Battlefield Earth (119 page)

“It’s still an awesome threat,” said one.

“It solves nothing in our economies,” said another. “On the contrary, it will produce chaos.”

Jonnie looked at them. Then he began to realize what he was really dealing with. Every one of these lords and all their peoples had been bred for eons in the shadow of the cruel and sadistic Psychlos. They may have remained politically free but they were stamped with the Psychlo philosophy- all beings are just animals. Greed, profit, and corruption were understood to be the nature of every individual. There were no decencies or virtues. The brand of the Psychlo!

Such sentiments were the ideas of madmen. The Psychlos had tailor-made life this way and had then said, see? this is the way life is.

How could he reach these mighty lords?

“Our industries,” another cried, “are geared to war. An intergalactic peace would ruin us, every one!”

Yes, thought Jonnie. The Psychlos wanted any they did business with at war with one another. Who cared what these “free planets” did so long as they bought metal? The Psychlos could crush them at any time. The Psychlos wanted them fighting like animals, believed they were only animals!

Jonnie said, “There are other ways of handling economies. You could phase every war industry you have over to what is called ‘consumer production.’ You make things for the people. The people are employed. They make things for one another. Your people are your best market for your industries.

“In the near future there will be cross-shipping between your worlds. The Psychlos had it worked out that everything was first shipped to Psychlo. By that very fact, they throttled trade. It will be worked out so that you can quickly and cheaply exchange goods from one system to another. Out of that alone will come prosperity.

“Your people, now starving and rioting, can become gainfully employed in peace industries. They can have things for themselves. Such things as better houses and furniture, better clothes, better food.

“You have a golden chance here to herald an age of prosperity and plenty!”

He wasn’t quite reaching them. They were listening, which was all you could say.

“That doesn’t handle riots going on right now!” said Dom.

Jonnie looked at him. Now for the big plunge that would make Voraz shudder. “I am sure the Galactic Bank would be pleased to make huge and ample loans to governments that would use the money to buy food for their peoples and tide them over to a time when peacetime industry could be phased in. That and the news of no war again would halt your riots and stabilize your governments.”

Browl looked at Voraz. “Would you do that?”

Voraz found he had MacAdam on one side of him and the baron on the other. They both were jabbing him to say yes. He just sat there.

Jonnie was talking again. “And I am sure the bank would make available all necessary loans to convert your industries over to consumer production. Not only that, I am quite sure that the bank would engage in making loans to the private sector: to small businesses and even to individuals so they could purchase new products.”

Voraz ignored the jabs he was getting. He was looking at Jonnie. This young man was talking about “commercial banking,” a thing usually relegated to petty little stalls on streets, a half-credit here and a quarter-credit there sort of thing.

Jonnie went on. “And I also wish to inform you that many new planets will be on the market. You will be able to borrow money to buy them and ample funds to colonize them with what you now consider ‘excess population.’ ” Jonnie raised his voice a bit and spoke very levelly at Voraz. “Isn’t that correct, Lord Voraz?”

The head of the Galactic Bank felt like he was in a tidal wave. He hadn’t really agreed he would let this young man set bank policy. Should he get up and denounce it?

The Galactic Bank had dealt with nations. Then suddenly he realized they had depended upon the Psychlos.

Voraz thought furiously. The bankers of the Gredides knew how to do these things. He thought of their own vast population, much of it always unemployed. Suddenly he had a vision of small offices of the Galactic Bank springing up in every town, every continent, every planet, manned with Selachees…neighborhood banks! Lending money to small businesses and all comers, even employees. Hadn’t they done that once? Before Lord Loonger? Yes…he recalled…. It would employ an awful lot of Selachees!

And these planets to colonize. Lending money to buy them…. He was abruptly hit with the fact that he would have to do something with one million, two hundred thousand planets! They couldn’t just sit in trust idle. And getting them into production would keep pace with the money supply so as to avoid inflation. This young man was trying to get these excess assets busy.

But, but, but! he protested to himself, this idea of lending money to governments so they could buy food for their people and just give it away…. That was social banking! It was not unknown. But this phase-over period he was talking about would be long. These governments would be in debt up to their gills.

Suddenly Lord Voraz shot an awed look at Jonnie. Did he really know what he was doing to these haughty lords and their governments- if they approved it all?

Yes! He could see it in his eyes. He did!

“Answer, Voraz!” said Browl. “Is it true you would do those things and on that scale?”

Voraz stood up. “My lords, it so happens that the Galactic Bank has just come into possession of assets a thousand or more times greater than anything it ever controlled before. It will be necessary to put those assets to work. You have all been good credit risks. The answer is, yes. With the proper papers and formalities and commitments, the Galactic Bank stands prepared to make those loans as described.”

The lords sat for a while. This expansion of policy was very sweeping.

