The reasons for other changes are less obvious to me, such as van Rijn's secretary Dorothea becoming Dorcas in the later version. Possibly the latter name sounded sexier, and sexiness is definitely a requirement for any of van Rijn's secretaries. Some (but not all) of the mentions of "spacemen" have become "astronauts," possibly to give the story a more contemporary flavor.
At the point in the story where the action gets fast and furious, the original had van Rijn out on the ship's hull doing an emergency repair. Like the ship, he's out of phase with both the universe and the attacking ship, so when an enemy missile goes like a phantom through his stomach, the only harm is to his nerves—the chance of him and the missile happening to be in phase was vanishingly small. In the revised version, though van Rijn worries about the possibility while out on the hull, he and his ample abdomen suffer no such indignity. (In this case, I like the earlier version better.)
There are other differences, but I'll leave further comparisons between the two versions to the reader. I'll mention again that many of the alterations are in van Rijn's dialogue, to make him sound more van Rijnesque. Even Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin didn't manage to nail their roles on their first appearance (in the novel Fer-de-Lance), and Nick van Rijn is certainly entitled to a retake. I hope the readers have fun comparing the changes in the merchant prince's inimitable explosive outbursts.
—Hank Davis
MARGIN OF PROFIT
(The original Version, as it appeared in
Astounding Science Fiction, September 1956))
It was an anachronism to have a human receptionist in this hall of lucent plastic, among the machines that winked and talked between jade columns soaring up into vaulted dimness—but a remarkably pleasant one when she was as long-legged and red-headed a stun-blast as the girl behind the desk. Captain Torres drew to a crisp halt, and a gauntleted hand went to his gilt helmet. Traveling down sumptuous curves, his eye was jarred by the small needler at her waist.
"Good day, sir," she smiled. "One moment, please, I'll see if Freeman van Rijn is ready for you." She switched on the intercom and a three-megavolt oath bounced out. "No, he's still conferring on the vid. Won't you be seated?"
Before she turned it off, Torres caught a few words: " . . . By damn, he'll give us the exclusive franchise or do without our business. Who do these little emperors think they are? All right, so he has a million soldiers under arms. You can tell him to take those soldiers, with field artillery and hobnailed boots, by damn, and—" Click.
Torres wrapped his cape about the deep-blue tunic and sat down, laying one polished boot across the other knee of his white culottes. He felt out of his depth, simultaneously overdressed and naked. The regalia of a Lodgemaster in the Federated Brotherhood of Spacemen was stiff with gold braid, medals, and jewelry, far removed from the gray coverall he wore on deck or the loungers of planet leave. Worse, the guards in the tower entrance, a kilometer below, had not only checked his credentials and retinal patterns, but had unloaded his sidearm.
Blast Nicholas van Rijn and the whole Polesotechnic League! Good saints, drop him on Pluto without his underwear!
Of course, a merchant prince did have to be wary of assassins—and most of them went to great lengths to avoid formal duels, though van Rijn himself was supposed to be murderously fast with a handgun. Nevertheless, arming your receptionist was not a high-born thing to do—
Torres wondered, rather wistfully, if she was one of the old devil's mistresses. Perhaps not; but with the trouble between the Company—no, the whole League—and the Brotherhood, she'd have no time for him, being doubtless bound by a contract of personal fealty. His gaze went to the League emblem on the wall, a golden sunburst afire with opals, surrounding an ancient-style rocketship of the Caravel model, and the motto: All the traffic will bear. That could be taken two ways, he reflected sourly. Beneath it was the trademark of Van Rijn's own outfit, the Solar Spice & Liquors Company.
The girl turned on the intercom again and heard the vidophone being switched off; there followed a steady rumble of obscenities. "Go on in now, sir," she said, and into the speaker: "Captain Rafael Torres, representing the Brotherhood."
The spaceman straightened himself and went through the inner door. His lean dark face clamped into careful lines. It would be a new experience, meeting his ultimate boss; for ten years, as captain of a ship and Lodgemaster of the union local, he had not called anyone "sir."
