New America (10 page)

“Machinery and labor are costly because there’s a demand for them—they’re
wanted,
in both senses of the word—and at the same time, for the nonce, they remain scarce. In a free market, the price of a commodity is nothing more nor less than an index of how much people are prepared to exchange for it.”

“You High Americans, though”—Coffin chopped the air with his hand—”you’ve got more than your share of machines. Even per capita you do. Which means, yours is the way the money flows, no matter what we lowlanders do. It isn’t right!”

De Smet took a sip of whisky before he shook his head and sighed, “Dan, Dan, you’re a frontiersman. You know better than I, from experience, no two people ever have identical luck.

“It isn’t as if your folk were in dire want. If they were, I’d be the first to bring them relief. The free market doesn’t forbid helping your fellow man. It only makes such acts voluntary—and so in the long run, I believe, encourages altruism, though I admit that’s just my opinion.

“Your folk aren’t suffering, except in their own minds. The poorest of them eats well, dresses decently, his adequate shelter. You yourself, to judge from the pictures you’ve shown me, you live in a bigger and better house than mine, live like a medieval baron. All you lowlanders enjoy many things we don’t, such as unlimited room to move around. And … whoever can’t stand it is welcome here. We have this chronic labor shortage; he can earn excellent wages.”

“We want to be our own men,” Coffin growled, albeit not hostilely.

“I admire you for that,” de Smet said in a mild tone. “Still, recall your origins. Individuals who could live in the low country went there first to study it, paid by High America because the knowledge they could get was essential. They fell in love with the land and settled. And this was right. Mankind ought to take over the whole planet.

“That’ll be slow, however. Meanwhile, most of us are confined to the uplands. We have the same right as you to improve our standards of living, don’t we? Since you lowlanders can come join us but would rather not, why should we sacrifice to support you in your own free choice—a much freer choice than we have?

“That’s where the social utility of the supply-demand law shows itself, Dan. High America is also still young, has plenty left to do. Plenty that must be done, because we’ll be crowded long before the typical lowlander can see his neighbor’s chimney smoke. The quicker return— the effectively higher profit—to be made here, simply reflects that urgency, as well as the fact that here, today, are far more persons needing to be served.

“Please don’t take this wrong; but honestly, it looks to me as if your community is the one asking for more than is fair, not ours.”

“I told you, we don’t want a handout,” Coffin answered with somewhat strained patience. “I can prove to you that the return on any investment you make among us will be good. Okay, granted, maybe not as good as equal investment made on High America. Still, you’ll gain, and gain well.”

“We already have considerable investments in the lowlands,” de Smet pointed out. _

Coffin nodded violently. “Yes! Mines, power stations, transport lines that you own, you High Americans. You employ lowlanders to work in them, but they’re your property, and the profits go to you.”

He leaned over. His pipestem jabbed, stopping barely short of the other man’s chest. “Now let me explain some home truths,” he said. “Believe it or not, I understand your economics. I know that I’m asking, on behalf of my community, I’m asking you to use part of the stuff and staff you command, part of it to come build us—oh, that flour mill, or a factory producing machine tools, or whatever—come build that for us, instead of building something like it for High America.

“Well, I tell you, my friend, economics is not all there is to life. Rightly or wrongly, the lowlanders are starting to feel slighted. After a while they’ll come to feel neglected, and then go on to feeling exploited. I’m not saying that makes sense, but I am saying it’s true.”

“I know,” de Smet replied as if half-apologetic. “I’ve been down there myself, inside an air helmet, remember. You’re not the first lowlander I’ve talked to at length. Yes, you’re already beginning to think of yourselves as a separate breed, rough, tough, bluff frontiersmen opposed to us dandified, calculating uplanders. That notion hasn’t developed far yet-“

“It will. Unless you come help us. If you do, maybe this will stay a unified planet. Or don’t you care about your grandchildren?” Coffin waited before he added, gravely, “This is not a threat. But do bear in mind, Tom, several generations from tonight the highlanders will be an enclave. The population will nearly all be down yonder. And so will the power. Man, win their good will before it’s too late.”

