Poul Anderson

“ The depression is not ending, but transforming itself: out-of-work men are starting to produce things for themselves with the help of capacitite-driven machinery often made at home, trading their surplus for whatever else they need. A mobile reclamation unit appears, costing little to operate, and families begin to irrigate and colonize desert areas. Big business, big labor, big government talk much and do nothing effective—their day is past, but they simply cannot understand the new forces at work. ”

“ It won't take long before people suddenly wake up to the fact that your invention did all this for them. Brace yourself—you're going to be famous for life."
Arch winced. "But I didn't!" he protested. "They did it for themselves. One man never could—"
"I quite agree," she smiled. "One man can neither make nor destroy a society. ”

“ I like to deal with a good businessman. I think you're more broadminded than some of your colleagues, and can better understand the idea of teamwork between business and science." Gilmer looked out the French doors to the building in the rear. "Is that your laboratory? I admire a man who can struggle against odds. You have faith, and deserve to be rewarded for it. How would you like to work with some real money behind you?"
Arch paused. "You mean, take a job on somebody's staff?"
"Not as a lab flunky," said Gilmer quickly. ”

“ Bob Culquhoun, he reflected, had a saner outlook. Not only was electricity cheaper in the first place, but the wasted power would be minimal and the "prime mover"—the capacitor itself—simply would not wear out.
Automobiles could be sold for perhaps five hundred dollars and built to last, not to run up repair bills till the owner was driven to buying a new model. The world's waning resources of petroleum could go into something useful: generating power at central stations, forming a base for organic syntheses; they would stretch out for centuries more. Coal could really come back into its own. ”

“ Gilmer chuckled amiably and repeated the idea he had broached.
"I like Westfield," said Elizabeth. "I don't like New York. It isn't fit for human consumption."
"Oh, I quite agree," said Gilmer. "Once a year I have to break loose—cabin up in Maine, hunting, fishing, back to Nature—you really must come up sometime soon. Your objection can be answered easily enough. We could set up a laboratory for you here, if you really insist. You see, we're prepared to be very generous."
Arch shook his head. "No," he said harshly. "No, thanks. I like being independent." ”

“ Arch," said Gilmer regretfully, "you must not have considered the matter of capital investment. Do you know how many billions of dollars are sunk in generators, dams, lines, motors—"
"Gasoline," said Elizabeth. "We've thought of that angle too."
"We can't throw all that in the discard!" went on Gilmer earnestly. He seemed more human, all at once. "It may take twenty years to recover the investment in, say, a local transmission network. The company would go broke overnight if that investment were suddenly made valueless. Millions of people would be thrown out of work. ”

“ The countryside looked clean, full of hope and springtime. Now and then a chrome-plated monster of an automobile whipped past Arch's sedately chugging antique. He observed them with a certain contempt, an engineer's eye for the Goldbergian inefficiency of a mechanism which turned this rod to push that cam to rotate such and such a gear, and needed a cooling system to throw away most of the energy generated. ”

“ Sagdahl looked grim. "You can be held incommunicado," he said. "This is a very serious matter."
"Yes," said Elizabeth. "The AP man will think so too, if he can't get a story."
"Well—"
"Oh, dear! My Russell Wright coffee cup!"
Nothing happened overnight. That was the hardest thing to believe. By all the rules, life should have been suddenly and dramatically transformed; but instead, there were only minor changes, day by day, small incidents. Meanwhile you ate, slept, worked, paid bills, made love and conversation, as you had always done. ”

“ I know you scientists don't think much of us poor fellows behind the desks, you should hear how our boys gripe when we set the appropriations for their projects, but somebody has to do that, ha." Gilmer made a bridge of plump fingers. "I do think, though, Dr. Arch, that this hostility is coming to an end. We're both part of the team, you know; scientist and businessman both work inside our free enterprise system to serve the American public. And more and more scientists are coming to recognize this." ”

