5: THE MERCHANTS

...As these worlds were assimilated into the budding financial empire of the Republic, it became the duty of the merchants, and more specifically the Department of Commerce and Trade, to bring monied economies into being on these planets. Perhaps the most important single person in the galaxy during this period was Kipchoge Ngana, whose complicity in the death of the Republic has been debated for millennia....

—Man: Twelve Millennia of Achievement

...Foremost of these was Kipchoge Ngana (884-971 G.E.), a ruthless financial and organizational genius who studiously avoided all publicity. It was he who fought tooth and nail against granting the most basic rights to non-human races, and who probably kept the stagnant and decrepit Republic alive and running long past its life expectancy...

—Origin and History of the Sentient Races, Vol. 8

Kipchoge Ngana leaned his chair back on two legs, put his feet on his desk, and sighed. Things had been going well, both for his department and the Republic. The Gross Galactic Product had doubled for the sixth decade in a row, the brief trade war with Darion III was over, and Man had never had it so good.

It was a strange feeling. He should have been smug and complacent, but instead he felt like a man waiting for the other shoe to drop and not having the slightest idea where it would be dropping from.

He glanced at his appointment calendar: two visits from minor officials in Cartography, a luncheon with a merchants’ organization from the newly settled Denebian colonies, and a planning conference within his own Department of Commerce and Trade. It was the last that was his specialty, and he was utterly convinced that no single facet of the Republic was quite so important.

Certainly they needed the Cartographers to decide upon the patterns of expansion, and the Pioneer Corps and Navy to open the planets up, and of course Psychology had become the darling of the popularizers of science. But all those came before the fact; each science and parascience had a definite job to do, and once their function was fulfilled, they moved on to the next world. After that, after the planet was made habitable, after the alien contacts had been made, after the Republic had made a commitment to the new world, it was up to the merchants, under the expert guidance of the Department of Commerce and Trade, to move in, to graft the world onto the sprawling economic structure of the galaxy, and to bring it firmly within the Republic's sphere of financial influence.

The Republic had long since learned that military force was a last resort, to be used only in the most insoluble of situations. The trick—and this was Ngana's specialty—was to introduce monied economies to the various worlds until they were so dependent upon continued commerce with the Republic that revolt and isolationism became the most repugnant and unfeasible of concepts.

On about a third of the sentient worlds, the problems had been slight, for economic structures already existed. It was the remaining worlds that wound up as Ngana's pet projects. And he was very good at his work.

There was, for example, Balok VII, a small world possessed of a totally self-reliant society relatively low on the evolutionary scale, but sentient nonetheless. The natives, vaguely humanoid in type, were completely herbivorous, and the continual search for the vast quantities of food they needed to sustain themselves prevented them from developing many other skills. There was some attempt at farming, but the climate was too uncertain for crops to be depended upon, and the economy never developed beyond a one-for-one trading stage.

Ngana had looked the world over, ordered in some twenty thousand “agrarian assistants,” and quintupled the amount of available food in three years’ time, never once extracting any payment or promise of payment from the natives, and never once allowing them to discover the methods the Republic used to multiply the food supply. At the end of three years a noticeable increase in the population took place, and the agricultural equipment was then sold or leased to private interests within the Republic. It functioned for five more years, and then, at a word from Ngana, all “assistance” came to a halt. Amid hoarse outcries of misery, disease raised its ugly head, and the Republic sent in free medical supplies. After six months, the flow of supplies stopped.

The supplies were then sold to the Republic's merchants, who rented out the agricultural machinery to the natives in exchange for harvests of certain crops, and after the first payments were made on the machinery, the medical supplies were sold on credit against future crops.

Within five more years the natives of Balok VII had need of neither equipment nor medicine, being quite capable of manufacturing their own, but by that time they had a growing agricultural economy, and the first paper Republic credits had already been introduced into the society, with which they purchased newer and better farming machines. And, of course, the continuous introduction of more advanced equipment ensured the production of more and more crops, with the Republic as the only interested speculator.

That had been easy. Korus XVI was a little more difficult. It held a race of silicon-based life forms that inhaled ammonia, excreted a carbon compound, and had a very viable economy that was based predominantly on rare metals. The inhabitants were quite happy to be isolated from the mainstream of the Republic's commerce and evinced no desire to trade with any race other than their own.

