Mack Reynolds: After Utopia

“Why did you bring me here!” Cogswell repeated.

“Because we need your know-how,” Edmonds said flatly. He seemed a far cry from his usual easygoing self.

Cogswell’s eyes became tired-looking. “My know-how?”

Betty said gently, “Tracy, when we sought back through history for someone to show us the way, we found Tracy Cogswell, the incorruptable, the dependable, the lifelong, devoted organization man.”

Tracy Cogswell was staring at her. “Who are you people?” he said. “What’s your angle?”

It was Academician Stein who answered, and he said what Cogswell now already knew. “We’re members of a new underground. The human race is turning to mush, Tracy. Something must be done. For more than half a century we’ve had what every Utopian through history has dreamed of. Democracy in its most ultimate form. Abundance for all. The end of strife between nations, races, and, for all practical purposes, between individuals. And, as a species, we’re heading for dissolution. Tracy Cogswell, we need your experience to guide us. To overthrow the present socioeconomic system and form a new society.”

Edmonds leaned forward and put it in another way.

“You… and your movement… got us into this. Now get us out.”

Tracy Cogswell sent his disbelieving eyes from Academician Stein, to his daughter, to Jo Edmonds.

He said, “Are you all completely around the bend? You sit here and tell me you’ve pulled me through almost a century of time. You tell me that you suspended animation in me, or whatever you want to call it. That you, against my will, captured my brain, through some god-awful technique that you have developed, and made me steal some twenty thousand dollars, betray my friends, betray comrades who had many a time risked their lives for me. Betray everything I stood for. And now… ”

Academician Stein was distressed. “Please Tracy. You are still much too weak. Don’t strain yourself. We have been premature in allowing this to be brought up so soon.”

“Strain myself!” Tracy glared at him. “Here you tell me that everything I’ve fought for all my life has been achieved. The human race, at long last, has abundance, no war; disease is practically wiped out. No crime. No race problems… Now you ask me to join your organization to overthrow all this. The things I’ve always dreamed of.” His voice was so high it was all but shrill. “My father before me was a revolutionist. After he died, in a vicious mining strike, my mother raised me in his tradition. Now you want me to help tear down everything he stood for. My great grandfather was an abolitionist. He died in the Civil War thinking he was helping to free the slaves.” He laughed bitterly. “A hell of a lot of slave freeing was done. The poor bastards just went from one type of slavery to another.”

“Please, Tracy,” Betty said with anxiety in her voice. “You’re overwrought.”

He looked at her and there was a certain self-deprecation in his expression. He leveled his voice. “I suppose that I’m not being very coherent.”

Edmonds had his jade piece out and was flipping it, over and over again. He said in his usual mild way, “Hardly surprising under the circumstances, old chap.”

What was there about the guy that continually irritated Tracy? Well, it didn’t make much difference. There was no particular reason for him to like him.

Cogswell looked at Academician Stein. “I’m getting out of here. Because of you, I appropriated twenty thousand dollars which wasn’t mine, though it was in my name. I want it back, Stein. I’ll probably need it before I get organized in this new society of yours.”

Betty Stein said, “Tracy, Tracy. I told you. We simply don’t use money any more. If there was twenty thousand dollars, or twenty thousand of any other kind of currency for that matter, it would probably be in some museum where people would stare at it in amazement that there could ever have been such things.”

He was impatient with her. “Well, whatever the equivalent is. Credits, or whatever. You must have some sort of credit cards or whatever.”

Edmonds said, “Why?”

Tracy glared at him. “Suppose you want to go into a store and buy something.”

Edmonds flipped his piece of jade again and said mildly, “It’s fortunate that all three of us went to a lot of research on your period, I shouldn’t wonder. Otherwise, half of the time we wouldn’t know what you were talking about. You see, old chap, we don’t have stores any more. Not in the sense you’re talking about.”

Tracy closed his eyes momentarily. He opened them again and said. “No stores, eh? All right. Suppose I wanted some clothes. Which is exactly one of the first things I’m going to want when I get out of here. How would I go about getting them?”

Walter Stein said, “You would simply dial the distribution center in Tangier and order them. See here, Tracy, as your physician—”

“How would I pay for them?”

“You wouldn’t,” Edmonds said, as though reasonably. “No need to, don’t you know.”

Tracy glared at him again. “Oh, I wouldn’t, eh? They’d be for free, eh?”

“Yes.”

Tracy shook his head in despair. “I don’t seem to get it. When I was working in the movement, we commonly believed that given a sane system of society we would be able to produce an abundance for all. But everything wasn’t going to be free . Everybody was going to have to work. You’d do your share and you’d get your share. I think it was a guy named Herman Kahn, in a book about the year 2000, who predicted that by that time we’d have a per capita product worth something like $10,000 a year, and an average family income of $20,000.”

“Failure of nerve and imagination,” Edmonds murmured. “Most of those who tried to extrapolate at that time had similar trouble.”

Academician Stein was making worried motions with his hands to quiet things down. He said, “Look here, Tracy Cogswell. I thought that we had made clear to you that the world today produces an absolute abundance for everyone.”

“There’s a limit to everything. Everything just can’t be free.”

“Tracy, Tracy,” Betty said. “You can only eat three or four meals a day, even if you’re a glutton. You can only wear one outfit of clothes at a time. You can only sleep in one bed. You can only ride in one vehicle at a time. You can only live in one house at a time. All of these things we have in abundance. Plenty of them for everybody.”

“All right, all right,” he said impatiently. “For that sort of thing, okay. But suppose I dialed this distribution center, or whatever you called it, and ordered all the diamonds they had in stock. Would they be free?”

“Diamonds?” Edmonds said blankly.

Betty said, “What in heavens would you want with diamonds?”

He looked at her in exasperation. “Diamonds, diamonds. Flawless blue diamonds. One of the most vahiable things in the world.”

“Oh,” Edmonds said. “Of course. They used to be. Gems. Rubies, sapphires, uh, emeralds. That sort of thing, what? Jewelry.” He looked over at Betty. “You know. Women used to wear it. Status symbols. That sort of thing.” He turned his eyes back to the impatient Cogswell. “Women don’t wear jewelry much any more. I doubt if there would be any diamonds at the local distribution center but if you wanted some they certainly wouldn’t take more than twenty-four hours to manufacture you as many as you wanted.”

“Manufacture?”

The other nodded. “Yes, certainly. If I remember correctly, a diamond is a pure or nearly pure form of carbon, crystalized in the isometric system. I believe that in the old days they were useful as points to tools due to their hardness. However, we now have artificial substances that are considerably harder, so diamonds are no longer utilized. Of course, another factor is that they were quite rare and difficult to locate and to mine.” He frowned and added, “It seems to me that even in your day they were already beginning to manufacture diamonds, weren’t they?”