“ Gasoline can still run generators. Oil can still lubricate. Byproducts can still be synthesized. It's a matter of shifting the emphasis of production, that's all. All that's needed is a little common sense."
"Which is a rather scarce commodity."
"There," said Arch gloomily, "we find ourselves in agreement."
"The trouble is," said Bob earnestly, "we're faced with a real situation, not a paper problem. It calls for a real solution. For an idea."
"There aren't any ideas," said Elizabeth. "Not big sweeping ones to solve everything overnight. Man doesn't work that way. ”

“ Most of the rural communities, though, are striking out on their own like us. There's going to be a big demand for selenium." Wistfulness flickered in his eyes. "Wonder if I can raise enough money to buy some stock?"
"It'll take time," said Elizabeth. "I know the sun-power generator is simple, but you still can't design and build one overnight."
As a matter of fact, fall had come again before Westfield's plant was in full operation. It didn't look impressive: great flat screens on top of hastily constructed buildings, and inside these the apparatus to raise voltage and charge capacitors. ”

“ One of the local teen-agers is going to make a car powered by—"
Addison groaned. "You would! Can't you shoot the boy?"
"I don't want to. For a person his age, he's quite inoffensive."
"Oh, well, you didn't want a hundred million dollars anyway, did you? I'll try to rush this for you, that may help."
Arch went out again, some of the elation taken from him. But what the hell, he reflected. If he could collect on only one percent of all the capacitite which was going to be manufactured, he'd still have an unreasonable amount of money. ”

“ Old people are Senior Citizens. Draft becomes Selective Service. Graveyard to cemetery to memorial park. We've become a race of dependents. And we can't break away: there isn't any frontier left, there isn't any alternative society, one man can't compete with a corporation. ”

“ So do America and Russia. The means of production only determine the possible societies, and there are always many possibilities.
"I'd like to see the possibility of individualism available again to the American people. If they're too far gone to accept it, to hell with them."
The government can work fast when it wants to. It was just the following afternoon when the phone rang again. Elizabeth came out to the lab, where Arch and Bob Culquhoun were preparing a batch of capacitite, with a strained look on her face. ”

“ He paused, frowning. "I've spent the last couple of months organizing a kind of local militia. Bob has been making capacitite guns, and there are about a hundred of us trying to train ourselves. Want in on it?"
"They'd probably shoot me first," whispered Arch.
The red head shook, bear-like. "No. There's less feeling against you locally than you seem to think. After all, few if any of the people in this area have been hurt—they're farmers, small shopkeepers trading in the essentials, students, college employees. Many of them have actually benefited. ”

“ He hesitated. "You know, it occurs to me we've just killed the wet-cell battery."
"Good riddance," said Elizabeth. "The first thing you do, my boy, is make a replacement for that so-called battery in our car. I'm tired of having the clunk die in the middle of traffic."
"Okay," said Arch mildly. "Then we see about patents. But—honey, don't you think this deserves a small celebration of sorts?"
Arch spent a few days drawing up specifications and methods of manufacture. By giving the subject a little thought, he discovered that production could be fantastically cheap and easy. ”

“ Arch stared moodily into the darkness. "I don't think they're a bunch of monsters—no more than anybody else. They just believe in the status quo. So do you, you know."
"How?" Culquhoun bristled. "I'll admit I'm not the hell-fire revolutionary of my undergraduate days, but I still think a basic change is called for."
"Not basic," said Arch. "You just want to change part of the mechanism. But you'd keep the same ant-heap industrial society. I believe the heart went out of this land after the Civil War, and the death warrant was signed about 1910. Before then, a man was still an individual ”

“ He felt a nervous tic beginning in one cheek.
"Production for use instead of for profit—"
"Oh, dry up, will you? Any system is a profit system. It has to show a profit in some terms or other, or it would just be wasted effort. And the profit has to go to individuals, not to some mythical state. The state doesn't eat—people do."
"Would you have the oil interests simply write off their investment?" ”

“ There was no reason why you couldn't power every type of vehicle with capacitors. Aircraft could stay aloft a month at a time if desired—a year if nothing wore out; ships could be five years at sea. You wouldn't need those thousands of miles of power line littering the countryside and wasting the energy they carried; you could charge small capacitors for home use right at the station and deliver them to the consumer's doorstep at a fraction of the present cost. ”

