The Rival Rigelians

Chessman growled. “They’re obvious. You have a unit of tens of thousands of persons. Instead of living in individual houses, each with a man working while the woman cooks and takes care of the home and the children, all live in community houses and take their meals in a messhall. The children are cared for by trained nurses. During the season all able adults go out en masse to work the fields. When the harvest has been taken in, the farmer does not hole up for the winter but is occupied in local industrial projects, or in road or dam building. The commune’s labor is never idle.”

Kennedy shuddered involuntarily.

Chessman looked at him coldly. “It means quick progress. Meanwhile, we go through each commune and from earliest youth, locate those members who are suited to higher studies. We bring them into state schools where they get as much education as they can assimilate—more than is available in commune schools. These are the Texcocans we are training in the sciences.”

“The march to the anthill,” Amschel Mayer muttered.

Chessman eyed him scornfully. “You amuse me, old man. You with your talk of building an economy with a system of free competition. Our Texcocans are sacrificing today but their children will live in abundance. Even today, nobody starves, no one goes without shelter or medical care.” Chessman twisted his mouth. “We have found that hungry, cold or sick people cannot work efficiently.”

He stared challengingly at the Genoese leader. “Can you honestly say the same? That there are no starving people in Genoa? No inadequately housed, no sick without hope of medicine? Do you have economic setbacks in which poorly planned production goes amuck and depressions follow with mass unemployment?”

“Nevertheless,” Mayer said, with unwonted calm, “our society is still far ahead of yours. A mere handful of your bureaucratic and military chiefs enjoy the good things of life. There are tens of thousands on Genoa who have them. Free competition has its weaknesses, perhaps, but it provides a greater good for a greater number of persons.”

Joe Chessman came to his feet. “Well see,” he said stolidly. “In ten years, Mayer, we’ll consider the positions of both our planets once again.”

“Ten years it is,” Mayer snapped back at him.

Jerry Kennedy saluted with his glass. “Cheers,” he said.

On the return to Genoa, Amschel Mayer looked his disgust at his right hand man. Kennedy was not piloting the small craft, as usual. Martin Gunther was at the controls.

Mayer said, “Are you sober enough to assimilate something serious?”

Jerry Kennedy shook his head to achieve clarity. “Sure, chief, of course. That Earthside liquor is just a little stronger than what I’m used to these days, I guess. Sneaks up on you.”

Mayer grunted contempt but said, “Well then, begin taking the steps necessary for us to place a few men on Texcoco in the way of, ah, intelligence agents.”

“You mean some of our team?” Kennedy said, startled.

Gunther looked over from the space launch’s controls and raised his eyebrows.

Mayer said impatiently, “No, no of course not. We can’t spare them, and, besides, there’d be too big a chance of recognition and exposure. We’ll have to use some of our more trusted Genoese. Make the reward enough to attract their services.” He looked from one of his lieutenants to the other significantly. “I think you’ll agree that it might not be a bad idea to keep our eyes on the developments on Texcoco.”

Martin Gunther thought about it. “Well, perhaps, but there’s another aspect, Amschel. Thus far, we’ve kept the secret of the Pedagogue’s existence from anybody we come in contact with on Genoa. Not even such close business associates as Mannerheim have been told about the real nature of our mission.”

“Ummm,” Kennedy said glumly. “And as soon as you start organizing an espionage mission to Texcoco, the fat will be in the fire.”

Mayer said, “It will be a top secret. Only a few very trusted, very dependable men will be used. You can ferry them over in this craft. Over there, perhaps, they can make contact with those elements in revolt against Chessman and his team. They can infiltrate one or more of these so-called communes, and keep in touch with whatever real progress Joe and his men are making—if any.”

Jerry Kennedy muttered. “One person can keep a secret, sometimes even two can. From then on the likelihood goes down in a geometric progression, and this project will involve dozens before we’re through.”

Mayer stared at him. “Just who is in command of this expedition, Jerome Kennedy?”

On the way back to Texcoco, Barry Watson said to his chief, “What do you think of putting some security men on Genoa, just to keep tabs?”

“Why?”

Watson looked at his fingers, nibbled at a hangnail. “It just seems to me it wouldn’t hurt any.”

Chessman snorted.