Exploiter's End Part 2

Carmody regarded him steadily. "Recruiting. You knew that."

"Yet you brought back only a dozen Terms."

Carmody drew a slow deep breath. "Word's gotten around, Dave. The tribes have finally forgotten their petty wars and united against a common enemy. Us! Any Term that exhibits undesirable traits of individuality is now destroyed. I think a dozen was a good haul."

"You had the whole planet."

Carmody's grin was diamond hard. "You think maybe I spent a few hours under a Guild mind-control? Is that it?"

Starza said, "On your way out, send Los Tichnat in."

Carmody flushed. "Tichnat's the one and you know it! But if he's not--if you haven't run down the spy by tomorrow--you can accept my resignation.

I saw what they left of Proycon."

The door slammed behind him. Starza smiled at me. "What do you think, Jake?"

"Tichnat. The second I got out of there, the thoughtcaster stopped."

"Doesn't mean a thing. They can beam through solid rock. Hundred-foot radius."

"No exploitation," I mused.

"Fanatics," Starza said. "They'd impede the progress of man. Sacrifice man's rightful place in the cosmos for the sake of--crawling things!

We'll fight them, Jake!"

Tichnat entered. He stood stiffly before Starza's desk, his antennae a cheerful emerald.

Starza said carefully, "What do you know about the Guild?"

"Impractical visionaries," Tichnat clicked. "Lovers of statis, well-meaning fools. They approached me yesterday."

A vein throbbed purple in Starza's forehead. Yet he kept his voice soft.

"And you didn't report it?"

"And precipitate a crisis?" Tichnat sounded amused. "I was asked if my people were being persecuted. Had I answered in the affirmative there might have been repercussions, perhaps a sequel to Proycon. Oh yes, we know of Proycon. Your foremen are sometimes indiscreet."

"Who was the agent?" Starza breathed.

"Should I tell you, and disrupt the status quo? You would destroy the agent. In retaliation, the Guild might destroy this plant."

"Impossible! Guild agents have no such authority--"

"A chance I cannot afford to take." Tichnat was adamant.

"Amalgamated," Starza prodded, "offers a standing reward of one hundred thousand solar credits for apprehension of any Guild agent. Your village could use those credits. You could equip an atomic lab. You could maintain your own research staff--"

"Stop it." The antennae throbbed brilliantly.

"We are your friends, Tichnat."

"Symbiosis, I believe is the word," Tichnat clicked dryly. "You need us.

We need your science. We need your terrifying concept of individuality.

We need to lose our old ways. The dance of harvest time. The Queen-Mother. One by one the rituals drop away. The old life, the good tribal life, is dying. You sift out us misfits who chafe at tribal oneness, you offer us the planets!"

The antennae flashed an angry scarlet. "You think to keep us chained a millennium. A hundred years will suffice. We will leave you. We exiles you have made, we who would be destroyed if we dared return to the tribe, we shall rule this world! You aliens drive a hard bargain, but the dream is worth it!"

Prometheus, in a bug's body. The shining strength, and the dark terrible pride.

"It is no dream," Starza said gently. "But perhaps you go about achieving it the wrong way. You still refuse to divulge the spy?"

"I am sorry. Good day."

Starza brooded after him.

"He's a fool. But he's grasping mankind's concepts, Jake. I'd give my right eye for a good semanticist! Basic English does it. _Self_, _want_, _mine_, selfish ego-words, the cornerstones of grasping humanity. Sure, we'll raise h.e.l.l with their esthetic sense, but in the end they'll thank us."

I sat, worrying about a secret fanatic somewhere in the plant who, in the holy interests of Mars-for-the-Martians, Terminorb-for-the-Terms, might soon plant an atomic warhead in our body shop. I finally said, "What are we going to _do_?"

"Do?" Starza chuckled. "Why, slacken line speeds, lower production standards, fifty percent at least. By tomorrow we'll be down to forty jobs an hour. They want loose standards, we'll give it to them."

"But my _cost_?"

"Obscenity your cost. Look, Jake, no matter how you set an operation up, the Terms manage to work in some glittering little ritual. They _have_ to create beauty. Their esthetic sense must be fed. They can't adjust to quick change. Supposing you cut line speeds by ten per cent. They adjust, but it almost kills them. Then drop thirty per cent. Their ritual loses timing, becomes discordant. What happens?"

I blinked. "They go mad."

"And our little Guild saboteur will be guilty of a few Term deaths.

He'll have violated a basic Guild tenet. He'll go home with his tail between his legs. Catch?"

I caught.

By midafternoon we had the conveyor speeds down thirty per cent. The red line on my cost chart soared precariously. The entire production line slowed to a crawl. We waited.

At five o'clock it happened. Three Terms in the body shop went mad. It started a chain reaction throughout the trim line. Six more Terms ran amuck and had to be destroyed. Final a.s.sembly became a shambles. Starza called me on the visicom, delighted. "Our Guild agent played right into our hands, Jake. In forcing a production slump he's harming the workers.

His next move will probably be a bluff."

I wasn't so sure.

That evening the executive dining room was choked with a tight, gnawing tension. Department heads spoke in hushed whispers, eyes darting. The man across the table could be a mindless-controlled, a Guild p.a.w.n. Smile at him politely and keep your mouth shut. I ordered _thar_, a Terminorb arthapod that was usually more delicious than Venusian lobster, but tonight it tasted like broiled leather. It was like eating in a morgue.

I saw Carmody, at the next table. I nodded coolly to him and he hitched his chair over and said, "By the way, Jake, I'm sorry about Harvey. He's going back to Earth next week."

"Why?"

"His stability index was too low," Carmody said smoothly. "Sure, we could have given him the works, but you didn't want a robot."

I said deliberately, "I needed that boy, Don."

Carmody got up, his smile infinitely contemptuous. "We don't all have your stability index, Jake."