The Fracas Factor (12 page)

There were women about the cluster of tables, about half as many as the men. Some kind of a women’s auxiliary, Max assumed. But they, too, had no particular Society dress or emblem. They were dressed in the very latest, held champagne glasses in their soft hands, and chatted with the men.

In spite of the fact that this was a rally open to the public, Max Mainz knew well that if he walked up to those Upper tables and asked for a drink, a sandwich, or whatever, that he’d be given at the very least, a cold, aloof stare.

“Well,” he told himself, under his breath. “I know bettern to try.” Max was well aware of the protocol in the caste system of People’s Capitalism.

Not even the prospect of free beer and trank had brought out a crowd large enough to fill the rope enclosure to anything like its capacity. Most Lowers preferred trank to beer anyway, and it was government-subsidized to the point that it was nearly free. And the shows you could watch on telly were probably a damn sight more entertaining than this was proving to be. There wasn’t always a fracas in progress, of course, but there was always an abundance of reruns of old classic scraps, especially those that had provided a more than usual amount of closeups of gore and death. Some buffs even bought cassettes of the classics and would rerun them over and over. And then there were the phoney-fracases, which were no more than what amounted to movies. They were gorier than in the old days, but less realistic.

Max wandered around a bit, beer mug in hand. The rally committee had brought in a hovertruck with a six-man band in it. The Society was certainly sparing no resources to put this over. The band started blaring martial and patriotic music, something about blessing America. Max decided that the Nathan Hale Society particularly stressed early American history, what with such slogans as My Country Right Or Wrong and Don’t Tread On Me, and calling their bully-boys Minutemen. Now the band even swung into Yankee Doodle.

Several of the Uppers who had been gathered around the exclusive tables began to file up onto the speaker’s stand and take folding chairs there. It was beginning to get slightly dark, and some of the Minutemen who were acting as guards with their billy clubs, began lighting torches. It had been decided that firelight was more inspiring.

Max refilled his beer mug again and sauntered up to an advantageous position.

The chairman began, “Fellow patriotic Americans, fellow benefactors of our glorious system, People’s Capitalism…” He paused at that point, obviously for applause.

He went on to introduce the first speaker. Max missed the name and tide, but it was some official connected with Category Security. It would appear that he was some pretty high mucky-muck. And for the first time Max noted two telly trucks, grinding away with their cameras. Must be good lenses to be able to work in this light, Max decided. And the Society must have good connections to get the coverage. He wondered whether or not Joe Mauser was tuned in.

He was worried about Joe Mauser and that outfit he’d gotten himself tied up with. Max was still of the opinion that you shouldn’t say anything against the government. Perhaps, after a while Joe Mauser would tire of all this subversive jetsam and settle down to enjoying life. Hell, between them they not only had Max’s shares of Inalienable and Variable Basic but Joe’s as well. Plenty to start really living it up, particularly since Joe was a Low-Upper. Max wished that Nadine Haer wasn’t on the scene. He liked her well enough, but was afraid that when she married Joe there wouldn’t be much room in his life for Max. Well, maybe Max could become his chauffeur, or some other kind of flunky. He’d once been in Doctor Haer’s lavish home. She had a whole mess of various kinds of servants.

The speaker was going on and on, largely about subversives and how every patriotic citizen should cooperate with Category Security in bringing them to justice. He darkly hinted at the same facts that had surfaced in the leaflets and pamphlets. The malcontents were foreigners, atheists, and worse. Some of them were undoubtedly agents of the Sov-world who infiltrated into the country to overthrow People’s Capitalism and the Ultra-Welfare State, so that the Sov-world could dominate all Earth.

At this point, the Middle standing next to Max Mainz laughed aloud. A silence fell. And the speaker stared down through the poor torch-supplied, light. He called in a threatening voice, “What’s so damned funny?”

And the voice called back, “Sorry, it’s bad manners to laugh at somebody who’s gone drivel-happy and obviously needs mental therapy.”

Suddenly, two of the Minutemen appeared. The man in the audience tried to turn and run, but the minutemen clubbed him. He hunched over and attempted to cover his head with his arms, but nobody came to his aid. All surrounding him fell back hurriedly, and he was beaten down. The two Minutemen grabbed him up by the arms and hustled him away.

