CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
…no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted for a moment, or reasonably supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly on voluntary support.
from NO TREASON
by Lysander Spooner
“Good evening, this is Radmon Sayers. It does not seem possible that there could be anyone watching right now who is not already aware of the catastrophic events that have rocked the length and breadth of Occupied Space today. But just in case someone has been unconscious since the early hours of the morning, I will recap:
“The Imperial mark has crashed. After holding fairly steady for years at an exchange rate of two marks per Solar credit, the Imperial mark began a steady decline at 5.7 hours Throne time. As most of you know, the Interstellar Currency Exchange never closes, but all trading in Imperial marks was suspended at 17.2 hours Throne time this evening when it hit a terrifying low of eighty marks per Solar credit. There is no telling how far its official trade value would have fallen had not trade been suspended.
“The precipitating factors in the selling panic have not yet been pinpointed. All that is known at this time is that virtually every brokerage firm involved with the Exchange received calls this morning from multiple clients, all with sizable accounts in Imperial marks, informing them to sell every mark they possessed, no matter what the going rate happened to be. And so billions of marks were dumped on the market at once. The brokers say that their clients were quite insistent: they wanted no further Imperial marks in their portfolio and were willing to take losses to divest themselves of them. The Exchange authorities have promised a prompt and thorough investigation into the possibility that a conspiracy has been afoot to manipulate the exchange rate for profit. So far, however, no one has been found who has made a windfall profit from the crash.
“In an extemporaneous speech on the vid networks, Metep VII assured the people of Throne and all the other out-worlds that there is nothing to fear. That all we can do is keep calm and have faith in ourselves and in our continued independence from Earth. ‘We've had hard times before and have weathered them,’ Metep said. ‘We shall weather them again…’”
“WAS ERIC BOEDEKKER BEHIND ALL THIS?” Doc Zack asked as LaNague darkened the holovid and Sayers’ face faded from the globe. The inner circle was seated around the vid set in LaNague's apartment.
“Yes. He's been selling everything he owns for the past three years or so, and converting the credit to marks. Thousands of accounts under thousands of names were started during that period, with instructions to the brokers to buy Imperial marks every time their value dipped.”
“And thereby creating an artificial floor on their value,” Zack said.
“Exactly.”
“But for all Eric Boedekker's legendary wealth,” Zack said, “I don't see how even he could buy enough Imperial marks to cause today's crash. I mean, there were hundreds of billions of marks sold today, and as many more waiting to be disposed of as soon as trading on them opens again. He's rich, but nobody's that rich.”
“He had help, although the people involved didn't know they were helping him. You see, Boedekker made sure to call public attention every time he sold off one of his major assets. His financial peers thought he was crazy, but they kept a close eye on him. He had pulled off some major coups in the past and they wanted to know exactly what he was doing with all that accumulated credit. And they found out. You can't keep too many things secret down there on Earth, and the ones who really wanted to know found out that he was quietly, anonymously, buying up Imperial marks whenever he could. So they started buying up marks, too…just to be safe. Maybe Boedekker knew something they didn't; maybe something was cooking in the out-worlds that would bring the Imperial mark up to trading parity with the Solar credit. I sent him the ‘sell’ signal last week and he's been getting ready ever since.”
“Ah, I see!” Zack said. “And when he dumped-”
“-they dumped. From there it was a cascade effect. Everybody who was holding Imperial marks wanted to get rid of them. But nobody wanted to buy them. The Imperial mark is now worth one fortieth of its value yesterday, and would probably be less than a hundredth if trading had not been suspended. It's still overpriced.”
“Brilliant!” Doc Zack was shaking his head in admiration. “Absolutely brilliant!”
“What's so brilliant?” Broohnin said from his reclining position on the floor. For a change, he had been listening intently to the conversation. “Is this the spectacular move you've promised us? So what? What's it done for us?”
