Part 1

Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Money Is the Root of All Good

BY PATRICK WILKINS

_Urgent! Class AA emergency for Universal Relief! Stock market crash on planet Lyrane, where people live by economy based on good deeds. Cause unknown. Suspect galactical manipulators of watering stock._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Kalgor, capital of the Galactic Empire, is not, as one would expect, one solid city. As a matter of fact, it is more suburban and rural than many farming planets.

The reason is obvious if but considered. The galactic government and the equally large galactic businesses are so immense that they must be distributed throughout the whole galaxy, with only the very cream of the hierarchy located on Kalgor. Thus, each company would have only one small building--but with a communication web that enfolded macroscopic enterprises.

Universal Relief Incorporated was typical of this arrangement. Although its warehouses and offices throughout the Empire could form a megalopolis in themselves, the fountainhead on Kalgor was a two story building.

In that building there was excitement. People were rushing frantically--the teletypes chattered in a frenzy--the air was static with urgency. It manifested itself in the quick jerky motions, in the voices held just below the cracking point.

Universal Relief served the function that used to be handled by the Red Cross. They were disaster rectifiers, succor and reconstruction was their business. But they were a business--declaring annual, taxable profits and dividends and, in general, a profit-seeking firm.

They received regular payments from planetary governments, much like premiums with insurance, and in case of emergency they were to provide complete relief as swiftly as possible. There was no chance for graft in their business, for they were closely checked by the government and competing organizations like Galactic Aid, their closest rival.

This business was now apparently faced with a crisis and its staff was feverishly trying to cope with it.

Roald Gibbons, President of Universal Relief, was the only person not affected--at least not apparently. His indolent posture, his quiet grey eyes reflected nothing of the hectic activity.

This made Kim Roger nervous.

"I don't think you comprehend the seriousness of it, Mr. Gibbons," he was saying.

"I am not thinking of the seriousness of it. I just want the facts."

"Very well, sir. Two days ago, the Lyranian stock market crashed."

"You will have to go back further than that. I can't possibly know the history of all the planets in the Empire. That's what I pay you for. Give me some background."

This little speech made Kim lose his clutching hold on his patience. Roald Gibbons had just taken office after the death of his father, who had managed the galactic firm for twenty years. By merely being the boss's son, Roald had achieved the reputation of being an ignorant, careless playboy. His professed ignorance of the planets confirmed, in Kim's mind, this reputation.

With an effort, Kim resumed. "The planet of Lyrane, the only habitable one in the system of Lyrane--Copernicus sector--was colonized by a socio-economic sect for the purpose of testing its slightly radical beliefs.

"This sect maintained that an individual should not be paid on the basis of the work he did, but for the good deeds, or good thoughts he had. A small stipend was paid for actual work or production, to establish a workable basic economy and trade. This stipend was enough to cover all the basic wants of the individual.

"To procure luxuries, a citizen had to use the money he received for his good deeds or thoughts. Every time a man helped an old lady across the street, or came up with a bit of philosophical wisdom, he could record it with a central office and receive his luxury pay from the government.

"The purpose of the system was to make people emphasize virtue and quality in their lives. Instead of concentrating on profit for profit's sake, they would have to consider the inherent rightness and beauty of what they were doing."

"In such a system," Roald asked, "how could such a thing as a stock market possibly develop?"

"Very simple, sir. This luxury pay, issued in a different currency than the commodity pay, could be used in any way a person saw fit. Some people naturally developed the idea of investing stock in a particularly virtuous or intelligent person. Every time that person did a good deed, the stockholders received a dividend from his luxury pay. All of the scientists and philosophers, therefore, became corporations in themselves, with as many as five thousand people holding stock in one man."

"Sorry, Kim, but I don't get it. How could these incorporated individuals get any luxury pay for themselves if they had to hand it out to their stockholders?"

"The administration would allow for that. A person received luxury pay in proportion to the number of stockholders that he claimed. The government had to do this since they indirectly were investing in these corporation-men--but I'll explain that later.

"The corporation-man lived off the original investments of stockholders, with some of the stock solvent for sales. In this way, the individual would profit from "good-doing" by receiving many new investments."

"What is the social makeup of this Lyrane? It seems to me it would be a lunatic fringe de luxe, with every hack writer, thaumaturgist, or evangelist climbing aboard the gravy train."

"On the contrary, it is a social structure of the finest minds in the galaxy. The rest are all weeded out. Although the motives of the system are idealistic, they are enforced with a rigid practicality. They demand quality and truth, and gauge it with the revealing yardstick of public consumption and approval as measured in sales and polls."

