A For Anything

10

Melker's reception, as usual, was crowded and colorful. Melker himself was there for a wonder, a gnomish, unpleasant little man with a really repulsive beard. His rooms were big but rather shabby; Melker had vague Army connections but was nobody himself, as far as Dick could determine: why everybody seemed to come to his Saturday night receptions, he couldn't tell; but since everybody did, he went too. The entertainment was good -- two accomplished dancers tonight, and a comedian who had once been attached to the Household. Towards eleven o'clock, though, as always, the evening turned unaccountably dull; all the pretty women began to go home, the waiters with the drinks disappeared, some old gasbag like Colonel Rosen would take the floor and start fighting the War of Establishment all over again -- people would be yawning all over the suite, and at this point, Dick always drifted out with a gang of acquaintances who were looking for something livelier.

Tonight, however, Clay drew him aside as he was moving toward the door. "Going so soon? Wait a while."

Dick nodded toward Colonel Rosen, who was holding forth in a parade-ground voice at the other side of the room. "And listen to that? No, thanks."

Clay didn't release his arm. "There's a reason. Wait."

Puzzled and intrigued, Dick found a seat and watched more alertly. For a while, if anything, the assemblage merely got more desperately dull. Then, after one incoherent drunk was helped out, the atmosphere miraculously changed. Colonel Rosen shut up and poured himself a neat drink; waiters were again moving among the chairs; there was a murmur of talk and laughter; even the lights seemed brighter but less glaring.

Dick looked around him. Most of those present were men in their prime; there was a sprinkling of young men and oldsters, and only three women -- two dowagers who had settled themselves close together, each with her own body-servant at hand, and a youngish but very plain woman in the far corner.

Melker, who was seated near the fireplace, now rapped for attention with a wineglass. "Men and ladies," he said, "the subject for tonight is 'Slavery.' Colonel Rosen, will you oblige us by opening with the traditional view?"

Dick groaned, not quite inaudibly. Rosen, a florid, nearly bald man in his fifties, cocked an eyebrow in his direction as he began. "Slavery is an institution of every civilized society, from the most ancient times to the present. Using the term in the broadest sense, there never has been a time when civilized arts and sciences, to such an extent as they existed, have not been founded on forced labor, that is, on slavery. We may distinguish -- "

"Objection!" said a vigorous-looking, dark-skinned man, pointing his pipe at Rosen. "Do you maintain that the peasant of the Middle Ages was a slave?"

"I do, mister."

"He was not, he was a serf, and there's an important difference. A serf was attached to the soil -- "

(" -- Like a pumpkin," murmured an ironic voice in Dick's ear.)

" -- and could only be sold with the soil, whereas a slave was absolute property and could be sold at any time."

"The chair rules," said Melker, "that Colonel Rosen may call the serf a slave if he wishes. Colonel, please continue."

Dick twisted around; Clay had moved over unobtrusively and was sitting close behind him. "What is all this?" Dick whispered.

"The Philosophers' Club -- shut up and listen, you may learn something."

"We may distinguish," Rosen was saying, "between systems of individual slavery, slavery of classes, and mechanical slavery. The last, an invention of the so-called Industrial Revolution, put an end to the formal practice of individual slavery in Europe and America, but introduced a new form of the slavery of classes, that is, industrial slavery. In more recent times -- "

"Just a minute, Colonel," cried the plain young woman. "Those people were free. They had a democracy, on this part of the continent -- they could move from job to job, just as they wanted."

"But they had to work?" asked the Colonel.

"Well, if you want to put it that way -- under the monetary system they had to work, yes, to get dollars -- but they could choose, don't you see -- "

"They could choose whether to work or starve," said the Colonel positively. "The difference between -- "

"Oh, now really! Colonel, those people were the best paid workers in history -- They had cars, they had television sets -- "

"My slaves have television sets," said Rosen; "they don't need cars. If they did, they'd have 'em. The fact remains, they can't dispose of their own time. That marks the essential difference between your slave and your freeman, whether you call 'em slaves, serfs, cotters, villeins, factory workers -- "

"Or soldiers, Colonel?" asked one of the dowagers, in a penetrating voice.

