Arthur Zagat - The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume IX

A year passed. The vault remained locked.

By that time the number of those who had tried and failed, and were naturally disgruntled, was large enough to be heard, so a rumor got about that the whole thing was a vast hoax—a mean joke perpetrated upon the helpless public by a lousy old crook who hadn’t any money in the first place.

Vituperative editorials were written—by editors who had stood in line and thrown futile thoughts at the great door. These editorials were vigorously rebutted by editors and columnists who as yet had not had a chance to try for the jackpot.

One senator, who had tried and missed, introduced a law making it illegal to sit on a stone bench and hurl a thought at a door.

There were enough congressional failures to pass the law. It went to the Supreme Court, but was tossed out because they said you couldn’t pass a law prohibiting a man from thinking.

And still the vault remained closed.

Until Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, farm people impoverished by reverses, spent their last ten dollars for two thoughts and waited out the hours and the days in line. Their daughter Susan, aged nine, waited with them, passing the time by telling her doll fairy tales and wondering what the world looked like to a bird flying high up over a tree top. Susan was glad when her mother and father reached the bench because then they all could go home and see how her pet rabbit was doing.

Mr. Wilson hurled his thought and moved on with drooping shoulders. Mrs. Wilson threw hers and was told to leave the bench. The guard looked at Susan. “Your turn,” he said.

“But I haven’t got any thought,” Susan said. “I just want to go home.”

This made no sense to the guard. The line was being held up. People were grumbling. The guard said, “All right, but that was silly. You could have sold your position for good money. Run along with your mother and father.”

Susan started away. Then she looked at the vault which certainly resembled a mausoleum and said, “Wait—I have too got a little thought,” and she popped onto the bench.

The guard frowned and snapped his stop watch.

Susan screwed her eyes tight shut. She tried to see an angel with big white wings like she sometimes saw in her dreams and she also tried to visualize a white-haired, jolly-faced little man as she considered Mr. Chipfellow to be. Her lips moved soundlessly as she said,

Dear God and all the angels—please have pity on poor Mr. Chipfellow for dying and please make him happy in heaven.

Then Susan got off the bench quickly to run after her mother and father who had not waited.

There was the sound of metal grinding upon metal and the great door was swinging open.

It’s not so much the decisions a man does make that mark him as a Man—but the ones he refrains from making. Like the decision “I’ve had enough!”

Read locked the door and drew his pistol. Sergeant Rashid handed Premier Umluana the warrant.

“We’re from the UN Inspector Corps,” Sergeant Rashid said. “I’m very sorry, but we have to arrest you and bring you in for trial by the World Court.”

If Umluana noticed Read’s gun, he didn’t show it. He read the warrant carefully. When he finished, he said something in Dutch.

“I don’t know your language,” Rashid said.

“Then I’ll speak English.” Umluana was a small man with wrinkled brow, glasses and a mustache. His skin was a shade lighter than Read’s. “The Inspector General doesn’t have the power to arrest a head of state—especially the Premier of Belderkan. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must return to my party.”

In the other room people laughed and talked. Glasses clinked in the late afternoon. Read knew two armed men stood just outside the door. “If you leave, Premier, I’ll have to shoot you.”

“I don’t think so,” Umluana said. “No, if you kill me, all Africa will rise against the world. You don’t want me dead. You want me in court.”

Read clicked off the safety.

“Corporal Read is very young,” Rashid said, “but he’s a crack shot. That’s why I brought him with me. I think he likes to shoot, too.”

Umluana turned back to Rashid a second too soon. He saw the sergeant’s upraised hand before it collided with his neck.

“Help! Kidnap.”

Rashid judo chopped him and swung the inert body over his shoulders. Read pulled a flat grenade from his vest pocket. He dropped it and yellow psycho gas hissed from the valve.

“Let’s be off,” Rashid said.

The door lock snapped as they went out the window. Two men with rifles plunged into the gas; sighing, they fell to the floor in a catatonic trance.

A little car skimmed across the lawn. Bearing the Scourge of Africa, Rashid struggled toward it. Read walked backward, covering their retreat.

The car stopped, whirling blades holding it a few inches off the lawn. They climbed in.

“How did it go?” The driver and another inspector occupied the front seat.

“They’ll be after us in half a minute.”

The other inspector carried a light machine gun and a box of grenades. “I better cover,” he said.

“Thanks,” Rashid said.

The inspector slid out of the car and ran to a clump of bushes. The driver pushed in the accelerator. As they swerved toward the south, Read saw a dozen armed men run out of the house. A grenade arced from the bushes and the pursuers recoiled from the cloud that rose before them.

“Is he all right?” the driver asked.

“I don’t think I hurt him.” Rashid took a syrette from his vest pocket. “Well, Read, it looks like we’re in for a fight. In a few minutes Miaka Station will know we’re coming. And God knows what will happen at the Game Preserve.”

Read wanted to jump out of the car. He could die any minute. But he had set his life on a well-oiled track and he couldn’t get off until they reached Geneva.

“They don’t know who’s coming,” he said. “They don’t make them tough enough to stop this boy.”

Staring straight ahead, he didn’t see the sergeant smile.

Two types of recruits are accepted by the UN Inspector Corps: those with a fanatic loyalty to the ideals of peace and world order, and those who are loyal to nothing but themselves. Read was the second type.

A tall, lanky Negro he had spent his school days in one of the drab suburbs that ring every prosperous American city. It was the home of factory workers, clerks, semiskilled technicians, all who do the drudge work of civilization and know they will never do more. The adults spent their days with television, alcohol and drugs; the young spent their days with gangs, sex, television and alcohol. What else was there? Those who could have told him neither studied nor taught at his schools. What he saw on the concrete fields between the tall apartment houses marked the limits of life’s possibilities.

He had belonged to a gang called The Golden Spacemen. “Nobody fools with me,” he bragged. “When Harry Read’s out, there’s a tiger running loose.” No one knew how many times he nearly ran from other clubs, how carefully he picked the safest spot on the battle line.

“A man ought to be a man,” he once told a girl. “He ought to do a man’s work. Did you ever notice how our fathers look, how they sleep so much? I don’t want to be like that. I want to be something proud.”

He joined the UN Inspector Corps at eighteen, in 1978. The international cops wore green berets, high buttonless boots, bush jackets. They were very special men.

For the first time in his life, his father said something about his ambitions.

“Don’t you like America, Harry? Do you want to be without a country? This is the best country in the world. All my life I’ve made a good living. Haven’t you had everything you ever wanted? I’ve been a king compared to people overseas. Why, you stay here and go to trade school and in two years you’ll be living just like me.”