H Beam Piper & Michael Kurland, page 8
There were the Music Combines, and the Rifle and Revolver combine, which now set standards for manufacturing gangs and held annual matches, and the Climbers' Combine. Perhaps most successful was the Railroad Combine, which insured uniform track gauges, set standards for load limits and wheel-and-axle construction and track grades and curves, traced cars which had been shunted from one road to another, and handled matters of inter-road fares and freight-bill tolls. There were even local protection combines, an early example of which was the force which had been raised at the time of the Thurkka invasion.
So Hetaira was not unready for the proposal of Kartho Alvararro when he called the meeting at Stockade Point, overlooking Timber Lake, in 307.
Singly and in groups, they came into the big gathering-room of the Alvararro gang-house, shaking hands with Kartho as they entered. Among them were some of the most important people in the Central Mountain country-Taldo Kunninzo, the chairman of the board of advisors of the Telegraph Gangs Combine; Brammo Linzartho and Feerk Evarro, of the Railroad Combine; Reeda Sambro, of the Munitions Combine; and Urlik Slidertho, head advisor of the Slidertho Weaving Gang. Lyssa Grassano, the advisor of advisors of the Grassano Gang, stopped short, halfway to her host, on seeing Dwallo Vallado already in the room. She lowered her glance to the Vallado advisor's belt to make sure that he, too, had divested himself ofhit hand-weapon. The Grassanos and the Vallados were currently feuding about a rich ore-field inside the Short Circle Line, in the mountains. They all sat at the long table, but when the toast of friendship was drunk, the Vallado and Grassano representatives ostentatiously looked in opposite directions. Then Kartho Alvararro tapped on the rim of his glass with his gold fountain pen.
Ladies and gentlemen, he began. Combine advisors, and gang representatives and advisors, I welcome you each to Timber Lake. You all have a pretty good idea of what I want to propose, since I outlined it as well as possible in the letters inviting you here. And I assume you're all interested, or, at least, curious, or you wouldn't have come. To put it briefly, I propose to set up, with your cooperation, a system of exchange that will partly supplant the present barter-system, and will avoid or eliminate many of its problems. Are there any comments or suggestions from anyone before we get down to the in-depth dissection of the idea?
Well,something is certainly needed, Taldo Kunninzo said. The Telegraph Combine prefers to take copper in exchange for sending a message, and we've worked out a regular scale of rates in copper, and a changing scale of values against copper for things like grain, that vary in worth from season to season, or coal, that vary in worth from location to location. But, of course, we cannot refuse to send a message if someone has something besides copper or the regular-scale items to barter. Some of the stuff we accumulate! And we never know, from one time to the next, what we're going to have to give some construction-gang for stringing a new line, or how to make an honest and equitable division of the profits each year.
We can't ever seem to get any kind of a reasonable division of the profits, either, Lyssa Grassano said.
There's always someone who's left unhappy. And so much skill is needed by the gang's traders, to know the value of every possible barter-item relative to every other item, that an unskillful trader can cost the gang on every transaction that's the least bit out of the ordinary; or, what's worse, inadvertantly cheat the customer. Maybe this business of trading goods for goods was all right a thousand years ago, when the gangs were little and everybody lived in the same house or the same village; and at the beginning it's certainly the most natural way. But it certainly does get complex if you keep at it long enough. How are you going to take two thousand people, all working at different jobs, and give everybody what they want out of fifty carloads of grain and five hundred bales of hides and a steamboat-load of lumber?
And suppose somebody halfway around the mountains needs a shipment of structural steel, or rails, and all he has to trade for it is grain, and you already have grain running out of your ears as it is, and what you want is electrical fittings and ceramics and small-arms ammo? Dwallo Vallado threw in.
Well, if a Vallado and a Grassano think it's a good idea, I, for one, won't argue, a representative of a coal-mining and coke-burning combine laughed. I do business with both of them. They know what they're talking about, and 7 know what they're talking about.
Kartho, suppose you explain your scheme, one of the railroad advisors said. It is evident that some way of handling the transfer of goods must be found that is an improvement on the one in use, but you're going to have to show us how your system is anything better than one of those old warehouse-script schemes. That's a good idea in principle, too; but since the Balsambo blowup, everybody's been afraid to have anything to do with warehouse script.
The warehouse script system wouldn't solve the problem even if the warehouses didn't blow up, Kartho said. A receipt for a bale of hides or a bin of grain still represents only the receipted object; it won't do you any good if what you want is a box of cartridges. You'd still have to find someone with the cartridges who happens to need grain.
How is your system better? Dwallo Vallado asked.
