“It’s a bit complicated,” said the man in front of her after wistfully rubbing his jaw.
“I can help you with any questions,” Giselle offered, quelling her distaste and plastering a serviceable smile on her face.
“Why can’t I just pay my fee and have done with it?”
“We feel our price structure offers you advantages,” she replied, but then remembered Alistair’s strict order of absolute honesty. “The truth is it’s better for us too. It’s good for us both.”
“How?”
“In a lot of ways. It’s to our advantage, not just yours, that you not be the victim of a crime. It’s less work for us, so we offer rate reductions for any self defense classes you take with Taribo. If you own a weapon and demonstrate you can competently use it, this reduces the likelihood of you being a victim of crime. Naturally we offer a discount for that. In the future, certain danger areas might develop that we prefer you avoid; we’ll offer incentives for you to do so. We have what we consider a more than acceptable defense force, but may need to raise an army some day, so we offer a reduction for a promise of military service. You can volunteer ten, twenty or thirty days of service per year, and the rate reductions increase commensurately. We offer a payment for graduation from a one week boot camp with Taribo.”
The man frowned as he tried to process all the information she flung at him.
“You don’t have to decide today—”
“I want a lot of reductions.”
She did her best to make her smile genuine. “Let’s sign the papers.”
Ten minutes later, Thomas O’Leary of Ireland, Earth, was a client of Ashley Security and Arbitration and a reserve soldier with an obligation of military service not to exceed thirty days per year. Having sworn an oath of good conduct, he enjoyed a rate reduction for the weapons he owned and was on his way to see Taribo about boot camp. When he left, Giselle, seeing he was the last in line and no other waited for her, took advantage of the lull to clean her office, starting with a thorough scrubbing of the floor and grimacing at the thought of the dirty brute who had just been there.
***
The site chosen for the Gaian Temple was only a few miles from where the powerplant would be built. The ground-breaking was largely symbolic, for no work followed for a period of weeks, but Clyde Oliver Jones immediately set about raising funds. Alistair met the news with a predictably stoic expression and a noncommittal shrug. To most it seemed he did not care. Only Giselle, who was coming to know him better, and Gregory detected the faint note of uncomprehending derision. This attitude became more and more evident, and morphed into hostile contempt, when Clyde’s project came to conflict with Alistair’s.
More than a few times Alistair’s bond salesmen returned with disappointing results, each one of them citing the Temple as a prominent cause of their difficulties. Charitable donations given to the Temple left less for the financing bonds essential to supplementing the original capital for the powerplant. No religion ever bested hunger in a straight fight, but when the farms, both new and old, began to produce, many men turned to their beliefs. Each time a bond went unsold, Alistair thought of the Temple. Each delay in the arrival of supplies caused him to curse the emerging foundations only a few miles from his embryonic electric plant. One day, he stormed into Giselle’s office, tracking mud, and launched into a tirade with no notice of Gregory and Layla, who had stopped by to visit.
“I don’t understand the need to worship,” he proclaimed in a voice that reverberated in the confines of the aircraft. “What good comes from pretending there is some greater deity, or system, or entity or power and submitting yourself to a will you yourself invented?”
He paused only long enough to take a breath.
“We’ve got so damn far to go and one of the first things they want to do is build a goddamn Temple! What the hell use is it?”
He finished his outburst with a roar and, deflated, leaned on a nearby crate. It was a moment before Giselle, exchanging surprised glances with Gregory and Layla, ventured a reply.
“I thought everyone was free to pursue their own ends.”
“They are free to pursue their own ends. But what the hell do they want to waste good time and resources on a fucking Temple for? We’re starting from damn near scratch here. Build a Temple later. Right now we need to work on more useful things.”
“There’s no point in explaining religious convictions to you, Alistair,” Gregory softly declared. “But most people have them. You don’t need to understand it; you just need to tolerate it. I believe I’ve heard you say the same thing a few times.”
“Honey, you told me value was subjective. They’re building a Temple because they want to build one. It doesn’t have to serve your interests.”
He had no reply to the logic he fed her and which she now gave back to him. He stood silently a moment, leaning on the crate and looking at nothing in particular, before Giselle spoke again.
“We’ll finish the plant. You say we have a long way to go… but to what? There’s no final destination.”
“Are you sure?”
Giselle looked confused. “We just keep working to make things better. Like you told me, we all have to cooperate to achieve more. Cooperating means allowing people the use of their property. Right?”
Alistair sat down in a chair, his temper under control.
“Do you know how he’s raising money? He’s having séances. Reading people’s palms. Performing magic tricks. Predicting the future. There are just enough drooling idiots out there to keep him in business, and when he tells them their dead grandmother still loves them or the spirit of Gaia is with them, they pour all the money they’ve earned in his hands.”
Gregory shrugged. “If they’re dumb enough to fall for that crap…”
“I ought to arrest him for fraud. I seriously mean it. He’s committing fraud.”
“You think all religion is fraud.”
