Ring Around the Sun

by Clifford D. Simak

  "Someone has you scared," said Vickers. "You wouldn't admit it, of course, but you're scared livid."

  "Queerly enough, I will admit it. But it's not me, Mr. Vickers — it's industry, the industry of the entire world."

  "You think the people who are making and selling these houses," said Vickers, "are the same ones who are making the Forever car and the lighters and the bulbs."

  Crawford nodded. "And the carbohydrates, too," he added. "It's terrifying, when you think about it. Here we have someone who wrecks industries and throws millions out of work, then turns around and offers those same millions the food to live on — offers it without the red tape and the investigations and all the quibbling that always heretofore has characterized relief."

  "A political plot?"

  "It's more than that. We are convinced that it is a deliberate, well-planned attack on world economy — a deliberate effort to undermine the social and economic system of our way of life, and after that, of course, the political system. Our way of life is based on capital, be it private capital or state control of resources and on the wage that the worker earns at his daily job. Take away those two things, capital and jobs, and you have undercut the whole basis of an orderly society."

  "We?" asked Vickers. "Who are we?"

  "North American Research."

  "And North American Research?"

  "You're getting interested," said Crawford.

  "I want to know who I'm talking to and what you want of me and what it's all about."

  Crawford sat for a long time without speaking, and then he finally said, "That is what I meant when I told you what I had to say was highly confidential."

  "I will swear no oath," said Vickers, "if that is what you mean."

  "Let's go back," said Crawford, "and review some history. Who we are and what we are will become apparent then.

  "You remember the razor blade. It was the first to come out. An everlasting razor blade. The news spread quickly and everyone went out and bought one of the razor blades.

  "Now, the ordinary man will get anywhere from one to half a dozen shaves out of a blade. Then he throws that blade away and puts in another one. That means he is a continuous buyer of new razor blades. And as a result the razor blade industry was a going concern. It employed thousands of workers, over the course of a year it represented a certain profit for thousands of dealers, it was a factor in a certain type of steel production. In other words, it was an economic factor which, linked in with thousands of other similar economic factors, make up the picture of world industry. So what happens?"

  "I'm no economist, but I can tell you that," said Vickers. "No one bought any more razor blades. So the razor blade industry was out the window."

  "Not quite as quickly as that, of course," said Crawford. "A huge industry is a complex thing, and it dies somewhat slowly, even after the handwriting is on the wall, even after sales stop almost completely — and then quite completely. But you're correct; that's what's happening right now: out the window.

  "And then, there was the lighter. A small thing in itself, of course, but fairly large when you look at it from the world point of view. The same thing happened there. And the everlasting light bulbs. And the same thing once again. Three industries doomed, Mr. Vickers. Three industries wiped out. You said a while ago that I was scared and I told you that I was. It was after the bulbs that we got scared. Because if someone could wipe out three industries, why not half a dozen, or a dozen or a hundred — why not all of them?

  "We organized, and by we I mean the industry of the world — not American industry alone, but the industry of America and the British Commonwealth and the continent of Europe and Russia and all of the rest of them. There were a few, of course, who were skeptical. There still are a few who never have come in, but by and large I can tell you that our organization represents and is backed by every major industry of the entire world. As I have said, I would prefer you not to mention this."

  "At the moment," Vickers told him, "I have no intention of saying anything about it."

  "We organized," said Crawford, "and we swung a lot of power, as you can well imagine. We made certain representations and we brought certain pressures and we got a few things done. For one thing, no newspaper, no periodical, no radio station, now will accept advertising for any of the gadgets nor give them any mention in the news. For another, no reputable drug store or any other place of business will sell a razor blade or a bulb or lighter."

  "That was when they set up the gadget shops?"

  "Exactly," said Crawford.

  "They're branching out," said Vickers. "One opened in Cliffwood just the other day."

  "They set up the gadget shops," said Crawford, "and they developed a new form of advertising. They hired thousands of men and women who went around from place to place and said to people they would meet: 'Did you hear about those wonderful new gadgets they are getting out? You haven't? Well, just let me tell you… You get the idea. Something like that, involving personal contact, is the best kind of advertising that there is. But it's more expensive than you can possibly imagine.

  "So we knew that we were up against not merely inventive and productive genius, but almost unlimited money as well.

  "And we investigated. We tried to run these folks to earth, to find out who they were and how they operated and what they meant to do. As I've told you, we ran into stone walls."

  "There might be legal angles," said Vickers.

  "We have run down the legal angles, and these people, whoever they may be, are covered hell to breakfast. Taxes? They pay taxes. They're eager to pay taxes. So there won't be any investigation, they actually pay more taxes than they need to pay. Rules of corporation? They are more than meticulous in meeting all the rules. Social security? They pay social security on huge payrolls that we are convinced are utterly fictitious, but you can't go to the social security people and say, 'Look, there aren't any such people as these they're paying taxes on. There are other points, but those serve as illustration. We've run down so many legal blind alleys that our legal force is dizzy."

