by Various
BY DION HENDERSON
Inside the auditorium, the premier was making the final speech of his goodwill visit. Outside in the restricted area behind the stage door were the police - the city police and the county police and the state police and the auditorium police and two of the premier's own security police standing by the luggage. All of them swung ominously, like the turret piece of a complicated weapon, when the taxi screeched perilously to a halt at the barricade that guarded the parade limousines.
A tall gray haired man wearing a double breasted blue serge suit and carrying a black dispatch bag climbed hastily out of the cab. A perspiring uniformed police sergeant blocked his path.
"Sorry," he said. "Only cleared personnel here."
"Are you in charge?" the gray haired man asked.
"I'm in charge," the sergeant said unhappily. "I am because of a Secret Service guy who isn't here right now."
"I know," the gray haired man said apologetically. "Awfully sorry I'm late. Ran off the road on the way and bumped my driver a bit. I had to get a cab."
He took a worn leather folder from an inside coat pocket.
"Mr. Smith," the sergeant said thankfully, catching the name off the State Department identification card. "Boy, am I glad to see you."
The relief was visible. It communicated to the rest of the policemen. There was an audible sigh as they relaxed, all but the two security police from the premier's own country. They never relaxed. They had turned with the others when Smith arrived but they had remained tense, alert.
Smith and the sergeant walked past them, to the stage door. Inside, you could hear the premier's big voice speaking, then the comparative silence while the interpreter translated, and occasionally a polite spatter of applause.
The sergeant said, "I hope no one was hurt in the accident."
"No. Not really an accident," Smith said. He looked down the empty corridor that led to the stage. Two officers there. He turned and checked the restricted area - the lineup of the parade limousines, the posting of officers - all quickly and smoothly and professionally without really seeming to do it. "Actually, we only lost a tire and my driver ran off the side of the road. I pulled the car into a side road out of the way. Perhaps you could send a radio car after it when we get his nibs here safely off."
"Sure thing," the sergeant said. "Does everything look all right here?"
"Fine," Smith said. "You've done very well, scarcely need me at all. Although," he said, "don't you think it might be a good idea to post a man down there at the turn of the boulevard?"
"Where, sir?"
Smith grunted, found the dispatch case awkward and put it down by the rest of the luggage. He said, almost parenthetically to the two security police from the premier's country, "Keep an eye on it, will you?"
The security police looked at him, almost expressionless, arms folded. They did not say anything.
Smith turned back to the sergeant, pointing down the street.
"Lovely field of fire there, if one had had a mind. Of course no one does, but it would be an ugly incident."
"Yes sir," the sergeant said with conviction. "It wouldn't make me cry if someone blasted the guy, but they're not going to do it in my town."
"Just so," Smith said with his quiet smile. "And I have a little larger area to worry about. I can't allow it to be done in my country."
"Yeah," the sergeant said, nodding. He gave orders and a motorcycle roared.
Smith said, "Of course you've gone through this once, clearing the route to the airport and all."
"Yes sir," the sergeant said. "We made that dry run last week with one of your guys. The county guys are handling the airport, with the airlines police."
"I'm sure they'll do a fine job, too," Smith said. "But I wonder if perhaps we might run out there, a few minutes ahead of the official party. Just to look things over."
"Sure thing," the sergeant said. "And we'd better hurry. Sounds like they're winding things up in the auditorium."
"All right then," Smith said. "Let's go."
They took an unmarked squad car, with a patrolman driving. The parade route was as direct as possible. It would not be much of a parade. Previous parades the premier had made in other cities discouraged slow and extensive parades. It gave members of the premier's party too much time to read derisive slogans on curbside banners, and even to hear and understand some of the shouts from spectators. But this was his last parade and it would go very fast. There were few spectators waiting along the route. There was only one banner. It said, "Good-bye and Good Riddance."
Smith frowned. The sergeant said, "Think we ought to encourage the boys to take it down?"
"No," Smith said. "Free speech and all that. Besides, it's a good sign. When they're thinking up slogans they're not thinking up positions for a rifleman."
At the air terminal, they went on past the main gates and swung into a service drive guarded by two sheriff's deputies. The service drive made a long sweep over the flat approach skirts of the terminal, then came in between the two main wings of the terminal building. There were guards at the turn where they entered the terminal, and a barricade where they turned again to drive out on the apron of the aircraft loading area. Deputies lifted the barricade for them and the sergeant said to them out the window, "Another ten minutes."
They drove out on the apron, getting the sudden feeling of having the city disappear as they turned toward the vast expanse of signal-picketed landing area. The apron had been cleared of all aircraft but the premier's ship, which stood alone well out in the area, unfamiliar and ominous in the oncoming dusk.
They left the squad car in the angle of the buildings. Above them was the tower, its radar screens turning ceaselessly, and on either side the long wings of the terminal stretched out like peninsulas reaching out into a calm sea, the windows of the upper level behind the balconies growing brighter as twilight deepened.
