In the far corner was an office with paned walls. Through its windows he could see Vasco Banner, the president of the National Party. Banner was in discussion with a shorter man dressed in a dark business suit. The pointed jaw and sharp nose of this second man’s profile seemed familiar. After Valentin knocked, both glanced around and Donald recognised Team Lieutenant Farkas, the glory officer who had returned him from internment in the Lands of Dasti-Jones.
“Thank you, Valentin. Good thinking,” Banner said, pushing the door shut. Farkas was frowning. He obviously recognised Donald’s face without having yet placed it.
Banner was a fit, slender man of just under six feet, older than he had appeared from a distance, probably about sixty. He had pale brown skin and short-cropped white hair. His eyes were dark brown, pebble-hard and direct, as if he had practised the technique of bold staring to intimidate people. Donald stared him right back.
“I am Donald Aldingford.”
Farkas uttered an “Ah!” of surprise, which caused Banner to swing about in curiosity.
“Donald Aldingford and I have met before. I escorted you home from the Lands of Dasti-Jones,” Farkas said.
Banner shook hands cautiously. Donald thought the grip rather limp. He sat on the window ledge with his back to the street and made himself comfortable. Banner set his backside on the edge of the desk and crossed his arms, adopting the body language of the Grande Enceinte.
“I’ve heard of you. You are Krossington’s main counsel on disputes of Naclaski and Frite. Correct?” Banner said.
“That’s correct.”
“And you were shot down under Naclaski. You had to make an apology to the Westminster Assembly.”
“That’s correct. That’s how I came to be in the Assembly on the day you were chosen to speak. I was fascinated.”
“Really? Why would you give a damn for our policies?”
Donald had been caught off-guard brought face-to-face with the president of the National Party. It was a meeting to dream of. So typical for a dream to come true when you least expected it! He threw out a spin-ball to gain a little time.
“On the contrary, they interest me a great deal. Convince me you will bring back 240 volt AC white goods,” he said.
Banner and Farkas exchanged baffled looks.
“You do know what white goods are, I take it?” Donald said.
“They were machines of the Public Era that did menial household tasks like washing clothes and dishes, things servants do today,” Banner said.
“And they were powered by 240 volt AC. You do know that, I take it?”
“Yes.” Banner leaned back, lifting his eyes to the ceiling in an impatient gesture. “I assume you’re asking whether the Party will bring back the consumer culture that developed in some nations after the Second World War—the so-called Fatted Masses. The answer is, ‘no’. That will take generations to resurrect due to the Underpopulation Bomb. It certainly won’t happen in our lifetimes. To work for the Party is to lay the foundations for prosperity one century, two centuries, three centuries from now. It is to sacrifice today for the sake of a tomorrow none of us will live to see. It is the opposite of the Public Era. That is what the sovereigns can’t be made to understand.”
He pulled open a drawer in his desk, rummaged briefly, then approached Donald with a couple of photographs pinched between finger and thumb.
“I’m going to show you two photographs,” he said. “One was taken more than two hundred years ago. The other was taken last summer on a sovereign land. I want you to tell me which is which.”
Donald sat up straight and put one photo on each knee. Both were black and white, with an acute degree of detail. They showed scenes of the harvest of wheat. Men and women stooped to cut the crop with knives and lay the stalks in bundles, which were gathered by children. They all wore dark, simple clothing with proud white collars. Several of the women worked with babies on their backs. To the rear, a man in some kind of uniform sat on a horse, watching. The photographs portrayed a romantic image of country life compared to what Donald had seen on the Lands of Dasti-Jones.
“I’ve a fifty-fifty chance of getting this right,” Donald said. “I’d say that one is the recent photo.”
“You’re wrong. That was taken in the Ukraine in the 1880s, not that it matters, I expect you see the point I’m making.” Banner tossed the photographs back in the drawer. “The sovereigns would grow ten times more food with machines instead of people. What stops them?”
“Why should they change?” Donald said. “Everything suits them already. 90% of all the gold on this island is in their treasuries, while most of the rest forms the working capital of industrial asylums making toys for the sovereigns. Natives draw crops from the soil to sustain the circulation of gold between the sovereigns and the asylums. Natives don’t need oil or spare parts as machines would. Natives do not depreciate; they procreate for free. Natives prevent nests of infestation by crowding the land. The sovereigns have no incentive to risk tons of their gold on machinery—none whatsoever. On the contrary, it’s the lack of industry that leaves the sovereigns without competition. They are the lords of a beautiful, peaceful world inoculated against the recrudescence of the Fatted Masses. The Glorious Resolution produced a steady-state Underpopulation Bomb that could endure ten thousand years.”
Farkas and Banner exchanged impressed looks.
“I do believe you have done some reading since we last met, Farkas said.
A week’s grinding through demographic calculations of necessary discharges of surplus to the public drains did not count as ‘some reading’ in Donald’s book. He merely nodded.
Banner sat beside Donald, inspecting him with close interest.
“Just where do you stand?”
“Like you, I have come to the conclusion there is a failure of perception by the sovereigns. They see the National
