CHAPTER X
Life in Lo-Tan, the Magnificent
San-Lan's attitude toward me underwent a change. He did not seek mycompany as he had done before, and so those long discussions and mentalduels in which we pitted our philosophies against each other came to anend. I was, I suspected, an unpleasant reminder to him of things hewould rather forget, and my presence was an omen of impending doom. Thathe did not order my execution forthwith was due, I believe to a sort offascination in me, as the personification of this (to him) strange andmysterious race of super-men who had so magically developed overnightfrom "beasts" of the forest.
But though I saw little of him after this, I remained a member of hishousehold, if one may speak of a "household" where there is no semblanceof house.
The imperial apartments were located at the very summit of the ImperialTower, the topmost pinnacle of the city, itself clinging to the sidesand peak of the highest mountain in that section of the Rockies. Therewere days when the city seemed to be built on a rugged island in themidst of a sea of fleecy whiteness, for frequently the cloud level wasbelow the peak. And on such days the only visual communications with theworld below was through the viewplates which formed nearly all theinterior walls of the thousands of apartments (for the city was, infact, one vast building) and upon which the tenants could tune in almostany views they wished from an elaborate system of public television andprojectoscope broadcasts.
Every Han city had many public-view broadcasting stations, operating ontuning ranges which did not interfere with other communication systems.For slight additional fees a citizen in Lo-Tan might, if he felt soinclined, "visit" the seashore, or the lakes or the forests of any partof the country, for when such scene was thrown on the walls of anapartment, the effect was precisely the same as if one were gazingthrough a vast window at the scene itself.
It was possible too, for a slightly higher fee, to make a mutualconnection between apartments in the same or different cities, so that afamily in Lo-Tan, for instance, might "visit" friends in Fis-Ko (SanFrancisco) taking their apartment, so to speak, along with them; beingto all intents and purposes separated from their "hosts" only by a bigglass wall which interfered neither with vision nor conversation.
These public view and visitation projectoscopes explain that utter depthof laziness into which the Hans had been dragged by their civilization.There was no incentive for anyone to leave his apartment unless he wasin the military or air service, or a member of one of the repairservices which from time to time had to scoot through the corridors andshafts of the city, somewhat like the ancient fire departments, to makesome emergency repair to the machinery of the city or its electricaldevices.
* * * * *
Why should he leave his house? Food, wonderful synthetic concoctions ofany desired flavor and consistency (and for additional fee conforming tothe individual's dietary prescription) came to him through a shaft, fromwhich his tray slid automatically on to a convenient shelf or table.
At will he could tune in a theatrical performance of talking pictures.He could visit and talk with his friends. He breathed the freshest offiltered air right in his own apartment, at any temperature he desired,fragrant with the scent of flowers, the aromatic smell of the pineforests or the salt tang of the sea, as he might prefer. He could"visit" his friends at will, and though his apartment actually might beburied many thousand feet from the outside wall of the city, it was nonethe less an "outside" one, by virtue of its viewplate walls. There waseven a tube system, with trunk, branch and local lines and anautomagnetic switching system, by which articles within certain sizelimits could be despatched from any apartment to any other one in thecity.
The women actually moved about through the city more than the men, forthey had no fixed duties. No work was required of them, and thoughnominally free, their dependence upon the government pension for theirnecessities and on their "husbands" (of the moment) for their luxuries,reduced them virtually to the condition of slaves.
Each had her own apartment in the Lower City, with but a single smallviewplate, very limited "visitation" facilities, and a minimum creditfor food and clothing. This apartment was assigned to her on graduationfrom the State School, in which she had been placed as an infant, and itremained hers so long as she lived, regardless of whether she occupiedit or not. At the conclusion of her various "marriages" she would returnthere, pending her endeavors to make a new match. Naturally, as heryears increased, her returns became more frequent and her stay of longerduration, until finally, abandoning hope of making another match, shefinished out her days there, usually in drunkenness and whatever otherforms of cheap dissipation she could afford on her dole, starvingherself.
