Meeting at Infinity Read Online Free PDF

Principle had let it in. On the other, it was seen that unless outside aid was siphoned in, the economy was going to dissolve in famine, rioting and maybe warfare.
    You can’t bury knowledge. You can only bury the people who possess it. There was just one answer ready to hand, and The Market stood as its symbol.
    They rebuilt the economy of the world as a middleman’s economy. They banned indiscriminate use of Tacket’s Principle. They leased franchises to reliable parties—to skilled entrepreneurs or to hastily formed syndicates—sold thempower, and guaranteed their rights. They had to give guarantees. In those years directly following the White Death, anyone meddling with Tacket’s Principle was liable to be hung on a handy tree.
    Then they begged to be saved from scarcity.
    Some people rebelled. They wanted no more truck with Tacket’s Principle, no matter how efficient the safeguards might appear. The concessionaries ignored these people’s objections. They found other people who were too hungry, cold or weary to care, and formed bodyguards. They occupied their franchises; they policed them; they exploited them.
    A good franchise was the richest investment in history.
    Those who still objected found refuge with the most viable of the cults, and sought to save their souls by refusing to buy “imported” goods. They seldom kept that up for long, unless they were fanatics. Pretty soon, the concessionaries had found out how to get almost anything that was needed by cross-trading between the Tacket worlds. Some few items—heavy engineering, means of transport, and other things essential to advanced civilization—could not be got from the comparatively backward Tacket worlds. But food and fibers and furniture, and every sort of raw material, could be got aplenty. By and large, the world adapted itself to living off the traders’ commission rather quickly.
    If it had not been for the White Death, it would not have happened quite so quickly and smoothly.
    There were obstacles. There were problems. What automation had failed to do two centuries before, Tacket did without the least intention—rendered full employment inconceivable. The dregs of society went to the bottom. Half the world’s population became pensioners of the other half, and hated them for it. The other half engaged in distribution. Compared with the volume of imports, manufactures dropped to a trickle. The major home industry was power—power forthe huge portals through which the merchant princes brought their goods.
    There were occasional scares and scandals. Half a dozen franchises had to be closed because of unidentified disease. Others, however, yielded incredible antibiotics; the two canceled out and left only the screeching of the fanatical cultists.
    In general, then, people liked the setup. The emergency systems of government improvised after the chaos of the White Death persisted, simply because no one got around to changing them. Thus Clostrides was high bailiff of The Market, and the most influential man on Earth. Thus new ranks solidified; thus
status
became something tangible, to speak of as though it could be weighed and measured. Almost, it could be. Meantime Tacket’s name degenerated to a casual obscenity; hatred diminished, but was not allowed to die. The new lords of the new Earths were jealous of their rights.
    For that reason there were still, after all these years, departments in every law-enforcement agency charged with detecting unauthorized application of Tacket’s Principle. They had simple instruments as convenient as radiation counters.
    For an extension of that reason, Ahmed Lyken was being driven into a corner. The new lords of the new Earths were sometimes jealous of their colleagues’ rights—and Ahmed Lyken had never taken pains to make himself popular.
    Unaware of the passage of the hour of noon-for-doom, Luis Nevada sank back on the inflated cushions of the luxurious cruiser and stared disbelievingly at Lyken.