Ngana authorized fifty merchants to artificially reproduce the rarest of the rare metals that formed the staple of Korus XVI's financial structure and to flood the planet with them, trading them to private individuals for elements that were of equivalent value to Man. Fifty percent of the merchants’ profits went back into continuous market flooding, until the various coins of the Korusian realm became all but worthless. The remaining fifty percent of the profits were applied to “saving” the Korusian economy by putting it into synchronization with that of the Republic, for which the merchants were granted fifty years of exclusive trading rights to the planet. Within a decade, Korus XVI had been added to the list of the Republic's economic satellites.

Now and again a planet would attempt to withdraw from economic association with the Republic; rarely was it successful. Total trade embargo was the first means of reprisal. If this proved unsatisfactory, any medium of financial exchange used by the planet could be duplicated in huge quantities by the merchants in charge of commerce in that particular system. Except for fissionable materials, which were in ever-increasing demand across the galaxy, there was nothing so rare that Man couldn't spare a planetload of it to push an unruly economic entity back into line: diamonds, rare earths, drugs, grain, whatever an independent-minded planet held near and dear, would immediately be made worthless.

Most economies, whether natural or imposed by the Republic, dealt in essentially artificial mediums of exchange, made valuable only by the populace's confidence in them. There were a few worlds, however, where this did not hold true. If, for example, World X prized apples above all else, and apples were the prime medium of exchange, to be eaten when accumulated, introducing more apples into the society wasn't about to turn it into an economic entity that the Republic could influence and deal with. But finding something that destroyed apple crops, and then reintroducing them through the Republic's merchants, usually did the trick.

Yes, Ngana knew his job, and knew it well. More than four thousand sentient races had been discovered, and well over fifteen hundred of them were already integral cogs in the Republic's vast economic machinery. By the time he retired, Ngana expected to see that figure more than double.

But in the meantime, he was uneasy, and he couldn't quite put his finger on the reason for it. He'd been feeling apprehensive for more than a year now, filled with vague doubts about the wisdom of assimilating so many races so quickly. He did not fear any strivings for economic independence; such problems could and would be dealt with quickly and efficiently. It was something else, something he sensed was more far-reaching, but it was like a glimmer of light he could see only out of the corner of his eye; when he turned full face to it, it was gone.

A buzzer sounded on his desk, and he pressed a button that activated the inter-office communicator. It was Renyan, the Secretary of Commerce and Trade, his immediate superior. The gray-haired visage on the small screen looked troubled.

“Kip,” said Renyan, “cancel everything you have on for today and get over to my office right away.”

“Something serious?” asked Ngana.

“Very.”

“On my way,” said Ngana, flicking off the intercom. He debated taking a pocket computer, but decided that the meeting would probably be on record if he needed to go over anything later. Five minutes found him seated at a large oval table with Renyan and an elderly woman he didn't recognize.

“Kip,” said Renyan, “I'd like you to meet Miss Agatha Moore, a member of our trade commission to Lodin XI. Miss Moore, it seems, is the bearer of rather grim tidings.”

“Well, what can we do for you, Miss Moore?” asked Ngana.

“Not a thing,” said Agatha Moore. “But it's just possible that I can do something for you. Or, at least, prepare you for something that's going to be doneto you.”

Ngana shot a quick look at Renyan, who just raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

“Are you speaking about me personally?” asked Ngana.

“I'm afraid not,” said Miss Moore. “I refer to you only insofar as you are a member of the Republic. And,” she added thoughtfully, “because your consummate skill at your job has created the problem.”

“I'm afraid I don't follow you at all, Miss Moore,” said Ngana, running his fingers through his wiry black hair.

“If you were aware of what I was going to say, I wouldn't be here speaking to you,” said Agatha Moore rather primly.

“I apologize,” said Ngana. “Please continue.”

“Mr. Ngana, I am no psychologist, and I don't imagine you are either. However, it shouldn't take a master of that field to realize what's going on.”

Ngana looked at Renyan again, convinced that this was about to become some kind of elaborate joke.

“To continue,” said Miss Moore, “let me ask you exactly what your specialty is, Mr. Ngana.”

“My job is to create favorable economic conditions among alien civilizations and to open their planets up for trade with the Republic's merchants.”

“In other words, you develop undeveloped planets and give them all the economic benefits that accrue to the Republic's member worlds.”

“That is essentially correct,” said Ngana.

“Are you aware of the GGP for the past twelve months?”

“1,600.4 trillion credits or thereabouts,” said Ngana.

“1,600.369 to be precise,” said Miss Moore. “And are you aware of what portion of that product is due directly to the output of nonhuman worlds and populations?”

“No, I am not.”

“988.321 trillion credits,” said Miss Moore. “Does that imply something to you?”