“Religion is silly. But when you take people’s money in exchange for putting them in contact with their dead relatives—”
“But he doesn’t do that,” Gregory interjected. “He reads them their future and then accepts donations. He is not technically selling anything. That’s not fraud according to the definition you read me when I signed my contract with Ashley Security & Arbitration.”
“Besides, if you try to arrest him you’ll lose every Gaian client you have, which is most of them,” reasoned Giselle.
Alistair glared darkly at the floor. “I don’t want any Gaian clients,” he muttered and left the office.
***
The first thing Mordecai did upon returning to the mainland was order the construction of his new house. Having fewer funds than Alistair, he was forced to sell pieces of salvaged equipment in order to pay for it, an act he committed with the utmost agony. No king ever grieved more over the loss of a territory. When these funds ran out and he had to sell a couple more pieces, he felt as if his empire were unraveling.
The audacious structure was made of lumber and stone and progress was measured in inches per day. Part of this was due to the lack of good tools, but also contributing was Mordecai’s insistence that his home stand on the top of a large hill, and all the materials had to be dragged up the mount by the toil of underfed workers. Some of these were chronically undernourished former slaves who, despite the improvement in their position, had yet to regain their former vigor, and some were former warriors who, though well fed until recently, were showing signs of want now that food was purchased, not apportioned, and there simply wasn’t enough yet to make the entire population hale and hearty.
When the ground level was livable with the floor of the second story acting as roof, Mordecai made do with a converted living room as the master bedroom. He received his visitors in what would be his banquet hall when his table was finished. He placed an order for it but the best offer he could find was from a farmer who promised to finish the piece as soon as his field was in a satisfactory state. See
thing with impatience, he cursed this voluntary society and Alistair, the man who forced it on him.
He sat in his banquet-hall-to-be at a small desk with a wooden stool. The interior was bare and unfinished, giving the appearance of a shed more than a dining area. With his arms folded and his chin tucked into his chest, he did not distinguish the polite knock on the door from the bangs and wallops of construction coming from above. Finally, diffidently, the visitor entered and gingerly crossed the floor to stand before Mordecai at his desk.
“Are you finished?” grumbled Mordecai.
“Yes, sir,” was the reply in a heavy Russian accent.
“Then out with it.”
The nervous little man fumbled with some papers which he finally put into the desired order.
“There is no possibility of supplying weapons for the troops in the next three months, and probably not for the next three after that.”
“God damn it.”
“There was, uh… it seems the tool makers are making farm tools right now. I offered good money for swords and arrows but…” the small man winced before he delivered the next bit of news, “some of them outright refused to make weapons. A couple said they would accept but… the prices they are charging…” He gave a weak smile and waited for a response from Mordecai. When none was forthcoming he continued. “At any rate, even if we could get weapons we probably wouldn’t have much of an army to use them. We are having difficulty charging our customers enough to cover an army. Alistair, Duke and Wei Bai have a light security force—”
“Which is why we can strike them if we can raise an army!” Mordecai bellowed, and the startled man in front of him jumped back.
The obsequious and nervous smile quickly returned and he continued. “But that is also why they are charging so little for their services. In order to stay competitive we have to adjust our prices… it seems we have little discretionary room. Furthermore, and I hesitate to bring this up… you did authorize me to alter the terms of service to stop our subscribers from going over to Alistair…” Mordecai only stared blankly at the man, so he continued, “Our clients are no longer obligated to give military service. Now it’s an option we offer in exchange for reduced rates.” Mordecai looked as if he were ready to explode so the man hurried to continue. “We were forced to! We were losing clients because they liked Alistair’s offer better. Some of them have agreed to military service, but only for defense. And they are getting reduced rates for it. We simply are not taking in enough money to raise an army.”
“Then borrow!”
“I tried. There are few with that kind of capital, and they all asked to see our books and wanted to know what the loan was for. No one wants to finance a war, and no one thinks your earnings prospects are worth the risk of lending you the amount of money we would need to raise an army. An army that will be without weapons for at least the next half year.”
The report finished, the man laid the papers on the desk in front of Mordecai. He stood with his arms at his sides and waited for a response, but at first Mordecai only rubbed at the bridge of his nose.
“It’s like trying to climb out of a sand pit,” he finally said, his voice soft and weary. “Every time I reach up I slide down, and I can’t make any headway.”
“Perhaps this is the way things are going to be.”
“You may go now.”
The man nodded once and began to leave but stopped before reaching the door and half turned to say one last thing.
“Two of the pilots you trained left. Alistair hired one and Wei Bai the other.”
He spoke the two sentences in the manner of a man who reaches out to grab the handle of a frying pan whose temperature he does not know. When Mordecai did not explode with rage, did not even respond, he sighed in relief: the handle was cool to the touch. Not wishing to press his luck, he opened the door and made a hasty exit.
