Читать книгу The Selected Sci-Fi Stories - Mack Reynolds - Страница 4

* * * * *

It was by no means the last trip that Paul Koslov was to make to his underground contacts, nor the last visit to the dacha at Petrodvorets.

In fact, the dacha became the meeting center of the Russian underground with their liaison agent from the West. Through it funneled the problems involved in the logistics of the thing. Spotted through the rest of the vast stretches of the country, Paul had his local agents, American, British, French, West German. But this was the center.

The Mikoyan Camera made a great success in the States. And little wonder. Unknown to the Soviets, the advertising campaign that sold it cost several times the income from the sales. All they saw were the continued orders, the repeated visits of Mr. John Smith to Leningrad on buying trips. Leonid Shvernik was even given a promotion on the strength of his so ably cracking the American market. Ana Furtseva was automatically assigned to Paul as interpreter-guide whenever he appeared in the Soviet Union's second capital.

In fact, when he made his "tourist" jaunts to the Black Sea region, to the Urals, to Turkestan, to Siberia, he was able to have her assigned to the whole trip with him. It gave a tremendous advantage in his work with the other branches of the underground.

Questions, unthought of originally when Paul Koslov had been sent into the U.S.S.R., arose as the movement progressed.

On his third visit to the dacha he said to Shvernik and three others of the organization's leaders who had gathered for the conference, "Look, my immediate superior wants me to find out who is to be your top man, the chief of state of the new regime when Number One and the present hierarchy have been overthrown."

Leonid Shvernik looked at him blankly. By this stage, he, as well as Ana, had become more to Paul than just pawns in the game being played. For some reason, having studied under the older Koslov seemed to give a personal touch that had grown.

Nikolai Kirichenko, a higher-up in the Moscow branch of the underground, looked strangely at Paul then at Shvernik. "What have you told him about the nature of our movement?" he demanded.

Paul said, "What's the matter? All I wanted to know was who was scheduled to be top man."

Shvernik said, "Actually, I suppose we have had little time to discus the nature of the new society we plan. We've been busy working on the overthrow of the Communists. However, I thought ..."

Paul was uneasy now. Leonid was right. Actually in his association with both Ana and Leonid Shvernik they had seldom mentioned what was to follow the collapse of the Soviets. It suddenly occurred to him how overwhelmingly important this was.

Nikolai Kirichenko, who spoke no English, said in Russian, "See here, we are not an organization attempting to seize power for ourselves."

This was a delicate point, Paul sensed. Revolutions are seldom put over in the name of reaction or even conservatism. Whatever the final product, they are invariably presented as being motivated by liberal idealism and progress.

He said, "I am familiar with the dedication of your organization. I have no desire to underestimate your ideals. However, my question is presented with good intentions and remains unanswered. You aren't anarchists, I know. You expect a responsible government to be in control after the removal of the police state. So I repeat, who is to be your head man?"

"How would we know?" Kirichenko blurted in irritation. "We're working toward a democracy. It's up to the Russian people to elect any officials they may find necessary to govern the country."

Shvernik said, "However, the very idea of a head man, as you call him, is opposed to what we have in mind. We aren't looking for a super-leader. We've had enough of leaders. Our experience is that it is too easy for them to become misleaders. If the history of this century has proven anything with its Mussolinis, Hitlers, Stalins, Chiangs, and Maos, it is that the search for a leader to take over the problems of a people is a vain one. The job has to be done by the people themselves."

Paul hadn't wanted to get involved in the internals of their political ideology. It was dangerous ground. For all he knew, there might be wide differences within the ranks of the revolutionary movement. There almost always were. He couldn't take sides. His only interest in all this was the overthrow of the Soviets.

He covered. "Your point is well taken, of course. I understand completely. Oh, and here's one other matter for discussion. These radio transmitters for your underground broadcasts."

It was a subject in which they were particularly interested. The Russians leaned forward.

"Here's the problem," Kirichenko said. "As you know, the Soviet Union consists of fifteen republics. In addition there are seventeen Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics that coexist within these basic fifteen republics. There are also ten of what we call Autonomous Regions. Largely, each of these political divisions speak different languages and have their own cultural differences."

