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I learned the sad news at a meeting of the Focus Group held in October, about two months after the Cortez brothers and their crews sailed over the horizon. These get-togethers had become less frequent than they had been in the earliest days of our friendship. Marriage and busy schedules took us in different directions and we no longer felt the emotional need to check in with each other daily. Still, we never let more than three or four evenings pass without a good sitdown, often featuring the tasting of a new homemade beer. By now there were a number of different brews from which to choose, and Roxy, through her friends among the Inlanders, assured our supply.
So there we were, lazing about on a mild evening, engaged in languid end-of-the-day conversation, when Herb suddenly cleared his throat and said that he and Roxy had an announcement to make.
“We have decided to move away from Engineering Village.”
For a moment there was the silence of total shock, and then everybody started to talk at once. “You can’t be serious.” “Why on earth?” “Hold on now.” “We won’t permit it.” Mary started to cry. Sarah was ashen. Tom flushed. I don’t know how I looked, but I felt terrible.
Tom was the first to pull himself together and ask the obvious questions: Where, when, and most important, why?
“We’re moving up into the hills,” Roxy said. “Right after the first of the new year. It’s a question of climate.” She smiled to show us that this was a joke, but there were tears in her eyes.
“No,” she amended quickly, “it’s not really the climate. We’re moving to a kibbutz. That’s always been a dream of Herb’s, and it appeals to me as well.”
“We’re not calling it a kibbutz,” Herb said. “No Israeli connotations. We’re not calling it a commune, either, though that is what it will be. Commune sounds like Stalinist Russia, or American hippies, which is not what we are thinking about at all. It’s just a cooperative community.” Then, with a slight smile, “But I hope to organize it like a kibbutz.”
“We’ve been thinking about this for quite awhile,” Roxy said. “There are a number of people right here in Engineering Village who are anxious to give it a try. Not the engineers themselves—except for a couple—but several children of engineers, like Herb, and several
“We didn’t want to say anything about it until the plans were set,” Herb went on. “But now they are, and while Roxy was joking about the climate part of it, she wasn’t kidding about the timing. Right after the first of the year. We thought of asking you—our dearest friends—to join us. We still think of it, and we do ask you. Right now. But we assumed that this wouldn’t be your kind of thing.”
“Well, you’re right about that,” Tom said. “But why, for God’s sake, Herb? Why? Just when wonderful new deeds are being accomplished each day? Just as we’re finally getting organized?”
“That’s exactly it,” Herb said. “Things are getting organized. Or, more precisely, everybody’s getting ready to reorganize. Before you know it, a year will have passed since the Event and our landing here in KwaZulu Natal. That means we’ll be coming to the end of the agreed period, endorsed by the Coordinating Committee, of volunteer service to this disaster-stricken community. It’s been wonderful to see how everyone has pulled together, worked with a will and achieved miracles. I never would have dreamed that a community this large and this diverse could have carried on the way it has for so long. If anything, one might have expected it to go the other way. The calamity might have generated disorder and conflict, a descent into the worst kind of savagery. I give credit to the tribal tradition of the black Africans. I give credit to the good sense of the Afrikaners. I give credit to the British and their legacy of orderly government. I give credit to the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi that hovers over this place. I give credit to Captain Nordstrom and his super crew. And, finally, I give credit to you engineers, the ultimate pragmatists. You laid out a plan and got everybody to sign on. You gave the people constructive work to do and fostered hope. You generated a wholesome feeling of accomplishment that has served us well.”
I had never heard Herb speak so passionately and so seriously.
“But this can’t go on forever,” he said. “The magical year will end, and already I sense that people are jockeying for position. The workers want to make sure they’re not exploited. Entrepreneurs are making plans. Robber barons of the future. Maybe there isn’t any actual money to be had, but the capitalists are already gathering at the starting gate. Also, there are politicians dreaming of power. I’ve heard that petty crime is starting to become a problem. Human nature is rearing its ugly head, and you technocrats are blithely going about your work, unaware of the forces that are stirring.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tom said. “We know very well that the year will end. We understand that a constitutional convention is being planned, and then elections and all that self-seeking stuff. But there’s no reason to think we can’t work out a political design every bit as effective as our technical projects. All the people of Engineering Village, not just the Americans, expect that our society will evolve along democratic principles. As for the South Africans, they held their first fully representative democratic election in 1994, just sixteen years ago. They’ve had only the smallest taste of democracy, and it has whetted their appetite for more. So, why expect the worst when everybody is ready to move in the right direction?”
“Besides,” I said, “we’re not starting from scratch. Just as we have the benefit of accumulated technological knowledge, so do we have the benefit of the world’s experience in politics. We don’t have to go through the whole damned business again—pharaohs and warrior chieftains, knights and serfs, gentry and underclass, kings and revolutionaries, Communists and Freedom Fighters. We know how to put together a decent democratic government, just like we know how to put together an electric generator.”
“That’s so true,” Tom went on. “I’ll provide the quote this time and beat Sarah to it. Santayana: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ Well, we’ve learned the lessons of the past, and we are not condemned to repeat anything.”
“You think you’ve learned the lessons,” Herb said. “Pardon me, Tom Swift, boy genius of the age, but you really shouldn’t be so smug.”
I thought I knew what Herb was getting at, but I wanted to make sure. “Just what is it that has you so excited?” I asked.
“You know what it is, Wil,” Herb said. “You sit in on all those committee meetings, and you know what’s up. The Dismal Science is about to take over.”
“What in the world is the Dismal Science?” Mary asked.
“Economics,” Herb said. “That’s what John Kenneth Galbraith called it: The Dismal Science. And that’s what this planning for the future is all about. I’m not worried about the new constitution; it will say all the right things. But our planners are getting ready to crown the actual new ruler: Property Rights, the once and future king. And do you know the precepts that will dominate his realm? Economic incentives. Competition. Lean and mean. That’s what’s coming, and Roxy and I don’t want any part of it. We still believe in the possibilities of cooperation and brotherly love.”
“You’re overreacting,” Sarah said. “Just look around you. It’s obvious that free enterprise is already at work, and it doesn’t seem to be so terrible.”
Sarah was right, of course. Soon after the Event, out of the first days of chaos, there had emerged an unofficial market. I won’t call it a black market, since there were no specific prohibitions. But it is a complex system of barter that testifies to the ingenuity and enterprise—and the myriad yearnings—of the human spirit. Projects authorized by the Planning Subcommittee didn’t begin to address a host of the people’s needs and desires.
