Planetary Agent X

by Mack Reynolds

  “Yes.”

  “Oh?” Bronston raised eyebrows.

  “I didn’t slit that drunken bum’s throat last night. I should’ve. But instead I just poured more liquor down his gullet. I thought he’d stay under long enough for me to make it. He musta woke up right after I left.”

  Ronny Bronston looked at him in puzzlement.

  “It doesn’t sound like a man with your background. Why couldn’t you kill him? You’d already finished off eight others.”

  “Seven,” Billy muttered.

  “Eight. One of those two women bystanders you wounded in Scranton died in the hospital.”

  Billy winced.

  “With a record like that,” Bronston pursued, “you should have been capable of finishing Barrymore off to make sure your back trail was clean.”

  Billy said sourly, “What difference does it make? Maybe I was gettin’ tired of all the killin’. Ever since I knew Big Luigi give it to me, I been thinking about it all. About my old lady, and how she always said I was gonna go to school and all. But after I knifed one of Big Luigi’s goons he sent her off the planet, and I never seen her again.”

  For a long moment, Ronny Bronston looked at the other. Billy Antrim, defeated now and at bay, still looked like nothing so much as a defiant school youngster, caught in some misdemeanor and hauled before the principal. There was even somewhat of a wistful quality in the juvenile killer’s face, as though of a child grown almost to adulthood who had been allowed down through the years to press his face against the windowpane and look in at the others, celebrating their Christmases and birthdays—but never allowed to enter and participate.

  Ronny shook his head, as though to clear away a trend of thought he couldn’t afford.

  He said, “I’m afraid not. I’ve been looking further into your dossier, Billy. Section G has been checking you on every planet you’ve ever set down on. And we’ve been checking that of Luigi Agrigento, too.”

  Billy was scowling at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, ya stupid yoke. I know what happened to my old lady.”

  “That’s not Luigi Agrigento’s way. His henchman molested your mother and as a result you killed him. Somebody, given Maffeo outlook, had to pay. And since it was your mother who was the original…”

  Billy Antrim was on his feet, shaking. “You lie!”

  Bronston, his eyes wary, shook his head. “Sit down, Billy. You know better. I have no reason to lie.”

  Billy slumped back into the chair, his once poker face twitching. “You he,” he muttered.

  Bronston shrugged, as though he couldn’t care less. “Agrigento evidently turned her over to his goon’s relatives. And they… I didn’t understand this part of it. What does capontina mean?”

  “No,” Billy Antrim whispered, his head in his hands, his body swaying. “No.”

  Bronston said, an element of contempt in his voice. “You fizzled out, in the real clutch, Billy. You should have finished off Barrymore. And just a few minutes ago. You missed me with that knife on purpose, didn’t you?”

  Billy Antrim didn’t answer.

  “You haven’t got the guts to kill any more, Billy,” Bronston told him.

  Irene Kasansky looked up from her screens and order boxes, her switches and buttons, and said with as near to a smile as Irene Kasansky ever came to a smile, “Hello, Ronny. How’d you make out in New Albuquerque?”

  Ronny said, exhaustion in his voice, “Not now, Irene. Is the Old Man available?”

  Irene snorted and said, “Sid Jakes is with him. But it’s nothing more important than your report. Where’ve you been?”

  Ronny didn’t answer. He was too exhausted to go through this more than once. He pushed his way through the door to the back and headed for Ross Metaxa’s office.

  Sid Jakes was sitting in a heavy chair across from the commissioner, who sat behind his desk. They both looked up when Ronny entered without knocking.

  He slumped into a chair.

  “Ronny!” Sid chortled. “How come no reports? For awhile you had me worried. I was afraid our Billy-boy had done you in.”

  Ronny shook his head. “I haven’t been in a bed for four days,” he said.

  Ross Metaxa reached down into his desk drawer and came out with his brown bottle. “Drink?”

  “I guess so,” Ronny muttered. “Even that stuff.”

  While Metaxa poured, Sid chuckled, “Well, I suppose the fact you’re here winds up the Billy Antrim segment of our troubles with Palermo. Now we’ll have to get to work on the basic problem of our Maffeo friends. And that’s going to be a neat trick, if possible at all, what with Article One of the Charter.”