“And now, my lords,” said Jonnie. “Could we discuss this treaty of intergalactic peace?”

They were hesitating. Worse, some of them looked negative. Mr. Tsung’s quote flicked through his mind: “The power of money and gold over the souls of men passes all wondering.” These were not men, but it fit. Dominated by Psychlo materialism over the long ages, they had come to think like Psychlos. He would have to treat them like Psychlos, appeal to their personal greed.

It was slightly repugnant to his own ethical sense to do what he knew now he would have to do. But there were too many lives, too many civilizations at stake to fail here.

Jonnie moved to the front of the platform. He knelt down to get his head at the level of theirs. “Turn off that spotlight!” he called to the back. It died. “Turn off all recorders!” he barked at the button cameras.

“They’re off,” a small thin voice came back.

Jonnie looked at the audience. “Turn off any recorders you are holding.” And to the small gray men, “There must be no bank recorders on and you must so attest!”

The small gray men tapped their lapels with a twist. “We attest they are off.” He certainly had their attention now. They were riveted.

Jonnie turned his head to the lords. In a conspiratorial tone that they had to strain forward to hear, he said, “You didn’t think I would leave each one of you personally out of this, did you?”

They were very alert.

“What do your major firms manufacture?” whispered Jonnie.

“Armaments,” came whispering back.

“And what do you think will happen to interests in those firms, to their stocks and bonds?”

The lords wondered that he didn’t know. “They’ll crash!”

“Precisely,” said Jonnie, still whispering. “Let me tell you what this is really all about. If you went home and talked loudly and widely about a treaty forbidding all war, the stocks and bonds and interests in those armaments firms would go out the bottom. And if, without mentioning yet any plans to convert those firms to consumer products or the promises of the bank to make adequate loans, you and your friends let those armaments firms crash and then bought up all their shares and interests, possibly even with loans from the bank, you would own them utterly. Meanwhile, you would be heroes to the people for giving them money for food and the rioting would stop. Then, when you were fully in control, the bank would make conversion loans. Those firms would boom. The merely wealthy would become millionaires, the millionaires would become billionaires.”

He crouched there for a moment longer. Then he said, “You must forget that I mentioned this or even spoke of it.”

He stood up.

He waited. Had he been wrong? He couldn’t be. Their thinking had been conditioned too long by the oppression of the Psychlos.

They began to buzz to one another. Then there was a little tittering laugh behind one hand, a drawing closer together of heads.

Whispered remarks began to drift up to Jonnie. “I can get a new mistress.” “My wife always hated that old castle.” “I won’t have to sell my yacht.”

Their heads were together again, whispering. Jonnie couldn’t make it out.

Then suddenly Fowljopan stood up among the mob. “Lord Jonnie, we have forgotten what you said. None of it will be repeated by us.”

Fowljopan seemed to grow in size. “Build your platforms! We are going to write the toughest, clawproof, iron-hard, most vicious antiwar treaty you have ever heard of!”

He turned toward the back. “Turn on the lights! Turn on the recorders!”

Almost as one being the audience stood. They began to shout. “Long live Lord Jonnie! Long live Lord Jonnie!”

The applause was enough to knock one down!

Colonel Ivan let out a gusty sigh of relief and took his finger off his gun trigger. Then he hastily formed up troopers in a zone of protection to get Jonnie out of there and back to the small meeting room. These lords were pounding Jonnie on the back, almost knocking him down. Bedlam! He didn’t know what Jonnie had said or how he had turned it around. He didn’t speculate; he just concentrated on getting Jonnie out of there before they smashed him with good intentions. Knowing Jonnie, the reversal did not surprise him. That was life living around Jonnie Goodboy Tyler!

     The Russians had gotten them safely back to the small meeting room and they had seated themselves once more.

Dries Gloton was almost purring as he verified the wording and signatures of the transfer check from the Intergalactic-held funds over to his bank. It was not the biggest check he had ever heard of, but it was the biggest that had ever come to deposit in his branch bank. And it wasn’t just a check. It meant solvency, reopened doors in the lesser sector offices, employees back on the job. Actually, he didn’t have to verify it at all. He knew it was good. But he just liked to read it.

With a flourish, he drew the receipt to him. With an expert flip of his hand he signed it. And then he picked up the mortgage papers and with great, big letters scrawled across it wrote “PAID IN FULL!”

My, but this was worth all those worried months of waiting.

He put the check safely in his pocket and then sailed the receipt and papers with a gay spin back to MacAdam. “Our business is finished. It is a pleasure to do business with you.”

But as he let go his grip on MacAdam’s hand, Dries saw Lord Voraz was still sitting there, staring blankly at the table. An instant of alarm touched Dries. “Your Worship! Is something wrong?”

