But that wasn’t it. In spite of the informality, the unconventional brashness of its personnel on all levels, and the seeming chaos in which its tasks were done, Section G was no make-work project set up to provide juicy jobs for the relatives of high ranking officials. To the contrary, it didn’t take long in the Section before anybody with open eyes could see that Ross Metaxa was privy to the decisions made by the upper echelons of UP.
Ronny Bronston came to the conclusion that the appointment he’d received was putting him in a higher bracket of the UP hierarchy than he’d at first imagined.
His indoctrination course was a strain such as he’d never known in school years. Ross Metaxa was evidently of the opinion that a man could assimilate concentrated information at a rate several times faster than any professional educator ever dreamed possible. No threats were made, but Ronny realized that he could be dropped even more quickly than he’d seemed to have been taken on. There were no classes, to either push or retard the rate of study. He worked with a series of tutors, and pushed himself. The tutors were almost invariably Section G agents, temporarily in Greater Washington between assignments, or for briefing on this phase or that of their work.
Even as he studied, Ronny Bronston kept in mind the eventual assignment at which he was to prove himself. He made a point of inquiring of each agent he met about Tommy Paine.
The name was known to all, but no two reacted in the same manner. Several of them even brushed the whole matter aside as pure legend. Nobody could accomplish all the trouble that Tommy Paine had supposedly stirred up.
To one of these, Ronny said plaintively, “Look, the Old Man believes in him, Sid Jakes believes in him. My final appointment depends on arresting him. How can I ever secure this job, if I’m chasing a myth?”
The other shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I’ve got my own problems. O.K., now, let’s run over this question of Napoleonic law. There are at least two hundred planets that base their legal system on it.”
But the majority of his fellow employees in Section G had strong enough opinions on the interplanetary firebrand. Three or four even claimed to have seen him fleetingly, although no two descriptions jibed. That, of course, could be explained. The man could resort to plastic surgery and other disguises.
Theories there were in plenty, some of them going back long years, and some of them pure fable.
“Look,” Ronny said in disgust one day after a particularly unbelievable siege with two agents recently returned from a trouble spot in a planetary system that involved three aggressive worlds which revolved about the same sun. “Look, it’s impossible for one man to accomplish all this. He’s blamed for half the coups d’états, revolts and upheavals that have taken place for the past quarter century. It’s obvious nonsense. Why, a revolutionist usually spends the greater part of his life toppling a government. Then, once it toppled, he spends the rest of his life trying to set up a new government—and he’s usually unsuccessful.”
One of the others was shaking his head negatively. “You don’t understand this Tommy Paine’s system, Bronston.”
The other agent, a Nigerian, grinned widely. “You sure don’t. I’ve been on planets where he’d operated.”
Ronny leaned forward. The three of them were having a beer in a part of the city once called Baltimore. “You have?” he said. “Tell me about it, eh? The more background I get on this guy, the better.”
“Sure. And this’ll give you an idea of how he operates, how he can get so much trouble done. Well, I was on this planet Goshen, understand? It had kind of a strange history. A bunch of colonists went out there, oh, four or five centuries ago. Pretty healthy expedition, as such outfits go. Bright young people, lots of equipment, lots of know-how and books. Well, through sheer bad luck everything went wrong from the beginning. Everything. Before they got set up at all they had an explosion that killed off all their communications technicians. They lost contact with the outside. O.K. Within a couple of centuries they’d gotten into a state of chattel slavery. Pretty well organized, but static. Kind of an Athenian Democracy on top, a hierarchy, but nineteen people out of twenty were slaves, and I mean real slaves, like animals. They were at this stage when a scout ship from the UP Space Forces discovered them and, of course, they joined up.”
“Where does Tommy Paine come in?” Ronny said. He signaled to a waiter for more beer.
