“Are you saying we can’t deal with that, Joe? We can. We have secretly formulated herbicides which can instantly kill the plants. Our production crews have these on hand. At a moment’s notice we can shut either country down and move to others that treat us better. There’s a waiting list, Joe, a long one. Greed goes on forever.”
“You’ve got an answer for everything, haven’t you, Winston? With a lot of luck you might keep it going for quite a while. I don’t happen to think so. That’s why I plan to get out. Considering how many people have access to the facilities, and the efforts our enemies are making to get hold of clippings I think it’s only a question of time before somebody breaks our monopoly.”
“We’ve been very careful about that, Joe. Everybody that has physical contact with the plants gets checked, every body cavity, even under the fingernails and toenails. Anybody who leaves the reservation has to spend a week in quarantine first…”
“The experts tell me even a microscopic sample, even a single cell, would be enough. The company’s got some powerful enemies, Winston. All the industrial nations, and especially the Japanese. With them it’s a matter of face. Get out while you can, Winston. That’s what I’m going to do.”
“What do you want, Joe? Why’d you come here? Did you come to gloat? To say, ‘I told you so’? OK, so you told me so, and I didn’t listen, and—”
“And now you’re broke, and you’re out of a job. You’re a pariah because you were Rossi’s cat’s-paw and nobody trusts you.”
“What do you want, Joe?”
“I thought maybe you’d agree to talk to Ms. Ariko, Winston. She’s in town. She still represents the Japanese company.”
“You mean the Japanese government.”
“Whatever.”
“What’s the point, Joe? There’s nothing left of the gold business anymore. Gold’s cheaper than iron these days. They’re using it to plate sewer pipes. The ’15 Mercedes’s body is plated before the paint goes on. Pretty soon they’ll be wrapping chewing gum in gold foil, and arresting people for littering the streets with it.”
“There’s still a way the lilies can be economically profitable, Winston. That’s what she wants to talk about.”
“How, Joe? How do you break the Chinese monopoly? Harvesting the plants is labor-intensive. They’ve got the world’s cheapest labor—even India can’t compete with them. It’d be bad enough if there was any chance the market would improve, but it won’t. Gold’s practically indestructible, and it’s already reached the point where the price of new metal and recovered scrap are in competition.”
“OK, so gold’s finished…”
“Everything’s finished, Joe. What happened to gold will happen to anything we try to refine. It’s too much like a free lunch, that’s the trouble. When money grows on trees, it isn’t worth the effort of collecting.”
“It is if you can eat it and live on it, Winston. It is if you can use it to clean the air of pollutants you can’t avoid generating in other necessary processes.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I, Winston, at least not the technical stuff. But Ms. Ariko does, and she needs somebody who knows the ropes. She needs somebody who’s had practical hands-on experience with the lilies.”
Duffy had been standing in the doorway of Black’s small room. Now, without being invited, he walked over to the chair across from where Black sat. He knew now that what had at first appeared to be an upswing mood had tumbled back again to despair. His mission would need more work, lots of it. “She needs you. She wants to offer you a job, Winston.”
“After what I did?”
“Because of what you can do, Winston.”
“But, I’m just a mining engineer, Joe. She must know that. I don’t have the expertise she wants. There are molecular biologists who’ve forgotten more about the lilies than I ever knew, and horticulturists who—”
“Specialists, Winston, specialists. People with the narrow view. Yes, you’re right, these are the pick and shovel guys, and they’re a dime a dozen.
“But you’re a rare bird, Winston. You’re an unspecialist executive who may not know the details but who does know which direction to steer and how to get the most out of underlings. That’s the only reason Rossi tolerated you. Rossi needed you. You made the machine go.
“The reason you did was you had the curiosity. You were intrigued by the plants. You wanted to see what would happen. That’s why you tolerated him. No, Ms. Ariko and her colleagues don’t care that you’re just a mining engineer any more than Edison’s customers cared he never finished grade school. Edison was probably the least talented chemist, the most inept physicist, and the worst mechanic in his own shop. He had the sense to hire the best help because he knew his own strength was as a theorist. His curiosity generated harebrained ideas but that alone was not enough. His long suit was the ability to drive other men to make the hardware necessary to get the ideas working. That made money for everybody.”
He paused, and gazed into Black’s dejected puss. The confused stare told him more persuasion was needed. He let fly. “How many Edisons have there been, Winston? Maybe more than you think. Edison made the biggest splash but what about the guy who invented the zero, or the paper clip? Does anybody even know who they were? Why’d they do it? Why did Roentgen put his hand in that X-ray stream? What possessed Luigi Galvani to electrify dead frog’s legs? Why was Galileo watching that chandelier when he should have been praying?”
Duffy paused again, searching Black’s face for change. He thought the man’s expression was a trifle less pessimistic and he plunged on again. “Tell me, Winston, was your curiosity sated by the knowledge that gold is not real wealth?”
“No,” Black answered for the first time, “I guess it wasn’t. Only, I just don’t feel an overwhelming urge to—”
“Winston, what’s the biggest problem facing the human race today?”
“Hum, uh, well, uh, overpopulation, maybe?”
“Close. Actually, there’s more than enough area to handle a hundred times our present numbers, or so the experts tell me. The trouble is, lots of it’s in the wrong place—too cold, too little water, poor soil—the objections go on and on.
“But, what if—”
“What if we could extend the living space onto the continental shelves, use the resources of the sea to feed it, to house it, to supply power, fresh water…”
“Like I said, Winston, the list goes on and on. And, there are lots of materials that are only trace elements in the terrestrial crust but are abundantly available from seawater. Some of these are uncommonly useful, too. For instance, if you had a choice of any material what would you use in your space vehicle’s high-temperature components?”
“Beryllium, of course. Nothing else even comes close.”
Duffy moved in for the kill. “What you really mean, Winston, is that you’d use it if you could get it. How much would you expect to pay for a kilogram?”
“Too much, Joe. The universal production’s probably the lowest of any element, it’s in the wrong part of the periodic table, not very survivable. And, the principal terrestrial ore’s a semi-precious gemstone. It’d take some work, but—”
“Time was they didn’t gold-plate sewer pipes.”
“You’re making lots more sense than I thought you would, Joe. I’m glad you came.”
“Got you thinking, did I?”
“You did. At least enough to make me realize that even if we got it free it’d still be worth plenty to the customer. Besides, it’s not the only rare, useful element. Tell you what, set it up, let me know when, and where, and I’ll be there.”