Roald gazed out at the pastoral countryside surrounding this vital little nub of a billion-credit business. He swung back to Kim, and said, "But the basic difficulty would be determining just what a good deed or thought is. How in God's name could they determine that, when every act or word that anyone ever commits or utters is open to judgment by so many different standards. For instance, what about the case of the man who trespasses to save a person's life. How are you going to rate that sort of thing?"

"Mr. Gibbons, I am an economist, not a philosopher. It is the wonder of the galaxy that these people did establish and maintain this system, in spite of obstacles such as you mentioned."

"All right, we'll discount the philosophical angle. I still don't understand it. How about big business? How could that develop with this system? They certainly need it to support a planet."

"That's the easiest part of it. People would use their luxury pay to establish businesses. At these businesses men could work their five hours a day to get their commodity pay. It was not only possible, but mandatory that such businesses develop. There were two types: mass production of commodities, with a regulated profit in commodity pay; or specialization and production of fine merchandise that was sold at cost, but which the government paid for in luxury pay in proportion to its quality as thoroughly tested.

"However--all big businesses were closely controlled by the government. They would grant franchises so that there would be no cutthroat competition, and supply was regulated to meet demand. Therefore, business itself was stable, and there was no opportunity for speculating in its stock market. That left only the variable corporation-men for actual stock market trading--and that is what crashed.

"Let's take a writer, for example. He writes a book, and a publishing house prints it. The people buy it--spending luxury pay. The publishing house has to convert that luxury pay to commodity pay to cover costs and payroll. They make no profit, the book being sold at cost.

"That book has to sell so many thousand copies to receive luxury pay from the government. Then both the author and the publisher receive luxury pay in proportion to its sales, which is the indication of its merit. The luxury pay that the publisher receives goes in the pockets of the executives. The luxury pay that the author receives--which is much larger--goes to his stockholders.

"Since the author is the source of this transaction, the people invest in him and not the publisher, for they can't get any great return from investing in the publisher, but they can from the author.

"Actually, what the whole thing amounts to is a complete shift of emphasis from big business and its speculations--which is what we've always known--to individuals and the intangibles and variables of their ideas and deeds."

"There is only one question left," Roald said. "The government doles out all this luxury pay. Pray tell, where do they get it?"

"There are two parts to the government. There is the actual administration, with its members drawing set salaries and unable to draw luxury pay, to prevent graft; and then there is the Economics Commission, which controls luxury pay.

"This Economics Commission is a business. They invest in galactic corporations, such as ours, and make a profit. That's part of their money. Then--and here's the secret--any time a book is written, or fine merchandise produced, it must be sold on Lyrane at cost. But the government sells it throughout the galaxy for a profit, and keeps that profit to redistribute in luxury pay to Lyranian citizens.

"Anyway, the system finally blew up, and now we're holding a messy bag."

"But how could it? Why?"

"That's just it. Nobody knows what brought it about, but suddenly the men who were corporations just stopped producing. They stopped doing good deeds, stopped writing, stopped research, and what-not and, consequently, stopped drawing luxury pay.

"Naturally, their stockholders got mad and wanted to sell, but incorporated men couldn't liquidate and the values of the stocks dropped to zero, along with the value of the luxury pay. The result was a depression and a lot of angry people."

"A planetary depression is not such an outstanding emergency that it should cause Universal Relief to be in such an uproar. I believe that it is merely a Class B emergency, with complete regulations on proper handling."

Kim was so earnest in his reply that he leaned over and almost rubbed noses with his superior. "On the contrary, sir. There are other factors, so it's not so simple. This Lyranian system has been working for ten years now, and the Lyranians want desperately for it to succeed. They are almost fanatics on it, trying to prove the value of their system so that other planets will adopt it--which God forbid.

"Naturally, the resentment against the corporation-men for betraying them has turned into hatred, with murder, riots and a civil war in the offing. Yes, their politics were unitary and stable until this emergency, but you'd be surprised at the number of political factions that can be formed and develop hostilities in a period of crisis."

"Could it be an attempt by some faction to seize power?"

"Impossible. The way it was set up, political power was not desirable, being unprofitable and mostly drudgery. If they upset the apple-cart, the balance was so fine only chaos would result and there would be nothing to take power over. The only reason parties have developed now is due to differing views on how to rectify the situation, and blaming different things for being responsible. But no power motive."

"Very well then, the situation is a Class A emergency, but we've handled them before."

Kim allowed one fleeting sigh of despair. He had thought for a while that this Roald could take hold, could be competent, but--

"If you have ever consulted our financial records, sir," he said with heavy sarcasm, "you would find that our largest contribution comes from Lyrane. They have established our organization as tops in the good-deeds field, and nearly every person on Lyrane has stock in us, along with a sizable payment since we threw a high premium at them, fearing just this eventuality."

