Monroe-Alpha’s smile was just a little patronizing. “But you were an urban dweller. Naturally the life is unfamiliar to you.”
“What you describe may be unfamiliar, but the circumstances aren’t. I followed the harvest two summers, I’ve done a certain amount of camping, and I used to spend my summers and Christmases on a farm when I was a kid. If you think there is anything romantic, or desirable per se, in getting along without civilized comforts, well, you just ought to try tackling a two-holer on a frosty morning. Or try cooking a meal on a wood-burning range.”
“Surely those things would simply stimulate a man. It’s the primitive, basic struggle with nature.”
“Did you ever have a mule step on your foot?”
“No, but — ”
“Try it some time. Honest-I don’t wish to seem impertinent, but you have your wires crossed. The simple life is all right for a few days vacation, but day in and day out it’s just so much dirty back-breaking drudgery. Romantic? Hell, man, there’s no time to be romantic about it, and damned little incentive.”
Monroe-Alpha’s smile was a little bit forced. “Perhaps we aren’t talking about the same thing. After all, you came from a period when the natural life had already been sullied by over-emphasis on machines. Your evaluations were already distorted.”
Smith himself was beginning to get a little heated. “I hate to tell you, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. Country life in my day, miserable as it was, was tolerable in direct proportion to the extent to which it was backed by industrialization. They may not have had electric light and running water, but they had Sears Roebuck, and everything that implies.”
“Had what?” asked Hamilton.
Smith took time out to explain mail-order shopping. “But what you’re talking about means giving up all that-just the noble primitive, simple and self-sufficient. He’s going to chop down a tree-who sold him the ax? He wants to shoot a deer-who made his gun? No, mister, I know what I’m talking about-I’ve studied economics.” (That to Monroe-Alpha, thought Hamilton, with a repressed grin.) “There never was and there never could be a noble simple creature such as you described. He’d be an ignorant savage, with dirt on his skin and lice in his hair. He would work sixteen hours a day to stay alive at all. He’d sleep in a filthy hut on a dirt floor. And his point of view and his mental processes would be just two jumps above an animal.”
Hamilton was relieved when the discussion was broken into by another chime from the annunciator. It was just as well-Cliff was getting a little white around the lips. He couldn’t take it. But, damn it, he had it coming to him. He wondered how a man could be as brilliant as Monroe-Alpha undoubtedly was-about figures-and be such a fool about human affairs.
The plate showed McFee Norbert. Hamilton would have liked not to have admitted him, but it was not politic. The worm had the annoying habit of dropping in on his underlings, which Hamilton resented, but was helpless to do anything about-as yet.
McFee behaved well enough, for McFee. He was visibly impressed by Monroe-Alpha, whose name and position he knew, but tried not to show it. Toward Smith he was patronizingly supercilious. “So you’re the man from out of the past? Well, well-how amusing! You did not time it very well.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ah, that would be telling! But ten years from now might have been a better time-eh, Hamilton?” He laughed.
“Perhaps,” Hamilton answered shortly, and tried to turn attention away from Smith. “You might talk to Monroe-Alpha about it. He thinks we could improve things.” He regretted the remark at once, for McFee turned to Monroe-Alpha with immediate interest.
“Interested in social matters, sir?”
“Yes-in a way.”
“So am I. Perhaps we can get together and talk.”
“It would be a pleasure, I’m sure, Felix, I must leave you now.”
“So must I,” McFee said promptly. “May I drop you off?”
“Don’t trouble.”
Hamilton broke in. “Did you wish to see me, McFee?”
“Nothing important. I hope to see you at the Club tonight.”