First Cycle Part 4

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 Gra.s.sano, the advisor of advisors of the Gra.s.sano 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 of hit hand-weapon.

The Gra.s.sanos 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 friends.h.i.+p was drunk, the Vallado and Gra.s.sano representatives ostentatiously looked in opposite directions. Then Kartho Alvararro tapped on the rim of his gla.s.s 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 a.s.sume 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 acc.u.mulate! 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 Gra.s.sano 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, inadvertently 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 s.h.i.+pment 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 Gra.s.sano think it's a good idea, I, for one, won't argue," a representative of a coal-mining and c.o.ke-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 boxof 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 combine, even if they don't come in, should be willing to take the certificates in trade. They'll be a.s.sured 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 makes rogel-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 n.o.body else could get hold of," Lyssa Gra.s.sano 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 seewhat 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 pa.s.sed 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 sc.r.a.ped as the conference broke up. Dwallo Vallado and Lyssa Gra.s.sano were going out of the room arm in arm; if their new friends.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+ning 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-a.s.sisted 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 slos.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.senger 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 Thala.s.sa, possessed only the slightest trace of an ionosphere. Radio waves had nothing to bounce off of, and headed in straight lines to outer s.p.a.ce.

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 s.h.i.+ning 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.

Then, in the year 416, a black smudge was seen to obscure one group of islands. It was not a cloud, and through it the observers were sure they could make out glimpses of orange flame. At first it was supposed that a volcano had broken into activity, but when the smoke cleared, in less than one waking-period, there was no discernable alteration in the shape of the islands.

This was the first date which could be fixed in both Hetairan and Thala.s.san history; it was the day of the burning of the Zabashan fis.h.i.+ng-fleet by the s.h.i.+ps of Gir-Zashon.

Chapter Ten

However scrupulously the historian may shun value-judgments, the Thala.s.san Fish Oil War can only be characterized as a senseless and barbarous folly. The Ocean Sea was so vast, and its marine life so prolific, that the whole population of Thala.s.sa might have exploited its resources for all eternity without having occasion for conflict. The war began without legitimate reason or necessity, and it ended in the ruin of every partic.i.p.ant.

Only the kingdoms and city-states of Dudak remained neutral, carrying on trade with both Gir-Zashon and Thurv, and with the Sabashan-Vashturan-Nimshan-Gvardan allies.

The war ended in the year 1950 of the Tissean Era, with the defeat of Gir-Zashonan and Thurv. The whole of Thurv was overrun and conquered by Vashturan and Gvardan armies; several powerful Gir-Zashonan fleets were destroyed in naval battles on the Central Sea; two of the three semi-autonomous states of Gir-Zashon became embroiled in a civil war growing out of mutual accusations of cowardice and treachery. The war itself, begun without formal declaration, ended without formal peace. Everybody was tired of it; even the nominal victors were glad to see its end. The credit for finally halting the war goes to the then Successor of Puzza, and Interpreter of The Books of Tisse, Avaraff XVI, who finally managed to get an agreement from all parties; negotiating with the states of Gir-Zashon and Thurv through one Horv-Haddrov, a Gir-Zashonan general who had been taken prisoner several years before and converted to the Puzzan creed at Tullon.

Although the peace obviously saved the Gir-Zashonan states from extinction, there was bitter dissatisfaction within Gir-Zashon. All three of the semi-autonomous governments were overthrown, the people accusing them of having stabbed the armies and fleets of Gir-Zashon in the back. Horv-Haddrov, returning to Karkasha, was dragged from the rostrum while attempting to explain the terms of the peace and lynched with shocking brutality. Other members of the peace party, especially the clergy of Puzzanism, were the victims of savage pogroms. In the century which followed, at least fifty governments were toppled from power in the three states of Gir-Zashon; their political backgrounds ranging from absolute monarchy to total anarchy.

It was at Karkasha, near the mid-mark of this century of disorder, that Dov-Soglov wrote his brief thesis, The Organic State. Dov-Soglov was no superst.i.tious and sub literate Tisse, dictating his random thoughts over a pot of beer to a drinking-crony while he pegged the soles of peasants' sandals. His portraits, admittedly idealized, show a serious and intelligent face, with much darker head down than was usual among the Hoz- Hozgaz race, and the close-set eyes, small ears, and pointed nose of the mountain people of the interior. He was for some time a student in one of the secular universities at Karkasha, and, simultaneously, held some minor clerical post in one of the kaleidoscopically-s.h.i.+fting governments of the period. His studies seem to have been in the field of anatomy and what pa.s.sed, in his culture, for biology.

The state, according to his book, was a.n.a.logous to a living organism, and obeyed laws parallel to the laws of organic growth and evolution. Each individual was therefore a part of the organism, and could have no function or duty save the service of the organism-as- a-whole. Not "no higher duty" than service to the state, but no other duty at all.

Individualism was a species of social cancer. As the body is directed by a central nervoussystem, the state must be directed by a governing elite, to whom the "body-cells" must give absolute obedience for their own good.