Roald appeared thoughtful, then said, "Well, continue with standard procedures for a Class A emergency. I'll see what can be done."

Kim made one last desperate appeal. "I firmly believe that this should be a Class AA emergency!"

"Your field of specialization is overriding your business sense, Kim. You are fascinated, as an economist, by this Lyrane system, and you would like to see us put it back on its feet so you economists would have a live experiment to observe. I'm sorry, but it isn't practical. You know how fantastically expensive a Class AA is, and no one planet is about to get it."

Kim cowered mentally. This wasn't the indolent playboy, but the Old Man, giving him a good dressing down. He left the office with restored faith, but a faith that was interlaced with doubt in regard to Roald Gibbons.

Roald appeared to Kim to be uninformed and incompetent; but on the contrary, he had learned the business thoroughly from his father. There was one division of the company that he knew especially well.

This division was known to only a few people in the company, and no one outside knew it existed. Roald managed this special division, and left the rest of the management to the routine procedures and junior executives.

While the rest of the company was in a state of organized hysteria, with great ships loading from the massive warehouses of food, medicine, and other relief supplies, and heaving into the sky bound for Lyrane, Roald was having a quiet conference with the members of his special division.

Roald's father had known that the cheapest way to relieve an emergency was to alleviate the causes behind it, unless it were a natural disaster. For this reason, he had organized a corps of special agents to penetrate behind the scenes to straighten out the causes and cut short the emergencies that Universal Relief had to pay for.

"Apparently there is a definite force operating on Lyrane," Roald was saying to his elite corps, "that caused these men, who had been living by the standards of that civilization and becoming rich from it, to cease the activity which they had profited by."

"Could it be a religious doctrine?" one of them asked.

"Possibly. It could be anything. The fact is we don't know--and we should. So we're going to Lyrane. For the Main Office, this is a Class A; but for us it is a Class AA!"

* * * * *

Erol Garbin sat on the cool stone terrace of the mountain lodge, gazing out over the small valley with the golden orange sun of Lyrane setting behind the mountains. The cool evening breeze gently rearranged his white hair and brushed over the creased forehead and the worried eyes.

He looked up to see his daughter come out on to the terrace. She was a comely young woman of slight build and apparently sensitive nature as vivified in her piquant features. He gave her a wistful smile, at which she rushed into his arms and buried her head in his shoulder, which was still powerful despite his age. Her body quivered with muffled sobs.

"Yma, my dearest Yma," he said tenderly. "Why didn't you marry, so that you would have none of this? You could be leading your own life, instead of bearing my burden."

"You are no burden, Father. You are my life. And now that your life is threatened--"

He knew what had upset her. He had heard the newscasts too--yes, the video still operated, controlled by the people. He had heard the names of his old friends--Fredrikson, Tomlin, Masschau--all dead by violence.

"Why do you keep silent?" his daughter asked with a little child's pleading. "Where is the protection you were offered? Why don't you tell the people?" The world was mad and destructive in the eyes of the child--the woman who was a child in the face of this dilemma.

He gently quieted her with a large, steady hand that pressed her head to him.

"It would do no good. Arnson tried it."

She looked up with hope in her eyes.

"He spoke to a special meeting of his stockholders and tried to tell them. They scorned it as a wild fantasy to excuse his betrayal. They issued him an ultimatum--work! He said that they would have to believe him; he couldn't work. They killed him."

The hope slid away and her eyes assumed the depths of despair and bitterness.

Despair for the future, and bitterness for the past. And she thought of the past--for she dared not think of the future.

Where does violence start, she wondered. Trace it to its roots; what's its source, what's its manifestation?

It starts with one man and an idea. Many men may have had the same idea, but it takes one man to express it at the right time, to apply it. Then the planning, by many or by one.

And, finally, the last step is persuasion. The man who had the original idea must convince others. He must indoctrinate them with this new concept so that they believe. No more.

For once a man, who has been a stable entity in a stable organization, develops and believes a strange and contradictory idea--the result is inevitable. Misunderstanding, resentment, hate, violence. The cycle carries on from there with its own momentum.

And the people who are swept up in it, and that may include anyone from the most innocent to the perpetrator himself, are as helpless to control its outcome as are the atoms helpless to control the nova they started in a sun.

So this violence on Lyrane had begun, with one man, then a group of men, and then had come the misunderstanding, resentment, hate, violence cycle. It manifested itself in the offices of Universal Relief as a logical study in sociology and economics.

But to Yma Garbin and her father, it was pure hell.

When had it all started, and when would it end?

Did it start that first day when an orphanage in the capital city burned to the ground, and not one of the many philanthropists made a move or an offer to aid or restore?

Yes, that was when it started for the public, but it had really started in midnight conversations in locked rooms. Words, an idea, then the act--and who is to say which is more real?

