Capitalism, as practiced in the twentieth century, has some definite advantages. For one thing, companies are allowed to fail and so cease to exist. The physical assets are redistributed, the workers find new jobs, and the poor management which generally caused the problem is put out to pasture.
In a centrally-controlled economy, it is extremely embarrassing or politically impossible for such powers that be to eliminate inefficient managers.
In large organizations, it is hard to be noticed, so it is very difficult to do something that is demonstratively right. It therefore becomes critically important to your career that you never do anything that is demonstratively wrong. Fools may not be fired, but they are rarely promoted, either. To downgrade a subordinate manager seems to imply that one didn't know what one was doing when one promoted him in the first place. Best to leave him alone and hope that nobody notices. It takes something fairly obvious, an exploding atomic power plant for example, to get anything changed. But generally, things just go on as usual.
This results in the same fools making the same mistakes forever. People become demoralized, especially the best, most energetic workers. Useful work slows or even comes to a halt. I don't mean that the workers stop working. They are all furiously active, looking busy. They worry all day long and go home tired. But they are not doing anything useful.
Nor is this problem limited to the centrally controlled economies of eastern Europe. In major American corporations, poor managers are sometimes given "lateral promotions," perhaps to "company historian," but they are rarely removed.
Another advantage to capitalism is that small companies can do astounding things without the matter becoming political. And I mean both astoundingly good and astoundingly stupid. If enough people try enough new things and if there is some mechanism for dumb ideas to be eliminated, better processes will develop and society will benefit.
People will shake their heads or laugh at someone doing something silly with his own money, but they won't try to vote their congressman out of office because of it. But if it is the government's money being spent, they rightly think it's their money being wasted and the matter becomes political. Consider the way one blown gasket stopped the entire American space program for years.
Progress is impossible without trying new things. New things often don't work. Since large organizations do not permit failure, virtually all progress results from the work of small private companies.
Yet capitalism has a number of serious problems that seem to be intrinsic to it. Private companies are generally founded by productive people, often engineers. But when the founder retires, somehow the accountants always seem to take over, and a button-counter is rarely a good decision-maker. Or, the founder's widow or son-in-law tries to run the company and things are worse.
Such foolishness would be unthinkable in eastern Europe. There, managers are almost always trained engineers. Many are not brilliant but most are competent.
Oh, the worst faults of capitalism, the ones Marx was concerned with, have been patched over with governmental institutions and regulations, at least in America. Monopolies are forbidden or regulated. Surplus workers are not allowed to starve. Vast profits are largely taxed away, although there is still a huge class of people who do nothing productive but are very wealthy.
Yet this very patchwork has problems of its own. In Poland, if your teeth are bad, you go to a dentist and he fixes them. No matter who you are, even if you are not a citizen, if you are human, you have a right to good teeth. Paperwork is minimal.
In America, some people have this right and some don't. Most people don't, so they have a vast number of office workers filling out forms that try to prove that only those with special rights get these special privileges.
I am convinced that it should be possible to design an economic and political system that has the advantages of both capitalism and socialism with the problems of neither. If I can figure it out, thirteenth century Poland is going to be a fine place to live.
By the time Krystyana and the others returned from the hunt, I was feeling much better, having thought a lot of things out of my system. We dressed for another boring supper.
I simply didn't have much in common with the nobles of Wawel Hill. There wasn't much of anything I could say to them and I was eager to get on with our errand and return to Three Walls.
Eventually, by repeatedly painting a sad picture of poor Tadaos in a donjon, not knowing if help was on the way or not, contemplating suicide perhaps, I finally got my party to agree to leave.
Chapter Twelve
Our party was in sumptuous attire as we went to the riverfront at Cracow the next morning. Clothing equated with rank in the thirteenth century, and rank equated with services. If you wanted to be treated good, you had to dress good.
At the river landing, we engaged a ferryboat to take us to the northern bank of the Vistula River. This boat—a raft, really—was made of a dozen huge logs that had been split and burned out hollow, then shaped and smoothed on the outside. These half-round dugout canoes were laid lengthwise side by side to let the river flow past easily. Rough planks decked it over and tied the dugouts together.
A dozen men were required to pole and paddle the massive raft across the river. No fare was waiting on the north bank, so the boatmaster sat down to wait.
"You know," I said to him, "I can't help thinking that you are wasting the efforts of all your men."
"What do you mean, my lord?"
"Well, you see that big tree growing upstream there on the south bank?"
"Yes."
"If you tied one end of a long rope around that tree and the other end of it to the left side of your boat, near the bow, the force of the water would push your boat back to the other side. And once you were there, if you tied the rope to the right side of your boat, the river would push you right back to here again."
He thought a while. "Would that really work?"
"Prove it for yourself. Get a small boat and a small rope and try it."
"Hmm. I just might, my lord. I just might."
Sir Vladimir and the ladies were eager to push on so that they could get back to Wawel Castle again, since I had promised a second visit on our return journey. Vladimir planned to take us on a short cut that skirted the Wysoki Beskid Mountains, a part of the Carpathians. That would get us to Sacz in two easy days of travel.
