay," he said.

  Frank said, "I owe you one for that bribe you gave the official."

  "Never mind," the IABI man said, amused. "Let's say it's on me."

  That set Frank back. He looked down at the small number of Swiss coins in his hand and looked at one to check its denomination.

  "How many francs to the pseudo-dollar?" he said, scowling.

  "Two," Roskin told him.

  Frank calculated quickly and looked up. "This comes to only two hundred pseudo-dollars.''

  MacDonald said to his fellow agent, "He's not only an intellectual but a mathematician."

  "I'm supposed to get a thousand," Frank said, his voice tight.

  MacDonald scoffed at him. "What'd you do with a thousand pseudo-dollars? Probably waste it. Go through it in a week. As it is, Roskin and I will lay over in Madrid on our way home, and we'll hoist a couple of drinks to you in Chicote's."

  Frank stared from one of them to the other. "You miserable bastards," he said, his lips going white. He took a step forward.

  The other two stepped back warily, and Roskin's hand slipped inside his jacket.

  MacDonald said, his voice low, "You know what the Moroccan police would do if we shot you, here and now?

  Exactly nothing; they couldn't care less. Your type is a dime a dozen in Tangier."

  As Frank glared, Roskin smiled. "Over there's the exit to the taxi stand. The fare into town is five dirhams. Don't pay more. You can't trust these gooks."

  The two IABI men turned and left him standing there. Frank Pinell glared after them for a long moment. There was nothing he could do. Sure, once he got organized, he could write a letter of protest to Judge John Worthington. And a fat pile of crap that'd get him. He'd been silly enough to sign the receipt for one thousand pseudo-dollars, hadn't he? Signed it before getting the funds in his hands.

  He picked up his bags, made his way to the cambio booth, and exchanged fifty Swiss francs into dirhams. The Moroccan money came in coins rather than paper currency.

  From the money exchange booth he went on through the door to the taxi stand. The driver was a small, evil-looking type with a dirty rag of an orange turban wrapped carelessly around his head. The garment he wore looked like a seamless bathrobe made of brown homespun and there were yellow, backless leather slippers on his feet.

  Frank looked in the window of the ancient cab, even as he sharply slapped the hand of an urchin who was trying to pick his pocket. He said, "Do you speak English?"

  The cabby's shifty eyes took him in, evidently deciding his potential fare was American, rather than British. He said, "I talk everything, Jack."

  Frank put his bags in the back of the small cab and sat up front next to the driver. The cabby evidently wasn't accustomed to bathing. Frank rolled down the window and said, "Take me to the cheapest hotel in Tangier."

  The other grinned at him, displaying teeth like a broken-down picket fence. "The cheapest European type hotel, eh, Jack?"

  "The cheapest hotel, period," Frank said definitely.

  "You ever slept in a caravansary, Jack? Very cheap. One dirham a night. You sleep on a pile of straw, eh? Twenty other people in the same room, eh? Donkeys and goats, sometimes maybe even a camel. Other people are Rifs, down from the mountains to bring their things to the souk to sell, eh? Very bad people, some of these Rifs. Stick a knife in you if they figure you got ten, maybe twenty dirhams in your pockets."

  Frank sighed. "All right, take me to the cheapest European hotel," he said in surrender.

  The cabby dropped the lift lever of the prehistoric cab and, when they were aircushion borne, tromped on the accelerator, at first without result. He kicked it viciously and they started up. The American realized that the vehicle must be battery powered, rather than using power packs or picking up juice from the highway. Obviously, the gravel road wasn't automated. However, from what he had read, Morocco wasn't energy-poor. At least a third of the southern stretches of the country were in the Sahara and, in common with neighboring Algeria, the Sherifian Empire of Morocco had been among the first to use major solar power stations with Reunited Nations assistance. Endless square miles of them had been built before the satellite solar power stations began microwaving energy down from orbit.

  He had thought himself prepared for poverty of the North African variety, but he wasn't. He couldn't imagine any American being so prepared. The thought came to him: could parts of Latin America have been like this, before joining the United States of the Americas?

  From time to time, they passed small communities consisting of single-room dwellings made of wood scraps, cardboard, tin cans beaten flat, small boulders, and mud. There was no pretense of streets, or even alleys, obviously no running water, and garbage and refuse lay heaped in filthy piles, often with naked children playing on their summits. Flies and other insects droned in such swarms that Frank rolled up the window again, despite the stench of his driver.

