Pallas

by L. Neil Smith

Mrs. Singh shook her head. “Lookie here: when automobiles were first produced, they cost a couple of thousand dollars apiece. That’s old American dollars, at about thirty-five to the ounce of gold. Which was way more than anybody but rich people could afford back then—not that I remember it personally, mind you.

  “Then along came Henry Ford, with a mind to put the whole damn country on wheels, and car pricing was never the same afterward. He charged a flat eight hundred dollars, and when his higher-priced competitors came around to whine about it, he explained that if the average individual who worked in his car factory couldn’t afford to buy one of his cars, there wasn’t any point to making them.”

  “I stand corrected,” Cherry replied. “I guess. I’ve never been in a business before where anyone gained anything by economy of scale and volume pricing.”

  Aloysius laughed again.

  Emerson grinned, too. “For as long as anyone remembers, gunshops around here have been demanding three gold ounces—at about a thousand New American Dollars per—for anything that’ll shoot. And they’re the same old clunkers, recycled and recirculated, that have been here since they were first brought up from Earth by all of you people. Meanwhile, the gunshop owners complain constantly that business is flat.”

  “We asked half an ounce for ours,” Aloysius agreed, “and sold a hundred on the same day.”

  The partners were interrupted again when the Jacksons, Mrs. Singh’s other steady boarders, stopped by to ask Emerson a technical question about the pair of consecutively numbered pistols they’d just taken delivery on. In Lenda’s hand were two delicate glasses and a bottle of the Nimrod’s most expensive wine, which they’d bought to celebrate the occasion. Emerson noticed the gaze of her husband Charlie straying to the Grizzly hanging in its heavy belt on the back wall. Aloysius and the others had argued that it was bad business for the boy not to be carrying one of the guns he’d designed. Emerson had answered that the Ngu Departure was for people who didn’t already have weapons they were satisfied with.

  “We could have sold twice as many,” Nails added when the Jacksons had left, “at twice the price. I knew this guy, one time, who hand-made the best five-string banjos in the solar system. But he damn near starved to death because his prices were so low it looked suspicious, like he was selling junk or something. Nobody bought from him until he doubled what he’d been asking for them.”

  Emerson nodded. “Except that we won’t. You once asked me, Nails, what else I’d stolen from the old Earth-side gun outfits when I showed you my first prototype, remember?”

  Nails gave him a dubious look. “Yeah, I remember.”

  “Well, Mrs. Singh’s house is full of history books,” he explained, “and I’ve read as many of them as I had time for. There’s a good deal more in the past that any halfway intelligent entrepreneur can use than just simple design features. Whether we ever state it publicly or not, Nails, I’ve adopted the motto from the old Iver Johnson Arms & Cycle Works: ‘Honest Goods at Honest Prices.’”

  “Honest goods at honest prices,” Cherry remarked brightly. “Now that’s something I do understand.”

  Emerson turned to the little blond. “The Chief Administrator may not have any choice much longer about what he lets his workers do, Cherry. I think there’s something going terribly wrong out there. We’ve all noticed how the quality of the produce the rollabouts bring to Curringer seems to get worse every week.”

  “Something odd must be going on,” she agreed, “because the drivers don’t spend any time at Galena’s any more while their machines are recharging overnight.”

  Emerson remembered that driving produce deliveries had been a privilege individual workers competed for. The temporary freedom of the town must have been a major inducement in obtaining volunteers for the long trip from the Project and back.

  “More to the point, perhaps,” suggested Aloysius, “they’re not spending any money, not at Galena’s, not here at the Nimrod, nor any other place here about.”

  Emerson went on. “I keep hearing rumors of all kinds. What they boil down to is that there’s a rampage of violence and petty crime going on out there, basically because orders are dropping off and Altman’s people have less and less to do.”

  “And you plan to give them work.” Cherry nodded. “I saw that coming. It’s one reason I invested in the company. It’s something you can do to help your parents and your little brothers and sisters, even though they all still refuse to talk to you or see you. I knew there was a good reason I like you, Emerson.”

