James P. Hogan Craddle of Saturn

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political-scientific delegation to present their case firsthand in an attempt
to shake Earth out of its complacency.
There was a tap on the door, and Celia stuck her face in. "We're off now," she
said to Keene and
Vicki. "Have a good weekend."
" 'Bye," Karen's voice called from the outer office beyond.
"Take care with those cowboys out there," Keene called back. One of the
ongoing news topics of the office was Karen's latest boyfriend. He nodded a
goodnight to Celia. She disappeared, closing the door. Keene looked back at
Vicki. "We'll just have to wait and see what the next few weeks bring,"
he told her.
As he saw things, it was the last chance. If this didn't bring about a change
in Earth's outlook and policies, nothing would. Then he and Vicki might well
end up applying for jobs at the Bandana instead of just stopping by for
happy-hour drinks.
5
Thirty years earlier, the world had scoffed and said it was impossible when
two extraordinary personalities got together and announced an intention to
establish a human settlement among the moons of Saturn. After the parade of
mediocrity that had marked the closing decades of the twentieth century, it
seemed that leader figures with the charisma to inspire followings had
conceded the stage to rock stars and sports idols. Then, one day, a
disenchanted California trial attorney with the unremarkable name of Thomas
Mondel gave up a promising career to denounce the world's economic system with
the contention that humans were made created, evolved, or "just there";
whatever one chose to believe for better things. There was something wrong
with a society that spent millions trying to make computers and robots imitate
humans while at the same time raising humans to behave like robots. California
had seen more than a smattering of fads and cults before, of course. But this
was different in several ways that mattered. Mondel was not another beard with
sandals and beads, reaching out to lost sheep and adolescents of all ages
desperate to find escape from the hopeless corners of life that they had
painted themselves into. He was professional, articulate, wise to the ways of
the world, and he knew how to get attention. His appeal was to the slowly
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atrophying cost accountant stuck in traffic twice a day, two-hundred-
fifty days every year, with the IRS waiting to mop up whatever of his year's
income survived
Christmas; to the marketing wage slave sitting out a four-hour layover at
O'Hare, looking forward to a microwaved TV meal in a solitary apartment and
wondering what happened to the glamorous, high-
powered executive that she'd created out of movie images in the years she was
at college; to the frustrated who had worked to be scientists or teachers or
ministers or healers, but found themselves turned into full-time form-fillers
and fundraisers instead. In short, to all those people to whom it didn't make
sense to have to labor year-in, year-out in dismally unfulfilling
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n.txt ways in order to be allowed a modest share of the produce in a world
whose biggest preoccupation seemed to be with moving overproduced merchandise
that nobody really needed. And it was amazing how many people like that there
turned out to be.
It was hardly the first time that somebody had denounced money value as the
sole measure of worth of all things. In the past, Mondel claimed, some such
indicator to keep track of who owed what to whom had always been necessitated
by scarcity. But knowledge and the limitless capacity that it equated to in
today's world made that no longer true. In terms of ability, humanity's
material problems were solved. What hadn't been solved was finding the right
incentive to induce people to realize that ability. Trying to mesh
twenty-first-century technology with nineteenth-century notions of economics
produced the constant clashing of gears that the world had been hearing. When
the wants of those with the means to pay determined the demand that was
supplied, and not what the rest of the people needed, eventually the ones with
the needs would resort to force to satisfy them, which was why war, unrest, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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