Deathwish World

by Mack Reynolds

  Lee shook her head and put her empty glass down on a small table beside the couch. “I had always thought the World Club to be composed largely of economists whose research was supported by wealthy philanthropists.”

  The international banker was obviously amused. “Don’t exaggerate the contributions of economists, my dear. They are highly overrated compared to us, the pragmatic. If there was ever a group to which the question, ‘If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?’ applies, it is the economists. Economics aren’t as complicated as all that but the economists mythologize the subject. There are exceptions, but most of them go through life as second-raters—teaching, writing books that few read and even fewer understand, or selling their services to governments or the powerful. They make their way with gobbledy-gook terminology, but practically never do they get rich. Even a five-percent advantage on knowing what way the stock market was going to go would make them wealthy, but they simply don’t know. Karl Marx himself, that analyzer of the capitalist system, lived and died in poverty. Did you ever hear of a Rockefeller, a Dupont, a Getty, or any other founder of the great American fortunes, who was an economist?”

  Lee’s smile was inverted. “I am afraid that you are making a cynic of me, Mr. Amschel.”

  The smile he returned was thin. “I hope not, my dear. You are far too charming to succumb to cynicism. However, take as an example the monetary crisis of the last century. Every economist in the world was working on the problem of the collapse of international money. There was not enough gold or any other precious metal in the world to back the needed mediums of exchange. All nations, particularly your United States, simply began printing paper money, which had no value since it represented nothing. Inflation was rampant. Inflation, of course, is not a matter of prices going up, but of the value of money going down. The United States, with a two trillion dollar a year economy, faced disaster because it had issued perhaps four hundred billion dollars’ worth of paper without backing. Did the economists solve the problem? No. It was solved by an obscure speculative writer.”

  “I didn’t know that!”

  “Oh, yes. He proposed that the government, in taxing the two hundred top corporations of the United States, take ten percent of the taxes in the form of their common stock. This was amalgamated into what was called United States Basic Common, a sort of gigantic mutual fund. Its shares, of course, paid dividends based on the combined dividends of the corporations. The stock was placed on every stock exchange of the world to seek its level. Each year, the government added its new common stock, taken in the form of taxes, to its U. S. Basic Common. Anyone who had dollars could turn them in for Basic Common. In short, the money of the United States, now called pseudodollars since there was no gold behind them, was now backed by the American economy.” The banker made a little snort. “It wasn’t long before all other developed nations followed the lead. The world now has valid currencies.”

  * * * *

  Halfway across the room, Jerry Auburn was interrupted on his way to seeing Peter Windsor.

  Harrington Chase, his inevitable glass of bourbon and branch water in hand, waved him down. The American tycoon was a stereotype of the cattleman or oil entrepreneur who had flourished in the old Southwest. He differed little if at all from his progenitors. A Henry Ford or a Joe Kennedy might have come from rough-and-ready, tough-and-tight-eyed schools, but in two generations their descendants were attending Ivy League universities and had become ladies and gentlemen who conducted themselves as aristocrats—America’s new nobility. But not the Chases! Harrington Chase’s fief was a ranch enveloping two large counties overlapping in Texas and Oklahoma, larger than the areas of several northeastern states. Big and ruddy of face, his bulk no longer called for his riding his famed Palominos, but he usually still affected riding boots. And a king-sized cigar, even when police were in the vicinity, was always in his mouth. He also, Jerry knew, invariably ordered steak and potatoes, in the most celebrated restaurants, with apple pie and ice cream for dessert.

  With Chase, as usual at a Central Committee session, was his closest associate, John Warfield Moyer, for some twenty years Director of the IABI. A square-cut man in his late fifties, Moyer, with his bulldog face, shaggy brows, and cold, accusing eyes, looked every inch what he was: a high-ranking police officer. In his case, the highest ranking in the world.

  Chase said, with an overriding joviality, “Hold on, Jerry, old-timer.”