I propose to have a trading combine, which will include everybody here and as many more gangs as we can get to join. The combine will issue script, but it won't be for a specific object like a bale of hides; it will be for some arbitrarily agreed upon unit of value. These will be some kind of special certificates that can be used to trade for anything within the combine. And, since the combine will be so big and powerful, most gangs outside the com bine, even if they don't come in, should be willing to take the certificates in trade. They'll be assured that whatever they need from within the combine can be traded for these certificates whenever they wish to use them. People with small items to trade, who wish to get.a big item, like someone who makesrogel-leather belts and needs to get a stamping machine, can save up the certificates until they have enough to trade for the machine.
It sounds good, an advisor from a farming gang said. That way, if you have a boatload of grain, you won't have to wait around for somebody who wants it and has just what you want, or work out one of those complex around-the-corner-and-under-the-hedge deals, where fifteen people criss-cross receipts until everyone is happy. You could just trade your goods for the certificates, and then use them for whatever you wanted.
That's the idea, Kartho agreed.
Well now, wait a minute, Urlik Slidertho objected. This idea of having something that can be traded for anything sounds fine, but how are you going to set the value of your certificates? Look, we make fifty different kinds of cloth. Each one's of a different weave, with different yarns, and has a different value. What's your standard going to be?
Grain, somebody suggested. Everybody has to eat. Say a cubic tenth-lance of grain-
Grain's never worth the same from one year to the next! someone yelled out. I should know, I deal in it!
Lead! Reeda Sambro piped up. There isn't a man, woman, or child who doesn't carry a gun, and a gun's no use without bullets.
A unit of value will have to be decided upon, Kartho Alvararro said. We'll find one that we can all mutually agree on. It doesn't really matter what it is, you see; as long as it's the same for each certificate, any place within the combine territory, at any time. There are things to be said for a number of possible standards. It might be a good idea, for example, to use grain. If we made it the standard of value, that in itself might have a stabilizing effect on the trading of grain. But, on the other hand, if it doesn't, then the fluctuating value of grain would affect the worth of the certificates in a way that people might find unacceptable.
We could use a sort of 'box of commodities,' one of the farmers suggested. Say we pick out the ten or twenty most important commodities and take an average of their relative values for the last ten years, and work out some kind of common denominator. Then everyone can figure out the value of his own goods or services accordingly; the prices of other commodities will naturally adjust themselves according to demand.
That sounds more complex than the system we're using, Reeda Sambro called out, I would have thought it impossible!
There's another, completely separate problem, Dwallo Vallado said. When these certificates are in use, what's to stop some unscrupulous person-or gang-from imitating them? At least with a bale of hides, you have the bale of hides. With an imitation certificate, what would you have?
That is a very real problem, Kartho Alvararro admitted.
We'd have to make the certificates on some kind of fancy paper-special paper that nobody else could get hold of, Lyssa Grassano suggested. And make them as intricate as possible; all over little curlicues, pictures by master engravers, very hard to duplicate. And make only one set of plates to print them, and keep them under reliable guard.
We could organize a special gang to go after imitators, Taldo Kunnizo, the Telegraph Gangs Combine man said. Hunt down the makers of false certificates and kill them. If this special gang is efficient, it should discourage the practice.
If the gang is efficient enough, Kartho commented, it will eliminate the practice entirely.
Your notion is good, Lyssa, Dwallo Vallado said. If we add a few little hidden mistakes in the engraving, things that only those who regularly handle the script would notice, it might help. Kartho Alvararro noted that the representatives of the two feuding steel-gangs seemed to have put aside their shoot-on-sight enmity, and both seemed enthusiastically in favor of the proposal. Do you two think that you can work on that idea together without jumping at each other's throats over the Painted Hills business? he asked. Lyssa, I know you're good with drafting tools, you can work up a design, with Dwallo to help you.
You know, if we can make a go of this scheme, our gangs could probably get together on the Painted Hills mines. There's enough ore there for both of us, if we could figure out some fair way to divide it.
Well, how would this Trading Combine sup port itself? somebody asked. And how about possible disasters, like the cattle-plague of 274, or the Balsambo explosion? Wouldn't something like that still put the Combine out of business?
To the first question, Kartho said, the Combine will take a percentage, like a milling or distilling gang takes a percentage of the grain. It can be a very small percentage. As to the second, destruction of any kind of product will not affect the value of the script, because it will carry its own value when it trades for the products. Any script destroyed by fire or flood can be replaced if the holder can prove the destruction. We do have to guard against theft, but that is true of any valuable goods. I think we'll probably have to have a few special strong-rooms in different areas, and keep them well guarded. Small losses, even ones that would be major to any one gang, will simply even themselves out.
Look, Feerk; you remember reading about how the old Hoona River Railroad was put out of business in 65, when their only two locomotives and thirty of their cars were wrecked in a collision? Well, what would happen if somebody had a wreck like that now?
