“Well, that’s your job, isn’t it? What did I make you Minister of Education and Propaganda for?”
“Obviously to send me to an early and miserable grave, for all the co-operation you give me. For the last year, I’ve been deafening you with the rising danger of Sutt and his Religionists. What good will your plans be, if Sutt forces a special election and has you thrown out?”
“None, I admit.”
“And your speech last night just about handed the election to Sutt with a smile and a pat. Was there any necessity for being so frank?”
“Isn’t there such a thing as stealing Sutt’s thunder?”
“No,” said Jael, violently, “not the way you did it. You claim to have foreseen everything, and don’t explain why you traded with Korell to their exclusive benefit for three years. Your only plan of battle is to retire without a battle. You abandon all trade with the sectors of space near Korell. You openly proclaim a stalemate. You promise no offensive, even in the future. Galaxy, Mallow, what am I supposed to do with such a mess?”
“It lacks glamour?”
“It lacks mob emotion-appeal.”
“Same thing.”
“Mallow, wake up. You have two alternatives. Either you present the people with a dynamic foreign policy, whatever your private plans are, or you make some sort of compromise with Sutt.”
Mallow said, “All right, if I’ve failed the first, let’s try the second. Sutt’s just arrived.”
Sutt and Mallow had not met personally since the day of the trial, two years back. Neither detected any change in the other, except for that subtle atmosphere about each which made it quite evident that the roles of ruler and defier had changed.
Sutt took his seat without shaking hands.
Mallow offered a cigar and said, “Mind if Jael stays? He wants a compromise earnestly. He can act as mediator if tempers rise.”
Sutt shrugged. “A compromise will be well for you. Upon another occasion I once asked you to state your terms. I presume the positions are reversed now.”
“You presume correctly.”
“Then these are my terms. You must abandon your blundering policy of economic bribery and trade in gadgetry, and return to the tested foreign policy of our fathers.”
“You mean conquest by missionary?”
“Exactly.”
“No compromise short of that?”
“None.”
“Um-m-m.” Mallow lit up very slowly, and inhaled the tip of his cigar into a bright glow. “In Hardin’s time, when conquest by missionary was new and radical, men like yourself opposed it. Now it is tried, tested, hallowed — everything a Jorane Sutt would find well. But, tell me, how would you get us out of our present mess?”
“Your present mess. I had nothing to do with it.”
“Consider the question suitably modified.”
“A strong offensive is indicated. The stalemate you seem to be satisfied with is fatal. It would be a confession of weakness to all the worlds of the Periphery, where the appearance of strength is all-important, and there’s not one vulture among them that wouldn’t join the assault for its share of the corpse. You ought to understand that. You’re from Smyrno, aren’t you?”
Mallow passed over the significance of the remark. He said, “And if you beat Korell, what of the Empire? That is the real enemy.”
Sutt’s narrow smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Oh, no, your records of your visit to Siwenna were complete. The viceroy of the Normannic Sector is interested in creating dissension in the Periphery for his own benefit, but only as a side issue. He isn’t going to stake everything on an expedition to the Galaxy’s rim when he has fifty hostile neighbors and an emperor to rebel against. I paraphrase your own words.”
“Oh, yes he might, Sutt, if he thinks we’re strong enough to be dangerous. And he might think so, if we destroy Korell by the main force of frontal attack. We’d have to be considerably more subtle.”
“As for instance—”
Mallow leaned back. “Sutt, I’ll give you your chance. I don’t need you, but I can use you. So I’ll tell you what it’s all about, and then you can either join me and receive a place in a coalition cabinet, or you can play the martyr and rot in jail.”
“Once before you tried that last trick.”
“Not very hard, Sutt. The right time has only just come. Now listen.” Mallow’s eyes narrowed.
“When I first landed on Korell,” he began, “I bribed the Commdor with the trinkets and gadgets that form the trader’s usual stock. At the start, that was meant only to get us entrance into a steel foundry. I had no plan further than that, but in that I succeeded. I got what I wanted. But it was only after my visit to the Empire that I first realized exactly what a weapon I could build that trade into.
“This is a Seldon crisis we’re facing, Sutt, and Seldon crises are not solved by individuals but by historic forces. Hari Seldon, when he planned our course of future history, did not count on brilliant heroics but on the broad sweeps of economics and sociology. So the solutions to the various crises must be achieved by the forces that become available to us at the time.
“In this case — trade!”
Sutt raised his eyebrows skeptically and took advantage of the pause. “I hope I am not of subnormal intelligence, but the fact is that your vague lecture isn’t very illuminating.”
“It will become so,” said Mallow. “Consider that until now the power of trade has been underestimated. It has been thought that it took a priesthood under our control to make it a powerful weapon. That is not so, and this is my contribution to the Galactic situation. Trade without priests! Trade alone! It is strong enough. Let us become very simple and specific. Korell is now at war with us. Consequently our trade with her has stopped. But — notice that I am making this as simple as a problem in addition — in the past three years she has based her economy more and more upon the atomic techniques which we have introduced and which only we can continue to supply. Now what do you suppose will happen once the tiny atomic generators begin failing, and one gadget after another goes out of commission?
“The small household appliances go first. After half a year of this stalemate that you abhor, a woman’s atomic knife won’t work any more. Her stove begins failing. Her washer doesn’t do a good job. The temperature-humidity control in her house dies on a hot summer day. What happens?”
He paused for an answer, and Sutt said calmly, “Nothing. People endure a good deal in war.”
“Very true. They do. They’ll send their sons out in unlimited numbers to die horribly on broken spaceships. They’ll bear up under enemy bombardment, if it means they have to live on stale bread and foul water in caves half a mile deep. But it’s very hard to bear up under little things when the patriotic uplift of imminent danger is not present. It’s going to be a stalemate. There will be no casualties, no bombardments, no battles.
“There will just be a knife that won’t cut, and a stove that won’t cook, and a house that freezes in the winter. It will be annoying and people will grumble.”
Sutt said slowly, wonderingly, “Is that what you’re setting your hopes on, man? What do you expect? A housewives’ rebellion? A Jacquerie? A sudden uprising of butchers and grocers with their cleavers and bread-knives shouting ‘Give us back our Automatic Super-Kleeno Atomic Washing Machines!’?”
“No, sir,” said Mallow, impatiently, “I do not. I expect, however, a general background of grumbling and dissatisfaction which will be seized on by more important figures later on.”
“And what more important figures are these?”
“The manufacturers, the factory owners, the industrialists of Korell. When two years of the stalemate have gone, the machines in the factories will, one by one, begin to fail. Those industries which we have changed from first to last with our new atomic gadgets will find themselves very suddenly ruined. The heavy industries will find themselves en masse and at a stroke the owners of nothing but scrap machinery that won’t work.”