  Jerry Auburn came to a halt, albeit reluctantly. “Something up, Harry?” He knew perfectly well the other hated that name. He nodded at Moyer. “Hi, Fuzzy,” he said, inwardly pleased at the director’s wince.

  Harrington Chase hefted his glass up and down a couple of times pontifically. “We’ve been mulling over the replacement of Grace Cabot-Hudson, now that she’s let it be known she’s resigning.”

  Jerry said, “I had been inclined to Dunninger… until somebody got to him.”

  “Never cottoned much to Harold myself,” Chase said pompously. “Kind of a goddamned liberal. Show me a liberal and I’ll show you a man on the verge of a coyote Euro-communist. But at least he was a white American, just like us three.”

  Moyer looked at Jerry: a policeman’s look. “What do you mean, somebody got to him? Those Nihilist subversives shot him when his people wouldn’t pay the ransom. His wife must have thought they were bluffing.”

  “So they say,” Jerry nodded. “Which leaves the field more or less left to Ezra Hawkins and Lothar von Brandenburg, two of the most unlikely candidates for a seat in the Central Committee I could imagine.”

  Harrington Chase puffed out his cheeks. “At least the Prophet is a God-fearing Christian, a white man, and an American. We Americans ought to stick together. We wouldn’t want to see a slant-eye like Iyeyasu Suzuki, or a nigger like Sri Saraswate, on the Committee.”

  Jerry took him in. “It’s never been proven that the Prophet can read or write. Supposedly, the top echelons of the World Club are composed of highly intelligent, well-educated men and women, not superstition-spouting demagogues.”

  “Look, boy, us Americans have a manifest destiny to run this world. It’s in the cards. But unless we hold the cards, we’ll wind up with the wogs taking the pot.”

  The younger man regarded him, doing little to disguise his contempt. “Harry,” he said, “do you realize that half the United States population is below average in intelligence?”

  The billionaire’s eyes all but popped in indignation. “That’s a damn lie!” he rumbled.

  Jerry shook his head in pretended despair. “Your American chauvinism does you little credit, Harry. Of course, half of every population is below average, and the other half above average. What do you think average means?”

  The oilman sputtered, then took a heavy slug of his bourbon. Moyer said, obviously getting it before his colleague did, “What’s that got to do with the Prophet being elevated to the Central Committee, Auburn? It seems to me that having a man of God in our number makes good sense. The fact that the majority of us are among the world’s wealthiest rubs some people the wrong way, especially the liberal intellectuals. The Prophet heads the biggest church in the world, and every day it gets larger.”

  Jerry turned his gaze to the IABI head. “And did it ever occur to you, as a fuzzy, that the number of crimes in a city each year is proportional to the number of churches there?”

  The other stared at him. “You must be around the corner, Auburn. The more churches, the less crime.”

  Jerry shook his head in sorrow. “On the face of it, fuzzy, the larger the town is, the more churches there are. And the larger a town is, the more crime there is.”

  Harrington Chase said angrily, “You’re getting away from the point, Jerry. The point is, we don’t want any more kikes like Meyer Amschel in the Central Committee, and no more chinks like Fong Hui.”

  Jerry said, “We’ll see about that when it comes to the vote, Harry. In my opinion, Amschel and Fong may be on the oldish side, and overly cons
ervative, but they’re two of the best we’ve got. And now, excuse me; I want to have a few words with Windsor. Has it ever occurred to either of you that the Graf is so afraid of leaving that castle fortress of his that he always sends a deputy to represent him? What kind of a Committee member would he make if he never bothered to attend sessions?”