  Ross Metaxa handed the drink over to his field man and growled, “Did you have to finish him off, or were you able to capture him? He might turn evidence, in case we ever have anything to take into the interplanetary courts. But above all, it’s good propaganda, the civilization bit. The fact that here on Earth we don’t execute or even imprison criminals, not even murderers. We rehabilitate them and release them as valuable members of society. Gives a good example to rawer worlds.”

  Ronny shook his head. “Not exactly either. I’ve spent the last day and a half with Billy Antrim getting plastic surgery up in New Chicago.”

  “Plastic surgery!” Metaxa exclaimed, his moist eyes bugging.

  Ronny knocked back the drink and shuddered. It was every bit as bad as he remembered it.

  He said, “By the way, what ever happened to Ruth Antrim, Billy’s mother?”

  “What’s that got to do with it? Have you gone completely crazy?” Ross was blurting.

  Sid Jakes said, “We even traced that out. She’s living on Goshen now. Married to some sort of mining engineer.” He grinned. “I suspect you have another bomb to drop, Ronny.”

  “The Department of Dirty Tricks,” Ronny muttered, unhappily. “You see, I had to goose Billy.”

  Ross Metaxa rasped, “Where’s Antrim, damn it!”

  Ronny Bronston looked at him. “On his way back to Palermo.”

  Even Jakes lost his poise at that one.

  Ronny said softly, “He has a date with Luigi Agrigento.”

  Metaxa closed his eyes and talked as though to himself. “I can fire him. I can claim he went off his rocker. I know what he had in mind. He figured that one man murder mill will get Agrigento. But does the fool realize that if he doesn’t and it comes out that the Bureau of Investigation had a hand in the attempted assassination of a Chief of State what it will mean? The member planets will drop out of UP like dandruff.”

  Ronny was shaking his head. He reached over, took the brown bottle and poured himself another. “Billy’s familial with Luigi’s security. He’ll be able to get through, especially with the plastic surgery. And remember, Billy is a citizen of Delos, not Palermo. The moment Luigi Agrigento dies by the hand of a citizen of another world, Article Two goes into effect. Palermo has been interfered with politically by another member planet of UP.”

  Ronny got to his feet, preparatory to leaving. His voice was dead. “Which will be an excellent excuse for the United Planets Space Force landing, and, uh, reestablishing order.”

  Sid Jakes, his face empty, said, “Antrim. You think he’ll… ?” His voice dribbled off.

  Ronny said flatly, “Get away? Not on Palermo. He’s expendable. He was the tool Section G needed, and I used him.” He grunted deprecation. “Remember when you told me how the guts of my conscience were going to be strained the first time I got one of the jobs we’re really here for? I didn’t know what you were talking about then. I do now.”

  Ross Metaxa scowled down at his brown bottle, wordlessly.

  Nor did Sid Jakes say anything further.

  Ronny said, “And now I think I’ll go home and get drunk a little, and tell myself that the end justifies the means—though there hasn’t been a decent thinker in the history of man who could arrive at that conclusion.”

  It was in a far place from the office of Ross Metaxa
in the Octagon.

  A slight figure was inching its way along a building ledge, his back and arms pressed tight against the stonework. He had about four inches upon which to operate. It was a matter of twenty or thirty yards, but he had few doubts.

  “One chance in a million,” he muttered. You didn’t have much better odds than that when your goal was one of the most highly protected Chiefs of State in United Planets.

  However, he had his own gods and now he was praying to them, and they weren’t going to turn him down.

  They didn’t.

  He made it to the window, brought the gun from his belt and rested it on the window sill.

  He said softly, “Big Luigi.”

  The heavy man behind the desk stiffened, startled, but didn’t turn. For the moment he was frozen.

  The voice came ever so softly, “You wouldn’t remember the face, Luigi, but it’s me, Billy Antrim. You remember. Billy, the kid you sent for Giorgi, down on Earth. I just wanted you to know, Luigi.”

  The heavyset man’s hands flew—one to a button, one to a desk drawer.

  Billy Antrim pressed the trigger, in an affectionate way.

  And the guards stormed through the door, weapons in hand. Far too late for Luigi, but with ample time for Billy. For once again it was a matter of no getaway arranged for pistolero Billy Antrim.