Zack held up a hand as LaNague started to reply. “Let me answer him. I think I see the whole picture now, but correct me if I'm wrong.” He turned to Broohnin. “What our friend from Tolive has done, Den, is turn every inhabitant of Throne into a potential revolutionary. All the people who have come to the conclusion that the Imperium is inimical to their own interests and the interests of future generations of out-worlders have been constrained to go on supporting the Imperium because their incomes, either wholly or in part, have depended on the Imperium. That is no longer a consideration. The money the Imperium has been buying their loyalty with has now been reduced to its true value: nothing. The velvet coverings are off; the cold steel of the chains is now evident.”
“But is that fair?” Mora said. She and the Flinters had been silent until now. “It's like cutting off a flitter's power in midair. People are going to be hurt.”
“It would have happened with or without us,” LaNague told her brusquely. “If not now, then later. Boedekker has only allowed me to say when; he didn't really change the eventual outcome.”
“And don't forget,” Zack said more gently, “that the people getting hurt bear a great deal of the blame. They've allowed this to go on for decades. The people of Throne are especially guilty-they've allowed the Imperium to make too many decisions for them, run too much of their lives, buy them off with more and more worthless fiat money. Now the bill's come due. And they've got to pay.”
“Right,” LaNague said. “This could not have happened if out-worlders had refused to allow the Imperium to debase the Imperial mark. If the mark had had something real backing it up-if it had represented a given amount of precious metal or another commodity, and had been redeemable for that, if it had been something more than fancy printed keerni paper, then there would have been no crash, no matter how many Imperial marks Eric Boedekker bought and dumped on the Interstellar Currency Exchange.”
“Why not?” Broohnin said.
“Because they would have real value, intrinsic value. And that's not subject to much speculation. People have been speculating in the mark for years now, watching for fluctuations in exchange rates, taking a little profit here and there, but knowing all the time that it really had no intrinsic value, only what had been decided on by the money lenders and traders.”
“But what does Boedekker get out of all this?” Zack asked. “He doesn't seem like the type to give up his fortune just to ruin the Imperial mark.”
“He gets revenge,” LaNague said, and explained about Liza Kirowicz. “With no direct descendant to hand his fortune to, he lost all desire to keep adding to it. And don't worry-I'm sure he's got plenty of credit left in his Earth accounts, plus I'm sure he probably sold a good number of marks short before the crash.”
“But I still don't see where all the Robin Hood business ties in,” Broohnin said, combing his fingers through the coiled blackness of his beard. “One doesn't lead to the other.”
“There's an indirect connection,” LaNague replied. “We'll let the people of Throne find out what's really happened to them, and then we'll offer them a choice: Metep or Robin Hood.”
“WHAT ARE WE going to do?” Metep VII wandered in a reverberating semicircle around the east end of the conference table, alternately wringing his hands and rubbing them together. His perfect face framed eyes that were red-rimmed and hunted-looking. “I'm ruined! I'm not only broke, I'm now des
tined to go down in history as the Metep who killed the mark! What are we going to do?”
“I don't know,” Haworth said softly from his seat. Metep stopped his pacing and stared at him, as did everyone else in the room. It was the first time they could remember Daro Haworth without a contingency plan.
“You don't know?” Metep said, stumbling toward him, panic flattening and spreading his facial features. “How can you say that? You're supposed to know!”
Haworth held Metep's gaze. “I never imagined anything like this happening. Neither did anyone else here.” His eyes scanned the room, finding no sympathy, but no protest either. “It was a future possibility, a probability within a decade if we found no new markets for out-world goods. But no one could have predicted this. No one!”
“The Earthies did it,” Krager said. “They're trying to take over the out-worlds again.”
Haworth glanced at the elderly head of the Treasury and nodded. “Yes, I think that's the approach we'll have to take. We'll blame it on Earth. Should work…after all, the Exchange is based on Earth. We can say the Imperial mark has been the victim of a vicious manipulation in a cynical, calculated attempt by Sol System to reassert control over us. Yes. That will help get the anger flowing in some direction other than ours.”
