* * * * *
I
In other eras he might have been described as swacked, stewed, stoned,
smashed, crocked, cockeyed, soused, shellacked, polluted, potted,
tanked, lit, stinko, pie-eyed, three sheets in the wind, or simply
drunk.
In his own time, Major Joseph Mauser, Category Military, Mid-Middle
Caste, was drenched.
Or at least rapidly getting there.
He wasn't happy about it. It wasn't that kind of a binge.
He lowered one eyelid and concentrated on the list of potables offered
by the auto-bar. He'd decided earlier in the game that it would be a
physical impossibility to get through the whole list but he was making
a strong attempt on a representative of each subdivision. He'd had a
cocktail, a highball, a sour, a flip, a punch and a julep. He wagged
forth a finger to dial a fizz, a Sloe Gin Fizz.
Joe Mauser occupied a small table in a corner of the Middle Caste
Category Military Club in Greater Washington. His current fame,
transient though it might be, would have made him welcome as a guest
in the Upper Caste Club, located in the swank Baltimore section of
town. Old pros in the Category Military had comparatively small
sufferance for caste lines among themselves; rarified class
distinctions meant little when you were in the dill, and you didn't
become an old pro without having been in spots where matters had
pickled. Joe would have been welcome on the strength of his
performance in the most recent fracas in which he had participated as
a mercenary, that between Vacuum Tube Transport and Continental
Hovercraft. But he didn't want it that way.
You didn't devote the greater part of your life to pulling your way
up, pushing your way up, fighting your way up, the ladder of status to
be satisfied to associate with your social superiors on the basis of
being a nine-day-wonder, an oddity to be met at cocktail parties and
spoken to for a few democratic moments.
No, Joe Mauser would stick to his own position in the scheme of things
until through his own efforts he won through to that rarefied altitude
in society which his ambition demanded.
A sour voice said, "Celebrating, captain? Oops, major, I mean. So you
did get something out of the Catskill Reservation fracas. I'm
surprised."
A scowl, Joe decided, would be the best. Various others, in the course
of the evening, had attempted to join him. Three or four comrades in
arms, one journalist from some fracas buff magazine, some woman he'd
never met before, and Zen knew how she'd ever got herself into the
club. A snarl had driven some away, or a growl or sneer. This one, he
decided, called for an angered scowl, particularly in view of the tone
of voice which only brought home doubly how his planning of a full two
years had come a cropper.
He looked up, beginning his grimace of discouragement. "Go away," he
muttered nastily. The other's identity came through slowly. One of the
Telly news reporters who'd covered the fracas; for the moment he
couldn't recall the name.
Joe Mauser held the common prejudices of the Category Military for
Telly and all its ramifications. Not only for the drooling multitudes
who sat before their sets and vicariously participated in the sadism
of combat while their trank bemused brains refused contemplation of
the reality of their way of life. But also for Category
Communications, and particularly its Sub-division Telly, Branch Fracas
News, and all connected with it. His views, perhaps, were akin to
those of the matador facing the moment of truth, the crowds screaming
in the arena seats for him to go in and the promoters and managers
watching from the _barrera_ and possibly wondering if he were gored if
next week's gate would improve.
The Telly cameras which watched you as, crouched almost double, you
scurried into the fire area of a mitrailleuse or perhaps a Maxim; the
Telly cameras which swung in your direction speedily, avidly, when a
blast of fire threw you back and to the ground; the Telly cameras with
their zoom lenses which focused full into your face as life leaked
away. The Spanish aficionados never had it so good. The close-up
expression of the dying matador had been denied them.
The other undeterred, sank into the chair opposite, his face twisted
cynically. Joe placed him now. Freddy Soligen. Give the man his due,
he and his team were right in there when the going got hot. More than
once, in the past fifteen years, Joe had seen the little man lugging
his cameras into the center of the fracas, taking chances expected
only of combatants. Vaguely, he wondered why.