“Wait, now.” Economics was never my strong suit, but this was obvious. “You’re going to drive your own prices down. There can’t be that big a market for old paintings and—”
“Right, precisely. But most of these ships aren’t carrying such specialized cargo. The closest one, for instance, is on Tangiers, aimed for Faraway. It holds nearly a hundred thousand cubic meters of water.”
“Water…”
“Old passenger liner, flooded the damn thing. Just left a little room for ice expansion, in case the heating—”
“Because on Faraway—”
“—on Faraway there isn’t one molecule of water that men didn’t carry there. They recycle every drop but have to lose one percent or so annually.
“Tonight or tomorrow I’m going to call up Faraway and offer to sell them 897,000 kilograms of water. At cost. Delivery in six years. It’s a long time to wait, but they’ll be getting it for a hundredth of the usual cost, what Hartford charges.”
“And you’ll lose a bundle.”
“Depends on how you look at it. Most of my capital is tied up in small, slow spaceships; I own some interest in three-quarters of the interplanetary vessels that exist. If my scheme works, all of them will double in value overnight.
“Hartford, though, is going to lose more than a bundle. There are 237 other planets, out of 298, in a position similar to Faraway’s. They depend on Hartford for water, or seed, or medical supplies, or something else necessary for life.”
“And you have deals set up—”
“For all of them, right. Underbidding Hartford by at least a factor of ten.” He drank off the rest of his coffee in a gulp.
“What’s to stop Hartford from underbidding you?”
“Absolutely nothing.” He got up and started preparing another cup. “They’ll probably try to, here and there. I don’t think many governments will take them up on it.
“Take Faraway as an example. They’re in a better position than most planets, as far as their debt to Hartford, because the Second Empire financed the start of their colonization. Still, they owe Hartford better than ten billion CU’s—their annual interest payment comes to several hundred million.
“They keep paying it, not because of some abstract obligation to Hartford. Governments don’t have consciences. If they stopped paying, of course, they’d dry up and die in a generation. Until today, they didn’t have any choice in the matter.”
“So what you’re doing is giving all of those planets a chance to welsh on their debts.”
“That bothers you?” He sat back down, balanced the cup on his knee.
“A little. I don’t love Hartford any more than—”
“Look at it this way. My way. Consider Hartford as an arm of the government, the Confederation.”
“I’ve always thought it was the other way around.”
“In a practical sense, yes. But either way. A government sends its people out to colonize virgin lands. It subsidizes them at first; once the ball is rolling, it collects allegiance and taxes.
“The ‘debt’ to Hartford is just a convenient fiction to justify taking these taxes.”
“There are services rendered, though. Necessary to life.”
“Rendered and paid for, separately. I’m going to prove to the ‘colonies’ that they can provide these services to each other. It will be even easier once Hartford goes bankrupt. There’ll be no monopoly on starships. No Confederation to protect patents.”
“Anarchy, then.”
“Interesting word. I prefer to call it revolution… but yes, things will be pretty hectic for a while.”
“All right. But if you wanted to choreograph a revolution, why didn’t you pick a more comfortable planet to do it from? Are you just hiding?”
“Partly that. Mostly, though, I wanted to do everything legally. For that, I needed a very small planet without a charter.”
“I’m lost again.” I made myself another cup of coffee and grieved for the lack of bourbon. Maybe if I went outside and took a deep breath…
“You know what it takes to charter a planet?” Chaim asked me.
“Don’t know the numbers. Certain population density and high enough gross planetary product.”
“The figures aren’t important. They look modest enough on paper. The way it works out, though, is that by the time a planet is populated enough and prosperous enough to get its independence, it’s almost guaranteed to be irretrievably in debt to Hartford.”
“That’s what all those immigration forms are for. Half of those stacks are immigration forms and the other half, limited powers of attorney. I’m going to claim this planet, name it Mazel Tov, and accept my own petition for citizenship on behalf of 4,783 immigrants. Then I make one call, to my lawyer.” He named an Earth-based interplanetary law firm so well-known that even I had heard of it.
“They will call about a hundred of these immigrants, each of whom will call ten more, then ten more, and so on. All prearranged. Each of them then pays me his immigration fee.”
“How much is that?”
“Minimum, ten million CU’s.”
“God!”
“It’s a bargain. A new citizen gets one share in the Mazel Tov Corporation for each million he puts in. In thirty minutes MTC should have almost as much capital behind it as Hartford has.”
“Where could you find four thousand—”
“Twenty years of persuasion. Of coordination. I’ve tried to approach every living man of wealth whose fortune is not tied up with Hartford or the Confederation. I’ve showed them my plan—especially the safeguards on it that make it a low-risk, high-return investment—and every single one of them has signed up.”
“Not one betrayal?”
“No—what could the Confederation or Hartford offer in return? Wealth? Power? These men already have that in abundance.
“On the other hand, I offer them a gift beyond price: independence. And incidentally, no taxes, ever. That’s the first article of the charter.”
He let me absorb that for a minute. “It’s too facile,” I said. “If your plan works, everything will fall apart for the Confederation and Hartford—but look what we get instead. Four thousand—some independent robber barons, running the whole show. That’s an improvement?”
“Who can say? But that’s revolution: throw the old set of bastards out and install your own set. At least it’ll be different. Time for a change.”
I got up. “Look, this is too much, too fast. I’ve got to think about it. Digest it. Got to check out the ship, too.”
Chaim went along with me halfway to the air lock. “Good, good. I’ll start making calls.” He patted the transceiver with real affection. “Good thing this baby came along when it did. It would have been difficult coordinating this thing, passing notes around. Maybe impossible.”
It didn’t seem that bloody easy, even with all those speedy little tachyons helping us. I didn’t say anything.
It was a relief to get back into my own element, out of the dizzying fumes of high finance and revolution. But it was short-lived.
Things started out just dandy. The reason the control board was dead was that its cable to the fuel cells had jarred loose. I plugged it back in and set up a systems check. The systems check ran for two seconds and quit. What was wrong with the ship was number IV-A-I-a. It took me a half-hour to find the manual, which had slid into the head and nestled up behind the commode.
“IV” was fusion power source. “IV-A” was generation of magnetic field for containment thereof. “IV-A-I” was disabilities of magnetic field generator. And “IV-A-I-a,” of course, was permanent disability. It had a list of recommended types of replacement generators.
Well, I couldn’t run down to the store and pick up a generator. And you can’t produce an umpty-million-gauss fusion mirror by rubbing two sticks together. So I kicked Mlle. Biarritz’s book across the room and went back to the dome.