Radical Center by Mack Reynolds

RADICAL CENTER

Mack Reynolds

(“Radical Center” by Mack Reynolds, originally published in Analog. Copyright 1967 by the Conde Vast Publications, Inc.)

The first inkling I must have had was when I went into the corner drugstore and said to Jerry: "Let me have a pack of butts."

Jerry knew my brand. He had been pushing them over the counter to me for the past five years.

"What the hell's this?" I said, not picking the pack up.

Jerry grinned his stupid Alfred E. Newman grin.

“That's what you asked for," he said.

"I smoke Luckies, it's part of the image," I said sourly. Jerry and I aren't friends, I've just dealt with him for years. Besides, I'd only had Lime for one cup of coffee that morning.

"You asked for Butts," he said. I looked at him. Finally, I picked up the package. The label read: Butts.

I snorted, as though the clerk had told a pun. I turned the pack over, just to see if there was anything else. On the bottom it read: If Any Cigarette Will Give You Lung Cancer, Butts Will.

"All right," I said.

“I'll try them."

"Everybody does," Jerry grinned idiotically.

I'm no connoisseur of tobacco. They tasted the same to me as any other brand. I probably bought them with the idea of being able to haul the pack out, present it to someone and say, "Have a Butt." Big joke.

I found a place where I could set the Volkshover down and walked the rest of the way to the office.

There was a new display in a liquor store window. A couple of illustrations took a far departure from the old traditional man of distinction sipping delicately away at a highball whilst being admired by a yearning goddess combining the pulchritude of a dozen of Tri-Di's current sex symbols.

One of the illustrations portrayed a skid-row specimen, sprawling up against a brick wall in what was evidently a garbage dump. In one hand he held a half empty fifth, and he was obviously smashed. Smashed, but happy. His eyes were crossed and his mouth was hang-ing open. The caption read: NEW CORN WHISKEY isn't made in Maryland or Kentucky. It isn't aged beyond what the law requires. We don't use any particular water in its distillation and we wouldn't know sour mash and a pot still if we saw them. But MAN can you get stoned on NEW CORN WHISKEY. Hooch with a Hangover in every drop.

The other illustration was of a party in its last stages of disintegration. Several of the guests had passed out on the floor. Two or three bottles were overturned. Broken and half-empty glasses were strewn about the room. The atmosphere was heavy with smoke and at least one cigar was smoldering in the rug. The caption was approximately the same as the other.

I grunted and went on.

In the elevator, going up to the city room, I ran into one of the copy kids, a sheaf of newsprint in one hand, that earnest look in eye that they have the first year out of journalism school.

She said, "Hi, Lucky. You better look out for Mr. Blackstone today. He's on the warpath."

I said, "Ruthie, I shall giveth him the gentle answer that turneth away rats."

"You'd better," she said, popping out on the third floor.

So Blackstone was on the warpath. It had happened before, but the last time hadn't been too long after my Dolly Tetter coup and I'd survived the scalping party.

This time might prove to be different.

The blast rattled me as I. entered the city room.

"Mars!" he yelled.

“Lucky Mars!"

I approached his desk.

"Yes, sir," I said earnestly.

"What'd yawl think this is, a club? Where've you been? You might be Wilkins' fair-haired boy, but yawl don't pull these banker's hours on my edition."

"Yes, sir," I told him.

“Working."

"Working!" Old Burnoff blatted.

“Working who? You've already borrowed from everybody who doesn't know better."

Rank has its privileges. I chuckled at his bon mot appreciatively.

Then, in instinctive self-defense, I became earnest again.

“I've been researching another big one, I think, Mr. Blackstone."

His eyes had a baleful quality.

“That's what yawl said last week. Frankly, Mars, my opinion is you couldn't get the story of your own house burning down."

I had to answer that one.

“Yes, sir. But I'm the only reporter on this rag that ever copped the Pulitzer. Not to speak of doing it twice."

He glared.

“Don't remind me of that, Mars. It hurts. I admit, you've had two or three flukes. That's why Wilkins insists on keeping you. But a Pulitzer Prize doesn't . ."

"Two," I said.

". .. Make you a newspaperman." However, he shifted gears down.

“What's this big story you're working on?"

My mind raced. Old Burnoff was the oldest hand on the Journal. A Southerner, he had come up from the country weeklies . . . the hard way. He knew I was no newspaperman, and I knew I was no newspaperman, and what galled him most of all was that my pay was approximately the same as his own. I was the highest paid reporter in the State.

I said cautiously, "I'd rather keep this under my hat for a while, Mr. Blackstone."

"I'll bet you would. Don't curd me, Lucky Mars. What're you supposedly working on?"

The old magic was slipping. He knew I was no newspaperman, but on the other hand I'd produced the two greatest beats this part of the country had ever seen. How could he be sure I wouldn't do it again? How could he take a chance on throwing me out, when I might go over to the News-Chronicle and hand them the story of the year?

My mind was still trying to race, but it was hardly in second.

He growled, low and suspiciously, "Is it crime?"

Obviously, he couldn't forget the Dolly Tetter bank robbery. I'd had enough sense, when that happened, to put over the impression that I'd been working on the story for weeks, rather than stumbling on it.

But I knew no more about crime in Center City than did my kid sister. Besides, I can get the cold shudders from just looking at a hood safely stashed behind bars, with steel bracelets on his wrists and a cop at each side.

I didn't want Blackstone to get any idea whatsoever that I was snooping around Syndicate or Mafia operations in Center City.

"No, sir."

"Well, what is it, Mars? Yawl don't have to give me details, I'd just like a general idea of what you're supposedly doing to earn your pay."

I cleared my throat.

“Well, sir," I improvised, "it's more like sub-version." I thought about it.

“Yes, sir," I added.

"Subversion! In Center City? Listen, Mars, the last commie in this town died three years ago of old age."

"Well, yes, sir, but this isn't exactly commie, Mr. Blackstone." I hesitated.

“At least I don't think it is."

His expression turned less belligerent, more speculative.

“Ahhh. The radical right, eh?"

Oh, oh. I didn't want to get tangled up in that, either. The owners of the Journal aren't exactly liberals.

"Well, sir, not really. This seems to be, uh, a new group."

"Neither left nor right?" he scowled.

"Well, no, sir." I cleared my throat.

“You might say, the radical center."

He looked at me for a long moment, as though he'd put his last dime in a pay telephone and got the wrong number.

Finally, "Mars, just for the record. Something to give me a vague idea of what yawl think you're doing. Let me have one example of something that's led you along this path. Anything at all, you hear?"

My imagination jumped on its horse and began riding off in all directions. It was put up or shut up, now, and Old Burnoff wasn't going to take any more gobbledygook.

On an impulse, I pulled out my package of cigarettes.

"Have you seen these?" I demanded.

He looked at them.

“Butts?" he growled.

“New brand? So what?"

I tapped the pack with an emphatic forefinger.

