The Syndic

by C. M. Kornbluth

  XVII

  "Here?" Charles demanded. "_Here?_"

  "No possible mistake," she said, stunned. "When you're a Falcaro youtravel. I've seen 'em in Duluth, I've seen 'em in Quebec, I've seen 'emin Buffalo."

  The bull-horn voice roared again, dead in the shroud of fog; "Come intothe wind and cut your engines or we'll put a shell into you."

  Charles turned the wheel and wound in the moderator rod; the boatpitched like a splinter on the waves. There was a muffled doubleexplosion and two grapnels crunched into the plastic hull, bow andstern. As the boat steadied, sharing the inertia of the ore ship, a darkfigure leaped from the blue-white eye of the searchlight to their deck.And another. And another.

  "Hello, Jim," Lee Falcaro said almost inaudibly. "Haven't met since LasVegas, have we?"

  The first boarder studied her cooly. He was built for football or anyother form of mayhem. He ignored Charles completely. "Lee Falcaro asadvised. Do you still think twenty reds means a black is bound to comeup? You always were a fool, Lee. And now you're in real trouble."

  "What's going on, mister?" Charles snapped. "We're Syndics and I presumeyou're Mobsters. Don't you recognize the treaty?"

  The boarder turned to Charles inquiringly. "Some confusion," he said."Max Wyman? Charles Orsino? Or just some wild man from outback?"

  "Orsino," Charles said formally. "Second cousin of Edward Falcaro, underthe guardianship of Francis W. Taylor."

  The boarder bowed slightly. "James Regan IV," he said. "No need to listmy connections. It would take too long and I feel no need to justifymyself to a small-time dago chisler. Watch him gentlemen!"

  Charles found his arms pinned by Regan's two companions. There was a gunmuzzle in his ribs.

  Regan shouted to the ship and a ladder was let down. Lee Falcaro andCharles climbed it with guns at their backs. He said to her: "Who isthat lunatic?" It did not even occur to him that the young man was whohe claimed to be--the son of the Mob Territory opposite number of EdwardFalcaro.

  "He's Regan," she said. "And I don't know who's the lunatic, him or me.Charles, I'm sorry, terribly sorry, I got you into this."

  He managed to smile. "I volunteered," he said.

  "Enough talk," Regan said, following them onto the deck. Dull-eyedsailors watched them incuriously, and there were a couple of anvil-jawedmen with a stance and swagger Charles had come to know. Guardsmen--hewould have staked his life on it. Guardsmen of the North AmericanGovernment Navy--aboard a Mob Territory ship and acting as if they werepassengers or high-rated crewmen.

  Regan smirked: "I'm on the horns of a dilemma. There are noaccomodations that are quite right for you. There are storagecompartments which are worse than you deserve and there are passengerquarters which are too good for you. I'm afraid it will have to be oneof the compartments. Your consolation will be that it's only a short runto Chicago."

  Chicago--headquarters for Mob Territory. The ore ship had been on areturn trip to Chicago when alerted somehow by the Navy to intercept thefugitives. _Why?_

  "Down there," one of the men gestured briskly with a gun. They climbeddown a ladder into a dark, oily cavern fitfully lit by a flash inRegan's hand.

  "Make yourselves comfortable," Regan told them. "If you get a headache,don't worry. We were carrying some avgas on the outward run." The flashwinked out and a door clanged on them.

  "I can't believe it," Charles said. "That's a top Mob man? Couldn't yoube mistaken?" He groped in the dark and found her. The place did reek ofgasoline.

  She clung to him and said: "Hold me, Charles.... Yes that's Jimmy Regan.

  "That's what will become top man in the Mob. Jimmy's a charmer at a LasVegas Hotel. Jimmy's a gourmet when he orders at the Pump Room and he'strying to overawe you. Jimmy plays polo too, but he's crippled three ofhis own team-mates because he's not very good at it. I kept tellingmyself whenever I ran into him that he was just an accident, the Mobcould survive him. But his father acts--funny. There's something withthem, there's some--

  "They roll out the carpet when you show up but the people around themare afraid of them. There's a story I never believed--but I believe itnow. What would happen if my uncle pulled out a pistol and beganscreaming and shot a waiter: Jimmy's father did it, they tell me. Andnothing happened except that the waiter was dragged away and everybodysaid it was a good thing Mr. Regan saw him reach for his gun and shothim first. Only the waiter didn't have any gun.