  Inwardly, Emerson cringed at Cherry’s words. He was all too well aware that Cherry liked him, and that she was almost as beautiful as Gretchen had been. But with the best will in the world on both their parts, she wasn’t Gretchen, she could never be Gretchen, and they both knew that nothing would ever change that.

  What bothered him now was that, given what she did for a living, she was far too trusting, and he didn’t have the heart to disillusion her. What he’d been seeking to accomplish with this plan of his was something a good deal more like revenge than charity. At a healthy profit, of course—remembering his fantasy of flight had awakened another memory. He wouldn’t cheat his partners.

  But why was it that whenever he looked up at those damned ceiling fans, he thought about the Rimfence?

  Aloysius, who knew Emerson—in the present context, at least—far better than Cherry ever would, spoke up. “I hear me share of rumors, too, me boy.”

  “Such as?” inquired Mrs. Singh. Something about Emerson was beginning to worry her.

  “Such as the Project security stooges are now arming themselves not only with those so-called ‘shock batons’ they were issued at first and which once constituted their only armament, but with light automatic assault rifles—‘bullpups,’ they call ’em—recently sent from Earth in answer to the risin’ unrest inside the cooperative.”

  That got Emerson’s attention off the ceiling.

  Nails grinned admiringly. “Where in God’s name do you manage to hear these things, Aloysius?”

  “A crystal ball he keeps behind the bar,” Cherry suggested.

  “To go with his wooden leg?” Nails asked sweetly.

  Mrs. Singh shook her head. “No, Cherry, he’s got a Tarot deck up his sleeve, tucked in with the regular aces.” It was the first joke she’d ever made with the girl.

  “Now in truth, were I a good journalist, I’d be after wantin’ t’protect me sources.” The innkeeper shrugged. “But since, unlike former senators an’ suchlike, the only good journalist is a dead journalist, in this instance I had it from a cargo handler at the North Pole to whom I send an occasional case of Irish cheer in exchange for tidbits exactly like this. The weapons in question are 2.8 millimeter hypersonics—.11 caliber, if y’can imagine it—individually safety-keyed t’special coded magnetic rings which the goons wear, and which must be destroyed before they can be removed from their cold, dead fingers.”

  “Well,” observed Mrs. Singh, “so much for that idea.”

  “Some tidbit.” Nails shook his head. “What idea?”

  Brody nodded. “There’s more. What’s worse—for them, not for us—is that a radio control link prevents their bein’ fired without the electronic consent of their regimental muckety-muck, safe in his command post behind the lines.”

  Emerson nodded understanding. The arrangement his friend was describing was idiotic and suicidal—and thoroughly consistent with the way he’d been brought up.

  Cherry sat back and sighed. “Gee, it must be a comfort to the men out in the field who need to shoot in a hurry and can’t get their little guns to work because their boss has gone to the powder room. What do these things shoot, anyway, death rays?”

  “They use self-consuming caseless cartridges,” Brody explained, “designed not t’be picked up an’ reused by the subject population—an’ ultravelocity Lexan bullets. Both weapons and ammunition are shipped out to the Project in sealed containers, inventoried at both ends in an attemp
t t’keep ’em out of undesirable hands.”

  Nails nodded. “Then that was a pretty good guess you made at Emerson’s hearing about Altman’s real reasons for having dared to venture out among us barbarians.”

  “Either that,” suggested Mrs. Singh, “or Hizzoner, here, gave him the bright idea there and then.” Occasional mention of the hearing was as close as any of them ever got to discussing what had become of Gretchen. Her name was never spoken among them, not because they were angry, but because her absence was too painful.

  Cherry hadn’t known Gretchen, but respected her friends’ grief and obeyed the custom.

  Aloysius gave Mrs. Singh a sour look.

  “I don’t believe the poor man’s capable of having one all by himself,” she went on, “or they wouldn’t have stuck him out here in the back of beyond with all of us.”

  Wrenching his attention back to the conversation and away from the ceiling fans, Emerson shook his head. “That wasn’t my hearing, Mrs. Singh, it was the Chief Administrator’s. And I think it’s extremely dangerous to underestimate the man. They do say he could have been President of the United States, after all.”

