Mack Reynolds - Code Duello

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “Three bottles of the stuff. Tricky miser, isn’t he?” She reached into the interior, brought forth a full bottle of the exotic liqueur beloved by the First Signore of Firenze. She held the bottle up and read the label. “Twelve Star Golden Chartreuse,” she said. “He hordes it as though he couldn’t get another jug of the stuff with all the loot in his treasury.”

“Put it back,” Horsten said. “He probably couldn’t. I’ve heard of it. There’s no more available. When Betelgeuse Three was first explored, it didn’t allow colonization. The planetary engineering boys went to work and the biome balance was thrown off. When the first colonists moved in, the berry from which the beverage was made, surprisingly similar to the Earth plant of the ericaceous genus Vaccinium , was still surviving, and continued to do so for possibly half a century. During that period, the liqueur was laid down. Supposedly it has the most delicate bouquet and flavor of all time. However, ecology of Betelgeuse Three had been altered to the point where the berry slowly became extinct.”

She activated the stopper. “So you can’t get any more? You know, the stuff grows on you.”

“Put it back, you little lush,” Horsten said. “If you can’t get any more, why develop a taste for it?”

Helen ignored him. She put the bottle down by her side momentarily, bent back to the keyhole with her hairpin. She locked the small door again, came erect with the bottle, and acquired a glass from the bar.

She went back to the overgrown chair she had claimed as her own, put the bottle and glass on the cocktail table, after pouring herself a respectable portion, made herself comfortable and said, “All right, the meeting will come to order. So far, we’ve been handling this like a bunch of clowns. We need a plan of action.”

She raised her glass to her nose and sniffed. “You know”—she nodded to her supposed father—“you’re right. It sure stinks pretty. A little sticky, maybe, but real nice.”

Dr. Horsten lumbered along the sidewalk with the great dignity of an Imperial penguin. His right forefinger, which in size resembled a small salami, was in the possession of his little girl who, to match his pace, even though he was but strolling, had devised a combination of trip and skip. Beneath her free arm was tucked a rather oversized doll whose bedraggled hair and every-which-way clothing proclaimed it had seen better days.

The big man seemed to have other, deeper things, on his mind, but he dutifully pointed out various sights as they progressed along the streets of Firenze, capital city of the Free Democratic Commonwealth of Firenze. It was quite a charming sight to their fellow pedestrians who couldn’t quite make out the actual words exchanged.

Helen tinkled in her childish treble, albeit softly, There’s another one of the obscenities.”

“Shush, damnit, watch your language. Somebody’ll hear you-” He beamed affectionately down at her.

“Watch your own damn language.” She smiled back winningly. “What’s the use of going out if every one of their multiple security agencies has at least one man on us, plus, probably, the Engelists to boot?”

“It’s a matter of getting the feeling of the town. Watch yourself; our cover is already blown badly enough, you diminutive witch.”

“Why, you overgrown ox. I ought to clobber you one. Besides, I’ve got the feeling of this jerk planet. It’s a nut factory. Half of them in uniform, the other half look like they’re on the kind of rations you get on the Welfare State worlds.”

Horsten chuckled benignly, as though the little girl had gotten off a childish bit of bright saying.

“Here’s a park,” he said. “Suppose we sit for a time and give the poor chaps tagging us an opportunity to rest their feet.”

They found an unoccupied bench and the little girl bounced up beside her daddy and smoothed her pretty skirt self-consciously. She propped the doll up beside her and smoothed its skirt as well.

She murmured, “Still no beep from Gertrude. Evidently they haven’t any great shakes in the way of parabolic mikes, at least not the mobile variety.”

“Which surprises me, but then I am continually being surprised on this world. It’s not exactly as I had expected it from the little Metaxa told us.”

“Let’s face it. This is a damned police state.”

Horsten grunted discomfort at her words. “But with that all-important difference, Helen. The dream of freedom is there. They are fighting to retain it.”

“Retain it? It’s already gone. It’s been smothered in gobbledygook. Which is often what happens to freedom, inalienable rights and such. It’s everybody to his own definition, and the devil take the hindmost.”

Horsten said in unhappy doggedness, “It’s why we were sent here. They’re desperately hanging onto free institutions, in the face of one of the most insidious undergrounds in United Planets.”

But Helen was feeling more than usually argumentative, even for Helen. “That word freedom is on the elastic side. Wait’ll I think of the classic example I memorized back when I was going to school. It’s a dilly.” She thought for a moment, pink tongue stuck out the side of her mouth.

“Yeah. Here it is. You need the background. The Spanish conquest of Mexico and the Aztecs. The quotation comes from Fransisco de Aguilar, one of Cortes’ Conquistadors . It goes: ‘Sometimes the captain gave us very good talks, leading us to believe that each one of us would be a count or duke and one of the titled; with this he transformed us from lambs to lions, and we went out against that large army without fear or hesitation… We had a courageous captain and soldiers who were determined to die for freedom.’ ”

In spite of himself, Dorn Horsten had to laugh. He said, “I’ve got a better one. From the state where my people originated, Texas.”

“Texas? I thought you came from some planet with a one point four gravity. Texas? Didn’t it used to be a political division back on Mother Earth? The only thing that comes to my mind is an old saying, ‘If there had been a back door to the Alamo there wouldn’t have been a Texas.’ ”

Horsten winced. “Luckily for you, I am several generations removed from the old sod. At any rate, the area used to Belong to Mexico. Immigrants from the southern United States were invited in to help populate it. However, after a couple of decades they revolted, desiring freedom.”

“Freedom?”

“Freedom. First, it seems as though the Mexicans, way down in the capital, Mexico City, wanted to tax them as any other Mexicans. But that wasn’t the worst abridgment of freedom. It seems as though Mexico had abolished slavery and the newly arrived emigrants weren’t allowed the freedom to own slaves. Happily with the aid of Volunteers’ from America, such as Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie, they threw off the Mexican yoke and established a new country whose laws allowed slavery. They applied for entry into the United States and when it was granted submitted to paying the taxes to Washington which they had refused to Mexico City, half the distance away. So the freedom to own slaves was evidently the more germane freedom for which they fought.”

Helen snorted. “But, let’s get back to freedom here on Firenze. We’ve got to get cracking, or we’re going to pull a zero for poor Lee Chang. And, thus far, we know precious little more about these Engelists than we did when Ross Metaxa briefed us.”

“Do you think Zorro and Jerry will be able to make some sort of contact? Frankly, I got exactly nowhere with my local scientists. I could be mistaken, but the impression I got was that none of them belonged to the underground. In fact, none of them seemed interested in the movement, even when I dropped a few hints.”