None But Lucifer

Chapter XXVI

BY THE MIDDLE of autumn, Hale was no longer fearful. Like the rest of his hemisphere he had lost the capacity for astonishment. Generic man can adjust himself to almost any environment, and Hale adjusted himself to the change — a little late perhaps, because he was one of the two people in the western world who hadn't been affected.

Outwardly these new processes appeared very complex. They were certainly hectic and swift. But they could be reduced to one word: co-operation. For instance, a price was set on the construction of the factory; the workers broke that price down into units: so much for each man in each branch of construction. The manufacture and installation of the machinery, the operation of the factory, and the selling of the product were similarly organized. The result was that every man was his own employer. That incidentally removed the possibility of individual expansion, because nobody would work for fixed wages.

Hale had experienced the same difficulty as other employers with his servants and his and Johnson's office force; he had had to let some of the former go, and kept the remainder only by paying astronomical wages; the latter were finally satisfied with a contractual arrangement that he assured them was a form of profit-sharing.

On the whole, though, general expansion of an entire co-operative was limitless. That raised the individual profit along with the whole, and also did away with anarchic competition, in which everybody strove to be kingpin of his particular industry.

Realization of that made Hale smile grimly. What could have defeated Johnson more completely? The devil loved class, civil, and international war; but he never ignored the possibility of dog-eat-dog competition, with everybody fighting everybody else for existence. Let him come over here now, and see how far he'd get!

But eventually gloating over a vanquished enemy, even one of Lucifer's stature, loses its edge. Hale had to go on from there. Unlike stories, a man's life seldom stops short at the climax; he lives past it. What should he do next? He was resolved not to make a diabolical plan, like Johnson's. Neither was he going to reverse his destination. For in the abstract, like most men where the future of mankind was concerned, Hale had always been something of an idealist. Like most men, also, his idealism and his self-seeking were two water-tight compartments in his mind. But now, having seen his subjects work together in harmony for their common benefit, Hale had become — the truth must be faced — a reformer, with himself as Leader, of course.

His hemisphere ran smoothly enough; when one of the rare major problems came up, the self-confidence of his subjects always found a solution. The only source of danger that Hale foresaw was Johnson. What Johnson could do to undermine his Utopia, Hale couldn't imagine, but he didn't underestimate his enemy's cunning. But Johnson seemed lost somewhere in Asia. Now and then Hale got a cablegram from him. They were terse, cheery messages, giving little information and asking for none, mostly because, he said, he didn't know where he would be next.

BY THE FIRST snowfall of winter Hale had become contemptuous. The change was too firmly established for Johnson to wreck it. So Hale turned to whatever problems might still disturb his hemisphere. What was there to do? Finance? Nothing so complicated could have run with less friction. The Stock Exchanges? Nobody sold. A few minutes after new shares were issued they had all been snapped up, and there was nothing more to buy. Politics? In prosperity it rides at the tail of the procession, keeping its hands ostentatiously in its own pockets for fear of rocking the boat. Unemployment? Class warfare? National income? They had all ceased to be problems.

Sitting in his office and reading reports, Hale wore a perpetual grin of victory, even when Gloria knitted or nagged to be amused. She was just a minor annoyance. He still loved her — that couldn't be altered — but her beautiful, omnipresent face, with its pout of boredom and its other expression of coy affection, had lost a lot of its appeal. Love, he realized wistfully, should be renewed by judicious absences, and that, of course, was impossible for them.

But what the hell! Ore and steel production were at 100% of capacity, even though mines and plants would shortly be double those of a year ago. Automobile production was 240% above the previous peak. Airplane production, a mere beginning in serial manufacture, was 5,000 a week, and could be quadrupled if trained personnel kept pace. Carloadings were 73% higher than in 1929. Retail sales: 1,242% above the same month of the year before!

If Hale hadn't taken Gloria through the stores, he could never have concretely realized how many people were purchasing wildly, buying goods almost before they were unpacked; how many new stores there were. Of course, since the Hales were merely observers, their own behavior in buying only what they needed seemed entirely normal to them.

Now Hale began to play with the notion of invading the rest of Lucifer's territory, and turning the Eastern Hemisphere into another Utopia. He'd make his double cross really complete! Of course, he'd have to wait for the dictatorships to collapse. If he tried to hurry the process they would try to pull the rest of the world down with them. Hale wasn't motivated by humanitarian pacifism, since a war couldn't be a personal danger to him, and since he would live to see all the millions of people who would have become casualties die of other causes in any event. But he hated the thought of giving Johnson the gratification of another war. The dictatorships looked extremely shaky, and it wouldn't be long. Hale rubbed his mental hands together in anticipation.