  “I rest my case,” declared Mrs. Singh. Puzzled at Emerson’s behavior, she peered up at the ceiling, following his example, but she didn’t see what he’d begun to see.

  “Emerson’s right on both counts,” Aloysius insisted. “It was no guess. The only human factor that never changes is the blind instinct of those who’ve obtained power t’maintain it. It was your own husband who said that—or was it Bertrand de Jouvenel? Anyway, it was the only thing that made sense under the circumstances.”

  He leaned forward, across the table. “In many ways, Emerson, those guns are the exact opposite, philosophically speakin’, of the ones we’re makin’. There’s nothin’ like a quick-firin’ high-capacity assault rifle for defendin’ life, liberty, an’ the pursuit of property, but these things’re designed specifically to oppress the individual rather than allow him to liberate himself.”

  There were murmurs of agreement from everyone around the table.

  Emerson believed that Aloysius was correct. In startling contrast to what he’d just heard described, he’d revived an older, simpler technology made economical once again by the metal-rich Pallatian geology. His large-caliber semiautomatic pistols employed reloadable brass cases, molded lead bullets, and the same smokeless propellant powder now manufactured and widely used on the asteroid for construction and demolition. His weapons may have been old-fashioned—although they were of an improved, compact design featuring more sophisticated alloys and many fewer moving parts—but they were cheap and reliable.

  In short, he explained, they were precisely what was needed by colonists with such a long, expensive supply line back to their mother planet. What’s more, he informed Cherry, from the standpoint of their affordability by the impoverished Project peasants, he planned to allow easy credit. And hadn’t Henry Ford also nearly doubled the going wage for automobile workers, he asked Mrs. Singh, for exactly the same reason that he’d cut the going price for automobiles?

  “Oh, pshaw, as people of my age are supposed to say now and again—though I was never quite sure how to pronounce it—I hate it when you’re right, boy.” Her expression, almost that of a proud mother, gave the opposite impression.

  Arms and cycles. Henry Ford putting “the whole damn country on wheels.” The ceiling fans and the Rimfence. Why did it all seem like it should mean something?

  One thing Emerson didn’t tell his friends that evening was that he was also counting secretly on at least some of his cottage hand-assemblers to create “lunchbox specials” from pilfered parts—and take no serious steps to prevent it. In fact, his production scheme was designed specifically to encourage it.

  The whole thing reminded him of an old drawn-out Russian joke he’d once heard about smuggling wheelbarrows, but ultimately it would mean that peasant families like his own would no longer be bullied by United Nations goons, however impressively armed. People, he had learned since coming to Curringer and living among free individuals, defend themselves with character, not with technology.

  The latter was only one means among many; the former was indispensable.

  It was a lesson many leaders of technically advanced nations back on Earth had either never learned or had forgotten as soon as it was forcibly impressed upon them. Emerson intended to remind at least one of them all over again.

  But first, he had to get back to the shop.

  He’d just had an idea he wanted to try out.

  The Wings of Emerson

  I’ve always believed it says something significant about humanity that in the seven or eight millennia we’ve been fighting wars, we haven’t made a tiny fraction of the technical progress we’ve made in the mere century, from Kitty Hawk to the asteroids, that we’ve been flying. People fly much better than they fight. Nice thought, isn’t it?

  —William Wilde Curringer, Unfinished Memoirs

  It was a crude-looking lash-up.

  As soon as he was able to make excuses, Emerson had left his friends at the Nimrod and hurried back to the machine shop. Seyfried Road, the main—and basically only—street of the town, was all but deserted, and the stars twinkled fiercely through the atmospheric envelope.

  Nails was accustomed to taking on almost any sort of job, especially since he’d hired Emerson to assist him, which people thought they couldn’t do for themselves. In the tavern, the boy had suddenly remembered the pair of big electric office fans that some customer had left sitting on their front counter near the door. Their heavy cast-iron bases, it seemed, weren’t quite heavy enough, in Pallas’s minimal gravity, to keep them wherever they were put. Propelled partly by their own blades, partly by the vibration of their motors, they tended to drift along a surface until they found an edge and fell off onto the floor.

