Mack Reynolds: Amazon Planet

The difficulty was, there was no clip in the butt.

It was useless.

He looked at it and grunted. Some warrior Minythyia had turned out to be.

He tossed the shooter to the floor at his feet and started up the car again. He brought back, before memory’s eye, the map of the city and directed the speedy little vehicle at a definite destination this time. However, he drove more slowly than he had before. There was still quite a bit to think about.

He passed the bachelor sanctuary, as the major had called it, drove around to its rear and parked the car.

He stood there for a moment, looking at the building, and figuring out where his quarters had been. Then he found a path that wandered through, the garden and made his way to the area beneath the windows of that suite. Looking up now, he was mildly surprised that he had been able to climb down the wall with such ease. The handholds and footholds didn’t look as promising as all that.

He found the gun he had ditched only that morning, in the bush where he had thrown it.

He couldn’t afford to be spotted with it in his hand, and tucked it into his belt, without further examination. He had checked it this morning, knew it was charged, knew how it was operated. He doubted if he’d be overly accurate with the weapon at any range at all, at first, but, then, he doubted that he would be using it at any great distance.

He walked around the building and into the entrance he had used before. Inside, he walked up one of the halls aimlessly until he met an inhabitant.

The other was hurrying to some destination or other, but Ronny asked him, “Could you tell me what apartment Podner has?”

“Podner Bates? He’s in forty, isn’t he?” The man hustled on.

Ronny Bronston figured out the numbering system of the apartments and finally found forty.

He pulled the same trick that Minythyia had at Pat O’Gara’s place. He put his hand over the door’s eye before activating it. Inside, Podner, if he was at home, would see nothing but black on his screen.

The door opened and Podner was there, blinking.

Ronny pushed his way past him. He looked about the room. It was far from the frilly affair he had been given the night before. It was a man’s apartment—comfortable, scruffed-up furniture that had seen many a shoe rested upon it, a bar with a goodly selection of liquor. Paintings on the wall that would appeal to the masculine taste whether it be on Earth, New Delos, Victoria, or, Ronny Bronston was beginning to understand, Amazonia.

Ronny looked at the other. “You’ve forgotten your curly wig.”

Podner fluttered a hand at him. “Oh, darling, you know how it is. A boy simply has to get out of his frills once in awhile. Don’t you just hate girdles?”

Ronny looked at him wryly, “I never had one on,” he said. “And I doubt if you have either.”

He held a moment’s silence and then said, “You’re an actor.”

Podner blinked at him. He looked disgusted. “Damn it,” he said, “What’d I do wrong?”

“Nothing,” Ronny said. “Come along. I’ve got to talk with you, and I don’t think I’m safe here.”

“Why should I come with you?” Podner said sourly. “Damn it, I thought I was doing fine in that part. Minythyia is going to be furious with me.”

Ronny put his tunic back a few inches so that the gun in his belt was revealed. He tapped it two or three times with his forefinger. “Let’s go,” he said, his voice cold.

The other stared at the gun. “Holy Ultimate,” he said, all the astonishment in the galaxy in his voice. “You mean it. You’re threatening me with violence.”

They marched out of the building and toward the car.

Ronny said, “What happened to my luggage?”

“Major Oreithyia and some others came and got it a couple of hours ago.”

Ronny grunted disgust, but he couldn’t have expected anything else. They climbed into the car, and he looked at the other man, remembering his own attack upon Minythyia shortly before. He said, “Look, Podner, don’t try anything. I realize that sissy act of yours was laid on and that you’re no molly, however, in this sort of thing, I’m a pro.”

“I’m sure you are,” Podner muttered unhappily. “I’m not resisting. I’m not a hero.”

Ronny got under way. He looked from the side of his eyes at the other, trying to dope him out. “What are you? Obviously, you support the Amazonian government.”

“Of course,” the other said strongly. “Why not?” It’s the best government I’ve ever heard or read about, and I’m interested in the subject.”

Ronny said evenly, “Oh? My own ideas would lead a little nearer to democracy. You’re like a dog licking the hand of the master that has just clobbered him.”

“Democracy!” Podner snorted in scorn. “We’ve gone far beyond democracy on Amazonia.”

“Oh, you have, eh? And just what do you find beyond democracy?”

“In the first place, I doubt if you know what the word means,” the actor said in high scorn. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll find out. So I don’t know what democracy means. Please enlighten me.”

“Very well. As you possibly know, ancient man’s governmental institutions were based on the gens , or genos , as the Greeks called them.”

Ronny continued to tool the speedster down the boulevard. “So everybody’s been telling me,” he complained.

“Very well, when city states began to form and new institutions take the place of old, the former ways needed change. A council of chiefs was inadequate to handle municipal affairs. The first attempt to handle the problem is credited in legend to Theuseus, but that’s undoubtedly nonsense. It wasn’t until Solon, about 549 B.C. that they took the first big step to end gentile society and begin a new form of representation based on geographic factors and on property, rather than on family. In Athens, by the time of Cleisthenes in 509 B.C. the changes were culminated. Instead of being represented in government from the genos into which you were born, you were represented from the deme , or city ward, in which you lived and according to the amount of property you controlled. Democracy, then, actually means rule of the city wards .”

“Great,” Ronny said sarcastically. “However, the word has come to mean rule of the people.”

“Then seldom, if ever, did the reality live up to definition. Take a look down through history. The Athenians with their supposed democracy, in which only the citizens were allowed to vote and the overwhelming majority of the people, the slaves, were not. Florence and Venice and the other Italian republics. Who voted besides the wealthy merchants, the propertied elements? Bring it down to more modern times. Did you labor under the illusion that the soldiers who followed Washington at Valley Forge were allowed the vote after the revolution was won? Comparatively few of them, I’m afraid. Property requirements were stiff before you could vote in the early United States.”

“They loosened up later,” Ronny said.

“Yes, but by then they had new restrictions, some of them not so obvious. By the middle of the 20th Century, they had the so-called two party system. You could vote for the candidates of either one or the other. The trouble was they both stood for the same thing and represented the same elements. Laws were passed that made it all but impossible for a third party with conflicting principles to get on the ballot. Rule by the people? Take the election of 1960 during which Kennedy, one of the most popular political figures of the century, became president. He had some thirty-four million votes cast for him. The population at the time was one hundred and eighty million, so that you can figure that a bit more than one American out of six voted for him. The others either voted against, didn’t vote at all though eligible because of cynicism or whatever reason, weren’t allowed to vote because of restrictions based on race or education, or weren’t allowed to vote due to insufficient age. One out of six. This is rule by the people?”