How Dark the World Becomes (21 page)

“
Argh
, efficient allocation of resources,” Ping said, still in his pirate voice, but she shook her head.

“No, not necessarily. That’s not what a market does.”

“But you said—”

“—that the farmers all end up with the same amount of fruit. Right.
That’s
what a market does: it levels. And that’s
all
it does. It’s pretty good at leveling, but that’s not the same thing as efficiency.”

“Aye, but in the long run . . . ,” he started, but she was shaking her head. She wasn’t kidding around anymore, either; he had her pretty solidly locked into PhD mode. 

“The market can’t read a calendar; it doesn’t know long run from short run. It has no mind of its own—it’s just the economic manifestation of a universal tendency toward stasis in systems. One room has oxygen, the next room is a vacuum. Open the door between them and the pressure equalizes. That’s not necessarily the most efficient way to allocate the oxygen, especially if the original single-room pressure was sufficient to sustain Human life and the new ambient pressure isn’t, but that’s how nature works; it levels.”

“So you’re not one to hold with . . .
the invisible hand?
” Ping asked, leaning forward and saying it slowly, as if it were a secret organization of assassins.

She chuckled.

“Poor old Adam Smith. He’s probably the most widely quoted economist in history whom hardly anyone has actually read.
The Wealth of Nations
runs to hundreds of pages, and all anyone knows about it is that it talks about the invisible hand. How much does he talk about it, Captain Ping? Do you know?”

He shook his head.

“Once,” she answered. “In the entire
Wealth of Nations
, he mentions the invisible hand exactly
once
. One of the bedrock theses of the work—the concept that labor is the basis of any economic system, not a transactional commodity within it—is always ignored by people who want to make workers interchangeable consumable units, like ingots of steel. Instead, they invoke ‘The Invisible Hand’ as if it’s an incantation, calling forth the blessings of the Archangel Adam Smith. No, I don’t believe in the invisible hand, not the way some economists do.”

“Aye,” Ping said after a moment, “well, forget the invisible hand, then. But the way people respond—your three farmers—that’s resource allocation, ain’t it?” 

She nodded. “Absolutely. But who says the way they respond is efficient?”

“Well, if not, someone else comes along and takes over their farm.”

She smiled, but shook her head.

“You’d think so, but their efficiency is only related to meeting the demands of the market, and my point is that the demands of the market itself are not necessarily efficient. Let me give you an example. We came to Rakanka from Peezgtaan—the capital city actually, what they call Crack City. Do you know how many Humans died of deficiency diseases last year in Crack City?”

He shrugged. How would he know? She turned to me.

“Mr. Naradnyo?” she asked.

“I don’t know . . . a lot.”

“About six hundred urban poor Humans died from deficiency-related diseases last year,” she answered, “or a dietary deficiency was a significant complicating issue in their health collapse.”

“Six
hundred
? That many?” the captain asked, the pirate gone from his voice.

She nodded. 

“They should be mass synthesizing Human-specific vitamins and dietary minerals,” she went on, talking to everyone at the table, “enriching the soya paste that’s the basis for most Human-consumed protein on Peezgtaan, but they aren’t. But Human criminals
are
synthesizing Laugh.” She turned to me. “Why is that, Mr. Naradnyo?”

That made me a bit uncomfortable, as you might imagine, and she must have seen it in my face. She frowned and shook her head impatiently.

“No, this isn’t a moral question. I’m asking as an economist talking to someone who is an expert on the local economy. Why—economically—are suppliers synthesizing Laugh instead of Human vitamin complex?”

“’Cause that’s where the money is.”

“Yes, of course,” she agreed, and nodded vigorously, looking around the table again. There were times when she might look like a fashion model, but that wasn’t one of them. At that moment, there was nothing elegant or graceful about her mannerisms, nothing practiced about her speech. For a moment, she was an economics teacher, so absorbed by her subject that it made her geeky and almost likeable. 

