Adaptation, Mack Reynolds [red white and royal blue hardcover TXT] 📗

Note pads had been placed before each of them and both Watson and Gunther were equipped with gavels.

While chairs were still being shuffled, Barry Watson said over the table to Gunther, "Jerry?"

Martin Gunther shrugged "Jerry's indisposed. As a matter of fact, he's at one of the mountain sanitariums, taking a cure. He'll be all right."

"Good," Dick Hawkins said. "We've lost too many."

Watson pounded with his gavel. "Let's come to order. Gunther do you have anything to say in the way of preliminaries?"

"Not especially. I believe we all know where we stand, including the newcomers from Genoa and Texcoco. In brief, this is the fourth meeting of the Earth teams that were sent to these two planets to bring backward colonists to an industrialized culture. It would seem that we are both succeeding—possibly at different rates. Forty years have passed, ten remain to us."

For a moment there was silence.

Finally Roberts said, "Possibly you have already discovered this through your agents, but we have released the information on prolonging of life."

Peter MacDonald said wryly, "We, too, were pressured into such a step."

Baron Leonar said, "And why not?"

Taller, across the table from him, nodded.

Martin Gunther tapped twice on the table with his gavel. "The basic reason for our meeting is to report progress and to reconsider the possibilities of new elements having entered into the situation which might cause us to re-examine our policies. I think we already have a fairly good idea of each other's development." His voice went wry. "At least our agents do a fairly good job of reporting yours."

"And ours, yours," Watson rapped.

"However," MacDonald said, "now that we are drawing near the end of our half century, I think it becomes obvious that Amschel Mayer's original contention—that a freely competitive economy grows faster than one restricted by totalitarian bounds—has been proven."

Barry Watson snorted amusement. "Do you?" he said. "To the contrary, MacDonald. The proof is otherwise. On Genoa you still have comparative confusion. True enough, several of your nations, particularly those on your southern continent, are greatly advanced and with a high living and cultural standard—when times are good. But at the same time you have other whole peoples who are little, if any, better off, than when you arrived. On the western continent you even have a few feudalistic regimes that are probably worse off—mostly as a result of the wars you've crippled them with."

Natt Roberts said, his voice musing, "But even that isn't the important thing. The Co-ordinator sent us here to find a method of bringing backward cultures to industrialization. Have you got a blueprint to show him, when you return? Can you trace out the history of Genoa for this past half century and say, this war was necessary for progress—but that should have been avoided? Or is this whole free competition program of yours actually nothing but chaos which sometimes works out wonderfully for some nations, but actually destroys others? You have scorned our methods, our collectivized society—but when we return, we'll have a blueprint of how we arrived where we are."

Gunther banged the table with his gavel. "Just a moment. Is there any reason why we have to listen to these accusations when—"

Watson held up a hand, curtly, "Let us finish. If you have something to say, we'll gladly listen when we're through."

Gunther was flushed but he snapped, "Go ahead then, but don't think any of we Genoese are being taken in."

Watson said, "True enough, it took us a time to unite our people ..."

"Time and blood," Peter MacDonald muttered.

"... But once underway the Texcocan State has moved on in a progression unknown in any of the Genoese nations. To industrialize a society you must reach a certain taking off point, a point where you have sufficient industry, particularly steel, sufficient power, sufficient scientists, technicians and skilled workers. Once that point has been reached you can move in almost a geometric progression. You build a steel mill and with the steel produced you build two more mills the following year, which in turn gives you the material for four the next year."

Buchwald grunted his disbelief.

Watson looked up and down the line of Genoese, the Earthmen as well as the natives. "On Texcoco we have now reached that point. We have a trained, eager population of over one billion persons. Our universities are turning out highly trained effectives at the rate of more than twenty million a year. We have located all the raw materials we will need. We are now under way." He looked at them in heavy amusement. "By the end of the next decade we will bury you."

Martin Gunther said calmly, "Are you through?"

"Yes. For the time," Watson nodded.

"Very well. Then this is our progress report. In the past forty years we have eliminated feudalism in all the more advanced countries. Even in the remote areas the pressures of our changing world are bringing them around. The populace of these countries will no longer stand to one side while the standard of living on the rest of Genoa grows so rapidly. On most of our planet, already the average family not only enjoys freedom but a way of life far in advance of that of Texcoco. Already modern housing and household appliances are everywhere. Already both land cars and aircraft are available to the majority. The nations have formed an Inter-Continental League of governments so that it is unlikely that war will ever touch us again. And this is merely a beginning. In ten years, continuing our freely competitive way of developing, all will be living on a scale that only the wealthy can afford today."

He came to an end and stared antagonistically at the Texcocans.

Taller said, "There seems to be no agreement."

Across the table from him the ancient Honorable Russ said, "It is difficult to measure. We seem to count refrigerators and privately owned automobiles. You seem to ignore personal standards and concentrate on steel tonnage."

The Texcocan scientist, Wiss, said easily, "Given the steel mills, and eventually automobiles and refrigerators will run off our assembly lines like water, and will be available for everyone, not just those who can afford to buy them."

"Hm-m-m, eventually," Peter MacDonald laughed nastily.

The atmosphere was suddenly hostile. Hostile beyond anything that had gone before in earlier conferences.

And then Martin Gunther said without inflection, "I note that you have removed from the Pedagogue's library the information dealing with nuclear fission."

"For the purpose of study," Dick Hawkins said smoothly.

"Of course," Gunther said. "Did you plan to return it in the immediate future?"

"I'm afraid our studies will take some time," Watson said flatly.

"I was afraid so," Gunther said. "Happily, I took the precaution of making microfilms of the material involved more than a year ago."

Barry Watson pushed his chair back. "We seem to have accomplished what was possible by this conference," he said. "If anything." He looked to right and left at his cohorts. "Let's go."

They came stiffly erect. Watson turned on his heel and started for the door.

As they left, Natt Roberts turned for a moment and said to Gunther, "One thing, Martin. During this next ten years you might consider whether or not half a century has been enough to accomplish our task. Should we consider staying on? I would think the Co-ordinator would accept any recommendation along this line that we might make."

The Genoese contingent looked after him, long after he was gone.

Finally Martin Gunther said, "Baron Leonar, I think it might be a good idea if you began putting some of your men to work on making steel alloys suitable for spacecraft. The way things are developing, perhaps we'll be needing them."

Buchwald and MacDonald looked at him unblinkingly.

It was fifty years to a day since the Pedagogue had first gone into orbit about Rigel. Five decades have passed. Half a century.

Of the original crew of the Pedagogue, six now gathered in the lounge of the spaceship. All of them had changed physically. Some of them softer to the point of flabbiness; some harder both of body and soul.

Barry Watson, Natt Roberts, Dick Hawkins, of the Texcocan team.

Martin Gunther, Peter MacDonald, Fredric Buchwald, of the Genoese.

The gathering wasn't so large as the one before. Only Taller and the scientist Wiss attended from Texcoco; only Baron Leonar and the son of Honorable Russ from Genoa.

From the beginning they stared with hostility across the conference table. Even the pretense of amiability was gone.

Watson rapped finally, "I am not going to dwell upon the measures you have been taking that can only be construed as military ones aimed eventually at the Texcocan State."

Martin Gunther laughed nastily. "Is your implication that your own people have not taken the same measures, in fact, inaugurated them?"

Watson said, "As I say, I have no intention of even discussing this. Surely we can arrive at no agreement. There is one point, however that we should consider on