"They"re off," a small thin voice came back.
Jonnie looked at the audience. "Turn off any recorders you are holding." And to the small gray men, "There must be no bank recorders on and you must so attest!"
The small gray men tapped their lapels with a twist. "We attest they are off." He certainly had their attention now. They were riveted.
Jonnie turned his head to the lords. In a conspiratorial tone that they had to strain forward to hear, he said, "You didn"t think I would leave each one of you personally out of this, did you?"
They were very alert.
"What do your major firms manufacture?" whispered Jonnie.
"Armaments," came whispering back.
"And what do you think will happen to interests in those firms, to their stocks and bonds?"
The lords wondered that he didn"t know. "They"ll crash!"
"Precisely," said Jonnie, still whispering. "Let me tell you what this is really all about. If you went home and talked loudly and widely about a treaty forbidding all war, the stocks and bonds and interests in those armaments firms would go out the bottom. And if, without mentioning yet any plans to convert those firms to consumer products or the promises of the bank to make adequate loans, you and your friends let those armaments firms crash and then bought up all their shares and interests, possibly even with loans from the bank, you would own them utterly. Meanwhile, you would be heroes to the people for giving them money for food and the rioting would stop. Then, when you were fully in control, the bank would make conversion loans. Those firms would boom. The merely wealthy would become millionaires, the millionaires would become billionaires."
He crouched there for a moment longer. Then he said, "You must forget that I mentioned this or even spoke of it."
He stood up.
He waited. Had he been wrong? He couldn"t be. Their thinking had been conditioned too long by the oppression of the Psychlos.
They began to buzz to one another. Then there was a little t.i.ttering laugh behind one hand, a drawing closer together of heads.
Whispered remarks began to drift up to Jonnie. "I can get a new mistress." "My wife always hated that old castle." "I won"t have to sell my yacht."
Their heads were together again, whispering. Jonnie couldn"t make it out.
Then suddenly Fowljopan stood up among the mob. "Lord Jonnie, we have forgotten what you said. None of it will be repeated by us."
Fowljopan seemed to grow in size. "Build your platforms! We are going to write the toughest, clawproof, iron-hard, most vicious antiwar treaty you have ever heard of!"
He turned toward the back. "Turn on the lights! Turn on the recorders!"
Almost as one being the audience stood. They began to shout. "Long live Lord Jonnie! Long live Lord Jonnie!"
The applause was enough to knock one down!
Colonel Ivan let out a gusty sigh of relief and took his finger off his gun trigger. Then he hastily formed up troopers in a zone of protection to get Jonnie out of there and back to the small meeting room. These lords were pounding Jonnie on the back, almost knocking him down. Bedlam! He didn"t know what Jonnie had said or how he had turned it around. He didn"t speculate; he just concentrated on getting Jonnie out of there before they smashed him with good intentions. Knowing Jonnie, the reversal did not surprise him. That was life living around Jonnie Goodboy Tyler!
Chapter 4.
The Russians had gotten them safely back to the small meeting room and they had seated themselves once more.
Dries Gloton was almost purring as he verified the wording and signatures of the transfer check from the Intergalactic-held funds over to his bank. It was not the biggest check he had ever heard of, but it was the biggest that had ever come to deposit in his branch bank. And it wasn"t just a check. It meant solvency, reopened doors in the lesser sector offices, employees back on the job. Actually, he didn"t have to verify it at all. He knew it was good. But he just liked to read it.
With a flourish, he drew the receipt to him. With an expert flip of his hand he signed it. And then he picked up the mortgage papers and with great, big letters scrawled across it wrote "PAID IN FULL!"
My, but this was worth all those worried months of waiting.
He put the check safely in his pocket and then sailed the receipt and papers with a gay spin back to MacAdam. "Our business is finished. It is a pleasure to do business with you."
But as he let go his grip on MacAdam"s hand, Dries saw Lord Voraz was still sitting there, staring blankly at the table. An instant of alarm touched Dries. "Your Worship! Is something wrong?"
Voraz turned to him. Ignoring Jonnie"s presence, such was his preoccupation, Voraz said, "Didn"t you understand what he did?"
Dries said, "Speculative loans? The lords will try to borrow money to get those shares when they crash. But that is a small matter. Those loans will be good."