“Because that’s where the money is,” she repeated, sill nodding jerkily. “But does that make Laugh more useful than vitamins, just because it’s what the money in the market is chasing? The argument that the market allocates resources efficiently presupposes that the distribution of money demand within the market is based on some rational, economically efficient model. But what if it’s not? What if, for example, it’s driven by an uncontrollable addiction?”

She looked around to let everyone think that over for a couple seconds before going on.

“Alternatively, what if half the money in a market is controlled by one man? That market is going to allocate a disproportionate amount of its resources to satisfying that one man’s whims, isn’t it? But what’s efficient about that?”

“But eventually it gets leveled out, ain’t that so?” the pirate captain asked.

“That’s what markets do; they level,” she answered, nodding again. “Here’s the problem: how did one man get all that money to start with? Not from the market. Significant disparities in wealth are
never
the result of pure market forces—they are the result of market
distortions
, and you can’t rely on market forces to level a non-market imbalance. If the market by itself could correct the imbalance, then the imbalance would not have developed in the first place, would it?”

“Well, you lost me there,” he said. “Why can’t it correct one that just, well . . . happens?”

“Because imbalances do not
just happen
; they are the result of structural constraints, either natural or artificial, which are beyond the ability of markets to change. 

“Case in point: innovation. Every advanced society we know of has made the determination, for right or wrong, that the market itself does not sufficiently reward dramatic and costly innovations. Someone comes up with an innovation, they enjoy a transitory advantage, but the pressures of the market drive everyone else to adopt the same innovation as quickly as possible and re-level the field. If the innovation was particularly difficult or costly to develop—say a new drug—the original innovator’s momentary advantage is not enough, it is argued, to justify the investment. So the market encourages many simple and inexpensive innovations, but discourages major leaps forward. 

“Since societies prize major leaps forward, every advanced society we know of has adopted a series of intellectual property covenants which protect major innovations from the leveling effects of the marketplace. They prohibit anyone but the original innovator from using the innovation; they prohibit competition in that field as a reward for progress. The imbalance those laws create cannot be overcome by the market, because the market is specifically enjoined from doing so.”

“So, you’re saying intellectual property laws are bad because they short-circuit the market?” Ping asked.

“No, Captain. I’m saying a market is no more good or bad than is gravity. Both are morally neutral forces of nature, to be understood and utilized, not worshipped.”

Ping lapsed into a thoughtful silence, and my mind went to the short lesson I’d received on intellectual property law courtesy of Walter Wu. I guess I understood the whole “protect innovation” idea as a basis of intellectual property laws, but to my economically naïve brain it seemed like the
Cottohazz
had managed to screw things up with theirs. They had choked innovation off, not encouraged it. It wasn’t hurting the
e-Varokiim
’s bank accounts, though.

“So how come I don’t hear more economists talking like this?” I finally asked.

She shrugged languidly, and settled back in her chair, eyes half closed, and the teacher vanished.

“You’ll never hear me talk like this to a client,” she answered.

“So you’re saying,” I said, “that economic analysis is a commodity subject to market forces as well?” 

She laughed, and I think it was the first time she’d laughed at something I said . . . other than in derision.

Nice laugh, actually.

*   *   *

Sixteen hours out from Rakanka Highstation we found Ping’s elusive Lagrange point and made the jump—went “into the hole,” as he said—and despite my doubts came out in the K’Tok system with a solid residual vector pointing us almost square at Mogo, the main system gas giant. We did a minor correction and a supplemental burn to speed us up, and then settled back to enjoy the glide in. We’d glide to Mogo, refuel by skimming the gas giant, and do an orbital transit and breakaway maneuver which would slingshot us in-system toward K’Tok. 

The day after we broke into the K’Tok system I was down in our quarters with Barraki teaching him to play twenty-one. I was up about two hundred
Cottos
. Barraki didn’t have any cash, but I figured his credit was good, and I was about to explain the vig to him when my embedded comm chimed softly in my head. I squinted, opened the line, and Turncrank’s voice filled my head. 

“Hey Naradnyo, you down there in the pod?”

“Yeah.”

“Anybody with you?”

“Barraki. Why?”

“Maybe nothing, but both of you come on up to con. Dr. Marfoglia and the little girl are already here.”

