Short Fiction by Mack Reynolds (ready to read books .TXT) 📕

of packing when the screen summoned her. She looked into his face and said, surprised, “Why, Don, I thought you were on patrol.”

“Yeah, I was. However, something came up.”

She looked at him, a slight frown on her broad, fine forehead. “Again?”

He said impatiently, “Look, I called you to ask for a date. You’re leaving for Callisto tomorrow. It’s our last chance to be together. There’s something in particular I wanted to ask you, Di.”

She said, a touch irritated, “I’m packing, Don. I simply don’t have time to see you again. I thought we said our goodbyes five days ago.”

“This is important, Di.”

She tossed the two sweaters she was holding into a chair, or something, off-screen, and faced him, her hands on her hips.

“No it isn’t, Don. Not to me, at least. We’ve been all over this. Why keep torturing yourself? You’re not ready for marriage, Don. I don’t want to hurt you, but you simply aren’t. Look me up, Don, in a few years.”

“Di, just a couple of hours this afternoon.”

Dian looked him full in the face and said, “Colin Casey finally died of his wounds this morning. The President has asked for five minutes of silence at two o’clock. Don, I plan to spend that time here alone in my apartment, possibly crying a few tears for a man who died for me and the rest of the human species under such extreme conditions of gallantry that he was awarded the highest honor of which man has ever conceived. I wouldn’t want to spend that five minutes while on a date with another member of my race’s armed forces who had deserted his post of duty.”

Don Mathers turned, after the screen had gone blank, and walked stiffly to a booth. He sank onto a chair and called flatly to Harry, “Another tequila. A double tequila. And don’t bother with that lemon and salt routine.”

An hour or so later a voice said, “You Sublieutenant Donal Mathers?”

Don looked up and snarled. “So what? Go away.”

There were two of them. Twins, or could have been. Empty of expression, heavy of build. The kind of men fated to be ordered around at the pleasure of those with money, or brains, none of which they had or would ever have.

The one who had spoken said, “The boss wants to see you.”

“Who the hell is the boss?”

“Maybe he’ll tell you when he sees you,” the other said, patiently and reasonably.

“Well, go tell the boss he can go to the⁠ ⁠…”

The second of the two had been standing silently, his hands in his greatcoat pockets. Now he brought his left hand out and placed a bill before Don Mathers. “The boss said to give you this.”

It was a thousand-unit note. Don Mathers had never seen a bill of that denomination before, nor one of half that.

He pursed his lips, picked it up and looked at it carefully. Counterfeiting was a long lost art. It didn’t even occur to him that it might be false.

“All right,” Don said, coming to his feet. “Let’s go see the boss, I haven’t anything else to do and his calling card intrigues me.”

At the curb, one of them summoned a cruising cab with his wrist screen and the three of them climbed into it. The one who had given Don the large denomination bill dialed the address and they settled back.

“So what does the boss want with me?” Don said.

They didn’t bother to answer.

The Interplanetary Lines building was evidently their destination. The car whisked them up to the penthouse which topped it, and they landed on the terrace.

Seated in beach chairs, an auto-bar between them, were two men. They were both in their middle years. The impossibly corpulent one, Don Mathers vaguely recognized. From a newscast? From a magazine article? The other could have passed for a video stereotype villain, complete to the built-in sneer. Few men, in actuality, either look like or sound like the conventionalized villain. This was an exception, Don decided.

He scowled at them. “I suppose one of you is the boss,” he said.

“That’s right,” the fat one grunted. He looked at Don’s two escorts. “Scotty, you and Rogers take off.”

They got back into the car and left.

The vicious-faced one said, “This is Mr. Lawrence Demming. I am his secretary.”

Demming puffed, “Sit down, Lieutenant. What’ll you have to drink? My secretary’s name is Rostoff. Max Rostoff. Now we all know each other’s names. That is, assuming you’re Sublieutenant Donal Mathers.”

Don said, “Tequila.”

Max Rostoff dialed the drink for him and, without being asked, another cordial for his employer.

Don placed Demming now. Lawrence Demming, billionaire. Robber baron, he might have been branded in an earlier age. Transportation baron of the solar system. Had he been a pig he would have been butchered long ago; he was going unhealthily to grease.

Rostoff said, “You have identification?”

Don Mathers fingered through his wallet, brought forth his I.D. card. Rostoff handed him his tequila, took the card and examined it carefully, front and back.

Demming huffed and said, “Your collar insignia tells me you pilot a Scout. What sector do you patrol, Lieutenant?”

Don sipped at the fiery Mexican drink, looked at the fat man over the glass. “That’s military information, Mr. Demming.”

Demming made a move with his plump lips. “Did Scotty give you a thousand-unit note?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “You took it. Either give it back or tell me what sector you patrol, Lieutenant.”

Don Mathers was aware of the fact that a man of Demming’s position wouldn’t have to go to overmuch effort to acquire such information, anyway. It wasn’t of particular importance.

He shrugged and said, “A22-K223. I fly the V-102.”

Max Rostoff handed back the I.D. card to Don and picked up a Solar System sector chart from the short-legged table that sat between the two of them and checked it. He said, “Your information was correct, Mr. Demming. He’s the man.”

Demming shifted his great bulk in his beach chair, sipped some of his cordial and said, “Very well. How would you like to hold