Cumberland nodded. “I see. Then we'll just have to control the rate of inflation.”
Haworth smiled and Krager laughed aloud from the far end of the table. “That would be nice. We just hit a 21 per cent annual rate, although publicly of course, we're only admitting to 15. To slow inflation, the Imperium has to stop spending more than it takes in in taxes. We either have to increase taxes, which is out of the question, or we have to start cutting the Imperial budget.” He turned his smirking visage toward Cumberland. “Shall we start with the farm subsidies?”
“Impossible!” Cumberland blustered and blanched simultaneously. “Those subsidies are depended on by many small farmers!”
“Well? Where shall we start cutting? The dole? Food Vouchers? With more people than ever on public assistance, we'd be risking wide-scale food riots. And it's because I fear there may be some civil disorder in the near future that I don't advise cutting defense budgets.”
“I suggest we freeze the money supply for the next half year,” Krager said. “There'll be some fallout, naturally, but we've got to do it sometime, and it might as well be now.”
“Oh no, you don't!” It was Metep VII speaking. He had bolted upright in his chair at Krager's suggestion. “A freeze would swing us into a depression!” He looked to Haworth for confirmation.
The younger man nodded his white-haired head. “A deep one, and a long one. Longer and deeper than any of us would care to contemplate.”
“There! You see?” Metep said. “A depression. And during my term of office. Well, let me tell you, gentlemen, that as much as I desire a prominent place in the annals of human history, I do not wish to be known as the Metep whose administration ushered in the first great out-world depression. No, thank you. There'll be no freeze on the money supply and no depression as long as I sit in this chair. There has to be another way and we have to find it.”
“I don't think another way exists,” Krager said. “As a matter of fact, we're now getting to the point over at Treasury where we're seriously talking about changing the ratio of small bills to large bills. Maybe even dropping the one-mark note altogether. We may even get to the point of issuing ‘New Marks,’ trading them one to ten for ‘old marks.’ That would at least cut duplicating expenses, which gives you a pretty good idea of how fast the money supply is expanding.”
“There's no way out if we persist in limiting ourselves to simple and obvious solutions,” Haworth said into the ensuing verbal commotion. “If we freeze, or even significantly slow, the growth of the money supply, we face mass bankruptcy filings and soaring unemployment. If we keep going at this pace, something's bound to give somewhere along the line.”
Metep VII slumped in his chair. “That means I'm to be ‘the Depression Metep’ for the rest of history, I guess. Either way, I lose.”
“Maybe not.” Haworth's voice was not raised when he said it, but it cut cleanly through the undertone of conversational pairs around the table and brought all talk to an abrupt halt.
“You've got an idea? A way out?”
“Only a chance, Jek. No guarantees, and it will take lots of guts on all our parts. But with some luck, we may get a reprieve.” He began strolling around the conference table as he spoke. “The first thing we do is start to inform the public about Earth's new protein source, playing it up not as a great biological advance, but as a sinister move to try and ruin the out-world economy. We'll create a siege mentality, ask everyone to sacrifice to fight the inflation that Earth is causing. As a stopgap, we'll impose wage-price controls and enforce them rigidly. Anyone trying to circumvent them will be portrayed as an Earthie-lover. If legal penalties don't scare them into compliance, social pressure will. And we'll play the unions off against the businessmen as usual.”
“That's not a reprieve!” Krager said, turning in his seat as Haworth passed behind him. “That's not even a new trial-it's just a stay of execution, and a short one at that! It's all been tried before and it's never solved anything.”
“Kindly let me finish, won't you?” Haworth said as calmly as he could. The latent hostility between the Chief Adviser and the Minister of the Treasury was surfacing again. “What I'm proposing has never been attempted before. If we succeed, we will be heroes not only in the out-world history spools, but in the recorded history of humanity. I'm calling it Project Perseus.”
He scanned the table. All eyes were on him, watching him with unwavering attention. He continued strolling and speaking.
“We've been monitoring multiple radio sources concentrated in the neighboring arm of this galaxy. We've been at it ever since our ancestors settled out here. There's no doubt that their origin is intelligent and technologically sophisticated. We've sent a few probe ships into the region but they were lost. It's cold, black, and lonely out there and a single probe ship hunting for life is like loosing a single member of a hymenoptera species into the atmosphere of a planet which supports a single flower on its surface, and waiting to see if the bug can find the flower. But if a whole hiveful of the insects is freed into the air at carefully calculated locations, chances of success are immeasurably better. So that's what we're going to do: build a fleet or probe ships and contact whoever or whatever is out there.”
They all must have thought he was crazy by the looks on their faces. But Daro Haworth had expected that. He waited for the first question, knowing ahead of time what it would be and knowing that either Cumberland or Bede would ask it.
It was Cumberland. “Are you crazy? How's that going to get us out of this?”
“Through trade,” Haworth replied. “By opening new markets to us out there. The latest calculations show that there's another interstellar race in the Perseus arm, outward from here. It lives a damnable number of light years away, but if we try, we can reach it. And then we'll have billions of new customers!”
“Customers for what?” Metep said. “The only thing we've got to trade in any quantity is grain. What if they don't eat grain? Or even if they do-and that's unlikely, I'm sure-what makes you think they'll want to buy ours?”
“Well, we've got plenty of grain at the moment,” Cumberland said. “Let me tell you-”
“Forget about grain!” Haworth shouted, his face livid. “Who am I talking to-the most powerful men in the out-worlds or a group of children? Where is your vision? Think of it-an entire interstellar race. There has to be a million things we can exchange-from art to hardware, from Leason crystals to chispen filets! And if we don't have it, we can ship it out from Earth. We could arrange trade agreements and be sole agents for whatever alien technology is found to have industrial uses. We could corner any number of markets. The out-worlds could enter a golden age of prosperity! And”-he smiled here-“I don't think I have to remind you gentlemen what that could mean to each of us in the areas of political clout and personal finances, do I?”
The undertone began again as each man muttered cautiously at first to his neighbor, then with growing enthusiasm. Only Krager had a sour note to sing.