“If you agree, everything will be arranged quite simply, and you will be allowed to play the most distinguished role. The strike will be stubborn, but of course peaceful at first. You will openly argue against sending troops, but the new government will dispatch them anyway. You will demonstratively wash your hands of all responsibility for the consequences. The disorders will then be quelled; there will be a good deal of bloodshed, and it will be necessary to send troops to the other canals to prevent sympathy strikes and uprisings. You will resign in protest from all administrative duties and declare that only your desire to accomplish a mission of vital significance to all mankind has induced you to retain the scientific and technical leadership of the Project. An executive committee will be appointed to see to the budget and to maintain order at the construction sites. It will include Feli Rao as a representative of the Ministry of Finance, myself as a representative of the Ministry of Public Works, and one other member from the Central Police. Then, to satisfy you even more completely, Parliament will bring down the present goverment; it has purposely been composed of nobodies so that it can afford to become involved in these delicate matters.”
There was a moment of silence. Menni’s face was calm, but his eyes darkened strangely and his voice sounded somewhat muffled when he resumed the conversation.
“Excellent. If I agree, then you will have no problem in accomplishing all this. But suppose I refuse?”
“That would be most unfortunate, and we would hope that a man of your genius would be able to assess the balance of forces accurately and dispassionately and not wish to prolong a completely hopeless and senseless struggle. However, I can tell you what our strategy would be in such an unlikely situation. There would be no effort whatever to curb the workers; on the contrary, we would offer them our paternal protection. The question would be raised in Parliament whether it might not in fact be possible to alter the course of the canal. A commission would be appointed consisting of a group of old academic scholars—you know how they hate you. They are certain to issue a statement that is ambiguous and vague enough to enable Parliament to satisfy the demands of the workers in spite of you. Your position then . . .”
Maro stopped. Menni’s darkening gaze made him vaguely uneasy, and he lowered his eyes. Because of this he did not notice that for a few seconds this gaze rested on the dull surface of a bronze paper-knife lying in a pile of papers off to one side of them both. Maro finished what he had started to say:
“You see that this outcome would be the worst one in all respects.”
“So you would not hesitate to commit a crime in the eyes of science and mankind for the sake of the . . . budget?”
The touch of icy contempt in Menni’s question was stronger than a slap in the face. Maro straightened up, his eyes lit up in a flash of cynicism, and his businesslike reserve gave way to an impudent sneer.
“Crime? Such language! Is that your only objection? Everything will be quite legal. As for the earthquake, it will probably occur long after we are gone!”
“Yes, indeed, you will not be here!”
Menni leapt to his feet, and Maro was unable to evade his lightning-swift blow. In the hands of an ordinary man the bronze knife would not have been much of a weapon, but Aldo was the descendant of ancient knights. Maro’s carotid artery and throat were ripped open, and he fell to the floor in a spurting fountain of blood. He gave a shudder, there was a faint wheezing sound, and then only silence.
4. The Trial
Menni’s case was postponed for a few months until things had quieted down. In the meantime the workers were subdued by the military, their unions were disbanded, and their leaders were arrested. The newspapers worked feverishly to prepare public opinion for Menni’s trial, depicting him as a man with a violent and despotic character who was capable of the worst excesses at the slightest provocation. The bloody biographies of certain of his ancestors were also given the proper embellishment and enlisted in the cause. The voices of the few who defended him were drowned in a choir of malicious joy. Because the murder was connected with politics, the government handed Menni over to the Supreme Tribunal, which was made up of the most prominent jurists of the planet. A very select audience was allowed to attend the trial. One of the friends of the Minister of Justice acted as prosecutor. The accused declined legal counsel.
Menni confined his testimony to an accurate account of his conversation with Maro. Most of the depositions of the other witnesses amounted to unfavorable remarks on Menni’s character. The audience awaited two witnesses with great interest. One was the Prime Minister and the other was the arrested labor leader, Arri. Neither appeared, however: the Prime Minister suddenly fell ill with some mysterious disease, and Arri was wounded trying to escape from prison. Events were working in Feli Rao’s favor. The court, of course, determined that it was possible to continue the trial without these witnesses.
The prosecutor declared in his speech that the court simply could not attach any importance to Menni’s explanation.
“At all trials, of course,” he said, “the testimony of the accused always puts him in a favorable light. In this case, however, we have a report of a private conversation that cannot be checked, and juridically speaking a fact is not a fact unless it can be verified. To describe a respected man like Feli Rao and the entire Council of Syndicates as criminal conspirators—is this not an obvious fantasy invented by the accused simply to exonerate himself? We are left with the established and indisputable fact of the murder, which the accused does not deny having committed.”
Several times during his address the prosecutor expatiated upon the theme of the difficult situation in which the court found itself due to the high position of the accused and the great services he had rendered to mankind. “But it must be remembered,” he went on, “that in the eyes of the Republic there are no great or insignificant people: all are equal. If any difference at all is allowable, then it is that he who has been given more can also be expected to render more.” From this the prosecutor concluded that there were no mitigating circumstances: “The only thing that is not entirely clear is the degree to which the murder was premeditated. Here the accused should be given the benefit of the doubt.”