“I’ve thought about that. I genuinely have. I’m aware that this isn’t a problem with any neat either-or solution. If some arrangement could be made, an economically sensible arrangement, so it’d endure…. But why should the lowlands be industrialized? In time, and not such a terribly long time, the prices of food and timber will soar, as High America fills up. Wouldn’t it be wiser to wait for that day? Meanwhile you’d keep your attractive surroundings.”

“They’re not that attractive, when we have to overwork our kids for lack of equipment we know could be built. Anyway, nobody wants to found an industrial slum. Of course not. We just want a few specific items. We’ve ample space to locate them properly, ample resources to treat the wastes so they don’t poison the land.”

“We haven’t. At least, we don’t have that kind of chance much longer, at the rate we’re going.” De Smet locked eyes with his guest and said in a voice tautened by intensity: “That’s my main reason for wanting to get rich fast. I mean to buy up as much virgin highland as possible and make a preserve of it.”

Coffin smiled in fellow feeling. De Smet’s outdoorsmanship was what had originally brought them together. It is hard not to like a man with whom you have been hiking, boating, camping for days on end.

“Maybe we can work something out,” de Smet finished. “However, it has got to involve a quid pro quo, or it’s no good. As the saying goes, a fair exchange is no robbery.”

/Lake Royal, where they planned to fish, gleamed remotely on the right. Still the car whined ahead. A ways further came a break in the forest, an ugly scar where the ground had been ripped open across several kilometers. No life save a few weeds had returned to heal it.

Coffin gestured with his pipestem. “How old is that thing, anyway?”

De Smet peered out the canopy. “Oh, the strip mine?” He grimaced. “Seventy, eighty years, I guess. From the early days.”

“Industrialization,” Coffin grunted.

De Smet stared at him. “What’re you talking about? Necessity. They had to have fuel. Their nuclear generator was broken down, couldn’t be fixed soon, and winter was coming on. Here was a surface seam of coal which they could easily quarry and airlift out.”

“Nevertheless, industry, huh? Earlier this morning, I caught a knock-you-over stink from the refinery.”

“That’ll have to be corrected. I’m leaning on the owners. So are others. Mainly, Dan, you know as well as I do, we’ve had to take temporary measures, but we’re almost back to a clean hydrogen-fueled technology.”

“Then why do you worry about industrialization? Why do you want to set aside parts of High America?”

De Smet seemed bewildered. “Isn’t it obvious? Because … I, Highlanders who feel like me, we can never really belong in your unspoiled lowland nature. Shouldn’t we too have a few places to be, well, alone with our souls?” He uttered a nervous laugh. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get pompous.”

“No matter.” Coffin blew a smoke ring. “As population grows, won’t there be more and more pressure to turn this whole plateau into a big loose city? Do you really think your wilderness areas won’t be bought out, or simply seized? Unless ample goods are coming from the lowlands. Then High Americans will be able to afford letting plenty of land lie fallow… . Well, that can’t happen without trade, which can’t happen unless the lowlanders have something—not only raw materials but finished products—to trade with.

“Don’t you think, even today, even at the cost of some profit, it makes better sense to spread the industry more thin?”

De Smet leaned back and regarded Coffin for a while before he said, “You promised me, no further arguments on our holiday.”

“Nor’ve I broken my promise, Tom. I just reminded you about what I’d said before, to help you appreciate the interesting thing I also promised to show you.”

The autopilot beeped. Coffin switched it off, took the controls, checked landmarks, and slanted the car downward. Below was a rough and lovely upthrust of hills. A lake gleamed among them like a star, and overhead circled uncountably many waterfowl. Sunlight made rainbow iridescences on their wings.

“You recall, several close friends and I have been around here quite a bit,” Coffin said. “We gave out that we were investigating botanical matters, to try to get a line on a problem we’re having in our home ecology. It wasn’t altogether false— we did even get the information we wanted—and nobody paid much attention anyhow.”

De Smet waited, braced.

“In addition,” Coffin said, “we prospected.”

Air whistled around the hull. Ground leaped dizzyingly upward.

“You see,” Coffin went on, “if we lowlanders don’t have the wherewithal to develop our country as we’d like, and if nobody’ll help us get it, why, we’d better go help ourselves. If we could stake out a claim in
your
country, then transportation to Anchor would be fast and cheap, giving us a competitive break. Or we might sell out to a highland combine, or maybe take a royalty. In any case, we’d have the money we need to bid for the equipment and personnel we need.”