Max hadn’t moved.

A voice next to him said ominously, “He a friend of yours?”

Max looked at the speaker, another Minuteman. And then recognized him as the tough-looking committeeman who had borne leaflets earlier. He had called himself Jerry. He bore a billy club now.

“Zen, no!” Max said, his tone aggrieved. “You never hear me saying nothing against the government and none of its officials. That funker just happened to be standing next to me. I never seen him before. He deserved just what he got.”

The speaker went on.

Although he remained to the bitter end, Max’s attention had drifted astray early in the game. In the first ten minutes, the first speaker had covered everything the Nathan Hale Society believed in. The Society stood for the United States of the Americas, particularly those northern states once called the United States, Alaska, and Canada. It was forthrightly opposed to subversives, foreigners, others than Caucasians, atheists, and espionage agents from the Sov-world and the Neut-world.

When the last speaker had called for questions from the audience, there were none. He returned to his place and there was scattered applause, largely from the Minutemen. Max made his way closer to the stand and found that Jerry had been correct. A table had been set up there with a stack of membership blanks. A half a dozen or so applicants were lined up before it. Two Uppers were seated behind, one of them in the uniform of a colonel, the other in mufti.

Max recognized the civilian. It was Baron Balt Haer, brother of Doctor Nadine Haer, Max’s first inclination was to turn and leave, but he decided against it. The Baron wouldn’t recognize him as one of Joe Mauser’s friends.

When his turn came, Max stepped up before the head of the Haer family and came to attention. The other looked up and smiled as encouraging a smile as he was capable of when dealing with his underlings.

He said, “You wish to join the Nathan Hale Society?”

“Yes, sir!” Max said crisply.

“Name, category, rank, and caste status, please.”

“Max Mainz, Category Military, Rank Private, Middle-Lower.”

“Category Military, eh? Good, we don’t get nearly enough applicants from the Category Military.” Balt Haer frowned. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

Max was worried because Balt seemed to have an uncanny memory. He had seen, him only once in the past. He had been in a line before the offices of Vacuum Tube Transport when they had been recruiting for their fracas with Continental Hovercraft to be held on the Catskill Military Reservation. Max had gotten into a scrap with three larger men who were trying to take his place in the line. Joe Mauser had come to his rescue, and the fight was on in earnest until Balt Haer, a colonel at the time, had come up and put an end to it. It had been the beginning of Haer’s run-in with Joe Mauser, who was then a captain. But it was unbelievable that he would remember Max.

Max said, “Yes, sir. I fought on your side in that there fracas with Continental Hovercraft.”

“Oh, yes,” Haer looked vague. “It must have been there. Glad to have you with us, Mainz. Just sign this paper here and give us your identification number, so that we can check out your Category Security dossier. Then come to headquarters Saturday night and well finish processing you. Since you’re Category Military, you’ll probably want to join the Minutemen.”

“Yes, sir,” Max said sincerely. “If there’s any dill I want to be in on it.”

“Good man!” Balt Haer handed over a stylo and while Max was signing up, said, “Next.”

That business about the checking of his dossier set Max back a bit. Theoretically, nobody except proper government officals were in a position to examine a citizen’s Category Security dossier. And the Nathan Hale Society, while proclaiming its ultra-patriotism, was by no means connected with the government, and certainly not with Category Security. He wondered what might be in his dossier that could arouse the suspicions of Baron Balt Haer. He had no way of finding out. Citizens of the United States of the Americas were not given access to their secretly compiled Security dossiers.

Chapter Eleven

Joe Mauser was having one of his not uncommon nightmares. Nadine Haer, as a doctor herself, had suggested that he take the problem to a psychiatrist, but thus far he hadn’t been able to bring himself to it. He was prejudiced against psychiatrists and was against admitting that psychiatry was necessary in his case. Others might be drivel-happy, as the expression went these days, but not Joe Mauser.

