"No, my North American friend. My lips are sealed but I represent a
rather influencial group. All is not jest, even though I find life the
easier if one laughs often and with joy."
Hank closed his bag and slid it under his bunk. "Well, you should have
had this influencial group pony up a little more money so you could
have gone deluxe class."
Paco looked at him strangely. "That is the point. We are not
interested in a red-carpet tour during which the very best would be
trotted our for propaganda purposes. I choose to see the New World as
humbly as is possible."
"And me," Loo said. "We evidently are in much the same position."
Hank brought himself into character. "Well, lesson number one. Did you
notice the teeth in that steward's face? Steel. Bright, gleaming
steel, instead of gold."
Loo shrugged hugely. "This is the day of science. Iron rusts, it's
true, but I assume that the Soviet dentists utilize some method of
preventing corrosion."
"Otherwise," Paco murmured reasonably, "I imagine the Russians
expectorate a good deal of rusty spittal."
"I don't know why I keep getting into these arguments," Hank said.
"I'm just going for a look-see myself. But frankly, I don't trust a
Russian any farther than I can throw one."
"How many Russians have you met?" Loo said mildly. "Or are your
opinions formed solely by what you have read in American
publications?"
Hank frowned at him. "You seem to be a little on the anti-American
side."
"I'm not," Loo said. "But not pro-American either. I find much that is
ridiculous in the propaganda of both the Soviets and the West."
"Gentlemen," Paco said, "the conversation is fascinating, but I must
leave you. The ladies, crowding the decks above, know not that my
presence graces this ship. It shall be necessary that I enlighten
them. _Adios amigos!_"
* * * * *
The _Baltika_ displaced eight thousand four hundred ninety-six tons
and had accommodations for three hundred thirty passengers. Of these,
Hank Kuran estimated, approximately half were Scandinavians or British
being transported between London, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Helsinki
on the small liner's way to Leningrad.
Of the tourists, some seventy-five or so, Hank estimated that all but
half a dozen were convinced that Russian skunks didn't stink, in spite
of the fact that thus far they'd never been there to have a whiff. The
few such as Loo Motlamelle, who was evidently the son of some African
paramount chief, and Paco Rodriquez, had also never been to Russia but
at least had open minds.
Far from black bread and borscht, he found the food excellent. The
first morning they found caviar by the pound nestled in bowls of ice,
as part of breakfast. He said across the table to Paco, "Propaganda. I
wonder how many people in Russia eat caviar."
Paco spooned a heavy dip of it onto his bread and grinned back. "This
type of propaganda I can appreciate. You Yankees should try it."
Char was also eating at the other side of the community type table.
She said, "How many Americans eat as well as the passengers on United
States Lines ships?"
It was as good an opportunity as any for Hank to place his character
in the eyes of his fellow Progressive Tours pilgrims. His need was to
establish himself as a moderately square tourist on his way to take a
look-see at highly publicized Russia. Originally, the C.I.A. men had
wanted him to be slightly pro-Soviet, but he hadn't been sure he could
handle that convincingly enough. More comfortable would be a role as
an averagely anti-Russian tourist--not fanatically so, but averagely.
If there were any KGB men aboard, he wanted to dissolve into
mediocrity so far as they were concerned.
Hank said now, mild indignation in his voice. "Do you contend that the
average Russian eats as well as the average American?"
Char took a long moment to finish the bite she had in her mouth. She
shrugged prettily. "How would I know? I've never been to the Soviet
Union." She paused for a moment before adding, "However, I've done a
certain amount of traveling and I can truthfully say that the worst
slums I have ever seen in any country that can be considered civilized
were in the Harlem district and the lower East Side of New York."
All eyes were turned to him now, so Hank said, "It's a big country and
there are exceptions. But on the average the United States has the
highest standard of living in the world."
Paco said interestedly, "What do you use for a basis of measurement,
my friend? Such things as the number of television sets and movie
theaters? To balance such statistics, I understand that per capita
your country has the fewest number of legitimate theaters of any of--I
use Miss Moore's term--the civilized countries."
A Londoner, two down from Hank, laughed nastily. "Maybe schooling is
the way he measures. I read in the _Express_ the other day that even
after Yankees get out of college they can't read proper. All they
learn is driving cars and dancing and togetherness--wotever that it."
Hank grinned inwardly and thought, _You don't sound as though you read
any too well yourself, my friend._ Aloud he said, "Very well, in a
couple of days we'll be in the promised land, I contend that free
enterprise performs the greatest good for the greatest number."
"Free enterprise," somebody down the table snorted. "That means the
freedom for the capitalists to pry somebody else out of the greatest
part of what he produces."
By the time they'd reached Leningrad aside from Paco and Loo, his
cabinmates, Hank had built an Iron Curtain all of his own between
himself and the other members of the Progressive Tours trip. Which was
the way he wanted it. He could foresee a period when having friends
might be a handicap when and if he needed to drift away from the main
body for any length of time.
Actually, the discussions he ran into were on the juvenile side. Hank
Kuran hadn't spent eight years of his life as a field man working
against the Soviet countries in the economic sphere without running
into every argument both pro and con in the continuing battle between
Capitalism and Communism. Now he chuckled to himself at getting into
tiffs over the virtues of Russian black bread versus American white,
or whether Soviet jets were faster than those of the United States.