“Nobody’s prospected these parts to speak of,” de Smet said slowly.

“That’s why we did. You think of this section as being far from home, but to us, it’s no further than Anchor.”

The car came to a halt, then descended straight into a meadow. Coffin opened the door on his side. A thousand songs and soughings flowed in, autumn crispness and the fragrance of that forest which stood everywhere around, ripe. Grasses rippled, trees tossed their myraid colors, not far off blinked the lake.

“Marvelous spot,” Coffin said. “You’re lucky to own it.”

“Not lucky.” De Smet smiled, however worried he perhaps was. “Smart. I decided this ought to be the heart of my preserve, and claimed the maximum which the Homestead Rule allows.”

“You don’t mind that my gang and I camped here for a bit?”

“Oh, no, certainly not. You’d leave the place clean.”

“You see, in searching for clues to minerals on unclaimed land, we needed an idea of the whole region. So we checked here too. We made quite a discovery. Congratulations, Tom.”

De Smet grew less eager than alarmed. “What’d you find?” he snapped.

“Gold. Lots and lots of gold.”

“Hoy?”

“Mighty useful industrial metal, like for electrical conductors and chemically durable plating. Making it available ought to be a real social service.” Coffin’s thumb gestured aft. “You’ll want to see for yourself, no doubt. I brought the equipment. I knew you know how to use it, otherwise I’d’ve invited along any technician you named. Go ahead. Inspect the quartz veins in the boulders. Put samples through the crusher and assayer. Pan that brook, sift the lakeshore sands. My friend, you’ll find every indication that you’re sitting on a mother lode.”

De Smet shook his head like a man stunned. “Industry can’t use a lot of gold. Not for decades to come. The currency—”

“Yeh. That should be exciting, what happens to this hard currency you’re so proud of. Not to mention what happens to the wilderness, the majority of it that you don’t own, when the rush starts. And it’ll be tough to get labor for producing things we can merely eat and wear. You, though, Tom, you’ll become the richest man on Rustum.”

Coffin knocked the dottle from his pipe, stretched, and rose. “Go ahead, look around,” he suggested. “I’ll make camp. I’ve brought a collapsible canoe, and the fishing’s even better here than at Lake Royal.”

De Smet’s look searched him. “Do you … plan … to join the gold rush?”

Coffin shrugged. “Under the circumstances, we lowlanders won’t have much choice, will we?”

“I—See here, Dan—”

“Go on, Tom. Do your checking around, and your thinking. I’ll have lunch ready when you come back. Afterward we can go out on the water, and maybe dicker while we fish.”

He strode into the hospital room, grabbed Eva from her bed to him, and bestowed upon her a mighty kiss.

“Dan!” she cried low. “I didn’t expect—”

“Nor I,” he said, and laughed. “I never dared hope things’d go this fast or this well.” The sun stood at noon. “But they did, and it’s done, and from this minute forward, sweetheart, I am yours altogether and forever.”

“What-what—Dan, let me go! I love you, too, but you’re strangling me.”

“Sorry.” He released her, except to lower her most gently, bent over her, and kissed her again with unending tenderness. Afterward he sat down and took her hand.

“What’s happened?” she demanded. “Speak up, Daniel Coffin, or before heaven, I’ll personally wring the truth out of you.” She was half weeping, half aglow.

He glanced at the door, to make doubly sure he had closed it, and dropped his voice. “We’ve got our contract, Eva. Tom de Smet called in his counselor as soon as we returned, a couple hours ago, and we wrote a contract for the Smithy to come do work at Moondance, and you know Tom never goes back on his word. That’s one reason I was after him particularly.”

“You finally persuaded him? Oh, wonderful!”

“I s’pose you could call it persuasion. I—Okay, I’ve told you before, strictly confidentially, how my gang and I weren’t just doing research in the High American backwoods, we were trying for a mineral strike.”

“Yes. I couldn’t understand why the hurry.” Her tone did not accuse. Nor did it forgive. It said that now she saw nothing which needed forgiving, and merely asked for reasons. “I kept telling you, the minerals would wait, and the ecological trouble wasn’t that urgent.”