Cogswell grunted. “You sound like that queen—what was her name?—who said ‘Let them eat cake.’ ”
Betty frowned not getting it. “Marie Antoinette? How do you mean I sound like her?”
Tracy Cogswell said impatiently, “Look. You people with lots of dough don’t realize what it can mean for somebody without it to spend some time in the sun. And… if possible, and it usually isn’t… to finally retire in a desirable climate in your old age. It’s something a lot of poor working stiffs dream of, but you wouldn’t know about that.”
Betty looked at him from the side of her eyes and frowned. “Dough?” she said.
“Money,” Cogswell said, still impatient. “Sure, if you have piles of money, you can build swell houses even up in Alaska, and live comfortably. You can live comfortably just about anywhere, given piles of money. But for most people, who’ve probably lived the greater part of their lives in some near-slum, in some stinking city, the height of ambition is to get into a warm climate and have a little bungalow in which to finish off the final years.”
Suddenly, Betty laughed.
Tracy Cogswell froze up, his face went expressionless. Until this, he had rather liked the beautiful girl. Now she was showing the typical arrogance of the rich.
She indicated the swank villas beneath them. They were flying over Torremolinos now, which had once been an art colony. She said, “Were you under the impression, Tracy, that those people down there had lots of money?”
That took time to sink in. It couldn’t possibly mean what he first thought.
Tracy said, “Possibly they don’t have by your standards, but by mine, yes.”
Betty said flatly, “None of them have any money at all, and neither do I.”
That was too much. He gaped at her.
Betty said, “There is no such thing as money any more, and there hasn’t been for quite a while. It was eliminated decades ago.”
He figured that he understood now, and said, “Well, it’s the same thing. Whatever the means of exchange is, credit cards, or whatever.”
Betty laughed again and there was honest amusement in her voice, not condescension. She said, and her voice was gentle now, “Tracy Cogswell, in all those years you belonged to your movement, in all the years of dedication, did you really think, really inwardly believe in your heart of hearts, that someday it might come true? That someday the millineum would arrive, Utopia be achieved?”
A deep cold went through him. He closed his mouth but continued to stare in disbelief at her.
“Tracy,” she said gently, “your movement was successful more than sixty years ago.”
After a long moment, he said, “Look, could we go back to the house? I could use a drink.”
She laughed still once again and spun the wheel of the hover-craft.
Chapter Four
They were all three amused by his reactions, but it was a friendly amusement and with a somehow wry connotation which Tracy Cogswell didn’t quite get. So many things were bubbling through his head, so many questions to ask, he didn’t even have time for a complete answer before he was hurrying on to the next one.
“And the Russkies? What happened over there?” he demanded. “The Soviet Union and the other Commie countries?”
Jo Edmonds said, “The same as everywhere else. Overnight, the contradiction that had built up through the decades of misrule and misdirection finally boiled over. It was one of the few places where there was much violence. The Communists had gone too far, had done too much to too many, to have been allowed peaceful retirement.”
Betty shook her head. “According to accounts of the period, in some places it was quite horrible.”
Tracy Cogswell drew from his own memories pictures of members of the secret police hanging by their heels from lamp posts. He had been active with the Freedom Fighters in Budapest, during the 1956 uprising against the Russians. “Yes,” he said uncomfortably. Then he asked, “But countries like India, the African nations, South America and the other undeveloped countries. How do they stand now?”
Academician Stein was chuckling softly. “These things seem so long ago to us,” he said. “It’s almost unbelievable that they can be news to an intelligent adult. The backward countries? Why, given the all-out support of the most industrially advanced, they were brought up to a common level within a decade or two.”
“It was a universally popular effort,” Betty added. “Everybody pitched in. Instead of sending so-called aid to those countries, consisting largely of military equipment, we sent real aid and no strings attached.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Cogswell blurted. “But, look… look, the population explosion. What happened there?”
Jo Edmonds, who was sitting relaxed in an armchair near the fireplace of the living room, a drink in one hand, his inevitable piece of jade in the other, said easily, “Not really much of a problem, given world government and universal education on a high level. If you’ll remember, the large families were almost always to be found in the most backward countries, or among the most backward elements in the advanced countries. Education and really efficient methods of birth control ended the problem. Population is static now, if not declining. It was the European countries and Japan that first turned the corner. In the year 1972, West Germany lost population, the first of the advanced countries to do so.”
“Look,” Cogswell said happily, “could I have another drink? This must be the damnedest thing that ever happened to a man. Why, why it’s as though Saint Paul woke up in the year, well, say, 1400 a.d. and saw the strength of the church that he had founded. He would have flipped, just as I’m doing.”
All three of them laughed at him again and Jo Edmonds got up, slipped his jade into a side pocket and went over to the sideboard and mixed him another drink.
Tracy Cogswell said, “That reminds me of something. How about servants? It must take a multitude of maids to run a house like this.”
Betty made a moue at him. “Nonsense. You aren’t very good at extrapolation, are you, Tracy? Why, even in your own day in the advanced countries the house was automated to the point where even the well-to-do didn’t have domestic help. Today, drudgery has been eliminated. Anyone can have just about as large a house as they want and keep it up by devoting only a few moments a day to its direction.”
It was still all but inconceivable to him. “And everybody, just everybody can afford a place like this?”
It was the academician’s turn again. As they’d all been doing, he prefaced his explanation with a laugh. “Given automation and cheap, all but free power, and what is the answer? Ultraabundance for everyone. Surely the signs must have been present in your day. That was the goal of your organization, was it not?”
“Yes,” Cogswell said, shaking his head. “Yes, of course.” Then he added, his voice very low, “Jesus H. Christ.”
They all laughed with him.
Jo Edmonds brought the fresh drink and Cogswell knocked it back in one long swallow.
He considered for a moment. “Look,” he said, “I don’t suppose anyone remembers what happened to a fellow named Dan Whiteley.”
“Whiteley?” the Academician scowled.
“He was a member of the organization,” Tracy explained. “A very active one.”
“Dan Whiteley,” Betty said. “I read something about him. Let me see. He was a Canadian.”
“That’s right,” Tracy Cogswell said, leaning forward. “He was from Winnipeg.”
“Did you know him?” Betty said, her voice strange.
He said slowly, “Yes, yes I knew him quite well.” Unconsciously, he stroked his left elbow. The others had been in favor of leaving him behind. Dan had carried him, one way or the other, half the night. Toward morning, Tito’s secret police had brought up dogs and they’d been able to hear them baying only half a mile or so behind.
Betty said gently, “The Communists got him when he was trying to contact some of their intellectuals and get your movement going in China. He succeeded, but later was caught and shot in, I believe, Hankow. He’s now sort of a martyr. Students of the period know about him.”