The dream was about a full divisional magnitude fracas that had been fought on the same Catskill Military Reservation that many years later was to prove his Waterloo. It was between Lockheed-Cessna and Douglas-Boeing and the issue had been some huge government contract. Joe had never gotten a very clear picture of what they were fighting about. That wasn’t his interest. He was a mercenary and his interests were first, staying alive, second, projecting himself well enough that it would lead to, ideally, a bounce in caste from High-Lower to at least Low-Middle, and, three, that his side, Lockheed-Cessna, would win so that he would get not only the three shares of Variable Basic that were coming to him, win or lose, but a bonus as well. They almost always gave you a bonus if your side won.

General “Bitter Dave” Langenscheidt was commanding Douglas-Boeing, and it was well known among the fracas-buffs that there was a considerable grudge between Bitter Dave and Stonewall Cogswell, who was commanding the right flank of the Lockheed-Cessna forces, and who was to win his Marshal’s baton as a result of this battle. Joe Mauser was fighting under him as an infantry second lieutenant, a shavetail. And so was Jim Hawkins, his comrade-in-arms for many years.

The Category Military Department had given the two corporations permission for a maximum of one month to fight it out. If one side or the other didn’t win in that period of time, the fracas would terminate and a court of senior officers of the Department would rule on who had won, or if it was a draw.

For the first three weeks, Stonewall Cogswell’s brilliant tactics had seen them through to what seemed like certain victory. Langenscheidt’s regiments had been backed up, until finally he set his men to building defensive trenches near the Catskill town of Lake Hill. Or, more correctly, what had once been a small town; it had been shelled into ruin long since.

Through sheer bad luck, the company to which Joe and Jim Hawkins belonged had taken more than their share of the dill. Over and over they had been thrown into the heaviest action. Stonewall Cogswell, knowing full well that they were his most experienced veterans, had used them as storm troops. Thus Joe and Jim knew with certainty that they’d go in again in the morning, when they applied to the general for a one-night pass in nearby Kingston, a city of some twenty-five thousand right on the edge of the military reservation.

It was an unusual request. Passes were seldom granted in the middle of a fracas. However, Jim Hawkins and Joe Mauser had been in almost continuous combat for three weeks and had another week of it to go.

They stood before General Cogswell’s portable military desk in his field headquarters. He was a smallish man, but he had a strikingly strong face and a strong build. His voice was clipped and clear and had a ring of command, suggesting that he had given many an order and fully expected them to be carried out.

He said, “Gentlemen, my apologies for drawing upon you and your lads beyond the call of duty to such an extent over the past weeks. However, we go into the attack at first dawn.”

“Yes, sir,” Jim said.

Cogswell looked from him to Joe, his face a bit testy. He said, “Do you think you can be back with your lads by that time—and sober?”

“Yes, sir,” Joe said.

“I hope so, gentlemen. In view of your gallantry in the past three weeks, I have already made a note to recommend your promotions upon the conclusion of this fracas. I hope you do nothing to alter my thinking. One night pass granted. Notify the major at the desk out front.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” they said in unison, saluting. He was already back at his field maps. He looked infinitely weary. Like Napoleon, it was said that he could get by with two hours sleep a night when involved in a battle.

Outside, passes in hand, they looked at each other jubilantly.

“Old chum-pal,” Jim said happily, “we’re in business. I need a drink almost as badly as I need to breathe.”

“Second the motion,” Joe said. “Let’s see if we can liberate a couple of horses from some of the cavalry lads.”

They borrowed the horses from two of Jack Alshuler’s junior officers, who were openly envious at their Kingston leave. However, this had been a fracas in which the brunt had been thrown on the infantry, not the horse. And General Alshuler’s Heavy Cavalry had largely spent their time sitting around, or going on scouts. It wouldn’t have done to refuse the loan to two men who had been in the dill in the last days.

They headed for Kingston at a gallop, conscious of every elapsing minute.

Jim said, “First dawn attack, eh? Old Stonewall sounds as though he’s trying to wind it up. I wonder if he figures on a frontal attack.”

“That’s all we need,” Joe said. “But you know Cogswell. He never orders a frontal assault on a strong point, unless the other lads are punch drunk.”