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

the correct dress and in less than commanding dignity. While they were busily at work composing such directives, field men such as Johnny McCord went about the Commission’s real tasks.

It was auto-copter 4, which Johnny hadn’t expected for another half hour. He extracted the reports and then peered into the cockpit to check. There were two red lights flickering on the panel. Work for Reuben. This damned sand was a perpetual hazard to equipment. Number 4 had just had an overhaul a few weeks before and here it was throwing red lights already.

He took the reports back into the office and dumped them into the card-punch. While they were being set up, Johnny went over to the office refrigerator and got out a can of Tuborg beer. Theoretically, it was as taboo to drink iced beer in this climate, and particularly at this time of day, as it was to go out into the sun without a hat. But this was one place where the Commission’s medics could go blow.

By the time he’d finished the Danish brew, the card-punch had stopped clattering so he took the cards from the hopper and crossed to the sorter. He gave them a quick joggling⁠—cards held up well in this dry climate, though they were a terror further south⁠—and sorted them through four code numbers, enough for this small an amount. He carried them over to the collator and merged them into the proper file.

He was still running off a report on the Alphabetyper when Derek Mason came in.

Johnny drawled in a horrible caricature of a New England accent, “I say, Si, did the cyclone hurt your barn any?”

Derek’s voice took on the same twang. “Don’t know, Hiram, we ain’t found it yet.”

Johnny said, “You get all your chores done, Si?”

Derek dropped the pseudo-twang and his voice expressed disgust. “I got a chore for you Johnny, that you’re going to love. Rounding up some livestock.”

Johnny looked up from the report he was running off and shot an impatient glance at him. “Livestock? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Goats.”

Johnny McCord flicked the stop button on the Alphabetyper. “Where’ve you been? There isn’t a goat within five hundred miles of here.”

Derek went over to the refrigerator for beer. He said over his shoulder, “I was just making a routine patrol over toward Amérene El Kasbach. I’d estimate there were a hundred Tuareg in camp there. Camels, a few sheep, a few horses and donkeys. Mostly goats. Thousands of them. By the looks of the transplants, they’ve been there possibly a week or so.”

Johnny said in agony, “Oh, Lord. What clan were they?”

Derek punched a hole in his beer can with the opener that hung from the refrigerator by a string. “I didn’t go low enough to check. You can never tell with a Tuareg. They can’t resist as beautiful a target as a helicopter, and one of these days one of them is going to make a hole in me, instead of in the fuselage or rotors.”

Johnny McCord, furious, plunked himself down before the telephone and dialed Tessalit, 275 kilometers to the south. The girl on the desk there grinned at him and said, “Hello, Johnny.”

Johnny McCord was in no mood for pleasantries. He snapped, “Who’s supposed to be on Bedouin patrol down there?”

She blinked at him. “Why, Mohammed is in command of patrolling this area, Mr. McCord.”

“Mohammed? Mohammed who? Eighty percent of these Malians are named Mohammed.”

“Captain Mohammed Mohmoud ould Cheikh.” She added, unnecessarily, “The Qadi’s son.”

Johnny grunted. He’d always suspected that the captain had got his ideas of what a qadi’s son should be like from seeing Hollywood movies. “Look, Kate,” he said. “Let me talk to Mellor, will you?”

Her face faded to be replaced by that of a highly tanned, middle-aged executive type. He scowled at Johnny McCord with a this-better-be-important expression, not helping Johnny’s disposition.

He snapped, “Somebody’s let several thousand goats into my eucalyptus transplants in my western four hundred.”

Mellor was taken aback.

Johnny said, “I can have Derek back-trail them, if you want to be sure, but it’s almost positive they came from the south, this time of year.”

Mellor sputtered, “They might have come from the direction of Timmissao. Who are they, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Tuareg. I thought we’d supposedly settled with all the Tuareg. Good Lord, man, do you know how many transplants a thousand goats can go through in a week’s time?”

“A week’s time!” Mellor rasped. “You mean you’ve taken a whole week to detect them?”

Johnny McCord glared at him. “A whole week! We’re lucky they didn’t spend the whole season before we found them. How big a staff do you think we have here, Mellor? There’s just three of us. Only one can be spared for patrol.”

“You have natives,” the older man growled.

“They can’t fly helicopters. Most of them can’t even drive a Land Rover or a jeep. Besides that, they’re scared to death of Tuaregs. They wouldn’t dare report them. What I want to know is, why didn’t you stop them coming through?”

Mellor was on the defensive. He ranked Johnny McCord, but that was beside the point right now. He said finally, “I’ll check this all the way through, McCord. Meanwhile, I’ll send young Mohammed Mohmoud up with a group of his men.”

“To do what?” Johnny demanded.

“To shoot the goats, what else?”

Johnny growled, “One of these days a bunch of these Tuareg are going to decide that a lynching bee is in order, and that’s going to be the end of this little base at Bidon Cinq.”

Mellor said, “If they’re Tuareg nomads then they have no legal right to be within several hundred miles of Bidon Cinq. And if they’ve got goats, they shouldn’t have. The Commission has bought up every goat in this part of the world.”

Johnny growled, “Sure, bought them up and then left it to the honor of the Tuareg to destroy them. The honor of the Tuareg! Ha!”

The other said pompously, “Are you criticizing the upper echelons, McCord?”

Johnny McCord snapped, “You’re damned right I