“We called them ‘suits’ a couple of days ago,” Todd put in.
“Yeah, that’s one word,” Peters agreed. “There’s others. But mainly, as a group they run just about everything, and they don’t turn loose of nothin’ they don’t have to.” He sighed again. “‘Cordin’ to Granpap, it’s always been like that, but it didn’t used to be this bad.”
“Are you saying that things have changed? That this is a new situation for your people?”
“Yeah. Well, sort of,” Todd said, and paused, thinking. “Years ago, there were factories all over,” he explained. “Just about every town had a little plant or two, making something to sell.”
“Then they started gettin’ real efficient,” Peters put in. “I only know this because of Granpap, he worked at one of them little factories Todd was talkin’ about. Anyways, they started figurin’ ways to get things done with less people. Then they got to makin’ the whole system more efficient, mainly by havin’ each plant just do what it did best, and buyin’ the rest of what it needed. And mostly it worked real good. Things was cheap, so it didn’t matter much there wasn’t so many people workin’ and makin’ good money.”
“They’d hire people from other countries, because they’d work cheaper, and that was because cheaper here was lots better than what they’d get at home,” Todd interjected. “That was bad for folks here, in the U.S. I mean, but it was starting to get better, because other places needed workers too, and they had to raise their pay to keep them from coming to the States to make more money. So it was all starting to even out.”
“Takin’ a little longer than folks at home liked,” Peters pointed out, “but yeah, it was all startin’ to look good.”
“Then the wrapheads blew up Paris,” said Todd gloomily. He didn’t continue, and Peters didn’t take up the slack.
After a pause Dreelig prompted, “Wrapheads?”
Peters stirred in his chair. “Yeah. There’s this bunch of folks, Ay-rabs they’re properly called. Accordin’ to Granpap, most of ‘em’s just regular folks, but a few of ‘em was real sore at the rest of the world. They’d blow things up, or kill people, or what have you, and then make a speech or get somethin’ on the net about how they was makin’ the world better for their people.”
“Some of them had a lot of money,” Todd supplied. “The place where they live has lots of oil, and most of our industry burns oil for energy. We’d buy oil from the Arabs, and then sell them stuff to get the money back.”
Dreelig nodded. “Again, a common pattern,” he said with a shrug. “You still haven’t clarified very much. Why were these Arabs so angry? And what are wrapheads?”
“We call ‘em wrapheads because a lot of ‘em, ‘specially the poor folks, wear a kind of hat made of a strip of cloth wrapped around and tied off,” Peters said, waving his hand around his head to indicate tying a turban. “And they got a religion called ‘Moslem’, all the holy people wear that kind of hat, like a badge of office or something.”
“And it was the religious people that were really mad,” Todd explained. “They’d preach to the people and get them mad, too.”
“Why were these Moslem religious so angry?” Dreelig asked.
Peters shook his head. “Don’t rightly know. There’s some Moslem people in town, down by where I live, and far as I could see they’re just folks. They do some funny things, like there’s certain foods they don’t eat because their religion says not, but the rest of us knew that, and we got along. Sometimes there’d be arguments and that, but nothin’ serious.”
“But the ones in their home places didn’t get along,” Dreelig suggested.
“Nope. And like we said, some of ‘em had a lot of money,” Peters said. “Some of the rich ones’d give money to the ones that liked to blow things up. And finally, one bunch got enough money to buy a atom bomb.”
“Atom bomb? You mean a nuclear explosive?” asked Dreelig, looking puzzled. “Those are not expensive. They aren’t too useful, because they leave such a mess behind. But they are used often in places where the mess doesn’t matter, like moving rocks out of the way or breaking them up when necessary.”
“Yeah, well, that may be real good in space, but like you say, they leave a real mess,” said Peters. “If all you got is where you live, it ain’t real good to have ‘em around. Anyways, one bunch of Ay-rabs got hold of a atom bomb, and blew up Paris.”
Dreelig looked at Peters in horror. “Do you mean that this Paris was a place? Where people lived?”
“Oh, yeah. Biggest city in Europe,” Peters told him. “Well, maybe not the biggest, but big enough. Millions of people killed, and a big mess, like you said.”
Dreelig nodded. “Yes. The system you described might be very fragile after such a shock.”
“Well, the way Granpap told it, that’s true, but it ain’t that simple,” said Peters. “What happened was, one of the big religious people was makin’ a speech on the net. Probably half the people in the world was watchin’ that speech, and right in the middle, just as he was tellin’ everybody about how the folks in Paris deserved it ‘cause they wasn’t Moslems, somebody blowed up Jerusalem, which is where he was speakin’ from, with another atom bomb.”
“Who did that?” Dreelig asked in horrified fascination.
“Don’t rightly know. Granpap, he said everybody that had atom bombs denied it,” Peters said. “But accordin’ to him, some reporters got in with a airplane and said it looked like it wasn’t just one atom bomb. Maybe a bunch of people all thought it looked like a good idea.”
“It wasn’t a good idea,” said Dreelig.
“They found that out,” said Peters.
“And then the economy collapsed?”
“Not right at first,” Todd put in. “But yeah, not long after that.”
Dreelig spread his hands. “We knew some disaster had occurred. We landed on the large landmass first, in the western part, what you call Europe, and visited other places. It was terrible.” He shook his head. “We thought it was a war. We’ve seen that before, and it’s part of what made us so cautious dealing with you. Your situation is bad, but most other places in the world are worse.”
“We know,” said Todd. “We’re in the Navy, remember? Mostly what the Navy does any more is patrol, trying to stop pirates and that.” He shook his head. “Actually, mostly we sit at the dock because there’s no money to run the ship. Point is, we’ve been other places. Europe, South America, like that.”
“Mar-say,” said Peters.
Todd winced. “Yeah. God, what a stink. And we couldn’t go ashore in Rome because there was some kind of disease. Same way in Rio de Janeiro. Buenos Aires was about like Marseilles. About the only halfway nice place was Havana. We had a lot of fun in Cuba, remember, Peters?”
“Yeah. There’s talk the U.S. might ask Cuba if they’d like to join up, and when we was in Cuba that was one of the big things to talk about. Some folks there are hot for it, but when I told Granpap that he about bust a gut laughin’.”
There was silence for a few minutes. Dreelig emptied his glass and set it down. “You still have not told me why you are willing that we Grallt should know enough to negotiate effectively with your people.”
“Yeah.” Peters slumped down in his chair. “Well, thanks to all that, there’s two kinds of people. One kind, like Todd was sayin’, they own the factories that’re still workin’, and they got a pretty good life. They get to go to school and learn about all kinds of things. So they get to be officers, and government folks, and that. And then there’s us.”
“The ones who don’t have jobs, you mean,” said Dreelig.
“That’s right,” said Todd. “Me’n Peters, we’ve got it good. We have jobs, and we get plenty to eat. But we both know people, lots of people, who don’t have either one.”