Hunter Patrol | Page 5

are located in the most barren places, they are
beauty-spots, verdant beyond belief. It is of only passing interest that,
while large numbers of the aged go there yearly, their populations
remain constant, and, to judge from the quantities of supplies shipped
to them, extremely small."
* * * * *
"They call me Samuel, in this organization," the man in the long black
coat said. "Whoever gave me that alias must have chosen it because I
am here in an effort to live up to it. Although I am ordained by no
church, I fight for all of them. The plain fact is that this man we call
The Guide is really the Antichrist!"
"Well, I haven't quite so lofty a motive, but it's good enough to make
me willing to finance this project," Walter said. "It's very simple. The
Guide won't let people make money, and if they do, he taxes it away
from them. And he has laws to prohibit inheritance; what little you can
accumulate, you can't pass on to your children."
"I put up a lot of the money, too, don't forget," Carl told him. "Or the
Union did; I'm a poor man, myself." He was smoking an excellent cigar,
for a poor man, and his clothes could have come from the same tailor as
Walter's. "Look, we got a real Union--the Union of all unions. Every
working man in North America, Europe, Australia and South Africa
belongs to it. And The Guide has us all hog-tied."
"He won't let you strike," Benson chuckled.
"That's right. And what can we do? Why, we can't even make our

closed-shop contracts stick. And as far as getting anything like a
pay-raise...."
"Good thing. Another pay-raise in some of my companies would
bankrupt them, the way The Guide has us under his thumb...." Walter
began, but he was cut off.
"Well! It seems as though this Guide has done some good, if he's made
you two realize that you're both on the same side, and that what hurts
one hurts both," Benson said. "When I shipped out for Turkey in '77,
neither Labor nor Management had learned that." He looked from one
to another of them. "The Guide must have a really good bodyguard,
with all the enemies he's made."
Gregory shook his head. "He lives virtually alone, in a very small house
on the UN Capitol grounds. In fact, except for a small police-force,
armed only with non-lethal stun-guns, your profession of arms is
non-existent."
* * * * *
"I've been guessing what you want me to do," Benson said. "You want
this Guide bumped off. But why can't any of you do it? Or, if it's too
risky, at least somebody from your own time? Why me?"
"We can't. Everybody in the world today is conditioned against
violence, especially the taking of human life," Anthony told him.
"Now, wait a moment!" This time, he was using the voice he would
have employed in chiding a couple of Anatolian peasant partisans who
were field-stripping a machine gun the wrong way. "Those babies in
that film you showed me weren't dying of old age...."
"That is not violence," Paula said bitterly. "That is humane beneficence.
Ugly people would be unhappy, and would make others unhappy, in a
world where everybody else is beautiful."
"And all these oppressive and tyrannical laws," Benson continued.

"How does he enforce them, without violence, actual or threatened?"
Samuel started to say something about the Power of the Evil One;
Paula, ignoring him, said:
"I really don't know; he just does it. Mass hypnotism of some sort. I
know music has something to do with it, because there is always music,
everywhere. This laboratory, for instance, was secretly soundproofed;
we couldn't have worked here, otherwise."
"All right. I can see that you'd need somebody from the past, preferably
a soldier, whose conditioning has been in favor rather than against
violence. I'm not the only one you snatched, I take it?"
"No. We've been using that machine to pick up men from battlefields
all over the world and all over history," Gregory said. "Until now, none
of them could adjust.... Uggh!" He shuddered, looking even sicker than
when the film was being shown.
"He's thinking," Walter said, "about a French officer from Waterloo
who blew out his brains with a pocket-pistol on that table, and an
English archer from Agincourt who ran amok with a dagger in here,
and a trooper of the Seventh Cavalry from the Custer Massacre."
Gregory managed to overcome his revulsion. "You see, we were forced
to take our subjects largely at random with regard to individual
characteristics, mental attitudes, adaptability, et cetera." As long as he
stuck to high order abstractions, he could control himself. "Aside from
their professional lack of