“How come they pick Center City to introduce a snide attack on the American Way? Years ago it was decided that cigarettes were one of our institutions and that we'd ignore all the curd the medicos were supposedly dis-covering."

He looked at the cigarettes blankly.

“A lot of tryout campaigns start here, Lucky. Center of the nation. Average big city. That sort of thing."

"Yeah," I snorted.

“And such recent items as New Corn Whiskey. Whoever heard of a whiskey being new? Traditionally, both bourbon and rye are invariably named Old-something-or-other. Old Forester, Old Granddad, Old Crow, and so on. I tell you, this attack is subtle."

He said unhappily, "Undermining the country's image, eh? The radical center."

I said, "I don't want to say any more, sir. I've got a lot of leads but it's going to take time."

He thought about it some more. Finally, unhappily, "All right, Lucky. Supposedly you're our rov-ing reporter. Keep roving."

"Yes, sir," I said, giving him a semisalute. I turned and slouched away, trying to twist my face into the suggestion that I had something mighty weighty on my mind.

As a matter of fact, I did. The problem of keeping one of the best jobs in town. Long years past I had given up the hope of ever holding down any job beyond putting cans on ultramarket shelves. This one had dropped into my lap. Holding it for over a year was a straight miracle. And I didn't believe in miracles although I had participated in two of them.

All right, so it was too early in the day to start drinking. Nevertheless, I went on over to The Hole and climbed up on a stool and said to Sam, "A long dark."

It must have been the first glass he had drawn that day. The head was too high. He took his spatula and flicked some of it out, then put the glass down to let it settle.

I said gloomily, "You know how much a beer cost back when I first started drinking?"

"Yep," he said.

“Fifteen cents."

"Now it's four bits."

"Yep," he said, taking up the glass again.

 "It's inflation," I said accusingly.

“The government ought to put price ceilings on the necessities."

Sam topped the glass off neatly and put it in front of me.

"How much pay were you pulling down then?" he asked.

I thought about it.

“About eighty bucks.”

“You were lucky. How much do you make now?"

I took up the beer.

“Nearly three hundred. And I need every penny of it. I'm the only guy in the world that can go into a revolving door and come out ten dollars poorer."

"It all balances out, Mr. Myers. You know what I hafta pay a good barman, now? Two hunerd, and even then he figures he's got stealing privileges."

"Stealing privileges?"

"Yep. The right to play on the cash register."

"Don't tell me your troubles. I’ve got my own."

"Mr. Myers, you don't know what trouble is," Sam said, leaning on the bar before me.

“They don't call you Lucky for nothing."

"Oh, they don't, eh?"

"No, sir. The way I figure it, I'm glad you don't play that one-anned bandit of mine. As it is, it pays the rent for me."

I took down about half of the beer.

"I'll tell you something," I said.

“You know why I don't play your slot machine, Sam?"

"No. Why?"

"Because I've got to maintain my public image. But don't tell any-body I said so." He waited for me to elaborate that.

I shook a finger at him.

“Sam, luck makes luck. When people think you've got it, you do have it. And it's like having a property. Like having a pension. And if you've got good sense, you hang onto it."

He twisted his ugly face thinking that over.

He said, "The way I figure it, Mr. Myers, it all balances out—the laws of chance, like. You take the hunerd million men we got in this country. Each one gets an average number of breaks, good and bad. But mind, I said average. In making that up some guys got such bad luck they'll break their arm picking their nose. But to balance them, we got guys like yourself. If you fell into a cesspool, you'd come up with a diamond ring somebody lost down the drain the day before."

I finished the beer and pushed the glass back to him for a refill.

“That's what you think," I said nastily.

“Let me tell you the way it really is."

"All right," he told me, drawing another dark.

“You tell me the way it is."

"Like I said, luck can make luck. You have a chunk of it and everybody thinks, so O.K., he had a piece of luck. But then a short time after you have another king-size chunk. Everybody's impressed. They figure you've got Old Lady Fortune riding around on your shoulder. From then on, it builds up and every happy happenstance that comes to you is kind of magnified as past of your lucky image. And that's when your supposed luck makes luck. You meet a new girl at a party. She had half a dozen other men around her. When you show interest, with your known luck, they figure they haven't got a chance and fade. You get the girl."

Sam pushed the second beer over to me and leaned on the bar again, interested.

"So that's how you figure it works."

"Yes," I said gloomily.

“And they never think about it when later on she turns out to be a witch on wheels.”

“Well," Sam said, "maybe that's the way it is. But I've always wondered why you didn't go on out to Vegas and play the wheels, in-stead of holding down a newspaper job. You don't like reporter work anyways, do you?"

I grunted at him sourly.

“With beer at four bits a throw, I like any job that'll pay me three hundred a week."

Sam looked at the clock up on the wall.

“Hey," he said, "Dugan's on." He turned and flicked on the idiot box, ignoring my expression of distaste.

"Don't you like my conversation?" I growled.

"It's not that, Mr. Myers," he said, even while fiddling with the dials.

“It's this new Tri-Di character, Dugan.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He'll be on in a minute," Sam said, chuckling anticipation.

“He's new. He's supposed to be the hero, like, unnerstand? But he's not good looking, like. In fact, he's ugly as a monkey. He's got kind of a mean temper and everything happens to him, and he never gets the girl or anything. Ordinary, you'd think that everybody who watches Tri-Di'd hate his guts. And kind of, you do. But he's not the villain, like, unnerstand? He's the hero. Only nothing ever comes out right for hire."

I grumbled disgust.

“So he's the new smash hit, eh? Whatever happened to characters like Cary Grant and Rock Hudson? Good guys who always got the girl."

Sam said: "You wanta nether beer before Dugan comes on?"

"The hell with Dugan," I growled, tossing him a dollar piece and getting down from the stool. “I've got to think about the radical center." Then something came to me and I scowled. “This Dugan, he's an anti-hero type, eh?”

“Yeah, yeah I guess that's it,"

Sam said happily as the announcer rounded in.

The announcer's fling was for one of the new minicars imported from Japan, and involved running down the Detroit dinosaurs. This Jap car was about as gadget-free and chrome-free as the prehistoric Model A Ford, and it cost about half the next cheapest thing on air cushions. I knew they were selling like crazy locally.

I climbed back onto the stool.

“So you like this anti-hero type, eh?" I said.

“Yeah. You know, those guys you mentioned, like Rock Hudson. That was all a lot of curd. They was always rich and always so pretty. And they'd meet this girl and everybody lives in beautiful houses and drives Italian sport hovercars and eat in those classy restaurants where they still have waiters, and hang out in million-dollar nightclubs drinking champagne wine. And the girl, she could fall off the cliff but it never mussed her hair, and it always ended with them living happy ever after and all that curd.”

“Cynicism, Sam, doesn't become you," I told him. Then I said, under my breath, "So in the most popular Tri-Di shows these days, the good guy no longer gets the girl."

In the morning, I didn't even get as far as the city desk to check in with Blackstone. Ruthie, as ever breathless, met me at the elevator.