Men also received the same State pension, sufficient for the necessitiesbut not for the luxuries of life. They got it only as an old-agepension, and on application.
* * * * *
When boys graduated from the State School they generally were "adopted"by their fathers and taken into the latter's households, where theyenjoyed luxuries far in excess of their own earning power. It was notthat their fathers wasted any affection on them, for as I have explainedbefore, the Hans were so morally atrophied and scientifically developedthat love and affection, as we Americans knew them, were unexperiencedor suppressed emotions with them. They were replaced by lust and prideof possession. So long as it pleased a father's vanity, and he did notmiss the cost, he would keep a son with him, but no longer.
Young men, of course, started to work at the minimum wage, which wassomewhat higher than the pension. There was work for everybody inpositions of minor responsibility, but very little hard work.
Upon receiving his appointment from one or another of the bigcorporations which handled the production and distribution of the vastcommunity (the shares of which were pooled and held by thegovernment--that is, by San-Lan himself--in trust for all the workers,according to their positions) he would be assigned to anapartment-office, or an apartment adjoining the group of offices inwhich he was to have his desk. Most of the work was done in singleapartment-offices.
The young man, for instance, might recline at his ease in his apartmentnear the top of the city, and for three or four hours a day inspect,through his viewplate and certain specially installed apparatus, theoutput of a certain process in one of the vast automatically controlledfood factories buried far underground beneath the base of the mountain,where the moan of its whirring and throbbing machinery would not disturbthe peace and quiet of the citizens on the mountain top. Or he might berequired simply to watch the operation of an account machine in anautomatic store.
There is no denying that the economic system of the Hans was marvelous.A suit of clothes, for instance, might be delivered in a man's apartmentwithout a human hand having ever touched it.
Having decided that he wished a suit of a given general style, he wouldsimply tune in a visual broadcast of the display of various selections,and when he had made his choice, dial the number of the item and pressthe order button. Simultaneously the charge would be automatically madeagainst his account number, and credited as a sale on the automaticrecords of that particular factory in the account house. And his accountplate, hidden behind a little wall door, would register his new creditbalance. An automatically packaged suit that had been made to style andsize-standard by automatic machinery from synthetically producedmaterial, would slip into the delivery chute, magnetically addressed,and in anywhere from a few seconds to thirty minutes or so, according tothe volume of business in the chutes, and drop into the delivery basketin his room.
* * * * *
Daily his wages were credited to his account, and monthly his share ofthe dividends likewise (according to his position) from the ImperialInvestment Trust, after deduction of taxes (through the automaticbookkeeping machines) for the support of the city's pensioners andwhatever sum San-Lan himself had chosen to deduct for personal expensesand gratuities.
&n
bsp; A man could not bequeath his ownership interest in industry to his son,for that interest ceased with his death, but his credit accumulation, onwhich interest was paid, was credited to his eldest recorded son as amatter of law.
Since many of these credit fortunes (The Hans had abandoned gold as afinancial basis centuries before) were so big that they drew interest inexcess of the utmost luxury costs of a single individual, there was aclass of idle rich consisting of eldest sons, passing on these creditfortunes from generation to generation. But younger sons and women hadno share in these fortunes, except by the whims and favor of the"Man-Dins" (Mandarins), as these inheritors were known.
These Man-Dins formed a distinct class of the population, and numberedabout five percent of it. It was distinct from the Ku-Li (coolie) orcommon people, and from the "Ki-Ling" or aristocracy composed of thosemore energetic men (at least mentally more energetic) who were theactive or retired executive heads of the various industrial,educational, military or political administrations.
A man might, if he so chose, transfer part of his credit to a womanfavorite, which then remained hers for life or until she used it up, andof course, the prime object of most women, whether as wives, orfavorites, was to beguile a settlement of this sort out of some wealthyman.
