It was almost, I thought, as if we, the three of us, were acting out an old morality play, with the basic sins of mankind enlarged a millionfold to prove a point by exaggeration.
I felt Joy’s grip tighten on my arm and knew that this was perhaps the first time she had realized the true amorality of the creature that we faced. And perhaps, as well, a realization that this creature, this Atwood, was no more than a visual projection of a great, vast horde of others, of an alien force which intended to take the Earth from us. Behind the thing that sat upon the stool one could almost see the ravening blackness which had come from some far star to put an end to Man. And, worse than that, not to Man alone, but to all his works and all his precious dreams, imperfect as all those dreams might be.
The great tragedy, I realized, was not the end of Man himself but the end of all that Man had stood for, all that Man had built and all that he had planned.
“Despite the fact,” said Atwood, “that the human race may resent us and, perhaps, even hate us, there is nothing that’s illegal, even in your own concept of right and wrong, in anything we’ve done. There is nothing in the law which restricts anyone, even aliens, from acquiring or from holding property. You, yourself, my friend, or the lady with you, have a perfect right to buy all the property you wish. To purchase and to hold, if that should be your aim, all the property that exists in the entire world.”
“Two things would,” I said. “One of them is the lack of money.”
“And the other?”
“It would be damn poor taste,” I told him. “It simply isn’t done. And, also, a possible third thing. Something that is called an antitrust law.”
“Oh, those,” said Atwood. “We are well aware of them; we have taken certain measures.”
“I am sure you have.”
“When you get right down,” said Atwood, “to the nub of it, the only qualification one needs to do what we have done is to have the money.”
“You talk as if money is a new idea to you,” I said, for the way he’d said it, that was the way it sounded. “Could it be that money is unheard of elsewhere than Earth?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Atwood. “There is commerce of a sort, and there are mediums of exchange. Mediums of exchange, but not money possibly as you know it here. Money here on Earth is more than the paper or the metal that you use for money, more than the rows of figures that account for money. Here on Earth you have given money a symbolism such as no medium of exchange has anywhere else that I have ever known or heard of. You have made it a power and a virtue and you have made the lack of it despicable and Somehow even criminal. You measure men by money and you calibrate success with money and you almost worship money.”
He would have gone on if I’d let him. He was all ready to preach a full—scale sermon But I didn’t let him.
“Look at this business practically,” I said. “You’re going to lay out, before you’re through with it, more cash than the Earth has cost you, much more than it’s worth. You’ll throw people out of jobs and drive them from their homes and someone will have to try at least to take care of them. Every government on Earth will establish great relief programs and set up doles to help their people, and taxes will go up to pay for all of this. Taxes, mind you, levied on the very property you’ve bought. You throw the people out of work, you take their homes from them—OK, so you’ll take care of them, you’ll have to pay the taxes to take care of them.”
“I see,” said Atwood, mocking, “that your heart bleeds for us, and it’s very human of you and I thank you for it. But you need not bother. We’ll pay the taxes. We’ll very gladly pay them.”
“You could overthrow the governments,” I said, “and then there’d be no taxes. Perhaps you’ve thought of that.”
“Of course not,” said Atwood firmly.
“That is something we would not think of doing. That would be illegal. We do not, y friend, overstep the law.”
And it was no good, I knew. There was nothing any good.
For the aliens would control the land and the natural resources and all the things that were built upon the land, and they would not use the land in its proper usage—or anything else in the proper way. They would plow no furrow and they would grow no crop. No factory wheel would turn. No metal would be mined. No timber would be cut.
The people would be dispossessed, not alone of their property, but of their heritage. Gone with the land and houses, with the factory and the job, with the retail store and the merchandise, would be the hope and the aspiration and the opportunity—and perhaps the faith—that shaped humanity. It did not matter greatly how much of the property of Earth the aliens actually bought. They need not buy it all. All that would be necessary would be to stop the wheels of industry, to halt the flow of commerce, to destroy the effectiveness of the financial structure. When that had been done, there’d be an end to jobs and an end to credit and an end to business. And the human dream was dead.
It did not really matter that the aliens buy the homes or the apartment houses for if all the rest were done, then the four walls that a man called home would be just a place in which to die. Either the purchasing of the homes was a pure campaign of terror or, equally as likely, an indication that the aliens even now did not understand how little they would really have to do to strike the fatal blow.
There would be doles, of course, or some sort of relief program, to keep food in the people’s mouths and, where possible, a roof above their heads. And there’d be no lack of money for the doles, for the taxes would be paid most cheerfully by this alien tribe. But in a situation such as this, money would be the cheapest thing there was, and the least effective. What the price of a potato or a loaf of bread when we had reached the last potato and there was no flour for bread?
There would be fighting back, once the situation should be known. Fighting back, not only by the people, but by the governments as well. But by that time the aliens undoubtedly would have set up some sort of defense, perhaps of a kind and nature no one now could guess. Perhaps it would be a scorched-earth defense, with the factories and the homes and all the rest of it going up in flames or otherwise destroyed so that Man could not regain the things with which he’d forged a livelihood. There would then be only the land to fight for, and the bare land in itself would not be enough.
If something could be done immediately, I knew, there was every chance that, even flow, the aliens could be beaten. But to do anything soon enough required a willingness to believe in what was going on. And there was no one who’d believe. Bitterly, I realized that acceptance of the situation in its full and brutal force would have to wait until the world had been plunged in chaos, and by that time it well could be too late.
And, standing there, I knew that I was licked and that the world was licked.
Wells had written, long ago, of aliens who had invaded Earth. And many, after him, had written other imaginary versions of alien invasions. But not a one of them, I thought, not a single one, had come even Close to what had really happened. Not one had foreseen how it could be done, how the very system which we had constructed so painfully through the ages Should now be turned against us—how freedom and the right of property had turned out to be a trap we’d set to catch ourselves.
Joy pulled at my arm. “Leave us go,” she said.
I turned with her and headed for the door.
Behind me I heard Atwood chuckling.
“Come see me tomorrow,” he said. “You and I maybe can do business.”
Outside it was raining more heavily than ever. Not a downpour, but a steady drip that was discouraging. There was a definite edge of chill in the air. It was the kind of night, I thought, for the world we knew to come crashing down. No, not crashing down, for that was too dramatic. Sagging, rather. The kind of a night for the world to come sagging down, weakened without knowing it was being weakened or what had weakened it, and falling so smoothly and so steadily it did not know that it was falling until it had collapsed.