She gushed: "Mr. Myers, I've been looking for you everywhere.”

“That's not where I am," I said. “I'm here."

She giggled appreciatively. “Oh, Mr. Myers, you're always so humorous. Mr. Wilkins wants to see you.”

“Oh, oh," I said. “I just stopped being humorous."

I went on down the corridor to the managing editor's office.

Wentworth Wilkins, unlike the city editor, Blackstone, was of the new school of journalism. He inherited most of the Journal from his father, who inherited it from his father. The way the old hands tell it, Wentworth's father insisted he learn the business from the bottom up. As a result, he spent one week as a copy boy, one week as a cub re-porter, one week on the police beat, one week on the copy desk, one month as night editor, one month as city editor, and since then, know-ing the business all ways from Tuesday, he's been managing editor.

I don't know why I should knock it, he was my in. Had it been left to Blackstone, I would have been fired within twenty-four hours of being given my job. And at least once a week ever since. But old man Wilkins believed in me. He probably expected me to come up with another blockbuster one of these days and cop the Pulitzer for the third time, thus making some sort of journalistic record.

I stood in front of the door screen and waited for the lock to hum. When it came, I turned the knob and went in.

Miss Patton looked up from her desk and smiled coldly before saying: "Good morning, Lucky."

I said: "Good morning. Mr. Wilkins wanted to see me.”

“That is correct. Go right in, Lucky."

I went right in.

Wentworth Wilkins had one of those successful executive desks. Nothing on it, not even a pencil. When he wanted to give some in-struction to his secretary, all he had to do was say, "Miss Patton," and she was on. The mike must have been built into the desk top. I don't know where he kept his outside phone.

The desk looked as though no work had ever been done on it and that jibed with Wentworth Wilkins. He looked as though he never did any work. In the morning, he wore morning clothes.

I said, "Yes, sir. One of the copy girls said you wanted to see me, Mr. Wilkins." He got up and shook hands. Mr. Wilkins was very democratic. Then he sat down again, reached into a drawer for a Kleenex, wiped his palms on it and dropped it into a disposal chute.

He said, "That was a couple of hours ago, Lucky." He chuckled. “Don't tell me you turn up two hours after I do."

I could have told him that I'd had a hangover this morning. I could have—but didn't. I said earnestly, "Sir, I've been doing some concentrated research on a new story. Well, series of stories, I suppose. I, uh, had to go down to the library.”

“Well, sit down, my boy." He touched along that French pimp moustache of his, as though checking the wax content. “Blackie tells me you've acquired a bit of a bug in your bonnet."

He was the only man on the Journal who called Old Burnoff, Blackie. He called everybody by a nickname, whether or not he had one. It was part of his being very democratic.

I said in all modesty, "Well, sir, I'm just at the beginning of what might turn out very important."

He looked at me skeptically. “After thinking it over, Mackie came to me with a suggestion.”

“Yes, sir." The situation was looking up. Perhaps I could get a series of feature articles out of the idea, particularly if they assigned one of the old-timers to me.

“He suggested we fire you.”

“Yes, sir." The situation was looking down. I was going to have to talk fast. “I mean, no, sir.”

“Now, this radical center subversion matter. Suppose you tell me about it, Lucky."

I turned on the earnestness, full blast. “Well, yes, sir. I think there's some sort of plot running down the national image, like. Lous-ing up the national image."

He flicked the other side of his pretty moustache. “Ah?"

Whatever that meant. I said, "Yes, sir. When I was a kid, we used to go to the movies and cheer the one hundred per cent American pioneers and cowboys who were fighting off the Indians. Finally, the U.S. cavalry would come to the rescue, the flag bearer riding out in front. Then we'd cheer them."

He was frowning at me. “Your point, Lucky?”

“Now at the movies the kids cheer the Indians.”

“I seem to fail to ..." He let the sentence dribble off.

I was warming to the subject. “I don't know how far back it started, Mr. Wilkins, but it's accelerating.”

“See here, Lucky, we need some examples, not just generalities." There was an edge of impatience.

Think fast, Lucky Myers. Live up to your name. Lose this job, Buster, and you'll wind up servicing automated shoeshining machines after your unemployment insurance is gone.

I said hurriedly, "Well, to go back a way, take Gary Powers and the U-2 hassle. When the Russians turned him loose, they probably figured we'd shoot him. Instead, the government gave him another high-paying job, and finally a decoration. Medals are given to heroes. Evidently, our U-2 pilot was a hero. Some hero.”

“That was a long time ago," Wilkins said unhappily.

“Sure, but the trend was starting even then. When I was a kid, we used to read Superman and Batman and identify with those criminal busters. But before long, people started becoming camp conscious. They took Batman and put him on TV."

Wilkins was scowling. “I'm afraid this isn't getting through to me, Lucky. I don't seem to get your point."

I didn't get it either. Or, at least, it was only coming to me as I went along.

I said hurriedly, "Well, take another example from about the same time. The James Bond stories, written by that British ...”

“Ian Fleming," Wilkins said. “I used to read his thrillers.”

“Sure. Almost everybody did. They were satire. Far out to the point of being ridiculous. A take-off on our old crime solvers such as Sam Spade, Mike Hammer, Perry Mason and Nero Wolfe. A big spoof and everybody lapped it up. They were tired—or were being made tired—of the old crime busters."

Mr. Wilkins was very unhappy. He said, "Lucky, I fail to connect all this with what Blackie told me regarding your story of subversion. Your, what did you call it? Your radical center.”

“Well, yes, sir. That's just a term I pulled out of the air. I don't know what they call themselves. I don't even know what they have in mind.”

“Who?" he blurted.

“Whoever's doing this.”

“Doing what, good heavens!"

"Running down the American dream, destroying the American image, making our fondest ideals look silly." I snorted in indignation. “Whatever happened to the Fourth of July speech? Who'd dare, these days, to get up and give one? He'd be snickered off the stand."

It seemed to me I was doing a pretty good job. I was beginning to believe it myself.

Wentworth Wilkins shook his head, as though in despair. “See here, my boy, let us get to cases. What did you expect to do in this investigation of yours?"

For the moment, he had me there. I twisted up my face as though trying to figure out a way of presenting a plan I'd already laid out. Actually, I was grabbing around for anything at all—a straw would have looked just fine.

I said earnestly, "Well, sir, possibly Mr. Blackstone put his finger on it when he mentioned that a lot of advertising campaigns were tested out in advance in Center City. Average American city, center of the country, neither east nor west. Yes, sir. I have a hunch that this radical center outfit is using our town for testing."

Wilkins, still unhappy, snorted, "To what end?"

I looked at him.

“What are they trying to accomplish?" he added.

“They're subversives," I said weakly.

“But what are they subverting? What do they aim to achieve?"

He had me there. The brain finally gave out. I couldn't think of a damn thing.

Finally Wilkins shook his head.

