Revolution Read online

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  REVOLUTION

  By MACK REYNOLDS

  _Before you wish for something--or send agents to get it for you--make very, very sure you really want it. You might get it, you know...._

  Illustrated by Gardner

  Preface ... _For some forty years critics of the U.S.S.R. have beendesiring, predicting, not to mention praying for, its collapse. Fortwenty of these years the author of this story has vaguely wondered whatwould replace the collapsed Soviet system. A return to Czarism? Oh, comenow! Capitalism as we know it today in the advanced Western countries?It would seem difficult after almost half a century of State ownershipand control of the means of production, distribution, communications,education, science. Then what? The question became increasinglyinteresting following recent visits not only to Moscow and Leningrad butalso to various other capital cities of the Soviet complex. Acontroversial subject? Indeed it is. You can't get much morecontroversial than this in the world today. But this is science fiction,and here we go._

  * * * * *

  Paul Koslov nodded briefly once or twice as he made his way through theforest of desks. Behind him he caught snatches of tittering voices inwhisper.

  "... That's him ... The Chief's hatchetman ... Know what they call himin Central America, a _pistola_, that means ... About Iraq ... And thattime in Egypt ... Did you notice his eyes ... How would you like to date_him_ ... That's him. I was at a cocktail party once when he was there.Shivery ... cold-blooded--"

  Paul Koslov grinned inwardly. He hadn't asked for the reputation but itisn't everyone who is a legend before thirty-five. What was it_Newsweek_ had called him? "The T. E. Lawrence of the Cold War." Thetrouble was it wasn't something you could turn off. It had itsshortcomings when you found time for some personal life.

  He reached the Chief's office, rapped with a knuckle and pushed his waythrough.

  The Chief and a male secretary, who was taking dictation, looked up. Thesecretary frowned, evidently taken aback by the cavalier entrance, butthe Chief said, "Hello, Paul, come on in. Didn't expect you quite sosoon." And to the secretary, "Dickens, that's all."

  When Dickens was gone the Chief scowled at his trouble-shooter. "Paul,you're bad for discipline around here. Can't you even knock before youenter? How is Nicaragua?"

  Paul Koslov slumped into a leather easy-chair and scowled. "I did knock.Most of it's in my report. Nicaragua is ... tranquil. It'll staytranquil for a while, too. There isn't so much as a parlor pink--"

  "And Lopez--?"

  Paul said slowly, "Last time I saw Raul was in a swamp near LakeManagua. The very last time."

  The Chief said hurriedly, "Don't give me the details. I leave details upto you."

  "I know," Paul said flatly.

  His superior drew a pound can of Sir Walter Raleigh across the desk,selected a briar from a pipe rack and while he was packing in tobaccosaid, "Paul, do you know what day it is--and what year?"

  "It's Tuesday. And 1965."

  The bureau chief looked at his disk calendar. "Um-m-m. Today the SevenYear Plan is completed."

  Paul snorted.

  The Chief said mildly, "Successfully. For all practical purposes, theU.S.S.R. has surpassed us in gross national product."

  "That's not the way I understand it."

  "Then you make the mistake of believing our propaganda. That's always amistake, believing your own propaganda. Worse than believing the otherman's."

  "Our steel capacity is a third again as much as theirs."

  "Yes, and currently, what with our readjustment--remember when they usedto call them _recessions_, or even earlier, _depressions_--our steelindustry is operating at less than sixty per cent of capacity. TheSoviets always operate at one hundred per cent of capacity. They don'thave to worry about whether or not they can sell it. If they producemore steel than they immediately need, they use it to build anothersteel mill."

  The Chief shook his head. "As long ago as 1958 they began passing us,product by product. Grain, butter, and timber production, jet aircraft,space flight, and coal--"

  Paul leaned forward impatiently. "We put out more than three times asmany cars, refrigerators, kitchen stoves, washing machines."

  His superior said, "That's the point. While we were putting the productof our steel mills into automobiles and automatic kitchen equipment,they did without these things and put their steel into more steel mills,more railroads, more factories. We leaned back and took it easy, sneeredat their progress, talked a lot about our freedom and liberty to ourallies and the neutrals and enjoyed our refrigerators and washingmachines until they finally passed us."

  "You sound like a Tass broadcast from Moscow."

  "Um-m-m, I've been trying to," the Chief said. "However, that's stillroughly the situation. The fact that you and I personally, and a coupleof hundred million Americans, prefer our cars and such to more steelmills, and prefer our personal freedoms and liberties is beside thepoint. We should have done less laughing seven years ago and morethinking about today. As things stand, give them a few more years atthis pace and every neutral nation in the world is going to fall intotheir laps."

  "That's putting it strong, isn't it?"

  "Strong?" the Chief growled disgustedly. "That's putting it mildly. Evensome of our allies are beginning to waver. Eight years ago, India andChina both set out to industrialize themselves. Today, China is thethird industrial power of the world. Where's India, about twentieth? Tenyears from now China will probably be first. I don't even allow myselfto think where she'll be twenty-five years from now."

  "The Indians were a bunch of idealistic screwballs."

  "That's one of the favorite alibis, isn't it? Actually we, the West, letthem down. They couldn't get underway. The Soviets backed China witheverything they could toss in."

  Paul crossed his legs and leaned back. "It seems to me I've run intothis discussion a few hundred times at cocktail parties."

  The Chief pulled out a drawer and brought forth a king-size box ofkitchen matches. He struck one with a thumbnail and peered throughtobacco smoke at Paul Koslov as he lit up.

  "The point is that the system the Russkies used when they started theirfirst five-year plan back in 1928, and the system used in China, works.If we, with our traditions of freedom and liberty, like it or not, itworks. Every citizen of the country is thrown into the grinding mill toincrease production. Everybody," the Chief grinned sourly, "that is,except the party elite, who are running the whole thing. Everybodysacrifices for the sake of the progress of the whole country."

  "I know," Paul said. "Give me enough time and I'll find out what thislecture is all about."

  The Chief grunted at him. "The Commies are still in power. If theyremain in power and continue to develop the way they're going, we'll bethrough, completely through, in another few years. We'll be so farbehind we'll be the world's laughing-stock--and everybody else will beon the Soviet bandwagon."

  He seemed to switch subjects. "Ever hear of Somerset Maugham?"

  "Sure. I've read several of his novels."

  "I was thinking of Maugham the British Agent, rather than Maugham thenovelist, but it's the same man."

  "British agent?"

  "Um-m-m. He was sent to Petrograd in 1917 to prevent the Bolshevikrevolution. The Germans had sent Lenin and Zinoviev up from Switzerland,where they'd been in exile, by a sealed train in hopes of starting arevolution in Czarist Russia. The point I'm leading to is that in one ofhis books, 'The Summing Up,' I believe, Maugham mentions in passing thathad he got to Petrograd possibly six weeks earlier he thinks he couldhave done his job successfully."

  Paul looked at him blankly. "What could he ha
ve done?"

  The Chief shrugged. "It was all out war. The British wanted to keepRussia in the allied ranks so as to divert as many German troops aspossible from the Western front. The Germans wanted to eliminate theRussians. Maugham had carte blanche. Anything would have gone. Elementsof the British fleet to fight the Bolsheviks, unlimited amounts of moneyfor anything he saw fit from bribery to hiring assassins. What wouldhave happened, for instance, if he could have had Lenin and Trotskykilled?"

  Paul said suddenly, "What has all this got to do with me?"

  "We're giving you