And—in contradistinction to all the rest—there was Mor, the one Donal would have most liked to have at his side; but whose pride had driven him to place himself as far from his successful younger brother as possible. Mor had finally taken service with Venus, where in the open market that flourished on that technological planet, he had had his contract sold to Ceta; and now found himself in the pay of Donal’s enemy, which would put them on opposite sides if conflict finally came.
Donal shook himself abruptly. These fits of depression that took him lately were becoming more frequent—possibly as a result of the long hours of work he found himself putting in. Brusquely, he broke open the signal from Gait.
Donal:
The news about New Earth will have reached you by this time. The coup d’etat that put the Kyerly government in control of the planet was engineered with troops furnished by Ceta. I have never ceased to be grateful to you for your advice against leasing out units to William. But the pattern here is a bad one. We will be facing the same sort of internal attack here through the local proponents of an open exchange for the buying and selling of contracts. One by one, the worlds are failing into the hands of manipulators, not the least of which is William himself. Please furnish us with as many field units as you can conveniently spare.
There is to be a General Planetary Discussion, meeting on Venus to discuss recognition of the new government on New Earth. They would be wise not to invite you; so come anyway. I, myself, must be there; and I need you, even if no other reason impels you to come.
Hendrik Gait Marshal, Freiland.
Donal nodded to himself. But he did not spring immediately into action. Where Gait was reacting against the shock of a sudden discovery, Donal, in the situation on New Earth, recognized only the revelation of something he had been expecting for a long time.
The sixteen inhabited worlds of the eight stellar systems from Sol to Altair survived within a complex of traded skills. The truth of the matter was that present day civilization had progressed too far for each planet to maintain its own training systems and keep up with progress in the many necessary fields. Why support a thousand mediocre school systems when it was possible to have fifty superb ones and trade the graduates for the skilled people you needed in other areas of learning? The overhead of such systems was tremendous, the number of top men in each field necessarily limited; moreover, progress was more effective if all the workers in one area of knowledge were kept closely in touch with each other.
The system seemed highly practical. Donal was one of the few men of his time to see the trouble inherent in it.
The joker to such an arrangement comes built in to the question—how much is a skilled worker an individual in his own right, and how much is he a piece of property belonging to whoever at the moment owns his contract? If he is too much an individual, barter between worlds breaks down to a series of individual negotiations; and society nowadays could not exist except on the basis of community needs. If he is too much a piece of property, then the field is opened for the manipulators—the buyers and sellers of flesh, those who would corner the manpower market and treat humanity like cattle for their own gain.
Among the worlds between the stars, this question still hung in argument. ‘Tight” societies, like the technological worlds of the so-called Venus group— Venus herself, Newton and Cassida—and the fanatic worlds of Harmony and Association, and Coby, which was ruled by what amounted to a criminal secret society—had always favored the piece of property view more strongly than the individual one. “Loose” societies, like the republican worlds of Old Earth, and Mars, the Exotics—Mara and Kultis—and the violently individualistic society of the Dorsai, held to the individual side of the question. In between were the middling worlds—the ones with strong central governments like Freiland and New Earth, the merchandising world of Ceta, the democratic theocracy of St. Marie, and the pioneer, underpopulated fisher-planet of Dunnin’s World, ruled by the co-operative society known as the Corbel.
Among the “tight” societies, the contract exchange mart had been in existence for many years. On these worlds, unless your contract was written with a specific forbidding clause, you might find yourself sold on no notice at all to a very different employer— possibly on a completely different world. The advantages of such a mart were obvious to an autocratic government, since the government itself was in a position to control the market through its own vast needs and resources, which no individual could hope to match. On a “loose” world, where the government was hampered by its own built in system of checks from taking advantage of opposing individual employers, the field was open for the sharp practices not only of individuals, but of other governments.
Thus, an agreement between two worlds for the establishment of a reciprocal open market worked all to the advantage of the “tighter” of the two governments—and must inevitably end in the tighter government gaining the lion’s share of the talent available on the two worlds.
This, then, was the background for the inevitable conflict that had been shaping up now for fifty years between two essentially different systems of controlling what was essentially the lifeblood of the human race—its skilled minds. In fact, thought Donal, standing by the open wall—the conflict was here, and now. It had already been under way that day he had stepped aboard the ship on which he was to meet Gait, and William, and Anea, the Select of Kultis. Behind the scenes, the build-up for a final battle had been already begun, and his own role in that battle, ready and waiting for him.
He went over to his desk and pressed a stud, speaking into a grille.
“I want all Chiefs of Staff here immediately,”-he said. “For a top-level conference.”
He took his finger from the stud and sat down at the desk. There was a great deal to be done.
PROTECTOR II
Arriving at Holmstead the capital city of Venus five days later, Donal went immediately to a conference with Gait in the latter’s suite of rooms at Government Hotel.
“There were things to take care of,” he said, shaking hands with the older man and sitting down, “or I’d have been here sooner.” He examined Gait. “You’re looking tired.”
The Marshal of Freiland had indeed lost weight. The skin of his face sagged a little on the massive bones, and his eyes were darkened with fatigue.
“Politics—politics—” answered Gait. “Not my line at all. It wears a man down. Drink?”
“No thanks,” said Donal.
“Don’t care for one myself,” Gait said. “I’ll just light my pipe … you don’t mind?”
“I never did before. And,” said Donal, “you never asked me before.”
“Heh … no,” Gait gave vent to something halfway between a cough and a chuckle; and, getting out his pipe, began to fill it with fingers that trembled a little. “Damned tired, that’s all. In fact I’m ready to retire—but how can a man quit just when all hell’s popping? You got my message—how many field units can you let me have?”
“A couple and some odds and ends. Say twenty thousand of first-line troops—” Gait’s head came up. “Don’t worry,” Donal smiled. “They will be moved in by small, clumsy stages to give the impression I’m letting you have five times that number, but the procedure’s a little fouled up in getting them actually transferred.”
Gait grunted.
“I might’ve known you’d think of something,” he said. “We can use that mind of yours here, at the main Conference. Officially, we’re gathered here just to agree on a common attitude to the new government on New Earth—but you know what’s really on the fire, don’t you?”
“I can guess,” said Donal. “The open market.”
“Right.” Gait got his pipe alight; and puffed on it gratefully. “The split’s right down the middle, now that New Earth’s in the Venus Group’s camp and we—Freiland, that is—are clear over on the nonmar-ket side by way of reaction. We’re in fair enough Strength counting heads as we sit around the table; but that’s not the problem. They’ve got William— and that white-haired devil Blaine.” He looked sharply over at Donal. “You know Project Blame, don’t you?”
“I’ve never met him. This is my first trip to Venus,” said Donal.
“There’s a shark,” said Gait with feeling. “I’d like to see him and William lock horns on something. Maybe they’d chew each other up and improve the universe. Well .. . about your status here—”
“Officially I’m sent by Sayona the Bond as an observer.”
“Well, that’s no problem then. We can easily get you invited to step from observer to delegate status. In fact, I’ve already passed the word. We were just waiting for you to arrive.” Gait blew a large cloud of smoke and squinted at Donal through it. “But how about it, Donal? 1 trust that insight of yours. What’s really in the wind here at the Conference?”