Paul said, "Then it will be necessary to have transmitters for each of these areas?"

"Even more. Because some are so large that we will find it necessary to have more than one underground station."

Leonid Shvernik said worriedly, "And here is another thing. The KGB has the latest in equipment for spotting the location of an illegal station. Can you do anything about this?"

Paul said, "We'll put our best electronics men to work. The problem as I understand it, is to devise a method of broadcasting that the secret police can't trace."

They looked relieved. "Yes, that is the problem," Kirichenko said.

* * * * *

He brought up the subject some time later when he was alone with Ana. They were strolling along the left bank of the Neva River, paralleling the Admiralty Building, supposedly on a sightseeing tour.

He said, "I was discussing the future government with Leonid and some of the others the other day. I don't think I got a very clear picture of it." He gave her a general rundown of the conversation.

She twisted her mouth characteristically at him. "What did you expect, a return to Czarism? Let me see, who is pretender to the throne these days? Some Grand Duke in Paris, isn't it?"

He laughed with her. "I'm not up on such questions," Paul admitted. "I think I rather pictured a democratic parliamentary government, somewhere between the United States and England."

"Those are governmental forms based on a capitalist society, Paul."

Her hair gleamed in the brightness of the sun and he had to bring his mind back to the conversation.

"Well, yes. But you're overthrowing the Communists. That's the point, isn't it?"

"Not the way you put it. Let's set if I can explain. To begin with, there have only been three bases of government evolved by man ... I'm going to have to simplify this."

"It isn't my field, but go on," Paul said. She wore less lipstick than you'd expect on an American girl but it went with her freshness.

"The first type of governmental system was based on the family. Your American Indians were a good example. The family, the clan, the tribe. In some cases, like the Iroquois Confederation, a nation of tribes. You were represented in the government according to the family or clan in which you were born."

"Still with you so far," Paul said. She had a very slight dimple in her left cheek. Dimples went best with blondes, Paul decided.

"The next governmental system was based on property. Chattel slavery, feudalism, capitalism. In ancient Athens, for example, those Athenians who owned the property of the City-State, and the slaves with which to work it, also governed the nation. Under feudalism, the nobility owned the country and governed it. The more land a noble owned, the larger his voice in government. I'm speaking broadly, of course."

"Of course," Paul said. He decided that she had more an American type figure than was usual here. He brought his concentration back to the subject. "However, that doesn't apply under capitalism. We have democracy. Everyone votes, not just the owner of property."

Ana was very serious about it. "You mustn't use the words capitalism and democracy interchangeably. You can have capitalism, which is a social system, without having democracy which is a political system. For instance, when Hitler was in power in Germany the government was a dictatorship but the social system was still capitalism."

Then she grinned at him mischievously. "Even in the United States I think you'll find that the people who own a capitalist country run the country. Those who control great wealth have a large say in the running of the political parties, both locally and nationally. Your smaller property owners have a smaller voice in local politics. But how large a lobby does your itinerant harvest worker in Texas have in Washington?"

Paul said, slightly irritated now, "This is a big subject and I don't agree with you. However, I'm not interested now in the government of the United States. I want to know what you people have in store for Russia, if and when you take over."

She shook her head in despair at him. "That's the point the others were trying to make to you. We have no intention of taking over. We don't want to and probably couldn't even if we did want to. What we're advocating is a new type of government based on a new type of representation."

He noticed the faint touch of freckles about her nose, her shoulders—to the extent her dress revealed them—and on her arms. Her skin was fair as only the northern races produce.

Paul said, "All right. Now we get to this third base of government. The first was the family, the second was property. What else is there?"

"In an ultramodern, industrialized society, there is your method of making your livelihood. In the future you will be represented from where you work. From your industry or profession. The parliament, or congress, of the nation would consist of elected members from each branch of production, distribution, communication, education, medicine—"

"Syndicalism," Paul said, "with some touches of Technocracy."