“Lucky, my boy, you've pulled a bad one. You can't expect your intuitive news sense to work out every time. Don't worry about it. Your batting average is still superlative. The recovery of the Shultz kidnapping victim and the incredible photography of the Dolly Tetter bank robbers, will live forever in journalistic annals." I

 said, trying to project worry, which wasn't hard, "Then you think I ought to drop this, sir?”

“I'm afraid I do, Lucky. I'm afraid I must insist upon it.”

“Well, sir, you're the boss."

He beamed at me. “Don't put it that way, my boy. We're a team, here on the Journal. We all pull together." He winked condescension. “It's just that in my position I decide which way to pull.”

“Yes, sir." I was being dismissed. I got to my feet.

Wilkins said, "Ah, just tell Blackie that you'll now be available for some other assignments."

I winced, not figuring on that particular ax falling at that particular moment. In other words, I was no longer a roving reporter, free to seek out my own stories. From now on, I was to take assignments from Blackstone. And I had no illusions. It wouldn't take that old pro a week to discover that I didn't know a scoop from an obituary. He already suspected it.

Old Burnoff had a sense of humor, or thought he had. For my first assignment, he sent me to a Salvation Army banquet, a regional meeting of officers with rank of captain up.

I had a sense of humor, too, or thought I had. Before the banquet, I approached the speaker and got a copy of his speech. I told him I had a deadline to meet, and hightailed it down to The Hole.

The trouble was, one dark brew led to another and I didn't make it back to the office until just before the night shift came on.

Blackstone smiled at me sweetly. “Lucky Mars, the demon Pulitzer Prize winner," he murmured. “I assume the story yawl intend to do on the sky pilots will hit every wire service from Reuters to Tass."

I refuse to recall the rest of the scene.

Afterwards, I returned to Sam's dark lager.

The next morning, happily, I was off. I didn't go immediately down for my check. I went on over to Mort Zimmerman's apartment and got him out of bed.

He glared at me from the door, standing there in pajama pants but no tops. The scrawniness of his chest was made up for by a mat of black hair he could have used for a mattress—or a flea zoo.

“What do you want this time of night?”

“It's ten o'clock in the morning," I said, pushing past him into his chaotic living room.

“I do my writing from midnight to dawn, damn it!

“I know," I said. I tossed a few copies of Cynic and Misanthrope to the coffee table and pushed to one side a stack of Iconoclast, thus making room on the couch. I sank down.

“I had to have somebody to talk to," I said.

“Why me?" he snarled.

“You want some coffee?”

“Yes. Why not you? You're smaller than I am, and can't get away.”

“Jollies we get, this time of day," he growled, going off into his kitchenette.

While he was gone, I picked up a copy of Cynic and fluttered through the pages, sourly.

The lead article was on Momism. From what I could see, the author had done most of his research in that old classic "Generation of Vipers" with which Wylie had made himself infamous and solvent a few decades ago. There was another piece reviving the idea of establishing a Veterans of Future Wars organization. The idea being to start teen-age kids off with a pension, so they'd have the spending money while they were still young enough and whole enough to enjoy it. The theme was, why should men who survived a war be the only ones to enjoy the veteran gravy that the government ponied up? The ones who were killed ought to get in on it as well—before the war ever started.

I grunted and tossed the magazine back to the coffee table, when Mort reentered the room bearing two cups of coffee, spoons sticking out of them, and a paper sack of sugar.

I took one of the cups, dug down into the sack for sugar with a spoon, and nodded at the magazines.

“You still selling articles to those?”

“Occasionally," Mort said disinterestedly. He sat down in his easy chair, ignoring the papers and a dirty towel that already occupied the seat. “The competition is getting tougher. When they first started coming out, you could sell just about anything you wrote. But now a lot of the pro free-lancers are switching over from the other magazines and getting into the act . I can't compete with name writers."

I said glumly, "Whatever happened to the men's girlie magazines? The ones that used to do articles on bottomless bathing suits and such?"

He sipped his coffee and found it too hot.

“That was the last fad," he muttered. “Some are still going. Those that are have switched to the same type articles as these new ones, Cynic and Iconoclast. I sold a piece last week to Roguish Playboy on how to beat the draft.”

“How to beat the draft?" I said.

“Sure. There's a lot of ways. Some even legal. One thing you can do is commit a crime. Steal a hovercar or something. Get yourself a police record. Then you're a felon and the military won't take you. Or you can guarantee flunking your medical by taking a heart stimulant. Or I know of one guy who made no protest about being inducted, but once he was in the Reception Center he started hanging around the showers all the time. Finally, he was brought up before the camp medicos who asked him, 'How do you like girls?' and he said, `I guess they're all right.' And that was the end of his military career. Then ..." I said, "I know there's a lot of ways to beat the draft. What I meant was, I'm surprised they'd run an article like that."

His shaggy eyebrows went up. “Why not? It's a free country.”

“And getting freer by the minute," I said.

He tried the coffee again, found it drinkable and waggled his coffee spoon at me. “There's only one reason for having draft laws," he pontificated. “That's because your citizens aren't silly enough to volunteer. How long's it been since anybody in this country volunteered?”

“Well, there's some ..."

He shook his head in disgust at my opinion.

“The kind of guy who volunteers for the Army these days is so light in the head that they don't want him. They need somebody with a smidgen of intelligence. The days when the military was staffed with sergeants whose average I.Q. was less than ninety are over."

I said, "Some pick the military for a career. After twenty years, you're out and on a pension, with all sorts of privileges.”

“Sure," he said, evidently losing interest in the subject. “The only exceptions. They don't join because of anything as old hat as patriotism. They join for the security. And you can imagine the caliber of anybody who takes the guff handed out by the Army for twenty years because he figures he can't compete in ordinary civilian life. That the Army will offer more in the way of reward, than working on the outside."

He grunted contempt. He stood up and went into the kitchen for more coffee.

When he came back, I said, "What're you working on now, Mort?”

“Couple of things. I've got a nibble on a series on politics. It's over-worked but I've got some new angles.”

“What about politics?"

He picked up a newspaper and tossed it over to me. “Did you see this bit about the pickpocket who was elected mayor up in this New England town?”

“Pickpocket?"

He laughed bitterly. “Yeah. Long police record. He ran on a ticket that he needed the job to keep him honest. That if he wasn't elected, he'd have to go back to stealing for a living. And even if he had to steal for a living, he'd rather do it sitting down at a desk, the way politicians did, instead of wandering around crowded theatre lobbies and state fairs."

I was staring at him. “And he was elected?”

“Oh, he was elected, all right. They laughed him into office.”

“Holy Jumping Zen," I groaned.

“What's the country coming to?"

Mort snorted. “It's just that at long last the voters are getting as cynical as the politicians. Do you have any idea of how many ballots, in elections these days, have written in as candidates such names as Pogo or Donald Duck?"

I said, "I thought the big trend was not voting at all."

Most said, on the belligerent side, "Who can blame them! It's unusual for even a hot election to bring out half the potential voters."