  Nails had purposed fixing them in two ways. First, their bases would be replaced with screw-adjustable spring clamps like those he used to mount flood lamps on the edges of working surfaces throughout his own shop. Since the fans also tended to blow everything downwind of their blades into the air—and apparently their customer’s cat was getting tired of being thrown against the nearest wall in the middle of a nap—Nails would step the motors down electrically, exactly as he’d done a few years ago with the overhead fans at Brody’s place.

  The job still wasn’t done.

  With all of the hurry, recently, to complete the first run of pistols—”crawl” might have been a more appropriate word—Nails hadn’t gotten around to modifying the office fans yet, and neither had Emerson. Their customer hadn’t complained, not very energetically, anyway, because he was on the Ngu Departure waiting list.

  Taking what might be his last appreciative look at the starry sky and the darkened storefronts of Curringer for quite a time—there was no telling in advance how long he’d labor over this crazy idea he’d had (or that had him) before he even ate or slept again—the boy let himself into the machine shop. Reflexively, he reached up to silence the bell tinkling above the doorframe and greeted BCH, the cat, who’d come to investigate this uncustomary intrusion.

  Switching on a light, he saw that the fans, complete with work order and claim tags, were still gathering dust on the front counter where they’d been left weeks ago.

  For a moment, as BCH stropped happily at his shins, he allowed himself to stop and admire the fans. They were perfect for his experiment, with 16 inch blades mounted in lightweight wire cages, driven by big 45 watt motors. Then, in an instant, he had a screwdriver in his hand and the heavy bases off. In another, he’d duct-taped the two machines to either end of a four-foot piece of scrap electrical conduit, their cords running to the head of a switching extension cord he’d attached to the center of the conduit at a point convenient to his thumb.

  With mounting excitement, as he gathered up the free end of the extension cord and maneuvered this unlikely collection of parts into the assembly shed, which h
ad more overhead, he considered the one and only time he’d ever given swimming a try—at Gretchen’s insistence—in a perfectly circular swimming pool with natural glass sides and bottom, the remnant of a primordial meteor strike between what, millions of years later, would become the town site and the lake.

  Fed by a tiny sun-warmed trickle of a stream momentarily delayed on its journey downhill to Lake Selous, the water had been surprisingly clear, fresh—from time to time the local volunteer fire company washed the algae out with their high-pressure hoses—and not too cold. Nor had it turned out quite as deep as he’d expected. Among a number of other silly things, he’d attempted standing up, with his feet planted none too firmly either side of a discarded inner tube, and very nearly gotten away with it in the low Pallatian gravity, but wound up, instead, standing on his head for an instant at the bottom of the pool.

  Which was how he’d learned about mouth-to-mouth resuscitation—also at Gretchen’s insistence—and eventually decided, reluctantly, not to count it as a kiss.

  Such a memory—of his tawny, emerald-eyed Gretchen at her happiest, her beautiful, long-legged swimsuit-clad body wet and sparkling in the sunlight—should have been painful, but in this instance it was instructive, which for Emerson, at least, made all the difference. The fans would have to be above him, where his weight would hang below and balance naturally. Accordingly, he moved the extension head, with its neon-lit rocker switch, to a shorter piece of conduit which he hung a foot beneath the longer piece like the rung of a rope ladder, using a pair of multilayered straps of duct tape. He plugged the cord in across the room, near the back door of the shop, at what had once been an all-weather outlet.

  Only mildly curious—because he hadn’t been ordered to stay away—BCH sniffed at the cord where it was plugged in, then hurried back across the room after Emerson, anxious to reassume his feline responsibility to be underfoot whenever possible.

  Emerson, meanwhile, laid the longer piece of conduit across the narrow gap between two of the firearms-assembly tables, so that each of the fans rested facedown on a separate surface. He made sure that the oscillator clutches built into the fan housings were disengaged and that the rotary switches on the motors were turned all the way up. Unable to think of any more preliminaries, he sat down on the floor between the tables, removed the cat from his lap several times, took a deep breath, and grasped the hanging rung with both hands.