The Girl in the Golden Atom 21 – Cummings · Verses Across
Literature · Science Fiction
The Girl in the Golden Atom 21A Life Worth Living
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Literature · Science Fiction
The Girl in the Golden Atom 21
A Life Worth Living
CummingsEnglish
The appearance of Lylda at one of the long windows of the balcony, interrupted the men for a moment. She was dressed in a tunic of silver, of curious texture, like flexible woven metal, reaching to her knees. On her feet were little fiber sandals. Her hair was twisted in coils, piled upon her head, with a knot low at the back of the neck. From her head in graceful folds hung a thin scarf of gold.
She stood waiting in the window a moment for them to notice her; then she said quietly, "I am going for a time to the court." She hesitated an instant over the words. The Chemist inclined his head in agreement, and with a smile at her guests, and a little bow, she withdrew.
The visitors looked inquiringly at their host.
"I must tell you about our government," said the Chemist. "Lylda plays quite an important part in it." He smiled at their obvious surprise.
"The head of the government is the king. In reality he is more like the president of a republic; he is chosen by the people to serve for a period of about twenty years. The present king is now in--well let us say about the fifteenth year of his service. This translation of time periods into English is confusing," he interjected somewhat apologetically. "We shall see the king to-morrow; you will find him a most intelligent, likeable man.
"As a sort of congress, the king has one hundred and fifty advisers, half of them women, who meet about once a month. Lylda is one of these women. He also has an inner circle of closer, more intimate counselors consisting of four men and four women. One of these women is the queen; another is Lylda. I am one of the men.
"The capital of the nation is Arite. Each of the other cities governs itself in so far as its own local problems are concerned according to a somewhat similar system, but all are under the central control of the Arite government."
"How about the country in between, the--the rural population?" asked the Big Business Man.
"It is all apportioned off to the nearest city," answered the Chemist. "Each city controls a certain amount of the land around it.
"This congress of one hundred and fifty is the law-making body. The judiciary is composed of one court in each city. There is a leader of the court, or judge, and a jury of forty--twenty men and twenty women. The juries are chosen for continuous service for a period of five years. Lylda is at present serving in the Arite court. They meet very infrequently and irregularly, called as occasion demands. A two-thirds vote is necessary for a decision; there is no appeal."
"Are there any lawyers?" asked the Big Business Man.
"There is no one who makes that his profession, no. Generally the accused talks for himself or has some relative, or possibly some friend to plead his case."
"You have police?" the Doctor asked.
"A very efficient police force, both for the cities and in the country. Really they are more like detectives than police; they are the men I sent up into the forest to meet you. We also have an army, which at present consists almost entirely of this same police force. After the Malite war it was of course very much larger, but of late years it has been disbanded almost completely.
"How about money?" the Very Young Man wanted to know.
"There is none!" answered the Chemist with a smile.
"Great Scott, how can you manage that?" ejaculated the Big Business Man.
"Our industrial system undoubtedly is peculiar," the Chemist replied, "but I can only say again, it works. We have no money, and, so far, none apparently is needed. Everything is bought and sold as an exchange. For instance, suppose I wish to make a living as a farmer. I have my land----"
"How did you get it?" interrupted the Very Young Man quickly.
"All the land is divided up pro rata and given by each city to its citizens. At the death of its owner it reverts to the government, and each citizen coming of age receives his share from the surplus always remaining."
"What about women? Can they own land too?" asked the Very Young Man.
"They have identical rights with men in everything," the Chemist answered.
"But women surely cannot cultivate their own land?" the Doctor said. Evidently he was thinking of Lylda's fragile little body, and certainly if most of the Oroid women were like her, labour in the fields would be for them quite impossible.
"A few women, by choice, do some of the lighter forms of manual labor--but they are very few. Nearly every woman marries within a few years after she receives her land; if it is to be cultivated, her husband then takes charge of it."
"Is the cultivation of land compulsory?" asked the Big Business Man.
"Only when in a city's district a shortage of food is threatened. Then the government decides the amount and kind of food needed, and the citizens, drawn by lot, are ordered to produce it. The government watches very carefully its food supply. In the case of overproduction, certain citizens, those less skillful, are ordered to work at something else.
"This supervision over supply and demand is exercised by the government not only in the question of food but in manufactures, in fact, in all industrial activities. A very nice balance is obtained, so that practically no unnecessary work is done throughout the nation.