***
There was one large aircraft Alistair acquired from the auction. It seemed to have been a diplomatic vessel, a capacious affair with sleeping chambers, board rooms, antechambers and just about anything one would expect from an embassy. He used it as his headquarters, and it had flown only twice since he acquired it: once from Floralel to Odin’s Island, and then from Odin’s Island back to the mainland.
It was circular, with an outer hallway running near the perimeter. On the outside of the hallway was the cockpit as well as several private chambers. Inside was a large meeting room with a polished, mahogany table, a plush carpet and cushioned chairs, all done in the Gaian style of swirls, rounded corners and asymmetry. It was there Alistair chose to hold his weekly meetings.
Darion Chesterton always attended, though he was not technically a part of Ashley Security & Arbitration. The Singulatarians, as science and technology advisors, were there, as were Taribo, Wellesley, Santiago and the indispensable Giselle. They gathered one day around the table, underneath the irregular green ceiling with the recessed whitish patch that glowed when turned on, giving the impression of a sun shining through a canopy of leaves. Alistair entered late and was greeted by the soft murmurs of hushed conversations, the occasional throat clearing, the rustle of papers. When he sat down and tapped his stack of papers on the table top, it sliced through the hum of background noise.
“Let’s get this started,” he said as he fished out a couple sheets of paper from his stack.
“Should we do a roll call?” asked Shukri with an inoffensive delicateness, referring to a decision from the previous meeting that Alistair was forgetting.
“It doesn’t seem…” he began but trailed off. “I think we can keep things less formal.”
“It can be helpful to have a thorough record of these things,” suggested Santiago as he rattled the table top with his fingertips.
“Giselle can note who attended in the minutes,” pronounced Alistair with a tone of dismissal. “Now, first order of business: supplies.”
“Yes,” said Faisa, “we have much to discuss about supplies.”
“We are concerned we are not going to be given the proper time to work with what we salvaged from Floralel,” said Akihiro with a polite but firm tone.
Amina and Shukri lodged similar grievances, the one on top of the other. Darion, leaning back in his chair and fingering the top of his cane, was not affected by their complaints. Indeed, he gave no indication he was even listening until the Singulatarians were finished and everyone turned their gazes to him. At that point he spoke but did not take his eyes from his cane.
“We have such a mountain of things… we simply can’t use it all.”
“If you give us enough time…” said Shukri and then he turned to the company head. “Alistair, we need more time. There are all sorts of projects we can undertake—”
“But not enough labor to undertake them all,” Alistair interjected. “We can take advantage of the expertise out there, sitting idle right now. You are scientists. You can tell me what a particular device can do. Darion is a businessman. He can tell me the most profitable course of action. All I need you to do is explain the equipment to Darion and he will decide whether it is best for us to keep and use or to sell to the highest bidder. That way, we allow anyone who thinks they can make use of something the opportunity to use it. We can’t do everything. We don’t have business interests in every field of human endeavor. It doesn’t make sense to hoard everything in a vault until we get around to using it.”
“But how can you know whom to sell it to?” countered Shukri. “Finding the right man, making sure he uses it in a way that furthers our – everyone’s – interests…”
“We don’t need to do that,” said Darion, still intent on inspecting his cane. “I have sent out men far and wide announcing an auction. We will sell anything to anyone who pays the right price. We don’t need to know what they will use it for; if they put up the money to buy it I assume they have an idea in mind for it and are welcome to it. For the right price, I will sell every last piece we have.”
A roa
r of protest went up from all five Singulatarians, but Darion did not flinch.
“You have to learn to let go, to trust and use the market,” said Alistair when the shouting died down. “By selling off this equipment, we allow it to go to where it is most valued.”
“But no one else has the facilities you do,” said Faisa. “No one else can put it to such use.”
“For any single piece of equipment, I agree with you. But we have thousands of items. After the first few dozen, their value to us falls based on the simple fact we don’t have time to get to it. Even if we sell it to someone who lacks our capacity to use it, the fact that it’s their primary piece of equipment means it is at the top of their list and will receive their utmost attention. This puts that piece of equipment in a better position.”
“How will they recharge the batteries?” asked Akihiro, but his tone was weak, like one who is almost ready to give in.
“When the powerplant comes on line, there is already someone who is looking to recharge batteries,” said Darion. “He is going to purchase some of our equipment and is already building a little shop right next to the powerplant. A recharging station. It will be difficult, but if he succeeds, and he seems confident, then we may not have to worry about the equipment running out of power… at least not until the batteries themselves degrade.”
“And maybe by then we’ll be producing our own,” finished Alistair. “And that’s something we are going to be working towards: production. The knowledge is out there to produce higher technology.”
“But we’re light years away from having the equipment,” added Darion.
“We will have to build up gradually. The tools we have today we use to make better tools, which we use to make even better tools, and so on, until one day… we’re making HD drives, superconductors, nanobots, femptochips… a journey that first took thousands of years. But we are starting out with the knowledge already extant. Most of the scientific discovery won’t have to be redone.”
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