When successful in this, and upon reassuming her freedom, a woman rankedsocially and economically with the Man-Dins. But on her death, whateverremained of her credit was transferred to the Imperial fund.
When one considers that the Hans, from the days of their exodus fromMongolia and their conquest of America, had never held any ideal ofmonogamy, and the fact that marriage was but a temporary formality whichcould be terminated on official notice by either party, and that afterall it gave a woman no real rights or prerogatives that could not beterminated at the whim of her husband, and established her as nothingbut the favorite of his harem, if he had an income large enough to keepone, or the most definitely acknowledged of his favorites if he hadn't,it is easy to see that no such thing as a real family life existed amongthem.
Free women roamed the corridors of the city, pathetically importuningmarriage, and wives spent most of the time they were not under theirhusbands' watchful eyes in flirtatious attempts to provide themselveswith better prospects for their next marriages.
* * * * *
Naturally the biggest problem of the community was that of stimulatingthe birth rate. The system of special credits to mothers had beguncenturies before, but had not been very efficacious until women had beendeprived of all other earning power, and even at the time of which Iwrite it was only partially successful, in spite of the heavy bountiesfor children. It was difficult to make the bounties sufficientlyattractive to lure the women from their more remunerative lightflirtations. Eugenic standards also were a handicap.
As a matter of fact, San-Lan had under consideration a revolutionarychange in economic and moral standards, when the revolt of the forestmen upset his delicately laid plans, for, as he had explained to me, itwas no easy thing to upset the customs of centuries in what he waspleased to call the "morals" of his race.
He had another reason too. The physically active men of the communitywere beginning to acquire a rather dangerous domination. These includedmen in the army, in the airships, and in those relatively few civilianactivities in which machines could not do the routine work andthinking. Already common soldiers and air crews demanded and receivedhigher remuneration than all except the highest of the Ki-Ling, theindustrial and scientific leaders, while mechanics and repairmen whocould, and would, work hard physically, commanded higher incomes thanPrinces of the Blood, and though constituting only a fraction of one percent of the population they actually dominated the city. San-Lan daredtake no important step in the development of the industrial and militarysystem without consulting their council or Yun-Yun (Union), as it wasknown.
Socially the Han cities were in a chaotic condition at this time,between morals that were not morals, families that were not families,marriages that were not marriages, children who knew no homes, work thatwas not work, eugenics that didn't work; Ku-Lis who envied the richerclasses but were too lazy to reach out for the rewards freely offeredfor individual initiative; the intellectually active and physically lazyKi-Lings who despised their lethargy; the Man-Din drones who regardedboth classes with supercilious toleration; the Princes of the Blood,arrogant in their assumption of a heritage from a Heaven in which theydid not believe; and finally the three castes of the army, air andindustrial repair services, equally arrogant and with more reason intheir consciousness of physical power.
* * * * *
The army exercised a cruelly careless and impartial police power overall classes, including the airmen, when the latter were in port. But itdid not dare to touch the repair men, who, so far as I could ever makeout, roamed the corridors of the city at will during their hours offduty, wreaking their wills on whomever they met, without let orhindrance.
Even a Prince of the Blood would withdraw into a side corridor with hisescort of a score of men, to let one of these labor "kings" pass, ratherthan risk an altercation which might result in trouble for thegovernment with the Yun-Yun, regardless of the rights and wrongs of thecase, unless a heavy credit transference was made from the balance ofthe Prince to that of the worker. For the machinery of the city couldnot continue in operation a fortnight, before some accident requiringdelicate repair work would put it partially out of commission. And theYun-Yun was quick to resent anything it could construe as a slight onone of its members.
In the last analysis it was these Yun-Yun men, numerically the smallestof the classes, who ruled the Han civilization, because for allpractical purposes they controlled the machinery on which thatcivilization depended for its existence.
Politically, San-Lan could balance the organizations of the army and theair fleets against each other, but he could not break the grip of therepairmen on the machinery of the cities and the power broadcast plants.