Ring Around the Sun

CHAPTER SIX

GEORGE Crawford was a big man who overflowed the chair in which he sat. He held his hands folded over his paunch and talked with no change of tone, with no inflection whatsoever, and was the stillest man Vickers had ever seen. There was no movement in him nor any sense of movement. He sat huge and stolid and his lips scarcely moved and his voice was not much louder than a whisper.

"I have read some of your work, Mr, Vickers," he said. "I am impressed by it."

"I am glad to hear you say so," Vickers said.

"Three years ago, I never would have thought that I would ever read a piece of fiction or be talking to its author. Now, however, I find that we need a man like you. I have talked it over with my directors and we are all agreed that you are the man who could do the job for us."

He paused and stared at Vickers with bright blue eyes that peered out like bullet points from the folds of flesh.

"Miss Carter," he said, "tells me that, at the moment, you are very busy."

"That is right."

"Some important piece of work, I presume," said Crawford.

"I hope it is."

"This thing I have in mind would be more important."

"That," Vickers told him crisply, "is a matter of opinion."

"You don't like me, Mr. Vickers," Crawford said. It was a statement of fact, not a question, and Vickers found that it irritated him.

"I have no opinion of you," he replied. "I am totally disinterested in everything except what you have to say."

"Before we go any further," said Crawford, "I would like to have it understood that what I have to say is of a confidential nature."

"Mr. Crawford," Vickers told him, "I have little stomach for cloak and dagger business."

"This is not cloak and dagger business," said Crawford and for the first time there was an edge of emotion in his voice. "It is the business of a world with its back against the wall."

Vickers stared at him, startled. My God, he thought, the man really means exactly what he is saying. He really believes that the world does have its back against the wall.

"Perhaps," said Crawford, "you have heard of the Forever car."

Vickers nodded. "The garage owner in my home town tried to sell me one this morning."

"And about the everlasting razor blades and the lighter and the light bulbs."

"I have one of the blades," said Vickers, "and it is the best blade I ever owned. I doubt that it is everlasting, but it is a good blade and I've never had to sharpen it. When it wears out, I intend to buy another one."

"Unless you lose it, you will never have to. Because, Mr. Vickers, it _is_ an everlasting blade. And the car is an everlasting car. Maybe you've heard about the houses, too."

"Not enough to matter."

"The houses are prefabricated units," said Crawford, "and they sell at the flat rate of five hundred dollars a room — set up. You can trade in your old home on them at a fantastic trade-in value and the credit terms are liberal — much more liberal, I might add, than any sane financing institution would ever countenance. They are heated and air conditioned by a solar plant that tops anything — you hear me, _anything_ — that we have today. There are many other features, but that gives you a rough idea."

"They sound like a good idea. We've been talking about low-cost housing for a long time now. Maybe this is it."

"They are a good idea," said Crawford. "I would be the last to deny they are. Except that they will ruin the power people. That solar plant supplies it all — heat, light, power. When you buy one of them, you don't need to tie up to an electric outlet. And they will put thousands of carpenters and masons and painters out of work and in the carbohydrates lines, too. They eventually will wreck the lumber industry."

"I can understand about the power angle," Vickers said, "but that business about the carpenters and the lumber industry doesn't quite make sense. Surely these houses use lumber and it must take carpenters to build them."

"They use lumber, all right, and someone builds them, but we don't know who it is."

"You could check," suggested Vickers. "It seems rather elementary. There must be a corporate setup. There must be mills and factories somewhere."

"There's a company," admitted Crawford. "A sales company. We started with that and we found the warehouse from which the units are shipped for delivery after they are sold. But that's the end of it. There is, so far as we can find, no factory that builds them. They are consigned from a certain company and we have its name and address. But no one has ever sold a stick of timber to that company. They have never bought a hinge. They hire no men. They list factory sites and the sites are there, but there aren't any factories. And, to the best of our knowledge, no single person has gone into or come out of the home office address since we've been watching it."

"That's fantastic," Vickers objected.

"Of course it is," agreed Crawford. "Lumber and other materials go into those houses and somewhere there are men who build them."

"Mr. Crawford, just one question. Why are you interested?"

"Well, now," said Crawford, "I wasn't quite ready to tell you that."

"I know you weren't, but tell me anyway."

"I had hoped to sketch in a bit more of the background, so that you would understand what I am driving at. Our interest — I might say our organization — sounds just a little silly until you know the background."

"Someone has you scared," said Vickers. "You wouldn't admit it, of course, but you're scared livid."

"Queerly enough, I will admit it. But it's not me, Mr. Vickers — it's industry, the industry of the entire world."

"You think the people who are making and selling these houses," said Vickers, "are the same ones who are making the Forever car and the lighters and the bulbs."