Smith stood a moment, making the same quick inspection that he had at the auditorium, while the sergeant talked with the captain of deputies who was in charge of the county police detachment.
"Only one area we really need to go over," Smith said. He gestured. "The balcony up there, the part with the open view."
"Yes sir," the captain of deputies said. "The cars with the big guy and his people will swing right around there, and the balcony will look right up the gangplank."
"Well," Smith said smiling, "shall we take a walk up there?"
They went upstairs and walked along the promenade. There were not many people on it. At the end of the promenade, the three men stopped.
"Looks all right," the sergeant said.
"Yes," Smith said. "Except for the girl outside, you noticed her of course. I wonder," he said to the captain of deputies who obviously had not seen the girl at all, "if I might borrow a man for a few moments?"
The captain signaled and they met the new deputy when he came up the escalator. Then they walked the promenade again casually, and Smith went out on the balcony to lean on the railing close to the girl. She wore low heeled shoes, not quite shabby. You saw the shoes, and the golden earrings.
Smith did not look at her as he spoke, quietly.
"I beg your pardon, Miss. But we can't have any of that, you know. If you'd just step back of the glass now, and chat with that officer over there until the airplane leaves, there won't be any fuss about it."
She did not turn. The only sign that she had heard was the tightening of her hands on the big purse she carried.
"Come along now," Smith said, still quietly.
The girl began to weep, silently, but she went.
The sergeant said, "Maybe we'd just better have a look at that purse now."
"Please don't," Smith said.
"But," the sergeant objected, "she may have a weapon in there."
"I'm sure she has," Smith said, smiling. "And if we found it, we'd have to take her into custody. Then we'd have things in the newspapers, and a dreadful international uproar."
"Right," the deputy said. "It won't be bad duty."
It wasn't. She was very pretty, even with the tears. But she had not said anything and she did not say anything now. Below them, on the apron, the first of the official cars had gone by. It was the advance car, carrying the baggage. It pulled up close to the premier's airplane and crewmen opened the baggage hatch. They moved very smartly. "Confound it," Smith said suddenly. "Those people have my dispatch case. I put it down with the other bags at the auditorium."
"Let's go down and retrieve it," the police sergeant said. "If we don't, those slobs will fly away with it."
"Right," the captain of deputies said.
The three of them went downstairs, walking on the down escalator. They didn't want to waste any time. Outside again, they walked rapidly toward the airplane and the crewmen reaching bags up from the car. Just as they reached the car a crewman took out the black dispatch case, looked at it, then reached up with it.
"Here, here," Smith said. "That's mine, you know."
Two of the premier's security police materialized from the dark area underneath the plane. They stood with their arms folded, almost expressionless.
Smith said to one of them, "Colonel, be good enough to have your boys hand back my bag."
The man he spoke to almost grinned sardonically, but not quite.
"I did not see any identification," he said. It was the first time any of the premier's security guards had spoken.
"Well, get it back," Smith said, annoyed. "I'll show you the identification."
"I'm extremely sorry," the premier's security colonel definitely was sneering now. "The premier's party is on a very close timetable. We do not have time to correct mistakes made by other people at this time."
"Don't be rude," Smith said mildly. "Just get me the case, like a good automaton."
The colonel did not understand the word. Enjoying himself, he said, "When we return to the capital and check out the baggage, if we find one that appears to have been the property of the so-great Department of State of your country, we will return it to your embassy."
"After photographing everything, including the hinges," Smith said.
The premier's security colonel stood with his arms folded, grinning. The captain of deputies whispered something in Smith's ear.
"No, mustn't do that," Smith said. "Not really important. If I hadn't made a point of it, I suppose these chaps would have hurled the thing out of their luggage in a rage."
He shrugged away his annoyance and smiled suddenly at the captain.
"Actually, you know, it means mostly that I'll have to buy a new razor and shaving things."
The captain and the police sergeant both grinned happily.
"Wait until they analyze my after-shave lotion," Smith said. "That'll give their biochemical boys a lovely time."
They had walked away from the airplane now. Sirens rose faintly in the distance. It was the premier's party itself. The sirens grew louder and louder, and in a few minutes the big, black cars drove up fast onto the apron, their sirens sinking to a growl as they stopped. Smith moved still farther away from the airplane and stood with his back to it, with his back to the official party, watching the balconies and the windows. In one, the girl stood with the deputy close beside her. They did not appear to be talking. Behind him, the official party was boarding the aircraft. A flash bulb popped and the premier's security colonel shouted angrily. There were no more flashes. In a very few minutes, there were the final sounds of the hatches closing, and then the engines started.
Smith turned then, looking at his watch.
"Another minute," he said to the captain of deputies and the police sergeant. "Then you're through."
"I'm glad to see them go," the captain said with conviction. "And I'm glad you got here."
"You people had the whole thing beautifully organized," Smith said. "All I could do was walk around a bit. That's always the way, you know. We're spread so thin."
