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

were passing over the Potomac, to the right and below them Hank Kuran could make out the twin Pentagons, symbols of a military that had at long last by its very efficiency eliminated itself. War had finally progressed to the point where even a minor nation, such as Cuba or Portugal, could completely destroy the whole planet. Eliminated wasn’t quite the word. In spite of their sterility, the military machines still claimed their million masses of men, still drained a third of the products of the world’s industry.

One of the C.I.A. men was saying urgently, “So we’re going to send you in as a tourist. As inconspicuous a tourist as we can make you. For fifteen years the Russkies have boomed their tourist trade⁠—all for propaganda, of course. Now they’re in no position to turn this tourist flood off. If the aliens got wind of it, they’d smell a rat.”

Hank Kuran brought his attention back to them. “All right. So you get me to Moscow as a tourist. What do I do then? I keep telling you jokers that I don’t know a thing about espionage. I don’t know a secret code from judo.”

“That’s one reason the chief picked you. Not only do the Russkies have nothing on you in their files⁠—neither do our own people. You’re safe from betrayal. There are exactly six people who know your mission and only one of them is in Moscow.”

“Who’s he?”

The C.I.A. man shook his head. “You’ll never meet him. But he’s making the arrangements for you to contact the underground.”

Hank Kuran turned in his seat. “What underground? In Moscow?”

The bright, pink faced C.I.A. man chuckled and began to say something but the older one cut him off. “Let me, Jimmy.” He continued to Hank. “Actually, we don’t know nearly as much as we should about it, but a Soviet underground is there and getting stronger. You’ve heard of the stilyagi and the metrofanushka?”

Hank nodded. “Moscow’s equivalent to the juvenile delinquents, or the Teddy Boys, as the British call them.”

“Not only in Moscow, they’re everywhere in urban Russia. At any rate, our underground friends operate within the stilyagi, the so-called jet-set, using them as protective coloring.”

“This is new to me,” Hank said. “And I don’t quite get it.”

“It’s clever enough. Suppose you’re out late some night on an underground job and the police pick you up. They find out you’re a juvenile delinquent, figure you’ve been out getting drunk, and toss you into jail for a week. It’s better than winding up in front of a firing squad as a counterrevolutionary, or a Trotskyite, or whatever they’re currently calling anybody they shoot.”

The chauffeur rapped on the glass that divided their seat from his, and motioned ahead.

“Here’s the airport,” Jimmy said. “We’ll drive right over to the plane. Hid your face with your hat, just for luck.”

“Wait a minute, now,” Hank said. “Listen, how do I contact these beat generation characters?”

“You don’t. They contact you.”

“How.”

“That’s up to them. Maybe they won’t at all; they’re plenty careful.” Jimmy snorted without humor. “It must be getting to be an instinct with Russians by this time. Nihilists, Anarchists, Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, now anti-Communists. Survival of the fittest. By this time the Russian underground must consist of members that have bred true as revolutionists. There’ve been Russian undergrounds for twenty generations.”

“Hardly long enough to affect genetics,” the older one said wryly.

Hank said, “Let’s stop being witty. I still haven’t a clue as to how Sheridan Hennessey expects me to get to these Galactic Confederation people⁠—or things, or whatever you call them.”

“They evidently are humanoid,” Jimmy said. “Look more or less human. And stop worrying, we’ve got several hours to explain things while we cross the Atlantic. You don’t step into character until you enter the offices of Progressive Tours, in London.”

The door of Progressive Tours, Ltd. 100 Rochester Row, was invitingly open. Hank Kuran entered, looked around the small room. He inwardly winced at the appearance of the girl behind the counter. What was it about Commies outside their own countries that they drew such crackpots into their camp? Heavy lenses, horn rimmed to make them more conspicuous, wild hair, mawkish tweeds, and dirty fingernails to top it off.

She said, “What can I do for you, Comrade?”

“Not Comrade,” Hank said mildly. “I’m an American.”

“What did you want?” she said coolly.

Hank indicated the travel folder he was carrying. “I’d like to take this tour to Leningrad and Moscow. I’ve been reading propaganda for and against Russia as long as I’ve been able to read and I’ve finally decided I want to see for myself. Can I get the tour that leaves tomorrow?”

She became businesslike as was within her ability. “There is no country in the world as easy to visit as the Soviet Union, Mr.⁠—”

“Stevenson,” Hank Kuran said. “Henry Stevenson.”

“Stevenson. Fill out these two forms, leave your passport and two photos and we’ll have everything ready in the morning. The Baltika leaves at twelve. The visa will cost ten shillings. What class do you wish to travel?”

“The cheapest.” And least conspicuous, Hank added under his breath.

“Third class comes to fifty-five guineas. The tour lasts eighteen days including the time it takes to get to Leningrad. You have ten days in Russia.”

“I know, I read the folder. Are there any other Americans on the tour?”

A voice behind him said, “At least one other.”

Hank turned. She was somewhere in her late twenties, he estimated. And if her clothes, voice and appearance were any criterion he’d put her in the middle-middle class with a bachelor’s degree in something or other, unmarried and with the aggressiveness he didn’t like in American girls after living the better part of eight years in Latin countries.

On top of that she was one of the prettiest girls he had ever seen, in a quick, redheaded, almost puckish sort of way.

Hank tried to keep from displaying his admiration too openly. “American?” he said.

“That’s right.” She took in his five-foot