The 34th Golden Age of Science Fiction: C.M. Kornbluth

by C. M. Kornbluth

  It was only 9:45 P.M.; F. W. Taylor would be in and working. Charles said: “Wait here, boys,” and muttered the code phrase to the door. It sprang open.

  F. W. Taylor was dictating, machine-gun fashion, to a mike. He looked dog-tired. His face turned up with a frown as Charles entered and then the frown became a beam of pleasure.

  “Charles, my boy! Sit down!” He snapped off the machine.

  “Uncle—” Charles began.

  “It was so kind of you to drop in. I thought you’d be at the theater.”

  “I was, Uncle, but—”

  “I’m working on a revision for the next edition of Organization, Symbolism and Morale. You’d never guess who inspired it.”

  “I’m sure I wouldn’t, Uncle. Uncle—”

  “Old Thornberry, President of the Chase National. He had the infernal gall to refuse a line of credit to young McGurn. Bankers! You won’t believe it, but people used to beg them to take over their property, tie up their incomes, virtually enslave them. People demanded it. The same way they demanded inexpensive liquor, tobacco and consumer goods, clean women and a chance to win a fortune and our ancestors obliged them. Our ancestors were sneered at in their day, you know. They were called criminals when they distributed goods and services at a price people could afford to pay.”

  “Uncle!”

  “Hush, boy, I know what you’re going to say. You can’t fool the people forever! When they’d had enough hounding and restriction, they rose in their might.

  “The people demanded freedom of choice, Falcaro and the rest rose to lead them in the Syndic and the Mob and they drove the Government into the sea.”

  “Uncle Frank—”

  “From which it still occasionally ventures to annoy our coastal cities,” F. W. Taylor commented. He warmed to his subject. “You should have seen the old boy blubber. The last of the old-time bankers, and they deserved everything they got. They brought it on themselves. They had what they called laissez-faire, and it worked for awhile until they got to tinkering with it. They demanded things called protective tariffs, tax remissions, subsidies—regulation, regulation, regulation, always of the other fellow. But there were enough bankers on all sides for everybody to be somebody else’s other fellow. Coercion snowballed and the Government lost public acceptance. They had a thing called the public debt which I can’t begin to explain to you except to say that it was something written on paper and that it raised the cost of everything tremendously. Well, believe me or not, they didn’t just throw away the piece of paper or scratch out the writing on it. They let it ride until ordinary people couldn’t afford the pleasant things in life.”

  “Uncle—”

  * * * *

  A cautious periscope broke the choppy water off Sea Island, Georgia. At the other end of the periscope were Captain Van Dellen of the North American Navy, lean as a hound, and fat little Commander Grinnel.

  “You might take her in a little closer, Van,” said Grinnel mildly.

  “The exercise won’t do you any lasting damage,” Van Dellen said. Grinnel was very, very, near to a couple of admirals and normally Van Dellen gave him the kid-glove treatment in spite of ranking him. But this was his ship and no cloak and dagger artist from an O.N.I. desk was telling him how to con it.

  Grinnel smiled genially at the little joke. “I could call it a disguise,” he said patting his paunch, “but you know me too well.”

  “You’ll have no trouble with a sea like this,” Van Dellen said, strictly business. He tried to think of some appropriate phrase to recognize the danger Grinnel was plunging into with no resources except quick wits, a trick ring and a pair of guns. But all that bubbled up to the top of his head was; thank God I’m getting rid of this bastardly little Sociocrat. He’ll kill me some day if he gets a clean shot and the chance of detection is zero. Thank God I’m a Constitutionist. We don’t go in for things like that—or do we? Nobody ever tells me anything. A hack of a pigboat driver. And this little bastard’s going to be an admiral some day. But that boy of mine’ll be an admiral. He’s brainy, like his mother.

  Grinnel smiled and said: “Well, this would be it, wouldn’t it?”

  “Eh?” Van Dellen asked. “Oh. I see what you mean. Chuck!” he called a sailor. “Break out the Commander’s capsules. Pass the word to stand by for ejection.”

