Jumping off the Planet

GOING SOUTH

After that, we got back on the Intercontinental Expressway. It was Doug's turn to drive, and he immediately pushed the speed up to 160 klicks, until Dad told him to back off a bit. Doug eased back to 150 and Dad began muttering again about estimated time of arrival and beanstalk schedules and stuff like that.

We skipped staying in a motel that night, while the two of them took turns driving and sleeping all the way down to Puerto Vallarta, where Dad turned in the car and we got on board the SuperTrain Express, which would take us south through Central America and straight to Beanstalk City at speeds up to 360 klicks—225 mph. Dad said we'd be in Beanstalk City in less than thirty hours.

Stinky and I slept through Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Dad woke us up at 7A.M. so we could see the Panama Canal as we raced over it, but it was no big deal. The Colorado River is wider. The canal was just a straight-walled cut through flat green fields, filled with a motionless line of dirty freighters and smaller private boats, all waiting their turn at the next lock.

We spent most of the day gliding south through Colombia. The highway and the train tracks raced each other, swirling back and forth across the mountain slopes in great sweeping loops, hardly ever losing sight of each other. I was glad we hadn't driven the whole way. It would have taken a week or longer. We'd have killed each other.

Late in the day, the train began rising up the western slopes of the Andes and there were some places where the view was spectacular. By now, the beanstalk was a visible presence day and night. We could see it sometimes out our windows when the train went around a curve, but the best view was from the seats in the upstairs observation domes. The beanstalk sliced straight up into the bright blue sky almost from the very edge of the horizon. You'd think it would keep going until it was directly overhead, but it didn't. It disappeared about 11:00 high. Dad said it had something to do with angles and perspective and atmospheric haze. When we got closer, it would reach more toward zenith.

The SuperTrain was a lot wider than the old-fashioned kind—as wide as an airplane, but roomier, and the cars were all two-level. There was even a restaurant car with real waiters. We spent most of our time in the lounge car where there were terminals and even a theater at one end. Stinky wanted to play World Stomper, so Weird had to help him at the terminal. Dad and I went to the other end of the car and plopped down in the only available seats. I stared out the window and he ordered a drink from the table.

There was a fat man in a shiny suit sitting next to Dad; he was arguing across the table with a dark-haired woman. They both looked like Mexicans, but they could just as well have been Texans too. Sometimes it's hard to tell. They were both wearing fancy clothes and expensive-looking jewelry, so I figured they were Internationals, people with world-passports and no countries of their own.

The woman was angrily telling the man what was wrong with his politics, and he was telling her what was wrong with hers.

The fat man was explaining to the woman that money was a liquid, and that the health of an economy could be measured by how fast the liquid flowed through all the different parts. He said that if you gave a hundred plastic dollars to a rich man and a hundred plastic dollars to a poor man, the rich man's plastic dollars would be like drops in a reservoir, and they would move a lot slower than the poor man's plastic dollars. The poor man's money would be like drops in a river. They would flow a lot faster and farther than the rich man's money.

Dad looked uncomfortable. He obviously didn't like having to listen to their political discussion, but there was no other place to move to. He turned on his zine, but it was clear he couldn't concentrate. I smirked at his annoyance and he glowered at me.

The dark-haired woman said that the rich man's money worked just as hard as the poor man's—investments created jobs. But the fat man argued that rich dollars just flowed from one financial reservoir to another, without ever going through the rest of the economy. The poor man's dollars are more liquid than the rich man's, so funding the flow-through—paying people to consume—was good for the economy, because poor people bought things and that created jobs for everybody. The fat man looked at me then; he'd noticed that I was listening to their argument. "Am I right, muchacho? Or am I right?"

"I'm not your muchacho," I said.

"Perdone me." He held up a hand. "But you have studied plastic flow-through dollars en la escuela, have you not?"

I nodded. Reluctantly. Because I didn't really want to talk about it. We'd had a lot of flow-through kids in school, so the teachers had to explain it that some people's parents were being paid to be consumers, but everybody still called them weasels and thieves—because everybody knew that flow-throughs were the reason everybody's taxes were so high. At least that's what I used to think, until Mom had to sign up for the flow and we moved to the tube-city and then other kids were calling Weird and me and Stinky the same names. Then I didn't know what to think. We weren't stealing from anyone—the government was paying us. But if the government was paying us with the money it was taking from other people, then maybe we shouldn't be taking it, should we? But if we didn't, then how would we live?

