The normal work of the Assembly now began. Donald observed the procedure, assisted by murmured narration from TK. Applications from members wishing to speak were drawn at random from the Ballot Box. This allocated limited Assembly time in a fair way. It also meant TK had to be ready to deal with any spin-balls other members might throw his way.
Donald grew increasingly disgusted by the pettifogging griping and carping level of debate. Speaker after speaker stood up and attacked a neighbour over some frivolous grievance. One sovereign attacked another for ‘outrageous reflections’ of sunlight off the windows of a mansion in the neighbour’s land. Another accused their neighbours of deliberately infecting wild hogs with anthrax and discharging them to invade his lands.
For Donald, the most disturbing speech was by “Member His Grace the Legitimate and Worthy Sovereign Augustus Markus Antonine Maximus Shellingfield, Lord of Bournemouth, Portland, Bristol, Dorchester, Sherborne and all of the Summer Country”. The Shellingfields were well known for their hatred of their neighbours to the east, the Krossingtons. Augustus Shellingfield ranted against the Krossingtons for their selfish hoarding of the only major oil wells on the Island of Britain and for their excessive and profligate discharges of surplus. Shellingfield claimed that some of these discharges nested on his lands and had to be extracted by General Wardian glory trust at considerable expense in gold. He claimed compensation from the Krossington clan.
TK dismissed it all with adroit rhetoric, while Donald stared at his knees, thinking. TK had invited Donald to this exclusive room for more reason than just to make a short speech. No member in this place cared a hoot what any commoner had to say. Suppose afterwards, TK took Donald into some quiet place and made him an offer he could not refuse, a most lucrative offer? Donald needed gold to survive. What would his conscience have to say about taking gold sweated off the backs of scores of thousands of wretched natives? There was no doubt that Krossington discharged surplus to the public drains, after all, in such great amounts as to draw complaints from his neighbour. What could a man do? Donald sighed and gouged his nails into his palms. He was being slammed hard to comply with sovereign immorality.
The Speaker opened the next randomly-selected application from the Ballot Box.
“Member Professor Vasco Banner, MA (Oxon), PhD, DSc, the president of the National Party, will now speak,” the Speaker said.
Donald lurched back from introspection. He was not alone in being rapt. Amid stunned tension, Professor Banner stood up. Compared to the tailored suits and lavish finery of the rest of the membership, Professor Banner appeared like a footman about to return to an industrial asylum on leave. He wore a brown jacket, so old it wrapped over the bones of his shoulders and, incredibly, no tie, just a white shirt with an open collar. He reminded Donald of the janitor of his chambers. There was some cat-calling as Professor Banner waited, looking over his notes. The Speaker eventually called order. Quiet settled over the chamber.
“Thank you, fellow members, for providing me this opportunity to address you—”
“You’re very welcome,” quipped a voice.
“Order!” barked the Speaker.
“My name is Vasco Banner, I am the president of the National Party.”
He spoke in a quiet, patient voice, as if beginning a lecture he knew the students would find taxing. The Assembly became dead still, as members strained to hear him. Banner explained that he was an economic historian. He had spent his life amassing and analysing statistics about the collapse of the Public Era. Between 2038 and 2041, the globalised world economy of the Public Era shrank by 99%, as estimated from the catastrophic fall in the buying power of gold after the bursting of the Gold Crest. Reputable estimates showed the Island of Britain lost 90% of its people. Nothing learned in the most adventurous prowling of the world’s oceans suggested any region had been spared. The economy of the world had regressed to the nineteenth century, indeed, in some respects to a state more akin to the Roman world than any shadow of modernity. By a grotesque abuse of language, this collapse had come to be known as the Glorious Resolution.
And there the world had remained, frozen in time for seven decades. This stagnation flouted the normal human performance of learning, improving and expanding.
Why?
Explaining this economic mystery was the core of his research.
The National Party had been formed at Brent Cross industrial asylum in the eighties from the remnants of the old SUN Party. It was limited in its media, due to the Naclaski ban on radio transmissions across private land. Nevertheless, the Party now had a membership in excess of one hundred thousand.
Someone muttered: “Do you think that’s true?”
Those seeking reform faced an economic conundrum known as the Underpopulation Bomb—the lack of people to consume. Just as a great river cannot flow out of a desert, so the gigantic factories required for mass production could not exist without a population to buy all the mass-produced stuff. The population of Britain was lower today than during the High Middle Ages of the thirteenth century. Furthermore, most people were not so much poor as denied even the touch of money, supposing one could call shiny tokens money. Nevertheless, the Party offered a programme that would, given decades of effort, reconstruct the old world of trading strangers.
Donald’s principal reaction in listening to all this was frustration at his unfamiliarity with economic concepts. He had never studied economics. In fact, until now had not even considered it a veritable subject.
Banner now described the National Party programme. Donald floundered. He had no idea what fiat legal tender was, for instance, nor had he heard the term ‘bank’. However, he had a fine memory and stored the jargon for later enquiry. There would be a state bank to issue fiat legal tender. The glory trusts and the repugnant Night and Fog racket
