In the silence the Speaker glanced from one side of the little House of Freemen to the other—from Bentner, Leader of the Opposition, to Mountjoy, leader of the Government. He was feeling uneasy, sensing that a moment had arrived which would leave its mark on the history of the Western powers and indeed the world. But he had his duty to do.
He passed the tip of his tongue over thin lips and picked up the goosequill pen which lay on the desk before him. He examined the goosequill, admiring the grace of its construction, the flow of the vanes up the central ridge, the lightness and strength of the whole design. It was a thing without voice or intelligence, and it was entirely at peace with itself. Mankind… He stopped the thought, for the business of the House must be put in hand.
"Does the Prime Minister wish to put the matter in the form of a motion?" he asked.
Mountjoy looked about the chamber. The members were taken aback, puzzled, unsure. He did not need half a century of parliamentary experience to know that they were not with him and the motion would fail.
"I respectfully suggest that the Speaker adjourn the House at this time to reconvene in two hours," he said.
The motion to adjourn was passed without dissent and Mountjoy tapped Bentner on the shoulder as they left the chamber.
"We need to talk, you and I," he said. "Would you be kind enough to join me in my study?" Bentner scratched his head. He couldn't remember ever having won a discussion with Mountjoy, but he had to admit that the Count was a knowing old fox and was often right. In any case, he could not enlighten the members of his own party on what was afoot until Mountjoy had enlightened him.
"No politics?" he said.
"No politics," said Mountjoy. "The matter is too big for politics. It calls for a high order of statesmanship on both our parts. I would be glad of your advice, in fact, after I have laid a few things before you."
"All right," said Bentner. "But let's talk facts and not just suspicions of facts."
"That I promise," said Mountjoy and led him to his study.
CHAPTER VIII
"My dear Bentner," said Mountjoy when the two were seated, "I have been guilty of a parliamentary error in not confiding in you before discussing the question of what I have called SALT talks openly in the House. I intended no offense. I did what I thought was right. I was quite wrong."
"Never mind that," said Bentner, wondering what Mountjoy was going to try to put over on him. "What is it you have to say?"
"I have been doing a great deal of thinking and making some extensive private inquiries on the energy shortage, which has resulted in our own meager supplies of needed oil being drastically reduced," said the Count. "At first, I confess, I viewed the matter in quite the wrong light. I thought it just a snub by the French company who supplies us—the French being, as you know, ever anxious to belittle our country since it was wrested from their control in 1370 by Sir Roger Fenwick. Their postal service to Grand Fenwick, for instance, is worse than to the smallest village in France.
"I wrote a letter of protest to the French President-ignored, of course. And I wrote also to the President of the United States with the results I have already disclosed in the House. The problem is bigger, however—far bigger—than Grand Fenwick. The oil shortage, although widely viewed as a temporary thing—a mere inconvenience which has motorists in the United States lined up at petrol stations and householders facing a shivering winter in their homes, is, as I hinted in the House, a threat to the whole economy of the Western world.
"A threat, I said. It is more than that. It is to a degree a plot; a plot by quite selfish and shortsighted men to reduce the world supply of oil while pushing the price up as high as it can go. As the price of energy goes up, so the price of everything energy produces goes up. Wages follow prices, and the oil magnates who are behind this plot make double profits. They produce less. They get more for what they produce."
Bentner sighed. Whenever anybody mentioned inflation to him he thought of balloons, which, overinflated, must burst. The only part of the statement with which he entirely agreed was that the oil companies, being big business and therefore necessarily evil, were out to profiteer from the labor of the working man. That made basic sense to him.
Reflecting on this essential characteristic, as he saw it, of big business, he said, "What's new about that?"
"What's new about it, my dear friend of the workingman," said Mountjoy, "is that this manipulation of the major source of energy in our society, producing massive inflation, will also produce in the end massive unemployment, massive destruction of the value of money, and massive erosion of the life savings and pensions of those who toiled away their lives only to find themselves on retirement facing living conditions which would have driven their grandparents to revolution.
"More than that. Standards of living all over the Western world will come tumbling down even for those who are earning what are thought to be good wages. Goods of every kind will become scarcer—first the nonessentials and then the more essential goods. Finally the world will find itself living at the standard of the eighteen-eighties. That is it in a nutshell. That is the threat to society which we face today, not the threat of extermination in a nuclear holocaust but the eradication of all the social progress we have made in the last century."
"Wait a moment," said Bentner. "There's sources of energy other than oil."
"Why, so there are," replied Mountjoy. "But every one of them is likely to turn out to be every bit as expensive as oil is now. Coal may not be mined at the prices available in the nineteen-thirties, however plentiful it may be. Its transportation to the place where it is to be used is an enormous financial burden. As for solar energy, I have questioned Kokintz and he points to the fact that one major difficulty is the storage of energy derived from the sun. Not to mention the fact that in more northern countries what little would be available from that source might light and heat a few homes (given a method of storage) but would not serve to power industry. I am by no means an expert. Indeed I doubt that there are any experts, but it seems that an entirely new source of energy—abundant, cheap and physical—capable of storage without resorting to batteries and methods of transmission which we do not possess, must be found.