I said, "Well, if the voters don't like what's going on, they can put a new man in.”

“Can they?" he demanded. “That's the old story, and it's fiction —when the usual thing is that both candidates stand for the same thing. How many politicians, railing away at the incumbent, stand by their promises, once in themselves? You vote for a man because he takes your stand against the other candidate, then as soon as he gets in, he reverses himself. Look at Johnson and Goldwater, back in the old days."

He shook his coffee spoon at me again.

“That's one of the things I'm going to write up. The growing cynicism of people in regard to anything the politicians do any more. We've given up expecting anything except a sideshow from them. Lucky, there hasn't been a real idealist in the White House since Woodrow Wilson, and he was an anachronism and probably slightly crackpot to boot.”

“Well, there was Roosevelt," I said weakly.

“Was there? You know who nominated him the first time? Huey Long. Who supported him? Among others, the big city political machines. Tammany Hall, Frank Hague, the Kelly-Nash machine. And where did he get his third vice president? From the Pendergast machine of Kansas City. Lucky, my friend, what do you think old Roosevelt, the super-liberal, had to promise and later deliver to these people to get their support?"

He was getting warmed up. “And what've we had since? Clowns and military types who spent the whole eight years playing golf .. .”

“Well," I squirmed uncomfortably. “There was Jack . ..”

“And the Irish mafia, eh? That was when Madison Avenue really took over an election for the first time. When the public image and TV appearance made more difference than party principles and plat-forms. The guy who won a presidential election because his opponent didn't shave closely enough before a TV debate. Another big liberal. The one who O.K.'d the Bay of Pigs fiasco and first escalated the Asia War." Mort Zimmerman snorted. “I'll admit, at least he had dignity. He and his family. He wasn't one of the clowns we've been getting since."

He was getting a little far out for me. I said, "Look, we're moving away from the point. We were talking about voter cynicism.”

“Why shouldn't they be cynical? About every two years a new case of a police force being the biggest burglars and thieves in town comes up. I can think back over the years. Denver, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Idaho Falls, and all the more recent examples. And that's only the police. Peanuts compared to corruption in office."

I said, half angrily, "I still say that the voters can turn them out if they don't like them."

He shook his head. “Even that's becoming impossible. Are you fa-miliar with the election laws that prevail now? In half the States, it's all but impossible for a third party to get on the ballot any more. In some States there is no provision in election laws for a third party; in others the requirements are such that if the equivalent of Lincoln's Republican party of the mid-1800's came along, they'd never be able to make their bid for power, because they wouldn't be able to meet the requirements for candidates.

"Sure, you can vote for one party or the other, but both parties stand for the same thing. How long has it been since there was any difference in national platforms?"

I finally gave up under his barrage and put my coffee cup back on the table. 'Well," I said, "yesterday I would have been more interested. Today, I've got to start dreaming up something besides the country's growing cynicism.”

“Oh? What's up, Lucky?”

“It looks as though people are going to have to go back to calling me Charlie."

His face went questioning.

I said, "I doubt if my job's going to last the week out.”

“Actually," Mort grunted, "you never were much of a newspaper-man, Lucky."

I sighed. “Everybody keeps telling me that. However, I need the money. I'm the most improvident man on record. I can jump into my own swimming pool in my back yard and come out three dollars poorer."

He looked at me strangely. “How'd you ever get that Dolly Tetter bank romp story?"

I was beginning not to care. “My kid sister had taken a roll of film in a new camera and didn't know how to get it out. Neither did I, so I took it down to the photo shop. On the way back, outside the First Bank of America, I ran into Dolly Tetter, or he ran into me. He was carrying one of these new Gyrojet rocket guns, kind of a poor man's bazooka, and he was covering the retreat of three of his troupe who'd just picked up a quarter of a million, the easy way."

Mort was taken aback. “You just stumbled on it?”

“That's right," I said, complete with self-deprecation. “Dolly was banging away at two groups of cops—one up the street, one down. But they were up against a handicap or two. A lot of innocent bystanders, including me, were on the streets and, besides, they were face to face with the toughest Public Enemy Number One since the legendary Dillinger. They weren't that anxious to earn their salaries.”

“What'd you do?”

“I don't know what I did. I just stood there. Kind of frozen. Too scared to drop to the sidewalk. I wasn't more than fifteen feet from Dolly. His cool wasn't at all affected. In fact, he was kind of whistling to himself as he'd toss a couple of those Gyrojet 13mm rockets at first one set of cops, then the other. His men came running out of the bank, carrying the loot, and piled into the armored car they had there for their getaway. I got several pictures of them, too."

Mort closed his eyes in pain. “Too?”

“Yeah. You remember the pictures.”

“I thought you'd taken them with a telephoto lens, from way off somewhere," he muttered. “Go on.”

“So then Dolly noticed me and upped with his Gyrojet carbine, or whatever it was, to wing one at me."

Mort’s eyes opened again to stare.

“But he'd emptied the clip, evidently, and didn't have time to re-load. He made a snatch at the camera, as he piled into the car after his troupe, but by this time I'd come out of my daze, and I stepped backward, kind of in a hurry, and went flat on my fanny.

“Anyway, I took the camera up to the pix department on the paper and left it with the chief darkroom technician. I told him I thought I might have something on the robbery, but he took one look at the kid camera and went back to the shots the regular photogs were bringing in of the street outside the bank and the three wounded cops and the safe that Dolly and the boys had blasted open. It wasn't until later they found every one of my shots had come out clear as day. By that time I'd got over my shakes and came over here to you. You'd been working on that true detective article about the Tetter gang and had all the dope. So, between us, we cooked up that article and I took it down and submitted it to Blackstone. And that's the piece I won the second Pulitzer on."

He groaned. “And paid me four hundred bucks for writing it." He looked at me and shook his head. “I can't imagine you having the guts to just stand there and take shot after shot of all that action.”

“I can't either," I told him. “I didn't know I was doing it. I looked down later, after Dolly had taken off, and noticed that the whole roll of film had been exposed. I can't remember doing it. It was an auto-mated camera, self-winding film and all. Maybe my finger just jittered.”

“Listen," he demanded. “How'd you ever find that Shultz kid. The first Pulitzer prize deal?”

“You wouldn't believe me," I told him, getting up. “Well, I better get about my business.”

“Oh, great," he said. “Now that I'm all woke up." He scratched his mat of black hair and ran his tongue over his teeth distastefully.

I didn't get around to my usual day-off activities: laundry, shop-ping and such. I was feeling depressed.

It was obvious what was going to happen. Old Burnoff Blackstone was going to continue to hand me cub-reporter assignments. And I was going to make a mess of each in turn. They weren't going to be the sort of thing I could take around to Mort Zimmerman and have him do up for me. The only way I could afford Mores ghosting was on a fairly major article. I'd resorted to him possibly eight or ten times in the past year, including both of my big beats, and each time he'd come through. Why not? He was a twenty-year free-lancer.

