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

have been so gross as to use Margitsziget for other than a park.

Buda, lying to the west of the Danube, is of rolling hills and bluffs and of ancient towers, fortresses, castles and walls which have suffered through a hundred wars, a score of revolutions. It dominates the younger, more dynamic, Pest which stretches out on the flat plains to the east so that though you stand on the Hármashatárhegy hill of Buda and strain your eyes, you are hard put to find the furtherest limits of Pest.

The jetport was on the outskirts of Pest, and the craft carrying Nadine Haer, Joseph Mauser and Max Mainz, settled in for a gentle landing, the autopilot more delicate far than human eye served by human hand.

Max, his eyes glued to the window, said, “Well, gee, it don’t look much different than a lotta the other towns we passed over.”

Nadine looked at him and laughed. She alone of the three of them had ever been outside the boundaries of the West-world having attended several international medical conventions. Over the years, the Frigid Fracas had laid its chill on tourism, so that now travel between West-world and Sov-world was all but unknown, and even visiting the Neut-world was considered a bit far out and somewhat suspect of going beyond the old time way of doing things⁠—even among the Uppers. Securing a passport for a Middle’s trip, not to speak of a Lower’s, involved such endless bureaucratic red tape as to be nonsensical.

Nadine said to Joe’s batman, “What did you expect, Max?”

“Well, I don’t know, Miss Haer. I mean, Dr. Haer. Kind of gloomier, like. Shucks, I’ve seen this here town on Telly a dozen times.”

“And seeing is believing,” Joe muttered cynically. “It looks as though we have a reception committee.” He looked at Nadine. “Are we supposed to know each other?”

She shrugged and made a moue. “It would be somewhat strange if we didn’t, seeing that we flew over in the same aircraft, and were the only passengers to come this far.”

He nodded and as the plane came to a halt, helped her from her chair, even as the plane’s ladder slipped out and touched to the ground.

Joe grunted and said, as though to himself, “You realize that for all practical purposes there hasn’t been any improvement in aircraft for a generation?”

Nadine looked at him from the side of her eyes, even as they descended. “That’s what I keep telling you, Joe. We’ve become ossified. When a society, afraid of change, adopts a policy of maintaining the status quo at any cost, progress is arrested. Progress means change.”

He grinned at her. “Sure, sure, sure. Please, no more lectures, teacher. Let what’s already in my head stew a while.”

On the ground, Nadine was met by one contingent from the Embassy and from the Sov-world authorities, and Joe and Max by another. Joe became occupied, hardly more than noticing that she had been whisked away in a hover-limousine, ornately bedecked with official flags and stars.

Joe, no longer holding military rank, in spite of his mission, was in mufti, and restrained himself from returning the salute when greeted by two fresh young lieutenants from the Embassy and a bemedaled lieutenant colonel in Sov-world uniform, whose tight-waisted tunic reminded Joe of that worn by Colonel Lajos Arpád, the military attaché Joe had come across twice in West-world fracases, and who Frank Hodgson had branded an espionage agent. Joe swore again, inwardly, that these Hungarian officers must wear girdles under their uniforms, and wondered vaguely if they did so in combat.

The lieutenants, who could have been twins, so alike were they in size, bright smiling faces, uniform and words of welcome, saluted Joe, shook hands, and then turned to introduce him to the Sov-world officer.

One of them said, “Major Mauser, may we present you to Lieutenant Bela Kossuth of the Pink Army?”

They were, evidently using Joe’s old title of rank, as if he were retired rather than dismissed from the Category Military. It meant little to Joe Mauser. The Sov officer clicked his heels, bowed from the waist, extended his hand to be shaken. His waist might be pinched in like that of a girl of the Nineteenth Century, but his hand was dry and firm.

“The fame of Joseph Mauser has penetrated to the Proletarian Paradise,” he said, his voice conveying sincerity.

Joe shook and said, “Pink Army? I thought you called it⁠—”

The colonel was indicating a hover-limousine with a sweeping gesture that would have seemed overly graceful, had not Joe felt the grip of the man only a moment earlier. Kossuth interrupted him politely, “The plane was a trifle late and the banquet we have prepared awaits us, major. A multitude of my fellow officers are anxious to meet the famed Joseph Mauser. Would it surprise you to know that I have replayed, a score of times, your celebrated holding action on the Louisiana Military Reservation? Zut! Unbelievable. With but a single company of men!”

Joe was looking at him blankly. Celebrated! Joe couldn’t but remember the fracas the mincing Hungarian was talking about. When the front had collapsed, Joe, then a captain, had held his position in the swamps while his superiors were supposedly reforming behind him, actually while they frantically tried to reach terms with the enemy.

One of the West-world lieutenants laughed at Joe’s expression. “You’re going to have to get used to the fact that there’re as many fracas buffs over here, sir, as there are back home.”

The Sov colonel waggled a finger at him. “But, no, you misunderstand completely, Lieutenant Andersen. We study the bloody fracases of the West. Following the campaigns of such tacticians as your Marshal Stonewall Cogswell goes far toward the training of our own Pink Army in its, ah, fracases.”

That brought up a dozen questions in Joe’s mind, but first he turned and indicated Max, who’d been standing behind, his eyes wide, and taking in the luxurious airport, the vehicles about it, the buildings, the airport workers, few in number though they be,