Dov-Soglov lived only eight years after the publication of his book, but in that time he saw it become a subject of hot discussion all over the planet. The hierarchy of Puzzan Tisse'ism and the Zaithuan Congregations outdid one another in denouncing it; the latter because it was revolting to their individualistic principles, and the former because it proposed a rival authoritarianism too much like their own. Absolute monarchs and dictators approved it-with much suspicion and with reservations-and quoted or misquoted from it to support their authority. The workers and peasants, slave and free, hailed it as a promise of equality and fraternity for all. Workers and peasants tend to be out of touch with their own best interests. And adventurers saw in it a ladder to power.

Within twenty years of Dov-Soglov's death, there was a strong, if clandestine, Organicist movement on every continent around the Central Sea. Everywhere its existence was illegal and secret, its advocates slinking among the poor and oppressed with glowing promises of freedom and prosperity for all. There were governments, even formally democratic republics, which adopted parts of Dov-Soglov's political gospel and grasped more and more authority in the name of such meaningless abstractions as "the common welfare," or "the greatest good for the greatest number." Whenever possible, Organicists managed to infiltrate as many of their supporters as possible into such governments. This even happened in states which looked for spiritual guidance to the Puzzan Creed.

The end of the Fish Oil War had brought peace, but not prosperity to Thala.s.sa. With the exception of the Confederacy of Dudak, which had stayed out of it, every nation around the Central Sea either stood on the crumbling edge of bankruptcy, or had gathered skirt in hand and leapt headlong over it. The introduction of new weapons had forced all of them into rearmament programs far beyond their financial or technological capacities.

The fis.h.i.+ng fleets were devastated; merchant s.h.i.+ps, the red corpuscles of trade, were mostly sunk or burned in port. Blockades and commerce-raiding had forced every continent into a shabby self-sufficiency based on a make-do or do-without philosophy.

Everybody was poor, and almost everybody went to bed hungry nine times out of ten.

Gir-Zashon was the first to go completely Organicist. Conditions there were worse than on any other continent, with the exception of Thurv, still occupied after a century by Zabashan troops. The last of a long series of progressively weaker governments could no longer suppress the hungry rioters, and collapsed into a shambles of blood and destruction. The Organicists, organized, disciplined, armed with secretly acc.u.mulated stores of weapons and ammunition, and reinforced by comrades from overseas, waited until the whole continent was in anarchy and then took over in a series of almost bloodless coups. The bloodshed would come later.

Hetairan history had not been without its b.l.o.o.d.y pages. There had been no national wars, for there were no nations; but as gangs grew larger, conflicts between them approached the ferocity and intensity of wars. There had been the Sugar Valley Ma.s.sacre; people still talked of the wiping out of the Halzorros and their bandit mercenaries. There had been fights between migratory labor-gangs. There had been the Painted Hills War, between the Vallados and the Gra.s.sanos, which ended after the first Timber Lake Conference as a result of the friends.h.i.+p and collaboration between Dwallo Vallado and Lyssa Gra.s.sano. This collaboration may have resulted in more than that-it was rumoredthat Dwallo may have been the father of Lyssa's next child. This was somewhat shocking.

Liaisons with wanderers were acceptable, but with that one exception, s.e.x outside of the gang was discouraged by an ancient, unspoken taboo. After all, the gang had to raise the offspring of any such liaison. The rumor itself was regarded as almost indecent, the only form of indecency existing in any Hetairan language, although the mere act of attempting to trace the paternity of a child was, in itself, regarded as in extremely poor taste.

In one way the Trading Combine was a force for peace: gang wars were definitely bad for business. When, however, such clashes could not be averted, they were apt to be far more extensive, sanguinary, and destructive, as inter-gang connections grew. In the Fifth Century there was an oil-war in the Rim Country which lasted for five years; both sides used armored trucks and dropped bombs of blasting-paste from transport planes. The Trading Combine tried to stop it by cutting off credit to the two warring oil-gangs, but this only hurt business even more, and both gangs were able to borrow from independent banking groups. It proved, at least, that the Trading Combine was not the all-powerful monster that so many small gangs had feared.

No gang or combine, however, was ever able to so completely dominate any geographical area as to resemble, even remotely, a national state; and such a thing as government was an idea that never developed. Armed individuals protected themselves.

Hetairans of good will were always willing to band together to put down brigandage.

Roads were built out of common need, and paid for by the users. Fire protection was supplied by a gang, and paid for like an insurance policy. Police protection could be supplied the same way, if anyone felt the need.

Hetaira was a world of order in the absence of law; if violence between individuals was common, and violence between gangs possible, at least the greater violence that was possible between nations was completely unknown. The individual's rifle or revolver was less of a burden to him than a nation's armies and air-fleets would have been, and far less of a danger to his neighbors. There was very little incentive for an arms-race.

The day after the smoke-smudge was observed on s.h.i.+ning Sister, the newspapers all over the planet carried the story; and for years to come they were filled with the continuing controversy as to just what this signified. There had never, since the establishment of the observatory on Skystabber, been any trace of volcanic activity on s.h.i.+ning Sister. While this proved nothing, it gave support to the view that the smoke was the result of some artificial process caused by intelligent beings.