“He comes in a few years later. I was the Section G agent on Goshen, understand? No planet was keener about Articles One and Two of the UP Charter. The hierarchy understood well enough that if their people ever came to know about more advanced socio-economic systems it’d be the end of Goshen’s Golden Age. So they allowed practically no intercourse. No contact whatsoever between UP personnel and anyone outside the upper class, understand? All right. That’s where Tommy Paine came in. It couldn’t have taken him more than a couple of months at most.”
Ronny Bronston was fascinated. “What’d he do?”
“He introduced the steam engine, and then left.”
Ronny was looking at him blankly. “Steam engine?”
“That and the fly shuttle and the spinning jenny,” the Nigerian said. “That Goshen hierarchy never knew what hit them.”
Ronny was still blank. The waiter came up with the steins of beer, and Ronny took one and drained half of it without taking his eyes from the storyteller.
The other agent took it up. “Don’t you see? Their system was based on chattel slavery, hand labor. Given machinery and it collapses. Chattel slavery isn’t practical in a mechanized society. Too expensive a labor force, for one thing. Besides, you need an educated man and one with some initiative—qualities that few slaves possess—to run an industrial society.”
Ronny finished his beer. “Smart cooky, isn’t he?”
“He’s smart, all right. But I’ve got a still better example of his fouling up a whole planetary socio-economic system in a matter of weeks. A friend of mine was working on a planet with a highly-developed feudalism. Barons, lords, dukes, counts and no-accounts, all stashed safely away in castles and fortresses up on the top of hills. The serfs down below did all the work in the fields, provided servants, artisans and foot soldiers for the continual fighting that the aristocracy carried on. Very similar to Europe back in the Dark Ages.”
“So?” Ronny said. “I’d think that’d be a deal that would take centuries to change.”
The Section G agent laughed. “Tommy Paine stayed just long enough to introduce gunpowder. That was the end of those impregnable castles up on the hills.”
“What gets me,” Ronny said slowly, “is his motivation.”
The other two both grunted agreement to that.
IV
Toward the end of his indoctrination studies, Ronny appeared one morning at the Octagon Section G offices and before Irene Kasansky. Watching her fingers fly, listening to her voice rapping and snapping, O.K.ing and rejecting, he came to the conclusion that automation could go just so far in office work and then you were thrown back on the hands of the efficient secretary. Irene was a one-woman office staff.
She looked up at him. “Hello, Ronny. Thought you’d be off on your assignment by now. Got any clues on Tommy Paine?”
“No,” he said. “That’s why I’m here. I wanted to see the commissioner.”
“About what?” She flicked a switch. When a light flickered on one of her order-boxes, she said into it, “No,” emphatically, and turned back to him.
“He said he wanted to see me again before I took off.”
She fiddled some more, finally said, “All right, Ronny. Tell him he’s got time for five minutes with you.”
“Five minutes!”
“Then he’s got an appointment with the Commissioner of Interplanetary Culture,” she said. “You’d better hurry along.”
Ronny Bronston retraced the route of his first visit here. How long ago? It already seemed ages since his probationary appointment. Your life changed fast when you were in Section G.
Ross Metaxa’s brown bottle, or its twin, was sitting on his desk and he was staring at it glumly. He looked up and scowled.
“Ronald Bronston,” Ronny said. “Irene Kasansky told me to say I could have five minutes with you, and then you have an appointment with the Commissioner of Interplanetary Culture.”
“I remember you,” Metaxa said. “Have a drink. Interplanetary Culture, ha! The Xanadu Folk Dance Troupe. They dance nude. They’ve been touring the whole UP. Roaring success everywhere, obviously. Now they’re assigned to Virtue, a planet settled by a bunch of Fundamentalists. They want the troupe to wear Mother Hubbards. The Xanadu outfit is in a tizzy. They’ve been insulted. They claim they’re the most modest members of UP, that nudity has nothing to do with modesty. The government of Virtue says that’s fine but they wear Mother Hubbards or they don’t dance. Xanadu says it’ll withdraw from United Planets.”
Ronny Bronston said painfully, “Why not let them?”