“All right,” Cumberland said, shifting his bulk uneasily in his chair.
“That's the official posture. But what really happened? I think that's important to know. Did Earth do this to us?”
Haworth's head shake was emphatic. “No. First of all, the out-worlds have fallen into debt to Earth over the past few years, and the credit has always been tallied in marks-which means that our debt to them today is only 2 or 3 per cent of what it was yesterday. Earth lost badly on the crash. And second, I don't think anyone in the Sol System government has the ingenuity to dream up something like this, or the courage to carry it through.”
“You think it was just a freak occurrence?”
“I'm not sure what I think. It's all so far beyond the worst nightmare I've ever had…” Haworth's voice trailed off.
“In the meantime,” Krager said sarcastically, “while you sit there in a blue funk, what about the out-worlds-Throne in particular? All credit has been withdrawn from us. There's been no formal announcement, but the Imperium is now considered bankrupt throughout Occupied Space.”
“The first thing to do is get more marks into circulation,” Haworth said. “Immediately. Push the duplicators to the limit. Big denominations. We've got to keep some sort of commerce going.”
“Prices will soar!” Krager said.
“Prices are soaring as we talk. Anyone holding any sort of useful commodity now isn't going to part with it for Imperial marks unless he's offered a lot of them, or unless he's offered something equally valuable in trade. So unless you want Throne back on a barter economy by week's end, you'd better start pouring out the currency.”
“The agrarian worlds are practically on barter now,” Cumberland said. “They'll want no part-”
“Let the agrarian worlds fall into the Galactic Core for all I care!” Haworth shouted, showing emotion for the first time since the meeting had begun. “They're useless to us now. There's only one planet we have to worry about, and that's Throne. Forget all the other out-worlds. They can't reach us, and the sooner we put them out of our minds and concentrate our salvage efforts on Throne, the better we'll be! Let the farmers out there go on scratching their dirt. They can't hurt us. But the people here on Throne, and in Primus City especially…they can cause us real trouble.”
“Civil disorder,” Metep said, nodding knowingly, almost thankfully. Riots he could understand, cope with. But all this economics talk…
“You expect major disturbances?”
“I expect disturbances-just how major they'll be depends on what we do in the next few weeks. I want to try to defuse any riots before they start; but once they start, I want plenty of manpower at our disposal.” He turned to Metep. “We'll need an executive order from you, Jek, ordering withdrawal of all Imperial garrisons from all the other out-worlds. We can't afford to keep them supplied out there anyway, and I want them all gathered tight around us if things get nasty.”
There was a chorus of agreement from all present.
Haworth glanced up and down the table. “It's going to be a long, hot summer, gentlemen. Let's try to hold things together until one of the probe ships makes contact with the aliens in the Perseus arm. That could be our only hope.”
“Any word yet?” Metep said.
“None.”
“What if we never hear anything from them?” Cumberland asked. “What if they never come back?”
“That could be useful, too.”
* * *
“FIFTY MARKS FOR A LOAF of bread? That's outrageous!”
“Wait until tomorrow if you think fifty's too much,” the man said laconically. He stood with his back against a blank synthestone wall, a hand blaster at his hip, his wares-unwrapped loaves of bread-spread on a folding table before him. “Probably be fifty-five by then.”
Salli Stafford felt utterly helpless, and frightened. No one had heard from Vin or any of the other probe pilots; no one at Project Perseus knew when they were coming back. Or if they were coming back. She was alone in Primus City and could daily see signs of decay: lengthening, widening cracks in its social foundations. She needed Vin around to tell her that everything would be all right, that he would protect her.