“Only that we've done a hell of a good job incorporating them into the economy,'’ said Ngana.

“That's your side of the coin,” said Miss Moore. “They, on the other hand, seem to feel that they're economic slaves.'’

“Meaning?”

“Meaning they feel that if they're to supply such a large proportion of the Republic's capital, they want a share of the profits. Or, to be more precise, they want immediate enfranchisement.”

“The other shoe,” said Ngana glumly.

“What?” asked Renyan.

“Nothing,” he replied. “How do you know this is so?”

“In your work, you deal with figures,” said Miss Moore. “In mine, I deal with people, human and nonhuman alike. At a convention on Lodin XI, this was the prime topic of discussion among the alien members present, nor did they seem intent on hiding their feelings or their purposes. They want value received for their economic contributions to the Republic.”

“So they want a piece of the action, do they?” asked Ngana. “How well organized are they?”

“Very,” said Miss Moore. “As I said, Mr. Ngana, you've done your job too well. They now possess an economic club—a clubyou gave them—to threaten us with.”

“Have we any corroborative reports?” Ngana asked Renyan.

“I've had feelers out all day,” said Renyan, “and while the movement seems to be in its infancy, it definitely exists.”

“Have you contacted Psychology yet?”

“No, Kip,” said Renyan. “I thought we'd better discus all our options first.”

“I'll begin by assuming that the Republic isn't crazy about the notion of giving four hundred billion aliens the vote,” said Ngana wryly. “Which means whatever action we decide upon must be aimed at preventing this movement from coming to fruition, correct?”

“May I remind you that it was only twenty-six hundred years ago that your own race was held in a slavery more severe than the economic bonds you now shackle these worlds with?” said Miss Moore.

“Your point is noted,” said Ngana, “although my own ancestors never left the African continent until long after the American Civil War. And, to be honest with you, Miss Moore, if I were an inhabitant of the Denebian colonies, or Lodin XI, or any other recently assimilated world, I'd be very much in favor of complete and immediate enfranchisement, just as I would have been were I an American slave centuries ago. But I am neither. I am a ranking member of the Republic, charged with perpetuating the interests of my employer. Or to be blunt, I'm one of the Haves. The Have-nots’ arguments appeal to me emotionally, but I run my job with my intellect, not with my heart. And if Man is to fulfill whatever destiny he has in the galaxy and claim whatever birthright is his, he'll reach his goal a lot sooner if he does not allow all of his achievements to become subservient to some alien's notion of fair play and morality, or even his own such notion.”

“How noble!” said Miss Moore sarcastically.

“Nobility is a drag on the market. I'm paid for solving problems, not for moralizing them away. I'm sorry that you don't admire my ethics; but on the other hand, I don't think too much of your pragmatism.”

“Kip,” broke in Renyan hastily, “wait in the anteroom for me, and check out the ramifications of the problem with Psychology. I'll be with you shortly.”

Ngana took his leave, walked to the plush anteroom, and sat down. Renyan walked out a few minutes later, looking somewhat flustered.

“You know, Kip,” he began, “when I called you in we had only one crisis on our hands. Now we have two.”

“Oh?”

“She wants our jobs.”

“Both of them?”

“Yours, for saying what you did; and mine, for not firing you on the spot.”

“She's just a trivial old lady,” said Ngana.

“A rich, politically potent, trivial old lady,” corrected Renyan.

“How serious is the problem?”

“It depends who she knows. She could—”

“I don't mean the irritant,” said Ngana bluntly. “I mean the problem. How serious are the outworlds about enfranchisement?”

“As I told you, I just learned of it a few hours ago but there does seem to be considerable open sentiment for it, as far as we can tell.”

“And the Republic is against it, of course?”

“Of course.”

“How close is the association among the worlds? Can they act as a unified body?”

“Not yet,” said Renyan. “But give them twenty years or so and there'll be no doubt of it. We have no trading, immigration, or traveling restrictions. If they want to get together, they'll have ample opportunity to do so.”

“All right,” said Ngana. “I imagine we ought to begin by having Psychology eliminate all those worlds that won't have the gumption or the temperament to stand up to us. That should knock about half of them out. As for the others, we'll start squeezing them so hard they can't quit.”

“You're looking at it all wrong,” said Renyan. “They don't want to quit. They want more powerwithin the Republic, not total independence from it.”

“I know,” said Ngana. “But first we have to weaken their bargaining position.”

“And we have to do it without cutting the Republic's financial throat,'’ pointed out Renyan.