The office was big, with an entire side transparent, overlooking a precipitous vista of Batavia's towers, green landscape, hot with tropical gardens, and the molten glitter of the Java Sea. The other walls were lined with the biggest referobot Torres had ever seen, with shelves of extraterrestrial curios, and—astonishingly—a thousand or more old-type folio books, exquisitely bound in tooled leather and looking well-worn. The room and the desk were littered, close to maximum entropy, and the ventilators could not quite dismiss a tobacco haze. The most noticeable object on the desk was a small image of St. Dismas, carved from sandroot in the Martian style. The precise and perfect patron for Nicholas van Rijn, thought Torres.
He clicked his heels and bowed till the helmet plume swept his nose. "Lodgemaster-Captain Torres speaking for the Brotherhood, sir."
Van Rijn grunted. He was a huge man, two meters high, and the triple chin and swag belly did not make him appear soft. Rings glittered on the hairy hands and bracelets on the thick wrists, under snuff-soiled lace. Small gray eyes, set close to the great hook nose under a sloping forehead, blinked at the spaceman. He went back to filling his churchwarden, and said nothing until he had a good head of steam up.
"So, by damn," he muttered than. "You speak for the whole louse-bound union, I hope." The long handlebar mustaches and goatee waggled over a gorgeously embroidered waistcoat. Beneath it was only a sarong, columnar legs and bare splay feet.
Torres checked his temper. "Yes, sir. For all the locals in the Solar Federation, and every other lodge within ten light-years. We understood that you would represent the League."
"Only tentatively. I will convey your demands to my colleagues, such of them as I can drag out of their offices and harems. Sit."
Torres did not give the chair an opportunity to mold itself to him; he sat on the edge and said harshly: "It's simple enough, sir. You already know our decision. We aren't calling a real strike . . . yet. We just refuse to take any more ships through the Kossaluth of Borthu till the menace there has been stopped. If you insist that we do so, we will strike."
"By damn, you cut your own throats," replied van Rijn with surprising mildness. "Not alone the loss of pay and commissions. No, but if Antares is not kept steady supplied, she loses taste maybe for cinnamon and London dry gin. Not to speak of products offered by other companies. Like if Jo-Boy Technical Services bring in no more indentured scientists, Antares builds her own academies. Hell and lawyers! In a few years, no more market at Antares and all fifteen planets. You lose, I lose, we all lose."
"The answer is simple enough, sir. We just detour around the Kossaluth. I know that'll take us through more hazardous regions, we'll have more wrecks, but the brothers don't mind that risk."
"What?" somehow, van Rijn managed a basso scream. "Pest and cannon balls! Double the length of the voyage! Double the fuel bills, salaries, ship and cargo losses . . . halve the deliveries per year! We are ruined! Better we give up Antares at once!"
It was already an expensive route, Torres knew; whether or not the companies could actually afford the extra cost, he didn't know, for by the standard treaty which Sol had also signed, the League's books were its own secret. He waited out the dramatics, then said patiently:
"The Borthudian press gangs have been operating for two years now, sir. We've tried to fight them, and can't. We didn't make this decision overnight; if it had been up to the brothers at large, we'd have voted right at the start not to go through that hellhole. But the Lodgemasters held back, hoping that something could be worked out. Apparently it can't."
"Se
e here," growled van Rijn. "I don't like this losing of men and ships any better than you. Worse, maybe. A million credits a year or more it costs this company alone. But we can afford it. Only fifteen per cent of our ships are captured. We would lose more, detouring through the Gamma Mist or the Stonefields. Crewfolk should be men, not jellyfish."
"Easy enough for you to say!" snapped Torres. "We'll face meteors and dust clouds, rogue planets and hostile natives, warped space and hard radiation . . . but I've seen one of those pressed men. That's what decided me. I'm not going to risk it happening to me, and neither is anyone else."
"Ah, so?" Van Rijn leaned over the desk. "By damn, you tell me."