She shrugged. "Your American Technocracy of the 1930s I am not too familiar with, although I understand power came from top to bottom, rather than from bottom to top, democratically. The early syndicalists developed some of the ideas which later thinkers have elaborated upon, I suppose. So many of these terms have become all but meaningless through sloppy use. What in the world does Socialism mean, for instance? According to some, your Roosevelt was a Socialist. Hitler called himself a National Socialist. Mussolini once edited a Socialist paper. Stalin called himself a Socialist and the British currently have a Socialist government—mind you, with a Queen on the throne."

"The advantage of voting from where you work rather than from where you live doesn't come home to me," Paul said.

"Among other things, a person knows the qualifications of the people with whom he works," Ana said, "whether he is a scientist in a laboratory or a technician in an automated factory. But how many people actually know anything about the political candidates for whom they vote?"

"I suppose we could discuss this all day," Paul said. "But what I was getting to is what happens when your outfit takes over here in Leningrad? Does Leonid become local commissar, or head of police, or ... well, whatever new title you've dreamed up?"

Ana laughed at him, as though he was impossible. "Mr. Koslov, you have a mind hard to penetrate. I keep telling you, we, the revolutionary underground, have no desire to take over and don't think that we could even if we wished. When the Soviets are overthrown by our organisation, the new government will assume power. We disappear as an organization. Our job is done. Leonid? I don't know, perhaps his fellow employees at the Mikoyan Camera works will vote him into some office in the plant, if they think him capable enough."

"Well," Paul sighed, "it's your country. I'll stick to the American system." He couldn't take his eyes from the way her lips tucked in at the sides.

Ana said, "How long have you been in love with me, Paul?"

"What?"

She laughed. "Don't be so blank. It would be rather odd, wouldn't it, if two people were in love, and neither of them realized what had happened?"

"Two people in love," he said blankly, unbelievingly.

* * * * *

Leonid Shvernik and Paul Koslov were bent over a map of the U.S.S.R. The former pointed out the approximate location of the radio transmitters. "We're not going to use them until the last moment," he said. "Not until the fat is in the fire. Then they will all begin at once. The KGB and MVD won't have time to knock them out."

Paul said, "Things are moving fast. Faster than I had expected. We're putting it over, Leonid."

Shvernik said, "Only because the situation is ripe. It's the way revolutions work."

"How do you mean?" Paul said absently, studying the map.

"Individuals don't put over revolutions. The times do, the conditions apply. Did you know that six months before the Bolshevik revolution took place Lenin wrote that he never expected to live to see the Communist take over in Russia? The thing was that the conditions were there. The Bolsheviks, as few as they were, were practically thrown into power."

"However," Paul said dryly, "it was mighty helpful to have such men as Lenin and Trotsky handy."

Shvernik shrugged. "The times make the men. Your own American Revolution is probably better known to you. Look at the men those times produced. Jefferson, Paine, Madison, Hamilton, Franklin, Adams. And once again, if you had told any of those men, a year before the Declaration of Independence, that a complete revolution was the only solution to the problems that confronted them, they would probably have thought you insane."

It was a new line of thought for Paul Koslov. "Then what does cause a revolution?"

"The need for it. It's not just our few tens of thousands of members of the underground who see the need for overthrowing the Soviet bureaucracy. It's millions of average Russians in every walk of life and every strata, from top to bottom. What does the scientist think when some bureaucrat knowing nothing of his speciality comes into the laboratory and directs his work? What does the engineer in an automobile plant think when some silly politician decides that since cars in capitalist countries have four wheels, that Russia should surpass them by producing a car with five? What does your scholar think when he is told what to study, how to interpret it, and then what to write? What does your worker think when he sees the bureaucrat living in luxury while his wage is a comparatively meager one? What do your young people think in their continual striving for a greater degree of freedom than was possessed by their parents? What does your painter think? Your poet? Your philosopher?"

Shvernik shook his head. "When a nation is ready for revolution, it's the people who put it over. Often, the so-called leaders are hard put to run fast enough to say out in front."

