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

were convinced that Russian skunks didn’t stink, in spite of the fact that thus far they’d never been there to have a whiff. The few such as Loo Motlamelle, who was evidently the son of some African paramount chief, and Paco Rodriquez, had also never been to Russia but at least had open minds.

Far from black bread and borscht, he found the food excellent. The first morning they found caviar by the pound nestled in bowls of ice, as part of breakfast. He said across the table to Paco, “Propaganda. I wonder how many people in Russia eat caviar.”

Paco spooned a heavy dip of it onto his bread and grinned back. “This type of propaganda I can appreciate. You Yankees should try it.”

Char was also eating at the other side of the community type table. She said, “How many Americans eat as well as the passengers on United States Lines ships?”

It was as good an opportunity as any for Hank to place his character in the eyes of his fellow Progressive Tours pilgrims. His need was to establish himself as a moderately square tourist on his way to take a look-see at highly publicized Russia. Originally, the C.I.A. men had wanted him to be slightly pro-Soviet, but he hadn’t been sure he could handle that convincingly enough. More comfortable would be a role as an averagely anti-Russian tourist⁠—not fanatically so, but averagely. If there were any K.G.B. men aboard, he wanted to dissolve into mediocrity so far as they were concerned.

Hank said now, mild indignation in his voice. “Do you contend that the average Russian eats as well as the average American?”

Char took a long moment to finish the bite she had in her mouth. She shrugged prettily. “How would I know? I’ve never been to the Soviet Union.” She paused for a moment before adding, “However, I’ve done a certain amount of traveling and I can truthfully say that the worst slums I have ever seen in any country that can be considered civilized were in the Harlem district and the lower East Side of New York.”

All eyes were turned to him now, so Hank said, “It’s a big country and there are exceptions. But on the average the United States has the highest standard of living in the world.”

Paco said interestedly, “What do you use for a basis of measurement, my friend? Such things as the number of television sets and movie theaters? To balance such statistics, I understand that per capita your country has the fewest number of legitimate theaters of any of⁠—I use Miss Moore’s term⁠—the civilized countries.”

A Londoner, two down from Hank, laughed nastily. “Maybe schooling is the way he measures. I read in the Express the other day that even after Yankees get out of college they can’t read proper. All they learn is driving cars and dancing and togetherness⁠—wotever that it.”

Hank grinned inwardly and thought, You don’t sound as though you read any too well yourself, my friend. Aloud he said, “Very well, in a couple of days we’ll be in the promised land, I contend that free enterprise performs the greatest good for the greatest number.”

“Free enterprise,” somebody down the table snorted. “That means the freedom for the capitalists to pry somebody else out of the greatest part of what he produces.”

By the time they’d reached Leningrad aside from Paco and Loo, his cabinmates, Hank had built an Iron Curtain all of his own between himself and the other members of the Progressive Tours trip. Which was the way he wanted it. He could foresee a period when having friends might be a handicap when and if he needed to drift away from the main body for any length of time.

Actually, the discussions he ran into were on the juvenile side. Hank Kuran hadn’t spent eight years of his life as a field man working against the Soviet countries in the economic sphere without running into every argument both pro and con in the continuing battle between Capitalism and Communism. Now he chuckled to himself at getting into tiffs over the virtues of Russian black bread versus American white, or whether Soviet jets were faster than those of the United States.

With Char Moore, though she tolerated Hank’s company, in fact, seemed to prefer it to that of whatever other males were aboard, it was continually a matter of rubbing fur the wrong way. She was ready to battle it out on any phase of politics, international affairs or West versus East.

But it was the visitors from space that actually dominated the conversation of the ship⁠—crew, tourists, business travelers, or whoever. Information was still limited, and Tass the sole source. Daily there were multilingual radio broadcasts tuned in by the Baltika but largely they added little to the actual information on the extraterrestrials. It was mostly Soviet back-patting on the significance of the fact that the Galactic Confederation emissaries had landed in the Soviet complex rather than among the Western countries.

Hank learned little that he hadn’t already known. The Kremlin had all but laughingly declined a suggestion on the part of Switzerland that the extraterrestrials be referred to that all but defunct United Nations. The delegates from the Galactic Confederation had chose to land in Moscow. In Moscow they should remain until they desired to go elsewhere. The Soviet implication was that the alien emissaries had no desire, intention nor reason to visit other sections of Earth. They had contacted the dominant world power and could complete their business within the Kremlin walls.

Leningrad came as only a mild surprise to Henry Kuran. With his knowledge of Russian and his position in Morton Twombly’s department, he had kept up with the Soviet progress though the years.

As early as the middle 1950s unbiased travelers to the U.S.S.R. had commented in detail upon the explosion of production in the country. By the end of the decade such books as Gunther’s Inside Russia Today had dwelt upon the ultra-cleanliness of the