The Second Science Fiction Megapack

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Shvernik said, “However, the very idea of a head man, as you call him, is opposed to what we have in mind. We aren’t looking for a super-leader. We’ve had enough of leaders. Our experience is that it is too easy for them to become misleaders. If the history of this century has proven anything with its Mussolinis, Hitlers, Stalins, Chiangs, and Maos, it is that the search for a leader to take over the problems of a people is a vain one. The job has to be done by the people themselves.”

  Paul hadn’t wanted to get involved in the internals of their political ideology. It was dangerous ground. For all he knew, there might be wide differences within the ranks of the revolutionary movement. There almost always were. He couldn’t take sides. His only interest in all this was the overthrow of the Soviets.

  He covered. “Your point is well taken, of course. I understand completely. Oh, and here’s one other matter for discussion. These radio transmitters for your underground broadcasts.”

  It was a subject in which they were particularly interested. The Russians leaned forward.

  “Here’s the problem,” Kirichenko said. “As you know, the Soviet Union consists of fifteen republics. In addition there are seventeen Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics that coexist within these basic fifteen republics. There are also ten of what we call Autonomous Regions. Largely, each of these political divisions speak different languages and have their own cultural differences.”

  Paul said, “Then it will be necessary to have transmitters for each of these areas?”

  “Even more. Because some are so large that we will find it necessary to have more than one underground station.”

  Leonid Shvernik said worriedly, “And here is another thing. The KGB has the latest in equipment for spotting the location of an illegal station. Can you do anything about this?”

  Paul said, “We’ll put our best electronics men to work. The problem as I understand it, is to devise a method of broadcasting that the secret police can’t trace.”

  They looked relieved. “Yes, that is the problem,” Kirichenko said.

  * * * *

  He brought up the subject some time later when he was alone with Ana. They were strolling along the left bank of the Neva River, paralleling the Admiralty Building, supposedly on a sightseeing tour.

  He said, “I was discussing the future government with Leonid and some of the others the other day. I don’t think I got a very clear picture of it.” He gave her a general rundown of the conversation.

  She twisted her mouth characteristically at him. “What did you expect, a return to Czarism? Let me see, who is pretender to the throne these days? Some Grand Duke in Paris, isn’t it?”

  He laughed with her. “I’m not up on such questions,” Paul admitted. “I think I rather pictured a democratic parliamentary government, somewhere between the United States and England.”

  “Those are governmental forms based on a capitalist society, Paul.”

  Her hair gleamed in the brightness of the sun and he had to bring his mind back to the conversation.

  “Well, yes. But you’re overthrowing the Communists. That’s the point, isn’t it?”

  “Not the way you put it. Let’s set if I can explain. To begin with, there have only been three bases of government evolved by man…I’m going to have to simplify this.”

  “It isn’t my field, but go on,” Paul said. She wore less lipstick than you’d expect on an American girl but it went with her freshness.

  “The first type of governmental system was based on the family. Your American Indians were a good example. The family, the clan, the tribe. In some cases, like the Iroquois Confederation, a nation of tribes. You were represented in the government according to the family or clan in which you were born.”

  “Still with you so far,” Paul said. She had a very slight dimple in her left cheek. Dimples went best with blondes, Paul decided.

  “The next governmental system was based on property. Chattel slavery, feudalism, capitalism. In ancient Athens, for example, those Athenians who owned the property of the City-State, and the slaves with which to work it, also governed the nation. Under feudalism, the nobility owned the country and governed it. The more land a noble owned, the larger his voice in government. I’m speaking broadly, of course.”

  “Of course,” Paul said. He decided that she had more an American type figure than was usual here. He brought his concentration back to the subject. “However, that doesn’t apply under capitalism. We have democracy. Everyone votes, not just the owner of property.”

  Ana was very serious about it. “You mustn’t use the words capitalism and democracy interchangeably. You can have capitalism, which is a social system, without having democracy which is a political system. For instance, when Hitler was in power in Germany the government was a dictatorship but the social system was still capitalism.”

  Then she grinned at him mischievously. “Even in the United States I think you’ll find that the people who own a capitalist country run the country. Those who control great wealth have a large say in the running of the political parties, both locally and nationally. Your smaller property owners have a smaller voice in local politics. But how large a lobby does your itinerant harvest worker in Texas have in Washington?”

  Paul said, slightly irritated now, “This is a big subject and I don’t agree with you. However, I’m not interested now in the government of the United States. I want to know what you people have in store for Russia, if and when you take over.”

  She shook her head in despair at him. “That’s the point the others were trying to make to you. We have no intention of taking over. We don’t want to and probably couldn’t even if we did want to. What we’re advocating is a new type of government based on a new type of representation.”

  He noticed the faint touch of freckles about her nose, her shoulders—to the extent her dress revealed them—and on her arms. Her skin was fair as only the northern races produce.

  Paul said, “All right. Now we get to this third base of government. The first was the family, the second was property. What else is there?”