"And gentlemen, do you know, as a matter of fact, I think that is the secret of a race of people being able to live without having to work most of its waking hours? If your civilization could eliminate all its unnecessary work, there would be far less work to do."
"I wonder--isn't this balance of supply and demand very difficult to maintain?" asked the Big Business Man thoughtfully.
"Not nearly so difficult as you would think," the Chemist answered. "In the case of land cultivation, the government has a large reserve, the cultivation of which it adjusts to maintain this balance. Thus, in some districts, the citizens do as they please and are never interfered with.
"The same is true of manufactures. There is no organized business in the nation--not even so much as the smallest factory--except that conducted by the government. Each city has its own factories, whose production is carefully planned exactly to equal the demand."
"Suppose a woman marries and her land is far away from her husband's? That would be sort of awkward, wouldn't it?" suggested the Very Young Man.
"Each year at a stated time," the Chemist answered, "transfers of land are made. There are generally enough people who want to move to make satisfactory changes of location practical. And then of course, the government always stands ready to take up any two widely separate pieces of land, and give others in exchange out of its reserve."
"Suppose you don't like the new land as well?" objected the Very Young Man.
"Almost all land is of equal value," answered the Chemist. "And of course, its state of cultivation is always considered."
"You were speaking about not having money," prompted the Very Young Man.
"The idea is simply this: Suppose I wish to cultivate nothing except, let us say, certain vegetables. I register with the government my intention and the extent to which I propose to go. I receive the government's consent. I then take my crops as I harvest them and exchange them for every other article I need."
"With whom do you exchange them?" asked the Doctor.
"Any one I please--or with the government. Ninety per cent of everything produced is turned in to the government and other articles are taken from its stores."
"How is the rate of exchange established?" asked the Big Business Man.
"It is computed by the government. Private exchanges are supposed to be made at the same rate. It is against the law to cut under the government rate. But it is done, although apparently not with sufficient frequency to cause any trouble."
"I should think it would be tremendously complicated and annoying to make all these exchanges," observed the Big Business Man.
"Not at all," answered the Chemist, "because of the governmental system of credits. The financial standing of every individual is carefully kept on record."
"Without any money? I don't get you," said the Very Young Man with a frown of bewilderment.
The Chemist smiled. "Well, I don't blame you for that. But I think I can make myself clear. Let us take the case of Loto, for instance, as an individual. When he comes of age he will be allotted his section of land. We will assume him to be without family at that time, entirely dependent on his own resources."
"Would he never have worked before coming of age?" the Very Young Man asked.
"Children with parents generally devote their entire minority to getting an education, and to building their bodies properly. Without parents, they are supported by the government and live in public homes. Such children, during their adolescence, work for the government a small portion of their time.
"Now when Loto comes of age and gets his land, located approximately where he desires it, he will make his choice as to his vocation. Suppose he wishes not to cultivate his land but to work for the government. He is given some congenial, suitable employment at which he works approximately five hours a day. No matter what he elects to do at the time he comes of age the government opens an account with him. He is credited with a certain standard unit for his work, which he takes from the government in supplies at his own convenience."
"What is the unit?" asked the Big Business Man.
"It is the average work produced by the average worker in one day--purely an arbitrary figure."
"Like our word horse-power?" put in the Doctor.
"Exactly. And all merchandise, food and labor is valued in terms of it.
"Thus you see, every individual has his financial standing--all in relation to the government. He can let his balance pile up if he is able, or he can keep it low."
"Suppose he goes into debt?" suggested the Very Young Man.
"In the case of obvious, verified necessity, the government will allow him a limited credit. Persistent--shall I say willful--debt is a crime."
"I thought at first," said the Big Business Man, "that everybody in this nation was on the same financial footing--that there was no premium put upon skill or industriousness. Now I see that one can accumulate, if not money, at least an inordinate amount of the world's goods."
"Not such an inordinate amount," said the Chemist smiling. "Because there is no inheritance. A man and woman, combining their worldly wealth, may by industry acquire more than others, but they are welcome to enjoy it. And they cannot, in one lifetime, get such a preponderance of wealth as to cause much envy from those lacking it."
"What happens to this house when you and Lylda die, if Loto cannot have it?" the Big Business Man asked.
"It is kept in repair by the government and held until some one with a sufficiently large balance wants to buy it."
"Are all workers paid at the same rate?" asked the Doctor.
"No, but their wages are much nearer equal than in your world."
