If Nikki had made it into the room with us. If she hadn’t, I was hoping to quietly leave.
Time to test out the bag ladies. I whistled the opening bars of Beethoven’s fifth.
One of the bag ladies scratched her head and adjusted her mask. Provided I hadn’t just managed the world’s worst coincidence, the scratching in response to our pre-agreed upon signal told me Nikki had managed to made it into the room with me.
Now it was time for signal two: I whistled a few bars of the 2112 Overture. The music triggered a response from Lincoln, “Time for a little chat Mr. Dobrynin,” he said as he flipped off a switch in front of Dobrynin. The din of the game being piped into the room was suddenly cut off.
“What the hell are you doing?” Dobrynin said flipping the switch back on and the sounds of the fans again gushed in. “Am I going to have to spank you?”
Lincoln reached over and switched off the speaker off again. He paused a moment in the abrupt silence, then ripped the control pedestal off the floor and hurled it across the room where it shattered the mirrored wall. That takes care of that, I thought.
The bag lady next to Nikki raised her gun; Nikki raised hers a little faster. The barrel of Nikki’s shotgun lined up with the unarmored area of the bag lady’s neck. The report rattled the room’s windows.
The bag lady turned slightly, stumbled, then fell, asleep before she hit the floor as the stun chemical coursed through her veins.
One of the boys pulled a knife—how he’d hidden it on his person is beyond me—and advanced toward Nikki.
“You don’t want to do that,” I suggested, Beretta leveled strategically at his groin.
I guess he did since he threw the knife at me. Fortunately, his athletic skills were about as skimpy as his attire. The blade went careening past me and shattered the mirror behind me.
“Dobrynin,” I said, “you’re going to have some major redecorating to do when we leave.”
Nikki fired again, putting the knife thrower down for his nap and quickly aced the other two boys as well just to be safe. I reminded myself to ask her where she’d learned to shoot so well if and when we got out of our present predicament.
At this moment, taking his part as a leader of the world to heart, Sammy Dobrynin fell on the floor and threw a tantrum.
I don’t exaggerate.
It was a real chew-the-rug, scream-and-holler, curse-and-threaten, hold-your-breath-and-turn-purple tantrum. If we could have sold tickets, we might have retired right there.
Lincoln and I started laughing and the show came to an abrupt halt.
“You… You dirty boys,” he sputtered as he got up onto his chubby knees.
“Why don’t you just shut up, you tub of lard, and listen to what Mr. Hunter has to say,”
Lincoln said.
Another tantrum. But this one didn’t last as long.
“Are you ready to listen, fatso,” Lincoln asked, demonstrating that he had missed his calling as a diplomat. I also figured he’d hate himself when he realized that we’d filled him full of chemicals in order to get him to bring us in and insult his boss. No doubt he’d be on the run after this. Sammy didn’t look too forgiving.
“What do you want?” Dobrynin growled, easing his frame into his chair, his face glowing a furious red.
“Well,” I said, ” I need to talk to you. We need to have an understanding.”
“Tell me what you want so I can get back to my game.”
“Yeah, we don’t want to let the state of the world interfere with our ball game,” I said. “We want you to agree to quit hounding us and to release the anti-gravity technology to the public.”
“You don’t beat around the bush, Mr., uh…whatever your name is. Just what do you stand to gain from that?”
“My life. I want to be left alone.”
“Just what would I gain?”
“Dobrynin, you get all the wealth created by cheap energy.”
He laughed. “What makes you think I need more wealth?”
“You must. Otherwise you’d quit trying to get rid of me and my new invention. But I don’t aim to compete with your monopoly. I figure that once you start turning out the rods, all of us will benefit. And you’ll get even richer. Just leave me alone and my secret is yours.”
Again Dobrynin laughed. And laughed. He all but fell out of his chair. Finally, he wiped the tears out of his eyes and spoke, “You fool. I already have the formula. You don’t understand how things work. Did you ever wonder why we haven’t circled the Earth with solar cells and beamed microwave energy down to Earth? Or how about fusion power? If we took advantage of what we know, of our technology, your anti-gravity wouldn’t make a dent in things. Why are there steel shortages when we could mine the Moon? Did you know we’ve closed our operations down there?”
I said nothing.
“Want to know why?”
“I’ll bite.”
“Because the operations would be successful. Our goal isn’t to help the unwashed masses. Our goal is to keep the peons poor. And it isn’t easy to keep them poor so we can retain control of all the naughty girls and boys on this planet.”
“He’s crazy,” I said to Lincoln.
“No,” Lincoln said. “And he isn’t alone in his thinking. The industrial cartel agrees with him.
More or less. Listen to what he’s saying. It makes sense.”
“Yes,” Dobrynin continued. “Think about history. When do you have revolts and uprisings?”
“Whenever the people don’t have enough. When they’re oppressed.”
“Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong,” Dobrynin whined, shaking his finger at me. ” If you’d study history—really study history, not this tripe we have them telling the school brats—
you’ll discover that revolts and turmoil occur when people start to get a higher standard of living.
Or when they see their neighbors getting it and they aren’t. During real times of hardship—the dark ages, the depressions, hyper-inflation—people knuckle under. They look to their government to help them. They become beggars—not fighters.”
“And that’s what you want?”
“You bet. By slowly lowering the standard of living, by letting them the peasants expect a price rise on their utilities, we gradually gain control of everything. As long as they sit at home and watch the 3V or come to my games… People like me retain our power and we all live in peace. Since we started manipulating the government, there hasn’t been anything other than border squabbles and on occasional terrorist act.”
“But…” It was so crazy, I didn’t know what to say. Because in addition to being crazy it had a terrifying ring of truth to it.
“You,” Dobrynin continued, “would throw in a monkey wrench into things if you had your way with releasing the technology of anti-gravity. Right away everyone is going to want a flying vehicle; but not everyone can have one. The skies can’t hold them all. And if even a few have them, my rocket system will go broke. Next everyone is going to expect cheap energy; what happens to the people who work in the power plants? Are they going to want to be on the public fares while their neighbors continue to work? No. We’ll just have more friction. Those who’ve lost their jobs to your new technology won’t be able to keep up with the others. We’ll have protests and—finally—riots. And who finally loses? The government. And who runs the government?”
“The people,” I said. And felt instantly foolish as both Lincoln and Dobrynin laughed.
Dobrynin sneered. “You must think you’re in the good-old-days. No wonder you want to give power away. No, we can’t let that happen. Now why don’t you leave and let me watch my games?”
He turned back and watched the games. Lincoln sat still, having come to the end of his program. I stood and fumed for what seemed like ten minutes, wondering if I might still be able to do something else. I hadn’t expected to be able to reason with Dobrynin; Yet I had hoped that perhaps we could get everyone off our backs so that we could go about our work. And I had hoped against hope that we’d be able to get my anti-gravity technology released to those on Earth who really needed it to raise their standard of living.