Prisoners of Tomorrow (87 page)

Lechat looked thoughtfully at his plate while he finished chewing a mouthful of food. “You make them all sound like millionaires,” he commented.

“That’s exactly what they are,” Pernak said. “In the material sense, anyway. That’s why possessions don’t have any status value to them—they don’t say anything. That’s why you won’t find any absolute leaders down there either.”

“How come?” Lechat asked, puzzled.

“Why do people follow leaders?” Pernak replied. “For collective strength. What do you need collective strength for? Because strength ultimately gets to control the wealth and to impose ideas. But why does a race of millionaires need leaders if it already has all the material wealth it needs, and isn’t interested in imposing ideas on anyone because nobody ever taught it to? The Chironians don’t. There isn’t anything to scare them with. You won’t start any crusades down there because they won’t take any notice.”

Lechat thought for a while as he continued to eat. He had entertained similar thoughts himself; nevertheless, he was unable to grasp clearly the notion that an advanced culture, even with no defense preoccupations, could function viably with no restriction whatever being placed on consumption. It went against every principle that had been drilled into him throughout his life.

Even as he thought that, Eve’s words about brainwashing came back to him. Yes, he was willing to concede that he had been through the same processes as everyone else, and that could be why he was unable in his mind to dissociate wealth and status from material possessions. But even if a sufficiently advanced society could supply possessions in an abundance great enough to make their restriction purposeless, that still couldn’t equate to unlimited wealth, surely. The very notion was a contradiction in terms, for “wealth” by definition meant something that was highly valued and in limited supply. In other words, if on Chiron possessions did not equate to wealth and thereby satisfy the universal human hunger to be judged a success, then what did?

“I can see your point to a degree,” Pernak said eventually. “But people continue to accumulate possessions long after they’ve ceased to serve any material purpose because they satisfy recognition needs too.”

“That’s so true,” Eve agreed.

Lechat looked puzzled. “That’s my point—how do the Chironians satisfy them?”

“You’ve already said it,” Eve told him. She studied the expression on his face for a few seconds and then smiled. “You can’t see it yet, can you, Paul?”

Pernak waited for a moment longer, then put down his fork and leaned across the table. “On Chiron, wealth is
competence!”
he said. “Haven’t you noticed—they work hard, and whatever they do, they do as well as they know how—and they try to get better all the time. It doesn’t matter so much
what
they do as long as it’s good. And everybody appreciates it. That’s their currency—
recognition,
as you said . . . recognition of competence.” He shrugged and spread his hands. “And it makes a lot of sense. You just told us that’s what everyone wants anyway. Well, Chironians pay it direct instead of indirectly through symbols. Why make life complicated?”

The suggestion was too extraordinary for Lechat to respond instantly. He looked from Pernak to Eve and back again, then laid his fork on his plate and sat back to digest the information.

“When did you see a shoddy piece of workmanship on Chiron . . . a door that didn’t fit, or a motor that wouldn’t start?” Eve asked him. “Have you ever come across anything like that anywhere there? It makes what we’re used to look like junk. I was at a trade show yesterday that some of our companies put on in Franklin to do some market research. The Chironians thought it was a joke. You should have seen the kids down there—they thought our ideas of design and manufacturing were hilarious. Our guys had to give it up as a dead loss.”

“That’s how they get rich,” Pernak said. “By being good at what they do and getting better. Who but a crazy would do anything and stay poor by choice?”

“You mean by reputation, or something like that?” Lechat asked, beginning to look intrigued.

“That’s part of it,” Pernak replied, nodding. “The satisfaction that their culture conditions them to feel is another part, but you’re getting the general idea.”

Lechat picked up his fork again. “I never looked at it in quite that way. It’s an interesting thought.” He began eating again, then stopped and looked up. “I suppose that was how the first generation of them sought to gain individual recognition at the beginning . . . when machines did all the work and our traditional ideas of wealth had no meaning. And it’s become embedded in their basic thinking.” He nodded slowly to himself and reflected further. “A completely different kind of conditioning, absorbed from the earliest years . . . based on recognizing individual attributes. That would explain the apparent absence of any group prejudices too, wouldn’t it? They’ve never had any reason to feel threatened by other groups.”

