Mack Reynolds: The Best Ye Breed

Doctor Smythe came back to Meg’s suggestion. “Needless to say, Doctor, your services are welcome. Are you a specialist?”

She shook her head. “A general practitioner. Place me at any task you wish.” Her eyes went to Isobel. “At one time you say you are against the West and the civilization of the whites, but here you are, making every effort to bring it to North Africa.”

Isobel smiled at that and said, “Not exactly. Possibly it’s according to what you mean by civilization. Modern medicine, obviously, we want, along with agricultural techniques, irrigation, afforestation methods, and many other modern developments. But we can do without such things as, say, American-type television, which exists primarily for profit reasons, any entertainment or educational value being incidental.”

“Above all,” Jimmy Peters said, “we don’t wish to bring to Ifriqiyah the suicidal waste of your so-called civilization. Just take one example. Every year your Detroit spends hundreds of millions in re-tooling to turn out automobiles that look somewhat different. The height, the length, the color, the shape of fenders, the upholstery, the number of lights. It’s largely for something the advertising men can spend additional hundreds of millions upon, touting the product.”

Isobel said, “The one I like is the electric Martini-stirrer. It took a sharp idea man to conceive of it. Skilled engineers to design it. Competent technicians to tool up for it. Trained workers to operate the factory in which it was built. Highly paid publicity and advertising personnel to bring it before the eyes of the public. Probably millions were involved before it was through. All for what? What in the world good is an electric Martini-stirrer save for humor, or as a status symbol? Of course, it most likely made a profit, and that’s all that counts in your so-called Western civilization.”

Meg had to laugh. “All right,” she said. “I’ll have to believe you, I shouldn’t doubt. You want the blessings of civilization…”

“Modern technology,” Jimmy Peters corrected lowly.

“… without its curses.” She looked at Doctor Smythe again. “I’m ready to go to work at any post you assign me.”

Later that evening, just before sunset, Meg, Sean Ryan, Bryan O’Casey, Paul Bazaine and Lon Charles met in the mess tent of the mercenaries. Half a dozen of their men were nonchalantly lolling around outside, covering the tent from each direction. They were guards, albeit unarmed, and stationed to give warning should any outsiders approach.

The five sat at two of the folding tables, on camp chairs. Lon Charles, in his wanderings about the souk and cafés in Tamanrasset, had located, of all things, a bottle of cognac, which had probably been in the town since French occupation days. They had split the astronomical cost of the bottle five ways and now sat around it with tin cups.

Bryan had in hand his Peterson shell briar and had just filled it from the leather pouch he had carried since his first mercenary job in Angola, many years before. In actuality, it wasn’t leather, it was human skin and he would never have let Meg know the fact. One of the boys under his command had carefully cured it, had his wife sew it, and had presented it to a then horrified Bryan as a gift. It was a perverse fascination that caused him to continue using it, down through the years.

Sean opened the discussion by saying, “Does anyone have any reason to believe that this tent might be bugged?”

They thought about it.

Paul Bazaine said, “I doubt it. In all my years in North Africa, I have never heard of an electronic bug. They might have them in Algiers, or Casablanca or Dakar, but it seems unlikely out here. If El Hassan’s ambitious gang actually did come to power, in a year or so they might introduce such niceties. But now? It’s unlikely that such equipment was in Tamanrasset before they took over and doubly unlikely that Reunited Nations teams would have been carrying them; Besides, such devices need trained technicians to install and operate. No, this tent is not bugged.”

“I think you’re right.” Sean said. “Let’s get down to our council of war. This not being able to contact El Hassan or find out where he is has its ramifications. Suppose that his adherents overrun Adrar before we can pull off the job? What happens to our getaway aircraft and pilots in that case?”

“There’s nothing we can do about it,” Bryan growled unhappily, tamping down the tobacco in his shell briar.

Sean said, “I got a tightbeam from Saul Saidi this morning. He’s gnawing his nails about our holdup. It seems that El Hassan’s movement is spreading like a brush fire. If he manages to consolidate all of what they call Ifriqiyah before we do him in, then it might be too late. He might become a martyr and elements among his followers take over.” He dwelt upon it inwardly. “As a matter of fact, these charismatic leaders are sometimes better off dead, after a certain point. If they lived, possibly their followers would begin to detect feet of clay. But dead, nobody can say a word against them.”

“Examples?” Bryan growled.

“There’s lots of them” Sean told him. “Take Jesus. Suppose that he had lived on, instead of being crucified as a young man, so that Paul and others could defy him and knock together a viable program. Jesus, himself, never had one, or, if he did, it was evidently edited out of the gospels.”

“Why, Sean,” Meg said, twisting her mouth. “You’re absolutely blasphemous.”

Major Ryan ignored her and said, “Lenin’s another example. Suppose he had lived? Stalin and the boys must have blessed their lucky stars when he kicked off. If he hadn’t, when he did, they probably would have had to take steps to accomplish it.”

“Very well,” Raul Bazaine said impatiently. “And where do we stand now? Have we any information all aren’t acquainted with?”

Sean looked at Lon Charles. “You’ve been given the run of Tamanrasset. Have you learned anything?”

The black sergeant shook his head. “I don’t speak any of their languages, or even French. The only thing I’ve noticed that kind of set me back, is that they all seem caught up in this El Hassan idea. I’ve been in a lot of backward countries, in my time, and I found out they got one thing in common, a dislike of work.”

Meg said, “People ridden with everything from pellagra to hookworm haven’t got much energy or ambition.”

Lon looked over at her. “You’re the doc. But somehow these people are different. They’re all working like bastards. Uh, sorry…”

Meg snorted at the apology.

Sean turned his eyes to Raul Bazaine. “I noted you talking to El Hassan’s secretary. Did you pick up anything?”

The Frenchman snorted. “The little cocotte is tight-mouthed. However, perhaps she let a little something drop.”

Meg said, “That’s hardly the term to describe Miss Cunningham. I found her a cultivated, sincere and idealistic woman.”

The four men took her in, empty-faced.

But Sean said to Bazaine, “Dropped what?”

“Possibly she let slip that El Hassan and his closest aides are not in the vicinity of Tamanrasset at all but have gone off somewhere. This so-called ekhwan , the great council, they are supposedly holding, doesn’t ring true, at any rate, n’est-ce pas ? How could but four men take this long to talk things over?”

Sean pursed his lips and looked unseeingly out of the side of his eyes toward the tent opening. He poured himself another slug of the cognac—which he knew he shouldn’t do—and then one each for the others.

Then he said, “I’ll be thinking that possibly fits in with something Saul Saidi told me this morning. Remember the rumors we heard in the north about some Algerian tribesman proclaiming he was a second coming of some Moslem religious figure and was being taken up by all the marabouts and so forth? His program was anti-El Hassan; in fact he was proclaiming a jehad holy war against him and had captured one of El Hassan’s closest followers.”