  “In an ultramodern, industrialized society, there is your method of making your livelihood. In the future you will be represented from where you work. From your industry or profession. The parliament, or congress, of the nation would consist of elected members from each branch of production, distribution, communication, education, medicine—”

  “Syndicalism,” Paul said, “with some touches of Technocracy.”

  She shrugged. “Your American Technocracy of the 1930s I am not too familiar with, although I understand power came from top to bottom, rather than from bottom to top, democratically. The early syndicalists developed some of the ideas which later thinkers have elaborated upon, I suppose. So many of these terms have become all but meaningless through sloppy use. What in the world does Socialism mean, for instance? According to some, your Roosevelt was a Socialist. Hitler called himself a National Socialist. Mussolini once edited a Socialist paper. Stalin called himself a Socialist and the British currently have a Socialist government—mind you, with a Queen on the throne.”

  “The advantage of voting from where you work rather than from where you live doesn’t come home to me,” Paul said.

  “Among other things, a person knows the qualifications of the people with whom he works,” Ana said, “whether he is a scientist in a laboratory or a technician in an automated factory. But how many people actually know anything about the political candidates for whom they vote?”

  “I suppose we could discuss this all day,” Paul said. “But what I was getting to is what happens when your outfit takes over here in Leningrad? Does Leonid become local commissar, or head of police, or…well, whatever new title you’ve dreamed up?”

  Ana laughed at him, as though he was impossible. “Mr. Koslov, you have a mind hard to penetrate. I keep telling you, we, the revolutionary underground, have no desire to take over and don’t think that we could even if we wished. When the Sov
iets are overthrown by our organisation, the new government will assume power. We disappear as an organization. Our job is done. Leonid? I don’t know, perhaps his fellow employees at the Mikoyan Camera works will vote him into some office in the plant, if they think him capable enough.”

  “Well,” Paul sighed, “it’s your country. I’ll stick to the American system.” He couldn’t take his eyes from the way her lips tucked in at the sides.

  Ana said, “How long have you been in love with me, Paul?”

  “What?”

  She laughed. “Don’t be so blank. It would be rather odd, wouldn’t it, if two people were in love, and neither of them realized what had happened?”

  “Two people in love,” he said blankly, unbelievingly.

  * * * *

  Leonid Shvernik and Paul Koslov were bent over a map of the U.S.S.R. The former pointed out the approximate location of the radio transmitters. “We’re not going to use them until the last moment,” he said. “Not until the fat is in the fire. Then they will all begin at once. The KGB and MVD won’t have time to knock them out.”

  Paul said, “Things are moving fast. Faster than I had expected. We’re putting it over, Leonid.”

  Shvernik said, “Only because the situation is ripe. It’s the way revolutions work.”

  “How do you mean?” Paul said absently, studying the map.

  “Individuals don’t put over revolutions. The times do, the conditions apply. Did you know that six months before the Bolshevik revolution took place Lenin wrote that he never expected to live to see the Communist take over in Russia? The thing was that the conditions were there. The Bolsheviks, as few as they were, were practically thrown into power.”

  “However,” Paul said dryly, “it was mighty helpful to have such men as Lenin and Trotsky handy.”

  Shvernik shrugged. “The times make the men. Your own American Revolution is probably better known to you. Look at the men those times produced. Jefferson, Paine, Madison, Hamilton, Franklin, Adams. And once again, if you had told any of those men, a year before the Declaration of Independence, that a complete revolution was the only solution to the problems that confronted them, they would probably have thought you insane.”

  It was a new line of thought for Paul Koslov. “Then what does cause a revolution?”

  “The need for it. It’s not just our few tens of thousands of members of the underground who see the need for overthrowing the Soviet bureaucracy. It’s millions of average Russians in every walk of life and every strata, from top to bottom. What does the scientist think when some bureaucrat knowing nothing of his speciality comes into the laboratory and directs his work? What does the engineer in an automobile plant think when some silly politician decides that since cars in capitalist countries have four wheels, that Russia should surpass them by producing a car with five? What does your scholar think when he is told what to study, how to interpret it, and then what to write? What does your worker think when he sees the bureaucrat living in luxury while his wage is a comparatively meager one? What do your young people think in their continual striving for a greater degree of freedom than was possessed by their parents? What does your painter think? Your poet? Your philosopher?”

  Shvernik shook his head. “When a nation is ready for revolution, it’s the people who put it over. Often, the so-called leaders are hard put to run fast enough to say out in front.”

  Paul said, “After it’s all over, we’ll go back to the States. I know a town up in the Sierras called Grass Valley. Hunting, fishing, mountains, clean air, but still available to cities such as San Francisco where you can go for shopping and for restaurants and entertainment.”

  She kissed him again.

  Paul said, “You know, I’ve done this sort of work—never on this scale before, of course—ever since I was nineteen. Nineteen, mind you! And this is the first time I’ve realized I’m tired of it. Fed up to here. I’m nearly thirty-five, Ana, and for the first time I want what a man is expected to want out of life. A woman, a home, children. You’ve never seen America. You’ll love it. You’ll like Americans too, especially the kind that live in places like Grass Valley.”

  Ana laughed softly. “But we’re Russians, Paul.”

  “Eh?”