Voraz turned to him. Ignoring Jonnie’s presence, such was his preoccupation, Voraz said, “Didn’t you understand what he did?”

Dries said, “Speculative loans? The lords will try to borrow money to get those shares when they crash. But that is a small matter. Those loans will be good.”

“No, no,” said Voraz. “What he is doing to those lords and their governments. No, you don’t see. Let me explain. By providing widespread employment and by making it possible for the little creature on the street to borrow money, he is creating an independent working class. In years to come they won’t have to stand around, cap in hand. They will become financially independent. The state will depend on them as a market and not be able to neglect them anymore. And huge quantities of bank business will be with that working class.”

“I see nothing wrong in that,” said Dries. “With all the money those governments will owe us, they’ll have to do pretty much what the bank tells them.”

“That’s just it,” said Voraz. “And the bank will tell them more and more to pay attention to the working class because that’s where the bank’s main interest lies! Those lords and their existing governments will have less and less power. To all intents and purposes they will vanish as a special class.”

“Ah,” said Dries, remembering his school days. “Social banking.”

Jonnie lounged back in his chair at the side. He was a little bit spent. He wished they’d finish up. “It’s called ’social democracy,’ ” he said. “It will work as long as there are lots of new frontiers and room to expand. But we have those and in a few thousand years somebody can think of something else.”

Voraz was looking at MacAdam and the baron now. “Do you know what he just did? In that short period in that room in there he freed more people than have been freed in all the revolutions in history!”

“I know he gave us the power to hold those lords in check,” said MacAdam.

“Shall we finish this bank resolution so we can end this conference?”

Voraz came out of it. He picked up a proxy. “This mentions a second resolution.”

The baron came to life. “That’s about Lord Loonger.”

“Yes,” said Voraz. “How long has he been dead, now? Two hundred-”

“Listen,” said the baron. “The Psychlos are about the most hated people any universe ever saw. A couple of hundred thousand years ago, your Lord Loonger saved them with the bank. Today, that’s not a very popular act.”

“Indeed not,” said Voraz.

The baron said, “The definition of money is ‘an idea backed with confidence.’ It isn’t helping your money any to have Lord Loonger’s face on all your bank notes!”

Jonnie suddenly stirred; a premonition based on what had happened with Earth money hit him. He was about to speak. Sir Robert’s huge hand closed over his mouth and silenced him.

Dries had been looking at Jonnie for the last minute. Without taking his eyes off him, Dries said, “Your Worship, has it occurred to you that this young man could be part Selachee?” There was no humor in his voice at all.

Jonnie was absolutely glaring at them above Sir Robert’s big hand. He wouldn’t fight Sir Robert. But he really had his eyes boring into the rest of them.

It’s his eyes,” said Dries. “They’ve got gray in them. Another color, yes, somewhat like the sea. But look at those eyes. Gray!”

“I certainly see what you mean,” said Lord Voraz. “He does resemble a Selachee.”

“I have several picto-recordings of him,” said Dries. “From a lot of angles. We can get that painter Rensfin to use them and make an idealized portrait. With the helmet in color. There is a special ink that can make the buttons flash. And we can do the helmet in full color, three-dimensional view. But what should be put on the scroll? ‘Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, Conqueror of the Psychlos?’

“No, no,” said Voraz.

“‘Who brought freedom from war?’ ” said the baron.

“No, no,” said Voraz. “That word ‘freedom’ would antagonize lords and such. We have to have this really good and final, you know, for we’ll be reprinting all currency and retiring all old issues everywhere. We have to add along the bottom, ‘Backed by the assets of the Earth Planetary Bank and Intergalactic Mining’ or something like that. We can make the picture a

bit larger in the center. But the wording…” he trailed off.

MacAdam brightened. “We’ve got to get in there what he did. The painter should put in the background a picture of Psychlo exploding. And on the scroll we can put ‘Jonnie Goodboy Tyler,’ and right under that put ‘who brought happiness to all races.’

      “The very thing!” said Voraz. “It doesn’t relegate it to just destroying

Psychlo. Because that isn’t all he really did. People will know fast enough. His popularity will be not just in the stars but all over the stars and planets in sixteen universes!”

Lord Voraz sat forward and drew the resolution to him. He penned in the wording for the bank note. And then he shot his cuffs, raised his pen in a flourish, and signed the resolutions.

It was all finished. The small gray men got up. They were all beaming smiles. Sir Robert let go of a morose Jonnie and they shook hands all around.

“I think,” said Voraz to MacAdam and the baron, “that we can work together splendidly! It is banking right after my own heart!”

They laughed. The small gray men gathered their papers and left.

“Wheeoo and whuff!” said MacAdam, grinning from ear to ear. “We’re free and clear and sailing like birds!” He looked at Jonnie. “Thanks in no small part to you, laddie!”