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

evidently assigned compartments by Intourist and where we were assigned we’ll sleep. Either that or you can stand in the corridor all night. I’ll be damned if I will.”

“You don’t have to swear,” Char bit out testily. “What are we going to do about it?”

“I just told you what I was going to do.” Taking up his things he opened the door. “I’ll change in the men’s dressing room.”

“I’ll lock the door,” Char Moore snapped.

Hank grinned at her. “I’ll bet that if you do the conductor either has a passkey or will break it down for me.”

When he returned in slippers, nightrobe and pajamas, Char was in the upper berth, staring angrily at the compartment ceiling. There were no hooks or other facilities for hanging or storing clothes. She must have put all of her things back into her bag. Hank grinned inwardly, carefully folded his own pants and jacket over his suitcase before climbing into the bunk.

“Don’t snore, do you?” he said conversationally.

No answer.

“Or walk in your sleep?”

“You’re not funny, Mr. Stevenson.”

“That’s what I like about this country,” Hank said. “Progressive. Way ahead of the West. Shucks, modesty is a reactionary capitalistic anachronism. Shove ’em all into bed together, that’s what I always say.” He laughed.

“Oh, shut up,” Char said. But then she laughed, too. “Actually, I suppose there’s nothing wrong with it. We are rather Victorian about such things in the States.”

Hank groaned. “There you are. If a railroad company at home suggested you spend the night in a compartment with a strange man, you’d sue them. But here in the promised land it’s OK.”

After a short silence Char said, “Hank, why do you dislike the Soviet Union so much?”

“Why? Because I’m an American!”

She said so softly as to be almost inaudible, “I’ve known you for a week now. Somehow you don’t really seem to be the type who would make that inadequate a statement.”

Hank said “Look, Char. There’s a cold war going on between the United States and her allies and the Soviet complex. I’m on our side. It’s going to be one or the other.”

“No it isn’t, Hank. If it ever breaks out into hot war, it’s going to be both. That is, unless the extraterrestrials add some new elements to the whole disgusting situation.”

“Let’s put it another way. Why are you so pro-Soviet?”

She raised herself on one elbow and scowled down over the edge of her bunk at him. Inside, Hank turned over twice to see the unbound red hair, the serious green eyes. Imagine looking at that face over the breakfast table for the rest of your life. The hell with South American señoritas.

Char said earnestly, “I’m not. Confound it, Hank, can’t the world get any further than this cowboys and Indians relationship between nations? Our science and industry has finally developed to the point where the world could be a paradise. We’ve solved all the problems of production. We’ve conquered all the major diseases. We have the wonders of eternity before us⁠—and look at us.”

“Tell that to the Russkies and their pals. They’re out for the works.”

“Well, haven’t we been?”

“The United States isn’t trying to take over the world.”

“No? Possibly not in the old sense of the word, but aren’t we trying desperately to sponsor our type of government and social system everywhere? Frankly, I’m neither pro-West nor pro-Soviet. I think they’re both wrong.”

“Fine,” Hank said. “What is your answer?”

She remained silent for a long time. Finally, “I don’t claim to have an answer. But the world is changing like crazy. Science, technology, industrial production, education, population all are mushrooming. For us to claim that sweeping and basic changes aren’t taking place in the Western nations is just nonsense. Our own country’s institutions barely resemble the ones we had when you and I were children. And certainly the Soviet Union has changed and is changing from what it was thirty or forty years ago.”

“Listen, Char,” Hank said in irritation, “you still haven’t come up with any sort of an answer to the cold war.”

“I told you I hadn’t any. All I say is that I’m sick of it. I can’t remember so far back that there wasn’t a cold war. And the more I consider it the sillier it looks. Currently the United States and her allies spend between a third and a half of their gross national product on the military⁠—ha! the military!⁠—and in fighting the Soviet complex in international trade.”

“Well,” Hank said, “I’m sick of it, too, and I haven’t any answer either, but I’ll be darned if I’ve heard the Russkies propose one. And just between you and me, if I had to choose between living Soviet style and our style, I’d choose ours any day.”

Char said nothing.

Hank added flatly, “Who knows, maybe the coming of these Galactic Confederation characters will bring it all to a head.”

She said nothing further and in ten minutes the soft sounds of her breathing had deepened to the point that Hank Kuran knew she slept. He lay there another half hour in the full knowledge that probably the most desirable woman he’d ever met was sleeping less than three feet away from him.

Leningrad had cushioned the first impression of Moscow for Henry Kuran. Although, if anything, living standards and civic beauty were even higher here in the capital city of world Communism.

They pulled into the Leningradsky Station on Komsomolskaya Square in the early morning to be met by Intourist guides and buses.

Hank sat next to Char Moore still feeling on the argumentative side after their discussion of the night before. He motioned with his head at some excavation work going on next to the station. “There you are. Women doing manual labor.”

Char said, “I’m from the Western states, it doesn’t impress me. Have you ever seen fruit pickers, potato diggers, or just about any type of itinerant harvest workers? There is no harder work and women, and children for that matter, do half of it at home.”

He looked at the husky, rawboned women laborers working