"Met him on Arkan III, autonomous planet on the fringe of the Kossaluth, where we put in to deliver some tea. One of their ships was in, too, and you can bet your brain we went around in armed parties and were ready to shoot anyone who even looked like a crimp. I saw him, this man they'd kidnapped, going on some errand, spoke to him, we even tried to snatch him back so we could bring him to Earth for deconditioning—He fought us and got away. God! He wasn't human any more, not inside. And still you could tell he wanted out, he wanted to break the conditioning, and he couldn't, and he couldn't go crazy either—"
Torres grew aware that van Rijn was thrusting a full goblet into his hand. "Here, you drink this." It burned all the way down. "I have seen conditioned men. I was a rough-and-tumbler myself in younger days." The merchant went back behind his desk and rekindled his pipe. "It is a fiendish thing to do, ja."
"If you want to outfit a punitive expedition, sir," said Torres savagely, "I guarantee you can get full crews."
"No." The curled, shoulder length black locks swished greasily as van Rijn shook his head. "The League does not have many capital ships. It is unprofitable. The cost of a war with Borthu would wipe out ten years' gains. And then we will have trouble with the milksop governments of a hundred planets. No."
"Isn't there some kind of pressure you can put on the Kossalu himself?"
"Hah! You think maybe we have not tried? Economic sanctions do not work; they are not interested in trade outside their own empire. Threats they laugh at. They know that they have more navy than we will ever build. Assassins never get close to the big potatoes." Van Rijn cursed for two straight minutes without repeating himself. "And there they sit, fat and greedy-gut, across the route to Antares and all stars beyond. It is not to be stood!"
He had been prowling the floor; now he whirled about with surprising speed for so large and clumsy a man. "This strike of yours brings it to a head. And speaking of heads, it is getting time for a tall cold beer. I shall have to confer with my fellows. Tell your men there will be steps taken if it is financially possible. Now get out!"
It is a truism that the structure of a society is basically determined by its technology. Not in an absolute sense—there may be totally different cultures using identical tools—but the tools settle the possibilities: you can't have interstellar trade without spaceships. A race limited to one planet, possessing a high knowledge of mechanics but with all its basic machines of commerce and war requiring a large capital investment, will inevitably tend toward collectivism under one name or another. Free enterprise needs elbow room.
Automation made manufacturing cheap, and the cost of energy nose-dived when the proton converter was invented. Gravity control and the hyperdrive opened a galaxy to exploitation. They also provided a safety valve: a citizen who found his government oppressive could usually emigrate elsewhere, which strengthened the libertarian planets; their influence in turn loosened the bonds of the older world.
Interstellar distances being what they are, and intelligent races all having their own ideas of culture, there was no union of planetary systems. Neither was there much war: too destructive, with small chance for either side to escape ruin, and there was little to fight about. A race doesn't get to be intelligent without an undue share of built-in ruthlessness, so all was not sweetness and brotherhood—but the balance of power remained fairly stable. And there was a brisk demand for trade goods. Not only did colonies want the luxuries of home, and the home planets want colonial produce, but the old worlds had much to swap.
Under such conditions, and exuberant capitalism was bound to strike root. It was also bound to find mutual interest, to form alliances and settle spheres of influence. The powerful companies joined together to squeeze out competitors, jack up prices, and generally make the best of a good thing. Governments were limited to a few planetary systems at most; they could do little to control their cosmopolitan merchants. One by one, through bribery, coercion, or sheer despair, they gave up the struggle.
Selfishness is a potent force. Governments, officially dedicated to altruism, remained divided; the Polesotechnic League became a super-government, sprawling from Canopus to Polaris, drawing its membership from a thousand species. It was a horizontal society, cutting across all political and cultural boundaries. It set its own policies, made its own treaties, established its own bases, fought its own minor wars—and, in the course of milking the Milky Way, did more to spread a truly universal civilization and enforce a lasting Pax than all the diplomats in the galaxy.
But it had its own troubles.
One of Nicholas van Rijn's mansions lay on the peak of Kilimanjaro, up among the undying snows. It was an easy spot to defend, and a favorite for conferences.