  "Mr. Crawford," said Vickers, "you make out a most interesting case, but I can't see the point of what you said earlier. You said this was a conspiracy to break world industry, to destroy a way of life. If you study your economic history, you will find example on example of cut-throat competition. Surely that's all this is."

  "You forget," Crawford replied, "about the carbohydrates."

  And that was true, thought Vickers. The carbohydrates were something apart from cut-throat competition.

  There had been, he remembered, a famine in China, as usual, and another threatening, as usual, in India, and the American Congress had been debating, along strictly personal and political lines, as to whom they should help and how, and should they help anyone at all.

  The story had broken for the morning papers. Synthesis of carbohydrates had been accomplished by an obscure laboratory. The story didn't say it was an obscure laboratory: that had come out later. And much later it came out that the laboratory was one that had never been heard of before, one which literally had sprung out of the ground overnight. There had been certain captains of industry, Vickers recalled, who had from the very first attacked these manufacturers of synthetic carbohydrates with the smear of "fly-by-night."

  They were not fly-by-night. The company might have been unorthodox in its business dealings, but it was here to stay. A few days after the initial announcement the laboratory had made it known that it did not intend to sell its product, but would give it away to persons who might need it — persons, you understand, not populations or countries, but persons who were in need and who could not earn the money necessary to buy sufficient food. Not only the starving, but the simply undernourished, the whole wide segment of the world's population who would never actually starve from insufficient food, but who would suffer disease and handicaps, both physical and mental, from never getting quite enough to eat.

  Offices appeared, as i
f by magic, in India and China, in France and England and Italy, in America and Iceland and Ireland and New Zealand, and the poor came in droves and were not turned away. There were those, no doubt, who took advantage of the situation, those who lied and took food they had no right to have, but the offices, it appeared after a time, did not seem to mind.

  Carbohydrates by themselves were not sufficient food. But they were better than no food at all, and for many the saving represented by free carbohydrates provided the extra pennies to buy the bit of meat which had been a stranger to their table for many long months.

  "We checked into the carbohydrates," Crawford was saying, "and we found nothing more to go on than with any of the others. So far as we're concerned, the carbohydrates aren't being manufactured — they simply exist. They are shipped to the distribution offices from several warehouses and none of the warehouses are big enough to carry more than a day or two's supply. We can find no factories and we can't trace transportation — oh, sure, from the warehouses to the distribution points, but not from anywhere to the warehouses. It's like the old story that Hawthorne told — about the pitcher of milk that never ran dry."

  "Maybe you should go into the carbohydrates business yourself."

  "Good idea," said Crawford, "but we don't know how. We'd like to make a Forever car, or everlasting razor blades, too, but we don't know how to do that, either. We've had technicians and scientists working on the problems, and they are no nearer to solution than the day they started."

  "What happens when the men who are out of work need more than just a gift of food?" asked Vickers. "When their families are in tatters and they need clothes? What happens when they're thrown into the street?"

  "I think I can answer that. Some other philanthropic society will spring up over night and will furnish clothes and shelter. They're selling houses now for five hundred a room and that's no more than token payment. Why not give them away? Why not clothing that will cost no more than a tenth, or a twentieth of what you pay today? A suit for five dollars, say. Or a dress for fifty cents."

  "You have no idea of what is coming next?"

  "We've tried to dope it out," said Crawford. "We figured the car would come quickly, and it did. We figured houses, too, and they have put them out. Clothing should be one of the next items to go on the market."

  "Food, shelter, transportation, clothing," said Vickers. "Those are four basics."

  "They also have fuel and power," Crawford added. "Let enough of the world's population shift to these new houses, with their solar power, and you can mark the power industry completely off the books."

  "But who is it?" asked Vickers. "You've told me you don't know. But you must have some idea, some educated guess."

  "Not an inkling. We have tables of organization for their corporation setups. We can't find the men themselves; they are names we've never heard of."

  "Russia?"

  Crawford shook his head. "The Kremlin is worried, too. Russia is co-operating. That should prove how scared they are."

  For the first time, Crawford moved. He unfolded his hands from across his paunch, grasped the arms of his massive chair and pulled himself straight, sitting upright now.

  "I suppose," he said, "that you are wondering where you fit in on this."

  "Naturally.

  "We can't come out and say, 'Here we are, a combine of the world's industrial might, fighting to protect your way of life. We can't explain to them what the situation is. They'd laugh at us. After all, you can't tell people that a car that will last forever or a house that cost only five hundred a room is a bad thing for them. We can't tell them anything and yet this needs telling. We want you to write a book about it."

  "I don't see…" Vickers began, but Crawford stopped him in mid-sentence.

  "You would write it as if you had doped it out yourself. You would hint at informed sources that were too high to name. We'd furnish all the data, but the material would appear as yours."

  Vickers came slowly to his feet. He reached out a hand and picked up his hat.