In his concluding speech Menni observed that the prosecutor was completely right in refusing to recognize any mitigating circumstances: ‘The just act I committed has no need of any such extenuation. Nor will the judgment of the future find any mitigating circumstances for those who are guilty of the real crime, for if greatness is no excuse, then neither is smallness.” The chairman called the accused to order, threatening to deprive him of the right to speak. “I do not have much more to say,” Menni concluded, “only that I protest emphatically against the assumption that my act was unpremeditated. On the contrary, it was deliberate and carefully considered.”
The judges were indignant over Menni’s cold arrogance. Although in earlier private conversations they had told the ministers that they would not be able to give Menni more than a few years in prison, now they felt that the politicians would not be satisfied with so little. They therefore sentenced Menni to the maximum penalty—fifteen years of solitary confinement.
A large crowd had gathered in the courtyard of the Supreme Tribunal Building to await the announcement of the sentence. When it had been passed along from mouth to mouth a dead silence fell over the gathering. The hush seemed to become even deeper when Menni’s serene, athletic figure appeared at the top of the stone steps and he was led away by two gendarmes to the prison van. The crowd parted to let him through. An invisible force diverted Menni’s unblinking forward gaze to one side. His eyes met those of a tall, beautiful woman holding a boy of twelve or thirteen by the hand. Somehow she seemed familiar . . .
A sonorous female voice called out in the midst of the silence:
“Son, take a good look at a hero! Never forget him!”
A memory flashed deep in Menni’s soul:
Nella!
PART II
1. Netti
Twelve years passed.
Some thirty persons gathered in the dimly lit cellar of a small tavern in one of the proletarian suburbs of Centropolis. Lean figures, intelligent faces, working clothes . . . When the doors had been locked and it had become quiet in the room, the elderly chairman rose and spoke:
“Brothers!” (At that time this was the customery form of address among members of the workers’ organizations.) “I hereby declare this Council of the Great Project Federation to be open. You union secretaries are well aware of the situation that has led us to gather clandestinely here today in order to draw up and discuss a general plan of action. You know that labor conditions are becoming increasingly intolerable. In the years that have passed since the failure of the general strike and the shooting of thousands of our brothers, the arrogance of the exploiters has steadily grown. Wages have fallen by a third, while almost everything has become more expensive. The working day has been lengthened everywhere from ten to twelve hours. The engineers and contractors and even the foremen treat us like serfs, penalizing and firing us as they see fit. Our organizations are subject to systematic persecution. You will remember how difficult it was to resurrect them after our defeat. At present active workers are dismissed on the flimsiest pretexts, sometimes even without any pretext. Almost all of you have personally experienced something of the sort.
“However, discontent is also growing. The proletariat has long been suppressed, but it is finally raising its head. It looks around and says: ‘What is this, anyway? Why? What’s the reason?’ And from these questions it proceeds to another one which is even more important, namely ‘What must be done?’ We have been asked this question thousands upon thousands of times by our brothers out on the construction sites; every conversation we have had with them has led to it. It is this question which has brought us here today and forced us to resuscitate, after a long interruption, our forbidden General Federation. Let us pool our entire experience and strength for the common cause; the fate of millions of our brothers depends on it. And let us not leave here today until this matter is settled!
“Now then, brothers, tell us what you know and let’s hear what you think we should do.”
Ten speakers representing the workers at ten different canals addressed the gathering in turn. Their speeches were brief: a concise description of the on-the-spot situation, a few typical facts relating to labor conditions, some figures relevant to the state of the workers’ organizations, and finally conclusions. All were agreed that the common struggle must be initiated immediately, for otherwise anarchical disorders would begin flaring up sporadically on their own. Everyone was of the opinion that the only weapon was a general strike, and that its slogan should be a return to the conditions that prevailed before the first strike. Certain delegates suggested appealing for support to the railroad workers, the mechanics, and the coal miners, who were the best organized groups; the assaults of the growing syndicates had also robbed them of a great deal during these years, and it was hoped that they would agree to advance their demands at the same time. In that case the prospects for victory looked very good. The plan of action seemed to be almost ready when an elderly worker sitting next to the chairman took the floor. It was Arri.
“Brothers,” he said, “I would like to ask you to allow my son Netti to present a report. An engineer, he is attending our gathering without the right to vote, not as a representative of a union but as one of the organizers of the congress. Some of you know him already, for his assignment has brought him into personal contact with half of our organizations. We are not accustomed to trusting outsiders, nor should we be, considering how often we have been deceived and betrayed in the past. But he is not a stranger to us: he is from a worker’s family, and as a boy he himself worked in a factory. He has studied a great deal; if to complete his education he attended the same schools as our enemies, he did so in order to find new weapons for the defense of our cause. You will not regret taking the time to hear him out.”