  The Commander was fitted, puffing, into the capsule. He growled at the storekeeper: “You sure this was just unsealed? It feels sticky already.”

  A brash jayee said: “I saw it unsealed myself three minutes ago, Commander. It’ll get stickier if we spend any more time talking. You have”—he glanced at his chronometer—“seventeen minutes now. Let me snap you in.”

  The Commander huddled down after a searching glance at the jayee’s face which photographed it forever in his memory. The top snapped down. Some day—some happy day—that squirt would very much regret telling him off. He gave an okay sign to Van Dellen who waved back meagerly and managed a smile. Three crewmen fitted the capsule into its lock.

  Foomf!

  It was through the hatch and bobbing on the surface. Its color matched the water’s automatically. Grinnel waggled the lever that aimed it inshore and began to turn the propellor crank. He turned fast; the capsule—rudders, crank, flywheel, shaft and all—would dissolve in approximately fifteen minutes. It was his job to be ashore when that happened.

  And ashore he’d be practically a free agent with the loosest sort of roving commission, until January 15th. Then his orders became most specific.

  CHAPTER III

  Charles Orsino squirmed in the chair. “Uncle—” he pleaded.

  “Yes,” F. W. Taylor chuckled, “Old Amadeo and his colleagues were called criminals. They were called bootleggers when they got liquor to people without worrying about the public debt or excise taxes. They were called smugglers when they sold cheap butter in the south and cheap margerine in the north. They were called counterfeiters when they sold cheap cigarettes and transportation tickets. They were called high-jackers when they wrested goods from the normal inflation-ridden chain of middlemen and delivered them at a reasonable price to the consumers.

  “They were criminals. Bankers were pillars of society.

  “Yet these bankers who dominated society, who were considered the voice of eternal truth when they spoke, who thought it was insanity to challenge their beliefs, started somewhere and perhaps they were the best thing for their day and age that could be worked out.…”

  * * * *

  Father Ambrosius gnawed at a bit of salt herring, wiped his hands, dug through the litter in his chest and found a goose quill and a page of parchment. He scrubbed vigorously with a vinegar-soaked sponge, at the writing on the parchment and was pleased to see that it came off nicely, leaving him a clean surface to scribble his sermon notes on. He cut the quill and slit it while waiting for the parchment to dry, wondering idly what he had erased. (It happened to be the last surviving copy of Tacitus’ Annals, VII. i-v.)

  To work then. The sermon was to be preached on Sexagesima Sunday, a prelude to the solemn season of Lent. Father Ambrosius’ mind wandered in search of a text. Lent… salt herring… penitence… the capital sins…avarice… usury… delinquent pew rent… fat-headed young Sir Baldwin in his tumbledown castle on the hill… salt herring now and per saeculae saeculorum unless Sir Baldwin paid up his delinquent pew rent.

  At the moment, Sir Baldwin came swaggering into the cell. Father Ambrosius rose courteously and said, with some insincerity: “Pax vobiscum.”

  “Eh?” asked Sir Baldwin, his silly blue eyes popping as he looked over his shoulder. “Oh, you meant me, padre. It don’t do a bit of good to chatter at me in Latin, you know. The king’s Norman is what I speak. I mean to say, if it’s good enough for his majesty Richard, it’s good enough for me, what? Now, what can I do for you, padre?”

  Father Ambrosius rem
inded him faintly: “You came to see me, Sir Baldwin.”

  “Eh? Oh. So I did. I was huntin’ stag, padre, and I lost him after chasin’ the whole morning, and what I want to know is, who’s the right saint chap to ask for help in a pickle like that? I mean to say, I wanted to show the chaps some good sport and we started this beast and he got clean away. Don’t misunderstand me, padre, they were good chaps and they didn’t rot me about it, but that kind of talk gets about and doesn’t do one a bit of good, what? So you tell me like a good fellow who’s the right saint chap to put the matter in the best light for me?”

  Father Ambrosius repressed an urge to grind his teeth, took thought and said: “St. Hubert, I believe, is interested in the stag hunt.”

