Nelson did so. 'I thinked them,' Mike answered.
'That's right,' Jubal agreed. 'He 'thinked' 'em. When I got him, just over a week ago, he was a mess, slight, flabby, and pale. Looked as if he had been raised in a cave - which I gather he was, more or less. So I told him he had to grow strong. So he did.'
'Exercises?' Nelson said doubtfully.
'Nothing systematic. Swimming, when and as he wished.'
'A week of swimming won't make a man look as if he had been sweating over bar bells for years!' Nelson frowned. 'I am aware that Mike has voluntary control over the so-called 'involuntary' muscles, But that is not entirely without precedent. This, on the other hand, requires one to assume that-'
'Doctor,' Jubal said gently, 'why don't you just admit that you don't grok it and save the wear and tear?'
Nelson sighed. 'I might as well. Put your clothes on, Michael.'
Somewhat later, Jubal, under the mellowing influence of congenial company and the grape, was unburdening to the three from the Champion his misgivings about his morning's work. 'The financial end was simple enough: just tie up Mike's money so that a struggle over it couldn't take place. Not even if he dies, because I've let Douglas know privately that Mike's death ends his stewardship whereas a rumour from a usually reliable source - me, in this case - has reached Kung and several others to the effect that Mike's death will give Douglas permanent control. Of course, if I had had magical powers, I would have stripped the boy not only of all political significance but also of every penny of his inheritance. That-'
'Why would you have done that, Jubal?' the captain interrupted.
Harshaw looked surprised. 'Are you wealthy, Skipper? I don't mean: 'Are your bills paid and enough in the sock to buy any follies your taste runs to?' I mean rich? so loaded that the floor sags when you walk around to take your place at the head of a board-room table.'
'Me?' Van Tromp snorted. 'I've got my monthly check, a pension eventually, a house with a mortgage and two girls in college. I'd like to try being wealthy for a while, I don't mind telling you!'
'You wouldn't like it.'
'Huh! You wouldn't say that? if you had two daughters in school.'
'For the record, I put four daughters through college, and I went in debt to my armpits to do it. One of them justified the investment; she's a leading light in her profession which she practices under her husband's name because I'm a disreputable old bum who makes money writing popular trash instead of having the grace to be only a revered memory in her paragraph in Who's Who. The other three are nice people who always remember my birthday and don't bother me otherwise I can't say that an education hurt them. But my offspring are not relevant save to show that I understand that a man often needs more than he's got. But you can fix that easily; you can resign from the service and take a job with some engineering firm that will pay you several times what you're getting just to put your name on their letterhead General Atomics. Several others, You've had offers, haven't you?'
'That's beside the point,' Captain van Tromp answered stiffly. 'I'm a professional man.'
'Meaning there isn't enough money on this planet to tempt you into giving up note 1 space ships. I understand that.'
'But I wouldn't mind having money, too.'
'A little more money won't do you any good, because daughters can use up ten percent more than a man can make in any normal occupation regardless of the amount. That's a widely experienced but previously unformulated law of nature, to be known henceforth as 'Harshaw's Law.' But, Captain, real wealth, on the scale that causes its owner to hire a battery of finaglers to hold down his taxes, would ground you just as certainly as resigning would.'
'Why should it? I would put it all in bonds and just clip coupons.'
'Would you? Not if you were the sort of person who acquires great wealth in the first place. Big money isn't hard to come by. All it costs is a lifetime of singleminded devotion to acquiring it and making it grow into more money, to the utter exclusion of all other interests. They say that the age of opportunity has passed. Nonsense! Seven out of ten of the wealthiest men on this planet started life without a shilling - and there are plenty more such strivers on the way up. Such people are not stopped by high taxation nor even by socialism; they simply adapt themselves to new rules and presently they change the rules. But no premiere ballerina ever works harder, nor more narrowly, than a man who acquires riches. Captain, that's not your style; you don't want to make money, you simply want to have money - in order to spend it.'
'Correct, sir! Which is why I can't see why you should want to take Mike's wealth away from him.'
'Because Mike doesn't need it and it would cripple him worse than any physical handicap. Wealth - great wealth - is a curse? unless you are devoted to the money making game for its own sake. And even then it has serious drawbacks.'
'Oh, nonsense, Jubal, you talk like a harem guard trying to convince a whole man of the advantages of being a eunuch. Pardon me.'
'Very possibly.' agreed Jubal, 'and perhaps for the same reason; the human mind's ability to rationalize its own shortcomings into virtues is unlimited, and I am no exception. Since I, like yourself, sir, have no interest in money other than to spend it, there has never been the slightest chance that I would acquire any significant degree of wealth just enough for my vices. Nor any real danger that I would fail to scrounge that modest amount, since anyone with the savvy not to draw to a small pair can always manage to feed his vices, whether they be tithing or chewing betel nut. But great wealth? You saw that performance this morning. Now answer me truthfully. Do you think I could have revised it slightly so that I myself acquired all that plunder - become its sole manager and de facto owner while milking off for my own use any income I cared to name - and still have rigged the other issues so that Douglas would have supported the outcome? Could I have done that, sir? Mike trusts me; I am his water brother. Could I have stolen his fortune and so arranged it that the government in the person of Mr. Douglas would have condoned it?'
'Uh? damn you, Jubal, I suppose you could have.'
'Most certainly I could have. Because our sometimes estimable Secretary General is no more a money-seeker than you are. His drive is political power - a drum whose beat I do not hear. Had I guaranteed to Douglas (oh, gracefully, of course - there is decorum even among thieves) that the Smith estate would continue to bulwark his administration, then I would have been left undisturbed to do as I liked with the income and had my acting guardianship made legal.'
Jubal shuddered. 'I thought that I was going to have to do exactly that, simply to protect Mike from the vultures gathered around him - and I was panic-stricken. Captain, you obviously don't know what an Old Man of the Sea great wealth is. It is not a fat purse and time to spend it. Its owner finds himself beset on every side, at every hour, wherever he goes, by persistent pleaders, like beggars in Bombay, each demanding that he invest or give away part of his wealth. He becomes suspicious of honest friendship - indeed honest friendship is rarely offered him; those who could have been his friends are too fastidious to be jostled by beggars, too proud to risk being mistaken for one.
'Worse yet, his life and the lives of his family are always in danger. Captain, have your daughters ever been threatened with kidnapping?'
'What? Good Lord, I should hope not!'
'If you possessed the wealth Mike had thrust on him, you would have those girls guarded night and day - and even then you would not rest, because you would never be sure that those very guards were not tempted. Look at the records of the last hundred or so kidnappings in this country and note how many of them involved a trusted employee - and note, too, how few victims escaped alive. Then ask yourself: is there any luxury wealth can buy which is worth having your daughters' pretty necks always in a noose?'
Van Tromp looked thoughtful. 'No. I guess I'll keep my mortgaged house - it's more my speed. Those girls are all I've got, Jubal.'
'Amen. I was appalled at the prospect. Wealth holds no charm for me. All I want is to live my own lazy, useless life, sleep in my own bed - and not be bothered! Yet I thought I was going to be forced to spend my last few years sitting in an office, barricaded by buffers, and working long hours as Mike's man of business.
'Then I had an inspiration. Douglas already lived behind such barricades, already had such a staff. Since I was forced to surrender the power of that money to Douglas merely to ensure Mike's continued health and freedom, why not make the beggar pay for it by assuming all the headaches, too? I was not afraid that Douglas would steal from