  The cabby grinned evilly over at him. "Not so good, eh, Jack?"

  Frank didn't answer.

  After suburbs of such appalling filth, Tangier itself came as a surprise. The part of it they entered was European in appearance, rather than Moslem. That figured. The French had once owned this town on the Straits of Hercules, even before the International Zone. And the French might have loony logic, but they didn't live in midden heaps.

  The driver assumed the role of travel guide. "This is Route de Tetouan, eh, Jack? And this here we come into is Place d'Europe."

  They proceeded to the right and merged into what street signs proclaimed to be the Avenue de Madrid. At least, that's what the French proclaimed. Frank couldn't decipher the Arabic scrawl.

  They turned left on the Boulevard Mohammed Fifth. The city continued to improve, and now there was considerably more traffic. Tangier had no restrictions on surface traffic. From time to time they were even held up by minor traffic jams. Most of the cars and trucks seemed as elderly as the hovercab.

  "Pasteur Boulevard, she the center of European town, eh? She just two streets up. You like, I think. Cheap hotel."

  They turned down Rue Moussai Ben Moussair, barely wide
enough for two vehicles to pass, and two blocks later pulled up before a sadly decrepit four-story structure.

  "Hotel Rome," the driver said expansively. "Very cheap. Almost clean. Not much bugs, eh, Jack?"

  Frank looked out blankly. "Where?" he said.

  "She's on second floor, third floor, fourth floor. You don't pay more than ten dirhams, eh? Luigi, he's a crook. He try to charge you more, eh? You can't trust Italianos. Okay, Jack. That'll be fifteen dirhams, Jack. Cheap. All the way from the airport."

  Frank got out of his side of the cab, brought forth his Moroccan coins, and handed six dirhams through the window. "The rate's five dirhams and here's one more for a tip," he said.

  The other was furious. "Fifteen, you cheap Yankee," he yelled.

  "Five," Frank said flatly and reached for the door to the back of the hovercab to recover his bags.

  Before he could get it open, the vehicle surged ahead, wrenching his hand from the doorknob and nearly knocking him sprawling.

  His eyes bulging, Frank stared aghast at the hovercab careening up the street with his luggage. He searched desperately for its license plate, and could see none. His eyes darted around to other vehicles parked in the street. None of them had license plates. Evidently, there was no such thing in the International Zone of Tangier.

  He groaned audibly. He knew nothing about the layout of this town. He didn't know where he could find the police. He didn't know the cabby's name. And the taxi looked like every other one he had seen in this-this ripoff Mecca.

  He stood there, staring after it, until the vehicle swerved around a corner and was gone from sight.

  Less than two hundred pseudo-dollars to his name and his every belonging stolen.

  He finally took a deep breath and turned. Now he could make out the faded sign for the Hotel Rome. It was over a drab wooden stairway. The ground floor of the building was taken up by two stores which seemed almost identical. They resembled, in their window contents, the general stores in American small towns of long ago, selling everything from groceries to textiles, and toys, liquor, non-prescription drugs, shaving supplies, and what not.

  The lobby of the Hotel Rome was on the second floor. Only one window overlooked the street. It was furnished with an aged reception desk, keys openly displayed on a rack behind it, and several thoroughly defeated chairs, their upholstery looking as though wild animals had savaged it. In one of the chairs snored an obese man, as disreputable as the furniture.

  "Hey!"

  The other opened first one eye, then the other. He brushed a fly from the top of his almost bald head and looked accusingly at the man who had awakened him. What do bald, fat Italians dream of, Frank wondered.

  "Who do I see about getting a room here?"

  "Me," the other grunted, somehow getting his bulk erect. "I'm Luigi. This place, it's mine."

  Frank said, "I want the cheapest room you've got."

  Luigi took him in, his plump face expressionless. "You got no luggage? You pay right now. Twenty dirhams."

  "Ten," Frank said wearily, fishing in his pocket for two five-dirham coins.

  "This way," Luigi said, shrugging.

  The room was on the same floor as the lobby. It had one primitive electric bulb hanging from the ceiling, one sagging bed, one straight chair, one chipped dresser with a drawer missing. No bath, nor running water. Not even a window. There was a toilet down the hall, but no bath there, either. Seemingly, the tenants of the Hotel Rome didn't bathe, unless they managed a sponge bath out of the filthy lavatory, crammed next to the toilet bowl.

