She thought about it. “Why, even in your day how did they deal with a shoplifter who was found to be a kleptomaniac?”
“Okay. But look, take a present-day embezzler. Suppose you had someone working in the part of the data banks dealing with what we would have called banking—the credit records. Someone in a position to so alter the records that he deposited to his own account, say, twice as much credit as the other citizens are granted from their Guaranteed Annual Income. What would you do with him?”
Edith sighed. “Jule, in the first place he would have no motive for doing such a thing since he already receives all that he needs. You can’t eat more than three or four meals a day, you can’t wear more than one outfit of clothes at a time, and you can’t sleep in more than one bed. As things are now, most people don’t use up their yearly quota of credit. What in the world would you do with twice as much? But if such a thing did happen, then obviously the person involved would be mentally deranged and the Medical Guild would treat him.”
“And during the time he was being treated, he would still continue to receive his Guaranteed Annual Income?”
“But of course.”
Julian sighed. “Okay. All right. But how about rape? Don’t tell me there are no longer crimes of passion.”
“Yes, there are; seldom, but sometimes. As to rape, sex is so free, so easily available to all, that only a terribly upset person would resort to rape for sexual satisfaction. In which case, once again, it is a matter for the Medical Guild to treat the poor harassed individual.”
“But suppose in committing the rape, the rapist kills the girl. Suppose the rapist is a sadist.”
She looked at him in puzzlement. “But surely even in your time a sadist was given psychiatric care rather than punishment.”
“Sometimes,” he muttered. “Sometimes they were executed, or given life imprisonment.”
“How terrible!”
“Suppose it’s a crime against the State?”
“What State? There is no State. The State was an institution for the purpose of maintaining a class-divided society. It was organized with laws, police and military, courts and prisons to maintain the status quo under slavery, feudalism, capitalism, or state-capitalism, which was what the Soviet-type communism was really all about. Today, we have no State, since we have no class or classes to be kept subjugated.”
“What I mean is, suppose someone comes along who wants to overthrow this so-called Golden Rule society of yours. What do you do with him?”
“Nothing. Any citizen is free to advocate any change.”
“But suppose he wants to overthrow the system?”
“If he could convince the majority of our citizens that his plan was appropriate, then it would be done.”
Julian was becoming impatient with her. “But suppose he knew that he couldn’t convince a majority and resorted to force and violence. In the old days, in the United States, it was theoretically legal to advocate a basic change. The country was full of minority parties and groups who wanted to establish everything from socialism to anarchy. But you had to advocate that it be accomplished by peaceful means—the ballot. When somebody came along such as the IWW, the Wobblies, or the early Communist Party, who favored armed revolt, the police, the F.B.I., and everyone else landed on them like a ton of bricks.”
The idea was so foreign to Edith that she had to think it over. She said finally, “He’d have his work cut out trying to accomplish it. For one thing, in your day half the citizens in the country seemed to possess guns. If not, they were easily obtained, even after various laws were passed to control them. But today I would estimate that not one person in fifty owns a firearm. Hunting is no longer a popular sport; we tend to protect our wildlife. Those who do have guns usually have small-caliber ones for use in marksmanship clubs. They would hardly be suitable for armed revolt.”
“But suppose a few thousand people did arm themselves,” he argued, “even with these small-caliber guns, and seized the government?”
“Jule, Jule, you know enough about the manner in which the country is run now to realize how silly that sounds. We have no government in the sense that applied in the middle of the twentieth century. The government that we do have, if that is what you want to call it, is not in control of the country. Let us suppose that you did seize all the members of the Production Congress. What would have been accomplished? They are not in control of the nation. The production of the industries and the other necessary work would go on. We would simply elect new members to a new Production Congress. But it is all so ridiculous. What would motivate such people? What would they gain that they do not have now?”
Julian grabbed up his notes and fumbled through them. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Somebody—it was you, I think—told me that narcotics were legal now. Anybody can try them.”
“Yes. If you become addicted and wish to be cured, the cure is immediate and you develop a built-in allergy to the drug you were on. Both a physical and a psychological allergy, so that you both don’t want to ever try it again and physically are incapable of standing it.”
Julian sighed. “It was one of the big problems of my time.”
Edith said, “When drugs were first legalized and taken out of the hands of the criminals, they were given quite a go. Then, as with pornography in Denmark, and later in the States, particularly after an extensive educational campaign in the media, use fell off to the vanishing point. I tried smoking opium once, out of sheer curiosity.”
“You did? You don’t look the type. What happened?”
She was indignant. “But of course I’m the type. I keep telling you that I am an amateur anthropologist. Man has smoked, eaten, and drunk opium for thousands of years.”
“What happened to you?”
“The first time? It made me sick.”
“What do you mean, the first time? What happened the second time?”
“It wasn’t so bad. I had some very nice dreams. I had read up on it, so I knew I had a good chance of becoming ill the first few times I smoked. But I went on and saw it through.”
He shook his head. “It simply doesn’t seem like Edith Leete. Did you finally wind up taking the cure?”
“The cure?”
“For addiction.”
“Oh, Jule. Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t become addicted. I simply tried it a few times and then stopped. It bored me.”
Julian said, “Okay. Let’s get back to crime. What I want to know is what the hell happened to the criminals when these changes of yours started taking place? What happened to the Mafia, the Syndicate, Cosa Nostra? What did you have to do, shoot them all?”
She rubbed a hand down over her face in a gesture of despair. “Jule, Jule.” Then, “The average criminal in any society is not an affluent man. For every Lucky Luciano—was that his name? It’s been years since I studied it.”
“Yes, Lucky,” Julian said. “As a matter of fact, I met him a couple of times in Naples. Well, it was Capri, actually, just off the coast. He was a rather quiet type. Quite a gentleman, in a way. But there was death behind his eyes.”
“Good heavens, how wonderful,” she said. “For me it’s history. It’s like your telling me you knew, well, Lincoln or General Grant or someone like that.”
Julian said, “My family began its fortune during the Grant administration. There were many opportunities, if you had the connections.”