  “Right-oh, padre! St. Hubert it is. Hubert, Hubert. I shan’t forget it because I’ve a cousin named Hubert. Haven’t seen him for years, poor old chap. He had the fistula—lived on slops and couldn’t sit his horse for a day’s huntin’. Poor old chap. Well, I’m off—no, there’s another thing I wanted. Suppose this Sunday you preach a howlin’ strong sermon against usury, what? That chap in the village, the goldsmith fellow, has the infernal gall to tell me I’ve got to give him Fallowfield! Forty acres, and he has the infernal gall to tell me they aren’t mine any more. Be a good chap, padre, and sort of glare at him from the pulpit a few times to show him who you mean, what?”

  “Usury is a sin,” Father Ambrosius said cautiously, “but how does Fallowfield enter into it?”

  Sir Baldwin twiddled the drooping ends of his limp, blond mustache with a trace of embarrassment. “Fact is, I told the chap when I borrowed the twenty marks that Fallowfield would stand as security. I ask you, padre, is it my fault that my tenants are a pack of lazy, thieving Saxon swine and I couldn’t raise the money?”

  The parish priest bristled unnoticeably. He was pure Saxon himself. “I shall do what I can,” he said. “And Sir Baldwin, before you go—”

  The young man stopped in the doorway and turned.

  “Before you go, may I ask when we’ll see your pew rent, to say nothing of the tithe?”

  Sir Baldwin dismissed it with an airish wave of the hand. “I thought I just told you, padre. I haven’t a farthing to my name and here’s this chap in the village telling me to clear out of Fallowfield that I got from my father and his father before him. So how the devil—excuse me—can I pay rent and tithes and Peters pence and all the other things you priest chaps expect from a man, what?” He held up his gauntleted hand as Father Ambrosius started to speak. “No, padre, not another word about it. I know you’d love to tell me I won’t go to heaven if I act this way. I don’t doubt you’re learned and all that, but I can still tell you a thing or two, what? The fact is, I will go to Heaven. You see, padre, God’s a gentleman and he wouldn’t bar another gentleman over a trifle of money trouble that could happen to any gentleman, now would he?”

  The fatuous beam was more than Father Ambrosius could bear; his eyes fell.

  “Right-oh,” Sir Baldwin chirped. “And that saint chap’s name was St. Hubert. I didn’t forget, see? Not quite the fool some people think I am.” And he was gone, whistling a recheat.

  Father Ambrosius sat down again and glared at the parchment. Preach a sermon on usury for that popinjay. Well, usury was a sin. Christians were supposed to lend to one another in need and not count the cost or the days. But who had ever heard of Sir Baldwin ever lending anything? Of course, he was lord of the manor and protected you against invasion, but there didn’t seem to be any invasions anymore.…

  Wearily, the parish priest dipped his pen and scratched on the parchment: RON. XIII ii, viii, XV i. “Whosoever resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God… owe no man any thing… we that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak.…” A triple-plated text, which, reinforced by a brow of thunder from the pulpit should make the village goldsmith think twice before pressing his demand on Sir Baldwin. Usury was a sin.

  There was a different knock on the door frame.

  The goldsmith, a leather-aproned fellow named John, stood there twisting his cap in his big, burn scarred hands.

  “Yes, my son? Come in.” But he scowled at the fellow involuntarily. He should know better than to succumb to the capital sin of avarice. “Well, what is it?”

  “Father,” the fellow said, “I’ve come to give you this.” He passed a soft leather purse to the priest. It clinked.

  Father Ambrosius emptied it on his desk and stirred the broad silver coins wonderingly with his finger. Five marks and eleven silver pennies. No more salt herring until Lent! Silver forwarded to his bishop in an amount that would do credit to the parish! A gilding job for the image of the Blessed Virgin! Perhaps glass panes in one or two of the church windows!

  And then he stiffened and swept the money back into the purse. “You got this by sin,” he said flatly. “The sin of avarice worked in your heart and you practiced the sin of usury on your fellow Christians. Don’t give this money to the Church; give it back to your victims.”

