Mack Reynolds - Code Duello

“At five paces?” the Florentine said. “Holy Ultimate, you’ll both be hamburger. No, only you. I have no great respect for my highly placed cousin, but he has perhaps the fastest reflexes on the planet Firenze. It is no mistake he is the First Signore.”

Helen said, “Look. While you’re over there, make me one of those king-size drinks too, will you?”

They used the heavy table, which a few moments past had been utilized for the roulette layout, for their conference. The wheel lay to one side, where Dorn Horsten had let it drop upon revealing its crooked nature. Zorro had swept the felt layout board to the floor as well, and all had brought up seats, save Helen who remained in the comfort chair she had made her own.

Cesare Marconi, somehow, had automatically become a member of the group. He said to Dorn Horsten, “What’s this Section G? My friend, Bulchand, just before he was killed in a put-up duel, revealed he belonged to it, and that undoubtedly new representatives would be coming to replace him from Earth, if he was killed. It’s why I contacted you. You seemed unlikely, but you were the only travelers from Earth in some time.”

The scientist looked at him quizzically. Finally, he said, “All I can tell you is that its purpose, so far as Firenze is concerned, is to get this planet back on the road to progress.”

“That sounds good enough to me.”

Helen said, “I’m beginning to think I know the answer to this already, but just for the record, if you’re in favor of progress on Firenze, what’re you doing in the ranks of the Engelists?”

Marconi eyed her in speculation. “I’m beginning to think I know the answer to this question already too, but you’re an adult, aren’t you?”

Helen snorted and looked at Zorro and Jerry. “Evidently more so than my two colleagues, here.” She looked Marconi full in the face. “What’re you doing in the ranks of the Engelists?”

“ Ranks of the Engelist? I am the Engelists.”

Dom Horsten was scowling at him. “What in the name of the Holy Ultimate is that supposed to mean?”

Helen looked at her large partner. “Isn’t is obvious? What he’s saying is, there are no Engelists on this crackpot planet. There are none, never were any.” A speculative look came to her face. “I was about to add, and never will be.”

“Nothing’s making sense around here!” Zorro complained. “What do you mean, there are no Engelists? We were sent here, all the way from Earth to…”

Helen overrode him. “Get stute, love. It’s all phony. The powers that be on this zany world maintain themselves with a police state camouflaged as a democratic regime that has to curtail all liberties, civil and otherwise, in the supposed fight against subversion. It’s not the first time witch hunting has been resorted to, when there were precious few witches, in order to maintain the status quo. This is just the most complete example known in history.”

Jerry said, “You mean everybody on Firenze spends practically all their time looking for subversives that aren’t there? How about that leaflet Maggiore Verona showed us?”

Horsten grunted. “Obviously, the government itself printed them up. Which explains how stupidly it was worded. No, Helen’s right. It’s a sort of reverse of the old Roman adage. When confronted with possible revolt from your people at home, stir up trouble abroad. In this case, the powers that be pretend the need to unite the country against subversives when their real interest is to preserve themselves in control. Only those on the very highest levels are in on the secret. Not even that colonel in the Anti-Subversion Ministry, whom Helen and I interrogated, knew the real situation.”

Zorro growled, “What gets me is that when you arrive at the top, the First Signore—not to mention that silly little member of his council, the Tenth Signore—you draw a small-time crook, and not a particularly smart one, at that.”

Dorn Horsten said, “That’s one of the mistakes the man in the street has made down through the ages. He simply can’t realize that those in ultimate power are not, necessarily, competent to exercise power. And that applies to the most highly evolved societies as well as the backward.” He snorted. “Take the first caesars, following the founders of the Empire, Julius and Augustus. From Tiberius, through Caligula and Claudius to Nero. Sex deviates, sadistic monsters, playboys, mass murderers. Caligula was actually quite mad. The end of the Julain line? Nero, who fiddled around until the Empire burned and they were heading to lynch him when he committed suicide.

“It’s not the only example. History teems with them. But can you imagine some sincere Centurion, stationed at an important outpost on the Parthian frontier, being told that the God-Emperor, back in Rome, had made one of his racehorses a Consul, and made prostitutes of his two sisters? He simply wouldn’t have, couldn’t have, believed it. You don’t have to go that far back. Would a good British subject of the early Nineteenth Century have believed you, had you told him his monarchy was. crazy? Did the American people of the Twentieth Century have an idea, really, of the true competence of some of their elected presidents?”

Jerry said, “But this isn’t just a matter of an incompetent getting to power. Sure, that’s happened before, (specially when rulers inherited their jobs, but even when they could get elected to them because they happened to have a photogenic face for TV, or oozed sincerity, politician style. But this whole government, the whole planet, is a farce.”

Helen sighed. “It’s not the first time there, either. Remember some of the supposed sovereign states, back before man reached into space. What was the one on the French Riviera? Monaco. A bit over three hundred acres. Half the size of Central Park, in the New York City of the time. But it had a supposed prince, princess and all the rest of the feudalistic foofaraw. Even that wasn’t the most ludicrous. Did you ever hear of the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta, which was contemporary with Monaco, the United States and the rest? It was a sovereign country with its own citizens, ambassadors, air force, license plates and so forth and it occupied the second floor of a villa in Rome, as its sole territory.”

She changed the subject. “All right. Fine. Ross Metaxa, back in the Octagon, was sold a bill of goods, along with everyone else. There are no Engelists on Firenze and the present ruling class are incompetents, not patriots fighting an underground. But we’ve got more pressing problems.” She looked at Zorro. “How in hell did you get caught by those dimwits?”

The dark complected Vacamundian was surly. “I don’t know. It didn’t occur to me that they’d have that cubicle of a room, occupied by a junior janitor, bugged. I thought the rest of you were wrong, that we ought to report on these Dawnworld developments, so I took your disguised communicator and called Sid Jakes. You know the rest.”

“No use crying over spilled milk,” Jerry Rhodes said.

All eyes went to him.

Helen snarled, “I ought to spill some milk over you. What was the idea of getting into that stupid roulette game with the big shot? You knew damn well you didn’t have any real negotiable credits on Geneva.”

Jerry was plaintive. “I couldn’t escape him. I couldn’t have got out of it without blowing our cover. He was hot to get his hands on hard exchange in a numbered account on Geneva, and he wasn’t going to take no.”

Helen looked at Cesare Marconi, who had been absorbing it all, his face intelligently serious. “Why don’t you start talking?” she said.

He nodded. “Obviously, my cousin was trying to get out from under while he still had his skin. He probably does not wish to go through even this next pseudo-election.”