  "Thanks for the chance," he said. "I'm not having any."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ANN CARTER said to Vickers: "Some day, Jay, I'm going to get sore enough at you to take you apart. And when I do maybe I'll have a chance to find what makes you tick."

  "I got a book to write," said Vickers. "I'm writing it. What more do you want?"

  "That book could keep. You could write it anytime. This one won't."

  "Go ahead, tell me I threw away a million bucks. That's what you're thinking."

  "You could have charged them a fancy fee for writing and gotten a contract with the publisher like there never was before and…"

  "And pushed aside the greatest piece of work I've ever done," said Vickers, "and come back to it cold and find I'd lost the touch."

  "Every book you write is your greatest one. Jay Vickers, you're nothing but a literary ham. Sure, you do good work and your darn books sell, although sometimes I wonder why. If there were no money in it you'd never write another word. Tell me, honest, why do you write?"

  "You've answered it for me. You say for money. All right, so it's for money."

  "All right, so I have a sordid soul."

  "My God," said Vickers, "we're fighting as if we were married."

  "That's another thing. You've never married, Jay. It's an index of your selfishness. I bet you never even thought of it."

  "Once I did," said Vickers. "Once long ago."

  "Here, put your head down here and have a good long cry. I bet it was pitiful. I bet that's how you got some of those excruciating love scenes you put into your books."

  "Ann, you're getting maudlin drunk."

  "If I'm getting drunk, you're the man who drove me to it. You're the one who said, 'Thanks for the chance, but I'm not having any."

  "I had a hunch there was something phoney there," insisted Vickers.

  "That was you," said Ann. She finished off her drink.

  "Don't use a hunch," she said, "to duck the responsibility for turning down the best thing you ever had. Any time someone dangles money like that in front of me, I'm not letting any hunch stand in my way."

  "I'm sure you wouldn't," Vickers agreed.

  "That was a nasty thing to say," Ann told him. "Pay for the drinks and let's get out of here. I'm putting you on that bus and don't you come back again."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE huge sign was draped diagonally across the front of the huge show window. It read:

  HOUSES

  TAILORED TO ORDER

  $500 a room

  LIBERAL TRADE-IN ON YOUR OLD HOME

  In the window was a five or six room house, set in the middle of a small, beautifully planned lawn and garden. There was a sundial in the garden and a cupola with a flying duck weather vane on the attached garage. Two white lawn chairs and a white round table stood on the clipped grass and there was a new and shiny car standing in the driveway.

  Ann squeezed Vickers' arm. "Let's go in."

  "This must be what Crawford was talking about," said Vickers.

  "You got lots of time to catch the bus," Ann said.

  "We might as well. If you get interested in looking at a house you won't be chewing me."

  "If I thought it were possible, I'd trap and marry you."

  "And make my life a hell."

  "Why, certainly," Ann told him sweetly. "Why else would I do it?"

  They went in the door and it swung to behind them and the noise of the Street was shut away and they walked on the deep green carpeting that doubled as a lawn.

  A salesman saw them and came over.

  "We were just passing by," said Ann, "and we thought we would drop in. It looks like a fine house and…"

  "It is a fine house," the salesman assured them, "and it has many special features."

  "Is that true what the sign said?" asked Vickers. "Five hundred dollars a room?"

  "Everyone asks me that. They read the sign, but they don't believe
it, so the first thing they ask me when they come in is whether it is really true we sell these houses for five hundred a room."

  "Well, is it?" insisted Vickers.

  "Oh, most certainly," said the salesman. "A five room house is twenty-five hundred dollars and a ten room house would be five thousand dollars. Most people of course, aren't interested in a ten room house at first."

  "What do you mean, at first?"

  "Well, you see, it's this way, sir," the salesman said. "This is what you might call a house that grows. You buy a five room house, say, and in a little while you figure that you want another room, so we come out and redesign the house and make it a six room house."

  "Isn't that expensive?" Ann asked.

  "Oh, not at all," the salesman said. "It only costs you five hundred dollars for the extra room. That is a flat and standard charge."

  "This is a prefabricated house, isn't it?" asked Ann.

  "I suppose you would call it that, although it does the house injustice. When you say 'prefabricated' you are thinking of a house that is pre-cut and sort of stuck together. Takes a week or ten days to put it together and then you just have a shell — no heating plant, no fireplace, no nothing."

  "I'm interested in this extra room angle," said Vickers. "You say that when they want an extra room they just call you up and you come out and stick one on."

  The salesman stiffened slightly. "Not _exactly_, sir. We stick nothing on. We _redesign_ your house. At all times, your house is well planned and practical, designed in accordance with the highest scientific and esthetic concepts of what a home should be. In some cases, adding another room means that we have to change the whole house around, rearrange the rooms and such.

  "Of course," he added, "if you wanted to change the place completely the best thing might be to trade the house in on a new one. For doing that we make a service charge of one per cent per year of the original cost, plus, of course, the charge for the extra rooms."

  He looked at the two of them, hopefully. "You have a house, perhaps?"