The Second Science Fiction MEGAPACK®. Robert Silverberg

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СКАЧАТЬ He grasped the card firmly between thumb and forefinger and stalked out of his office. He took an elevator down to the registration desk. His trouble was that he had seized upon the first thing he saw wrong with the card and saw nothing thereafter. To him, “out of the ordinary” meant “wrong”—which was where he made his mistake.

      There was a man waiting impatiently at the desk. He had put the card that had been given him by the registration robot on the desk and was tapping his fingers on it.

      The manager walked over to him. “Morgan, Harry?” he asked with a firm but not arrogant voice.

      “Is this the city of York, New?” asked the man. There was a touch of cold humor in his voice that made the manager look more closely at him. He weighed perhaps two-twenty and stood a shade over six-two, but it was the look in the blue eyes and the bearing of the man’s body that made the manager suddenly feel as though this man were someone extraordinary. That, of course, meant “wrong.”

      Then the question that the man had asked in rebuttal to his own penetrated the manager’s mind, and he became puzzled. “Er…I beg your pardon?”

      “I said, ‘Is this York, New?’” the man repeated.

      “This is New York, if that’s what you mean,” the manager said.

      “Then I am Harry Morgan, if that’s what you mean.”

      The manager, for want of anything better to do to cover his confusion, glanced back at the card—without really looking at it. Then he looked back up at the face of Harry Morgan. “Evidently you have not turned in your Citizen’s Identification Card for renewal, Mr. Morgan,” he said briskly. As long as he was on familiar ground, he knew how to handle himself.

      “Odd’s Fish!” said Morgan with utter sadness, “How did you know?”

      The manager’s comfortable feeling of rightness had returned. “You can’t hope to fool a registration robot, Mr. Morgan,” he said “When a discrepancy is observed, the robot immediately notifies a person in authority. Two months ago, Government Edict 7-3356-Hb abolished titles of courtesy absolutely and finally. You Englishmen have clung to them for far longer than one would think possible, but that has been abolished.” He flicked the card with a finger. “You have registered here as ‘Commodore Sir Harry Morgan’—obviously, that is the name and anti-social title registered on your card. When you put the card into the registration robot, the error was immediately noted and I was notified. You should not be using an out-of-date card, and I will be forced to notify the Citizen’s Registration Bureau.”

      “Forced?” said Morgan in mild amazement. “Dear me! What a terribly strong word.”

      The manager felt the hook bite, but he could no more resist the impulse to continue than a cat could resist catnip. His brain did not have the ability to overcome his instinct. And his instinct was wrong. “You may consider yourself under arrest, Mr. Morgan.”

      “I thank you for that permission,” Morgan said with a happy smile. “But I think I shall not take advantage of it.” He stood there with that same happy smile while two hotel security guards walked up and stood beside him, having been called by the manager’s signal.

      Again it took the manager a little time to realize what Morgan had said. He blinked. “Advantage of it?” he repeated haphazardly.

      Harry Morgan’s smile vanished as though it had never been. His blue eyes seemed to change from the soft blue of a cloudless sky to the steely blue of a polished revolver. Oddly enough, his lips did not change. They still seemed to smile, although the smile had gone.

      “Manager,” he said deliberately, “if you will pardon my using your title, you evidently cannot read.”

      The manager had not lived in the atmosphere of the Earth’s Citizen’s Welfare State as long as he had without knowing that dogs eat dogs. He looked back at the card that had been delivered to his desk only minutes before and this time he read it thoroughly. Then, with a gesture, he signaled the Security men to return to their posts. But he did not take his eyes from the card.

      “My apologies,” Morgan said when the Security police had retired out of earshot. There was no apology in the tone of his voice. “I perceive that you can read. Bully, may I say, for you.” The bantering tone was still in his voice, the pseudo-smile still on his lips, the chill of cold steel still in his eyes. “I realize that titles of courtesy are illegal on earth,” he continued, “because courtesy itself is illegal. However, the title ‘Commodore’ simply means that I am entitled to command a spaceship containing two or more persons other than myself. Therefore, it is not a title of courtesy, but of ability.”

      The manager had long since realized that he was dealing with a Belt man, not an Earth citizen, and that the registration robot had sent him the card because of that, not because there was anything illegal. Men from the Belt did not come to Earth either willingly or often.

      Still unable to override his instincts—which erroneously told him that there was something “wrong”—the manager said: “What does the ‘Sir’ mean?”

      Harry Morgan glowed warmly. “Well, now, Mr. Manager, I will tell you. I will give you an analogy. In the time of the Roman Republic, twenty-one centuries or so ago, the leader of an Army was given the title Imperator. But that title could not be conferred upon him by the Senate of Rome nor by anyone else in power. No man could call himself Imperator until his own soldiers, the men under him, had publicly acclaimed him as such. If, voluntarily, his own men shouted ‘Ave, Imperator!’ at a public gathering, then the man could claim the title. Later the title degenerated—” He stopped.

      The manager was staring at him with uncomprehending eyes, and Morgan’s outward smile became genuine. “Sorry,” he said condescendingly. “I forgot that history is not a popular subject in the Welfare World.” Morgan had forgotten no such thing, but he went right on. “What I meant to say was that the spacemen of the Belt Cities have voluntarily agreed among themselves to call me ‘sir’. Whether that is a title of ability or a title of courtesy, you can argue about with me at another time. Right now, I want my room key.”

      Under the regulations, the manager knew there was nothing else he could do. He had made a mistake, and he knew that he had. If he had only taken the trouble to read the rest of the card—

      “Awfully sorry, Mr. Morgan,” he said with a lopsided smile that didn’t even look genuine. “The—”

      “Watch those courtesy titles,” Morgan reprimanded gently. “‘Mister’ comes ultimately from the Latin magister, meaning ‘master’ or ‘teacher’. And while I may be your master, I wouldn’t dare think I could teach you anything.”

      “All citizens are entitled to be called ‘Mister’,” the manager said with a puzzled look. He pushed a room key across the desk.

      “Which just goes to show you,” said Harry Morgan, picking up the key.

      He turned casually, took one or two steps away from the registration desk, then—quite suddenly—did an about-face and snapped: “What happened to Jack Latrobe?”

      “Who?” said the manager, his face gaping stupidly.

      Harry Morgan knew human beings, and he was fairly certain that the manager couldn’t have reacted that way unless he honestly had no notion of what Morgan was talking about.

      He smiled sweetly. “Never you mind, dear СКАЧАТЬ