Mack Reynolds - The Rival Rigelians

Steve Cogswell closed his eyes in pain. “What’s wrong with the new apartments? They’re sanitary. They’re comparatively spacious. We’re introducing gas stoves. What in the name of Holy Jumping Zen do these cloddies want?”

The headman said unctuously, “Man from First Earth, they want what they are used to. When a family moves into one of the new apartments, they pull down the interior walls so that the whole house can be one room. They are not used to the home being many rooms, it prevents the family from being one. This new soap that comes from the new industrial centers, the growing cities. We are not used to this soap. It is not well that the people wash themselves all the time, such as you suggest. Only on feast days, on holy days did we bathe in the past.”

“Yes,” Cogswell muttered bitterly. “I remember the smell.”

He looked back at the farmer. “Listen,” he said, “the world changes. It changes for the better.”

“I do not want these changes. Already one of my sons has left the village and gone to Tula to work in the new projects. He should be here with the rest of us, working the fields, tending the animals. It is not…”

Cogswell held up a hand. “Look. That’s the point. The changes we are making will make it possible to release workers from the fields so that they can get positions in the new industries. Everybody will profit by these new industries. You’ll have more and better food; there’ll never be famines again. You’ll have better clothes, better transportation, better medicine.”

“We do not want these things,” the other said stubbornly. “We want to continue in the old way. We want our land. It is our land. It is not yours to take.”

“ I’m not taking it,” Cogswell snapped impatiently. “Zen! Can’t you understand? The State is taking it.”

“I do not understand about this State of which you talk. I am a simple man. I do not want you to take my land. Where will my sons bring their wives when they are of age to wed?”

“The State is everybody,” Cogswell told him. “When your sons marry, they’ll be given apartments here in town. Each day they will be driven out to the farmland to work. They’ll live in luxury, compared to the way you always have. Holy Zen, man! Can’t you see this is for your own good?”

Without waiting for an answer, Cogswell looked at the headman. “Who’s next? I’m getting tired of these cloddies! Over and over again, the same confounded drivel!”

The peasant hadn’t stirred. He was breathing deeply now.

He pressed closer to the table behind which the Earthman sat.

“The land is ours!”

Cogswell leaned forward too, his face red with anger. “The land is now the State’s, whether you like it or not!”

The two guards, bored with the monotony, moved too slowly. They hadn’t expected action.

The knife came from nowhere, concealed perhaps in sleeve or jerkin folds.

The guards clubbed their rifles, struck again and again. Beat the man to the ground and senseless. Beat him long after consciousness was gone.

Not that this made any difference to Steven Cogswell, once of New Chicago in a land far, far from Texcoco. Already, his body was growing cold.

A deep sigh went through the long line of farmer petitioners. The headman, his eyes popping horror, was terrified. Word of the brutality of the new police was spreading throughout the countryside.

Down the long palace corridor strode Barry Watson, Dick Hawkins, Natt Roberts, the aging Reif and his son Taller, now in the prime of manhood. Their faces were equally lined from long hours without sleep. Half a dozen armed Tulan infantrymen brought up their rear.

As they passed Security Police guards, to left and right, eyes took in their weapons, openly carried. But such eyes shifted and the guards remained at their posts. Only one sergeant opened his mouth in protest. “Sir,” he said to Watson, hesitantly, “you are entering Number One’s presence armed.”

“Shut up,” Natt Roberts rapped at him.

Reif said, “That will be all, sergeant.”

The Security Police sergeant looked emptily after them as they progressed down the corridor.

Together, Watson and Reif motioned aside the two Tulan soldiers who stood before the door of their destination, and pushed inward without knocking.

Joe Chessman looked up wearily from his map and dispatch-laden desk. For a moment his hand went to the heavy military revolver at his right but when he realized the identity of his callers, it fell away. Isobel Sanchez, as always, lush, sat in an easy chair on the far side of the room, her face petulant, a drink in her hand.

She grunted contemptuously. “Another big crisis, without doubt. I tell you, I’m getting tired of being cooped up in this place.”

“What’s up now?” Joe Chessman said, his voice on the verge of cracking.

The men hadn’t even bothered to look at the woman. Their eyes were on Chessman. Barry Watson acted as spokesman.

“It’s everywhere the same. The communes are on the fine edge of revolt. They’ve been pushed too far. They’ve got to the point where they just don’t give a damn. A spark and all Texcoco goes up in flames.”

Reif said coldly, “We need immediate reforms. They’ve got to be pacified. An immediate announcement of more consumer goods, fewer State taxes, above all a relaxation of Security Police pressures. Given immediate promise of these, we might maintain ourselves.”

Joe Chessman’s sullen face was twitching at the right corner of his mouth. Taller Second made no attempt to disguise his contempt at the other’s weakness in time of stress.

Chessman’s eyes went around the half circle of them. This is the only alternative? It’ll slow up our heavy industry-planned program. I wanted to concentrate everything on steel. Otherwise, we might not catch up with Genoa as quickly as we figured.”

Barry Watson gestured with a hand in quick irritation. “Look here, Chessman, don’t we get through to you? Whether or not we build up a steel capacity as large as Amschel Mayer’s isn’t important now. Simple survival is. Everything’s at stake.”

“Don’t talk to me that way, Barry,” Chessman growled truculently. “I’ll make the decisions. I’ll do the thinking around here.” He looked at Reif in speculation. “How much of the Tulan army is loyal—to me?”

The aging Tulan looked at Watson before turning back to Joe Chessman. “All of the Tulan army is loyal—to me.”

Evidently, Joe Chessman hadn’t picked up the final two words, or, if so, he ignored them. “Good!” he said. He pushed some of the dispatches on his desk aside, letting them flutter to the floor. He bared a field map. “If we crush half a dozen of the local communes…crush them hard! Then the others…”

Watson said very slowly and so low as hardly to be heard, “You didn’t bother to listen, Chessman. We told you, all that’s needed is a spark.”

Isobel said, “Joe, honey, you don’t have to take that tone of voice from Barry.” She sloshed some more fluid into her glass from a decanter on the small table next to her.

They all ignored her.

Joe Chessman sat back in his chair, looked at them all again, one by one. Re-evaluating. For a moment, the facial tic stopped and his eyes held the old alertness.

“I see,” he said. “And you all recommend capitulation to the demands of these potential rebels?”

“It’s our only chance,” Hawkins said. “We don’t even know it’ll work. There’s always the chance if we throw them a few crumbs they’ll want the whole loaf. You’ve got to remember that some of them have been living for twenty-five years or more under this pressure. The valve is about to blow.”

“I see,” Chessman grunted. “And what else? I can see in your faces there’s something else.”