No state shall…make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts…
“What are these things?”
“Flyers. Nobody seems to know where they came from but they're all over the city. I thought they'd amuse you.” After Metep had the courtesy of first look, Haworth passed other copies of the flyer across the table to the rest of the Council of Five. The mood around the table had relaxed considerably since Metep's outburst. Expressions of deep concern for his safety had mollified the leader and it was decided to lower further his already low public profile.
“Robin Hood, eh?” Krager said, smiling sardonically as he glanced over the flyer. He looked to Haworth. “Wasn't he…?”
An old Earth myth, right,” Haworth replied with a nod. “He robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.”
“I wonder which of the rich he plans to rob?”
“Not me, I hope,” Bede, the slim Minister of Transportation, said with a laugh. “And what's this little insignia top and bottom?
Looks like an omega with a star in it. That supposed to mean something?”
Haworth shrugged. “Omega is the last letter in the Greek alphabet. If this is some revolutionary group, it might mean the Last Revolution or something equally dramatic. ‘The Last Revolution of the Star Colonies.’ How does that sound?”
“It doesn't sound good,” Metep said. “Especially when they appear on the night of an assassination attempt.”
“Oh, I doubt there's a link,” Haworth said slowly. “If there were, the flyers would have been printed up in advance proclaiming your death. This mentions nothing about death or disaster. Probably a bunch of Zem addicts, but I'm having security check it out anyway.”
Bede's brow was furrowed. “Isn't omega also the ohm, symbol for resistance? Electrical resistance?”
“I believe it is,” Krager said. “Perhaps this Robin Hood group-it may be one man for all we know-considers itself some sort of resistance or revolutionary group, but the message in this flyer is totally economic. And well informed, too. Look at that price index. Sad but true. It takes 150 current marks to buy now what 100 marks bought back in the 115th year. That's a lot of inflation in eighty years.”
“Not really,” Haworth said, looking up from the notes before him on the table.
“That's Earthie talk,” Krager said, an ill-concealed trace of annoyance in his tone. “The Earthies are used to inflation by now-”
“Earth has recently brought her economy under control and-”
“-but we out-worlders are still suspicious of it.” The older man had raised his voice to cut off Haworth's interjection and had perhaps put unnecessary emphasis on the word “we.” Haworth's Earth-gained education still raised hackles in certain quarters of the Imperium.
“Well, we'd all better get used to it,” Haworth said, oblivious to any implied slur, “because we're all going to be living with it for a long time to come.”
Amid the mutterings up and down the table, Metep VII's voice broke through. “I take it, then, the new economic projections are in and that they're not good.”
“Not good at all,” Haworth said. “This downtrend is not one of the cyclic episodes the out-world economy has experienced from time to time in the past half dozen decades. We are in a slow, steady decline in exports to Earth with no slackening of our import growth rate. I don't have to tell any of you how serious that is.”
They all knew. Knew too well.
“Any bright ideas on how we can turn it around-besides more inflation?” It was Krager speaking, and his tone had yet to return to neutral.
“Yes, as a matter of fact. But I'll get to that later. Those of you who have kept up-to-date know that we're caught in the middle of two ongoing trends. Earth's rigid population controls are paying off at last; their demand for grain and ore is decreasing, and at a faster rate than anyone expected. Out-world populations on the other hand, are expanding beyond our ability to keep up technologically. So our demand for Sol system hardware keeps growing.”
“The answer is pretty obvious, I think,” Metep VII said with bland assurance. “We've got to pump a lot more money into our own technical companies and make them more competitive with Earth's.”
“How about an outright subsidy?” someone suggested.
“Or an import tax on Earth goods?” from another.
Haworth held up his hands. “This has to be a backdoor affair, gentlemen. A subsidy will have other industries wailing for some of the same. And an import tax will upset the whole economy by sending technical hardware prices into orbit. Jek's right, however. We have to pump money into the right industries, but discreetly. Very discreetly.
Krager again: “And where do we get it?”
“There are ways.”
“Not by another tax, I hope. We're taking an average of one out of every three marks now-seven out of ten in the higher brackets. You saw what happened on Neeka when we announced that surcharge. Riots. And that dead girl. Not here on Throne, thank you!”
Haworth smiled condescendingly. “Taxes are useful, but crude. As you all know, I prefer adjustments in the money supply. The net result is the same-more revenue for us, less buying power for them-but the process is virtually undetectable.”
“And dangerous.”
“Not if handled right. Especially now while the Imperial mark still has some strength in the interstellar currency markets, we can shove a lot more currency out into the economy and reap the benefits before anyone notices. The good citizens will be happy because they'll see their incomes go up. Of course prices will go up faster, but we can always blame that on unreasonable wage demands from the guilds, or corporate profiteering. Or we can blame it on Earth-out-worlders are always more than ready to blame Earth for anything that goes wrong. We have to be careful, of course. We have to prime the pump precisely to keep inflation at a tolerable level.”
