Norton said, “A corporation is a — well, a company. That is, a group of individuals banded together to do something for profit. To manufacture a product, to perform a service, to—”
“A profit,” said Vornan idly. “What is a profit?”
Norton bit his lip and dabbed at his sweaty forehead. After some hesitation he said, “A profit is a return of income above costs. A surplus value, as they say. The corporation’s basic goal is to make a profit that can be divided among its owners. Thus it must be efficiently productive, so that the fixed costs of operation are overcome and the unit cost of manufacturing is lower than the market price of the product offered. Now, the reason why people set up corporations instead of simple partnerships is—”
“I do not follow,” said Vornan. “Simpler terms, please. The object of this corporation is profit, to be divided among owners, yes? But what is an owner?”
“I was just coming to that. In legal terms—”
“And what use is this profit that the owners should want it?”
I sensed that a deliberate baiting was going on. I looked in worry at Kolff, at Helen, at Heyman. But they seemed hardly to be perturbed. Holliday, our government man, was frowning a bit, but perhaps he thought Vornan-19’s questions more innocent than they seemed to me.
The nostrils of the Stock Exchange man flickered ominously. His temper seemed to be held under tight restraint. One of the media men, alive to Norton’s discomfiture, moved close to flash a camera in his face. He glowered at it.
“Am I to understand,” Norton asked slowly, “that in your era the concept of the corporation is unknown? That the profit motive is extinct? That money itself has vanished from use?”
“I would have to say yes,” Vornan replied pleasantly. “At least, as I comprehend those terms, we have nothing equivalent to them.”
“This has happened in America?” Norton asked in incredulity.
“We do not precisely have an America,” said Vornan. “I come from the Centrality. The terms are not congruous, and in fact I find it hard to compare even approximately—”
“America’s gone? How could that be? When did it happen’?”
“Oh, during the Time of Sweeping, I suppose. Many things changed then. It was long ago. I do not remember an America.”
F. Richard Heyman saw an opportunity to scrape a little history out of the maddeningly oblique Vornan. He swung around and said, “About this Time of Sweeping that you’ve occasionally mentioned. I’d like to know—”
He was interrupted by a geyser of indignation from Samuel Norton.
“America gone? Capitalism extinct? It just couldn’t happen! I tell you—”
One of the executive’s aides moved hurriedly to his side and urgently murmured something. The great man nodded. He accepted a violet-hued capsule from the other and touched its ultrasonic snout to his wrist. There was a quick whirr, an intake of what I suppose was some kind of tranquilizing drug. Norton breathed deeply and made a visible effort to collect himself.
More temperately, the Stock Exchange leader said to Vornan, “I don’t mind telling you that I find all this hard to believe. A world without America in it? A world that doesn’t use money? Tell me this, will you, please: Has the whole world gone Communist where you come from?”
There ensued what they call a pregnant silence, during which cameras and recorders were busy catching tense, incredulous, angry, or disturbed facial expressions. I sensed impending disaster. At length Vornan said, “It is another term I do not understand. I apologize for my extreme ignorance. I fear that my world is much unlike yours. However” — at this point he produced his glittering smile, drawing the sting from his words — “it is your world, and not mine, that I have come here to discuss. Please do tell me the use of this Stock Exchange of yours.”
But Norton could not shake his obsession with the contours of Vornan-19’s world. “In a moment. If you’ll tell me, first, how you make purchases of goods — a hint or two of your economic system—”
“We each have all that any person would require. Our needs are met. And now, this idea of corporation ownership—”
Norton turned away in despair. Vistas of an unimaginable future stretched before us: a world without economics, a world in which no desire went unfulfilled. Was it possible? Or was it all the oversimplified shrugging away of details that a mountebank did not care to simulate for us? One or the other, I was beguiled. But Norton was derailed. He gestured numbly to one of the other Stock Exchange men, who came forward brightly to say, “Let’s start right at the beginning. We’ve got this company that makes things. It’s owned by a little group of people. Now, in legal terms there’s a concept known as liability, meaning that the owners of a company are responsible for anything their company might do that’s improper or illegal. To shift liability, they create an imaginary entity called a corporation, which bears the responsibility for any action that might be brought against them in their business capacity. Now, since each member of the owning group has a share in the ownership of this corporation, we can issue stock, that is, certificates representing proportional shares of beneficial interest in the…”
And so on and on. A basic course in economics.
Vornan beamed. He let the whole thing run its route, right to the point where the man was explaining that when an owner wished to sell his share in the company, he found it expedient to work through a central auction system that would put his stock up for the highest bidder, when Vornan quietly and devastatingly admitted that he still couldn’t quite grasp the concepts of ownership, corporations, and profit, let alone the transfer of stock interests. I’m sure he said it just to annoy and goad. He was playing the part now of the man from Utopia, eliciting long explanations of our society and then playfully giving the structure itself a shove by registering ignorance of its underlying assumptions, implying that the underlying assumptions were transient and insignificant. There was a distressed huddle among the offended but stonily reserved Stock Exchange officials. It had never occurred to them that anyone might take this mock-innocent attitude. Even a child knew what money was and what corporations did, even if the concept of limited liability remained elusive.
I felt no great impulse to get mixed up in the awkwardness. My eyes roved idly here and there. Looking toward the great yellow blowup of the stock ticker, I saw:
And then:
The tape began then to tell of stock transactions and of fluctuating averages. But the damage was done. Action on the trading floor came to a halt. The counterfeit buying and selling stopped, and a thousand faces were upturned to the balcony. Great shouts arose, incoherent, unintelligible. The brokers were waving and cheering. They flowed together, swirling around the trading posts, pointing, waving, crying out mysterious booming noises. What did they want? The Dow-Jones industrial averages for January, 2999? The laying-on of hands? A glimpse of the man from the future? Vornan was at the rim of the balcony, now, smiling, holding up his hands as though delivering a benediction upon capitalism. The last rites, perhaps… extreme unction for the financial dinosaurs.