Rosen stiffened. "Lady, I'm a housed man, serving freely. I can resign my commission at any time -- "

"Mrs. Maxwell is out of order," Melker interposed smoothly. "Miss Flavin, the chair rules that the Colonel may call industrial workers slaves, under his own definition. Colonel, I believe you were building up to a point?"

"I was. Now, mechanical slavery, the slavery of the machine, was hailed as the great emancipator; it was supposed to eliminate the need for human slavery and make everybody a gentleman. The more work performed by machines, the more leisure for humans." (Half a dozen people had their hands raised; the chairman ignored them.) "Well, I give you the Gismo, the last word in mechanical slavery -- "

"In mechanical production," began Miss Flavin, heatedly, but Rosen waved her to silence. "One minute. The Gismo does everything any of the Industrial Age machines were supposed to do, to eliminate human labor -- it generates power, it manufactures everything from jet planes to toothbrushes, it replaces parts, and all this at zero cost for materials, and the absolute minimum of human supervision. But -- " He paused. "The Gismo won't clean a room, make a bed, comb your hair or carry a gun. And the more leisure you've got, the more demand for personal service. So you see the result -- mechanical slavery makes human slavery, and the proof is, we've got the highest proportion of slaves to free men in the history of the world -over fifty to one. Three hundred to one, here in Eagles. You moralists can argue all you like, it couldn't have happened any other way." There was another hooker of spirits at his side; he picked it up, drained it with a little ironic salute of the glass, and set it down.

"Very good," said Melker, rapping for order, "very good, Colonel, now since you've made such a kind invitation to the moralists, as represented by Miss Flavin, let's hear them argue."

"Well, in the first place," said the plain woman, looking indignant, "we're not moralists as Colonel Rosen calls us, we're humanitarians. That's an ethical position, and if the Colonel doesn't know the difference between ethics and morals, I won't take the time to instruct him now.

"Colonel Rosen has just explained to us how inevitable slavery is," she went on, "and of course there's just one little thing wrong with his argument. It took five years of brutal war, and the extermination of hundreds of thousands of people, to impose this so-called inevitable system that we enjoy today -- a system that, as the Colonel admits, was actually obsolete nearly a hundred and fifty years ago. And, of course, the Gismo is the end-all of all scientific progress, why, yes, we've seen to that, because there hasn't been a single, important, scientific development in the last fifty years -- not one! But that's sensible, of course, because we saw what just one little invention, the Gismo, did to the world, and we're afraid one more might upset our inevitable system!"

Dick looked around at Clay, open-mouthed with astonishment. He had never heard such talk, never imagined anything like it. But Clay was leaning calmly back in his chair with his, cigar cocked at an interested angle, for all the world as if he were listening to some moderately novel opinion about the weather.

"Question," called a scholarly-looking man from the opposite side of the room. He was white-haired and wore old-fashioned nose spectacles. "Does Miss Flavin assume that war, itself, is not inevitable?"

She turned to face him. "I most certainly do, Doctor Belasco. Like all apologists for brutality, you no doubt believe that history proves your point -- there have always been wars, therefore wars are inevitable. Adopting your own puerile argument, I could say that there have always been periods of peace, therefore peace is inevitable."

"Intervals between wars," grunted Colonel Rosen. "Man's a fighting animal, woman's a species of talking bird."

"We are a trifle off the point," said Melker, "Miss Flavin, if it's agreeable to you, I think we should all be interested to hear something of the alternative system your group proposes."

"Certainly," said the woman, with a hard look at Rosen. "We humanitarians, as our name suggests, believe that man has an ethical duty to man. We believe that the value of any system is measured by the consideration given to all human beings, not just to a favored class: and by that standard, our present system is a miserable failure."

"Oh, well," said Rosen loudly, "if we're going to use that kind of logic, down with horses -they don't lay eggs." There was some laughter.

"Colonel, we have given you considerable latitude in your definitions," said Melker. "Miss Flavin, if you please."

"Our first objective," she resumed, "is the abolition of slavery and a return to free, democratic institutions. No progress, either moral or material, can be made in a world which is frozen, like ours, into a rigid mold of suppression of liberties. Once this objective is attained, in an orderly way, then our other problems -- and they will be many -- can be dealt with as they arise. We do not believe that the only stable society is one that crams forty-nine fiftieths of itself into a degrading servitude."