But there was no questioning the reality of what she had seen at Tomlin's house. That was yesterday.

Tomlin, the greatest living biochemist in the empire, was nothing but a sad, huddled corpse. His beautiful mansion was slashed and looted, and then fired to the ground. The air was filled with the odor of burning, of death--but especially the mentally sickening, defeating odor of violence.

This was true of the whole planet, especially in the cities. The great houses beseiged by furious mobs, shattered. Night full of stray shots and casual death. Every man with that cold gleam in his eye when he looked at even his best friend.

"Did you cause it?"

Yma lay in her father's arms, her mind reeling through this wax works of personal horror and death.

This scene was interrupted by a gyro landing on the lawn.

* * * * *

Erol watched it curiously; his daughter, tensely. A man emerged and strode towards them. He was a young man, with good and intelligent features, and Erol felt no fear.

"Dr. Garbin," the man addressed him, "I'm delighted to find you. I tried to see others--I was always too late." He paused, then said, "If anyone should be able to tell me what has happened, you should."

A slight suspicion showed in Erol's face while Yma looked as wary as an animal.

"If I can help you in any way, sir, I shall be delighted," Erol said.

The young man sat down. His eyes told of bewilderment and horror, and Erol guessed that he had been in the cities.

"My name is Florin Brite," the man said after a long silence. "I was a student of Tomlin, the biochemist, who was, I believe, your friend. I left over a year ago to study at the Institute of Klynos. I heard of trouble here and grabbed the first ship home.

"I never dreamed I'd find such violence.

"When I tried to find out what happened, I only found that all the great men that I knew were murdered, or in hiding."

"How did you find where I was?" Erol asked.

"I talked to one of Tomlin's servants, an old fellow--scared silly--but he remembered me and he told me."

Erol seemed to accept this. "What do you want to know?"

"Sir, I just want to know what happened. Why do the people feel they have been deceived, and by whom? Why are all the incorporated men in danger of their lives?"

"It is the corporation-men who have deceived the public." It was a flat statement by Erol, without rancor or sympathy. "They are, in consequence, subject to the wrath of the people who relied upon them."

The bewilderment in the young man's eyes deepened. "How could they deceive the public? Why? They had everything to gain from earning luxury pay for their stockholders. Why did they stop?"

As if at a signal, Erol relaxed and his weariness became evident. Yma relaxed somewhat but remained alert.

"Why they did," Erol replied, "is a private matter that only each of those men knows. The fact is that they, myself included, did--and now we must pay."

"You sir? But you were always such an eminent figure. I've admired you from childhood as being one of the best of the planet's many scientists. Your researches in sociology have led the empire. Why should you suddenly stop your writing?"

"Fine flattery, son, but it will not avail you. I also see that you are not completely in the dark. You must have been investigating or you wouldn't know that I have a half-finished book that never got to the publisher on time.

"Anyway, the reasons are inconsequential, now. It is done, and we must consider the consequences. And we must consider you. What do you intend to do, return to Klynos, or stay here?"

"You don't get out of it that easily," Florin said. "Yes, consider me. Consider me as a citizen of this planet, a believer in its principles. I am no idiot that can't understand or won't accept the truth.

"You are a sociologist. Here we have one of the most paradoxical sociological situations imaginable on our planet. There obviously are many unknown factors. You know them--you must. Just consider me a student and explain the functionings of these phenomena."

"You try my patience, Mr. Brite. I am accepting you at face value, but you are a stranger to me. What I wish to keep to myself is entirely my business. As I say, I am accepting you, and trying to help you--as we all must do in this mess. Now what do you intend to do?"

With a fatalistic shrug, Florin replied, "I cannot go back to Klynos. My education was paid for by my stock in corporation-men here. That is now, as you know, worthless."

Yma spoke to him for the first time. "Then don't you feel resentment towards the men who--who betrayed you?" Her eyes awaited his answer.

Florin smiled. "I do not feel that I have been betrayed. I know that the corporation-men, representing the most intelligent element of Lyrane, wouldn't do this thing without a sound reason."

Erol said, "Apparently you wish to throw in your lot with us, rather than the mob."

"My loyalty to my teacher and his associates compels me to do so. It is also my personal desire."

"You won't get any luxury pay for that loyalty," Yma snapped.

"That's unfair. You know Tomlin always advocated proper living from a moral obligation rather than for mercenary reward."

Their conversation was interrupted by a faint humming. Out over the valley three gyros were approaching at a low altitude.

Bitterly, Yma said, "Apparently Tomlin's servant has talked to other people--or perhaps Mr. Brite here--."

Florin shrugged again. "I have no defense except to say that I talked to no one. Either you believe me or you don't."