entrada flanked with highly colorful columns, which started narrow at the bottom and widened at the roof.
There was another guard unit, clad in the costume of Knossos, at the entry. A full twenty of them here. They came to the salute.
An officer stepped forward, came to attention.
“The Supreme Commandant sends greetings to His Excellency, the Plenipotentiary from United Planets.”
Ronny stepped down from the chariot, looked at the driver bitterly. Inaudibly he muttered. “Do you have a license to operate that thing?”
“Thanks,” he said to the officer. “I would like to see the Baron immediately.”
“His instructions are to bring you to his quarters upon arrival, Your Excellency.”
He turned and marched, stiff legged, into the building. Ronny followed.
As at the Interplanetary News building in Greater Washington, the resemblance to the ancient past fell off immediately in the interior. The officer’s costume seemed doubly ludicrous among the hosts of guards, messengers, secretaries and officials, all garbed in modern dress.
Two guards, fish-cold of eye, stood before an elevator door, one behind a device of switches and screens. Ronny assumed he was being given an electronic frisk. Well, they’d find him clean. It would have been ridiculous to think he could approach the ruler of Phrygia armed.
The elevator opened and the officer accompanying him gestured. Ronny entered alone, the door closed and the car dropped.
Then the door reopened, and even before Ronny Bronston could step out, the tall, heavy-set man there—his face beaming—reached for his hand.
“Ronald Bronston!” he said heartily. “Your Excellency, I’ve been waiting for you!”
He was at least as tall as Phil Birdman, but would have outweighed the Indian by fifty pounds. He carried his weight well; gracefully, might be the word. He moved as a trained pugilist moves, or perhaps one of the larger cats. His charm reached out and embraced you, all but suffocatingly. His face was open, friendly; his eyes, blue and wide-set; his nose, the arched Hapsburg nose, giving an aristocratic quality that only his overwhelming friendliness could dissipate.
Ronny let his hand be pumped, admittedly taken aback. He realized now that, although he had never seen even a photo of the Baron, he had built up a ficticious picture of him.
Ronny Bronston hated to be touched by another man—other than perhaps a quick handshake—however, he suffered now his host to place an arm around his shoulders and lead him to as comfortable a room as the Section G agent could remember ever having been in. It was a man’s room. A small but complete bar to one side. A number of large, well-used chairs and couches. Racks of books that, even at a distance, looked interesting and oft-handled. Good, well-chosen, not necessarily expensive, paintings on the walls. A fireplace.
The Baron was at the bar. “May I suggest this departure on the wines of the Rhine and Moselle? One of my ancestors imported the Riesling grape to Phrygia. Local soil conditions were somewhat different; but I trust you will find a lightness and bouquet not at all unpleasing.” Even as he spoke, he was pouring from a very long necked bottle into two delicate crystal glasses.
Ronny found himself seated in one of the chairs, glass in hand. The Baron was across from him and now picked up a small sheaf of papers from a coffee table.
He read aloud. “Ronald Meredith Bronston, 32. Born in Luana, Hawaii. Parents, Michael L. Bronston, and Pauline Meredith. Studied, ummm, ummm, finished education at University of Stockholm… ummm, ummm, at age of twenty-six took position at New Copenhagen in the Population Statistics Department. Was discovered by Bureau of Investigation scouts and jockeyed into Section G…”
Ronny stared at him. ”
Baron Wyler chuckled at him magnanimously. “My dear Bronston, no luck is involved in getting into our friend Metaxa’s Section G. Not one human being in a million qualifies. Were you a bit more privy to the inner workings of your ultra-ultra cloak and dagger organization, you would know that at any given time at least a hundred of Metaxa’s picked men are scouting out potential agents. You were probably selected as far back as when you were in high school.”
Wyler’s eyes went back to the report. “But to go on with it. Given first assignment with Supervisor Lee Chang Chu and, as a result, was made full agent… Umm, umm, worked with distinction on the planets Kropotkin, Avalon and Palermo. Has become one of Supervisor Jakes’ most trusted field men. Height, weight, ummm, fingerprints, eye pattern, skull measurements.” The Baron looked up. “Some of these statistics come directly from Section G files.”
“All right,” Ronny said in resignation. “You’ve made your point. You have a rather complete dossier on me.”
The Baron put down the report and turned on his charm with a smile. “So we can dispense with preliminaries and get to the point.”
Ronny said, “The point being that the Supreme Commandant of the Planet Phrygia is ambitious to encroach upon the sovereignty of fellow worlds belonging to the United Planets.”
“Which is one way of putting it.” The Baron nodded agreeably. “Tell me, Bronston, what is the eventual goal of this United Planets to which you have devoted your life?”
“The advancement of the human race!”
“Neatly summed up in but six words. But, my dear Bronston, man has made his advances down through the ages in a wide variety of methods. Your knowledge of history must be such that you recognize the contributions of strongmen who have arisen in time of need. The democratic principle does not always apply.”
Ronny said sharply, “My studies have led me to believe that man makes his greatest advances under conditions of freedom.”
“An example?”
The Section G agent groped for a good one. “The Athens of the Golden Age. The Athenian democracy nourished a culture such as had never been seen before, nor since.”
Baron Wyler chuckled. “My dear Bronston, have you never heard of the strongman, Pericles? Besides, calling the Athenian society a democracy is somewhat stretching a point, is it not? For every Athenian citizen free to pursue the arts and sciences, there were a dozen slaves, or more, kept in complete subjugation. Come now, do you contend that if these slaves—who did the drudgery necessary to maintain the leisure of the Athenian citizens—had been given their freedom, been given complete equality, that the Golden Age could have been?”
Ronny looked at him. The Baron was obviously no fool.
The Baron got up, brought the bottle from the bar and refreshed the glasses. The Section G agent was no connoisseur of wine, but, admittedly, this was the most pleasant beverage he could remember drinking. He wondered if it was available on Earth.
The Baron said, “Let me use a somewhat more recent example of strongman versus the mob.”
“I wasn’t exactly advocating mob rule.”
“Indeed? However, remember when the Egyptian Nasser seized power in his country, oh, somewhere about the middle of the 20th Century? His nation had been a backward one, dominated by the big powers, ignored in the world’s councils. When he took over the Suez Canal, all prophesied that the waterway would soon be silted up and impassable. Instead, within a few years, traffic had doubled. Borrowing, begging, securing funds and techniques from every source he could find, he began to industrialize, to irrigate, to find new potentials in his desert country. His soldiers were sent out to fill up the wells in thousands of native communities, supposedly a crime beyond understanding in a desert land. They filled them up and forced the fellahin to dig new wells in places where the