Several hands were in the air; Melker nodded to a pale young man in a puce jacket. "Mr. Oliver?"

"Of course, I'm no philosopher or anything," Oliver began jerkily, "but it seems to me -- you talk about consideration and so on. Well, suppose you let all the slaves go. I can't quite see it myself, but what I want to know, suppose you had a lot of little families scattered all over, instead of the big houses we have now, well, how do you know there'd be any more consideration then? I mean, wouldn't all the families be fighting with each other, where now, at least, we've got 'em under control, so they can't fight."

"A very valuable and interesting point," said Melker, smoothly. "Mr. Collundra, did you wish to answer that question?"

The dark-skinned man said, "Well, in a way. Mr. Oliver, of course, as you point out, it's difficult to measure consideration. Or happiness, or anything of that kind. But there is a standard that can be used, and that's the efficient use of land.

Seventy-odd years ago, there were a hundred and eighty million people living on the North American continent; today, there's no census, but probably there are about one-eighth that number. Now, I merely offer that as a scale on which you can compute one way of living against another; I think we might profitably debate that point."

"Good; now we shall see some fireworks," said Melker, rubbing his hands. "Mrs. Maxwell?"

The old woman's expression was amused under her mask of cosmetics. "Well, Mr. Collundra is absolutely right, although I doubt that he knows it. Efficient use of space is the test, and I can add some figures to the ones he gave. When the white men first came to this continent, I understand, the place was about half forest. In five hundred years they got that down to one-third -- cleared the rest, made it into farms, and towns and cities. Then we came along, and in less than a hundred years we got it back pretty near to half forest again. We ought to be proud. There isn't but about a hundred thousand square miles that we actually use; I mean unproved land, land that looks some way different from what it did before we got there. One good epidemic could carry us all off; the Black Death in Europe, I understand, buried more people than there are in North America now. Then the cougars and coyotes could take over; there's plenty of them."

She seemed to be finished; Melker nodded to a white-bearded man who sat vigorously erect. "Commander Holt?"

Holt cleared his throat and said mildly, "I don't know if I understand the lady, but it seems to me if it's density of population you want, the best civilization was pre-Gismo India; they had about two hundred to the square mile there. Now, it may be that there are too few of us at the moment; that's an unusual situation and we're growing fast; I understand most of the country families are running to four and five children apiece. I hope we never get to two hundred to the square mile. But I suppose we'll get somewhere near it, and then we'll have to have another war of the character Miss Flavin describes." He cleared his throat at length, and began again, unexpectedly, "Now this question of population is, it seems to me, one that Miss Flavin and her supporters have consistently refused to face. Miss Flavin, let me put this question to you. You believe, do you not, that it was a primary, ethical mistake to limit the number of Gismos?"

"Of course it was," she answered. "It was the one original injustice from which the rest inevitably followed. But as for population increase -- " a thin flush appeared on her cheeks -"there are ways and means, as you perfectly well know, Commander -- "

"No, if you'll pardon me, there aren't," said Holt. "Voluntary birth control methods only work on the people who choose to use 'em. A population check that doesn't work on everybody, doesn't work at all, because it simply breeds out the ones who use it. The only population check that really works is one that affects everybody, like a limit of space or food. Now, Miss Flavin, with Gismos freely available, there wouldn't ever be a shortage of food, would there?"

"No."

"No, there couldn't be. And, we would hope that people wouldn't go to war and kill each other off, merely because there was getting to be a lot of 'em, isn't that right?" "If you like to put it that way."

"All right, then that leaves a limit of space: and, Miss Flavin, there wouldn't've been any end to our natural increase until there was one of us for every square yard of land surface on the planet."

Melker beamed. "Taking advantage of the privilege of the chair, may I say that your picture of the future gives me goose-flesh of delight: one enormous pile of refuse, with people standing in rows, each beside his Gismo. No trees, no competing animals or birds, no room for lakes or streams -- and, for that matter, why waste the oceans, Commander? I suppose we could build rafts ... Yes, Mr. Kishor?"

