New America (12 page)

“The man who read the tape had the sense to come straight to me, thank God. I swore him to silence. You’re the first I’ve talked to.”

“Why me?”

Hirayama smiled again, wryly this time. “False modesty never did become you, Daniel. You know how I respect your judgment, and I’m hardly alone in that. Besides, you’re the convention delegate from the Moondance region, its leader at home and its spokesman in Anchor, and it’s the largest and wealthiest in the lowlands, which makes you the most powerful person off High America and comparable in influence to anybody on it. Furthermore, you know your folk better than a highlander like me, who can’t come down among them without a helmet, ever will. Must I continue spelling it out?”

“No need. I’d blush too hard. Okay, Dorcas, what can I do for you?”

“First, give me your opinion. We can’t sit on the news more than a few days, but meanwhile we can lay plans and rally our forces. Offhand, what do you suppose the lowland reaction will be?”

Coffin shrugged. “Mildly favorable, because of glamour and excitement and the rest. No more than that. We’re so busy overrunning the planet. Nor do five thousand immigrants mean a thing to us, as regards crowding or competition, when we don’t yet total a lot more ourselves.”

“You confirm my guess, then.”

“Besides,” Coffin said, not happily, “very few of the newcomers will be able to live down here anyway.”

“Doubtless true. The devil’s about to break loose on High America, you realize that, don’t you?”

“Indeed I do.”

“Suggestions?”

Coffin pondered before he said: “Let me think at leisure, as you predicted I’d want to. I’ll call you back after sleeptime. Agreeable?”

“It’s got to be. Well, happy holidays.”

“Same to you. Don’t let this spoil your fun, Dorcas. You and I won’t have to cope with the arrival.”

“No. That girl of yours will.”

“Right. We’ll have to decide on her account. I only hope we’re able to. Good-bye.”

Coffin switched off, crossed the room, and knocked on the inner door. “All done, Alice,” he said. “Shall we continue our story?”

A calm spell, predicted to last a while, enabled Coffin to flit about by aircar, visiting chosen households throughout that huge, loosely defined territory which looked to him for guidance in its common affairs. He could have phoned instead, but the instrument made too many nuances impossible. Nobody objected to his breaking the custom of the season. They were glad to return some of the hospitality he and Eva had shown them.

Thus he went for a horseback ride with George Stein, who farmed part of the estate whereon he lived but mainly was the owner of the single steel mill in the lowlands, hence a man of weight. Stein knew that Coffin’s real desire was to speak privately. Yet the outing was worthwhile in its own right.

The Cyrus Valley was lower and warmer than Lake Moondance. Here many trees and shrubs— goldwood, soartop, fakepine, gnome—kept their foliage the year around. The blue-green “grasses” of summer had given way to russet muscoid, whose softness muffled hoofbeats. This was open woodland, where groves stood well apart. Between them could be seen an upward leap of mountains, which lost themselves in pearl-gray cloud deck. The air was mild and damp, blowing a little, laden with odors of humus. Afar whistled a syrinx bird.

When Coffin had finished his tale, Stein was quiet for a space. Saddle leather squeaked, muscles moved soothingly between thighs.
A good land
, Coffin thought, not for the first or the hundredth time.
How glad I am that, having conquered it, we made our peace with it May there always be this kind of restraining wisdom on Rustum.

“Well, not altogether unexpected, hey?” Stein said at length. “I mean, ever since radio contact was established, it’s seemed more and more as if this colony wasn’t a dying-gasp attempt after all. Earth’s made some resumption of a space effort. And they may have a few expeditions out looking for new habitable planets, as they claim; but they know for certain that ours is.”

“On the highlands,” Coffin answered redundantly. “I doubt that this lot they’re shipping to us, I doubt it contains a bigger percentage than the original settlers had, of persons able to tolerate lowland air pressure. And … the highlands are pretty well filled up.”

“What? You’re not serious, Dan.”

“Never more so, my friend. There isn’t much real estate that far aloft, and High America contains nearly the whole of what’s desirable. Most has been claimed, under the Homestead Rule, and you can bet your nose that the rest soon will be, after this news breaks.”

