Short Fiction Mack Reynolds (best ereader for pdf and epub .txt) 📖

mockingly, “That’s the trouble with you, Sis. Here we’ve reached Utopia and you don’t admit it.”

“Utopia!”

“Certainly. Take a poll. You’ll find nineteen people out of twenty happy with things just the way they are. They have full tummies and security, lots of leisure and trank pills to make matters seem even rosier than they are⁠—and they’re rather rosy already.”

“Then what’s the necessity of this endless succession of bloody fracases, covered to the most minute bloody detail on the Telly?”

Baron Haer cut things short. “We’ve hashed and rehashed this before, Nadine and now we’re too busy to debate further.” He turned to Joe Mauser. “Very well, captain, you have my pledge. I wish I felt as optimistic as you seem to be about your prospects. That will be all for now, captain.”

Joe saluted and executed an about face.

In the outer offices, when he had closed the door behind him, he rolled his eyes upward in mute thanks to whatever powers might be. He had somehow gained the enmity of Balt, his immediate superior, but he’d also gained the support of Baron Haer himself, which counted considerably more.

He considered for a moment, Nadine Haer’s words. She was obviously a malcontent, but, on the other hand, her opinions of his chosen profession weren’t too different than his own. However, given this victory, this upgrading in caste, and Joe Mauser would be in a position to retire.

The door opened and shut behind him and he half turned.

Nadine Haer, evidently still caught up in the hot words between herself and her relatives, glared at him. All of which stressed the beauty he had noticed the day before. She was an almost unbelievably pretty girl, particularly when flushed with anger.

It occurred to him with a blowlike suddenness that, if his caste was raised to Upper, he would be in a position to woo such as Nadine Haer.

He looked into her furious face and said, “I was intrigued, Miss Haer, with what you had to say, and I’d like to discuss some of your points. I wonder if I could have the pleasure of your company at some nearby refreshment⁠—”

“My, how formal an invitation, captain. I suppose you had in mind sitting and flipping back a few trank pills.”

Joe looked at her. “I don’t believe I’ve had a trank in the past twenty years, Miss Haer. Even as a boy, I didn’t particularly take to having my senses dulled with drug-induced pleasure.”

Some of her fury was abating, but she was still critical of the professional mercenary. Her eyes went up and down his uniform in scorn. “You seem to make pretenses of being cultivated, captain. Then why your chosen profession?”

He’d had the answer to that for long years. He said now, simply, “I told you I was born a Lower. Given that, little counts until I fight my way out of it. Had I been born in a feudalist society, I would have attempted to batter myself into the nobility. Under classical capitalism, I would have done my utmost to accumulate a fortune, enough to reach an effective position in society. Now, under People’s Capitalism⁠ ⁠…”

She snorted, “Industrial Feudalism would be the better term.”

“… I realize I can’t even start to fulfill myself until I am a member of the Upper caste.”

Her eyes had narrowed, and the anger was largely gone. “But you chose the military field in which to better yourself?”

“Government propaganda to the contrary, it is practically impossible to raise yourself in other fields. I didn’t build this world, possibly I don’t even approve of it, but since I’m in it I have no recourse but to follow its rules.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Why not try to change the rules?”

Joe blinked at her.

Nadine Haer said, “Let’s look up that refreshment you were talking about. In fact, there’s a small coffee bar around the corner where it’d be possible for one of Baron Haer’s brood to have a cup with one of her father’s officers of Middle caste.”

VI

The following morning, hands on the pillow beneath his head, Joe Mauser stared up at the ceiling of his room and rehashed his session with Nadine Haer. It hadn’t taken him five minutes to come to the conclusion that he was in love with the girl, but it had taken him the rest of the evening to keep himself under rein and not let the fact get through to her.

He wanted to talk about the way her mouth tucked in at the corners, but she was hot on the evolution of society. He would have liked to have kissed that impossibly perfectly shaped ear of hers, but she was all for exploring the reasons why man had reached his present impasse. Joe was for holding hands, and staring into each other’s eyes, she was for delving into the differences between the West-world and the Sov-world and the possibility of resolving them.

Of course, to keep her company at all it had been necessary to suppress his own desires and to go along. It obviously had never occurred to her that a Middle might have romantic ideas involving Nadine Haer. It had simply not occurred to her, no matter the radical teachings she advocated.

Most of their world was predictable from what had gone before. In spite of popular fable to the contrary, the division between classes had become increasingly clear. Among other things, tax systems were such that it became all but impossible for a citizen born poor to accumulate a fortune. Through ability he might rise to the point of earning fabulous sums⁠—and wind up in debt to the tax collector. A great inventor, a great artist, had little chance of breaking into the domain of what finally became the small percentage of the population now known as Uppers. Then, too, the rising cost of a really good education became such that few other than those born into the Middle or Upper castes could afford the best of schools. Castes tended to perpetuate themselves.

Politically, the nation had fallen increasingly