“There!” Guy blurted. “He was a flat to spend all those years in school if he doesn’t get paid any more than the unskilled driller.”
Lampado leaned forward again. She said, unbelievingly, “Don’t they pay students on Earth to go to school?”
Guy Thomas closed his eyes for a moment’s communion with higher powers. “No,” he said. Then, “How much do you pay a student, such as our hypothetical chemist, to go to school?”
“The same as anybody else,” she retorted, as though the question couldn’t have been sillier. “For every hour he puts in as a student, he accrues one hour. By attending school he is adding to his value to society. He is thus contributing to the common store of value.”
“Look,” Guy demanded. “Suppose he’s really stute, see? He keeps on going to school. Every time they throw an exam at him, he gets top marks. Okay, he likes school. He keeps going and going, taking more and more courses. Finally he’s sixty years old, or whatever. How old do you have to be to retire on Amazonia? Don’t you see, if he spent his whole life studying and getting paid as much as anybody, he’d have never put in a lick of useful work in his life!”
The Amazonians, including the major and her two warriors, began to laugh.
Aeasus, chuckling, said, “Actually, of course, graduate students in our upper schools participate in both teaching and in research in their respective fields. I am afraid, Citizen Thomas, that it would be quite difficult for your scholar not to enrich our culture as a result of his learning. Much of it, I am afraid, would rub off, willy-nilly.”
Guy brushed that aspect aside. “All right, now look. According to you, each hour of time expended is worth just as much as any other hour.”
Thasius interrupted here. “What could be more fair? It is the one thing in which all men and women are equal, without exception. We all, no matter of what sex, no matter the age, how intelligent or stupid, how quick of reaction or slow, have exactly twenty-four Earth basic hours a day. Surely nothing is more just than to realize that each person’s time is as valuable to her, as any other person’s. It is the ultimate substance of existence. What a crime is perpetuated if one person steals anothers, by whatever means.”
Guy Thomas took a deep breath. “All right, let’s make this simple. Suppose you have a man making shoes. His reactions are quick, he’s ambitious, he’s diligent. He can make, say, four pairs of shoes in a work day. All right. Next to him is another fella. He’s slow and strictly a cloddy. Even if he tries, and possibly he doesn’t, he can’t make more than two pair of shoes a day. You think the hours the stute man puts in should equal the hours the cloddy does?”
They all laughed again, to his irritation.
Aeasus said, “You make it too simple. In the very old days, when shoes were manufactured as you describe, then truly the first man’s time was worth more than that of the second. But long ago that situation changed. It was found that six men working together—three of them, perhaps, cutting leather, another two sewing it together, another hammering on the heels—could perhaps produce seventy-two pair of shoes. Three times as many, per man, than if they had been working as individuals. Division of labor multiplies man’s efforts. Of this six-man team, one was the fastest, one the slowest, the others inbetween, but their combined efforts brought their average up to three times the production of the fastest.”
“All right,” Guy muttered, “I’ll take that. “Still, the fastest—”
“Just a moment, I haven’t finished. Shoes are no longer produced by teams of six men, bent over a cobbler’s bench. Instead, a highly trained technician watches gauges and dials and the reports of computers, while the automated factory in which he devotes his hours, pours out shoes at the rate of tens of thousands a day. This fabulous productivity of his is the accumulated legacy of the race. It does not belong to one person or group of persons, no matter how intelligent, quick or ambitious. That automated plant can operate only because half a million years ago one of our common ancestors first hit upon the use of fire. Only because twenty thousand years ago, perhaps, another ancestor devised the first wheel. Only because some long-forgotten Hittites stumbled upon the smelting of iron. And so on. A hundred, a thousand, a million of our more inventive ancestors had to live their lives to give us this legacy.
“Can this technician who prowls the gauges and dials of the automated shoe factory claim to be turning out thousands of shoes per hour through only his own time? Obviously not. It is the whole human race, down through the centuries, which is producing them. For him to be so vainglorious as to demand more for the hours he puts in than a slightly less intelligent or less agile man is presumptuous. That legacy of the ages belongs to the less stute as well as our most fortunately endowed.”
They were interrupted by a knock on the door which Clete guarded. She stiffed, opened it and peered out. She grunted and opened wide.
A young man entered and nodded his head respectfully to Lampado. “Madam, the Hippolyte will be ready to receive the representative from United Planets in ten minutes.”
“Very well,” the committee chairman told him. “That’s all.”
The messenger left, after sweeping Guy Thomas with inquisitive eyes. At least he didn’t giggle, Guy conceded sourly.
Lampado said, “We’ve spent too much time on nonessentials. But to sum it up, Citizen Thomas, Amazonia is as desirous as Avalon to exchange columbium for titanium. We suggest that the trade be based on the number of hours expended to produce the respective products. If this is unacceptable to Avalon, we welcome their further opinions on the subject.”
“That’s the message you wish me to take to Avalon?” Guy said.
The major, silent all this time, said, “Always subject, of course, to the approval of the Hippolyte.”
Lampado gruffed, “Of course.”
The commitee members began to come to their feet, stretching and smoothing out their togas and warrior’s cloaks.
Guy stood too and approached the major. “Look,” he said. “Brief me a little on this setup. The more I hear about the workings of your society, the less clear I seem to be. Do I understand that the Hippolyte is queen of this continent?”
Aeasus had overheard him. “Don’t be silly,” he snorted. “How could you have an institution as out of date as a feudalistic nobility in a culture as advanced as Amazonia? Even as figureheads kings and queens had largely disappeared before the first landing on Luna.”
The major glowered at him. “Let me handle this.”
The elderly scientist looked contrite. “Sorry, Major,” he said. “Out of my field, of couse.”
She turned her eyes back to Guy Thomas. “The term queen is antiquated. The Hippolyte is the elected head of the four phylons or tribes of the Paphlagonian Amazons. The office is held for life unless the electorate deposes her.”
Guy said, “Who composes the electorate?”
“The four heads of the phylons,” the major told him as though nothing was more obvious.
He cleared his throat. “All right. How do they get to be heads of the, uh, phylons?”
“Each phylon is composed of ten phratras. The elected heads of the ten phratras elect the chief of their respective phylon.”
Guy looked at her. “I know I’ll get to the bottom sooner or later,” he muttered. “Who elects the heads of the phratras?”