I could tell that Dad didn't like the conversation either—because of the way he was holding his zine and glaring at me over the top of it. The fat man saw it too. "Señor, I apologize," the fat man said to him. "I saw that the muchacho, was listening, I don't mind. It's good for children to be curious about issues. Allow me to introduce myself." He held out a meaty hand. "Bolivar Hidalgo, Associate Representative for Baja to the SuperNational Congress. This is my esteemed colleague, Señora Juanita Ramirez, Economic Consultant for the Fiscal Alliance. I think they are all greedy reactionaries and she thinks that I am an agent of confiscatory totalitarianism because I do not share her feudalistic views of the world."

"I'm an old-fashioned conservative," Señora Ramirez announced to Dad and me, as if this were something to be proud of. "I believe in absolute fiscal responsibility, minimal government, and the preservation of individual freedoms."

Hidalgo snorted. "If we were talking about simple individuals, that would be fine, but you are talking about corporations who do not care if real people starve."

She reached across and poked him in the stomach with a perfectly manicured finger. "You are a fine one to talk about starvation. When the world food crisis finally occurs, you will be able to live off your stored fat long after the rest of us are bones bleaching in the sun."

I had to smile at that. These folks didn't talk like friends, but they didn't fight like enemies either. And ... it was nice to have adults actually speaking to me as a real person. Even if I didn't understand most of what they were talking about.

She looked at Dad and me. "You see, here is where my porkulent friend's argument breaks down. Real economic growth occurs in the development and deployment of new technology. The beanstalk, for instance—I assume you are going there?—do you know that the construction of the beanstalk expanded the world economy by almost three percent? It is the equivalent of constructing a new continent—a vertical continent. You'll see when you get there. And the economic benefit is still growing. What most people don't know is that the technological fallout of the beanstalk has been of far greater value to the economies of the Earth than the beanstalk itself. The money was spent here on Earth, and we built ten thousand factories and created a hundred million jobs. And thousands of new products that could never have existed before. My fat friend here would have you believe that the ownership of wealth automatically disqualifies one from full participation in the human race, as if somehow the possession or control of money is such a burden that it drains all compassion out of the soul. But he has a cure. He will take away the wealth and we will all be equally virtuous."

Bolivar Hidalgo just laughed and grinned, but it wasn't entirely a friendly grin. "Juanita," he said to her. "You misrepresent my views almost as badly as you misrepresent your own. It is not only about wealth, Juana. It is about the human suffering caused by economic plate-tectonics."

"Uh-oh, here we go—" she said. "The speech."

"And I will keep delivering it until you start listening. You cannot move a trillion dollars more than two inches in any direction without it flattening whoever or whatever is in the way, leaving a trail of broken economies in its wake. The people who'll pay your salary have taken trillions of dollars out of the North American economy and moved it into anonymous Ecuadorian holdings. The economic health of the entire hemisphere has been depressed by the greed of the fiscal underliners. And the ripples are still spreading. But your people don't care about the misery they leave behind, do they?" He eyed her curiously. "That money isn't even on the planet anymore, is it, Juana? It's on its way up the Line, isn't it?"

"Again with the conspiracy theories, Bollie?"

"Thirty trillion dollars has been drained out of the world economy. Where is it? We are heading into a global depression because the money has mysteriously disappeared. Where did it go? Your people are playing with disaster, Juana."

Very quickly, they forgot about Dad and me—which was just as well, because I was afraid that they were going to start asking more personal questions; but an aide came then and whispered something to Dr. Hidalgo. He looked annoyed, excused himself, and headed forward. Señora Ramirez followed glumly.

I looked to Dad. "What was that all about?"

Dad's expression was dark and unreadable. "Paper dollars, plastic dollars, future dollars—none of that exists. But people argue about it anyway—as if it's important."

"Is it?" I asked.

He shrugged. "If you can translate it into spendable dollars, it is. And if you can't ... you start a war."

"Is there going to be a war?"

Dad frowned. I could see the question troubled him. That meant that it was a very real possibility. But he considered the question fairly and gave a slow shake of his head. "I don't know." He put his zine down and tried to explain. "I guess those people think war is about money."

"Isn't it?"

He looked at me sadly. "I guess some people think so. But it's the rest of us who'll pay."