"I have spoken to Kokintz about it, and he is working on the problem—"
"Last time I saw him," said Bentner, "he was working on a kite with your great-granddaughter. In his lab he had a whole mess of stuff. I think he's making candy bars-"
"I know. I know," said Mountjoy, irritated. "He has his peculiarities, but he is the one man in the world who can be relied upon to discover a new boundless and cheap source of energy. But to return to the problem—the problem of the present and growing shortage of oil energy, which represents a sort of energy bomb threatening the whole of civilization—it is time that Grand Fenwick took a hand. We produce no oil ourselves. We have a vast experience of international affairs. We are in a sense called upon by humanity, as a neutral in the energy field, to save them in a crisis brought about by other nations whose vision is limited to their own national interests. It is for that reason, my dear Bentner, that I proposed to the House that we open SALT talks of our own."
"I can't see what SALT talks have to do with it," said Bentner. "I can't see it at all."
"Absolutely nothing," said Mountjoy airily. "They will merely provide me with a diplomatic weapon which I can use in negotiations aimed at defusing the energy bomb which now threatens the world."
"What kind of negotiations?" asked Bentner, now highly suspicious.
Mountjoy eyed him closely for a moment. Basically the man wasn't a fool. On the other hand, he had no flair for diplomacy whatever and his political creed, if he had such a thing, could be summed up in the sentence, "Trust no one with a white collar."
"Let us examine the position of the oil-producing nations of what used to be called the Persian Gulf," said Mountjoy. "They have a huge percentage of the world's oil supply. In the matter of oil resources they have the whip hand. But t
hey are squeezed between two powers—the United States and the Soviet Union, which is of course the more threatening and has in recent times become actively threatening.
"They are not without armament. Indeed, they have armament of the most modern kind. I suspect that if warfare were limited to nonnuclear arms, they might be able to put up a good showing, at least for a while. But they do lack nuclear weapons. And it is in this area that we may be of service to them."
"Are you talking about giving the Q-bomb to the blooming Arabs?" asked Bentner.
"I'm not talking at present about giving the Q-bomb to anybody," replied Mountjoy. "I am suggesting only that the prospect of giving the Q-bomb to what you call the blooming Arabs may produce a power equilibrium leading to an international agreement covering oil supplies and prices which would avert the energy crisis which threatens to engulf us all. It is my purpose to bring about such an agreement."
"Look here, Mountjoy," said Bentner, "there are plenty of other statesmen in the world, economists and so forth, who are probably anxious to bring about such an agreement without us meddling in the thing. Wine and wool. That's Grand Fenwick's business and nothing else."
"My good Bentner," said Mountjoy, "if this crisis persists, who do you think is going to have the money to buy our wine and our wool? They are both what are called by the vulgar luxury items, though how a man may get through life without a decent suit of worsted and a wine of some nobility on his table, I do not know. To be sure, we have sold our wool through the centuries, but that was before the introduction of artificial fabrics—drip-dry clothing for drip-dry minds.
"As to your charming belief that there are other statesmen, economists and so forth in the world, anxious to bring about an equitable agreement on oil supplies and prices, I ask you only to look at the record. These very statesmen and these same economists have produced exactly the opposite. Shortsightedly grabbing for themselves, juggling their figures and their prognostications to suit their national interests, they have produced the present imbroglio, with the might of Russia and the might of the United States confronting each other across the silent and peaceful deserts of Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan."
It took a great deal more argument on the part of Mountjoy, but in the end Bentner reluctantly agreed with the Count.
"We, you and I," said Mountjoy, rising when the talk was done, "hold the fate of Western society in our hands. We will keep in the closest touch with each other, but let us not disclose to the others the substance of what has passed between us."
"So long as it doesn't hurt the sales of wine and wool," said Bentner, and the Count, leading him from the study, reflected that Bentner would probably bring up the subject of wine and wool before the throne of God on Judgment Day.
CHAPTER IX
The motion acknowledging the voiding of the treaty with the United States and permitting the Count of Mountjoy a free hand in opening what were loosely called SALT talks with such nations as he thought fit was passed without further debate in the Council of Freemen.
The immediate result which the Count had anticipated was not forthcoming, however.
He had hoped for wide media coverage and a panicked reaction from the United States and the Soviet Union. He got none. A press release was prepared and sent out by GFNS—the Grand Fenwick News Service. It went third-class mail and wound up in the wastepaper baskets of the various news editors who received it. A television camera crew did arrive in Grand Fenwick a week later, but it turned out they were doing a documentary on the various surviving principalities in Europe and they were not at all interested in the momentous decision taken by the Council of Freemen.
