Combat Part 6

"You don't have to swear," Char bit out testily. "What are we going to do about it?"

"I just told you what I was going to do." Taking up his things he opened the door. "I'll change in the men's dressing room."

"I'll lock the door," Char Moore snapped.

Hank grinned at her. "I'll bet that if you do the conductor either has a pa.s.skey or will break it down for me."

When he returned in slippers, nightrobe and pajamas, Char was in the upper berth, staring angrily at the compartment ceiling. There were no hooks or other facilities for hanging or storing clothes. She must have put all of her things back into her bag. Hank grinned inwardly, carefully folded his own pants and jacket over his suitcase before climbing into the bunk.

"Don't snore, do you?" he said conversationally.

No answer.

"Or walk in your sleep?"

"You're not funny, Mr. Stevenson."

"That's what I like about this country," Hank said. "Progressive. Way ahead of the West. Shucks, modesty is a reactionary capitalistic anachronism. Shove 'em all into bed together, that's what I always say." He laughed.

"Oh, shut up," Char said. But then she laughed, too. "Actually, I suppose there's nothing wrong with it. We are rather Victorian about such things in the States."

Hank groaned. "There you are. If a railroad company at home suggested you spend the night in a compartment with a strange man, you'd sue them. But here in the promised land it's O.K."

After a short silence Char said, "Hank, why do you dislike the Soviet Union so much?"

"Why? Because I'm an American!"

She said so softly as to be almost inaudible, "I've known you for a week now. Somehow you don't really seem to be the type who would make that inadequate a statement."

Hank said "Look, Char. There's a cold war going on between the United States and her allies and the Soviet complex. I'm on our side. It's going to be one or the other."

"No it isn't, Hank. If it ever breaks out into hot war, it's going to be both. That is, unless the extraterrestrials add some new elements to the whole disgusting situation."

"Let's put it another way. Why are you so pro-Soviet?"

She raised herself on one elbow and scowled down over the edge of her bunk at him. Inside, Hank turned over twice to see the unbound red hair, the serious green eyes. Imagine looking at that face over the breakfast table for the rest of your life. The h.e.l.l with South American senoritas.

Char said earnestly, "I'm not. Confound it, Hank, can't the world get any further than this cowboys and Indians relations.h.i.+p between nations? Our science and industry has finally developed to the point where the world could be a paradise. We've solved all the problems of production. We've conquered all the major diseases. We have the wonders of eternity before us--and look at us."

"Tell that to the Russkies and their pals. They're out for the works."

"Well, haven't we been?"

"The United States isn't trying to take over the world."

"No? Possibly not in the old sense of the word, but aren't we trying desperately to sponsor our type of government and social system everywhere? Frankly, I'm neither pro-West nor pro-Soviet. I think they're both wrong."

"Fine," Hank said. "What is your answer?"

She remained silent for a long time. Finally, "I don't claim to have an answer. But the world is changing like crazy. Science, technology, industrial production, education, population all are mushrooming. For us to claim that sweeping and basic changes aren't taking place in the Western nations is just nonsense. Our own country's inst.i.tutions barely resemble the ones we had when you and I were children. And certainly the Soviet Union has changed and is changing from what it was thirty or forty years ago."

"Listen, Char," Hank said in irritation, "you still haven't come up with any sort of an answer to the cold war."

"I told you I hadn't any. All I say is that I'm sick of it. I can't remember so far back that there wasn't a cold war. And the more I consider it the sillier it looks. Currently the United States and her allies spend between a third and a half of their gross national product on the military--ha! the military!--and in fighting the Soviet complex in international trade."

"Well," Hank said, "I'm sick of it, too, and I haven't any answer either, but I'll be darned if I've heard the Russkies propose one. And just between you and me, if I had to choose between living Soviet style and our style, I'd choose ours any day."

Char said nothing.

Hank added flatly, "Who knows, maybe the coming of these Galactic Confederation characters will bring it all to a head."

She said nothing further and in ten minutes the soft sounds of her breathing had deepened to the point that Hank Kuran knew she slept. He lay there another half hour in the full knowledge that probably the most desirable woman he'd ever met was sleeping less than three feet away from him.

Leningrad had cus.h.i.+oned the first impression of Moscow for Henry Kuran. Although, if anything, living standards and civic beauty were even higher here in the capital city of world Communism.

They pulled into the Leningradsky Station on Komsomolskaya Square in the early morning to be met by Intourist guides and buses.

Hank sat next to Char Moore still feeling on the argumentative side after their discussion of the night before. He motioned with his head at some excavation work going on next to the station. "There you are.

Women doing manual labor."

Char said, "I'm from the Western states, it doesn't impress me. Have you ever seen fruit pickers, potato diggers, or just about any type of itinerant harvest workers? There is no harder work and women, and children for that matter, do half of it at home."

He looked at the husky, rawboned women laborers working shoulder to shoulder with the men. "I still don't like it."

Char shrugged. "Who does? The sooner we devise machines to do all the drudgery the better off the world will be."

To his surprise, Hank found Moscow one of the most beautiful cities he had ever observed. Certainly the downtown area in the vicinity of the Kremlin compared favorably with any.

The buses whisked them down through Lermontovskaya Square, down Kirov Street to Novaya and then turned right. The Intourist guide made with a running commentary. There was the famous Bolshoi Theater and there Sverdlova Square, a Soviet cultural center.

Hank didn't know it then but they were avoiding Red Square. They circled it, one block away, and pulled onto Gorky Street and before a Victorian period building.

"The Grand Hotel," the guide announced, "where you will stay during your Moscow visit."

Half a dozen porters began manhandling their bags from the top of the bus. They were ushered into the lobby and a.s.signed rooms. Russian hotel lobbies were a thing apart. No souvenir stands, no bellhops, no signs saying _To the Bar_, _To the Barber Shop_ or to anything else. A hotel was a hotel, period.

Hank trailed Loo and Paco and three porters to the second floor and to the room they were a.s.signed in common. Like the Astoria's rooms, in Leningrad, it was king-sized. In fact, it could easily have been divided into three chambers. There were four full sized beds, six arm chairs, two sofas, two vanity tables, a monstrous desk--and one wash bowl which gurgled when you ran water.

Paco, hands on hips, stared around. "A dance hall," he said.

"Gentlemen, this room hasn't changed since some Grand Duke stayed in it before the revolution."

Loo, who had a.s.sumed his usual p.r.o.ne position on one of the beds, said, "From what I've heard about Moscow housing, you could get an average family in this amount of s.p.a.ce."

Hank was stuffing clothes into a dresser drawer. "Now who's making with anti-Soviet comments?"

Paco laughed at him. "Have you ever seen some of the housing in the Harlem district in New York? You can rent a bed in a room that has possibly ten beds, for an eight-hour period. When your eight hours are up you roll out and somebody else rolls in. The beds are kept warm, three s.h.i.+fts every twenty-four hours."