"No, no," said Voraz. "What he is doing to those lords and their governments. No, you don"t see. Let me explain. By providing widespread employment and by making it possible for the little creature on the street to borrow money, he is creating an independent working cla.s.s. In years to come they won"t have to stand around, cap in hand. They will become financially independent. The state will depend on them as a market and not be able to neglect them anymore. And huge quant.i.ties of bank business will be with that working cla.s.s."
"I see nothing wrong in that," said Dries. "With all the money those governments will owe us, they"ll have to do pretty much what the bank tells them."
"That"s just it," said Voraz. "And the bank will tell them more and more to pay attention to the working cla.s.s because that"s where the bank"s main interest lies! Those lords and their existing governments will have less and less power. To all intents and purposes they will vanish as a special cla.s.s."
"Ah," said Dries, remembering his school days. "Social banking."
Jonnie lounged back in his chair at the side. He was a little bit spent. He wished they"d finish up. "It"s called "social democracy," " he said. "It will work as long as there are lots of new frontiers and room to expand. But we have those and in a few thousand years somebody can think of something else."
Voraz was looking at MacAdam and the baron now. "Do you know what he just did? In that short period in that room in there he freed more people than have been freed in all the revolutions in history!"
"I know he gave us the power to hold those lords in check," said MacAdam.
"Shall we finish this bank resolution so we can end this conference?"
Voraz came out of it. He picked up a proxy. "This mentions a second resolution."
The baron came to life. "That"s about Lord Loonger."
"Yes," said Voraz. "How long has he been dead, now? Two hundred-"
"Listen," said the baron. "The Psychlos are about the most hated people any universe ever saw. A couple of hundred thousand years ago, your Lord Loonger saved them with the bank. Today, that"s not a very popular act."
"Indeed not," said Voraz.
The baron said, "The definition of money is "an idea backed with confidence." It isn"t helping your money any to have Lord Loonger"s face on all your bank notes!"
Jonnie suddenly stirred; a premonition based on what had happened with Earth money hit him. He was about to speak. Sir Robert"s huge hand closed over his mouth and silenced him.
Dries had been looking at Jonnie for the last minute. Without taking his eyes off him, Dries said, "Your Worship, has it occurred to you that this young man could be part Selachee?" There was no humor in his voice at all.
Jonnie was absolutely glaring at them above Sir Robert"s big hand. He wouldn"t fight Sir Robert. But he really had his eyes boring into the rest of them.
It"s his eyes," said Dries. "They"ve got gray in them. Another color, yes, somewhat like the sea. But look at those eyes. Gray!"
"I certainly see what you mean," said Lord Voraz. "He does resemble a Selachee."
"I have several picto-recordings of him," said Dries. "From a lot of angles. We can get that painter Rensfin to use them and make an idealized portrait. With the helmet in color. There is a special ink that can make the b.u.t.tons flash. And we can do the helmet in full color, three-dimensional view. But what should be put on the scroll? "Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, Conqueror of the Psychlos?"
"No, no," said Voraz.
""Who brought freedom from war?" " said the baron.
"No, no," said Voraz. "That word "freedom" would antagonize lords and such. We have to have this really good and final, you know, for we"ll be reprinting all currency and retiring all old issues everywhere. We have to add along the bottom, "Backed by the a.s.sets of the Earth Planetary Bank and Intergalactic Mining" or something like that. We can make the picture a bit larger in the center. But the wording..." he trailed off.
MacAdam brightened. "We"ve got to get in there what he did. The painter should put in the background a picture of Psychlo exploding. And on the scroll we can put "Jonnie Goodboy Tyler," and right under that put "who brought happiness to all races."
"The very thing!" said Voraz. "It doesn"t relegate it to just destroying Psychlo. Because that isn"t all he really did. People will know fast enough. His popularity will be not just in the stars but all over the stars and planets in sixteen universes!"
Lord Voraz sat forward and drew the resolution to him. He penned in the wording for the bank note. And then he shot his cuffs, raised his pen in a flourish, and signed the resolutions.
It was all finished. The small gray men got up. They were all beaming smiles. Sir Robert let go of a morose Jonnie and they shook hands all around.
"I think," said Voraz to MacAdam and the baron, "that we can work together splendidly! It is banking right after my own heart!"
They laughed. The small gray men gathered their papers and left.
"Wheeoo and whuff!" said MacAdam, grinning from ear to ear. "We"re free and clear and sailing like birds!" He looked at Jonnie. "Thanks in no small part to you, laddie!"