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Oh . . . probably nothin’. But we may have to do a maneuvering burn sooner than we thought. Best if everyone’s strapped in, and I’ll need to secure the spin pod.”

“Okay. On our way,” I answered. 

“We gotta head up to the control room. Lucky for you,” I added to Barraki. “I’d have cleaned you out in another hour.” 

He giggled. “You think so,
Boti-Shaashka
?” 

“Uncle
Weasel
? I’m gonna kick your ass from here to dirt-side for that!” 

I grabbed for him, but he was too fast, trailing laughter out the door and up the access tunnel ladder. I took a look around the cabin before following him, and on a hunch grabbed my black carryall. Never can tell when you’ll need a 10mm hand cannon, twenty large in bearer drafts, or a toothbrush. I pulled our travel documents out of the desk where Marfoglia kept them and dropped them in the carryall as well. 

Why? To this day I can’t tell you. I just did. 

Marfoglia and Tweezaa were already strapped into their couches when I got there, and Barraki was fumbling with his straps. His couch was on the far right of the four and mine was on the far left, with Marfoglia and Tweezaa between us. 

“Good thing for you we gotta do this maneuvering thing now,” I told him. “Once it’s done, though, your ass is mine.”

He giggled again. 

“Yeah, laugh while you can, weasel boy.”

I stashed the carryall and then strapped myself in. Ping and Turncrank were both already strapped in and engaged in low conversation. I looked at Marfoglia, and she looked uneasy. I looked back at Ping and Turncrank and started feeling uneasy myself. There was something different about their attitude—not worried so much as preoccupied. They were absorbed in the details of the sensor feeds the same way I get absorbed by details whenever the birds stop singing. 

“What’s wrong?” I asked them. 

“Um . . . we lost contact with K’Tok Orbital about forty minutes ago,” Turncrank answered without looking up. “Not sure if it’s a receiver problem at this end or transmitter problems there.”

I’m no pilot, but I know that a failed communication link by itself wouldn’t make anyone consider an unscheduled maneuvering burn when we were still nearly a day out from Mogo, so there had to be something else. 

“And?” I said.

Ping and Turncrank exchanged a glance, and then Ping answered, and not in his pirate voice.

“And we’ve picked up some activity near Mogo—flickers of light and some interference across a lot of the EM spectrum. And no, we do not know what that means, but it is unusual.”

“Flickers of light on the planet surface?” I asked. That sounded odd, but not that menacing. Mogo was a gas giant, after all. It’s not as if anyone lived down there.

“No,” Turncrank answered. “Out in nearby space. Close orbital, I think.” 

That meant nothing to me. Them either, apparently. 

For the next three hours we coasted in toward Mogo, with nothing unusual on the sensors but no orbital nav beacon from Mogo and no answer to our requests at the top of each hour for a glide update from K’Tok Orbital. We talked a little, but not much. It started feeling spooky, as if we might be the only ones left alive in the whole system. 

Ping and Turncrank had the long-range scope pointed at Mogo with the image on the big screen. All of us could see it, but it just looked like a gas giant. Mogo had a nice set of rings round it, and a yellow-green tint to its atmosphere, but nothing unusual. 

Then we saw the flash. 

“Oh, shit!” Turncrank said. Ping hadn’t been looking at the screen, so his head snapped up from his monitor. 

“What was it? I just got an EMP reading.”

“A nuke!” Turncrank answered. “Look! Another one. We’re coasting into the middle of a goddamned naval battle!”

A naval battle? 

A naval battle with
whom
? There was only one navy—ours. 

Right?

“Um . . . somebody’s painting us,” Turncrank said, his voice higher pitched, fear present but under control. “I’m locking down all the airtight doors.”

I heard the hiss and solid clunk of the control room’s door closing and securing beside me.

“Okay,” Ping answered quickly, his hands flying across the control console. “Sending our recognition codes on every freq I can reach . . . NOW.
We are a civilian vessel, you fool! Stop painting us!
” he shouted, as if the other captain could hear through the better part of a light-second of vacuum.