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

The other two looked at him, shocked silent.

Pierre said, “I don’t know how many altogether. I found twenty-two of the pumps in the vicinity of In Ziza had been blown to smithereens⁠—out of forty I checked.”

Johnny rapped, “How long ago? How many trees⁠ ⁠… ?”

Pierre laughed sourly. “I don’t know how long ago. The transplants, especially the slash pine, are going to be just so much kindling before I get new pumps in.”

Derek said, shocked, “That’s our oldest stand.”

Pierre Marimbert, a forty-year-old, sun-beaten Algerian colon, eldest man on the team, sank into his place at the table. He poured the balance of his can of beer into a glass.

Johnny said, “What⁠ ⁠… what can we do? How many spare pumps can you get into there, and how soon?”

Pierre looked up at him wearily. “You didn’t quite hear what I said, Johnny. I only checked forty. Forty out of nearly a thousand in that vicinity. Twenty-two of them were destroyed, better than fifty percent. For all I know, that percentage applies throughout the whole In Ziza area. If so, there’s damn few of your trees going to be left alive. We have a few spare pumps on hand here, but we’d have to get a really large number all the way from Dakar.”

Derek said softly, “That took a lot of men and a lot of dynamite. Which means a lot of transport⁠—and a lot of money. We’ve had trouble before, but usually it was disgruntled nomads, getting revenge for losing their grazing land.”

Johnny snorted, “Damn little grazing this far north.”

Derek nodded. “I’m simply saying that even if we could blame our minor sabotage on the Tuareg in the past, we can’t do it this time. There’s money behind anything this big.”

Johnny McCord said wearily, “Let’s eat. In the morning we’ll go out and take a look. I’d better call Timbuktu on this. If nothing else, the Mali Federation can send troops out to protect us.”

Derek grunted. “With a standing army of about 25,000 men, they’re going to patrol a million and a half square miles of desert?”

“Can you think of anything else to do?”

“No.”

Pierre Marimbert began dishing cous cous into a soup plate, then poured himself a glass of vin ordinaire. He said, “I can’t think of a better place for saboteurs. Twenty men could do millions of dollars of destruction and never be found.”

Johnny growled, “It’s not as bad as all that. They’ve got to eat and drink, and so do their animals. There are damned few places where they can.”

From the door a voice said, “I am intruding?”

They hadn’t heard her car come up. The three men scrambled to their feet.

“Good evening,” Johnny McCord blurted.

“Hell⁠ ⁠… o!” Derek breathed.

Pierre Marimbert was across the room, taking her in hand. “Bonjour, Mademoiselle. Que puis-je faire pour vous? Voulez-vous une biere bien fraiche ou un apéritif? Il fait trés chaud dans le desert.” He led her toward the table.

“Easy, easy there, Reuben,” Derek grumbled. “The young lady speaks English. Give a man a chance.”

Johnny was placing a chair for her. “Paul Peterson, from Poste Weygand, radioed that you were coming. You’re a little late, Mademoiselle Desage.”

She was perhaps thirty, slim, long-legged, Parisian style. Even at Bidon Cinq, half a world away from the Champs Élysées, she maintained her chic.

She made a moue at Johnny, while taking the chair he held. “I had hoped to surprise you, catch you off guard.” She took in the sun-dried, dour-faced American wood technologist appraisingly, then turned her eyes in turn to Derek and Pierre.

“You three are out here all alone?” she said demurely.

“Desperately,” Derek said.

Johnny McCord said, “Mademoiselle Hélène Desage, I am John McCord, and these are my associates, Monsieur Pierre Marimbert and Mr. Derek Mason. Gentlemen, Mademoiselle Desage is with Paris Match, the French equivalent of Life, so I understand. In short, she is undoubtedly here for a story. So ixnay on the ump-pays.”

“I would love cold beer,” Hélène Desage said to Pierre, and to Johnny McCord, “These days a traveling reporter for Paris Match must be quite a linguist. My English, Spanish and Italian are excellent. My German passable. And while I am not fluent in Pig-Latin, I can follow it. What is this you are saying about the pumps?”

“Oh, Lord,” Johnny said. “Perhaps I’ll tell you in the morning. But for now, would you like to clean up before supper? You must be exhausted after that 260 kilometers from Poste Weygand.”

Pierre said hurriedly, “I’ll take Mademoiselle Desage over to one of the guest bungalows.”

“Zut!” she said. “The sand! It is even worse than between Reggan and Poste Weygand. Do you realize that until I began coming across your new forests I saw no life at all between these two posts?”

The three forestry experts bowed in unison, as though rehearsed. “Mademoiselle,” Derek, from the heart, “calling our transplant forests is the kindest thing you could have said in these parts.”

They all laughed and Pierre led her from the room.

Derek looked at Johnny McCord. “Wow, that was a slip mentioning the pumps.”

Johnny was looking through the door after her. “I suppose so,” he said sourly. “I’ll have to radio the brass and find out the line we’re supposed to take with her. That’s the biggest magazine in the French-speaking world and you don’t get a job on it without knowing the journalistic ropes. That girl can probably smell a story as far as a Tuareg can smell water.”

“Well, then undoubtedly she’s already sniffing. Because, between that clan of Tuareg with its flocks and the pump saboteurs, we’ve got more stories around here than I ever expected!”

In the morning Hélène Desage managed to look the last word in what desert fashion should be, when she strolled into Johnny McCord’s office. Although she came complete with a sun helmet that must have been the product of a top Parisian shop, she would have been more at place on the beaches at Miami, Honolulu or Cannes. Her shorts were