“Or the peace of an empire,” Giles said darkly.
“Any peace is better than none,” Rosalie reminded him.
“True,” said Esmeralda. “Peace will allow justice to prevail and education and the arts to flourish.”
“But there will never be any peace if we don’t establish it on Talipon first,” Morgan reminded her. “Malthus’s Law will see to that.”
“Yes, the fundamental principle of preindustrial economics,” a young man sighed, “that population increases geometrically, but food production only increases arithmetically.”
“Yes, Jorge, we all know,” a middle-aged woman said sourly. “Four people times four people equals sixteen people, but four bushels of grain plus four bushels of grain only equals eight bushels. Without industrial techniques, there will always be more people than there is food, until …”
“Plague, starvation, or war kills off so many of them that there’s enough food for everyone,” Rosalie sighed.
Gianni listened in horror, wanting to cry out, to scream, but held bound by sleep.
“Then there’ll be peace and plenty for all—until the people outmultiply the food supply, and the whole cycle begins all over again.”
“And again, and again, and again,” Morgan said darkly. “So any suffering that comes from our plan will be less than there would be without it.”
Easy enough for him to say—it was not his people who would die, not his mother and sister who would be raped and sold into slavery, not his house and goods that burned!
“Can backward people like the feudal serfs in the western continent ever accept modern techniques?” Giles wondered.
“They can if they’re taught,” Rosalie said sternly, “and if they’re taught it as a way of getting rich—which doesn’t take much, for a serf.”
“Yes,” Esmeralda said slowly, “and that’s the kind of teaching that merchants can do so well. The synergy of the peasant mentality and mercantile greed can produce amazing results.”
“So can the groupthink of the tribes in the North,” said Giles. “If they all talk long enough and loudly enough at a powwow, they’ll forget that greed is wrong, and start farming instead of hunting.”
“Then we can sneak in nuclear-powered matter converters, limited so that they won’t produce precious metals, until each lord has one,” Morgan said.
Even in his half-sleep, Gianni’s scalp prickled at the unfamiliar words. Were these false Gypsies really sorcerers?
Morgan’s next words confirmed it. “When each lord has a machine that will produce any trade goods that he wants for free, he’ll have a distinct advantage over the merchants, and not one single aristocrat will be able to resist the temptation of going into trade.”
Resist the temptation! They would ruin the merchants! Heaven knew the noblemen were already taking enough of the merchants’ money in the cities in which aristocrats still ruled. The taxes and official monopolies were already punishing, and the lords insisted that the merchants rent their stevedores and drivers from the aristocrats at extortionate rates. If, on top of all that, they began to undersell the merchants with goods they could produce from nothing, they’d annihilate the traders completely! No, they wouldn’t do it by underselling, Gianni realized—if the lords became merchants, they wouldn’t let anyone compete with them. Trading would be made illegal, for any but the aristocrats’ hirelings! They would have monopolies that couldn’t be broken!
“But the matter converters really do have to be limited,” Esmeralda said anxiously. “If the lords could produce gold and silver just by throwing lumps of lead and stone into a box, then pushing a button …”
“Of course not,” Morgan said impatiently. “Why do you remind us about this every time we discuss it, Essie? If they could make gold and silver whenever they wanted to, they wouldn’t have any reason to go into trade!”
Gold from lead! They were sorcerers! Or, at the least, alchemists …
“Greed will make the contes and the doges forget their petty feuds and band together to compete with the merchants,” Morgan said, with satisfaction. “They only need to see that they actually have a chance of taking over the merchants’ trade and getting all the money the merchants are getting now. They won’t be able to, of course—the merchants are too skilled, too deep entrenched, and the aristocrats will be far behind them in learning mercantile theory.”
“But they will learn,” Rosalie pointed out. “We really can turn the lords into merchants.”
Could they really be so naïve? Such was not the lords’ way—once banded together, they would send their armies to wipe out the merchants completely, to send the buildings of Pirogia crashing down into the lagoon from which they had risen! Oh, they would leave a few merchants, bound by taxes and loans and dependence on noble patrons, to do the trading for them, and would take all of the profits to themselves—or nineteen parts out of twenty, at least. No, whoever these people were, their plan was disastrous, at least for the merchants—and for the education and culture of which they were so fond, for a great deal of that had come from the patronage of merchants, not aristocrats. Oh yes, the artists would do well under the contes—as long as they only wished to paint portraits of noble faces, and scenes of martial valor. The poets would do well, as long as they wanted to write heroic romances and heap praise on their local conte and contessa, as Ariosto had praised Lucrezia Borgia in his Orlando Furioso. Yes, the artists and poets would do well, if they were tame—except that there weren’t enough noblemen to support more than a handful of artists. But there were merchants enough to support scores!
“No, our plans must be nurtured,” Morgan said complacently.
“Yes,” Giles agreed, “and if Medallia really tries to wreck them, we’ll have to find a way to stop her.” Even in his dream, Gianni’s spirit clamored for him to wrap his fingers around Giles’s throat. Harm that beautiful, merciful woman? Never!
The “Gypsies” seemed to think so, too. There was a horrified silence; then Esmeralda said, “You aren’t talking about killing her, surely!”
“No, of course not,” Giles said quickly—too quickly. “I only mean to catch her somehow, and keep her from leaving again.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Rosalie said darkly.
Morgan said, “Shame on you, for even thinking about depriving another sentient being of her freedom!”
“No, no, of course not,” Giles said quickly. “But there must be some way to make sure she can’t do us any harm.”
They were silent for a minute or so; then Esmeralda said, “Warn all the people against a renegade Gypsy woman?”
“Oh, no!” Rosalie said. “They might turn into a mob, accuse her of witchcraft or sorcery, and burn her at the stake!”
“Surely these people aren’t that barbaric,” Esmeralda protested.
Gianni shriveled inside. He knew full well that his people could be very barbaric indeed, when it came to believing in magic. But how could these people be so concerned about charges of witchcraft, when they themselves were sorcerers?
“She was so kind and so gentle,” Esmeralda said plaintively. “I can’t believe Medallia would actually try to fight us!”
“Not fight, no,” Rosalie agreed, but she sounded doubtful. “Perhaps decoying her into some outlying region, where there’s a good deal of disease that needs curing …”
“She’d see through that,” Esmeralda said. “We could send Dell through the villages dressed as a minstrel, to sing about the plight of orphans. In a month, he’d have everyone talking about orphans, and Medallia might set up an orphanage … ”