Ross Metaxa poured himself a Denebian tequila, offered his subordinate a drink again with a motion of the bottle. Ronny shook his head.
Metaxa said, “If we didn’t take steps to soothe these things over, there wouldn’t be any United Planets. In any given century every member in the organization threatens to resign at least once. Even Earth. And then what’d happen? You’d have interplanetary war before you knew it. What’d you want, Ronny?”
“I’m about set to take up my search for this Tommy Paine.”
“Ah, yes, Tommy Paine. If you catch him, there are a dozen planets where he’d be eligible for the death sentence.”
Ronny cleared his throat. “There must be. What I wanted was the file on him, sir.”
“File?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve got to the point where I want to cram up on everything we have on him. So far, all I’ve got is verbal information from individual agents and from Supervisor Jakes.”
“Don’t be silly, Ronny. There isn’t any file on Tommy Paine.”
Ronny stared at him.
Ross Metaxa said impatiently, “The very knowledge of the existence of the man is top secret. Isn’t that obvious? Suppose some reporter got the story and printed it. If our member planets knew there was such a man and that we haven’t been able to scotch him, why, they’d drop out of UP so fast the computers couldn’t keep up with it. There’s not one planet in ten that feels secure enough to lay itself open to subversion. Why, some of our planets are so far down the ladder of social evolution they live under primitive tribal society; their leaders, their wise men and witch-doctors, whatever you call them, are scared someone will come along and establish chattel slavery. Those planets that have a system based on slavery are scared to death of developing feudalism, and those that have feudalism are afraid of creeping capitalism. Those with an anarchistic basis—and we have several—are afraid of being subverted to statism, and those who have a highly developed government are afraid of anarchism. The socio-economic systems based on private ownership of property hate the very idea of socialism or communism, and vice versa, and those planets with state capitalism hate them both.”
He glared at Ronny. “What do you think the purpose of this Section is, Bronston? Our job is to keep our member planets from being afraid of each other. If they found that Tommy Paine and his group, if he’s got a group, were buzzing through the system subverting everything they could foul up, they’d drop out of UP and set up quarantines that a space mite couldn’t get through. No sir, there is no file on Tommy Paine and there never will be. And if any news of him spreads to the outside, this Section will emphatically deny he exists. I hope that’s clear.”
“Well, yes, sir,” Ronny said. The commissioner had been all but roaring toward the end.
The order box clicked on Ross Metaxa’s desk and he said loudly, “What?”
“Don’t yell at me,” Irene snapped back. “Ronny’s five minutes are up. You’ve got an appointment. I’m getting tired of this job. It’s a madhouse. I’m going to quit and get a job with Interplanetary Finance.”
“Oh, yeah,” Ross snarled. “That’s what you think. I’ve taken measures. Top security. I’ve warned off every Commissioner in UP. You can’t get away from me until you reach retirement age. Although I don’t know why I care. I hate nasty tempered women.”
“Huh!” she snorted and clicked off.
“There’s a woman for you,” Ross Metaxa growled at Ronny. “It’s too bad she’s indispensable. I’d love to fire her. Look, you go in and see Sid Jakes. Seems to me he said something about Tommy Paine this morning. Maybe it’s a lead.” He came to his feet. “So long and good luck, Ronny. I feel optimistic about you. I think you’ll get this Paine troublemaker.”
Which was more than Ronny Bronston thought.
Sid Jakes already had a visitor in his office, which didn’t prevent him from yelling, “It’s open,” when Ronny Bronston knocked.
He bounced from his chair, came around the desk and shook hands enthusiastically. “Ronny!” he said, his tone implying they were favorite brothers for long years parted. “You’re just in time.”
Ronny took in the office’s other occupant appreciatively. She was a small girl, almost tiny. He estimated her to be at least half Chinese, or maybe Indo-Chinese, the rest probably European or North American. She evidently favored her Asiatic blood—her dress was traditional Chinese, slit almost to the thigh Shanghai style.
