Commune 2000 AD. Mack Reynolds

family, and some of the old mores had worn off on him during childhood. The new permissiveness had already begun and by the time he had reached maturity he’d accepted the rapidly changing standards, but in his background there was still that which made him a wee bit straitlaced as compared to Nora’s generation, which had never known the old concepts.

      By the time they finished breakfast, he had grown weary of her vapid chatter and made no protest, nor no future date, when she prepared to leave. He was slightly chagrined at the fact that she hadn’t commended him upon the Eggs Malaga—they had turned out perfectly.

      She wore Bermuda shorts and the Cretan Revival slippers but had evidently decided that it was sunny enough, even at this early hour, to go topless back to her own place, and had thrown her blouse in the disposal chute in the bath. She went up on her tiptoes, kissed him briefly, said, “It was fun, Tom.” She added mischievously, “Don’t forget the raincheck. Maybe you’ll convert me into becoming a student of the Indians.”

      The door opened for her when she approached.

      He said, as she bustled through it, “The name’s Ted.”

      She looked at him over her shoulder and grinned. “And I’m Marsha, not Nora.”

      He grunted at that and went on back into the bedroom and through it to the bath for his shower. Shaving wasn’t necessary since he’d had his facial hair removed several years past. He had always hated to shave, even with a depilatory. Some of his friends had given him the argument that if beards ever came back in, he’d be sunk, but Ted Swain was no follower of the fads and he wouldn’t have grown a beard no matter what the style.

      His was a craggy face, certainly less than handsome in the accepted taste, both his ears and mouth being much too large. And there was an intense something about his eyes that had an inclination to throw off his acquaintances and colleagues. It took time to become friends with Ted Swain; he didn’t have many. Those he did have were close. He had qualities down beneath.

      Marsha had been right about going topless, he decided. It was going to be a warmish day even though autumn was already upon them. He selected a kilt from his closet and wrapped it around his waist. He didn’t bother to don footwear.

      He went on back into his living room and through it into the small study. It was small, since there was no reason for it to be otherwise. Save for a few reference books, the room was devoid of the atmosphere formerly considered required by a scholar. The furniture consisted solely of one bookshelf, and one chair behind a desk, the top of which was an autoteacher; its screen connected with the National Data Banks. There was an additional library-booster screen to one side, so that he could consult more than one source at a time, a TV phone, and a voco-typer. The reason he had any reference books at all was that he found it quicker, sometimes, to manually look up, say, a word in a dictionary, rather than dialing a book from the data banks.

      He went over to a shelf and brought down his bottle of stimmy and took one of the pills. It wasn’t Ted Swain’s field, and he had no real idea of the make-up of the ganglioside, other than that it contained magnesium pemoline. That it worked, he did know. He would be mentally stimulated for at least two hours; his I.Q. more than doubled, his ability to retain tripled. What was it someone had said? I.Q. isn’t enough. You have to have push as well. A lazy genius isn’t one. Well, stimmy gave you the push.

      He went back to the desk, sat down before his screen and activated it. He looked at it and sighed. Stimmy pill or not, he was already past his peak of mental aptitude. The human brain begins to lose its ability to absorb at approximately the age of twenty-five. The new kids coming up in the field of ethnology had more on the ball than he did. He had more experience, more accumulated knowledge, than they, but their Ability Quotients were higher.

      On the subject dial he dialed Ethnology, Mexico, the Aztecs, and then from the Peabody Museum Reports of Adolph F. Bandelier, and to the second report, On the Social Organization and Mode of Government of the Ancient Mexicans. It had been written in 1878 and for his money was still the definitive work on the Aztec Confederation, a sleeper forgotten by many modern ethnologists.

      Usually Ted Swain studied in Interlingua, every work in the National Data Banks, Library Division, having been translated into the international language, but this time he stuck to the originals since he sometimes distrusted any translation. The computer translaters, in particular, sometimes missed up on such matters as idiom.

      He flicked the pages until he arrived at the point where he had left off the day before, a quotation from Fray Toribio de Motolinia’s Historia de los Indios de Nueva Espana. Motolinia had come a bit late on the scene but he had done a fantastic amount of research into the nature of Montezuma’s Government.

      His desk TV phone buzzed and he looked up in irritation. Damn it doubly, he wished that he had a proper escape room in which to study. He had the phone on a number-two priority, ruling out all but important calls, or governmental announcements, but that wasn’t enough to guarantee his absolute privacy.

      He flicked off his autoteacher and activated the phone.

      To his surprise, it was Academician Franz Englebrecht, head of the department of ethnology at the university city in which Ted Swain was enrolled, and his director of dissertation.

      Ted hadn’t even talked with him for almost six months when Englebrecht had turned down his suggestion of a dissertation based on the true population of Tenochtitlan, the old Aztec Mexico City.

      Englebrecht beamed at him; the insipid smile irritated Ted Swain more than anything else about the man. Pompous, yes, an asshole, yes, but did the son-of-a-bitch have to beam at you in that condescending manner?

      Ted said, “Good morning, sir.”

      “Good morning, Swain. Well, I’ll not mince about. I think we have the theme for your dissertation, my boy. Can you come to my apartments immediately?”

      “Why, yes sir, of course. But … but what is it?”

      The other beamed again at him. “Not over the phone, Swain. We must run no chance of it leaking out. Some other candidate might see what a natural it is and publish before you could. We’ll talk it over in the seclusion of my escape sanctuary.”

Chapter Two

      When the other’s face had faded, Ted Swain leaned back for a moment in his chair and let first surprise and then emotion wash over him. At long last.

      He shook his head, took a deep breath and came to his feet. He went on into the bedroom, and to his closet, and selected a white Yucatan type shirt-jacket. He looked down at his kilts and considered donning more conservative trousers. But no, the hell with it, he decided. Badly as he wanted to get along with his director of dissertation, he didn’t want to toady to the man.

      He brought forth a pair of high woolen socks, in the Scottish tradition, donned them and then a pair of comfortable loafers.

      He brought out his pocket transceiver, touched the stud that activated the cover, and dialed for a single seater. He walked to the door and through it, when it automatically opened for him, and down the walk to the street.

      His electrosteamer rounded a corner and smoothed up to the curb before him. It was an open car, as he had dialed, and instead of bothering to open the door he flung a long leg over the side and made himself comfortable behind the manual controls.

      The controls were simplicity itself—an accelerator, a brake, the wheel. He put his pocket transceiver on the payment screen, so that the trip could be deducted from his credit account, touched the accelerator with his right toe and was off, heading for the entry to the underground expressway at the community center.

      Ordinarily he preferred to drive on the surface, manually, but this time he was in a hurry to get to his destination. Before Englebrecht changed his mind, he thought wryly. But, besides that, he wanted to think without the distraction of driving.

      At the community center, he waved a couple of times to friends in the tennis courts and the swimming pool, then drove up to the expressway autodispatcher, parked on the dispatch