A lantern-jawed young man, perched on one arm of the sofa, had been scribbling in a notebook. He held up the results. "I thought you might be interested to know just how many people the Earth could support, at the rate Commander Holt mentioned -- in round numbers, sixty-one trillion, nine hundred forty billion people."

"Of course, we could build a second story and double that," somebody called.

Melker was rapping for order. "Seriously -- seriously -- " a heavy, blunt-featured man kept saying. "Yes, Mr. Perse."

"Seriously, there really is an answer to this ridiculous problem we've been tossing around. I refer, of course, to space travel. Now I know some of you think of space travel as a kind of twentieth century frenzy, like the stock market or swallowing goldfish. But I assure you it is not. Space travel is an art completely worked out, in the most thorough detail, more than a century ago, and lacking only an adequate fuel -- which the Gismo provides! If it were not for the unfortunate moratorium placed on scientific progress at the beginning of the present era, we would be in space now -- and indeed, this isn't generally known, but we have some reason to believe that one or more spaceships may actually have got off during the War of Establishment. If it's standing room you want, there's the Moon -- there's Mars, Venus and all the other planets of this system just for a beginning. True, we are sadly limited on this poor little planet, but there's no need in the world to talk about reducing our numbers. Men and ladies, I ask you to consider that in our home galaxy alone there are more than thirty billion suns."

Dick's head was swimming. His first idea, that these people were talking reason, was obviously wrong, or else an old warhorse like Colonel Rosen wouldn't stay here and listen for a minute. No, this was what he had been looking for without knowing it: knowledgeable talk that didn't have the taint of slobbery. These were the people who really knew things. Dick conceived a sudden determination; he thought, I'll be like them. I'll talk that way too!

Going home afterwards through the blue-lighted residential corridors -- walking for the exercise, with Clay striding along beside him -- Dick felt elated. Through the narrow clerestory he could see the stars, sharp and bright in a sky flooded with moonlight. Life rolled on, after all: here or at home, it made no real difference; he was Dick Jones of Buckhill, and the world was his oyster.

All the servants had gone to bed except the valet; Dick dismissed him, too, poured Clay a nightcap, and flung himself down on a divan. The room was spacious and warm; the shaded lights glimmered from the polished surfaces of tables and bookcases; there were fresh camellias, tastefully arranged, in the vases. "Howard," he said, "how long has that been going on?"

The scrape of Clay's match was loud in the stillness. "Not very long, actually." The fragrance of the cigar drifted across. "There was a Philosophers' Club here that lapsed about twenty years ago; Melker revived it. I had an idea you'd fit in." He smoked in silence for a while. "Of course," he added, "they'll expect you to speak up, eventually. I'll lend you some books if you want."

"Yes -- about space flight?"

Clay's answer came after a pause. "Better stay clear of that, Dick. I know Perse has a way about him, but that's a dead end."

"Why? It sounded pretty logical."

"That's not settling anything, to run away into space. Our problems are right here. Besides, when he tells you it's all worked out, he's lying. Half the art has been lost; I know." Another pause. "Who do you think is the most important person you heard there tonight?"

Dick thought about it. "Well -- Melker?"

"No, not Melker."

"Rosen, then, or Holt"

"No, not either of them, or any of the Humanitarian crowd, either. Mr. Oliver."

Dick twisted around on the divan to look at him. "Oliver?"

"That's right. You're moving in exalted circles now, my boy. 'Oliver' is Oliver Crawford -- he happens to be the heir to Eagles. Some day he'll be the Boss -- and if you're his friend by that time -- " The glowing tip of Clay's cigar made an expressive, upward gesture. "He leans toward the conservative side, naturally, but he's squeamish; wants to keep what he's got without hurting anybody." Clay rose. "It's getting late; we'll talk again tomorrow."

Dick sighed; he felt peacefully tired. "Howard?"

His friend turned, a silhouette in the lighted doorway. "Yes?"

"When I first came here, that snake Ruell told me nobody in Eagles ever does anything for nothing. He was wrong, wasn't he?"'

Clay looked at him quietly across the room. "Get some sleep," he said gently, and closed the door.