  “Our home and our life should be here. In Russia. The New Russia that we’ll have shortly.”

  He scoffed at her. “Live here when there’s California? Ana, Ana, you don’t know what living is. Why—”

  “But, Paul, I’m a Russian. If the United States is a more pleasant place to live than Russia will be, when we have ended the police state, then it is part of my duty to improve Russia.”

  It suddenly came to him that she meant it. “But I was thinking, all along, that after this was over we’d be married. I’d be able to show you my country.”

  “And, I don’t know why, I was thinking we both expected to be making a life for ourselves here.”

  They were silent for a long time in mutual misery.

  Paul said finally, “This is no time to make detailed plans. We love each other, that should be enough. When it’s all over, we’ll have the chance to look over each other’s way of life. You can visit the States with me.”

  “And I’ll take you on a visit to Armenia. I know a little town in the mountains there which is the most beautiful in the world. We’ll spend a week there. A month! Perhaps one day we can build a summer dacha there.” She laughed happily. “Why practically everyone lives to be a hundred years old in Armenia.”

  “Yeah, we’ll have to go there sometime,” Paul said quietly.

  * * * *

  He’d been scheduled to see Leonid that night but at the last moment the other sent Ana to report that an important meeting was to take place. A meeting of underground delegates from all over the country. They were making basic decisions on when to move—but Paul’s presence wasn’t needed.

  He had no feeling of being excluded from something that concerned him. Long ago it had been decided that the less details known by the average man in the movement about Paul’s activities, the better it would be. There is always betrayal and there are always counter-revolutionary agents within the ranks of an organization such as this. What was the old Russian proverb? When four men sit down to discuss revolution, three are police spies and the third a fool.

  Actually, this had been astonishingly well handled. He had operated for over a year with no signs that the KGB was aware of his activities. Leonid and his fellows were efficient. They had to be. The Commies had been slaughtering anyone who opposed them for forty years now. To survive as a Russian underground you had to be good.

  No, it wasn’t a feeling of exclusion. Paul Koslov was stretched out on the bed of his king-size Astoria Hotel room, his hands behind his head and staring up at the ceiling. He recapitulated the events of the past months from the time he’d entered the Chief’s office in Washington until last night at the dacha with Leonid and Ana.

  The whole thing.

  And over and over again.

  There was a line of worry on his forehead.

  He swung his feet to the floor and approached the closet. He selected his most poorly pressed pair of pants, and a coat that mismatched it. He checked the charge in his .38 Noiseless, and replaced the weapon under his left arm. He removed his partial bridge, remembering as he did so how he had lost the teeth in a street fight with some Commie union organizers in Panama, and replaced the porcelain bridge with a typically Russian gleaming steel one. He stuffed a cap into his back pocket, a pair of steel rimmed glasses into an inner pocket, and left the room.

  He hurried through the lobby, past the Intourist desk, thankful that it was a slow time of day for tourist activity.

  Outside, he walked several blocks to 25th of October Avenue and made a point of losing himself in the crowd. When he was sure that there could be no one behind him, he entered a pivnaya, had a glass of beer, and then disappeared into the toilet. There he took off the coat, wrinkled it a bit more, put it back on a
nd also donned the cap and glasses. He removed his tie and thrust it into a side pocket.

  He left, in appearance a more or less average workingman of Leningrad, walked to the bus station on Nashimson Volodarski and waited for the next bus to Petrodvorets. He would have preferred the subway, but the line didn’t run that far as yet.

  The bus took him to within a mile and a half of the dacha, and he walked from there.

  By this time Paul was familiar with the security measures taken by Leonid Shvernik and the others. None at all when the dacha wasn’t in use for a conference or to hide someone on the lam from the KGB. But at a time like this, there would be three sentries, carefully spotted.

  This was Paul’s field now. Since the age of nineteen, he told himself wryly. He wondered if there was anyone in the world who could go through a line of sentries as efficiently as he could.

  He approached the dacha at the point where the line of pine trees came nearest to it. On his belly he watched for ten minutes before making the final move to the side of the house. He lay up against it, under a bush.

  From an inner pocket he brought the spy device he had acquired from Derek Steven’s Rube Goldberg department. It looked and was supposed to look considerably like a doctor’s stethoscope. He placed it to his ears, pressed the other end to the wall of the house.

  Leonid Shvernik was saying, “Becoming killers isn’t a pleasant prospect but it was the Soviet who taught us that the end justifies the means. And so ruthless a dictatorship have they established that there is literally no alternative. The only way to remove them is by violence. Happily, so we believe, the violence need extend to only a small number of the very highest of the hierarchy. Once they are eliminated and our transmitters proclaim the new revolution, there should be little further opposition.”

  Someone sighed deeply—Paul was able to pick up even that.

  “Why discuss it further?” somebody whose voice Paul didn’t recognize, asked. “Let’s get onto other things. These broadcasts of ours have to be the ultimate in the presentation of our program. The assassination of Number One and his immediate supporters is going to react unfavorably at first. We’re going to have to present unanswerable arguments if our movement is to sweep the nation as we plan.”