No nation in the world had thought the Duchy of sufficient importance to establish a consulate within its borders, so there was no official report of the news from embassies and consulates to any government, although Mountjoy, of course, undertook to officially inform the foreign departments of the United States, Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union and other affected nations of the development. However, so great was the daily inflow of diplomatic correspondence and reports into these various departments that the Grand Fenwick statement was lost from sight.
Mountjoy concluded that he was not being taken seriously—always a tremendous handicap in the little nation's dealing with other countries. There was now no heating oil at all in Grand Fenwick. But far away in the North, within the limits of the Arctic Circle a group of scientists, radar operators and military men, receiving a large and unasked-for supply flown in by the United States Navy, concluded that some emergency loomed ahead, that future shipments were likely to be interrupted, and decided to severely ration their use of oil. They then joined the rest of the world in the big shiver, which was just commencing.
Bentner was greatly relieved that nothing at all happened and congratulated himself that in going along with the Count, he had run no real risks. The world would take care of its own problems and for the time being at least, sales of wine and wool were not to be threatened. On reflection he decided that the fuel shortage might actually increase wool sales, warmer clothing being likely to be widely sought all over the northern hemisphere, and invested some of his capital in a hundred Southdown sheep to add to his not inextensive flocks.
Gloriana, who had of course been informed of the vote, was worried. As Duchess it was not her job to interfere in politics or even the foreign affairs of the country. She had no political power, but she had enormous prestige and could gently advise on critical matters when she felt her advice might be needed.
This, she felt, was just such an occasion and so she joined the Count for tea once more in his study.
"Bobo," she confessed when she had poured tea for the two of them, "I'm getting a little nervous about the way things are going. I don't understand the SALT talk thing but I hope you are going to be very careful and not let that wretched bomb fall into the wrong hands. Did Dr. Kokintz fix it, by the way? The last I heard of it, it wouldn't work because of some spring or other he had made for its insides with a hairpin."
"That detail has not yet been attended to," said Mountjoy. "But it can be at any time. No, Your Grace, I do not intend to let the Q-bomb fall into the wrong hands. But, as I have explained to Bentner, the threat that it might gives me some needed diplomatic leverage."
"Well, that's nice to know," said Gloriana. "But I'm worried about the people in the Duchy. The power station has closed down so everybody has had to go back to lanterns and candles for illumination. None of the water heaters work, of course, the washing machines are useless and people are having to scrub clothes by hand again.
"Lots of them don't know how to do it, so I've arranged for lessons to be given them by old Mrs. Tanner, who still has a washboard and a tub that she never gave up. But it's dreadfully hard on everybody—particularly the women. It takes a whole day to do laundry, and then it has to be dried on clotheslines like in the old days. And there's all the ironing. The only thing that is better is the bread. Tom Westfield has gone back to using his old charcoal-fired ovens. The bread's scrumptious. But everything else—everything has just gone backward. Are you sure the Americans aren't just making some kind of mistake? I mean, I really can't see any reason why they won't send the oil to us. They're not vicious. But maybe it's just hard for them, with all the millions of things they have to handle, to remember to send oil through that French company to Grand Fenwick."
"I have a letter from the President assuring me of the resumption of oil supplies," said Mountjoy. "And the prospect of their having made a mistake has indeed occurred to me.
"But we must not look upon this problem from a narrow and selfish point of view. What has happened in Grand Fenwick is what, to a greater or lesser extent, the whole world is threatened with. We are now enduring a sample of the sufferings which lie ahead for mankind, though, being an agricultural nation, we will not face the massive unemployment and loss of income which other nations will suffer.
"It is all in all perhaps just as well that we are the
first victims of the energy bomb. We could serve as an object lesson to the world, but the world refused to take any notice of us. We are the microcosm that portends the macrocosm—the tiny sample that shows what the whole will shortly be.
"But we are ignored." He sighed and passed a thin aristocratic hand through his thin aristocratic hair. Not for the first time he reflected on the irony that such a mind as his and such a background as his—extending in his ancestry through several centuries of diplomatic history—should have to do its work in so tiny a nation, while bunglers, utterly ignorant of the delicacy and foresight demanded in the dealings of nations, were elected to high office in more powerful countries merely because their faces, on television, looked friendly and reassuring.
"The people do not vote for the facts," he said musingly. "They vote for the faces. Appearance has replaced acumen and the whole world has become a nursery full of children, reassured by kindly pictures."
"You're dreaming, Bobo," said Gloriana.
"I was. I beg Your Grace's pardon," replied the Count. "But to return to the matter in hand. Grand Fenwick has, by some quirk of fate, been elected to serve as an example to the world of what lies before it in this energy crisis. The example, as I remarked, has so far been ignored. But it will not be ignored when I make those diplomatic moves to which I have already referred. At that time, I believe, the world will give us attention—look at what has happened to us and listen to us."
"But I expect everybody is working on the problem of finding and producing more oil," said Gloriana. "I don't see that anything we have to say will help with that."
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