“Why? Who has to worry about getting crowded? The lowlands can feed a hundred High Americas if we expand cultivation. Let them industrialize the whole plateau if need be.” Stein lifted a hand. “Oh, yes, I remember past rivalry. But that was before you got some industry started down here. Now we don’t have to fear economic domination. Anytime they overcharge us, we can build new facilities and undersell them. Therefore it makes perfectly good sense to specialize along geographical lines.”

“The trouble is,” Coffin said, “that prospect is exactly what’s worrying the more thoughtful High Americans. Has been for quite a while. They’ve been raised in the same tradition of elbow room and ample unspoiled nature as we have, George. They want to keep it for their descendants; and the area available to those descendants will be limited for a long time, historically speaking, until at last the pressure-tolerant genes have crowded the older kind out of man on Rustum.

“For instance, take my sometime partner Tom de Smet. He’s spent a fairish part of his life buying out land claims in the wilderness, as he got the money to do it. He’s created a really gigantic preserve. He’ll deed it to the public,
if
we write into the Constitution an article making its preservation perpetual, and certain other provisions he wants as regards the general environment. Failing that, his family intends to keep it. On a smaller scale, similar things have been happening— similar baronies have been growing—everywhere on High America. People have not forgotten what overpopulation did to Earth, and they don’t aim to let their personal descendants get caught in the same bind.”

“But—oh, Lord!” Stein exclaimed. “How many immigrants did you say? Five thousand? Well, I grant you even forty years hence, or whenever they arrive, even then they’ll be a substantial addition. Nevertheless, a minority group. And no matter how they breed, they won’t speed population increase enough to make any important difference.”

“They will, though,” Coffin replied, “having no land available to them for the reasons I just gave you—they will be a damned significant augmentation of one class of people we’re already beginning to get a few of.”

“Who?”

“The proletariat.”

“What’s that?”

“Not everybody on High America succeeded in becoming an independent farmer, a technical expert, or an entrepreneur. There are also those who, however worthy, have no special talents. Laborers, clerks, servants, routine maintenance men, et cetera. Those who have jobs, whatever jobs they happen to get, rather than careers. Those whose jobs get automated out from under them when employees acquire the means to build the machinery—unless they accept low wages and sink to the bottom of the social pyramid.”

“What about them?” Stein asked.

“You’ve not been keeping in touch with developments on High America over the years. I have. Mind you, I’m not scoffing at the people I’m talking about. Mostly they’re perfectly decent, conscientious human beings. They were absolutely vital in the early days.

“The point is, the early days are behind us. The frontier on High America is gone. We have a planetful of frontier in the lowlands, but that’s no help to men and women who can’t breathe here without getting sick.

“Anchor hasn’t got a real city proletariat yet, nor has its countryside got a rural one. Nevertheless, the tendency exits. It’s becoming noticeable, as increasing numbers of machines and workers end the chronic labor shortage we used to have.

“If something isn’t done, Rustum will repeat Earth’s miserable history. Poverty-stricken masses. Concentration on wealth and power. The growth of collectivism. Later, demagogues preaching revolution, and many of the well-off applauding, because they no longer have roots either, in a depersonalized society. Upheavals which can only lead to tyranny. Everything which we were supposed to escape by coming to Rustum!”

Stein frowned. “Sounds farfetched.”

“Oh, it is farfetched in the lowlands,” Coffin admitted. “A territory this big won’t stifle in a hurry. But High America is a different case.”

“What do they plan to do to head off this, uh, proletariat?”

Coffin smiled, not merrily. “That’s a good question. Especially when the whole idea of the Constitutional Convention is to secure individual rights—close the loopholes through which they got shot down in the republics of Earth—limit the government strictly to keeping public order and protecting the general environment—because, thank God, we don’t have to worry about foreign enemies.” Somberly: “Unless we generate our own. Societies have been known to polarize themselves. Civil wars are common in history.”

“On the one hand, then, you don’t want a government able to take hold of things; on the other hand, you don’t dare let things drift,” Stein complained. “What do you propose, then?”