When I left his house and piled into my Volkshover, I noticed a man staring into the store front of the neighborhood autogrocery, next door to Most Zimmerman's apartment house. The store fronts of autogroceries aren't that interesting, but that wasn't what bugged me.

I felt I ought to say hello to the guy. I knew him—vaguely. But I couldn't remember his name.

I hit the lift lever and tromped down on the accelerator. I was halfway down the block before I placed him. He wasn't actually an acquaintance. I'd seen him the night before, in The Hole. He had been sitting in a booth immediately behind me. I had been at the bar. He seemed to be a lone drinker, never stirring as long as I was there and I was there until closing.

I went around to the library, not exactly knowing why. I think I had a vague idea of trying to find some new subject with which to wow Wentworth Wilkins. If I could come up with a real blockbuster of a story idea, I might still be able to have Most write it up for me and preserve my image with the Journal's managing editor, if not with Old Burnoff. That might put me back on my roving-reporter basis, a situation where I wasn't actually responsible to Blackstone and where no one really kept tabs on what I was doing.

I didn't find anything at the library. Somehow or other I drifted into checking back on some of the things Mort had brought up about politics. Not that I've ever been particularly interested in politics.

He was right about the two-party system. The third party is a thing of yesteryear. I checked back through the national elections. Each one that went by, the minority parties became more pathetic, appearing on fewer and fewer State ballots. The Prohibition Party, the third oldest in the country, was on the ballot in only eleven states and had less than twenty thousand votes. The Socialist Party, which had once garnered almost a million votes in the days of Eugene V. Debs, had now disappeared. The Socialist Labor Party, largest of the minority outfits, had scored in the last election in seventeen states, but some of these had evidently been write-in votes for their candidates; they hadn't actually been on the ballot.

I didn't know why I bothered. I wasn't interested.

While I was at it, I looked up some of the crime statistics. Crimes, particularly petty crimes and juvenile delinquent stuff, were growing all but geometrically. And, to balance that fact, crime punishment was falling off almost at the same rate. Evidently, some young jerk could pull anything short of murder or grand larceny and get off without more than a scolding. By the time be became an habitual offender, he had evidently got around to the point of achieving protection and could have fixed even major felonies.

I wasn't getting any ideas with which to impress Wilkins. This was all old hat. People had had these statistics thrown at them for so long, they couldn't be bothered any more.

It came to me that there were a lot of things people couldn't be bothered with any more. That they were fed up and cynical about.

It was getting on into the day. I called it quits and decided to head for The Hole as soon. as I'd picked up my check.

By coincidence, the man I'd seen staring into the autogrocery window next to Zimmerman's house, was passing along the street when I came out of the library.

There are actually two reasons why I hang out at Sam's, three if you count the fact that he cashes my checks. The other two are the dark beer and the fact that he's off on a side street where you can usually find parking.

I found parking, dropped the lift of the Volkshover and went on into The Hole.

Sam continued mopping the bar listlessly with his bar rag until lI climbed onto my usual stool.

He said, "Hi, Mr. Myers. Guy in here asking about you today.”

“About me?" I scowled.

“Yep." He picked up a beer glass and headed for the spigot.

“What did he want?" Sam said, "I couldn't figure out. He seemed to want to know more about you than where you were, or when you usually dropped in.”

“Surprising he didn't look me up at the office.”

“Mr. Myers, you don't have any enemies, have you?" Sam asked.

“Me? Who'd bother to have me for an enemy?"

He nodded, as though in agreement. “Yeah, I guess that's right.”

“Oh, it is!" I snarled at him, suddenly irritated.

“Just suppose I take my business elsewhere?"

Sam said, wide-eyed, "I didn't mean anything, Mr. Myers. Zen! you're my best customer."

"Huh," I snorted.

“What about this guy?”

“He sure asked a lot of leading questions, like.”

“Such as?”

“I can't remember most of them. I didn't know the answers mostly. Things like, what were you working on these days? What did you talk to me about? Hell, I just told him you never said anything worth listening much to."

I glared at him for a long moment.

Somebody entered and slipped into the booth immediately behind me. I turned, but didn't recognize the big bruiser. He had an empty face.

One brew led to another brew. It was a slow night and Sam wasn't too busy, so he spent most of his time listening to me beef. When I ran out of other items to beef about, I brought up some of the subjects Mort Zimmerman and I had been talking about that morning. Public cynicism toward the police and politicians, the declining percentage of eligibles who voted, that sort of thing.

Sam mostly grunted agreement.

When I finally called it quits, it was good and dark.

I'd forgotten about the bruiser who had been sitting in the booth behind me. When I slid off my stool to leave, he paid his bill as well and followed after.

I had on quite a load of lager and wondered vaguely if I ought to leave the Volkshover where it was and get an autocab. But it takes a rare drunk to leave his car because he knows he's been drinking too much. I am not a rare drunk.

When I got to where I'd parked the little hovercar, I found a stranger leaning nonchalantly against it. Only it wasn't a stranger. It was the character I'd seen next to Mort's apartment house and later outside the library, not to speak of the fact that he'd been sitting in the booth behind me the night before.

From behind, I could hear the footsteps of the tough looking type who had spent this evening in the same booth, sipping at his drinks and listening to what I had to say to Sam.

You can see what a quick thinker I am. It wasn't until then I began to smell a rat.

I was lurching up the street in a mild zigzag, one eye closed for more effective vision.

The one leaning against the car murmured pleasantly, "So you couldn't keep your beak out of other people's business, even when warned off, eh, Myers?"

I heard a sudden quickening of the steps behind me.

At this point of progress, in an effort to reach the car so as to steady myself against it with at least one hand, ordinarily I would have zigged ... but I zagged.

The fist went whistling past my head, missing completely the original target, but slamming into an alternative—the one who had just spoken.

The next few minutes are still none too clear in my memory. I can vaguely recall a colossal kick being aimed at my ribs, after I had stumbled and fallen to one knee. I can vaguely remember the horrible sound, like a watermelon falling to the ground and splitting open, when the kick threw kicker off balance and he conked his head against the sidewalk. And the various grunts, groans, growls and scuffling sounds as they tried to coordinate sufficiently to get at me. And, oh yes, my own squeals of terror as one thing after another kept happening.

At long last, I could hear somebody coming a-running.

It was Sam, and two or three others from The Hole.

Sam was yelling something. He had a hard rubber bung starter in his beefy right hand. I winced when he brought it down on the head of one of them, the one still able to sit up on the curb.

When the shouting had simmered down slightly, Sam was there staring at me. “You don't have a mark on you," lie accused. “How come?”

“I don't?" I said, holding onto the side of the hovercar. I was al-most sober again.

“What happened?" he said.

“How would I know?"

He looked at me. So did the others. It had obviously been an insufficient answer.

I cleared my throat and said, "It looks like they kind of beat each other up ... by accident."

Sam still looked at me. “So luck makes luck, eh?" he growled.

“All I can say, yours must be a regular assembly line."