Crawford nodded. "And the carbohydrates, too," he added. "It's terrifying, when you think about it. Here we have someone who wrecks industries and throws millions out of work, then turns around and offers those same millions the food to live on — offers it without the red tape and the investigations and all the quibbling that always heretofore has characterized relief."

"A political plot?"

"It's more than that. We are convinced that it is a deliberate, well-planned attack on world economy — a deliberate effort to undermine the social and economic system of our way of life, and after that, of course, the political system. Our way of life is based on capital, be it private capital or state control of resources and on the wage that the worker earns at his daily job. Take away those two things, capital and jobs, and you have undercut the whole basis of an orderly society."

"We?" asked Vickers. "Who are we?"

"North American Research."

"And North American Research?"

"You're getting interested," said Crawford.

"I want to know who I'm talking to and what you want of me and what it's all about."

Crawford sat for a long time without speaking, and then he finally said, "That is what I meant when I told you what I had to say was highly confidential."

"I will swear no oath," said Vickers, "if that is what you mean."

"Let's go back," said Crawford, "and review some history. Who we are and what we are will become apparent then.

"You remember the razor blade. It was the first to come out. An everlasting razor blade. The news spread quickly and everyone went out and bought one of the razor blades.

"Now, the ordinary man will get anywhere from one to half a dozen shaves out of a blade. Then he throws that blade away and puts in another one. That means he is a continuous buyer of new razor blades. And as a result the razor blade industry was a going concern. It employed thousands of workers, over the course of a year it represented a certain profit for thousands of dealers, it was a factor in a certain type of steel production. In other words, it was an economic factor which, linked in with thousands of other similar economic factors, make up the picture of world industry. So what happens?"

"I'm no economist, but I can tell you that," said Vickers. "No one bought any more razor blades. So the razor blade industry was out the window."

"Not quite as quickly as that, of course," said Crawford. "A huge industry is a complex thing, and it dies somewhat slowly, even after the handwriting is on the wall, even after sales stop almost completely — and then quite completely. But you're correct; that's what's happening right now: out the window.

"And then, there was the lighter. A small thing in itself, of course, but fairly large when you look at it from the world point of view. The same thing happened there. And the everlasting light bulbs. And the same thing once again. Three industries doomed, Mr. Vickers. Three industries wiped out. You said a while ago that I was scared and I told you that I was. It was after the bulbs that we got scared. Because if someone could wipe out three industries, why not half a dozen, or a dozen or a hundred — why not all of them?

"We organized, and by we I mean the industry of the world — not American industry alone, but the industry of America and the British Commonwealth and the continent of Europe and Russia and all of the rest of them. There were a few, of course, who were skeptical. There still are a few who never have come in, but by and large I can tell you that our organization represents and is backed by every major industry of the entire world. As I have said, I would prefer you not to mention this."

"At the moment," Vickers told him, "I have no intention of saying anything about it."

"We organized," said Crawford, "and we swung a lot of power, as you can well imagine. We made certain representations and we brought certain pressures and we got a few things done. For one thing, no newspaper, no periodical, no radio station, now will accept advertising for any of the gadgets nor give them any mention in the news. For another, no reputable drug store or any other place of business will sell a razor blade or a bulb or lighter."

"That was when they set up the gadget shops?"

"Exactly," said Crawford.

"They're branching out," said Vickers. "One opened in Cliffwood just the other day."

"They set up the gadget shops," said Crawford, "and they developed a new form of advertising. They hired thousands of men and women who went around from place to place and said to people they would meet: 'Did you hear about those wonderful new gadgets they are getting out? You haven't? Well, just let me tell you… You get the idea. Something like that, involving personal contact, is the best kind of advertising that there is. But it's more expensive than you can possibly imagine.

"So we knew that we were up against not merely inventive and productive genius, but almost unlimited money as well.

"And we investigated. We tried to run these folks to earth, to find out who they were and how they operated and what they meant to do. As I've told you, we ran into stone walls."

"There might be legal angles," said Vickers.

"We have run down the legal angles, and these people, whoever they may be, are covered hell to breakfast. Taxes? They pay taxes. They're eager to pay taxes. So there won't be any investigation, they actually pay more taxes than they need to pay. Rules of corporation? They are more than meticulous in meeting all the rules. Social security? They pay social security on huge payrolls that we are convinced are utterly fictitious, but you can't go to the social security people and say, 'Look, there aren't any such people as these they're paying taxes on. There are other points, but those serve as illustration. We've run down so many legal blind alleys that our legal force is dizzy."

"Mr. Crawford," said Vickers, "you make out a most interesting case, but I can't see the point of what you said earlier. You said this was a conspiracy to break world industry, to destroy a way of life. If you study your economic history, you will find example on example of cut-throat competition. Surely that's all this is."