* * * * *

Paul said, "After it's all over, we'll go back to the States. I know a town up in the Sierras called Grass Valley. Hunting, fishing, mountains, clean air, but still available to cities such as San Francisco where you can go for shopping and for restaurants and entertainment."

She kissed him again.

Paul said, "You know, I've done this sort of work—never on this scale before, of course—ever since I was nineteen. Nineteen, mind you! And this is the first time I've realized I'm tired of it. Fed up to here. I'm nearly thirty-five, Ana, and for the first time I want what a man is expected to want out of life. A woman, a home, children. You've never seen America. You'll love it. You'll like Americans too, especially the kind that live in places like Grass Valley."

Ana laughed softly. "But we're Russians, Paul."

"Eh?"

"Our home and our life should be here. In Russia. The New Russia that we'll have shortly."

He scoffed at her. "Live here when there's California? Ana, Ana, you don't know what living is. Why—"

"But, Paul, I'm a Russian. If the United States is a more pleasant place to live than Russia will be, when we have ended the police state, then it is part of my duty to improve Russia."

It suddenly came to him that she meant it. "But I was thinking, all along, that after this was over we'd be married. I'd be able to show you my country."

"And, I don't know why, I was thinking we both expected to be making a life for ourselves here."

They were silent for a long time in mutual misery.

Paul said finally, "This is no time to make detailed plans. We love each other, that should be enough. When it's all over, we'll have the chance to look over each other's way of life. You can visit the States with me."

"And I'll take you on a visit to Armenia. I know a little town in the mountains there which is the most beautiful in the world. We'll spend a week there. A month! Perhaps one day we can build a summer dacha there." She laughed happily. "Why practically everyone lives to be a hundred years old in Armenia."

"Yeah, we'll have to go there sometime," Paul said quietly.

* * * * *

He'd been scheduled to see Leonid that night but at the last moment the other sent Ana to report that an important meeting was to take place. A meeting of underground delegates from all over the country. They were making basic decisions on when to move—but Paul's presence wasn't needed.

He had no feeling of being excluded from something that concerned him. Long ago it had been decided that the less details known by the average man in the movement about Paul's activities, the better it would be. There is always betrayal and there are always counter-revolutionary agents within the ranks of an organization such as this. What was the old Russian proverb? When four men sit down to discuss revolution, three are police spies and the third a fool.

Actually, this had been astonishingly well handled. He had operated for over a year with no signs that the KGB was aware of his activities. Leonid and his fellows were efficient. They had to be. The Commies had been slaughtering anyone who opposed them for forty years now. To survive as a Russian underground you had to be good.

No, it wasn't a feeling of exclusion. Paul Koslov was stretched out on the bed of his king-size Astoria Hotel room, his hands behind his head and staring up at the ceiling. He recapitulated the events of the past months from the time he'd entered the Chief's office in Washington until last night at the dacha with Leonid and Ana.

The whole thing.

And over and over again.

There was a line of worry on his forehead.

He swung his feet to the floor and approached the closet. He selected his most poorly pressed pair of pants, and a coat that mismatched it. He checked the charge in his .38 Noiseless, and replaced the weapon under his left arm. He removed his partial bridge, remembering as he did so how he had lost the teeth in a street fight with some Commie union organizers in Panama, and replaced the porcelain bridge with a typically Russian gleaming steel one. He stuffed a cap into his back pocket, a pair of steel rimmed glasses into an inner pocket, and left the room.

He hurried through the lobby, past the Intourist desk, thankful that it was a slow time of day for tourist activity.

Outside, he walked several blocks to 25th of October Avenue and made a point of losing himself in the crowd. When he was sure that there could be no one behind him, he entered a pivnaya, had a glass of beer, and then disappeared into the toilet. There he took off the coat, wrinkled it a bit more, put it back on and also donned the cap and glasses. He removed his tie and thrust it into a side pocket.

He left, in appearance a more or less average workingman of Leningrad, walked to the bus station on Nashimson Volodarski and waited for the next bus to Petrodvorets. He would have preferred the subway, but the line didn't run that far as yet.

The bus took him to within a mile and a half of the dacha, and he walked from there.