“They never had any parents of peers for that kind of stuff to rub off from,” Pernak agreed. “Classes, echelons, black, white, Soviet, Chinese . . . it’s all the same to them. They don’t care. It’s what
you
are that matters.”

“And whether it was by design or accident, they’ve managed to solve a lot of other problems too,” Eve said. “Take crime for instance. Theft and greed are impossible, because how can you steal another man’s competence? Oh, you could try and fake it, I suppose, but you wouldn’t last long with people as discerning as Chironians. They can see through a charlatan as quickly as we can spot ourselves being shortchanged. In fact to them that’s just what it is. They have their violent moments, sure, but nothing as bad as what’s coming in from Africa on the beam right now, or what happened in 2021. But it never turns into a really big problem. There’s no motivation for anyone to rally round a would-be Napoleon. He wouldn’t have anything to offer that anybody needs.”

After another short silence Lechat said, “It’s a strange system of currency though, isn’t it. I mean, it’s not additive at all, or subject to any laws of arithmetic. You can pay what you owe and still not be any poorer yourself. It sounds—I don’t know—impossible somehow.”

“It’s not subject to finite arithmetic,” Pernak agreed. “But why does it have to be? Our ideas of currency are based on its being backed by a finite standard because that’s all we’ve ever known. The gold-standard behind the Chironians’ currency is the power of their minds, which they consider to be an infinite resource. Therefore they do their accounting with a calculus of infinities. You take something from infinity, and you’ve still got infinity left.” He shrugged. “It’s consistent. I know it sounds crazy to us, but it fits with the way they think.”

“It certainly puts a new light on things,” Lechat conceded. He sat back again, looked from one to the other, and spread his hands resignedly. “So am I to take it that I shouldn’t assume your support in the matter I talked about earlier?”

“It’s nothing personal, Paul. We think you’re a great guy. . . .” Pernak frowned and sighed apologetically. “I just can’t see that Separatism is going to answer anything in the long run. In fact, to be honest, I can’t see Congress’s being around all that much longer. On that planet down there, it’s a dodo already.”

“You could be right, but that’s long-term,” Lechat replied. “I’m more worried about what might happen in the shorter term. I need help to do something about it.”

“Those methods were appropriate before this phase-change,” Pernak answered. “They don’t have any place now.”

“What other way is there?” Lechat asked.

Pernak shrugged. “Just let the system die naturally.”

“It might not want to die that easily,” Lechat pointed out. “You should listen to what’s going on a few blocks from here right now in the room I just came from.”

“They won’t stop anything, Paul,” Pernak said. “They’re up against the driving force of evolution. Canute had the same problem.”

“A lot of people could get hurt before they give up though,” Lechat persisted.

Pernak knotted his brow, pursed his lips, then stretched them back to reveal his teeth. “Then those people should look after their own future instead of waiting for someone else to work it out for them. That’s the old way. They have to learn to think the Chironian way.” After a second of hesitation he added, “That’s what Eve and I are going to do.”

“What do you mean?” Lechat asked, although in the same instant he thought he knew.

Pernak glanced at Eve for a moment. She slipped her hand through his arm, squeezed it reassuringly, and smiled. They both looked back at Lechat. “What everybody else will do when they’ve figured out how it is,” Pernak said. He grinned, almost apologetically. “That’s why we won’t be able to help much, Paul. You see, we’re leaving.”

“I see . . .” Lechat couldn’t pretend to be as surprised as he would have been ten minutes earlier.

Pernak tossed up his hands. “I’ve been to take a look at their university and what they do there. You wouldn’t believe it. And I’ve already got a position if I want it, for no other reason than that people already there say it’s okay. You get a house, for nothing . . . a good one. Or they’ll build you one however you want it. How can you say no? We’re going to become Chironians. And so will everybody else when they’ve gotten over the voyage. Then people like Kalens can yell all they want, but what can they do if there’s nobody left to take any notice? It’s as I said—you have to start thinking like Chironians.”

“They’ve still got the Army . . . and a lot of nasty hardware up here,” Lechat reminded him.