We traveled across the Vistula flood plain with Annastashia and Krystyana chattering constantly about all the wonders they had seen in Cracow. When we started climbing the foothills in the afternoon, the previously perfect weather began to cloud over. In a few hours it began to sprinkle on our expensive clothes.
"I'd thought that we could make it to my Uncle Felix's manor today," Sir Vladimir said. "But we haven't come as far as I'd hoped and I'm loath to get wet in a rainstorm the new finery our ladies made. I know of caves in these hills. I played in them when I was a boy. What would you think of making for one of them?"
"Fine by me," I said. "We have my old backpack with us. I can treat you all to some freeze-dried stew."
Sir Vladimir found a cave in short order. There were bat droppings near the mouth. Bats are common throughout the Carpathian Mountains. They're all harmless insectivores and there are so many of them that you can go for weeks without swatting a bug.
It was a four-yard climb to the cavemouth, but over easy rock, almost a stepladder. We couldn't get the horses inside, but a summer shower wouldn't hurt them. I set up the dome tent and stowed our baggage in it while Sir Vladimir unloaded and hobbled the horses. Anna wouldn't tolerate hobbling, but she was so loyal that there was never any worry about her wandering off.
Annastashia and Krystyana collected a night's supply of firewood and soon we were sitting in a semicircle around the fire, facing outward, waiting for the stew to start bubbling in my aluminum cooking kit. Krystyana was on my left and Annastashia and Sir Vladimir were to my right.
We were settled just in time, for soon lightning and
thunder were crashing and rain was coming down in sheets. I've always loved thunderstorms when I don't have to be in them, and the view from our mountain cave was spectacular. But soon the show was over and the rain almost ended.
We started telling stories, a great art form in the Middle Ages but one that has been almost lost in modern times. Krystyana told a hilarious tale about how her uncle bought a pig, but came home with a cow. I rambled on for an hour about nine-fingered Frodo. A modern man may lack storytelling skills, but he sure knows a lot of plotlines.
With dusk the bats rushed out in a clicking, squeaking swirl. The girls, unfamiliar with the harmless creatures, started screaming.
Sir Vladimir took this as the cue for his story, which was about a vampire. His basic story line, that of a man who was of the living dead, who hated sunlight and water, who drank human blood and made his victims into creatures like himself, was much like a modern movie plot.
Vladimir's flashy storytelling style, with many gesticulations and facial expressions, added a lot to the natural setting, for Count Dracula had lived in these same Carpathian Mountains, only farther south.
What's more, Sir Vladimir adamantly claimed that every word of his tale was true and his eye didn't have the wink and twinkle it had when he was fibbing. He actually believed it and had the girls doing so. While I, of course, am above such things, I confess he had my heart thumping.
As he was approaching the climax of the story, he suddenly stopped and looked behind me. The expression on his face was one of pure horror and I remember thinking that in the twentieth century he would have gone to Hollywood.
There was a shuffling noise and I wondered briefly how he had arranged the sound effects. Then I saw that the girls too were horror-stricken and actresses they weren't.
I looked over my right shoulder and made what was perhaps one of the biggest mistakes of my life.
A man was coming toward me, totally naked with skin as white as bone china. Spittle and foam were dribbling from his mouth, his throat was convulsing and his chest was quivering. He was reaching toward me!
I was horrified and frightened. With no rational thought in my head, I drew my sword and with one motion slashed at him.
I cut him entirely in half at the belt line. The two pieces fell to the ground at a crazy angle, the throat twitched a few more times and stopped.
Instantly, a new horror struck me. I had just murdered a man, a crazy hermit perhaps but a fellow human being, for no other reason than that I was scared. I had become so callous in this brutal century that killing had become a reflex.
Sir Vladimir was the first to come to life. He grabbed a piece of firewood, sharpened it frantically with his belt knife and began beating it into the chest of the dead body with a rock.
This desecration of the dead brought me back to my senses.
"For the love of God, Sir Vladimir, stop that!"
"It must be done, Sir Conrad! It's still alive! It still can kill us!" There was more than a hint of panic in his voice.
There was no obvious way of stopping him short of violence. Sir Vladimir was swinging the rock with all his strength but forcing a wooden stick through a human rib-cage—especially one that is open at the bottom—is no easy feat. The intestines and liver were squirted out onto the cave floor, and all of us were splattered with blood.
I stared at the man I had murdered. Slowly something dawned on me. The foam at the mouth. The white skin. The convulsions. "Rabies," I said. "RABIES! Sir Vladimir, get away from that body! That stuff is infected! It's contagious! We could all end up like that poor bastard!"
"Not any more, Sir Conrad. I've done it." He stood up from his grisly work, a stump of wood projecting brutally below the corpse's left nipple.
"Trust me on this! If ever in your life you take me on faith, do it now! That's a virus, a disease, like leprosy or the plague. We must clean this blood and dirt off of us!"
"Just what would you have us do?"
"We've got to get out of here! We've got to get ourselves clean!" I started shoving them toward the cavemouth.
"Sir Conrad!" Krystyana said, "It's raining out there! Our clothes!"