His gravcar slanted down through a night of needle-sharp stars, toward the high turrets and glowing lanterns. Looking though the roof, he picked out the cold sprawl of Scorpio. Antares flashed a red promise, and he shook his fist at the suns between. "So! Monkey business with van Rijn, by damn. The whole Sagittarius clusters waiting to be ope3ned, and you in the way. This will cost you money, my friends, gut and kipper me if it don't."
He thought back to days when he had ridden a bucketing ruin of a ship through the great hollow spaces, bargaining under green skies, and in poisonous winds for jewels Earth had never seen before, and a moment's wistfulness tugged at him. A long time now since he had been any farther than the Moon . . . poor old fat man, chained to one miserable planet and unable to turn an honest credit. The Antares route was more important that he dared admit; if he lost it, he lost his chance at the Sagittarian developments to corporations with offices on the other side of the Kossaluth. In today's pitiless competition, you either went on expanding or you went under. And he had made too many enemies, they were waiting for the day of his weakness.
The car landed itself, and the guards jumped out to flank him. He wheezed the thin chill air into sooty lungs, drew his cloak of phosphorescent onthar skin tightly about him, and scrunched across frosty paving to the house. There was a new maid at the door, pretty little baggage . . . Venusian-French, was she? He tossed his plumed hat at her as the butler said the Freemen were already here. He sat down and told the chair "Conference Room" and went along corridors darkly paneled in the wood of a hundred planets.
There were four colleagues around the table when he entered. Kraaknach of the Martian Transport Company was glowing his yellow eyes at a Frans Hals on the wall. Firmage of North American Engineering puffed an impatient cigar. Mjambo, who owned Jo-Boy Technical Services—which supplied indentured labor to colonial planets—was talking into his wristphone. Gornas-Kiew happened to be on Earth and was authorized to speak for the Centaurians; he sat quietly waiting, hunched into his shell, only the delicate antennae moving.
Van Rijn plumped himself into the armchair at the head of the table. Walters appeared with trays of drinks, smokes, and snacks. He took a large bite from a ham sandwich and looked inquiringly at the others.
Kraaknach's owl face turned to him. "Well, Freeman host, I understand we are met on account of this Borthudian brokna. Did the spacemen make their ultimatum?"
"Ja." Van Rijn picked up a cigar and rolled it between his fingers. "It grows serious. They will not take ships through the Kossaluth, except to get revenge, while this shanghai business goes on."
"So why
not blast the Borthudian home planet?" asked Mjambo.
"Death and damnation!" Van Rijn tugged at his goatee. "I had a little computation run off today. Assuming we lost no ships—and Borthu has good defenses—but allowing for salaries, risk bonus, ammunition, maintenance, depreciation, estimated loss due to lack of protection elsewhere, lawsuits by governments afraid the Kossaluth may strike back, bribes, and loss of profits to be had if the cost were invested peaceably—the bill for that little operation would come to about thirty trillion credits. In a nutshell, we cannot afford it. Simmons, a bowl of Brazils!"
"You will pardon my ignorance, good sires," clicked Gornas-Kiew's artificial vocalizer. "My main interests lie elsewhere, and I have been only marginally aware of this trouble. Why are the Borthudians impressing our men?"
Van Rijn cracked a nut between his teeth and reached for a glass of brandy. "The gruntbrains have not enough of their own," he replied shortly.
"Perhaps I can make it clear," said Kraaknach. Like most Martians of the Sirruch Horde, he had a mind orderly to the point of boredom. He ran a clawlike hand through his gray feathers and lit a rinn-tube. "Borthu is a backward planet . . . terrestroid to eight points, with humanoid natives. They were in the early stage of nuclear energy when explorers visited them seventy-eight years ago, and their reaction to the presence of a superior culture was paranoid. They soon learned how to make modern engines of all types, and then set out to conquer themselves an empire. They now hold a volume of space about forty light-years across, though they only occupy a few Soltype systems within it. They want nothing to do with the outside universe, and are quite able to supply all their needs within their own boundaries—with the one exception of efficient spacemen."
The Van Rijn Method Page 56