She needed money, too. She had read in one of The Robin Hood Readers that came out just after the bottom had dropped out of the mark that she should immediately pull all her money out of the bank and spend every bit of it. She didn't hesitate. Vin had grown to have unwavering faith in whoever was behind those flyers, and Salli had finally come around to believing in him, too. Especially after that long wait in their old back yard, when she had laughed at Vin's almost childish faith, and then the money had come down. She wasn't going to waste time laughing this time; she was down at the bank first thing the next morning, withdrawing everything that was left from Vin's advance for joining the probe fleet.
That had been a month ago, and it was the smartest thing she had ever done in her life. Within the first three days after the crash of the Imperial mark, fully half the banks in Primus had closed. They didn't fail-the Imperium prevented that by seeing to it that every depositor was paid the full amount of his or her account in nice, freshly minted paper marks-they simply ran out of depositors.
Salli followed up her foresight with shortsightedness that now seemed incredibly stupid. Instead of spending the entire ten thousand marks she had withdrawn on commodities, as The Robin Hood Reader had suggested, she waffled and spent only half. The rest she hid in the apartment. She now saw the error of that-prices had risen anywhere between 1,000 and 2,000 per cent in the intervening weeks. Steri-packed vegetables and staples she could have picked up for five marks then-and she had considered that exorbitant-were now going for fifty or sixty, with people thankful they could find them. It was crazy! The four thousand marks she had hidden away then would have bought her fifty thousand marks’ worth of food at today's prices. She cursed herself for not following Robin Hood's advice to the letter. Everyone in Primus now knew from personal experience what he had said back then. Nobody held onto cash any more; it was spent as soon as it was in hand. The only things worth less were Food Vouchers…retailers laughed when you brought them in.
Salli was afraid. What was going to happen when her money ran out? She had called Project Perseus but they had said they could not release Vin's second fifteen thousand until he had returned. She shrugged as she stood there on the street. What was fifteen thousand any more? Nothing!
“You gonna buy, lady?” the man asked, his eyes constantly shifting up and down the street. His legs straddled a large box of currency and he mentally took the measure of every passerby.
“Will you take anything else?”
His eyes narrowed. “Gold, silver, platinum if you
've got any. I can let you take it out in trade or I can give you a good bundle of marks depending on what you've got.”
“I-don't have any.” She didn't know what had made her ask. She didn't really want bread. It was being made out in the hinterlands on isolated farms and there were no preservatives being used because there were none to be had. Bread like that went stale too fast to be worth fifty marks to a woman living alone.
He looked her up and down, his gaze seeming to penetrate her clothing. “Don't bother to offer me anything else you've got,” he sneered. “I've got more offers for that every day than I could handle in a lifetime.”
Tears sprang into Salli's eyes as she felt her face redden. “I didn't mean that!”
“Then why did you ask?”
Salli couldn't answer. She had been thinking about the future-the near future, when her money ran out. How was she to get by then? Her employer had told her he couldn't give her a raise, that his business had fallen off to the point where he might have to close up shop and go home.
As she turned away, the man called after her. “Hey, look, I'm sorry, but I've got a family of my own to feed. I've got to fly out and pick this up on my own. The freight unions aren't running till they get more money, you know that.”
Salli knew all that. The vid was full of it-bad news and more bad news. Shipping of goods was at a standstill. Employers were unable to raise wages quickly enough to keep their employees at subsistence level. Salli glanced back over her shoulder and saw that the bread seller had already forgotten her, and was now busy dickering with a man holding up a handful of fresh vegetables.
What was she going to do? Nothing in her life had prepared her for anything like this-she was slowly coming to the realization that her life had prepared her for little more than child rearing. No skill beyond rudimentary mathematics was required of her in the part-time job she was barely holding onto; she could be replaced in minutes. All her childhood had been spent learning to be dependent on men-her father, her brothers, and then Vin. Which was fine until now, when everything was falling apart, and her father and brothers were on the other side of the planet with no way to get to her or she to them. She was suddenly on her own, scared to death, and helpless.
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