Mack Reynolds: Planetary Agent X

Sid Jakes took his heels from the desk and leaned forward, beaming. He pointed a finger at Ronny. “Now that’s the real beauty of the thing. Our Luigi knew damn well that young Billy wouldn’t ever succeed in making a getaway and hence made no effort to provide one.”

Ronny frowned. “You mean Antrim knew he’d get caught, but pulled the job anyway?”

Sid shook his head. “Not if our dope is correct. Luigi Agrigento figured on throwing Billy to the wolves. He let the boy believe there was a getaway all arranged. But there simply wasn’t.”

The field man didn’t get it. “But I thought Antrim was his favorite protégé. He wouldn’t…”

Sid Jakes chuckled. “I keep telling you about these Maffeo lads. They’re very uncouth, as the term goes. Luigi isn’t the type to let friendship, or affection, interfere with business and there was one advantage in sending Billy to do the job. Billy isn’t a citizen of Palermo, having been born on Delos. When blame is being scattered around, Agrigento will have some claim to innocence.”

Ronny whistled softly. “Well, what happened here on Earth?”

“It was done very professionally indeed. A classical assassination of the very old school, such as you see in the historical Tri-D shows. Giorgio Schiavoni, was located, set up, and fingered. And Billy shot him very neatly indeed, like the old pro he is—at the age of nineteen.

“But it was then that the wheels began to come off for Billy Antrim. The getaway floater evidently simply wasn’t there. Neither were any of his supposed colleagues. He was left stranded with the local sheriff’s men coming in fast.”

“Sheriff?”

“It’s an old police term, going back to antiquity. They still use it in some areas. The head of the local commissariat of police. At any rate, Billy shot it out with them, killing one man and sending two to the medicos. He stole a floater and took off, apparently without plan.”

“And he’s remained at large all this time, on Earth? ” Ronny said unbelievingly.

Sid Jakes held up a hand, grinning. “Wait. You haven’t heard it all. The alarm went out, of course, and he was cornered again not three hours later.” Jakes snorted. “This time he killed two men and wounded two bystanders, both women. Then he stole one of the police floaters and was off again. He ditched it later and at gun point forced three people out of a private floater and took off in it. But there was a pattern by now. They could see he was heading for Greater Washington, and set up road blocks.”

By this time, Ronny was staring. The story was incredible.

“They flushed him twice more,” Jakes said. “The last time, just last night. I don’t think even the Old Man knows about this. I haven’t taken it in to him yet. Two of the local floater patrol caught him in their bips and started in pursuit. Mind you, this was a standard police floater, with all equipment. Evidently Billy realized he couldn’t outrun them and lifted his vehicle to about a ten foot level and took out over the fields, with them after him. But it wasn’t Billy’s style to wait until they caught up and finished him off. No sir. He zipped around a corner, got out of his floater and waited. You can imagine their surprise when they came tearing around that corner and there was young Billy, waiting. By the way, he carries a gun that is at least as powerful as one of our Model H’s. When we found the two patrolmen they were like tomato paste.”

Ronny wound it up for the other. “So he made it to Greater Washington, and whatever his destination was.”

Sid Jakes shook his head, as though pleased with the whole affair. “He has no destination. He’s probably just trying to disappear into the city. Billy is basically a city boy, and it’s the best place on Earth for him to hide. Don’t think he’ll head for the Palermo Embassy. He knows better. Billy Antrim hasn’t survived this long by being stupid. He knew . He knew the moment that getaway floater didn’t materialize that he’d been betrayed.”

Sid Jakes leaned back in his chair, beaming at his subordinate. “So that’s your phase of the job. Get Billy Antrim. I don’t need to tell you what his continued freedom means to the department. If political assassinations can be successfully pulled off right here on Earth, heads are going to roll in Section G, starting with Ross Metaxa himself.”

Ronny came thoughtfully to his feet. “How come we’re not putting more men on it?”

Sid grinned at him. “Our prestige is low enough as is. If we assigned a dozen men to capture this callow boy, how would it look? Nope. There’s only one of him, so there’ll be only one Section G agent sent to get him. You’ll have, of course, the support of all the police apparatus you’ll need. Just call. But there’ll be only one Section G agent.”

He stood too and stuck out a hand for a shake. “It’ll be a neat trick, if you pull it off, Ronny. And Ross’ll have your scalp if you don’t.”

Ronny said acidly, “From what you say about this Billy Antrim, Ross’ll never have a chance at my scalp if I foul up. Billy’ll already have it.”

Billy Antrim was on the run under one of the most difficult situations conceivable.

He had no credit card acceptable on Earth.

Looking back at it now, he could see that Big Luigi had deliberately arranged that. The obvious thing would have been to have equipped Billy Antrim with several valid credit cards, just in case. Without one he could breathe and he could get water to drink, but practically all else was closed to him.

This was his first visit to Earth and his first contact with this type of exchange, but animal instinct told him that the simple stealing of a credit card wasn’t the answer. At least, not a permanent answer. In an economy using this exchange medium, somewhere along the line would be ultra-efficient computors, checking and double-checking each transaction no matter how small. A stolen credit card might be used once or twice, but then whatever police powers were available to the accounting computors would be after the thief.

He slept the first night, his stomach empty, standing in the nearest equivalent he could find in the city of Greater Washington to a darkened alley. It was darkened through his own efforts, and he didn’t like that bit of it, either. He had no way of knowing how soon the light failure would be taken care of by the city maintenance department. He slept standing, to the extent he slept at all, his hand never further than inches from the weapon in his belt, the gun which he knew how to use so well.

A maintenance squad floater came through at dawn and Billy, catlike, awoke fully from his drowze. He shrugged his shoulders in the nearest thing he had time for in way of stretching cramped muscles, gave his clothes a rapid brush, stuck his hands in his pockets and stepped out briskly, whistling a currently popular Palermo dance tune.

The two men of the squad looked at him blankly.

Billy grinned his toothy grin and said, “Sure is pretty this time of morning, ay? I just can’t help comin’ out and walkin’ around.”

One of the two men looked up at the lightening sky, his face still empty. Color was there. New color in the gray-black of night. He had seen dawn many thousands of times. Perhaps the first thousand had even awakened some feeling in him. Now, he wished he was in bed. The other one didn’t bother to look up. He grunted sarcasm.

Billy, his hands still in his pockets, turned and went on his way, still whistling.

The first of the two looked after him for a moment. “Crazy young jerk,” he muttered. “Doesn’t know when he’s well off. He’ll freeze his bottom off in this weather with no more but that jacket on.”