“I don't know how to put this diplomatically,” began Ngana, “but...”

“But what?” asked Renyan.

“But you've got a remarkable facility for pointing out the obvious. I don't mean to hurt your pride. You were chosen for your post because you're a fantastic administrator. But solving this problem is simply beyond your realm of experience. May I respectfully suggest that you leave it to your Brain Trust?”

“Meaning you?”

“Meaning me and my staff. You can modify our solution to suit the political and diplomatic and administrative necessities of the moment, but I'll get a lot more accomplished by returning to my own office than by jawboning here with you.”

“You know what I hate about you, Kip?” said Renyan.

“What?”

“You can be the politest sonofabitch in the world when you're trying to prove a point to me, but when we both know you're right you can become one of the most distasteful individuals I've ever met.”

Ngana flashed him a smile and returned to his office. He assembled four senior members of his extensive staff, explained the problem to them, and set them to work coordinating various details of the plan he had devised. That done, he had Psychology give him a thumbnail sketch on the characteristics of each race he would be dealing with. Some were loyal to Man, some were unable to summon the emotional independence to offer the Republic an ultimatum, and some simply didn't care. What remained were 845 worlds that could and would do all within their power to gain enfranchisement.

Enfranchisement, of course, was merely a word, a harbinger of things to come. But its meaning was absolutely clear: the ultimate passing of political power from Man to non-Man.

It was a knotty problem, and full of political obstacles. The Republic had no desire to keep the alien worlds in line through overt military force. After all, there were well over a billion suns in the galaxy; almost half of them possessed planets, and an average of one out of every twenty planets held life forms that were either sentient or someday would be. That was a lot of life forms to have massed against you.

Also, there were the 2,500 sentient races that had not yet accepted commerce with the Republic; throttling their brother creatures in too obvious a manner wouldn't exactly entice them into joining the Republic's economic fraternity.

And, finally, there were the potential Fifth Columnists, the humans who felt that the alien worlds had every legal and moral right to enfranchisement and a say in the political future of the galaxy. They would be the most bothersome obstacle, for Man needed to keep his exclusive little fraternity tightly knit at this point in his history; there were just too many outside interests picking away at him to allow internal strife to weaken his infant primacy in the galaxy. Yes, the solution must definitely handle the sympathetic humans with tender kid gloves. The brass knuckles, he decided, would remain hidden for the time being.

Reports began coming back to him. Gamma Leporis IV couldn't make any trouble they were still entirely aquatic and could be cut off from all communication with the rest of the races. The Denebian Colonies were a trouble spot; it was suspected that they had nuclear weapons, and the capacity to deliver them. Binder VI's economy depended on atomics, but they possessed no native fissionable material; an embargo would probably bring them into line. Canphor VI and VII could withstand an embargo for more than a decade; they had a viable political system, and the last two governors had run on a platform of enfranchisement. And so it went, planet after planet, race after race, economy after economy.

By the end of the week the truth began to manifest itself to Ngana: There was indeed no way to keep the 845 worlds, and very likely all of them, from their share of the spoils. It was possible on a short-term basis, to be sure, but other than total assimilation, the only answer was total political and economic disenfranchisement.

“And that,” concluded Ngana to his subordinates, “is the proverbial Pandora's Box. Ultimately half the worlds would revert to economic and possibly social barbarism. But the other half would eventually unite as a competitive entity. The competition would be economic in the beginning, but would sooner or later spread over into political and military competition as well. And Man simply cannot buck those odds at this point in history. I think we're better off to make the best accommodation we can, and make the transition slow enough and difficult enough so that Man can gather his forces and energies for another try at primacy sometime in the future. Any comments?”

“I'd hate to be around after the next election!” said one man fervently.

“We'll carry the next election, and the next twenty after it,” said Ngana. “There's going to be a change in the power structure of the galaxy, a huge and vital change, though, let's hope, a temporary one; but none of us will be alive to see it. Surely you don't think we're going to turn the reins of government over to them without putting up a little resistance, do you? No, gentlemen, we are not. Our recommendations will be as follows:

“First, that the sectors of representation be redivided in the most favorable way. The ancient word for it was gerrymandering. This, plus a few rule changes in electoral procedures, will secure political power for us indefinitely even if all the nonhumans in the galaxy are given the vote tomorrow.

“Second, that no assimilated world will be enfranchised without paying a modest fee. The figure I propose is thirty-three percent of its Gross Planetary Product for a period of twenty years.

