Mercenary Read online

  VI

  The following morning, hands on the pillow beneath his head, Joe Mauserstared up at the ceiling of his room and rehashed his session withNadine Haer. It hadn't taken him five minutes to come to the conclusionthat he was in love with the girl, but it had taken him the rest of theevening to keep himself under rein and not let the fact get through toher.

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

  Of course, to keep her company at all it had been necessary to suppresshis own desires and to go along. It obviously had never occurred to herthat a Middle might have romantic ideas involving Nadine Haer. It hadsimply not occurred to her, no matter the radical teachings sheadvocated.

  Most of their world was predictable from what had gone before. In spiteof popular fable to the contrary, the division between classes hadbecome increasingly clear. Among other things, tax systems were suchthat it became all but impossible for a citizen born poor to accumulatea fortune. Through ability he might rise to the point of earningfabulous sums--and wind up in debt to the tax collector. A greatinventor, a great artist, had little chance of breaking into the domainof what finally became the small percentage of the population now knownas Uppers. Then, too, the rising cost of a really good education becamesuch that few other than those born into the Middle or Upper castescould afford the best of schools. Castes tended to perpetuatethemselves.

  Politically, the nation had fallen increasingly deeper into thetwo-party system, both parties of which were tightly controlled by thesame group of Uppers. Elections had become a farce, a great nationalholiday in which stereotyped patriotic speeches, pretenses of unitybetween all castes, picnics, beer busts and trank binges predominatedfor one day.

  Economically, too, the augurs had been there. Production of the basicshad become so profuse that poverty in the old sense of the word hadbecome nonsensical. There was an abundance of the necessities of lifefor all. Social security, socialized medicine, unending unemploymentinsurance, old age pensions, pensions for veterans, for widows andchildren, for the unfit, pensions and doles for this, that and theother, had doubled, and doubled again, until everyone had security forlife. The Uppers, true enough, had opulence far beyond that known by theMiddles and lived like Gods compared to the Lowers. But all hadsecurity. They had agreed, thus far, Joe and Nadine. But then had comedebate.

  * * * * *

  "Then why," Joe had asked her, "haven't we achieved what your brothercalled it? Why isn't this Utopia? Isn't it what man has been yearningfor, down through the ages? Where did the wheel come off? What happenedto the dream?"

  Nadine had frowned at him--beautifully, he thought. "It's not the firsttime man has found abundance in a society, though never to this degree.The Incas had it, for instance."

  "I don't know much about them," Joe admitted. "An early form ofcommunism with a sort of military-priesthood at the top."

  She had nodded, her face serious, as always. "And for themselves, theRomans more or less had it--at the expense of the nations theyconquered, of course."

  "And--" Joe prodded.

  "And in these examples the same thing developed. Society ossified. Joe,"she said, using his first name for the first time, and in a manner thatset off a new count down in his blood, "a ruling caste and asocio-economic system perpetuates itself, just so long as it ever can.No matter what damage it may do to society as a whole, it perpetuatesitself even to the point of complete destruction of everything.

  "Remember Hitler? Adolf the Aryan and his Thousand Year Reich? When itbecame obvious he had failed, and the only thing that could result fromcontinued resistance would be destruction of Germany's cities andmillions of her people, did he and his clique resign or surrender?Certainly not. They attempted to bring down the whole German structurein a Goetterdammerung."

  Nadine Haer was deep into her theme, her eyes flashing her conviction."A socio-economic system reacts like a living organism. It attempts tolive on, indefinitely, agonizingly, no matter how antiquated it mighthave become. The Roman politico-economic system continued for centuriesafter it should have been replaced. Such reformers as the Gracchusbrothers were assassinated or thrust aside so that the entrenchedelements could perpetuate themselves, and when Rome finally fell,darkness descended for a thousand years on Western progress."

  Joe had never gone this far in his thoughts. He said now, somewhatuncomfortably, "Well, what would replace what we have now? If you tookpower from you Uppers, who could direct the country? The Lowers? That'snot even funny. Take away their fracases and their trank pills andthey'd go berserk. They don't _want_ anything else."

  Her mouth worked. "Admittedly, we've already allowed things todeteriorate much too far. We should have done something long ago. I'mnot sure I know the answer. All I know is that in order to maintain thestatus quo, we're not utilizing the efforts of more than a fraction ofour people. Nine out of ten of us spend our lives sitting before theTelly, sucking tranks. Meanwhile, the motivation for continued progressseems to have withered away. Our Upper political circles are afraid someseemingly minor change might avalanche, so more and more we lean uponthe old way of doing things."

  Joe had put up mild argument. "I've heard the case made that the Lowersare fools and the reason our present socio-economic system makes it sodifficult to rise from Lower to Upper is that you cannot make a foolunderstand he is one. You can only make him angry. If some, who are notfools, are allowed to advance from Lower to Upper, the vast mass who arefools will be angry because they are not allowed to. That's why theMilitary Category is made a channel of advance. To take that road, a mangives up his security and he'll die if he's a fool."

  Nadine had been scornful. "That reminds me of the old contention byracial segregationalists that the Negroes _smelled_ bad. First they putthem in a position where they had insufficient bathing facilities, theirdiet inadequate, and their teeth uncared for, and then protested thatthey couldn't be associated with because of their odor. Today, we areborn within our castes. If an Upper is inadequate, he neverthelessremains an Upper. An accident of birth makes him an aristocrat;environment, family, training, education, friends, traditions and lawsmaintain him in that position. But a Lower who potentially has thegreatest of value to society, is born handicapped and he's hard put notto wind up before a Telly, in a mental daze from trank. Sure he's afool, he's never been _allowed_ to develop himself."

  * * * * *

  Yes, Joe reflected now, it had been quite an evening. In a life of morethan thirty years devoted to rebellion, he had never met anyone sooutspoken as Nadine Haer, nor one who had thought it through as far asshe had.

  He grunted. His own revolt was against the level at which he had foundhimself in society, not the structure of society itself. His whole_raison d'etre_ was to lift himself to Upper status. It came as a shockto him to find a person he admired who had been born into Upper caste,desirous of tearing the whole system down.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the door opening and the face of MaxMainz grinning in at him. Joe was mildly surprised at his orderly notknocking before opening the door. Max evidently had a lot to learn.

  The little man blurted, "Come on, Joe. Let's go out on the town!"

  "_Joe?_" Joe Mauser raised himself to one elbow and stared at the other."Leaving aside the merits of your suggestion for the moment, do youthink you should address an officer by his first name?"

  Max Mainz came fully into the bedroom, his grin still wider. "Youforgot! It's election day!"

  "Oh." Joe Mauser relaxed into his pillow. "So it is. No duty for today,eh?"

  "No duty for anybody," Max crowed. "What
'd you say we go into town andhave a few drinks in one of the Upper bars?"

  Joe grunted, but began to arise. "What'll that accomplish? On electionday, most of the Uppers get done up in their oldest clothes and goslumming down in the Lower quarters."

  Max wasn't to be put off so easily. "Well, wherever we go, let's getgoing. Zen! I'll bet this town is full of fracas buffs from as far asPhilly. And on election day, to boot. Wouldn't it be something if Ifound me a real fracas fan, some Upper-Upper dame?"

  Joe laughed at him, even as he headed for the bathroom. As a matter offact, he rather liked the idea of going into town for the show. "Max,"he said over his shoulder, "you're in for a big disappointment. They'reall the same. Upper, Lower, or Middle."

  "Yeah?" Max grinned back at him. "Well, I'd like the pleasure of findingout if that's true by personal experience."