Mack Reynolds: Planetary Agent X

He looked up quizzically. “Hello, Billy,” he said, his hand reaching for the automatic which lay on the desk.

Billy Antrim blurred into motion. He crouched, his right hand flicked and the knife was there magically. He threw the hand back for the cast.

Ronny Bronston’s eyes blinked in surprised alarm—his fingers were still inches from the gun.

Then there was something in the wild blue eyes of Billy Antrim. He threw the knife—

His throw was not quite true. It missed Ronny Bronston’s head by scant millimeters and broke its point in a clang on the steel bulkhead beyond.

The gun was trained on Billy’s stomach.

The Section G agent took a deep breath, swallowed, then managed to say, “You missed, Billy. I didn’t expect you to miss.”

Billy Antrim sneered. “It’s all luck,” he said. “Everything’s luck, I had one chance in a million, and didn’t make it.”

The gun was steady.

“Sit down over there, Billy. I set this whole thing up only minutes ago. I didn’t expect you quite yet. But shortly there’ll be some local agents of my department showing up. Then we’ll get about our business.”

Billy sat, his strained juvenile face still in sneer. “You ain’t got a jug could hold me, yoke.”

Ronny Bronston looked at him meditatively. Evidently the other didn’t know that there were no prisons for such as him on presentday Earth. Criminals of Billy Antrim’s ilk were turned over to medical science for rehabilitation.

Ronny said, “It’s been a long trek, Billy. I don’t mind admitting you almost made it. You know what your big mistake was?”

“Yes.”

“Oh?” Bronston raised eyebrows.

“I didn’t slit that drunken bum’s throat last night. I should’ve. But instead I just poured more liquor down his gullet. I thought he’d stay under long enough for me to make it. He musta woke up right after I left.”

Ronny Bronston looked at him in puzzlement.

“It doesn’t sound like a man with your background. Why couldn’t you kill him? You’d already finished off eight others.”

“Seven,” Billy muttered.

“Eight. One of those two women bystanders you wounded in Scranton died in the hospital.”

Billy winced.

“With a record like that,” Bronston pursued, “you should have been capable of finishing Barrymore off to make sure your back trail was clean.”

Billy said sourly, “What difference does it make? Maybe I was gettin’ tired of all the killin’. Ever since I knew Big Luigi give it to me, I been thinking about it all. About my old lady, and how she always said I was gonna go to school and all. But after I knifed one of Big Luigi’s goons he sent her off the planet, and I never seen her again.”

For a long moment, Ronny Bronston looked at the other. Billy Antrim, defeated now and at bay, still looked like nothing so much as a defiant school youngster, caught in some misdemeanor and hauled before the principal. There was even somewhat of a wistful quality in the juvenile killer’s face, as though of a child grown almost to adulthood who had been allowed down through the years to press his face against the windowpane and look in at the others, celebrating their Christmases and birthdays—but never allowed to enter and participate.

Ronny shook his head, as though to clear away a trend of thought he couldn’t afford.

He said, “I’m afraid not. I’ve been looking further into your dossier, Billy. Section G has been checking you on every planet you’ve ever set down on. And we’ve been checking that of Luigi Agrigento, too.”

Billy was scowling at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, ya stupid yoke. I know what happened to my old lady.”

“That’s not Luigi Agrigento’s way. His henchman molested your mother and as a result you killed him. Somebody, given Maffeo outlook, had to pay. And since it was your mother who was the original…”

Billy Antrim was on his feet, shaking. “You lie! ”

Bronston, his eyes wary, shook his head. “Sit down, Billy. You know better. I have no reason to lie.”

Billy slumped back into the chair, his once poker face twitching. “You he,” he muttered.

Bronston shrugged, as though he couldn’t care less. “Agrigento evidently turned her over to his goon’s relatives. And they… I didn’t understand this part of it. What does capontina mean?”

“No,” Billy Antrim whispered, his head in his hands, his body swaying. “ No .”

Bronston said, an element of contempt in his voice. “You fizzled out, in the real clutch, Billy. You should have finished off Barrymore. And just a few minutes ago. You missed me with that knife on purpose, didn’t you?”

Billy Antrim didn’t answer.

“You haven’t got the guts to kill any more, Billy,” Bronston told him.

Irene Kasansky looked up from her screens and order boxes, her switches and buttons, and said with as near to a smile as Irene Kasansky ever came to a smile, “Hello, Ronny. How’d you make out in New Albuquerque?”

Ronny said, exhaustion in his voice, “Not now, Irene. Is the Old Man available?”

Irene snorted and said, “Sid Jakes is with him. But it’s nothing more important than your report. Where’ve you been?”

Ronny didn’t answer. He was too exhausted to go through this more than once. He pushed his way through the door to the back and headed for Ross Metaxa’s office.

Sid Jakes was sitting in a heavy chair across from the commissioner, who sat behind his desk. They both looked up when Ronny entered without knocking.

He slumped into a chair.

“Ronny!” Sid chortled. “How come no reports? For awhile you had me worried. I was afraid our Billy-boy had done you in.”

Ronny shook his head. “I haven’t been in a bed for four days,” he said.

Ross Metaxa reached down into his desk drawer and came out with his brown bottle. “Drink?”

“I guess so,” Ronny muttered. “Even that stuff.”

While Metaxa poured, Sid chuckled, “Well, I suppose the fact you’re here winds up the Billy Antrim segment of our troubles with Palermo. Now we’ll have to get to work on the basic problem of our Maffeo friends. And that’s going to be a neat trick, if possible at all, what with Article One of the Charter.”

Ross Metaxa handed the drink over to his field man and growled, “Did you have to finish him off, or were you able to capture him? He might turn evidence, in case we ever have anything to take into the interplanetary courts. But above all, it’s good propaganda, the civilization bit. The fact that here on Earth we don’t execute or even imprison criminals, not even murderers. We rehabilitate them and release them as valuable members of society. Gives a good example to rawer worlds.”

Ronny shook his head. “Not exactly either. I’ve spent the last day and a half with Billy Antrim getting plastic surgery up in New Chicago.”

“Plastic surgery!” Metaxa exclaimed, his moist eyes bugging.

Ronny knocked back the drink and shuddered. It was every bit as bad as he remembered it.

He said, “By the way, what ever happened to Ruth Antrim, Billy’s mother?”

“What’s that got to do with it? Have you gone completely crazy?” Ross was blurting.

Sid Jakes said, “We even traced that out. She’s living on Goshen now. Married to some sort of mining engineer.” He grinned. “I suspect you have another bomb to drop, Ronny.”

“The Department of Dirty Tricks,” Ronny muttered, unhappily. “You see, I had to goose Billy.”

Ross Metaxa rasped, “Where’s Antrim, damn it!”

Ronny Bronston looked at him. “On his way back to Palermo.”

Even Jakes lost his poise at that one.

Ronny said softly, “He has a date with Luigi Agrigento.”