  Before the arrival of Jerry Auburn, Archbishop Willy Beck and Peter Windsor had been hitting it off jolly well, as the Englishman might have put it. The Graf’s right-hand man, now in impeccable evening wear, was a far cry from the languid, easygoing young man of the Wolfschloss. Now, in the view of his peers, he presented himself as the British aristocrat—straight of posture, clipped of voice. His companion was dressed in black and wore the reversed collar of clerical tradition. They were approximately the same age, approximately the same height, but there the resemblance ended, save for goals. Willy Beck, a lifelong evangelist who had first taken the stump at revival meetings in the American Bible Belt at the age of fourteen, had the sanctimonious face of his trade—long, expressionless, save for a sadness which tugged at the heartstrings of his feminine followers. Indeed, his face had been compared to that of Lincoln before the beard. His voice was soft, with a depth of sorrow similar to that of an undertaker. His railings against the evils of drink and tobacco were his trademark, which would undoubtedly have led the faithful to goggle at the Manila cigar he now held in one hand and the glass of that most delicate though strong of spirits, Hungarian barack, in the other.

  The Archbishop was saying, “Yes, you are quite correct. The Prophet foresees, once the World State has come to power, the reestablishment of the Holy Office, the Inquisition—under a more inspiring name, of course. Heretics must be rooted out. At this point it is quite impossible, but once the United Church has become the State Church of the World Government, matters will be different. Since the days of Socrates the organized religions have found that to be the ultimate truth. But now, at this point, we must rely on other means to confound our Godless opponents, and that is why the Prophet sees the need for greater cooperation between our two organizations.”

  Peter Windsor said, sipping at his Scotch, “You put it most interestingly, Your Excellency. In what manner do you think the United Church could be of use to us?”

  “In most of the present-day branches of the United Church, my son, we follow the rite of confession. Perhaps a judicious leader might be reluctant to reveal his secrets, but often the same restraint does not apply to his more devout wife. It is astonishing, the information that is revealed in the confessional booth, especially if encouraged by a trained confessor—information that would be priceless to an organization involved in espionage.”

  “Bloody marvelous,” Peter Windsor said, lost in admiration of the possibilities. “And in return?”

  The Archbishop’s face was sad. “Alas, my son, in this sin-ridden world the true faith often has what would seem insurmountable obstacles raised by the followers of the Adversary. Such enemies of the United Church would feel the wrath of the heavens. Who knows what might befall a strong official of some false faith who exhorts his fellows to refrain from cooperation with our Holy cause…”

  “Chaps such as the Mahdi, I wouldn’t wonder,” Peter said.

  “Indeed. Our sainted leader, Ezra Hawkins, spent long hours in prayer before coming to the reluctant decision to remove this limb of Satan from the scene, so that his deluded followers might at long last see the true path to salvation.”

  “Long hours in prayer?” Peter said musingly. “I say, do you chaps really find time for that sort of drill?”

  Willy Beck sighed. “Peter, sometimes I am inclined to think that Ezra takes himself a bit too literally in his role of Prophet. It does not do for a religious man, or a politician, to believe too much in his own propaganda. The more one knows his religion the less he believes, if he is a pragmatic man.”

  Peter accepted that, pursing his lips. “However, the Prophet is, shall we say, no longer young. And history tells us that it is often a devoted follower of a great prophet who finally witnesses the flowering of the new religion. It was not Jesus who founded Christianity as we know it, but Paul. And Mohammed never saw Islam spread beyond Arabia. It was the second-generation Moslems who conquered half the known world.”

  “A point well taken, my son. And who can tell what the good Lord has planned for the future. But tell me, how is the health of the Graf these days?”

  The Englishman shook his head regretfully. “I am afraid that Lothar is aging rather rapidly, don’t you know? Sometimes he seems to make rather ill-considered decisions.” Archbishop Beck shook his head, also in sorrow. “Not long for this world, then. However, undoubtedly, when he goes to his reward there will be more youthful hands to take the reins of his worthy organization.”

  Peter Windsor fixed his green eyes on the other man’s face for a long calculating moment before he said, “Perhaps we should talk this over in more detail in the near future. I suspect that matters are coming to a head faster than some of us realize.”

  It was then that Jerry Auburn came up, recently refilled glass in hand, dark blue eyes with a faint glaze. He said, not quite slurring, “Hi, Peter. Done in any poor cloddies of recent date? Hi, Willy, saved any good souls lately?”

  “All souls are good, my son,” the Archbishop said unctuously.