There was some more confused hassle when the police cars Sam had phoned for came dashing in. We all had to go down and help book the two. They asked me a lot of confused questions and. I gave them a lot of confused answers which they obviously didn't believe.

Finally, I went on home and slept it off.

The next day was a working day. I got there moderately on time.

Old Burnoff wasn't in a particularly bad mood, evidently. He gave me an assignment to go to the zoo and get a story on the newly born hippo. I ignored the snide crack that went along with it.

I stood next to the hippo pool for a while staring at the newborn. I couldn't think of anything beyond the fact that it looked like a small duplicate of its mother.

I said to the keeper, "What's its name?”

“What's name?”

“The baby hippo.”

“It hasn't got any name, yet"

I looked at it some more.

Finally, I said, "What does it weigh?”

“How would I know?" I gave up and went on back to the office where I told Blackstone there wasn't any story on the baby hippo.

His temper had gone into a setback since that morning. He glared at me. On the desk in front of him was a copy of the rival rag, the News-Chronicle. He slapped it with the back of his hand.

“Look at this beat," he blatted. “Right in our own backyard. Lugs and Benny Onassis picked up here on an assault with intent to kill romp. The toughest enforcers the Syndicate has on its rolls. And what happens? We don't have a word on it! What kind of police coverage are we getting, Mars?"

I said weakly, "I'm not assigned to the police, Mr. Blackstone.”

“I know that," he growled, "Thank God." He stared down at the story again. “Lugs and Benny. You seldom get anything about them, out of Chi. They all must've been sent down on a special job. Evidently to finish off this . . . this Charles Myers." His voice had slowed. “Charles Myers?" He looked up at me, his face beginning to go ominous. “Lucky, what's your first name?"

I cleared my throat.“Charles."

He closed his eyes and held them closed for a long time. He was counting, I suppose.

When he opened them, at long last, he said very evenly, "Why didn't yawl phone in?”

“I forgot to. It didn't occur to me." I added apologetically, "It was kind of drunk out last night."

He closed his eyes some more. He wasn't counting now. His mutters sounded more like prayer.

Finally he said, "Lucky, we still might be able to rescue something. Why did those two hatchetmen jump you?"

I shook my head, trying to be cooperative. “I don't know, Mr. Blackstone. I sure don't.”

“You think they were old friends of Dolly Tetter's troupe, or possibly those kidnappers who tried to snatch the Shultz baby?"

I shook my head, dumbly.

He closed his eyes still once again.

Finally, without opening them this time, he said in a flat voice, "You're fired, you hear? I don't care what Wilkins says. It's yawl or me. If he doesn't let me fire you, I quit. Get your things out of your desk and yawl get out of here, you hear?"

I went over to my desk and stared at it. I didn't have anything in it to get out.

So I left the city room and headed for the elevators.

Ruthie came up, as ever breathless. “Oh, Mr. Myers, I caught you just in time. Mr. Wilkins wants to see you soonest."

I thought about it. Was there any reason to bother seeing Went-worth Wilkins? Could I possibly rescue the job? No. Old Burnoff was really down on me now. Even if Wilkins went to bat, it couldn't last. Not with Blackstone out to get me. Even if I'd been a decent reporter, you couldn't expect me to hold out against my city editor. So what was the use? He'd already given me an inkling of what an editor's harassment could consist—Salvation Army and baby hippo assignments.

Nevertheless, I started toward Wilkins' office.

I stood in front of the door screen and the lock hummed immediately.

When I entered, Miss Patton said hurriedly, "Mr. Wilkins and the others are awaiting you, Mr. Myers."

Mr. Myers, yet. Not Lucky.

I entered the sanctum sanctorum.

Wilkins was sitting at his clean as a hound's tooth desk, flanked by two strangers who could have been his twins. Between the three of them, they looked like several million bucks on the hoof.

Wentworth Wilkins popped to his feet, more jovial and democratic than ever. He shook hands and forgot to wipe his off later. How democratic can you get?

He said, "Gentlemen, this is Lucky Myers, our two-time Pulitzer Prize winner." He looked at me. “Ah. Lucky, this gentleman is from Greater New York, and this one from Washington. For reasons that will become obvious to you, we shan't use names here today."

That made a lot of sense. He'd just used mine.

“Please have a chair, Lucky," he beamed.

I located a chair. I cleared my throat and said, "Just in case you didn't know, Mr. Blackstone fired me a few minutes ago.”

“Because of that matter last night?"

I nodded, a lump in my throat.

"Fine," he said.

What was fine about it?

Maybe I could get a job in some cheap cafeteria that couldn't afford to automate the dishwashing.

One of the nameless said, after checking his watch, "Shouldn't get about this, Wenty?"

I looked at Wentworth Wilkins. It had never occurred to me that se too had a nickname. Wenty, yet.

“Um-m-m," Wilkins nodded, working the wax into his moustache with his fingernail. “Of course." He continued to beam at me. “Lucky, my boy, we have had second thoughts since your demonstration of fortitude and quick wittedness last night.”

“Quick wittedness," I repeated.

Wilkins nodded and so did his pal on his right. The one on the left looked thoughtful.

“In spite of our advantageous position, in view of your journalistic renown it could have become quite ... ah ... embarrassing, had you . ah ... lowered the boom, Lucky."

Somewhere in here, something made sense. Until it turned up, I had best keep my trap shut and my face looking as though I knew what was going on.

I kept my trap shut and my face looking as though I knew what was going on.

“So," Wentworth Wilkins said jovially, "when it became obvious that you wished to be on our side, we decided to take you in."

There's more than one way of interpreting being taken in. I kept my trap shut and my face looking as though I knew what was going on.

He thumped his well-manicured forefinger on the desk. “Besides your well-demonstrated journalistic intuitiveness, we now find you al-most unbelievably apt in, ah, the clutch ..."

He turned to his confreres. “Imagine. Bare handed, roughing up the two best strong-arm men Chicago could send us."

The one on the right grunted affirmation. The other still looked thoughtful.

Wilkins turned back to me. “But I was most impressed by the manner in which you handled the police and the press"—he chuckled appreciatively—"including our own publication." He shook his head. “Had Blackie got hold of the story, I am afraid he would have front-paged it before I ever arrived on the scene this morning. And, I fear, the fat would have been in the fire. It certainly wouldn't have done the radical center much good, Lucky, my boy.”

“The radical center," I said, trying to keep my voice from going completely idiotic.

He chuckled again. “We like the term you coined. Very apt. Amongst ourselves, at least, we'll continue to use it.”

“Oh," I said.

The one on the left checked his watch again. Wilkins said, "My boy, you're in.”

“Yes, sir," I said earnestly. “In what? That is to say, how?" That didn't sound right either. I decided I'd better return to keeping my trap shut and my face looking as though I knew what was going on.

He chuckled deprecation. “Getting right down to basics, eh, Lucky? Well, my boy, how does a thousand sound to you?"