By this time Paul was familiar with the security measures taken by Leonid Shvernik and the others. None at all when the dacha wasn't in use for a conference or to hide someone on the lam from the KGB. But at a time like this, there would be three sentries, carefully spotted.

This was Paul's field now. Since the age of nineteen, he told himself wryly. He wondered if there was anyone in the world who could go through a line of sentries as efficiently as he could.

He approached the dacha at the point where the line of pine trees came nearest to it. On his belly he watched for ten minutes before making the final move to the side of the house. He lay up against it, under a bush.

From an inner pocket he brought the spy device he had acquired from Derek Steven's Rube Goldberg department. It looked and was supposed to look considerably like a doctor's stethoscope. He placed it to his ears, pressed the other end to the wall of the house.

Leonid Shvernik was saying, "Becoming killers isn't a pleasant prospect but it was the Soviet who taught us that the end justifies the means. And so ruthless a dictatorship have they established that there is literally no alternative. The only way to remove them is by violence. Happily, so we believe, the violence need extend to only a small number of the very highest of the hierarchy. Once they are eliminated and our transmitters proclaim the new revolution, there should be little further opposition."

Someone sighed deeply—Paul was able to pick up even that.

"Why discuss it further?" somebody whose voice Paul didn't recognize, asked. "Let's get onto other things. These broadcasts of ours have to be the ultimate in the presentation of our program. The assassination of Number One and his immediate supporters is going to react unfavorably at first. We're going to have to present unanswerable arguments if our movement is to sweep the nation as we plan."

A new voice injected, "We've put the best writers in the Soviet Union to work on the scripts. For all practical purposes they are completed."

"We haven't yet decided what to say about the H-Bomb, the missiles, all the endless equipment of war that has accumulated under the Soviets, not to speak of the armies, the ships, the aircraft and all the personnel who man them."

Someone else, it sounded like Nikolai Kirichenko, from Moscow, said. "I'm chairman of the committee on that. It's our opinion that we're going to have to cover that matter in our broadcasts to the people and the only answer is that until the West has agreed to nuclear disarmament, we're going to have to keep our own."

Leonid said, and there was shock in his voice, "But that's one of the most basic reasons for the new revolution, to eliminate this mad arms race, this devoting half the resources of the world to armament."

"Yes, but what can we do? How do we know that the Western powers won't attack? And please remember that it is no longer just the United States that has nuclear weapons. If we lay down our defenses, we are capable of being destroyed by England, France, West Germany, even Turkey or Japan! And consider, too, that the economies of some of the Western powers are based on the production of arms to the point that if such production ended, overnight, depressions would sweep their nations. In short, they can't afford a world without tensions."

"It's a problem for the future to solve," someone else said. "But meanwhile I believe the committee is right. Until it is absolutely proven that we need have no fears about the other nations, we must keep our own strength."

Under his hedge, Paul grimaced, but he was getting what he came for, a discussion of policy, without the restrictions his presence would have put on the conversation.

"Let's deal with a more pleasant subject," a feminine voice said. "Our broadcasts should stress to the people that for the first time in the history of Russia we will be truly in the position to lead the world! For fifty years the Communists attempted to convert nations into adopting their system, and largely they were turned down. Those countries that did become Communist either did so at the point of the Red Army's bayonet or under the stress of complete collapse such as in China. But tomorrow, and the New Russia? Freed from the inadequacy and inefficiency of the bureaucrats who have misruled us, we'll develop a productive machine that will be the envy of the world!" Her voice had all but a fanatical ring.

Someone else chuckled, "If the West thought they had competition from us before, wait until they see the New Russia!"

Paul thought he saw someone, a shadow, at the side of the clearing. His lips thinned and the .38 Noiseless was in his hand magically.

False alarm.

He turned back to the "conversation" inside.

Kirichenko's voice was saying, "It is hard for me not to believe that within a period of a year or so half the countries of the world will follow our example."

"Half!" someone laughed exuberantly. "The world, Comrades! The new system will sweep the world. For the first time in history the world will see what Marx and Engels were really driving at!"

