Deathwish World

Copyright © 1986 by The Literary Estate of Mack Reynolds

All rights reserved.

Foreword

The greatest land acquisitions by any power in the history of the world took place without even the faintest threat of arms. Not a shot was fired by the conqueror in this unprecedented colonization program. Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, and Tamerlane were tyros, by comparison, for none of them ruled a whole continent, much less two, with scores of neighboring islands.

And it was possibly the softest sell of all time. The United States Government simply issued a declaration that it welcomed any countries in North, Central, or South America, or the Caribbean, to join it, conferring all rights pertaining to American citizens, including the Guaranteed Annual Stipend, or GAS—sometimes called Negative Income Tax. Our English friends called it 'the dole.' They had seen it before. The English had seen everything before—including permanent decline.

Though the United States of America became the United States of the Americas without force, all was not simplicity. Military dictatorships, particularly in the banana republics, did all in their power to remain separate. Armies were ordered to fire upon mobs demanding admission to the new United States. But the soldiers laughed. One had to reach the rank of major to attain an income equal to that of a citizen of the United States on GAS.

So, with little strain on the Yankees, the Western Hemisphere assimilated into the United States of the Americas.

And, in the eyes of some, that was only the beginning…

Chapter One: Horace Hampton

A battered hovercar pulled up in the parking lot behind the aged apartment building. There were few other vehicles there.

Three men got out and headed across the parking area for the back door. The one in the middle carried a cane and affected a slight limp. The other two carried tired-looking attache cases. All three were dressed neatly, though their clothing was only a thin cut better than prole level.

The one in the middle looked up at the paint-flaked wooden building which was their destination. 'You could sell it for an antique,' he said.

One of the others grunted and told him, 'You could sell all New Salem as an antique. Restore it—something like colonial Williamsburg over in Virginia. You could put up a big sign for the tourists: 'New Salem, Bible Belt Town, Circa 1900.' '

They ascended the stairs to the second floor. Thus far they had seen nobody at all, which was understandable. They had counted on the total population being down at the park for the political rally. Aside from Tri-Di, there was precious little in the way of local entertainment.

On the second floor, the largest of the three men looked up and down the hall, dipped a hand into his side pocket, and brought forth a pair of thin black gloves. His right hand went back into the pocket of his shorts and came forth with a key. He unlocked the door and all three filed through quickly. He locked the door behind him.

The other two put their attache cases and the cane on the room's center table and also donned gloves. They seemed in no hurry. They took out handkerchiefs and carefully wiped the cane and case with professional care.

Their leader, a black, went through the small apartment, which consisted of bedroom, bath, and kitchen, besides the living room into which they had entered, and checked it out carefully. He, too, had left his attache case on the table after wiping it clean.

His companions looked about at the nondescript furniture, which included a broken couch and an old- fashioned rocking chair.

The two were of dark complexion, but there the resemblance ended. One was tall, wiry, and cougarlike of movement, black of hair and eye. The other was below average height, stocky, muscular. He tended to smile, while his companion was stoic of expression in keeping with his Amerind tradition. The smaller man was Latino.

The stocky one said, 'Look, civilization.' He pointed at the sole representative of modern furnishing, a small Tri-Di set.

The black, who had checked out the other rooms, returned and said, 'Wizard, let's get the show roadbound.'

Jose Zavalla took up the walking stick and began to unscrew the handle. His limp was gone. The handle came away and he upended the cane to let its contents slide gently into his right hand. It was a metallic tube about three feet long, threaded on one end externally, internally on the other. He laid it back on the table.

'Jesus, it's light,' he said.

Tom Horse, the Indian, who was opening the two attache cases, said, 'Titanium alloy.'

The sole contents of the hand luggage consisted of seven items, all carefully wrapped in foam rubber. Tom took them out gingerly, one by one, and laid them in a row on the table.

He said, 'How's it look up the road, Hamp?'

Hamp was the black, a well-built, dark-chocolate man with features more Caucasian than Bantu. He went over to the middle of the three curtained windows that lined the street side of the room. He pulled one curtain aside a bit and peered out, looking toward the north. From a jacket pocket he brought forth a small monoscope, twisted it open, and took off both lens shields. He put the eyepiece to his right eye, adjusted the focus.

He said, 'Quite a turnout. Must be triple the population of the town.'

'You don't hear the governor sound off every day in New Salem and environs,' Tom told him, unwrapping his packages with love care.

'Nice big banner above the speaker's stand,' Hamp said. 'Says, America for the Americans. Very sentimental. American flags at both ends. They look a little out of date. How many stars in the flag these days?'

'Who keeps track? About a hundred,' Tom said. He had taken up the tube Joe had extracted from the hollow cane and was carefully screwing one of the other objects—a stubby rectangular affair—into the threads of its interior.

He said bitterly, 'America for the Americans. You can be an Englishman or German whose parents came over twenty years ago and took out citizenship papers and you're an American. But you can have ancestors going back twenty thousand years on this continent and you're on the shit list.'

Hamp said, still surveying with his monoscope, 'You damn redskins are always complaining. Wait a minute, I think they've erected that speaker's stand thirty meters farther up than we figured on.'

'Hell,' the Indian said, taking up an aluminum rod from the table. One end of it was threaded. 'I had it all zeroed, sighted-in, calibrated.'

Joe, watching the assembly job, said, 'That's the smallest breech I've ever seen.'

'Uh huh,' Tom said, winding the aluminum rod into a hole at the end of the deadly device. 'This is a single- shot bolt action. But the bolt doesn't stick out to the side, it's this little knob on the top.'

'What's that?' Joe said of the steel rod the other was manipulating. He had obviously never seen the thing before, assembled or otherwise.

'Part of the skeleton stock,' Tom told him, tightening it firmly. The rod canted downward from the breech at an angle.

Hamp came back to the table where Tom Horse and Jose Zavalla were assembling the gun.

Tom was saying to Joe, 'Hand me that other rod.'

Hamp brought a quarter-liter bottle from an inner pocket. He studied its label for a moment, then unscrewed the top. He held it to his lips and took a long pull.

'What's that?' Tom said, not looking particularly happy as he twirled the new rod into its place.

'Cognac,' Hamp told him. 'Brandy. Have a slug. Listen, what effect is it going to have, their erecting that stand in the wrong place?'

'No thanks,' the Indian said, still not happy about the liquor. 'I'm driving. Besides, didn't you know we savages can't handle firewater?'

Joe said, 'Brandy?' reaching for the bottle. 'You mean aguardiente? Man, you blacks really live it up. I haven't