Mack Reynolds - Planetary Agent X

“It seems unlikely there could be that many,” she said mildly. She looked at the other two agents. “I think you two had better run along. Take my suggestion I made earlier.”

“Wait a minute,” Ronny snapped. “You mean that they go to Catalina? That’s ridiculous.”

Tog Lee Chang Chu looked at Pedro Nazaré and he turned and started for the door, followed by Frederic Lippman, who was still scowling his puzzlement.

“Wait a minute!” Ronny snapped. “I tell you it’s ridiculous. And why follow her suggestions? She’s just my assistant.”

Pedro Nazaré said, “Come on, Fred, let’s get going, we’ll have to pack.” But Lippman wasn’t having any.

“His assistant?” he said to Tog Lee Chang Chu.

Tog Lee Chang Chu’s face changed expression in sudden decision. She opened her bag and brought forth a Section G identification wallet and flicked it open. The badge was gold. “I suggest you hurry,” she said to the two agents.

They left, and Tog turned back to Ronny, her eyebrows raised questioningly.

Ronny sank down into one of the chairs recently occupied by the other two agents and tried to unravel thoughts. He said finally, “I suppose my question should be, why do Ross Metaxa and Sid Jakes send an agent of supervisor rank to act as assistant to a probationary agent? But that’s not what I’m asking yet. First, Lippman just called his buddy Tog. How come?”

Tog took her seat again, rueful resignation on her face. “You should be figuring it out on your own by this time, Ronny.”

He looked at her belligerently. “I’m too stupid, eh?” The anger was growing within him.

“Tog,” she said. “It’s a nickname, or possibly you might call it a title. Tog. T-O-G. The Other Guy. My name is Lee Chang Chu, and I’m of supervisor grade presently working at developing new Section G operatives. Considering the continuing rapid growth of UP, and the continuing crises that come up in UP activities, developing new operatives is one of the department’s most pressing jobs. Each new agent, on his first assignment, is always paired with an experienced old-timer.”

“I see,” he said flatly. “Your principal job being to needle the fledgling, eh?”

She lowered her eyes. “I wouldn’t exactly word it that way,” she said. She was obviously unrepentant.

He said, “You must get a lot of laughs out of it. If I say it seems to me democracy is a good thing, you give me an argument about the superiority of rule by an elite. If I say anarchism is ridiculous, you dredge up an opinion that it’s man’s highest ethic. You must laugh yourself to sleep at nights. You and Metaxa and Jakes and every other agent in Section G. Everybody is in on the Tog gag but the sucker.”

“Sometimes there are amusing elements to the work,” Lee Chang conceded, demurely.

“Just one more thing I’d like to ask,” Ronny rapped. “This first assignment agents are given. Is it always to look for Tommy Paine?”

She looked up at him, said nothing, but her eyes were questioning.

“Don’t worry,” he snapped. “I’ve already found out who Paine is.”

“Ah?” She was suddenly interested. “Then I’m glad I ordered that other probationary agent to leave. Evidently he hasn’t. Obviously I didn’t want the two of you comparing notes.”

“No, that would never do,” he said bitterly. “Well, this is the end of the assignment so far as you and I are concerned. I’m heading back for Earth.”

“Of course,” she said.

He had time on the way to think it all over, and over and over again, and a great deal of it simply didn’t make sense. He had enough information to be disillusioned, sick at heart. A lifetime? At least three. His father and his grandfather before him had had the dream. He’d been weaned on the idealistic purposes of the United Planets and man’s fated growth into the stars.

He was a third-generation dreamer of participating in the glory. His grandfather had been a citizen of Earth and had given up a commercial position to take a job that amounted to little more than a janitor in an obscure department of Interplanetary Financial Clearing. He’d wanted to get into the big job, into space, but had never made it. Ronny’s father had managed to work up to the point where he was a supervisor in Interplanetary Medical Exchange, in the tabulating department. He too had wanted into space, and had never made it. Ronny had loved them both. In a way, fulfilling his own dreams had been a debt he owed them, because at the same time he was fulfilling theirs.

And now this. All that had been gold was suddenly gilted lead. The dream had become contemptuous nightmare.

Finally back in Greater Washington, he went immediately from the shuttleport to the Octagon. His Bureau of Investigation badge was enough to see him through the guide-guards and all the way through to the office of Irene Kasansky.

She looked up at him quickly. “Hi,” she said. “Ronny Bronston, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. I want to see Commissioner Metaxa.”

She scowled. “I can’t work you in now. How about Sid Jakes?”

He said, “Jakes is in charge of the Tommy Paine routine, isn’t he?”

She shot a sharper look up at him. “That’s right,” she said warily.

“All right,” Ronny said. “I’ll see Jakes.”

Her deft right hand slipped open a drawer in her desk. “You’d better leave your gun here,” she said. “I’ve known probationary agents to get excited, in my time.”

He looked at her.

And she looked back, her gaze level.

Ronny Bronston shrugged, slipped the Model H from under his armpit and tossed it into the drawer.

Irene Kasansky went back to her work. “You know the way,” she said.

This time Ronny Bronston pushed open the door to Sid Jakes’ office without knocking. The Section G supervisor was poring over reports on his desk. He looked up and grinned his Sid Jakes grin.

“Ronny!” he said. “Welcome back. You know, you’re one of the quickest men ever to return from a Tommy Paine assignment. I was talking to Lee Chang only a day or so ago. She said you were on your way.”

Ronny grunted, his anger growing within him. He lowered himself into one of the room’s heavy chairs, and glared at the other.

Sid Jakes chuckled and leaned back in his chair. “Before we go any further, just to check, who is Tommy Paine?”

Ronny snapped, “You are.”

The supervisor’s eyebrows went up.

Ronny said, “You and Ross Metaxa and Lee Chang Chu—and all the rest of Section G. Section G is Tommy Paine.”

“Good man!” Sid Jakes chortled. He flicked a switch on his order box. “Irene,” he said, “how about clearing me through to the commissioner? I want to take Ronny in for his finals.”

Irene snapped back something and Sid Jakes switched off and turned to Ronny happily. “Let’s go,” he said. “Ross is free for a time.”

Ronny Bronston said nothing. He followed the other. The rage within him was still mounting.

In the months that had elapsed since Ronny Bronston had seen Ross Metaxa the latter had changed not at all. His clothing was still sloppy, his eyes bleary with lack of sleep or abundance of alcohol—or both. His expression was still sour and skeptical.

He looked up at their entry and scowled, and made no effort to rise and shake hands. He said to Ronny sourly, “O.K., sound off and get it over with. I haven’t too much time this afternoon.”

Ronny Bronston was just beginning to feel tentacles of cold doubt, but he suppressed them. The boiling anger was uppermost. He said flatly, “All my life I’ve been a dedicated United Planets man. All my life I’ve considered its efforts the most praiseworthy and greatest endeavor man has ever attempted.”