The Year's Best Science Fiction 10

Here on the surface we do not remember for different reasons. We know more about outer space than oceanic depths simply because there are vastly more “information offices,” lobbyists, public-relations men, and publicity agents working to sustain interest in the economically and strategically vital aerospace program.

For much the same reason, we tend to know more about the prospects for man in space than about the physical realities of a wartorn peninsula in Asia where, as I write, Americans are dying in the defense of a “good” political system against one we call “bad.” The people who live there are, like ourselves, citizens of Earth; yet to most of us the language, customs, and physical environment of a Vietcong village would be as strange and unmanageable as those of some alien planet.

I spoke of Arthur Clarke before as an unusually free man. Certainly he is one of the very few who exercises the global freedoms guaranteed in the U.N. Declaration of the Rights of Man.- no accidents or happenstances of language, geography, skin color, creed, or flag have succeeded in alienating him from his right to membership in the human race. British-born, he now makes his permanent home in Ceylon, but he lives and works, actually, all over the world.

Mack Reynolds is as different from Arthur Clarke in background, education, temperament, and personality as two good science-fictionists can be. Reynolds is a bawdy, hearty, beer-drinking, well-met-indeed man, whose most likely reason for leaving Earth would be to look into the political situation on Mars (and write home about it to Rogue magazine, as their travel editor).

“My mother’s people went to California in the Gold Rush,” he writes (from Spain, at the moment). “My father was twice candidate for President of the United States. ... I was once bitten by a vampire [bat—JM] and had to be treated for rabies, . . . Once while traveling across the Sahara to Timbuctoo I was kidnapped by Tuareg. ... I was once offered a soldier-of-fortune job for Chiang Kai-shek. ... I was once detained by the Jordan police because I couldn’t prove I was neither Jewish nor a Jehovah’s Witness. ... I once stole a perfect Etruscan vase out of an Italian tomb. ... And I once participated ... as an observer ... in a demonstration against the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. . . . Although I loathe being shot at, I’ve been in half a dozen wars, revolutions and military revolts. ... I once bought a Ming-dynasty vase for six dollars from a Chinese Communist. ... I believe the world is going through an unprecedented revolution, not only in the political field but in science, sexual and other mores, medicine and socioeconomic systems. And I’m all for it. . . .”

Reynolds owns neither a Questar nor Scuba gear, to the best of my knowledge—but he, too, is what I call a free man. And he knows beer and politics the world over.

It was another time, another space, another continuum.

Warren Casey called, “Boy! You’re Fredric McGivern, aren’t you?”

The lad stopped and frowned in puzzlement. “Well, yes, sir.” He was a youngster of about nine. A bit plump, particularly about the face.

Warren Casey said, “Come along, son. I’ve been sent to pick you up.”

The boy saw a man in his mid-thirties, a certain dynamic quality behind the facial weariness. He wore a uniform with which young McGivern was not familiar, but which looked reassuring.

“Me, sir?” the boy said. “You’ve been sent to pick me up?”

“That’s right, son. Get into the car and I’ll tell you all about it.”

“But my father said . . .”

“Your father sent me, son. Senator McGivern. Now, come along or he’ll be angry.”

“Are you sure?” Still frowning, Fredric McGivern climbed into the helio-car. In seconds it had bounded into the second level and then the first, to speed off to the southwest.

It was more than an hour before the kidnapping was discovered.

Warren Casey swooped in, dropped two levels precipitately and brought the helio-car down in so dainty a landing that there was no perceptible touch of air cushion to garage top.

He fingered a switch with his left hand, even as he brought his right out of his jacket holding a badly burned out pipe. While the garage’s elevator sunk into the recess below, he was loading the aged briar from an equally ancient pouch.

In the garage, Mary Baca was waiting nervously. She said, even though she must have been able to see the boy, “You got him?”

“That’s right,” Casey said. “I’ve given him a shot. He’ll be out for another half hour or so. Take over, will you, Mary?”

The nurse looked down at the crumpled figure bitterly. “It couldn’t have been his father. We have to pick on a child.”

Casey flicked a quick glance at her as he lit the pipe. “It’s all been worked out, Mary.”

“Of course,” she said. Her voice tightened. “I’ll have him in the cell behind the rumpus room.”

Down below he went to the room that had been assigned him and stripped from the uniform. He went into the bath and showered thoroughly, washing out a full third of the hair that had been on his head and half the color in that which remained. He emerged from the bath, little refreshed and some five years older.

He dressed in an inexpensive suit not overly well pressed and showing wear. His shirt was not clean, as though this was the second day he had worn it, and there was a food spot on his tie.

At the small desk he picked up an automatic pencil and clipped it into the suit’s breast pocket and stuffed a bulky notebook into a side pocket. He stared down at the gun for a moment, then grimaced and left it. He departed the house by the front-door and made his way to the metro escalator.

The nearest metro exit was about a quarter of’ a mile from Senator McGivern’s residence and Warren Casey walked the distance. By the time he arrived, he had achieved a cynical quality in his expression of boredom. He didn’t bother to look up into the face of whoever opened the door.

“Jakes,” he said. “H.N.S. McGivern expects me.”

“H.N.S.?” the butler said stiffly.

“Hemisphere News. Hemisphere News Service,” Warren Casey yawned. “Fer crissakes, we gonna stand here all day? I gotta deadline.”

“Well, step in here, sir. I’ll check.” The other turned and led the way.

Casey stuck a finger into his back. His voice went flat. “Don’t get excited and maybe you won’t get hurt. Just take me to the Senator, see? Don’t do nothing at all might make me want to pull this trigger.”

The butler’s face was gray. “The Senator is in his study. I warn you ... sir ... the police shall know of this immediately.”

“Sure, sure, Mac. Now just let’s go to the study.”

“It’s right in there . . . sir.”

“Fine,” Casey said. “And what’s that, under the stairway?”

“Why, that’s a broom closet. The downstairs maid’s broom ...”

Casey brought his flat hand around in a quick clip. The servant folded up with a lung-emptying sigh and Casey caught him before he hit the floor, dragged him to the broom closet, pushed and wedged him inside. He darted a hand to a vest pocket and brought forth a syrette. “That’ll keep you out for a couple of hours,” he muttered, closing the closet door.

He went over to the heavy door which the butler had indicated as Senator McGivern’s study, and knocked on it. In a moment it opened and a husky in his mid-twenties, nattily attired and of obvious self-importance, frowned at him.

“Yes?” he said.

“Steve Jakes of Hemisphere News,” Warren Casey said. “The editor sent me over . . .” As he talked, he sidestepped the other and emerged into the room beyond.