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Gun For Hire
by
Joe looked at him blankly.
“In your day you were confronted with national and international, problems. Just as we are today and just as nations were a century or a millennium ago.”
“Sure, O.K., so we had problems. I know whatcha mean–like wars, and depressions and dictators and like that.”
“Yes, like that,” Brett-James nodded.
The heavy-set man paused a moment. “Yes, like that,” he repeated. “That we confront you now indicates that the problems of your day were solved. Hadn’t they been, the world most surely would have destroyed itself. Wars? Our pedagogues are hard put to convince their students that such ever existed. More than a century and a half ago our society eliminated the reasons for international conflict. For that matter,” he added musingly, “we eliminated most international boundaries. Depressions? Shortly after your own period, man awoke to the fact that he had achieved to the point where it was possible to produce an abundance for all with a minimum of toil. Overnight, for all practical purposes, the whole world was industrialized, automated. The second industrial revolution was accompanied by revolutionary changes in almost every field, certainly in every science. Dictators? Your ancestors found, Mr. Prantera, that it is difficult for a man to be free so long as others are still enslaved. Today the democratic ethic has reached a pinnacle never dreamed of in your own era.”
“O.K., O.K.,” Joe Prantera growled. “So everybody’s got it made. What I wanta know is what’s all this about me giving it ta somebody? If everything’s so great, how come you want me to knock this guy off?”
Reston-Farrell bent forward and thumped his right index finger twice on the table. “The bacterium of hate–a new strain–has found the human race unprotected from its disease. We had thought our vaccines immunized us.”
“What’s that suppose to mean?”
Brett-James took up the ball again. “Mr. Prantera, have you ever heard of Ghengis Khan, of Tamerlane, Alexander, Caesar?”
Joe Prantera scowled at him emptily.
“Or, more likely, of Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin?”
“Sure I heard of Hitler and Stalin,” Joe growled. “I ain’t stupid.”
The other nodded. “Such men are unique. They have a drive … a drive to power which exceeds by far the ambitions of the average man. They are genii in their way, Mr. Prantera, genii of evil. Such a genius of evil has appeared on the current scene.”
“Now we’re getting somewheres,” Joe snorted. “So you got a guy what’s a little ambitious, like, eh? And you guys ain’t got the guts to give it to him. O.K. What’s in it for me?”
The two of them frowned, exchanged glances. Reston-Farrell said, “You know, that is one aspect we had not considered.”
Brett-James said to Joe Prantera, “Had we not, ah, taken you at the time we did, do you realize what would have happened?”
“Sure,” Joe grunted. “I woulda let old Al Rossi have it right in the guts, five times. Then I woulda took the plane back to Chi.”
Brett-James was shaking his head. “No. You see, by coincidence, a police squad car was coming down the street just at that moment to arrest Mr. Rossi. You would have been apprehended. As I understand Californian law of the period, your life would have been forfeit, Mr. Prantera.”
Joe winced. It didn’t occur to him to doubt their word.
Reston-Farrell said, “As to reward, Mr. Prantera, we have already told you there is ultra-abundance in this age. Once this task has been performed, we will sponsor your entry into present day society. Competent psychiatric therapy will soon remove your present–“
“Waita minute, now. You figure on gettin’ me candled by some head shrinker, eh? No thanks, Buster. I’m going back to my own–“
Brett-James was shaking his head again. “I am afraid there is no return, Mr. Prantera. Time travel works but in one direction, with the flow of the time stream. There can be no return to your own era.”
Joe Prantera had been rocking with the mental blows he had been assimilating, but this was the final haymaker. He was stuck in this squaresville of a world.