“It's at 6 per cent now,” Krager said, irritated by Haworth's didactic tone.
“We can push it to 10.”
“Too dangerous!”
“Stop your nonsensical objections, old man!” Haworth snarled. “You've been living with 6 per cent inflation-causing it, in fact!-for years. Now you balk at 10! Who are you play-acting for?”
“How dare-” Krager was turning red and sputtering.
“Ten per cent is absolutely necessary. Any less and the economy won't even notice the stimulus.”
Metep VII and the rest of the Council of Five mulled this dictum. They had all become masters of economic manipulation under Haworth's tutelage, but 10 per cent…that marked the unseen border of monetary no-man's land. It was double-digit inflation, and there was something inherently terrifying about it.
“We can do it,” Haworth said confidently. “Of course, we have Metep IV to thank for the opportunity. If he hadn't rammed through the legal tender laws eighty years ago, each out-world would still be operating on its own currency instead of the Imperial mark and we'd be helpless. Which brings me to my next topic.”
He opened the folder before him, removed a sheaf of one-mark notes, and dropped them on the table.
“I'd like to take the legal tender laws one step further.”
Metep VII picked up one of the marks and examined it. The note was pristine, bright orange and fresh out of the duplicator, with the satin gloss imparted by the specially treated keerni wood pulp used to make it, still unmarred by fingerprints and creases. Intricate scrollwork was printed around the perimeter on both sides; a portrait of Metep I graced the obverse while a large, blunt “I” dominated the reverse. Different polymer sheets had been tried and discarded when the legal tender laws were introduced during the last days of Metep IV's reign, but the keerni paper held up almost as well and was far cheaper. He lifted the bill to his nose-smelled better, too.
“You're not thinking of going totally electronic like Earth, I hope,” he asked Haworth.
“Exactly what I'm thinking. It's the only way to truly fine-tune the economy. Think of it: not a single financial transaction will be executed without the central computer knowing about it. We talk of subsidizing certain industries? With a totally electronic monetary system we can allot so much here, pull away just enough there…it's the only way to go when you're working with interstellar distances as we are. And it's worked for Earth.”
Metep VII shook his head with deliberate, measured slowness. Here was one area of economic knowledge in which he knew he excelled over Haworth.
“You spent all that time on Earth, Daro,” he said, “and got all that fine training in economic administration. But you've forgotten the people you're dealing with here. Out-worlders are simple folk for the most part. They used to barter exclusively for their needs until someone started hammering coins out of gold and silver or whatever else was considered valuable on that particular colony. Metep IV damn near had a full-scale revolt on his hands when he started to enforce the legal tender laws and make the Imperial mark the one and only acceptable currency in the out-worlds.”
He held up a one-mark note. “Now you want to take even this away and change it to a little blip in some computer's memory? You intend to tell these people that they will no longer be allowed to have money they can hold and count and pass back and forth and maybe bury in the ground somewhere?” Metep VII smiled briefly, grimly, and shook his head again. “Oh no. There's already a maniac fringe group out there trying to do away with me. That's more than enough, thank you. If we even hinted at what you suggest, I'd have every man and woman on the out-worlds who owns a blaster coming after me.” He lifted a copy of The Robin Hood Reader in his other hand. “The author of this would be predicting my death rather than a tax refund. No, my friend. I have no intention of being the only Metep overthrown by a revolution.”
He rose from his seat and his eyes came level with Haworth's. “Consider that idea vetoed.”
Haworth looked away and glanced around the table for a hint of support. He found none. Metep had veto power at council meetings. He also knew out-world mentality-that was how he became Metep. The matter was, for all intents and purposes, closed. He looked back to Metep VII, ready to frame a graceful concession, and noticed a puzzled expression on the leader's face. He was holding the two sheets of paper-the mark note in his left hand, The Robin Hood Reader in his right-staring at them, rubbing his thumbs over the surface of each.
“Something wrong, Jek?” Haworth asked.
The Metep raised each sheet in turn to his nose and sniffed. “Have there been any thefts of currency paper?” he asked, looking up and fixing Krager with his stare.
“No, of course not. We guard the blank paper as well as we guard the printed slips.”
“This flyer is printed on currency paper,” Metep VII stated.
“Impossible!” Krager, who was Minister of the Treasury, reached for one of the flyers on the table. He rubbed it, sniffed it, held it up to gauge the glare of light off its surface.
“Well?”
The old man nodded and leaned back in his form-fitting chair, a dumbfounded expression troubling his features. “It's currency paper all right.”
Nothing was said for a long time. All present now realized that the author of the flyer that had been so easily dismissed earlier in the meeting was no fevered radical sweating in a filthy basement somewhere in Primus City, but rather a man or a group of men who could steal currency paper without anyone knowing. And who showed utter disdain for the Imperial mark.