  "I saw Jimmy last three years ago. I haven't been in Mob Territorysince. I didn't like it there. Now I know why. Give Mob Territory enoughtime and it'll be like New Portsmouth. Something went wrong with them.We have the Treaty of Las Vegas and a hundred years of peace and therearen't many people going back and forth between Syndic and Mob exceptfor a few high-ups like me who have to circulate. Manners. So you payduty calls and shut your eyes to what they're really like.

  "_This_ is what they're like. This dark, damp stinking compartment. Andmy uncle--and all the Falcaros--and you--and I--we aren't like them. Arewe? _Are we?_" Her fingers bit into his arms. She was shaking.

  "Easy," he soothed her. "Easy, easy. We're all right. We'll be allright. I think I've got it figured out. This must be some privategun-running Jimmy's gone in for. Loaded an ore boat with avgas and ammoand ran it up the Seaway. If anybody in Syndic Territory gave a damnthey thought it was a load of ore for New Orleans via the Atlantic andthe Gulf. But Jimmy ran his load to Ireland or Iceland, H.Q. A littleprivate flier of his. He wouldn't dare harm us. There's the Treaty andyou're a Falcaro."

  "Treaty," she said. "I tell you they're all in it. Now that I've seenthe Government in action I understand what I saw in Mob Territory.They've gone rotten, that's all. They've gone rotten. The way he treatedyou, because he thought you didn't have his rank! Sometimes my uncle'shigh-handed, sometimes he tells a person off, sometimes he lets him knowhe's top man in the Syndic and doesn't propose to let anybody teach himhow to suck eggs. But the spirit's different. In the Syndic it's parentto child. In the Mob it's master to slave. Not based on age, not basedon achievement, but based on the accident of birth. You tell me 'You'rea Falcaro' and that packs weight. Why? Not because I was born a Falcarobut because they let me stay a Falcaro. If I hadn't been brainy andquick, they'd have adopted me out before I was ten. They don't do thatin Mob Territory. Whatever chance sends a Regan is a Regan then andforever. Even if it's a paranoid constitutional inferior like Jimmy'sfather. Even if it's a giggling pervert like Jimmy.

  "God, Charles, I'm scared.

  "At last I know these people and I'm scared. You'd have to see Chicagoto know why. The lakefront palaces, finer than anything in New York.Regan Memorial Plaza, finer than Scratch Sheet Square--great gildedmarble figures, a hundred running yards of heroic frieze. But the hovelsyou see only by chance! Gray brick towers dating from the Third Fire!The children with faces like weasels, the men with faces like hogs, thewomen with figures like beer barrels and all of them glaring at you whenyou drive past as if they could cut your throat with joy. I neverunderstood the look in their eyes until now, and you'll never begin tounderstand what I'm talking about until you see their eyes...."

  Charles revolted against the idea. It was too gross to go down. Itdidn't square with his acquired picture of life in North America andtherefore Lee Falcaro must be somehow mistaken or hysterical. "There,"he murmured, stroking her hair. "We'll be all right. We'll be allright." He tried to soothe her.

  She twisted out of his arms and raged: "I _won't_ be humored. They'remad, I tell you. Dick Reiner was right. We've got to wipe out theGovernment. But Frank Taylor was right too. We've got to blast the Mobbefore they blast us. They've died and decayed into something toohorrible to bear. If we let them stay on the continent, with us theirstink will infect us and poison us to death. We've got to do something.We've got to do something."

  "What?"

  It stopped her cold. After a minute she uttered a shaky laugh. "The fat,sloppy, happy Syndic," she said, "sitting around while the wolvesoverseas and the maniacs across the Mississip
pi are waiting to jump.Yes--do what?"