Feerk considered. If they belonged to the Railroad Combine, he said, they'd borrow an engine here and an engine there, and cars from all around, and the combine would get them new rolling stock as soon as possible, and let them trade for it as soon as they were able. A thing like that wouldn't interrupt service for more than a sleep-period or two. And besides, most of the railroad gangs have enough of a reserve- He stopped. I think I see what you're getting at. A combine like you're proposing would be too big to be hurt by any local disaster; Skystabber's too big to be knocked down with a cannon. The meeting continued, with only short interruptions for food and rest, while the sun crawled thirty degrees across the sky. They hammered out compromises, raised and disposed of objections, convinced each other that the idea would, indeed, work. Finally Brammo Lazanthro rose to his feet. Ladies and gentlemen, we've been at this for the last two sleep-periods-and none of us have taken much time out to do the sleeping. I think we have the basic idea straight in our minds. Let's take a vote on it now, as to whether or not we want to commit our gangs and combines to the scheme. After that we can work out the little details. Personally, I'm getting sleepy, and I wouldn't mind having a decent meal instead of arguing with a cup of tea in one hand and a meat-roll pastry in the other.
Yes, let's vote already, Reeda Sambro, the advisor of the Munitions Combine agreed. Here, this will do!
She was sitting on Kartho Alvararro's right. She picked up a sheet of paper, wrote on it, and passed it to the man on her right. When the paper had gone once around the table, it ended at Kartho. He looked at it and smiled. Well, out of forty-two of you, everybody has voted for the new combine but Ranna Satallano, who thinks the plan isn't fully enough developed to vote on yet, and Bordo Rakkajoro, who thinks such a combine would subject the members to compulsion which might end up infringing upon their individual rights. I take it, then, that the rest of you speak for your gangs or combines, and will bring them into the Trading Combine. Ranna, will you go along with the majority? The representative of the Chemicals Combine shrugged. I only thought we ought to work it out in detail before we positively adopt it, she said, but we can finish it from the inside as easily as from the outside. So, if the rest of you are determined to start the Combine here and now, then my group is in.
You, Bordo?
It's going to mean that this Trading Combine will get too much power, Bordo Rakkajoro, who represented a combine of traders from the other side of the Central Mountains, said. But, if my crowd doesn't join, the rest of you just might squeeze us out of business. All right, my combine's in-under protest!
You won't regret it, Bordo. And I suggest that we put you to the task of drawing up a set of rules for us that will prevent that from happening. Now, let's all get some sleep. After we're all awake we can get down to the business of organizing this.
Chairs scraped as the conference broke up. Dwallo Vallado and Lyssa Grassano were going out of the room arm in arm; if their new friendship rubbed off on their two gangs, the meeting would have been worthwhile for that alone. Reeda Sam-bro fell into step with Kartho as they went out.
Where did you get this idea from, anyhow, Kartho? she asked.
On top of Skystabber, he told her seriously.
He related the conversation among the victorious climbers as they rested at the summit, that time thirty years ago. I've always wanted to see the other side of Shining Sister. I probably shan't live long enough to, but I'm going to do what I can toward starting the process. That was why I organized a gang to get into the aircraft business, back when the only aircraft were rocket-assisted gliders, and everyone thought I had eaten too much fungus, and was seeing that-which-was-not. They stepped out onto the veranda and looked up at their world's companion-planet.
Another thing more immediate, he continued. My gang is working on a new engine; one that burns a volatile fluid refined from petroleum. It works like the present coal-gas engines, but has more power. Before we can get it into general use, though, we'll have to have a large and dependable fuel supply. There isn't enough petroleum in the Central Mountains, but it's fairly sloshing around a few hundred lance-lengths under the ground everywhere in the Rim Country. If we can get a railroad out there, we'll have thousands of aircraft flying all over the planet in the next ten years. At first the world was cautious in accepting the new trading certificates, but by the middle of the Fourth Century, when Kartho Alvararro was dead and Reeda Sambro was an old woman, they had so revolutionized the economy of Hetaira that the barter system, in use for so many thousands of years, had just about faded away. It seemed fantastically remote, even to those old enough to remember having done business under it. Heretofore, technological progress had been a slow, steady push; now it became a torrent after the breaking of an ice-gorge.
By the Year of the Railroad 416, there were railroads across the plains to the Rim Country, and a four-track line completely circling the planet along the Horizon Zone, and lines into the Outer Hemisphere clear to the Central Sea. There was no place left on the planet to which motor-truck caravans or huge transport and passenger airplanes did not go. The telegraph had been superceded by the telephone, and the telephone would have been generally superceded by the radio except that Hetaifa, like Thalassa, possessed only the slightest trace of an ionosphere. Radio waves had nothing to bounce off of, and headed in straight lines to outer space.
Line-of-sight broadcasting was possible, and in some areas chains of relay stations were set up on mountain tops. There was a powerful station on the very summit of Skystabber, reached by a series of cable-lifts that were of themselves an engineering project of the first magnitude. There was also an observatory there, and a great telescope was kept aimed at Shining Sister, even though all that could be seen was the unbroken expanse of the Ocean Sea, the few small islands of the Horizon Zone, and an occasional cloud bank.