  “You ought to know; you must get a wide variety of them. The United Church will take anything into its ranks, down to and including animists.”

  The Archbishop was sadly forgiving. He said softly, “In my Father’s house there are many mansions. We are all one in the loving eyes of God, be he called Jehovah, Allah, Brahma, Maya, or The Great Spirit.”

  Jerry said, taking another healthy pull at his drink, “Or Artemis and Pan, for the sake of the various witch cults. You’ll adapt to anything to suck another faith into the United Church. If the Aztec religion was still in existence, you’d allow them to cut out the hearts of a few thousand victims each year. If the Canaanites were still with us, they could throw their firstborn into the flaming bronze maw of Ba’al.”

  “Surely, my son, this is not a subject upon which to jest.” There was sorrow in the voice of the Prophet’s right-hand man, but his eyes were narrow and cold.

  “I wasn’t kidding,” Jerry said. “The archives don’t record what long-dead con man first dreamed up religion and put nine-tenths of the human race on the sucker list, but he must have been a genius.”

  The Archbishop said, his long face expressionless, “I am neglecting my duties as the representative of a candidate member of the Central Committee. I must pay my respects to Harrington Chase. His devotion to the United Church is well known; only last week he contributed a million pseudodollars. If you’ll forgive me.”

  When he was gone, Jerry said to Peter Windsor, “I hate to see you two getting together.”

  Peter said, “Oh, Willy’s all right. I assume that most of us in the World Club are either agnostics or atheists, but we’ll always have religion with us, and I’d rather see the United Church on our side than have it oppose us.”

  “Sometimes I wonder what our side is,” Jerry said. He fixed his eyes on the tall Britisher. “Have you heard about the attack on me yesterday?”

  The other looked worried. “Yes, I did, Jerry. Jolly good that you were able to thwart the beggar.”

  “Yeah, wasn’t it? What I’ve been wondering about was who fingered me.”

  “What do you mean, dear boy?”

  “I mean that it seems unlikely that cloddy went to all the trouble to get a job at the Hostaria dell’Orso just to take a crack at the first wealthy customer to come along. If he had, he would have polished someone else off long before I arrived on the scene. It’s the most expensive restaurant in town and there’s a fistful of millionaires and top politicians there every day. No, he was waiting for me. Somebody had tipped the Nihilists off that it was my favorite eating spot. I’d just got in to Rome the same day. And he was waiting.”

>   Peter looked distressed. “What’s your point, old chap?”

  “All of a sudden, the Nihilists seem to be taking an extraordinary interest in members and candidate members of the Central Committee. It was only a few days ago that Harry Dunninger was knocked off by them, back in the States. If he hadn’t been, sure as hell the Central Committee would have nominated him to full membership. With him eliminated, it looks as though either the Graf or the Prophet has a much better chance. If I’d been knocked off, both of them would have the chance.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “I think you’d better try.” Jerry Auburn’s eyes had lost their alcohol sheen and were now very level.

  The Englishman shook his head. “Really, old boy, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Your people had the contract to guard Dunninger. When the Nihilists raided his estate, four of the guards had been pulled off, weakening resistance so that overwhelming the defense was a cinch. Now, what I want to know is what contracts you people have with the Neo-Nihilists.”

  Peter Windsor flushed in indignation. He said strongly, “Really, Auburn, your suggestion is inadmissible.”

  Jerry’s voice was winter cold. “I’m asking you if you have contacts with the Nihilists. If you tell me no, and through my people I later find out that you have, your organization is mud in the World Club, chum-pal. Remember that I’m a member of the Central Committee. All by myself I can blackball the Graf from ever becoming a full member. I think I could throw enough weight to have him tossed out of the World Club entirely. And that would hardly fit in with your plans, would it, Windsor?”

  “Now, see here, Jerry,” Peter Windsor said hurriedly. “You’re getting off onto the wrong foot. Of course, the Graf has infiltrated the Nihilists, along with all other subversive organizations. A great deal of our work is espionage. We infiltrate everywhere, especially into organizations having any sort of political connotations.”