Whatever the new job was, it evidently wasn't going to pay as well as the last. A salary of a thousand a month didn't add up to the three hundred a week wage I had got as a roving reporter. My lack of enthusiasm must have come through.

The colleague to the right stirred and muttered, "It seems to me an income bettering fifty thousand a year is ample for a former journalist, no matter how proficient he is."

My jaws shut audibly.

Wilkins nodded. “I'm afraid that is what you will have to start at, Lucky. Now then, I suppose you have questions, in spite of the extent to which you have obviously ferreted out our basic, over-all, long view, ah, schema.”

“Well, uh, you might sum it up for me, sir. There's a lot of, well, ramifications.”

“Of course, of course." He flicked his pretty moustache again. “To get very basic, Lucky, how many different ways would you say there were to overthrow a government, or a socioeconomic system, so as to bring a new group to power?"

I must have blinked.

I said, "Well, you can shoot yourself in."

One of the colleagues grunted.

“Indeed you can," Wilkins beamed. “But the trouble is, when you start shooting you don't know who might get stirred up and start shooting back. That type of revolution has a way of getting confused. Remember when Kerenski and the Mensheviks started the Russian Revolution in 1917? When the smoke cleared, the Czar and his group were out, sure enough. But Kerenski and the Mensheviks weren't in. They were either dead or, ah, on the lam. The Bolsheviks were in."

I nodded very thoughtfully. “That's true." Frankly, I had never heard of Kerenski or the Menshe-whatever-he-called-them.

“Of course," Wilkins said, "violence as a method of taking over certainly has its precedents. Frazer's 'Golden Bough' tells us of the prehistoric priest-king of Lake Nemi who lost his position only when someone managed to steal into the wood about his temple and pilfer a sprig of mistletoe from an old oak there. The thief then had the right to fight it out with the priest-king. If he won, he became the new incumbent."

He twisted his face, in a false grimace. “Later, of course, violence was often resorted to by an exploited majority which took to the streets, threw up barricades and defeated the adherents of the old regime. The French Revolution is the example that comes to mind. Or the American Revolution, which was slightly different, being led, at least, by the best elements in the colonies."

The one with the nervous watch stirred impatiently.

Wilkins hurried on. “Then, of course, there came the vote. In England, at least, a whole socioeconomic system was so changed. Over a lengthy period, of course. From feudalism, step by step, emerged classical capitalism. Violence there was, from time to time, but no single bloody revolution, as occurred elsewhere. Remnants of feudalism, such as the House of Lords and the royal family, remained for a century and more, but feudalism, per se, had been definitely abolished."

The longer he talked, the less I knew what he was talking about.

He pursed his lips, in another phony grimace. “Then, of course, there is a new government imposed from the outside. Excellent examples followed the Second War. But nations such as Czechoslovakia, Poland and East Germany never did adjust to the Russian-type communism. Yugoslavia, which put over its own revolution and adapted to its own conditions, did considerably better. On the other hand, Greece provides another unsuccessful example of imposing a government from the outside. The partisans there had thrown out the Nazis, in much the manner Tito's Yugoslavians had, but first British and then American help allowed the old regime to return, and the partisans were defeated. And for the next twenty years Greece floundered around in the same way East Germany and Poland did. The people, as a whole, had been thwarted. Whether or not their own adaptation of communism would have been any better for them is debatable but the fact was they were thwarted and didn't do as well as, say, Yugoslavia, despite the fabulous amounts of aid plowed in by the West."

One of his colleagues said disgustedly, "Good grief, Wenty, where'd you pick up your history?"

Wentworth Wilkins glared at him. “I make a hobby of the history of revolution. Real history, not the pap we turn out for the flats. And considering our position, you should, too."

He turned back to me. “We couldn't fool Lucky, anyway, even if we wished. He's one of us. Meant to be on top."

The one with the watch said, "Let's get on with this, Wenty. My jet's wailing. I want to be sure of Mr. Myers' response, but I've got a committee meeting in Denver."

Wilkins, looking a bit grumpy, came back to me. “What we're leading to, Lucky, is that a new method of taking over has had to be devised. None of the old apply to the situation we are now in. Violence is too unpredictable, with modern weapons at hand. Having a new socioeconomic system imposed from outside is also out of the question, considering what the chaps on the outside would be prone to impose."

I had to say something somewhere in here, or I'd look like a kook. So I said, "What's wrong with the vote?”

“Um-m-m." Wentworth Wilkins looked at me thoughtfully. “I see what you mean, but we're ahead of you, Lucky. Which isn't surprising, since we've been working on this for so very long. You obviously are cognizant of the fact that the vote in the old, the classical connotation, is out. We don't want to ever bring that back again. Why, anything might happen, with all the old values almost completely devaluated by our long-term campaigns. But, of course, you meant the vote in the new sense of the word.”

“Of course," I said. What else could I say?

"Well, we shall utilize that. As window dressing. We've been working a long time on creating voter apathy. You don't have to win the votes of a majority to win an election. Just a majority of those who actually get out and vote. Make the opposition apathetic, while your own group is enthusiastic, and you win the election. Even if your group is only five per cent of the electorate."

I felt as though I had come late into this conversation. Either that, or every third sentence was being left out. I went back to my old strategy of keeping my trap shut and my face looking as though I knew what was going on.

“But what it amounts to, my boy, is that we're going to take over through apathetic cynicism on the part of the citizenry. We're going to take over because nobody gives a damn any longer."

I tried to keep from staring.

He said, in satisfaction, "The day of the radical center is dawning. The nation is equally cynical about the radical right and the radical left, but transcending even that is the fact that they couldn't care less who takes over the reins of government. They're too busy living up to the new moral code."

One of his two buddies murmured, "Buzz off, Jack, I'm all right."

And the other grinned without humor and said, "Or, if I didn't take advantage of this situation, somebody else would."

Wentworth Wilkins entered into the spirit of the thing and added, "Do your neighbor before he does you."

They looked at me.

I swallowed and said, "You mean, like, Never give a sucker an even break?"

They all chuckled.

“The new morality," the one who bad the jet waiting said. But then he added briskly. “Well, Mr. Myers, are you with us?”

“I said carefully, "Well, what would my duties be?”

“Duties?" Wentworth Wilkins protested. “My dear boy, you mustn't think in such terms, on this level. You have proven your worth. You will be one of us. Pondering on top policy, that sort of thing. Undoubtedly, your intuitive abilities will come up with a superlative idea once or twice a year. Perhaps guiding us toward a positive step, or warning us away from a negative one. For instance, what do you think of the name Democratic-Republicans for the projected amalgamation of the political parties?"

The one with the watch said evenly, "Before discussing radical center policies, perhaps we should be sure just where Mr. Myers stands."

It's no skin off my nose. When it comes to not sticking his neck out, but at the same time looking out for Number One, I go along with the times.

An anti-hero, that's Lucky Myers.

“Radical Center” by Mack Reynolds, published in Analog. Copyright 1967 by the Conde Vast Publications, Inc.