  When Luigi was gone, Frank Pinell looked about his room.

  "Home at last," he said acidly, running a hand down over his long face.

  In another part of town, a stranger to Frank Pinell was speaking into his pocket transceiver. He was saying, "He pulled in on the three o'clock from Madrid. At the airport, those sons of bitches, MacDonald and Roskin, pulled their usual little romp. He got into Hamad's cab and Hamari took him to Luigi's and was able to take off with his luggage. He must be running scared by now. It looks as though we've found our patsy."

  Chapter Three: Roy Cos

  Roy Cos looked out over the small, shabby hall in Baltimore with its pitiful group, members of the Industrial Workers of the World-"Wobblies," in their own jargon. Inwardly, he felt depressed and weary. It was the same old story: there were sixteen in the audience. At least ten of these were either Wobblies or sympathizers who had heard or read all that he had to say a hundred times. They were there not to learn but to give him support. Another two or three, looking bored, had drifted in from the street out of mild curiosity, or because they had nothing else to do. Another trio, seated together at the rear with identical condescending sneers, were hecklers come to give him a bad time. Only one stranger, who sat in the last row on one of the rickety folding chairs, looked at all like promising material. He was a small man, better dressed than the prole audience, and he had a notepad on his lap. From time to time he took notes. But for all Roy Cos knew, the man could be an IABI agent checking out just how subversive the speaker might be.

  Roy took in the tattered banners which the committee members had hung about the walls. SOLIDARITY! UNITE! And, the longest of them all, PEOPLES OF THE WORLD UNITE. YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS. Roy Cos knew that such signs had once read, WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE. But there were no workers any more, for all practical purposes. Over ninety percent of the population was on GAS. Two percent were affluent members of the upper class, who did not worry about employment. And five percent were actually all that were needed to produce an abundance of goods and supply the services of this automated, computerized society. And they, the professional technicians, engineers, scientists, doctors, and teachers, seldom thought of themselves as workers. Their pay was such that they identified with the upper class, rather than the proles on GAS.

  Roy Cos, a second-generation radical, was in his early forties. He was an outwardly average, unprepossessing man, faded brown of hair, hazel of eye, earnest of expression, but projecting a hint that somehow he realized that life had passed him by and that his efforts were meaningless in the long run. He was some ten pounds overweight. Too many hours studying, too many hours sitting around tables, arguing dialectics, too many hours talking, talking, talking, largely to people not really interested in blueprints of Utopia.

  He was saying: "And is this the final destiny of man? The overwhelming majority living on the verge of poverty? The history of the human race has been a hard and proud one. Since first our ancestors emerged from the caves, we have fought upward. And from the beginning we have been the thinking animals, the tool users. Who first utilized fire, we cannot know. What early men first developed the hand ax, the knife, the spear, the bow and arrow is unknown to us. But each generation that came along added its contribution to human knowledge and we slowly acquired agriculture, the domestication of animals, the wheel, the hoe, the plow. And as each generation emerged, its geniuses now forgotten, our knowledge grew. The arts and the sciences began to emerge."

  "Great!" one of the three cynical listeners called out. "So what? Get to the point."

  Roy nodded and went on. "The point is that all of these developments, this accumulated knowledge down through the centuries, is the common heritage of all mankind. They are not the property of a few, but of the race as a whole. A modern, automated factory is possible only because these tools were handed down to us over the centuries. The products of modern society should be the common property of the race, not of a mere fraction of it. And if this is true, where is justice today when a few live idle, in luxury, while the rest of us are forgotten? As John Ball, centuries ago, put it in a sermon to English poorer class rebels:

  " 'When Adam dalfe and Eve span Who was thanne a gentil man?' "

  The stranger made a note on his pad. He was thin, gray-faced, probably in his mid-forties, and Roy largely directed his talk toward the man. If you could make one convert at a typical Wobbly meeting you were doing
fine. One valid convert, potentially an activist, would more than pay for an otherwise depressing evening.

  He went on to explain the Wobbly program: organizing all presently employed workers so that they could use the only clout that really counted-the control of production, distribution, communications.

  When the question period came, the chairman took over again. No one seemed prepared to ask an initial question of the speaker. As usual, in such a case, one of the Wobbly members stood up and started the ball rolling.