Chapter 5.
MacAdam and Baron von Roth were picking up their papers, admiring the signatures, getting ready to leave.
Jonnie said, "How did you get those directors in Snautch to pay enough attention to you to listen?"
The baron boomed a laugh. "It was the way we started our account. It went all through the bank in seconds. Since the Psychlos hogged it and it was already scarce, gold in the Gredides is soaring at half a million credits an ounce. We opened our account with gold. Your gold, Jonnie. Near a ton of it. We melted it into ingots some time ago. Almost broke our back lugging it into the bank. They hadn"t seen that much gold in a century!"
Jonnie laughed. "So even Terl"s gold came in handy."
"After all that work at the lode," said MacAdam, "that gold belonged to you and the crews! We"ll bring it home, if you want. But it"s on exhibit right this minute behind armored gla.s.s in what"s left of the main foyer of the Galactic Bank in Snautch! Historic gold, Jonnie."
"Another thing," said Jonnie, "what did you do with Ker that got him to sign those papers?"
"Ker?" said the baron. "Well for one thing, he"s your friend, Jonnie, and we said it would help you. But Stormalong saw your views of Psychlo that night and he told Ker it was one dead planet. You never saw such relief! He"s always felt hunted by them. So as the last official Planet Head- he even had his appointment papers and they"re attached to the deed- he was really glad to be rid of it. We promised him a standard employment contract minus the clause to ship the body home. We let him keep the few hundred thousand credits he hooked out of the loot of his predecessor and guaranteed him breathe-gas for the rest of his life. I hope we can fulfill the latter."
Jonnie thought of the moon, Fobia. Yes, they could pump tons of it into bottles with the transshipment rig. "No pain. Easy."
Jonnie watched them packing up and then said, "You two certainly did a brilliant job! Really extraordinary."
They grinned at him. "We had a good example. You!"
"But," said Jonnie, "how did you know to word that Intergalactic sale contract that way for Terl to sign?"
MacAdam laughed. "When Brown Limper Staffor tried to use it to secure his new currency issue, we saw that it wasn"t a legal contract. Terl had even tried to forge his own signature!" He had a copy of the original and it was a ridiculous mess. "So the baron and I got to thinking. It had been nearly eleven months since you sent those bombs to Psychlo and there had been no counterattack. If Psychlo were gone, then according to Ker, there wasn"t much chance of other mining planets having enough breathe-gas left. They"d all be dead."
"So," said the baron, "we took a banker"s chance and worded it so that it was valid either way."
"And there"s one additional reason," said MacAdam, "knowing how you operate. If you set out to destroy Psychlo, which you did, we put our bets on the fact that you had really done it. And we were right!"
"You can"t go very wrong putting your chips on Jonnie," said the baron. He hitched a stack of doc.u.ments under his arm and picked up a bulging briefcase, looking around to see if they had everything. "Then, we"re all set."
"Oh, no, we"re not!" said Sir Robert. His tone was so positive and censorious that they stopped and looked at him, startled.
"I think," said Sir Robert, "that it"s a wee bit disgraceful, the way you use this poor lad!"
"I don"t understand!" said MacAdam, shocked.
"You use his picture on Earth currency, you use his energy and ideas to further your own ends. You own the bulk of sixteen universes. You"re now plotting to put his face on Galactic money. And here he is, poor as a church mouse. Why, he doesn"t even collect his own pilot pay that I know of! I know you"re going to lend him money for a factory. But what"s that? just a plan to get him in debt. You should be ashamed of yourselves!" And he meant it.
He couldn"t have had more effect on MacAdam and the baron if he"d shot them with a stun gun.
Jonnie had tried to stop Sir Robert the moment he had gotten an inkling of what the old Scot was saying. Jonnie didn"t think he needed any money: if he was hungry he could always go out and hunt. But Sir Robert"s hand had stopped him.
The baron looked at MacAdam and MacAdam looked at the baron. Clearly they were two very puzzled men.
Sir Robert just kept on glaring at them. It was very uncomfortable. Finally, Sir Robert said, "You might at least give him a little payment for using his picture!"
Suddenly a light seemed to dawn on MacAdam"s face. He dropped his bundled doc.u.ments on the table and began to rifle through a near-bursting attachee case. He found what he was looking for and, holding it, sat in a chair before them.