"Damn your clothes! This rain is a Godsend! Get out there or I'll throw you out! You too, Annastashia! Move!"
They scurried out, but Sir Vladimir stood staring at me.
"Sir Vladimir, please!"
He paused a moment, then said, "Right."
I tossed our possessions over the edge and followed them down to the ground. The rain was coming in buckets again and the lightning was flashing. Both were welcome, by me at least. In total darkness and without water, the task would have been impossible. Anna heard the commotion and came running up.
"Back, girl! Rabies!"
She nodded her head and backed off.
"The rest of you, strip!" I shouted above the storm. "Hang your clothes over the bushes where they'll get rinsed out. Wash yourselves. Krystyana, break out my soap!"
I bullied them into sudsing down twice in the bone-chilling rain. Finally, we gave the girls the tent and Sir Vladimir and I hunkered down as best we could under a tree.
"Sir Conrad, was this really necessary?"
"Yes."
"It's some sort of superstition among your people?"
"It's not a superstition. I've told you before, most diseases are caused by germs, tiny animals, smaller than you can see. That poor bastard in the cave was infested with them."
"Sir Conrad, you've also taught me the scientific method, and told me never to believe anything that I could not prove with my own senses. With my own eyes I just saw a vampire. I touched it. I felt it. I smelled it. Can you doubt that this is true?"
"You certainly saw something, but what you saw was the victim of a disease."
"As to these germs, well, to be scientific about it, I've never seen one. If you ever build that microscope that once you talked of, perhaps I will. For now, I know what I saw, I know what I did.
"As to this chilly midnight bathing party, well, you are a stranger here and I was only being polite and going along with your customs as you have so often gone along with ours."
"Okay. Have it your way. Your scientific deductions were satisfied by pounding a stake into the vampire's heart and my superstitions required that we ritually bathe off the devil-viruses.
"That's not what's bothering me.
"What bothers me, Sir Conrad, is sitting here wet and naked in the cold rain, with only male company, when but a short time ago I was most comfortably situated with my love at my side."
"Well, I'm sitting right next to you."
"More's the pity."
We were silent a long while. Then I said, "I think we were both right about the man in the cave. Most legends have some basis in fact. The symptoms of rabies are a lot like the way you described a vampire. The fear of light and water. The white skin. And if one bites you, you'll certainly become one. I think your vampire is my rabies victim. Two names for the same thing."
"If you say so. How long does your ritual require before we can go back to the cave?"
"It's not a ritual and we don't go back, ever."
"Right. It is not a superstition. The cave is merely permanently defiled and unclean."
It was a long night and I spent it soul searching. I suppose I did the man a favor, giving him a quick death. Rabies is a rough way to die. Maybe he would have bitten one of us and maybe I saved one of the others from joining his sad fate. There was nothing I could do to cure the disease.
But this was all rationalization after the fact. In truth, I had murdered a man because he frightened me.
* * *
The lands we rode through the next morning were cheerful, despite the depressed mood of our party. The fields were well tended and soon to give a good harvest, the peasant cottages were big and well built and most had brightly painted trim. The people were well fed, half of them were fat, and all were fairly well clothed. And everybody bustled, as if whatever they were doing right then
was the most important thing in the world.
That sort of attitude is contagious and we had cheered up some by the time we entered Uncle Felix's manor in our second-best clothes. I had to call him that even though he was Sir Vladimir's uncle and not mine. He was the kind of man who is everybody's uncle. Big, bluff, crude, and wholesome, he radiated good cheer and good wishes.
"That you, Vlad boy? You big enough for girls already? Pretty ones, too! And a giant! You must be Stargard! Welcome! Mama! Go kill a fat calf for supper! We got company! Iwo! Iwo you lazy peasant! Come take care of the horses! Well, you people? Get down!"
A little intimidating at first, but you couldn't help liking him. Soon dozens of people were rushing about, our horses unloaded and put in a barn, and our baggage opened out. Some women tsk-tsked at our wet finery and took it away, while the four of us were treated to an impromptu dinner for twelve.
Uncle Felix had already eaten, but sat down to join us and ate enough for six men just to be sociable.
"So, boys. You are out adventuring? Have you killed any dragons?"
"No dragons, Uncle Felix," Sir Vladimir said. "But we killed five Crossmen in an open fight and we dispatched a vampire last night."
"Another vampire in my hills, eh? That's the second one this year. I'll have to warn the peasants. Tell me about the Crossmen."
Sir Vladimir launched into his tale, which grew better each time he told it. He never exactly lied, you understand, but the embroidery around the edges got constantly brighter.
"Whew! The duke may like it, but the duke is not your liege lord." He waved a chubby finger at Sir Vladimir. "You know, your papa is not going to be happy about this!"
"I know. I was wondering if you could intercede for me."
"Maybe. But it's too close to harvest for me to leave now. After that, well, maybe the trial will settle everything. But if he's still mad at you at Christmastime, I'll go talk to him.
"Now you, big fellow—I've heard so many things about you that I don't believe that I'm thinking I should have believed some of them after all. Tell me what you know."
Conrad Starguard-The Radiant Warrior Page 39