* * * * *

Back at the hotel, toward morning, Paul was again stretched out on the bed, hands under his head, his eyes unseeingly staring at the ceiling as he went through his agonizing reappraisal.

There was Ana.

And there was even Leonid Shvernik and some of the others of the underground. As close friends as he had ever made in a life that admittedly hadn't been prone to friendship.

And there was Russia, the country of his birth. Beyond the underground movement, beyond the Soviet regime, beyond the Romanoff Czars. Mother Russia. The land of his parents, his grandparents, the land of his roots.

And, of course, there was the United States and the West. The West which had received him in his hour of stress in his flight from Mother Russia. Mother Russia, ha! What kind of a mother had she been to the Koslovs? To his grandfather, his father, his mother and brother? Where would he, Paul, be today had he as a child not been sent fleeing to the West?

And his life work. What of that? Since the age of nineteen, when a normal teenager would have been in school, preparing himself for life. Since nineteen he had been a member of the anti-Soviet team.

A star, too! Paul Koslov, the trouble-shooter, the always reliable, cold, ruthless. Paul Koslov on whom you could always depend to carry the ball.

Anti-Soviet, or anti-Russian?

Why kid himself about his background. It meant nothing. He was an American. He had only the faintest of memories of his family or of the country. Only because people told him so did he know he was a Russian. He was as American as it is possible to get.

What had he told such Westerners, born and bred, as Lord Carrol and Derek Stevens? If he wasn't a member of the team, there just wasn't a team.

But then, of course, there was Ana.

Yes, Ana. But what, actually, was there in the future for them? Now that he considered it, could he really picture her sitting in the drug store on Montez Street, Grass Valley, having a banana split?

Ana was Russian. As patriotic a Russian as it was possible to be. As much a dedicated member of the Russian team as it was possible to be. And as a team member, she, like Paul, knew the chances that were involved. You didn't get to be a star by sitting on the bench. She hadn't hesitated, in the clutch, to sacrifice her favorite brother.

* * * * *

Paul Koslov propped the Tracy, the wristwatch-like radio before him, placing its back to a book. He made it operative, began to repeat, "Paul calling. Paul calling."

A thin, far away voice said finally, "O.K. Paul. I'm receiving."

Paul Koslov took a deep breath and said, "All right, this is it. In just a few days we're all set to kick off. Understand?"

"I understand, Paul."

"Is it possible that anybody else can be receiving this?"

"Absolutely impossible."

"All right, then this is it. The boys here are going to start their revolution going by knocking off not only Number One, but also Two, Three, Four, Six and Seven of the hierarchy. Number Five is one of theirs."

The thin voice said, "You know I don't want details. They're up to you."

Paul grimaced. "This is why I called. You've got to make—or someone's got to make—one hell of an important decision in the next couple of days. It's not up to me. For once I'm not to be brushed off with that 'don't bother me with details,' routine."

"Decision? What decision? You said everything was all ready to go, didn't you?"

"Look," Paul Koslov said, "remember when you gave me this assignment. When you told me about the Germans sending Lenin up to Petrograd in hopes he'd start a revolution and the British sending Somerset Maugham to try and prevent it?"

"Yes, yes, man. What's that got to do with it?" Even over the long distance, the Chief's voice sounded puzzled.

"Supposedly the Germans were successful, and Maugham failed. But looking back at it a generation later, did the Germans win out by helping bring off the Bolshevik revolution? The Soviets destroyed them for all time as a first-rate power at Stalingrad, twenty-five years afterwards."

The voice from Washington was impatient. "What's your point, Paul?"

"My point is this. When you gave me this assignment, you told me I was in the position of the German who engineered bringing Lenin up to Petrograd to start the Bolsheviks rolling. Are you sure that the opposite isn't true? Are you sure it isn't Maugham's job I should have? Let me tell you, Chief, these boys I'm working with now are sharp, they've got more on the ball than these Commie bureaucrats running the country have a dozen times over.

"Chief, this is the decision that has to be made in the next couple of days. Just who do we want eliminated? Are you sure you don't want me to tip off the KGB to this whole conspiracy?"