“Third, that representation be based on a planetary ratio, rather than a racial ratio. Thus, Man would be represented by almost ten thousand planets and colonies; no other race would have more than two dozen.”

“They'll scream bloody murder on that one,” said one of the subordinates.

“Let ‘em. It'll take them fifty years to knock it down; that's fifty more years we've bought for Man.

“Fourth, that all military forces be placed under the rule of Man.”

“They'll knock that one down, too,” said the subordinate.

“Legally, yes,'’ said Ngana. “But what human commander is going to turn his fleet over to an alien simply because an alien-dominated government tells him to?

“Fifth, and last, that a census be taken prior to enfranchisement. That'll buy us another twenty years or so.”

The proposals were written up and submitted to Renyan, who, with the aid of his legal staff, worded them subtly, diplomatically, and legally. They were then sent to the Secretary of the Republic, who eventually gave them his stamp of approval and had them made into law.

The aliens weren't happy about it, but it was better than nothing, and one by one, world by world, they agreed to the terms. Which, decided Ngana, made a considerable amount of sense; not being enfranchised, they hardly had the power to object.

Weeks later he was summoned to Renyan's office, where once again he met Agatha Moore, now in charge of the newly formed Commission of Alien Rights. A brief discussion of minor problems followed, after which Renyan broke open a bottle of his finest liqueur, and passed glasses around.

“To Man,” he said, raising his glass, “who may not have come out of all this smelling like a rose, but who came out on top all the same.”

“Do you really think so, Mr. Renyan?” asked Agatha Moore.

“Absolutely,” said Renyan expansively. “In one fell swoop we've added twenty percent to the Republic's annual income, nipped what amounted to an insurrection in the bud, satisfied if not delighted our fellow races, and secured Man's political power for the foreseeable future.”

“And what do you think, Mr. Ngana?” she asked.

“I think Man has had it,” he replied bluntly.

"What?"demanded Renyan.

“Oh, not tomorrow, or even a century from now. I bought us quite a bit of time,” said Ngana. “But the handwriting is on the wall. We expanded too far too fast, tried to do too much too soon. In a matter of four or five hundred more years we'll have run out of stepping blocks to throw at the other races and we'll be out in the cold. I've secured us enough military might so that we'll survive. In fact, we'll do more than survive; we'll thrive and prosper. What we will not do is rule the galaxy with an iron hand. Not yet, anyway. The first chapter in Man's galactic history is coming to an end. The best we can do is consolidate what we've got and try to hang onto it for a few millennia; then we'll be ready to move forward again.”

“You sound as if we're about to enter a galactic Dark Age,” scoffed Renyan.

“No,” said Ngana. “But our first Golden Age is going to get rather tarnished in the years ahead. Am I correct, Miss Moore?”

“Absolutely,” said Agatha Moore.

“Well, I'll be damned!” snapped Renyan. “You make it sound as if you sold us out!”

“Not at all,” said Ngana. “I simply postponed the inevitable for as long as I could, and got us the best bargain I could manage. The problem was a fault inherent in our basic dream of Empire ... and make no mistake about it: Empire is what we were dreaming of. To control a world, you must control its economy, but for a world to have an economy it must be enlightened enough to ultimately desire fair payment for its labors. They happened to pick this point in history to demand that payment.

“If it will make you feel any better, Man will continue to be the most potent and powerful single race in the galaxy. But a millennium or so from now, he will stand alone and apart from a galaxy that will be more or less united against him, or at least a galaxy with goals considerably different from his. Then Man will begin the second stage of his destiny. The first was to overcome the obstacles of Nature, and he succeeded with consummate ease. The next step will be to overcome the intelligent races of the galaxy, some of them a by-product of Nature, some bastard stepchildren of an illegitimate union between Man and Nature, for many of them would not have had their annoying drives and ambitions without our guidance and example. I'll be surprised if Man accomplishes that step as easily as he took the first one, but if he's to be the true master of the galaxy he'll have to do it sooner or later.”

“Probably later,” said Agatha Moore.

“Don't count us out too soon,” said Ngana. “And now, if you will excuse me, I'm afraid I must return from the remote future to the problems of the here and now. The natives of Pinot VIII don't seem to give too much of a damn for the value of a credit these days, and since I'm still on salary, I imagine I'll have to look into the matter.”

And, so saying, the man who had extended the life of the Republic while simultaneously signing its death warrant scurried back to his office, thoroughly enmeshed in his newest problem. The future would have to take care of itself; as for the present, he had work to do.

THIRD MILLENNIUM: DEMOCRACY