“Nobody has a neat solution,” Coffin said. “Besides, we hope to avoid imposing any ideology, unless you count freedom itself. However—official policies could maybe encourage an organic development. For instance, under the ‘public order’ heading, government might create incentives for employers to treat their employees as human beings,
individual
human beings, not just interchangeable machines or a faceless organized mass. Better conditions could be maintained for the growth of small than big businesses; a strict hard-money rule ought to help there, if it includes some provision for persons down on their luck. On the larger scale, under ‘environmental protection,’ maybe agreements can be reached which’ll distribute economic activity in such ways that everybody will have a chance to get ahead, no matter where he lives. Voluntary agreements, of course, with a profit motive behind them, but entered into under the advice of scholars who see more than just the immediate profit.”

Coffin sighed. “Those are superficial examples,” he finished. “We can’t prescribe the behavior of future generations. All we can do is be aware of certain dilemmas, present and future, put forth ideas, and hammer into our successors that they will face the future ones and had better start preparing well in advance.”

Stein rode sunk in thought. Wind lulled, leaves whispered. Two kilometers off, a herd of cero-there left a wood and started across the sward in graceful bounds.

Finally he said: “I guess I see what you’re driving at, Daniel. Forty or fifty years from now, the proletariat problem should still be fairly small. Only a few people, at worst, should be in that uprooted condition. The economy will be expanding, jobs potentially plentiful, lots of surplus wealth which can be used to help the laid-off city worker get on his own feet. Nothing unmanageable, given common sense and good will.

“Except … then Earth dumps five thousand newcomers on us.”

Coffin nodded. “Yes,” he said.

“Who’ll get no chance to become freeholders. Who’ll have to adapt to the higher gravity, the longer day and shorter year, a million different matters before they can work. And then they aren’t likely to have skills that’re in demand, considering how even the simplest things must be done otherwise on Earth. Instead of occasional individuals who need a helping hand once in a while, High America gets an instant proletariat!”

“For which it won’t be prepared, George, because it won’t have had experience with the type. Shucks, I certainly wouldn’t know how best to treat them, and doubt if the most sophisticated Anchor dweller could make a much better guess than mine.”

“It’ll hardly affect the lowlands.”

“Oh, yes, it will, if we want to keep a unified planet.” Coffin paused. “Or a free one. Elbow room doesn’t guarantee liberty. Some of the harshest empires in Earth history had all kinds of wide-open spaces.”

He straightened in the saddle, though he was becoming to feel weariness from a ride that he would once have considered short. “That’s why I’m traveling around, talking to influential and respected persons like you,” he said. “I’ve got to have the backing of this community—because I mean to make a damned radical proposal when the convention reopens.”

Stein considered his friend for a while before he responded. “I may or may not agree with you, Daniel. Frankly, here is my country, the country I care about, not High America. But I’ll hear you out, of course.”

And if need be,
Coffin thought,
I have reserves of my own to call on.
He began speaking.

The de Smet house, where Coffin stayed when he visited Anchor, lay well out from the center of town, in an area where most homes stood on broad grounds, amidst groves and gardens. Street lamps were infrequent, and trees broke the city’s light haze. Thus, there was little to blur the sky when the man from Lake Moondance went for a walk.

Winter on the altiplano had turned silent and cold. The face stung, the body was glad of a thick coverall, breath felt liquid as it entered the nostrils and came back out in stiff white puffs. Where byways were unpaved, the ground rang underfoot. Elsewhere reached snow, frost-glittering until vision faded out in distance and shadowless. The occasional yellow shining from windows looked infinitely tender but infinitely tiny. Far in the east, the peaks of the Hercules reared glacier-sharp.

Overhead stood heaven. One rarely saw such a wonder in the lowlands, however many other wonders they gave in exchange. Stars crowded the dark, sparks of frozen fire which melted into the Milky Way; tonight that great torrent gleamed like sea-glow. Three sister planets burned in copper, silver, and amber. Among them hastened pygmy Sohrab, while Raksh hung near the half, so low in the west that illusion made it huge, and cast the shadows of trees and drifts long across the land.