The radio station began beaming signals toward the other planet. They went unanswered for the excellent reason that there was not, on Thala.s.sa, at that time, a single radio to receive them or reply. A closer watch was kept through the big telescope.

Occasionally smaller smudges were detected on the open water. Some optimists were of the firm opinion that these were signal-fires, but the prevalent-and correct-opinion was that these were burning s.h.i.+ps. One scientists approached absolute truth when he opined that it was probably the sign of a great gang-war in progress.

The interest in s.h.i.+ning Sister was powerful and universal, deeply involving the emotions of everybody. For over a thousand years it had been known that she was a duplicate world, formed, along with their own, from the wreckage of a single planet in a great stellar cataclysm. In the Hetairan social organization the family, as such, was non- existent. The only blood relations.h.i.+p commonly recognized was that of mother and child, and between children of the same mother. The binary planetary system they were a partof was, perhaps inevitably, conceived of as-in poetic terms-the two children of a single mother, who gave her life in their birth.

For thousands of years they had looked toward the unmoving globe in the sky, first with wonder, then as a reliable landmark, and finally, when their astronomers established the relations.h.i.+p, with familial love. And now it seemed strongly probable that s.h.i.+ning Sister had children with whom they could communicate.

An att.i.tude of something less-or something more-than logic, perhaps? Though extremely logical, the Hetairan was not exclusively logical. About some things he could be pa.s.sionately emotional. And so, compelled by the two poles of logic and emotion, the s.h.i.+ning Sister Combine was formed by the scientists of the Rendezvous Combine, and, almost immediately, heavily subscribed by the general public.

The six who sat in the ornate-shabby room were variously clad. Yev-Lorov, paring an apple-like fruit with his knife, wore the leather smock of a carpenter, but there was a heavy pistol thrust through the loop in which a carpenter usually carried his square, a powder-flask in one side pocket and a book in the other. Tav-Jarkthov and Olv-Yakkov wore military uniforms, one of cavalry and the other of the Brigade of Naval Infantry; they were playing cards at one end of the table. Thav-Thabov, in the sleeveless jerkin of a merchant's clerk, had one of his pistols apart and was cleaning it. Rav-Razkov, in his student's gown, with an artillery private's carbine slung from his shoulder, was peering at the t.i.tles of the books on the shelves across the room. And Zov-Zolkov lounged, seemingly asleep, in the armchair once occupied by the High Courts judge whose private chamber this room had been; except for the tip of one ear, which would twitch occasionally, he was utterly motionless.

The group shared two things in common: they each had a white armband bearing, in black, a cubist humanoid figure, stylized to the point of inhumanity; and they each had the bitter, hate-filled, utterly humorless expression of the complete fanatic.

"Cattle!" Thav-Thabov said contemptuously. "They riot for bread-and they begin by destroying the bakeries!"

"'And on the farm,'" Rav-Razkov quoted, "'there are the cattle, and the herdsmen, and there are those who tell the herdsmen where to drive the cattle, and what to feed them, and which are to be milked, and which bred, and which slaughtered."

"You can quote the Citizen-Originator about anything at all," Yev-Lorov admired.

"Me, I have to carry The Organic State in my pocket, but you have it all in your head."

"If you'd spent five years in prison as I did," Rav-Razkov said, "you'd know it all by heart, too."

There was a sound outside the door; the faint rattle of a musket-sling, as the sentinel brought his weapon to the ready. Only the apparently somnolent Zov-Zolkov heard it; his hand went to the pistol inside his jacket, and then he relaxed as the door opened and a man in the trousers of a workman, the coat of an infantry captain, and a steel helmet, entered.

"Obedience, Citizen First Controller," he greeted Zov-Zolkov. "All the gates of the city are in our hands. Citizen-Lieutenant Niv-Hazrov's force controls the warehouse district, and Citizen-Captain Yav-Novrov sends word from the rural districts that the seizure of grain and meat-animals is progressing, and what little resistance he had encountered has been dealt with according to The Words of Instruction."Zov-Zolkov smiled-not a pleasant smile. "Excellent, Citizen. Have you notified Citizen Trav-Vasov? Then do so at once; he has his instructions."

"Obedient to your will, Citizen First Controller!" The messenger turned and went out, closing the door behind him.

"The cattle will be lowing to be fed, soon," Zov-Zolkov said. "The herdsmen have been told under what conditions to feed them... Citizens, we will now proceed to construct the Organic State."

The construction was neither swift nor nice. Peasants and workers who had gulped the doc trines of Dov-Soglov whole, without pausing to savor the taste or texture, which is to say without examining the details or understanding just what their position in the Organic hierarchy was to be, had to be made to understand that they were cattle on the farm of Zov-Zolkov; bone-cells and muscle-cells in the body of the State, of which the Party was the brain and Zov-Zolkov the First Controller. The understanding usually came painfully.