Pernak twisted his face through a few contortions, then sighed again. “I know. That crossed my mind too, but what is there to provoke any real trouble? There may be one or two flareups before it’s all over, but this state of affairs can’t last.” He shook his head. “We’re convinced this is the only way to go. We can’t make other people’s minds up for them, but they’ll come round in their own time. Anything else would cause worse problems.”

Lechat nodded reluctantly. “Well, it sounds pretty final, I guess.”

Pernak spread his hands and nodded. “Yes. Sorry and all that kind of thing, Paul, but that’s how it is.”

Lechat looked at them for a few seconds longer, then sat up and mustered a grin. “Well, what can I say? Good luck to the pair of you. I hope everything works out.”

“Thanks,” Pernak acknowledged.

“I trust we’ll all stay friends and keep in touch,” Eve said.

“You’d better believe it,” Lechat promised.

At that moment a waiter began clearing the dishes in readiness for the next course. “Have you heard the news from the surface?” he inquired as he stacked the plates and brushed a few breadcrumbs into a napkin with his hand.

“News?” Lechat looked up, puzzled. “When? We’ve been here for the last hour. There wasn’t anything special then.”

“It came in about fifteen minutes ago,” the waiter said. He shook his head sadly. “Bad news. There’s been a shooting down there . . . in Franklin somewhere. At least one dead—one of our soldiers, I think. It was at some place called The Two Moons.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

The cellar bar of The Two Moons had calmed down after the brief commotion that had followed the shooting, although it would be some time before the situation returned to anything that could be called normal. Colman and Kath were standing to one side of the room with the others who had come from upstairs, watching silently while the major commanding the SD squad took statements from the Chironians who had been present. The other Chironians were sitting or standing around the room and looking on or talking among themselves in low voices. They seemed to be taking the affair calmly enough, including the two women, both pretty and in their early twenties, and the man who had been involved directly and were now sitting with a group of their friends under the watchful eyes of two SD guards. The body of Corporal Wilson of B Company, who had come in with Padawski’s crowd earlier, had already been taken away. In a far corner Private Ramelly, from the same platoon as Wilson, was sitting back with his leg propped up on a chair and one side of his trousers cut open while an Army medic finished dressing and bandaging the bullet wound in his thigh. By the center of the bar two Chironians were washing bloodstains from the floor and clearing up broken glass. Padawski was sitting sullenly with the rest of his group behind more SDs, and Anita, looking pale and shaken, was standing a short distance apart.

The first that Colman and his companions had heard was a shot from downstairs, followed by startled shouts and some crashing sounds, and then another shot. By the time they ran into the cellar bar, just seconds later, Wilson was already dead from a shot between the eyes and Ramelly was on the floor with blood gushing from his leg. Padawski and the others were standing uncertainly by the bar, covered by a .38 automatic that one of the young Chironian women was holding. Several other weapons had appeared around the room. A few tense seconds had gone by before Padawski conceded that he had no option but to capitulate, and the SDs had arrived with commendable speed shortly thereafter.

Apparently some of Padawski’s friends had the idea that the Chironian women were among the things that could be had for the taking on Chiron, and two of them had persisted in pressing lewd advances upon the two girls at the bar despite their being told repeatedly and in progressively less uncertain terms that the girls weren’t interested. The soldiers, who had been drinking heavily, became angry and even more unpleasant, paying no attention to dour warnings from around the room. An argument developed, in the course of which Ramelly grabbed one of the women and handled her roughly. She produced a gun and shot him in the leg. There would probably have been no more to it than that if Wilson hadn’t seized the gun and turned it on the Chironians who were about to intervene, at which point another Chironian had shot him dead from the back of the room.

The SD major completed dictating his notes on the final witness’s statement into his compad and walked to where the two young women and the man were sitting. Their expressions as they looked up at him were not apprehensive or apologetic, but neither were they defiant. The deed was unfortunate but it had been necessary, the faces seemed to say, and there was nothing to feel guilty about. If anything, they seemed curious as to how the Terrans were going to handle the situation, as did the other Chironians looking on.