Sid Jakes said, “Tog Lee Chang Chu… Ronny Bronston. You’ll be working together. Bloodhounding old Tommy Paine. A neat trick if you can pull it off. Well, are you all set to go?”
Ronny mumbled something to the girl in the way of amenity, then looked back at the supervisor. “Working together?” he said.
“That’s right. Lucky you, eh?”
Tog Lee Chang Chu said demurely, “Possibly Mr. Bronston objects to having a female assistant.”
Sid Jakes snorted, and hurried around his desk to resume his seat. “Does he look crazy? Who’d object to having you around day in and day out? Call him Ronny. Might as well get used to it. The two of you’ll be closer than man and wife.”
“Assistant?” Ronny said, bewildered. “What do I need an assistant for?” He turned his eyes to the girl. “No reflection on you, Miss… ah, Tog.”
Sid Jakes laughed easily. “Section G operatives always work in pairs, Ronny. Especially new agents. The advantages will come home to you as you go along. Look on Tog Lee Chang Chu as a secretary, a gal Friday. This isn’t her first assignment, of course. You’ll find her invaluable.”
The supervisor plucked a card from an order box. “Now, here’s the dope. Can you leave within four hours? There’s a UP Space Force cruiser going to Merlini; they can drop you off at New Delos. Fastest way you could possibly get there. The cruiser takes off from Neuve Alburquerque in, let’s see, three hours and forty-five minutes.”
“New Delos?” Ronny said, taking his eyes from the girl and trying to catch up with the grasshopper-like conversation of his superior.
“New Delos it is,” Jakes said happily. “With luck, you might catch him before he can get off the planet.” He chuckled at the other’s expression. “Look alive, Ronny! The quarry is flushed and on the run. Tommy Paine’s just assassinated the Immortal God-King of New Delos. A neat trick, eh?”
V
The following hours were chaotic. There was no indication of how long a period he’d be gone. For all he knew, it might be years. For that matter, he might never return to Earth. This Ronny Bronston had realized before he’d ever applied for an interplanetary appointment. Mankind was exploding through this spiral arm of the galaxy. There was a racial enthusiasm about it all. Man’s destiny lay out in the stars; only a laggard stayed home of his own accord. It was the ambition of every youth to join the snowballing avalanche of man into the neighboring stars.
It took absolute severity by Earth authorities to prevent the depopulation of the planet. But someone had to stay to administer the ever more complicated racial destiny. Earth became a clearing
house for a thousand cultures, attempting, with only moderate success, to coördinate her widely spreading children. She couldn’t afford to let her best seed depart. Few were allowed to emigrate from Earth anymore. New colonies drew their immigrants from older ones.
Lucky was the Earthling able to find service in interplanetary affairs, in any of the thousands of tasks that involved journey between member planets of UP. Possibly one hundredth of the population at one time or another, and for varying lengths of time, managed it.
Ronny Bronston was lucky and knew it. The thing now was to pull off this assignment and cinch the appointment for good.
He packed in a swirl of confusion. He phoned a relative who lived in the part of town once known as Richmond, explained the situation and asked that the other store his things and dispose of the apartment he’d been occupying.
Luckily, the roof of his apartment building was a copter-cab pickup point and he was able to hustle over to the shuttleport in a matter of a few minutes.
He banged into the reservations office, hurried up to one of the windows and said into the screen, “I’ve got to get to Neuve Alburquerque immediately.”
The expressionless voice said, “The next rocket leaves at sixteen hours.”
“Sixteen hours! I’ve got to be at the spaceport by that time!”
The voice said dispassionately, “We are sorry.”
The bottom fell out of everything. Ronny said, desperately, “Look, if I miss my ship in Neuve Alburquerque, what is the next spaceliner leaving from there for New Delos?”
“A moment, citizen.” There was an agonized wait, and then the voice said, “There is a liner leaving for New Delos on the 14th of next month. It arrives in New Delos on the 31st, Basic Earth calendar.”
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