"You have to hire people to work for you, how do you pay them?" the Doctor inquired.
"The rate is determined by governmental standard. I pay them by having the amount deducted from my balance and added to theirs."
"When you built this house, how did you go about doing it?" asked the Big Business Man.
"I simply went to the government, and they built it for me according to my own ideas and wishes, deducting its cost from my balance."
"What about the public work to be done?" asked the Big Business Man. "Caring for the city streets, the making of roads and all that. Do you have taxes?"
"No," answered the Chemist smiling, "we do not have taxes. Quite the reverse, we sometimes have dividends.
"The government, you must understand, not only conducts a business account with each of its citizens, but one with itself also. The value of articles produced is computed with a profit allowance, so that by a successful business administration, the government is enabled not only to meet its public obligations, but to acquire a surplus to its own credit in the form of accumulated merchandise. This surplus is divided among the people every five years--a sort of dividend."
"I should think some cities might have much more than others," said the Big Business Man. "That would cause discontent, wouldn't it?"
"It would probably cause a rush of people to the more successful cities. But it doesn't happen, because each city reports to the National government and the whole thing is averaged up. You see it is all quite simple," the Chemist finished. "And it makes life here very easy to live, and very worth the living."
Unnoticed by the four interested men, a small compact-looking gray cloud had come sweeping down from the horizon above the lake and was scudding across the sky toward Arite. A sudden sharp crack of thunder interrupted their conversation.
"Hello, a storm!" exclaimed the Chemist, looking out over the lake. "You've never seen one, have you? Come upstairs."
They followed him into the house and upstairs to its flat roof. From this point of vantage they saw that the house was built with an interior courtyard or patio. Looking down into this courtyard from the roof they could see a little, splashing fountain in its center, with flower beds, a narrow gray path, and several small white benches.
The roof, which was guarded with a breast-high parapet around both its inner and outer edges, was beautifully laid out with a variety of flowers and with trellised flower-bearing vines. In one corner were growing a number of small trees with great fan-shaped leaves of blue and bearing a large bell-shaped silver blossom.
One end of the roof on the lake side was partially enclosed. Towards this roofed enclosure the Chemist led his friends. Within it a large fiber hammock hung between two stone posts. At one side a depression in the floor perhaps eight feet square was filled with what might have been blue pine needles, and a fluffy bluish moss. This rustic couch was covered at one end by a canopy of vines bearing a little white flower.
As they entered the enclosure, it began to rain, and the Chemist slid forward several panels, closing them in completely. There were shuttered windows in these walls, through which they could look at the scene outside--a scene that with the coming storm was weird and beautiful beyond anything they had ever beheld.
The cloud had spread sufficiently now to blot out the stars from nearly half of the sky. It was a thick cloud, absolutely opaque, and yet it caused no appreciable darkness, for the starlight it cut off was negligible and the silver radiation from the lake had more than doubled in intensity.
Under the strong wind that had sprung up the lake assumed now an extraordinary aspect. Its surface was raised into long, sweeping waves that curved sharply and broke upon themselves. In their tops the silver phosphorescence glowed and whirled until the whole surface of the lake seemed filled with a dancing white fire, twisting, turning and seeming to leap out of the water high into the air.
Several small sailboats, square, flat little catamarans, they looked, showed black against the water as they scudded for shore, trailing lines of silver out behind them.
The wind increased in force. Below, on the beach, a huge rock lay in the water, against which the surf was breaking. Columns of water at times shot into the air before the face of the rock, and were blown away by the wind in great clouds of glistening silver. Occasionally it thundered with a very sharp intense crack accompanied by a jagged bolt of bluish lightning that zigzagged down from the low-hanging cloud.
Then came the rain in earnest, a solid, heavy torrent, that bent down the wind and smoothed the surface of the lake. The rain fell almost vertically, as though it were a tremendous curtain of silver strings. And each of these strings broke apart into great shining pearls as the eye followed downward the course of the raindrops.
For perhaps ten minutes the silver torrent poured down. Then suddenly it ceased. The wind had died away; in the air there was the fresh warm smell of wet and steaming earth. From the lake rolled up a shimmering translucent cloud of mist, like an enormous silver fire mounting into the sky. And then, as the gray cloud swept back behind them, beyond the city, and the stars gleamed overhead, they saw again that great trail of star-dust which the Chemist first had seen through his microscope, hanging in an ever broadening arc across the sky, and ending vaguely at their feet.
