room. He sat down before the mirror, pulled out a drawer, and took up the small box containing his colored contact lenses.
'Doc Jekyll, meet Comrade Hyde,' he muttered.
Chapter Twenty-One: Horace Hampton
Horace Hampton looked up at the lanky, stoop-shouldered man who hovered over his table in the automated bar, grinning down at him.
'Thought I'd find you here,' Max Finklestein said. 'It's the nearest bar to Assembly Halls.'
'Hi, Max,' Hamp said. 'Have some of this syntho-beer. How did Shakespeare put it? 'Weaker than woman's tears,' or something. They ought to stick it back in the horse.'
'Not up to your usual standards, eh?' the older man said, even as he slid into a chair opposite the black. He put his credit card in the table's payment slot and dialed for a mug of the brew.
Hamp looked at him. 'What's that supposed to mean, old chum-pal?'
The center of the table sank down to return with the beer. Max took a drink of it, then wiped the coarse foam from his lips. 'It means that usually you drink more expensive stuff than the proles have to put up with.'
The other's look turned quizzical. 'How do you know?'
'I've been checking up on you.'
'Wizard, and what've you found?'
'That you're not exactly a down-and-out nigger subsisting on GAS.' Max grinned at him in deprecation.
'That's the trouble with you kikes,' Hamp said. 'Nosy.'
Max Finklestein said, 'I was sitting around one day, minding my own business, when the thought came to me that the Anti-Racist League was in better funds than it should be. Most of the membership consists of minority elements who'd contribute a lot to the cause if they could, but they can't— they're largely on GAS. Somehow the organization never seems to lack sufficient funds, though. So purely out of curiosity, I began checking on the source of the larger donations that come through. And guess what I found?'
'I know what you found,' Hamp said. He finished his beer and dialed another.
Max said, 'Why all the secrecy? Why not just openly donate it, in one lump sum, instead of here and there in dribbles?'
Hamp sighed and said, 'Because I'm of the opinion that a race, a nationality, or a social class should finance its own emancipation. You mustn't hand somebody freedom on a platter. Suppose I came out and gave a million pseudo-dollars to the Anti-Racist League in a flat sum. Then the membership as a whole would stop their pathetically small donations, as meaningless. But it's not meaningless for a man to give up his guzzle, his sometime extravagance, or his occasional splurge, for a cause he believes in. It's not meaningless for him to sacrifice. It's part of his fight for freedom.'
'Quite a speech,' Max said. 'Where'd you get all this money, Hamp? Or is it a secret? Are you a big-time crook? That's all the organization needs in the way of publicity—one of its most active members turning out to be a crook.'
Hamp sighed. 'Come off it, Max. It's according to what you mean by crook, I suppose. Yesterday, I tuned in on this Deathwish Wobbly, who we're supposed to get together with tonight. According to him, the whole upper class is composed of crooks. Their wealth has been stolen from the useful workers.'
'So you're upper class.'
'I suppose so. It's a long story, Max.'
The other looked at his wrist chronometer. 'We've got time.'
Hamp sighed again. 'It starts with a slave down in South Carolina—Pod Hampton. I haven't a violin to play so I'll skip the details of the hard time he had. When he finally lit out, he took old massa's silver with him. In fact, the kind old massa was on the rich side and some of the so-called silver was gold. Pod managed to get it, and himself, up to Boston. And there he swore a great oath, understand? He wasn't going to spend any of his, ah, ill-gotten gains on himself. Instead, he was going to invest it and use the proceeds to fight for freeing his people.
'At that time there was no valid organization putting up such a fight. He thought the Abolitionists were a bunch of impractical do-gooders, a bunch of starry-eyed whiteys who, beneath it all, believed that blacks really were inferior, and should be pampered like children by those who were good of heart, rather than being exploited as slaves. He continued to invest the money; railroads, mainly. When he died, both the securities and the dream went to his oldest son who, if anything, was even more solidly anti-racist than the old man. He managed the investments—some land in the so-called Great American Desert really paid off—but didn't spend much of it on himself. During his lifetime the Civil War took place, but it didn't take any genius to see that the freed blacks weren't much better off than they had been as slaves. And there was still no organization that seemed fit to turn the money over to. Those were the boom times of industrialization, and the money was still largely in railroads. It grew. It grew still more under
Max whistled softly.
Hamp went on, after dialing still another syntho-beer. 'These sons all continued the dream. They were devoted to ending racism. They'd progressed beyond the point of fighting for black rights alone. They were also smart enough not to throw the fortune away on lost causes. They were hanging onto it until the right time and the right organization came along. The fortune was kept as secret as possible and they led very simple lives while managing it. Remember, they were smart. One by one, as new developments such as radio, the airplane, and later, electronics, came along, they got in on the ground floor. For instance, one of them helped launch IBM back in the 1920s.'
'That would explain it, without the other stuff,' said Max.
'And along in here came a new development. It wasn't practical to live like misers while hoarding a fortune that would one day be used to end world racism. To manage a modern fortune, you've got to be educated in top schools, you've got to have the correct social and financial contacts, which are often the same people. In short, you've got to move in the right circles. It's all part of the great fortunes game. A Rockefeller, a Mellon, a Rothschild, can't operate out of a sleazy flat in Harlem. At any rate, Max, I'm the current holder of the purse strings and the Anti-Racist League is being doled out all the funds I feel it can handle at this point.'
Max was eyeing him. 'I'll be damned,' he said. 'That fortune must be king-size by now.'
'It is,' Hamp said dryly. 'And the present descendant of Pod Hampton still has the dream.'
Max said, 'But for Christ's sake, you shouldn't be risking yourself carrying out extreme assignments for the organization.'
Hamp looked at him flatly. 'I refuse to finance activities that I'm not willing to take on myself. If Indians like Tom Horse and Chicanes like Jose Zavalla are willing to take the risks they do, so is Horace Hampton.'
Max nodded acceptance of that stand. 'Right,' he said. 'I assume you want me to keep this to myself.'
'If I thought you couldn't, I wouldn't have told you,' Hamp said.
Max looked at his wrist chronometer again. 'I suppose we ought to get going. The Synthesis committee has rented a small hall for the meeting. Only delegates are to be admitted— and their bodyguards.'
As they stood, Hamp looked over at him questioningly.
Max laughed. 'I assume nobody'll have bodyguards besides Roy Cos. That rule was made with him in mind. From what I hear, they average two attempts on his life a day, the poor bastard.'
They headed for the door. 'Yeah,' Hamp growled. 'Every hit man in Mercenaries, Incorporated has zeroed in on him.'
They went out onto the street and headed for the Assembly Halls, a commercial building devoted to a score of rentable halls ranging from a large auditorium to small lecture rooms that would hold audiences of fifty or so.
Max was eyeing his companion strangely. 'How do you know?' he said.
Hamp covered. 'Just guessing. It makes sense. It's not just that insurance conglomerate that wrote the Deathwish Policy now. Poor Cos has everybody and his nephew down on him—the United Church, the government of every country in the world that fears revolutionary change, the World Club, God knows who else. He's the sorest thumb to show up for many a year.'
Max said, frowning, 'Why the World Club?'
The black shrugged. 'They want a World State, but under their wing—not the kind he's agitating for.'