"But we'd have missed the girl," the sergeant said. "Standing up there, she could have pulled out a heater and boom, maybe we're in a war or something."
"Oh, not that bad," Smith said. "Range was much too long for her to do much good. But it would have been a nasty mess."
"What shall we do with her?" the sergeant said. "Take her in now?"
"No," Smith said. "Even if you took her in for something inconsequential like walking on the grass, she might talk to a reporter. If it's all right with both of you, I'll take her along with me and perhaps chat a bit."
"Yes, sir, perfectly all right," the captain of deputies said gratefully. "That will leave everything in the clear, officially."
The sergeant said, "Would you like to take a prowl car back, sir?"
"No thanks," Smith said. "Have to go downtown and make a report and then scurry right back to central division. Probably have another job for me by this time. Now don't you forget my car, parked down there by the roadside. Driver's probably lonesome."
"It's been a real pleasure," the sergeant said. "Come back when you have a few days. The fishing's pretty good around here."
"That would be fine," Smith said, smiling. The deputy was bringing the girl down now. They shook hands all around, the girl standing calmly at one side. Out in the darkness the engines of the premier's plane roared, the roar standing still for a moment, then moving, gathering speed and then quite suddenly going fast and fading, out and up over the city, over the miles of countryside dotted with other bright cities and then the ocean and another world, the premier's world.
Smith and the girl walked through the terminal lobby, his hand politely on her arm, then outside again and into a cab.
Once in it, she said in a soft, bitterly disappointed voice, "Why didn't you let me do it? The world would really be better without him."
"Possibly," Smith said, soothingly. "But you wouldn't have done a very good job. Emotional people rarely do, you know."
"I can't help but be emotional," she said. "My father died in one of his labor camps." Then she said, "How could you tell about me, just by walking past me there?"
"It takes one to know one," Smith said, sitting very much alone in a dark corner of the seat. "I had seven years of their best, myself. Had the luck to live through it, though it didn't seem good luck at the time."
"And now you're with the American State Department." The girl did not want to believe in his hardship.
"Only for today," Smith said. "I made a very good appearance as an emergency chauffeur. The Secret Service chap, the real one, was quite impressed."
She said, her tone suddenly different, "Did you -"
"Of course not," Smith said. "That accommodating police fellow will find the car, with my erstwhile employer knocking about in the trunk. Hardly hurt a bit."
They were back in the center of the city now. At a stoplight, Smith knocked on the glass and told the driver to stop. He got out and said, "Take the young lady wherever she wishes to go."
"Wait," the girl said. "If you did what you said, why did you stop me? Why did you let them go?"
"Mustn't embarrass our friends," Smith said. "No international incidents, no emotional assassinations, no uproar. No nothing. Forgive me for sounding critical, but one does not plan such a thing in a few days. Nor," he said, "a few years."
"But -"
"The dispatch case they insisted on taking along," Smith said. "So characteristic of them, so brutally characteristic to seize even so trivial an opportunity for demonstrating their superiority."
The girl looked at him, bewilderment still remaining on her face.
Smith said, "So they had to demonstrate what they are, and take my case. And now, out over the middle of the ocean, there will be no international incidents, no emotional assassinations, no nothing. Nothing."
She said, almost in a whisper, "But what i
f they had not taken the case?"
Smith's smile was very gentle.
"Then they wouldn't have been the people we know they are, would they?" he said, and closed the taxi door.
No question at all in my mind that Homer's urge to do his sister in was justified. For one thing, her name was Samantha.
* * *
A LITTLE SORORICIDE
BY RICHARD DEMING
Samantha Withers wasn't reticent about showing her feelings. "Can't you remember anything, you idiot?"
Homer Withers was a small, round, mild-appearing man, and he seemed to shrink even smaller under the blast from his spinster sister. Though she routinely treated him as though he were a mental incompetent, it never occurred to him to fight back. For too many years he'd been conditioned to her domineering manner.
Samantha Withers was a head taller than Homer, thirty pounds heavier, and as muscular as a man. Though she'd never actually offered him physical violence, she often seemed on the verge of striking him, and the thought made Homer cringe. He was quite certain he'd be defenseless against her in a physical battle.
"The policy won't lapse," he said in a placating tone. "The agent sends in the premium money when it's due, you see, and I simply repay him. I'll mail the check right after dinner."
"You'll mail it right now, if you expect any dinner," Samantha snapped. "And don't forget it's the mailbox you're heading for."
"I'm entirely capable of mailing a letter without detailed instructions," Homer said with unaccustomed asperity. Then he wilted under the glitter of his older sister's eyes.
He rarely rebelled enough to give her a tart reply, and invariably wished he hadn't on the infrequent occasions he drummed up enough courage to do it. For usually she made his life miserable for days afterward.
He scooted out before she could open up her heavy artillery, but she managed to get in a parting shot. As he went down the porch steps, she shouted through the screen door, "Look both ways when you cross the street, stupid. Coming back I don't care. Once the premium's mailed, you can..."
