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

Freddy demanded, “Look, what was the smallest machine gun in use in 1900?”

Joe considered. “Probably the little French Chaut-Chaut gun. It was portable by one man, the rounds were carried in a flat, circular pan. I think it goes back that far. They used them in the First War.”

“Right! OK, you had gliders. You had eight portable machine guns. All we’re doing is combining them. It’ll be spectacular. You’ll be the most famous mercenary in Category Military and it’ll be impossible for the Department not to bounce you to colonel and Low-Upper. Especially with me and every Telly reporter and fracas-buff magazine we’ve bribed yelling for it.”

Joe’s mouth manifested its tic, but he was shaking his head. “It wouldn’t go, anyway. Suppose I caught one, or both, of those other gliders, busy at their reconnaissance and shot their tails off. So what? The fans still wouldn’t have their blood and gore. We’d be so high they couldn’t see the action. All they would be able to see would be the other glider falling.”

Freddy stopped dramatically and pointed a finger at him in triumph. “That’s where you’re wrong. I’ll be in the back seat of your sailplane with a portable camera. Get it! And every reporter on the ground will have the word, and his most powerful telescopic lens at the ready. Man, it’ll be the most televized bit of fracas of this half of the century!”

When Major Joe Mauser entered the swank Agora Bar, the little afternoon dance band broke into a few bars of that tune which was beginning to pall on him.

“… I knew her heart was breaking,
And to my heart in anguish pressed,
The girl I left behind me.”

Nadine looked up from the little table she occupied and caught the wry expression on his face and laughed.

“What price glory?” she said.

He took the chair across from her and chuckled ruefully. “All right,” he said, “I surrender. However, if you think a theme song is bad, you’ll be relieved at some of the other ideas my, ah, publicity agent had which I turned down.”

She said, “Oh, did he want you to dash into some burning building and save some old lady’s canary, or something?”

“Not exactly. However, he had a nightclub singer with a list of nine or ten victories behind her⁠—”

“Victories?”

“Husbands. And I was to be seen escorting the singer around the nightclub circuit.”

“A fate worse than death? But, truly, why did you turn him down?”

“I wanted to spend the time with you.”

She made a moue. “So as to carry on our never-ending argument over the value of status?”

“No.”

Her eyes dropped and there was a slight frown on her forehead. Joe interpreted it to mean that she took exception to one of Mid-Middle caste speaking to her in this wise. He said, flatly, “At least the tune is somewhat applicable tonight.”

She looked up quickly, having immediately caught the meaning of his words. “Oh, Joe, you haven’t taken another commission?”

“Why not? I’m a mercenary by trade, Nadine.” He was vaguely irritated by her tone.

“But you admittedly made a small fortune on the last fracas. You were one of the very few investors in the whole country who expected Vacuum Tube Transport to boom, rather than go bankrupt. You simply don’t need to risk your life further, Joe!”

He didn’t bother to tell her that already the greater part of his small fortune had been siphoned off in Freddy Soligen’s campaign to make him a celebrity. He said, instead, “The stock shares I’ll make aren’t particularly important, Nadine. But Stonewall Cogswell has pledged that if I’ll fly for him in the Carbonaceous Fuel⁠–⁠United Miners fracas, he’ll press my ambitions for promotion.”

She said, her voice low, “Promotion in rank, or caste, Joe?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“But, Joe, to risk your life, your life, Joe, for such a silly thing⁠—”

He said softly, “Such a silly thing as attaining to a position which will enable me to court openly the girl I love?”

She flushed, looked into his face quickly. Her flush deepened and her eyes went to her folded hands, on the table.

He said nothing.

Nadine said finally, her voice so low as almost not to be heard, “Perhaps I would be willing to marry a man of Middle caste.”

He was taken with surprise, but even in thrilling to the meaning of her words, his head was shaking in negation. “Nadine Haer, Category Medicine, Rank Doctor, Mid-Upper, married to Major Joseph Mauser, Category Military, Mid-Middle. Don’t be ridiculous, Nadine. It would be as though back in the Twentieth Century you would have married a Negro or Oriental.”

She was stirred with anger. “There is no law preventing marriage between castes!”

“Nor was there law, in most States, against marrying between races. But there were few who dared, and, of those, few who were allowed to be happy. It’s no go, Nadine. Remember in the Exclusive Room the other night when the waiter questioned my presence in an Upper establishment and you had to tell him I was your guest? I don’t desire to be your guest the rest of my life, Nadine.”

The anger welled higher in her. “And do you think that in the remote case you do jump your caste to Upper, that I would marry you and then realize the rest of my life that our marriage was only possible due to your participation in mass slaughter for the sake of the slobbering multitudes of Telly fans?”

Joe said, “I wasn’t going to bring the matter up until I had made Low-Upper caste.”

“Well, sir, the matter is up. And I reject you in advance. Oh, Joe, if you have to persist in this status-hungry ambition of yours, drop the Category Military and get into something else. You have enough of a fortune to branch into various fields where your abilities would lead to advancement.”

Again he didn’t tell her that his fortune was all but dissipated. Instead, he said bitterly, “Those who have, get. The rich get richer, the