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

to buy drinks and hang on your every word, and more important still, sensuous-eyed women, their faces slack in thinly suppressed passion. It was a recognized phenomenon, even Max Mainz knew⁠—this desire on the part of women Telly fans to date a man, and then watch him later, killing or being killed.

“Time enough to wear your fancy uniform,” Joe Mauser growled at him. “In fact, tomorrow’s a local election day. Parlay that up on top of all the fracas fans gravitating into town and you’ll have a wingding the likes of nothing you’ve seen before.”

“Well yessir,” Max begrudged. “Where’re we going now, captain?”

“To the airport. Come along.”

Joe Mauser led the way to his sports hover-car and as soon as the two were settled into the bucket seats, hit the lift lever with the butt of his left hand. Air-cushion-borne, he trod down on the accelerator.

Max Mainz was impressed. “You know,” he said. “I never been in one of these swanky sports jobs before. The kinda car you can afford on the income of a Mid-Lower’s stock aren’t⁠—”

“Knock it off,” Joe said wearily. “Carping we’ll always have with us evidently, but in spite of all the beefing in every strata from Low-Lower to Upper-Middle, I’ve yet to see any signs of organized protest against our present politico-economic system.”

“Hey,” Max said. “Don’t get me wrong. What was good enough for Dad is good enough for me. You won’t catch me talking against the government.”

“Hm-m-m,” Joe murmured. “And all the other cliches taught to us to preserve the status quo, our People’s Capitalism.” They were reaching the outskirts of town, crossing the Esopus. The airport lay only a mile or so beyond.

It was obviously too deep for Max, and since he didn’t understand, he assumed his superior didn’t know what he was talking about. He said, tolerantly, “Well, what’s wrong with People’s Capitalism? Everybody owns the corporations. Damnsight better than the Sovs have.”

Joe said sourly. “We’ve got one optical illusion, they’ve got another, Max. Over there they claim the proletariat owns the means of production. Great. But the Party members are the ones who control it, and, as a result they manage to do all right for themselves. The Party hierarchy over there are like our Uppers over here.”

“Yeah.” Max was being particularly dense. “I’ve seen a lot about it on Telly. You know, when there isn’t a good fracas on, you tune to one of them educational shows, like⁠—”

Joe winced at the term educational, but held his peace.

“It’s pretty rugged over there. But in the West-world, the people own a corporation’s stock and they run it and get the benefit.”

“At least it makes a beautiful story,” Joe said dryly. “Look, Max. Suppose you have a corporation that has two hundred thousand shares out and they’re distributed among one hundred thousand and one persons. One hundred thousand of these own one share apiece, but the remaining stockholder owns the other hundred thousand.”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” Max said.

Joe Mauser was tired of the discussion. “Briefly,” he said, “we have the illusion that this is a People’s Capitalism, with all stock in the hands of the People. Actually, as ever before, the stock is in the hands of the Uppers, all except a mere dribble. They own the country and they run it for their own benefit.”

Max shot a less than military glance at him. “Hey, you’re not one of these Sovs yourself, are you?”

They were coming into the parking area near the Administration Building of the airport. “No,” Joe said so softly that Max could hardly hear his words. “Only a Mid-Middle on the make.”

Followed by Max, he strode quickly to the Administration Building, presented his credit identification at the desk and requested a light aircraft for a period of three hours. The clerk, hardly looking up, began going through motions, speaking into telescreens.

The clerk said finally, “You might have a small wait, sir. Quite a few of the officers involved in this fracas have been renting out taxi-planes almost as fast as they’re available.”

That didn’t surprise Joe Mauser. Any competent officer made a point of an aerial survey of the battle reservation before going into a fracas. Aircraft, of course, couldn’t be used during the fray, since they postdated the turn of the century, and hence were relegated to the cemetery of military devices along with such items as nuclear weapons, tanks, and even gasoline-propelled vehicles of size to be useful.

Use an aircraft in a fracas, or even build an aircraft for military usage and you’d have a howl go up from the military attachés from the Sov-world that would be heard all the way to Budapest. Not a fracas went by but there were scores, if not hundreds, of military observers, keen-eyed to check whether or not any really modern tools of war were being illegally utilized. Joe Mauser sometimes wondered if the West-world observers, over in the Sov-world, were as hair fine in their living up to the rules of the Universal Disarmament Pact. Probably. But, for that matter, they didn’t have the same system of fighting fracases over there, as in the West.

Joe took a chair while he waited and thumbed through a fan magazine. From time to time he found his own face in such publications. He was a third-rate celebrity, really. Luck hadn’t been with him so far as the buffs were concerned. They wanted spectacular victories, murderous situations in which they could lose themselves in vicarious sadistic thrills. Joe had reached most of his peaks while in retreat, or commanding a holding action. His officers appreciated him and so did the ultra-knowledgeable fracas buffs⁠—but he was all but an unknown to the average dimwit who spent most of his life glued to the Telly set, watching men butcher each other.

On the various occasions when matters had pickled and Joe had to fight his way out against difficult odds, using spectacular tactics in desperation, he was almost always off camera. Purely luck. On top of