Short Fiction, Mack Reynolds [best book reader txt] 📗

sidewalk cafés occupy three of the strategic corners on the Place de France. The Café de Paris serves the best draft beer in town, gets all the better custom, and has three shoeshine boys attached to the establishment. You can sit of a sunny morning and read the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune while getting your shoes done up like mirrors for thirty Moroccan francs which comes to about five cents at current exchange.

You can sit there, after the paper’s read, sip your expresso and watch the people go by.

Tangier is possibly the most cosmopolitan city in the world. In native costume you’ll see Berber and Rif, Arab and Blue Man, and occasionally a Senegalese from further south. In European dress you’ll see Japs and Chinese, Hindus and Turks, Levantines and Filipinos, North Americans and South Americans, and, of course, even Europeans⁠—from both sides of the Curtain.

In Tangier you’ll find some of the world’s poorest and some of the richest. The poorest will try to sell you anything from a shoeshine to their not very lily-white bodies, and the richest will avoid your eyes, afraid you might try to sell them something.

In spite of recent changes, the town still has its unique qualities. As a result of them the permanent population includes smugglers and black-marketeers, fugitives from justice and international con men, espionage and counterespionage agents, homosexuals, nymphomaniacs, alcoholics, drug addicts, displaced persons, ex-royalty, and subversives of every flavor. Local law limits the activities of few of these.

Like I said, it’s quite a town.

I looked up from my Herald Tribune and said, “Hello, Paul. Anything new cooking?”

He sank into the chair opposite me and looked around for the waiter. The tables were all crowded and since mine was a face he recognized, he assumed he was welcome to intrude. It was more or less standard procedure at the Café de Paris. It wasn’t a place to go if you wanted to be alone.

Paul said, “How are you, Rupert? Haven’t seen you for donkey’s years.”

The waiter came along and Paul ordered a glass of beer. Paul was an easygoing, sallow-faced little man. I vaguely remembered somebody saying he was from Liverpool and in exports.

“What’s in the newspaper?” he said, disinterestedly.

“Pogo and Albert are going to fight a duel,” I told him, “and Lil Abner is becoming a rock’n’roll singer.”

He grunted.

“Oh,” I said, “the intellectual type.” I scanned the front page. “The Russkies have put up another manned satellite.”

“They have, eh? How big?”

“Several times bigger than anything we Americans have.”

The beer came and looked good, so I ordered a glass too.

Paul said, “What ever happened to those poxy flying saucers?”

“What flying saucers?”

A French girl went by with a poodle so finely clipped as to look as though it’d been shaven. The girl was in the latest from Paris. Every pore in place. We both looked after her.

“You know, what everybody was seeing a few years ago. It’s too bad one of these bloody manned satellites wasn’t up then. Maybe they would’ve seen one.”

“That’s an idea,” I said.

We didn’t say anything else for a while and I began to wonder if I could go back to my paper without rubbing him the wrong way. I didn’t know Paul very well, but, for that matter, it’s comparatively seldom you ever get to know anybody very well in Tangier. Largely, cards are played close to the chest.

My beer came and a plate of tapas for us both. Tapas at the Café de Paris are apt to be potato salad, a few anchovies, olives, and possibly some cheese. Free lunch, they used to call it in the States.

Just to say something, I said, “Where do you think they came from?” And when he looked blank, I added, “The Flying Saucers.”

He grinned. “From Mars or Venus, or someplace.”

“Ummmm,” I said. “Too bad none of them ever crashed, or landed on the Yale football field and said Take me to your cheerleader, or something.”

Paul yawned and said, “That was always the trouble with those crackpot blokes’ explanations of them. If they were aliens from space, then why not show themselves?”

I ate one of the potato chips. It’d been cooked in rancid olive oil.

I said, “Oh, there are various answers to that one. We could probably sit around here and think of two or three that made sense.”

Paul was mildly interested. “Like what?”

“Well, hell, suppose for instance there’s this big Galactic League of civilized planets. But it’s restricted, see. You’re not eligible for membership until you, well, say until you’ve developed space flight. Then you’re invited into the club. Meanwhile, they send secret missions down from time to time to keep an eye on your progress.”

Paul grinned at me. “I see you read the same poxy stuff I do.”

A Moorish girl went by dressed in a neatly tailored gray jellaba, European style high-heeled shoes, and a pinkish silk veil so transparent that you could see she wore lipstick. Very provocative, dark eyes can be over a veil. We both looked after her.

I said, “Or, here’s another one. Suppose you have a very advanced civilization on, say, Mars.”

“Not Mars. No air, and too bloody dry to support life.”

“Don’t interrupt, please,” I said with mock severity. “This is a very old civilization and as the planet began to lose its water and air, it withdrew underground. Uses hydroponics and so forth, husbands its water and air. Isn’t that what we’d do, in a few million years, if Earth lost its water and air?”

“I suppose so,” he said. “Anyway, what about them?”

“Well, they observe how man is going through a scientific boom, an industrial boom, a population boom. A boom, period. Any day now he’s going to have practical spaceships. Meanwhile, he’s also got the H-Bomb and the way he beats the drums on both sides of the Curtain, he’s not against using it, if he could get away with it.”

Paul said, “I got it. So they’re scared and are keeping an eye on us. That’s an