With Char Moore, though she tolerated Hank's company, in fact, seemed
to prefer it to that of whatever other males were aboard, it was
continually a matter of rubbing fur the wrong way. She was ready to
battle it out on any phase of politics, international affairs or West
versus East.
But it was the visitors from space that actually dominated the
conversation of the ship--crew, tourists, business travelers, or
whoever. Information was still limited, and Taas the sole source.
Daily there were multilingual radio broadcasts tuned in by the
_Baltika_ but largely they added little to the actual information on
the extraterrestrials. It was mostly Soviet back-patting on the
significance of the fact that the Galactic Confederation emissaries
had landed in the Soviet complex rather than among the Western
countries.
Hank learned little that he hadn't already known. The Kremlin had all
but laughingly declined a suggestion on the part of Switzerland that
the extraterrestrials be referred to that all but defunct United
Nations. The delegates from the Galactic Confederation had chose to
land in Moscow. In Moscow they should remain until they desired to go
elsewhere. The Soviet implication was that the alien emissaries had no
desire, intention nor reason to visit other sections of Earth. They
had contacted the dominant world power and could complete their
business within the Kremlin walls.
* * * * *
Leningrad came as only a mild surprise to Henry Kuran. With his
knowledge of Russian and his position in Morton Twombly's department,
he had kept up with the Soviet progress though the years.
As early as the middle 1950s unbiased travelers to the U.S.S.R. had
commented in detail upon the explosion of production in the country.
By the end of the decade such books as Gunther's "Inside Russia Today"
had dwelt upon the ultra-cleanliness of the cities, the mushrooming of
apartment houses, the easing of the restrictions of Stalin's day--or
at least the beginning of it.
He actually hadn't expected peasant clad, half starved Russians
furtively shooting glances at their neighbors for fear of the secret
police. Nor a black bread and cabbage diet. Nor long lines of the
politically suspect being hauled off to Siberia. But on the other hand
he was unprepared for the prosperity he did find.
[Illustration]
Not that this was any paradise, worker's or otherwise. But it still
came as a mild surprise. Henry Kuran couldn't remember so far back
that he hadn't had his daily dose of anti-Russianism. Not unless it
was for the brief respite during the Second World War when for a
couple of years the Red Army had been composed of heroes and Stalin
had overnight become benevolent old Uncle Joe.
There weren't as many cars on the streets as in American cities, but
there were more than he had expected nor were they 1955 model
Packards. So far as he could see, they were approximately the same
cars as were being turned out in Western Europe.
Public transportation, he admitted, was superior to that found in the
Western capitals. Obviously, it would have to be, without automobiles,
buses, streetcars and subways would have to carry the brunt of
traffic. However, it was the spotless efficiency of public
transportation that set him back.
The shops were still short of the pinnacles touched by Western
capitals. They weren't empty of goods, luxury goods as well as
necessities, but they weren't overflowing with the endless quantities,
the hundred-shadings of quality and fashion that you expected in the
States.
But what struck nearest to him was the fact that the people in the
streets were not broken spirited depressed, humorless drudges. In
fact, why not admit it, they looked about the same as people in the
streets anywhere else. Some laughed, some looked troubled. Children
ran and played. Lovers held hands and looked into each other's eyes.
Some reeled under an overload of vodka. Some hurried along, business
bent. Some dawdled, window shopped, or strolled along for the air.
Some read books or newspapers as they shuffled, radar directed, and
unconscious of the world about them.
They were only a day and half in Leningrad. They saw the Hermitage,
comparable to the Louvre and far and above any art museum in America.
They saw the famous subway--which deserved its fame. They were ushered
through a couple of square miles of the Elektrosile electrical
equipment works, claimed ostentatiously by the to be the largest in
the world. They ate in restaurants as good as any Hank Kuran had been
able to afford at home and stayed one night at the Astoria Hotel.
At least, Hank had the satisfaction of grumbling about the plumbing.
Paco and Loo, the only single bachelors on the tour besides himself,
were again quartered with him at the Astoria.
Paco said, "My friend, there I agree with you completely. America has
the best plumbing in the world. And the most."
Hank was pulling off his shoes after an arch-breaking day of
sightseeing. "Well, I'm glad I've finally found some field where it's
agreeable that the West is superior to the Russkies."
Loo was stretched out on his bed, in stocking feet, gazing at the
ceiling which towered at least fifteen feet above him. He said "In the
town where I was born, there were three bathrooms, one in the home of
the missionary, one in the home of the commissioner, and one in my
father's palace." He looked up at Hank. "Or is my country considered
part of the Western World?"
Paco laughed. "Come to think of it, I doubt if one third the rural
homes of Argentina have bathrooms. Hank, my friend, I am afraid Loo is
right. You use the word _West_ too broadly. All the capitalist world
is not so advanced as the United States. You have been very lucky, you
Yankees."
Hank sank into one of the huge, Victorian era armchairs. "Luck has
nothing to do with it. America is rich because private enterprise
_works_."
"Of course," Paco pursued humorously, "the fact that your country
floats on a sea of oil, has some of the richest forest land in the
world, is blessed with some of the greatest mineral deposits anywhere
and millions of acres of unbelievably fertile land has nothing to do
with it."
"I get your point," Hank said. "The United States was handed the
wealth of the world on a platter. But that's only part of it."
"Yes," Loo agreed. "Also to be considered is the fact that for more
than a hundred years you have never had a serious war, serious, that
is, in that your land was not invaded, your industries destroyed."
"That's to our credit. We're a peace loving people."