The meeting expressed its unanimous consent, and a tall young man with clear, blue green eyes rose to speak.
“Brothers! I have nothing to add to what the speakers before me have said about the situation of the workers at the construction sites, about their mood, their hopes, or their desires. You are more competent than I to judge such matters. I want instead to talk about another aspect of the question. I am going to tell you certain things which many of you have probably already guessed but which no one has been able to mention because of the lack of precise information and proof. Let me tell you about how the Great Project is being run technically and financially. This entire sphere is one big muddle of flagrant blunders, unparalleled dishonesty, unprecedented thievery and embezzlement. I can prove what I am saying; for several years now, beginning when I was still a university student, I have been studying the subject. Not only do I have at my disposal all the printed reports and materials available to the specialists, I have also made use of personal contacts with engineers and especially with officials at Central Project Administration to obtain access to documents deep within the archives, sheltered from prying eyes. In addition I have had an opportunity to observe and learn a great deal on the spot during trips I have made in connection with organizational work for our common cause. When I had collected and compared all these materials, uncovered all the contradictory figures, and summarized the data, the picture which emerged was monstrous and overwhelming.
“I found that the plans of our great engineer had been distorted and perverted by the new leaders of the Project, partly due to their own mediocrity, but mostly because of their selfish dishonesty. Do you know why construction in the Rotten Bogs took four years instead of the proposed two? First of all, no use was made of special machines which had been invented, tested, and approved by Menni and Maro. Secondly, the course of the canal was deflected to run along the edge of the bogs, ostensibly to avoid a stretch of rocky subsoil, which, as I have confirmed with my own eyes, does not exist. Who needed all this and why? What happened was that workers were dying by the thousands, but over half the dead continued to be entered in the lists as able-bodied or ill for up to a year and a half. Thus their wages continued to be paid, but to whom? The contractors and engineers would know the details about that. And then there were the pensions to the families of the dead. Although special care had been taken to recruit bachelors and men without families to these sites, it turns out that all those who died had ‘dependents.’ So for many years now these pensions have been paid to at least twenty thousand nonexistent families.
“You have all noticed, of course, that large numbers of workers are very often transferred from one construction site to another without any apparent reason. There is a reason, however, a very simple one. The books are kept in such a manner that to the end of a given fiscal year the transferred workers are registered at their former place of employment, but are also entered at the new one. Thus a double wage is allocated for them, but as you well know, they never receive it. By this and other means official labor costs are higher than in Menni’s time, even though the number of workers has remained more or less constant and wages have decreased by a third.
“You remember the accident on the Ganges Canal, when a sudden explosion occurred as dynamite charges were being laid, killing over two thousand men. The official investigation blamed the incident on negligence and carelessness, three engineers were dismissed, and one explosives expert who happened to survive was thrown into prison. What you do not know is that all three of these engineers immediately became rich, and that their answers during the preliminary inquiry were not included in the printed report of the investigation. They said that it was impossible to foresee the explosion, which occurred spontaneously due to defective dynamite. The explosive used there was the most powerful and most expensive type, and it is supposed to be manufactured from absolutely pure chemical components. If ingredients that are not wholly pure are used instead, however, production costs can be red
uced by two thirds without affecting the explosive power of the dynamite, but there is the danger that it will explode on its own. It goes without saying that the Dynamite and Powder Trust has all this time been charging the state for the superior product. In other words, its price is three times what it should be, and the lives of the workers, of course, are immaterial. Several minor accidents occurred unnoticed, but the disaster on the Ganges posed a threat to the Trust’s profits. Since the Great Project requires enormous amounts of dynamite, this profit amounts to hundreds of millions per year. Thus it is not surprising that they should be willing to spend ten million or so to silence the investigators and the accused.”
At this point one of the delegates interrupted the speaker: “Can you prove all this?”
“Yes, I can,” replied Netti. “My brother workers procured samples of the dynamite, and I have analyzed it. Through engineer friends employed at the largest explosives factory I learned exactly how it is manufactured. I was able to trick bank employees into revealing to me when the three engineers deposited their millions. What is more, I can prove that twelve years ago ninety percent of the stocks in the Dynamite and Powder Trust were bought by Feli Rao, the chairman of Central Project Administration. I could go on proving this and much more to you for some time.
“Let me give you the results of my calculations. During the past twelve years the budget of the Great Project has run to a little more than fifty billion. Of this sum, between sixteen and eighteen billion have been stolen or embezzled. Feli Rao alone, whose fortune twelve years ago was reckoned at ‘only’ fifty million, is ‘worth’ three and a half billion today. The Project itself has been terribly delayed. Nectar and Ambrosia should have been completed several yars ago, but in fact they will not be ready for another year and a half or two years. The situation is the same for the other canals. The Great Cause has been sabotaged by these marauders. They have sacrificed both it and the blood of the workers to their own boundless greed.
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