"You forget," Crawford replied, "about the carbohydrates."

And that was true, thought Vickers. The carbohydrates were something apart from cut-throat competition.

There had been, he remembered, a famine in China, as usual, and another threatening, as usual, in India, and the American Congress had been debating, along strictly personal and political lines, as to whom they should help and how, and should they help anyone at all.

The story had broken for the morning papers. Synthesis of carbohydrates had been accomplished by an obscure laboratory. The story didn't say it was an obscure laboratory: that had come out later. And much later it came out that the laboratory was one that had never been heard of before, one which literally had sprung out of the ground overnight. There had been certain captains of industry, Vickers recalled, who had from the very first attacked these manufacturers of synthetic carbohydrates with the smear of "fly-by-night."

They were not fly-by-night. The company might have been unorthodox in its business dealings, but it was here to stay. A few days after the initial announcement the laboratory had made it known that it did not intend to sell its product, but would give it away to persons who might need it — persons, you understand, not populations or countries, but persons who were in need and who could not earn the money necessary to buy sufficient food. Not only the starving, but the simply undernourished, the whole wide segment of the world's population who would never actually starve from insufficient food, but who would suffer disease and handicaps, both physical and mental, from never getting quite enough to eat.

Offices appeared, as if by magic, in India and China, in France and England and Italy, in America and Iceland and Ireland and New Zealand, and the poor came in droves and were not turned away. There were those, no doubt, who took advantage of the situation, those who lied and took food they had no right to have, but the offices, it appeared after a time, did not seem to mind.

Carbohydrates by themselves were not sufficient food. But they were better than no food at all, and for many the saving represented by free carbohydrates provided the extra pennies to buy the bit of meat which had been a stranger to their table for many long months.

"We checked into the carbohydrates," Crawford was saying, "and we found nothing more to go on than with any of the others. So far as we're concerned, the carbohydrates aren't being manufactured — they simply exist. They are shipped to the distribution offices from several warehouses and none of the warehouses are big enough to carry more than a day or two's supply. We can find no factories and we can't trace transportation — oh, sure, from the warehouses to the distribution points, but not from anywhere to the warehouses. It's like the old story that Hawthorne told — about the pitcher of milk that never ran dry."

"Maybe you should go into the carbohydrates business yourself."

"Good idea," said Crawford, "but we don't know how. We'd like to make a Forever car, or everlasting razor blades, too, but we don't know how to do that, either. We've had technicians and scientists working on the problems, and they are no nearer to solution than the day they started."

"What happens when the men who are out of work need more than just a gift of food?" asked Vickers. "When their families are in tatters and they need clothes? What happens when they're thrown into the street?"

"I think I can answer that. Some other philanthropic society will spring up over night and will furnish clothes and shelter. They're selling houses now for five hundred a room and that's no more than token payment. Why not give them away? Why not clothing that will cost no more than a tenth, or a twentieth of what you pay today? A suit for five dollars, say. Or a dress for fifty cents."

"You have no idea of what is coming next?"

"We've tried to dope it out," said Crawford. "We figured the car would come quickly, and it did. We figured houses, too, and they have put them out. Clothing should be one of the next items to go on the market."

"Food, shelter, transportation, clothing," said Vickers. "Those are four basics."

"They also have fuel and power," Crawford added. "Let enough of the world's population shift to these new houses, with their solar power, and you can mark the power industry completely off the books."

"But who is it?" asked Vickers. "You've told me you don't know. But you must have some idea, some educated guess."

"Not an inkling. We have tables of organization for their corporation setups. We can't find the men themselves; they are names we've never heard of."

"Russia?"

Crawford shook his head. "The Kremlin is worried, too. Russia is co-operating. That should prove how scared they are."

For the first time, Crawford moved. He unfolded his hands from across his paunch, grasped the arms of his massive chair and pulled himself straight, sitting upright now.

"I suppose," he said, "that you are wondering where you fit in on this."

"Naturally.

"We can't come out and say, 'Here we are, a combine of the world's industrial might, fighting to protect your way of life. We can't explain to them what the situation is. They'd laugh at us. After all, you can't tell people that a car that will last forever or a house that cost only five hundred a room is a bad thing for them. We can't tell them anything and yet this needs telling. We want you to write a book about it."

"I don't see…" Vickers began, but Crawford stopped him in mid-sentence.

"You would write it as if you had doped it out yourself. You would hint at informed sources that were too high to name. We'd furnish all the data, but the material would appear as yours."

Vickers came slowly to his feet. He reached out a hand and picked up his hat.

"Thanks for the chance," he said. "I'm not having any."