Short Fiction, Mack Reynolds [best book reader txt] 📗

began to industrialize.” Gunther smiled wryly, “Soon to the dismay of the very countries that originally sponsored bringing her into the modern world. By 1894 she was able to wage a successful war against China and by 1904 she took on and trounced Czarist Russia. In a period of thirty-five years she had advanced from feudalism to a world power.”

Joe Chessman took his turn. He said obdurately, “Your paternalistic guidance, given an uncontrolled competitive system, doesn’t always work out. Take India after she gained independence from England. She tried to industrialize and had the support of the free nations. But what happened?”

Plekhanov leaned forward to take the ball. “Yes! There’s your classic example. Compare India and China. China had a planned industrial development. None of this free competition nonsense. In ten years time they had startled the world with their advances. In twenty years⁠—”

“Yes,” Stevens said softly, “but at what price?”

Plekhanov turned on him. “At any price!” he roared. “In one generation they left behind the China of famine, flood, illiteracy, war lords and all the misery that had been China’s throughout history.”

Stevens said mildly, “Whether in their admitted advances they left behind all the misery that had been China’s is debatable, sir.”

Plekhanov began to bellow an angry retort but Amschel Mayer popped suddenly to his feet and lifted a hand to quiet the others. “Our solution has just come to me!”

Plekhanov glowered at him.

Mayer said excitedly, “Remember what the Coordinator told us? This expedition of ours is the first of its type. Even though we fail, the very mistakes we make will be invaluable. Our task is to learn how to bring backward peoples into an industrialized culture in roughly half a century.”

The messroom’s occupants scowled at him. Thus far he’d said nothing new.

Mayer went on enthusiastically. “Thus far in our debates we’ve had two basic suggestions on procedure. I have advocated a system of free competition; my learned colleague has been of the opinion that a strong state and a planned, not to say totalitarian, economy would be the quicker.” He paused dramatically. “Very well, I am in favor of trying them both.”

They regarded him blankly.

He said with impatience, “There are two planets, at different ethnic periods it is true, but not so far apart as all that. Fine, eight of us will take Genoa and eight Texcoco.”

Plekhanov rumbled, “Fine, indeed. But which group will have the use of the Pedagogue with its library, its laboratories, its shops, its weapons?”

For a moment, Mayer was stopped but Joe Chessman growled, “That’s no problem. Leave her in orbit around Rigel. We’ve got two small boats with which to ferry back and forth. Each group could have the use of her facilities any time they wished.”

“I suppose we could have periodic conferences,” Plekhanov said. “Say once every decade to compare notes and make further plans, if necessary.”

Natt Roberts was worried. “We had no such instructions from the Coordinator. Dividing our forces like that.”

Mayer cut him short. “My dear Roberts, we were given carte blanche. It is up to us to decide procedure. Actually, this system realizes twice the information such expeditions as ours might ordinarily offer.”

“Texcoco for me,” Plekhanov grumbled, accepting the plan in its whole. “The more backward of the two, but under my guidance in half a century it will be the more advanced, mark me.”

“Look here,” Martin Gunther said. “Do we have two of each of the basic specialists, so that we can divide the party in such a way that neither planet will miss out in any one field?”

Amschel Mayer was beaming at the reception of his scheme. “The point is well taken, my dear Martin, however you’ll recall that our training was deliberately made such that each man spreads over several fields. This in case, during our half century without contact, one or more of us meets with accident. Besides, the Pedagogue’s library is such that any literate can soon become effective in any field to the extent needed on the Rigel planets.”

III

Joe Chessman was at the controls of the space lighter. At his side sat Leonid Plekhanov and behind them the other six members of their team. They had circled Texcoco twice at great altitude, four times at a lesser one. Now they were low enough to spot man-made works.

“Nomadic,” Plekhanov muttered. “Nomadic and village cultures.”

“A few dozen urbanized cultures,” Chessman said. “Whoever compared the most advanced nation to the Aztecs was accurate, except for the fact that they base themselves along a river rather than on a mountain plateau.”

Plekhanov said, “Similarities to the Egyptians and Sumerians.” He looked over his beefy shoulder at the technician who was photographing the areas over which they passed. “How does our geographer progress, Roberts?”

Natt Roberts brought his eyes up from his camera viewer. “I’ve got most of what we’ll need for a while, sir.”

Plekhanov turned back to Chessman. “We might as well head for their principal city, the one with the pyramids. We’ll make initial contact there. I like the suggestion of surplus labor available.”

“Surplus labor?” Chessman said, setting the controls. “How do you know?”

“Pyramids,” Plekhanov rumbled. “I’ve always been of the opinion that such projects as pyramids, whether they be in Yucatan or Egypt, are make-work affairs. A priesthood, or other ruling clique, keeping its people busy and hence out of mischief.”

Chessman adjusted a speed lever and settled back. “I can see their point.”

“But I don’t agree with it,” Plekhanov said ponderously. “A society that builds pyramids is a static one. For that matter any society that resorts to make-work projects to busy its citizenry has something basically wrong.”

Joe Chessman said sourly, “I wasn’t supporting the idea, just understanding the view of the priesthoods. They’d made a nice thing for themselves and didn’t want to see anything happen to it. It’s not the only time a group in the saddle has held up progress for the sake of remaining there. Priests, slave-owners, feudalistic barons, or bureaucrats of a twentieth-century police state,