He pointed at the auto-bar and while Leete went through the routine of getting their drinks, Julian continued mopping his quarters.
As he searched, he kept up the former trend of their conversation. “What would you say the present socioeconomic system could be called?”
Leete waired a moment, as though considering the question. “Actually,” he said, “I rebel against labels—capitalism, feudalism, socialism, communism, liberalism, technocracy.” He snorted in deprecation. “I even rebel against the use of our back-patting term Republic of the Golden Rule. It’s all a great deal of nonsense. Society is in a continual state of flux. Under the chattel slavery system of Greece, and later on, you had a certain amount of feudalism, and you even had an emerging capitalist class. What do we have today? Once again, I rebel against labels, but I suppose if you must have terminology, I would say…” he hesitated, “…well, I would say we have somewhat of a combination of syndicalism, socialism—the DeLeonist type—technocracy, and meritocracy, as that brilliant Englishman Michael Young called it.”
Julian’s mop began to buzz. He traced it down. The bug was neatly located immediately below his phone screen, right on his desk.
He said, “Meritocracy? That’s a new one for me. It must have come along after I went into hibernation.”
He went on into his bedroom, and Leete, now completely aware of the game though not quite understanding it, continued to talk.
“I’m not sure when he wrote his book. I think it was entitled The Rise of the Meritocracy. You can look it up at your leisure in the International Data Banks. He foresaw something like our present Aptitude Quotient. I think his formula was I.Q. plus effort equals merit. As I recall, he projected himself into the year 2034 A.D. His basic idea was that even in his day it was no longer enough to be somebody’s nephew to obtain a reasonable post in society. Under Meritocracy, experts in education and selection apply scientific principles to sift out the leaders. In a word, you must show ‘merit.’ Then he asks the question, is this an undivided blessing?”
Julian had returned to the living room after completely exploring his apartment. He went over to his desk and upended the phone screen. Then he took his small pocket knife out and regarded the bug for a long quizzical moment. He opened the knife and carefully pried the listening device off—it had been held onto the surface by a suction cup—and examined it carefully.
In his time, in the cutthroat field of international finance, Julian West had often had his phones tapped, his quarters bugged, and, in turn had done the same to his rivals. However, he himself was not up on the mechanics of the thing. There were experts to be hired for such matters, private detectives and such. He had long had, on full-time retainer, two former C.I.A. men.
There were two tiny screws on the surface. Using the small blade of the knife, he carefully unscrewed them, while his companion continued to watch him. The top came off and inside was a wonder of miniaturization which he understood not at all. He thought about it for awhile, deciding finally that almost anything he did would destroy its effectiveness. But that wasn’t all that he wanted; when somebody came to check out why the bug had become inoperative, he didn’t want it to appear as though it had been tampered with. With a shrug he inserted the small blade of the knife under a tiny disk and pried it free.
Then he put the top on the bug and screwed the tiny screws back into place. He returned the device to its exact original position, and then replaced the phone screen.
He turned to Dr. Leete. “All right, there was only the one bug in my place. I’ve bollixed it: we can talk.”
“Should we return to my apartment and do the same to those?”
Julian shook his head. “Whoever is monitoring your apartment—and mine—would be irritated, but not surprised, if one of the bugs became inoperative. The things are delicate. But if all of them suddenly failed to transmit, then they’d know they’d been discovered and would figure out some new method of tapping you—tapping us. Leave the bugs in your apartment, warn Martha and Edith about them, and simply watch what you say.”
The other was completely out of his depth. “But who would care what any of us say?”
Julian sighed. “I suspect you know. Or, at least, I suspect that you suspect. The other day, after you’d had your two run-ins with the young hoodlums, Edith suggested you get in touch with Security and report the incidents. But you clammed up. Why?”
Leete was irritated. He said, finally, “Julian, though you have been literally cramming new information ever since we revived you, there are still a million-fold matters you do not understand.”
Julian was not above impatience himself. “As I am fully aware of, Raymond; however, there are some fields in which you people today are babes in the woods compared to me. Now, who are the people down enough on you to bug your apartment and attack you physically?”
Leete sighed. “Julian, for about a month now we’ve been telling you that this is no Utopia. There is no such thing as Utopia. Society is in a continual condition of flux. Changes have been made, are being made, and will be made.”
“Okay. So what are the changes that you are actively advocating that so irritate some other elements that they’re out to get you?”
“That isn’t the way I would put it.”
“That’s the way I put it,” Julian said emphatically. “Though in full realization that the world has manifold times as much knowhow as it did when I was put to sleep, I suspect that it has lost some of the knowhow of my day, that it has atrophied away.”
The academician sighed again. “Julian—Martha, Edith, and I have given you a brief rundown on today’s socioeconomic system. Government, if you can call it that, is largely in the hands of the Production Congress composed of representatives from all the guilds, which represent every necessary type of endeavor. Aside from local civic government, there is a skeleton national government, which you might compare to the House of Lords and the Queen and Royal Family of England at the time you went into stasis. Mostly show. A leftover from the past society, just as the Queen and the House of Lords were leftovers from feudalism.”
“All right, you’ve already told me about that.”
“Very well. I am prominent in a group that wishes to take a further step in attaining a society that will fulfill the promises and hopes that are at the root of our whole human civilization.”
“And that step is…?”
“World government. You see, there are three of what you used to call ‘world powers’ existing today. There are some minor differences in our socio-economic systems, but they are only minor. My associates and I believe it is time to take the step of uniting these three: United America, Common Europe, and the Soviet Complex. Once that is accomplished, one by one the so-called undeveloped countries will certainly apply for admission. Some of the small states that still exist in the East, the Near East, South America, and especially Africa, can only follow.”
“Why is all this important?”
“Amalgamating the three great powers would join our technologies and bring greater efficiency. There would be one great Production Congress, rather than three. And, so far as I see, the anachronistic national civic governments could be allowed to wither away completely, since there would no longer be foreign countries to deal with, with their ambassadors, consuls and so forth.”
Julian said, “That brings something else to mind. What’s happened to the underdeveloped countries in the last thirty years?”
’They are still largely undeveloped and backward. There are still small nations in, say, the Near East that are absolute monarchies—sheikdoms. As the value of oil decreases in the world, they become ever poorer. There are still military dictatorships in South America; their economies, unable to compete on such world markets as remain, subject their peoples to worse and worse poverty.”