  “Father,” the fellow said, nearly blubbering, “excuse me but you don’t understand! They come to me and come to me. They say it’s all right with them, that they’re hiring the money the way you’d hire a horse. Doesn’t that make sense? Do you think I wanted to become a moneylender? No! I was an honest goldsmith and an honest goldsmith can’t help himself. All the money in the village drifts somehow into his hands. One leaves a mark with you for safekeeping and pays you a penny the year to guard it. Another brings you silver coins to make into a basin, and you get to keep whatever coins are left over. And then others come to you and say ‘Let me have soandso’s mark to use for a year and then I’ll pay it back and with it another mark’. Father, they beg me! They say they’ll be ruined if I don’t lend to them, their old parents will die if they can’t fee the leech, or their dead will roast forever unless they can pay for masses and what’s a man to do?”

  “Sin no more,” the priest answered simply. It was no problem.

  The fellow was getting angry. “Very well for you to sit there and say so, father. But what do you think paid for the masses you said for the repose of Goodie Howat’s soul? And how did Tom the Thatcher buy his wagon so he could sell his beer in Glastonbury at a better price? And how did Farmer Major hire the men from Wealing to get in his hay before the great storm could ruin it? And a hundred things more. I tell you, this parish would be a worse place without John Goldsmith and he doesn’t propose to be pointed at any longer as a black sinner! I didn’t want to fall into usury but I did, and when I did, I found out that those who hoist their noses highest at the moneylender when they pass him in the road are the same ones who beg the hardest when they come to his shop for a loan!”

  The priest was stunned by the outburst. John seemed honest, the facts were the facts—can good come out of evil? And there were stories that His Holiness the Pope himself had certain dealings with the Longobards—benchers, or bankers or whatever they called themselves.…

  “I must think on this, my son,” he said. “Perhaps I was over hasty. Perhaps in the days of St. Paul usury was another thing entirely. Perhaps what you practice is not really usury but merely something that resembles it. You may leave this silver with me.”

  When John left, Father Ambrosius squeezed his eyes tight shut and pressed the knuckles of both hands to his forehead. Things did change. Under the dispensation of the Old Testament, men had more wives than one. That was sinful now, but surely Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were in heaven? Paul wrote his epistles to little islands of Christians surrounded by seas of pagans. Surely in those days it was necessary for Christians to be bound closely together against the common enemy, whereas in these modern times, the ties could be safely relaxed a trifle? How could sinning have paid for the repose of Goodie Howat’s soul, got a better price for brewer Thatcher’s ale and saved the village hay crop? The Devil was tricky, but not that tricky, surely. A few more suc
h tricks and the parish would resemble the paradise terrestrial!

  Father Ambrosius dashed from his study to the altar of the little stone church and began furiously to turn the pages of the huge metal-bound lectern Bible.

  “For the love of money is the root of all evil—”

  It burst on Father Ambrosius with a great light that the words of Paul were in reference not to John Goldsmith’s love of money but to Sir Baldwin’s love of money.

  He dashed back to his study and his pen began to squeak over the parchment, obliterating the last dim trace of Tacitus’ Annals, VIII i.v. The sermon would be a scorcher, all right, but it wouldn’t scorch John Goldsmith. It would scorch Sir Baldwin for ruthlessly and against the laws of God and man refusing to turn Fallowfield over to the moneylender. There would be growls of approval in the church that Sunday, and many black looks directed against Sir Baldwin for his attempt to bilk the parish’s friend and benefactor, the moneylender.

  * * * *

  “And that,” F. W. Taylor concluded, chuckling, “is how power passes from one pair of hands to another, and how public acceptance of the change follows on its heels. A strange thing—people always think that each exchange of power is the last that will ever take place.”

  He seemed to be finished.

  “Uncle,” Orsino said, “somebody tried to kill me.”

  Taylor stared at him for a long minute, speechless. “What happened?” he finally asked.

  “I went formal to the theater, with five bodyguards. The chief guard, name of Halloran, took a shot at me. One of my boys got in the way. He was killed.”