Freedom

  Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction February 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  FREEDOM

  by MACK REYNOLDS

  Illustrated by Schoenherr

  _Freedom is a very dangerous thing indeed. It is so catching--like a plague--even the doctors get it._

  * * * * *

  Colonel Ilya Simonov tooled his Zil aircushion convertible along the edgeof Red Square, turned right immediately beyond St. Basil's Cathedral,crossed the Moscow River by the Moskvocetski Bridge and debouched into theheavy, and largely automated traffic of Pyarnikskaya. At DobryninskayaSquare he turned west to Gorki Park which he paralleled on Kaluga until hereached the old baroque palace which housed the Ministry.

  There were no flags, no signs, nothing to indicate the present nature ofthe aged Czarist building.

  He left the car at the curb, slamming its door behind him and walkingbriskly to the entrance. Hard, handsome in the Slavic tradition,dedicated, Ilya Simonov was young for his rank. A plainclothes man, idlinga hundred feet down the street, eyed him briefly then turned his attentionelsewhere. The two guards at the gate snapped to attention, their eyesstraight ahead. Colonel Simonov was in mufti and didn't answer the salute.

  The inside of the old building was well known to him. He went along marblehalls which contained antique statuary and other relics of the past which,for unknown reason, no one had ever bothered to remove. At the heavy doorwhich entered upon the office of his destination he came to a halt andspoke briefly to the lieutenant at the desk there.

  "The Minister is expecting me," Simonov clipped.

  The lieutenant did the things receptionists do everywhere and looked up ina moment to say, "Go right in, Colonel Simonov."

  Minister Kliment Blagonravov looked up from his desk at Simonov'sentrance. He was a heavy-set man, heavy of face and he still affected theshaven head, now rapidly disappearing among upper-echelons of the Party.His jacket had been thrown over the back of a chair and his collarloosened; even so there was a sheen of sweat on his face.

  He looked up at his most trusted field man, said in the way of greeting,"Ilya," and twisted in his swivel chair to a portable bar. He swung openthe door of the small refrigerator and emerged with a bottle ofStolichnaya vodka. He plucked two three-ounce glasses from a shelf andpulled the bottle's cork with his teeth. "Sit down, sit down, Ilya," hegrunted as he filled the glasses. "How was Magnitogorsk?"

  Ilya Simonov secured his glass before seating himself in one of the room'sheavy leathern chairs. He sighed, relaxed, and said, "Terrible, I loaththose ultra-industrialized cities. I wonder if the Americans do any betterwith Pittsburgh or the British with Birmingham."

  "I know what you mean," the security head rumbled. "How did you make outwith you assignment, Ilya?"

  Colonel Simonov frowned down into the colorlessness of the vodka beforedashing it back over his palate. "It's all in my report, Kliment." He wasthe only man in the organization who called Blagonravov by his first name.

  His chief grunted again and reached forward to refill the glass. "I'm sureit is. Do you know how many reports go across this desk daily? And did youknow that Ilya Simonov is the most long-winded, as the Americans say, ofmy some two hundred first-line operatives?"

  The colonel shifted in his chair. "Sorry," he said. "I'll keep that inmind."

  His chief rumbled his sour version of a chuckle. "Nothing, nothing, Ilya.I was jesting. However, give me a brief of your mission."

  Ilya Simonov frowned again at his refilled vodka glass but didn't take itup for a moment. "A routine matter," he said. "A dozen or so engineers andtechnicians, two or three fairly high-ranking scientists, and three orfour of the local intelligentsia had formed some sort of informal club.They were discussing national and international affairs."

  Kliment Blagonravov's thin eyebrows went up but he waited for the other togo on.

  Ilya said impatiently, "It was the ordinary. They featured completefreedom of opinion and expression in their weekly get-togethers. Theybegan by criticizing without extremism, local affairs, matters concernedwith their duties, that sort of thing. In the beginning, they even sent afew letters of protest to the local press, signing the name of the club.After their ideas went further out, they didn't dare do that, of course."

  He took up his second drink and belted it back, not wanting to give ittime to lose its chill.

  His chief filled in. "And they delved further and further into mattersthat should be discussed only within the party--if even there--until theyarrived at what point?"

  Colonel Simonov shrugged. "Until they finally got to the point ofdiscussing how best to overthrow the Soviet State and what socio-economicsystem should follow it. The usual thing. I've run into possible two dozensuch outfits in the past five years."

  His chief grunted and tossed back his own drink. "My dear Ilya," herumbled sourly, "I've _run into_, as you say, more than two hundred."

  Simonov was taken back by the figure but he only looked at the other.

  Blagonravov said, "What did you do about it?"

  "Several of them were popular locally. In view of Comrade Zverev's recentpronouncements of increased freedom of press and speech, I thought it bestnot to make a public display. Instead, I took measures to chargeindividual members with inefficiency in their work, with corruption orgraft, or with other crimes having nothing to do with the reality of thesituation. Six or seven in all were imprisoned, others demoted. Ten ortwelve I had switched to other cities, principally into more backwardareas in the virgin lands."

  "And the ringleaders?" the security head asked.

  "There were two of them, one a research chemist of some prominence, theother a steel plane manager. They were both, ah, unfortunately killed inan automobile accident while under the influence of drink."

  "I see," Blagonravov nodded. "So actually the whole rat's nest was stampedout without attention being brought to it so far as the Magnitogorskpublic is concerned." He nodded heavily again. "You can almost always bedepended upon to do the right thing, Ilya. If you weren't so confoundedlygood a field man, I'd make you my deputy."

  Which was exactly what Simonov would have hated, but he said nothing.

  "One thing," his chief said. "The origin of this, ah, _club_ which turnedinto a tiny underground all of its own. Did you detect the finger of theWest, stirring up trouble?"

  "No." Simonov shook his head. "If such was the case, the agents involvedwere more clever than I'd ordinarily give either America or Common Europecredit for. I could be wrong, of course."

  "Perhaps," the police head growled. He eyed the bottle before him but madeno motion toward it. He wiped the palm of his right hand back over hisbald pate, in unconscious irritation. "But there is something at work thatwe are not getting at." Blagonravov seemed to change subjects. "You canspeak Czech, so I understand."

  "That's right. My mother was from Bratislava. My father met her thereduring the Hitler war."

  "And you know Czechoslovakia?"

  "I've spent several vacations in the Tatras at such resorts as TatranskiLomnica since the country's been made such a tourist center of thesatellites." Ilya Simonov didn't understand this trend of theconversation.

  "You have some knowledge of automobiles, too?"

  Simonov shrugged. "I've driven all my life."

  His chief rumbled thoughtfully, "Time isn't of essence. You can take aquick course at the Moskvich plant. A week or two would give you all
thebackground you need."

  Ilya laughed easily. "I seem to have missed something. Have myshortcomings caught up with me? Am I to be demoted to automobilemechanic?"

  Kliment Blagonravov became definite. "You are being given the mostimportant assignment of your career, Ilya. This rot, this ever growingferment against the Party, must be cut out, liquidated. It seems to festerworse among the middle echelons of ... what did that Yugoslavian Djilascall us?... the _New Class_. Why? That's what we must know."

  He sat farther back in his chair and his heavy lips made a _mout_. "Why,Ilya?" he repeated. "After more than half a century the Party has attainedall its goals. Lenin's millennium is