F. Wilson: An Enemy of the State

“We can do it,” Haworth said confidently. “Of course, we have Metep IV to thank for the opportunity. If he hadn't rammed through the legal tender laws eighty years ago, each out-world would still be operating on its own currency instead of the Imperial mark and we'd be helpless. Which brings me to my next topic.”

He opened the folder before him, removed a sheaf of one-mark notes, and dropped them on the table.

“I'd like to take the legal tender laws one step further.”

Metep VII picked up one of the marks and examined it. The note was pristine, bright orange and fresh out of the duplicator, with the satin gloss imparted by the specially treated keerni wood pulp used to make it, still unmarred by fingerprints and creases. Intricate scrollwork was printed around the perimeter on both sides; a portrait of Metep I graced the obverse while a large, blunt “I” dominated the reverse. Different polymer sheets had been tried and discarded when the legal tender laws were introduced during the last days of Metep IV's reign, but the keerni paper held up almost as well and was far cheaper. He lifted the bill to his nose-smelled better, too.

“You're not thinking of going totally electronic like Earth, I hope,” he asked Haworth.

“Exactly what I'm thinking. It's the only way to truly fine-tune the economy. Think of it: not a single financial transaction will be executed without the central computer knowing about it. We talk of subsidizing certain industries? With a totally electronic monetary system we can allot so much here, pull away just enough there…it's the only way to go when you're working with interstellar distances as we are. And it's worked for Earth.”

Metep VII shook his head with deliberate, measured slowness. Here was one area of economic knowledge in which he knew he excelled over Haworth.

“You spent all that time on Earth, Daro,” he said, “and got all that fine training in economic administration. But you've forgotten the people you're dealing with here. Outworlders are simple folk for the most part. They used to barter exclusively for their needs until someone started hammering coins out of gold and silver or whatever else was considered valuable on that particular colony. Metep IV damn near had a full-scale revolt on his hands when he started to enforce the legal tender laws and make the Imperial mark the one and only acceptable currency in the out-worlds.”

He held up a one-mark note. “Now you want to take even this away and change it to a little blip in some computer's memory? You intend to tell these people that they will no longer be allowed to have money they can hold and count and pass back and forth and maybe bury in the ground somewhere?” Metep VII smiled briefly, grimly, and shook his head again. “Oh no. There's already a maniac fringe group out there trying to do away with me. That's more than enough, thank you. If we even hinted at what you suggest, I'd have every man and woman on the out-worlds who owns a blaster coming after me.” He lifted a copy of The Robin Hood Reader in his other hand. “The author of this would be predicting my death rather than a tax refund. No, my friend. I have no intention of being the only Metep overthrown by a revolution.”

He rose from his seat and his eyes came level with Haworth's. “Consider that idea vetoed.”

Haworth looked away and glanced around the table for a hint of support. He found none. Metep had veto power at council meetings. He also knew out-world mentality-that was how he became Metep. The matter was, for all intents and purposes, closed. He looked back to Metep VII, ready to frame a graceful concession, and noticed a puzzled expression on the leader's face. He was holding the two sheets of paper-the mark note in his left hand, The Robin Hood Reader in his right-staring at them, rubbing his thumbs over the surface of each.

“Something wrong, Jek?” Haworth asked.

The Metep raised each sheet in turn to his nose and sniffed. “Have there been any thefts of currency paper?” he asked, looking up and fixing Krager with his stare.

“No, of course not. We guard the blank paper as well as we guard the printed slips.”

“This flyer is printed on currency paper,” Metep VII stated.

“Impossible!” Krager, who was Minister of the Treasury, reached for one of the flyers on the table. He rubbed it, sniffed it, held it up to gauge the glare of light off its surface.

“Well?”

The old man nodded and leaned back in his formfitting chair, a dumbfounded expression troubling his features. “It's currency paper all right.”

Nothing was said for a long time. All present now realized that the author of the flyer that had been so easily dismissed earlier in the meeting was no fevered radical sweating in a filthy basement somewhere in Primus City, but rather a man or a group of men who could steal currency paper without anyone knowing. And who showed utter disdain for the Imperial mark.

The White Hart had changed drastically. The thin blond man whose name was Peter LaNague noticed it as soon as he entered. The decor was the same: the rich paneling remained, the solid keerni bar, the planked flooring…these were as inviolate as the prohibition against women customers. During the five standard years since he had last visited Throne and had supped and drunk in the White Hart, there had been no physical alterations or renovations.

The difference was in the mood and in the level of sound. The regulars didn't realize it, but there was less talk around the bar these days. No one except LaNague, after a five-year hiatus, noticed. The diminution of chatter, the lengthening of pauses, both had progressed by tiny increments over the years. It was not just that the group's mean age had progressed and that familiarity had lessened what they had left to say to one another. New faces had joined the ranks while some of the older ones had faded away. And yet the silence had crept along on its inexorable course.

The process was less evident in the non-restricted bars. The presence of women seemed to lift the mood and add a certain buoyancy to a room. The men wore different faces then, responding to the opposite sex, playing the game of being men, of being secure and confident, of having everything under control.

But when men got together in places where women could not go, places like the White Hart, they left the masks at home. There was little sense in trying to fool each other. And so a pall would seep through the air, intangible at first, but palpable by evening's end. Not gloom. No, certainly not gloom. These were not bad times. One could hardly call them good times, but they certainly weren't bad.

It was the future that was wrong. Tomorrow was no longer something to be approached with the idea of meeting it head on, of conquering it, making the most of it, using it to add to one's life. Tomorrow had become a struggle to hold one's own, or if that were not possible, to give up as little as possible as grudgingly as possible with as tough a fight as possible.

All men have dreams; there are first-order dreams, second-order dreams, and so on. For the men at the bar of the White Hart, the dreams were dying. Not with howls of pain in the night, but by slow alterations in aspiration, by a gradual lowering of sights. First-order dreams had been completely discarded, second-order dreams were on the way…maybe a few in the third-order could be preserved, at least for a little while.

There was the unvoiced conviction that a huge piece of machinery feeding on hope and will and self-determination, ceaselessly grinding them into useless power, had been levered into motion and that no one knew how to turn it off. And if they were quiet they could, on occasion, actually hear the gears turning.