“ But in conjunction with the watermill, it furnished more than enough electricity to run the county's machines.
Arch was kept busy all that summer, directing, advising, helping. It seemed that everybody had some scheme of his own for using capacitite. Energy cost nothing, and machinery could be built from junkyard scrap if nothing else. Westfield was suddenly acquiring her own looms, mills, even a small foundry. Bob led a gang of young hellions who made an airplane and kept it aloft for days at a time. ”

“ Your mind dwells on the sudden and dramatic. Now the positive benefits of capacitite aren't anywhere near as quick and spectacular as the temporary evils were. What you have to do, to satisfy those Puritan chromosomes, is to produce something really big and fancy, something of immediate, large value. ”

“ There needn't be any unemployment. Capacitite makes increased production possible, so why not—well, why not drop the work day to four hours for the same wages? Then you can employ twice as many people."
"It is not your or my place to make carping criticisms," retorted Gilmer. "Fundamental changes aren't as easy as you think. Dr. Arch, I'm sorry to say that unless you'll agree to proper terms, none of the companies I represent will be interested in your material." ”

“ Everybody and his dog was studying physics then, but Arch was better than average, and went on through a series of graduate assistantships to a Ph.D. He married one of his students and patented an electronic valve. Its value was limited to certain special applications, but the royalties provided a small independent income and he realized his ambition: to work for himself.
He and Elizabeth built a house in Westfield, which lies some fifty miles north of Boston and has a small college—otherwise it is only a shopping center for the local farmers. ”

“ We have leisure now—in another year or so, well, we won't be the millionaires we once dreamed of, but like everybody else we'll have real security and real time to ourselves. You could use that time to work on something."
"Hm—" Automatically, his brain turned to practicalities. "Let's see, now. Capacitite offers a way of concentrating energy enormously ... a very small packet will hold a hell of a lot—My God!" His yell shook the windows as he leaped to his feet.
"What the devil—something wrong?" Elizabeth got up too.
"No!" He was running toward the phone. ”

“ Or with a commissar, for that matter.
"What we need is not to go back to living in log cabins, but to make the means of sustenance and the sources of energy so cheap that every man can have them in sufficient quantity to live and work. I don't know—maybe I'm being vainglorious, but it does seem as if capacitite is a long step in that direction."
"I warn you, you're talking good Marxism," said Culquhoun with a grin. "The means of production determine the type of society."
"Which is pure hogwash," answered Arch. "Egypt and Assyria had identical technologies. ”

“ But we've got a rough time ahead of us, because there are enough unstable elements in our own society to make trouble. Our traditional organizations just aren't prepared to handle them when they're suddenly armed. ”

“ If you hadn't brought the stuff out, somebody else would have. It's not your fault that we don't have the kind of economy to absorb it smoothly."
"All right," said Arch without tone. "I'll join your minute men. There doesn't seem to be anything else to do."
The wave of automobiles began coming around noon of the next day. Westfield lay off the main highway, so it didn't get the full impact of the jam which tied up traffic from Philadelphia to Boston; but there were some thousands of cars which passed through.
Arch stood in the ranks of men who lined Main Street. ”

“ To Arch, his voice had a dim dreamlike quality, none of this was real, it couldn't be.
"I don't know what those arsonists intend or where they're bound," said Culquhoun, "but we'd better be ready to meet them. The traffic through town stopped completely a few hours ago—I think there's a gang of highwaymen operating."
"Colin, it can't be! Plain people like us—"
"Hungry, frightened, angry, desperate, confused people. A mob has nothing to do with the individuals in it, my friend. And one small push is enough to knock down a row of dominoes. ”

“ Gasoline sales were down twenty-five percent already, and the industry was laying men off by the hundreds of thousands. That cut out their purchasing power and hit the rest of the economy.
"It's what you'd expect, laddie," said Culquhoun. They were over at his house. Outside, a slow cold rain washed endlessly down the windows. "Over production—over-capitalization—I could have predicted all this."
"Damn it to hell, it doesn't make sense!" protested Arch. "A new energy source should make everything cheaper for everybody—more production available for less work." ”