  Charles Orsino was not good at arguments or indeed at any abstractthinking. He knew it. He knew the virtues that had commended him to F.W. Taylor were his energy and an off-hand talent for getting along withpeople. But something rang terribly false in Lee's words.

  "That kind of thinking doesn't get you anywhere, Lee," he said slowly."I didn't absorb much from Uncle Frank, but I did absorb this: you runinto trouble if you make up stories about the world and then act as ifthey're true. The Syndic isn't somebody sitting around. The Governmentisn't wolves. The Mobsters aren't maniacs. And they aren't waiting tojump on the Syndic. The Syndic isn't anything that's jumpable. It's somepeople and their morale and credit."

  "Faith is a beautiful thing," Lee Falcaro said bitterly. "Where'd youget yours?"

  "From the people I knew and worked with. Numbers-runners, bookies,sluts. Decent citizens."

  "And what about the scared and unhappy ones in Riveredge? That sow of awoman in the D.A.R. who smuggled me aboard a coast raider? The neuroticsand psychotics I found more and more of when I invalidated the Liebermanfindings? Charles, the North American Government didn't scare meespecially. But the thought that they're lined up with a continentalpower does. It scares me damnably because it'll be three against one.Against the Syndic, the Mob, the Government--and our own unbalancedcitizens."

  Uncle Frank never let that word "citizens" pass without a tirade. "Weare not a government!" he always yelled. "We are not a government! Wemust not think like a government! We must not think in terms of dutiesand receipts and disbursements. We must think in terms of the oldloyalties that bound the Syndic together!" Uncle Frank was sedentary,but he had roused himself once to the point of wrecking a bright youngman's newly installed bookkeeping system for the Medical Center. He hadused a cane, most enthusiastically, and then bellowed: "The next wiseguy who tries to sneak punch-cards into this joint will get them downhis throat! What the hell do we need punch-cards for? Either there'sroom enough and doctors enough for the patients or there isn't. If thereis, we take care of them. If there isn't, we put 'em in an ambulance andtake them someplace else. And if I hear one goddammed word about'efficiency'--" he glared the rest and strode out, puffing and leaningon Charles' arm. "Efficiency," he growled in the corridor. "Every sooften a wise guy comes to me whimpering that people are getting awaywith murder, collections are ten per cent below what they ought to be,the Falcaro Fund's being milked because fifteen per cent of the doughgoes to people who aren't in need at all, eight per cent of the peoplegetting old-age pensions aren't really past sixty. Get efficient, thesepeople tell me. Save money by triple-checking collections. Save money bytightening up the Fund rules. Save money by a nice big vital-statisticssystem so we can check on pensioners. Yeah! Have people who might be_working_ check on collections instead, and make enemies to bootwhenever we catch somebody short. Make the Fund a grudging Scroogeinstead of an open-handed sugar-daddy--and let people _worry_ abouttheir chances of making the Fund instead of _knowing_ it'll take care ofthem if they're caught short. Set up a vital statistics system frombirth to death, with numbers and finger-prints and house registrationand maybe the gas-chamber if you forget to report a change of address.You know what's wrong with the wise guys, Charles? Constipation. Andthey want to constipate the universe." Charles remembered his unclerestored to chuckling good humor by the time he had finishedembroidering his spur-of-the-moment theory with elaborate scatologicaldetails.

  "The Syndic will stand," he said to Lee Falcaro, thinking of his unclewho knew what he was doing, thinking of Edward Falcaro who did the rightthing without knowing why, thinking of his good friends in the 101stPrecinct, the roaring happy crowds in Scratch Sheet Square, thegood-hearted men of Riveredge Breakdown Station 26 who had borne withhis sullenness and intolerance simply because that was the way thingswere and that was the way you acted. "I don't know what the Mob's up to,and I got a shock from the Government, and I don't deny that we have afew miserable people who can't seem to be helped. But you've seen toomuch of the Mob and Government and our abnormals. Maybe you don't knowas much as you should about our ordinary people. Anyway, all we can dois wait."

  "Yes," she said. "All we can do is wait. Until Chicago we have eachother."