He looked at the pale palms of his hands and wondered how heavy the future of an entire country might weigh.
At intervals he uttered a mechanical hullo.
* * *
Sharp on time Old GT herself came in, attended as usual by a secretary who was human but so strung about with portable equipment as to make him effectively an extension of the corporation’s massive information-processing resources up to and including Shalmaneser. Behind there followed Hamilcar Waterford, the treasurer, and just after him E. Prosper Rankin, the company secretary. As they took their seats a taut silence filled the room.
“This extraordinary meeting of the board,” Old GT began without ado, “has been called to receive and vote on a special report from the vice-president in charge of projects and planning. Two non-members of the board are also present: Mr. Elihu Masters, U. S. Ambassador to Beninia, and Dr. Raphael Corning of the State Department. Those in favour of their continuing presence—?”
Norman fumbled for the “aye” button on his throne. On the front panel of Old GT’s a pattern of lights, all green, displayed the result of the vote.
“Thank you. Rex, will you introduce the report?”
Old GT sat back and crossed her arms on her bosom. For the first time he could recall, Norman decided that her manner was smug. And then he wondered whether he could have avoided acting the same way if he had had the vision and persistence to achieve such tremendous personal power.
There are odds against Aframs, but there are odds against women too, and they’re a bigger minority group than we are!
Rex Foster-Stern cleared his throat. “Background,” he said. “Beninia faces a crisis on the impending retirement of President Zadkiel Obomi. On his demise or vacation of his post two consequences are possible. A civil conflict over the succession is the less likely in view of the exceptionally peaceful course of events there since independence. The probabilities are weighted in favour of its powerful African neighbours attempting to annex its territory. Intervention by a third party may prevent this by providing them with a common target for recriminations, and State wishes to try this.
“A parallel situation arose when the Sulu Archipelago seceded from the Philippine Republic. As you know, the solution of integrating those islands into our country as the State of Isola did not lead to the desired result, pacification of the area. Moreover in the case of Isola the conflicting parties included an enemy acceptable to public opinion, the Chinese. As neither the Dahomalians nor the RUNGs are a military threat to us intervention on the Isolan pattern would be resented as an unnecessary waste of our resources.
“However, Ambassador Masters has hit on a feasible alternative: to integrate Beninia not into our national but into our commercial orbit, and this is the proposal we are going to ask you to approve today.
“Beninia offers a source of inexpensive and potentially skilled labour admirably sited for expansion into the hinterland. What is more, it’s equally well located to process raw materials derived from the so-far unexploited mineral deposits discovered by MAMP.
“You will have seen from our briefing summary that the predicted turnover of this operation is comparable to that of a national budget and the scheme will not be completed until 2060. Despite the scale of it, however, evaluation of even the most minor details has proved to be possible and all information in your briefing has been thoroughly explored by Shalmaneser as a hypothetical case. Without his favourable verdict we’d not have presented the report.”
“Thank you, Rex,” Old GT said. “I see question lights going on in several places—kindly wait until we’ve heard from Dr. Corning and Mr. Masters. Dr. Corning?”
The gaunt tall man leaned forward.
“I need only add minor glosses to the admirable document Mr. Foster-Stern has circulated,” he said. “First, as to State’s involvement. Although we don’t possess the unique Shalmaneser we’re not ill-equipped with computers and we analysed Mr. Masters’s suggestion very fully before okaying his approach to you. State’s prepared to buy a fifty-one per cent share in the loan floated to finance the project, but to minimise political repercussions we’ll have to do so through front agents. These should keep down complaints about neocolonialism so that by the ten-year mark we can hope for active co-operation from Beninia’s neighbours in digesting the fruits of the plan. And, second, I’d like to emphasise that Mr. Masters conceived his idea after very wide experience in the country and you should give great weight to his personal recommendation.”
“Mr. Masters?” Old GT invited.
“All right, I’ll make it personal, then,” Elihu said after a barely noticeable hesitation. “The reason I put this project to State has nothing to do with the profit your corporation can expect. If you’re at all acquainted with the recent history of Africa you’ll have noticed that the withdrawal of the colonial powers left the map in a terrible muddle. Arbitrary lines separated potential economic units—they weren’t even tribally based, but dictated by nineteenth-century European power-struggles. As a result, many countries have been in chaos. There have been civil wars, hordes of refugees, poverty, famine and pestilence.
“Since the idea of federation took hold, things have improved. Countries like Dahomalia, for instance, or the Republican Union of Nigeria with Ghana, have become reasonable places to live, with an adequate GNP and stable public services. But they didn’t settle down in Dahomalia until they’d killed about twenty thousand members of a dissident tribe, and as for what went on in South Africa—ah, never mind. Everyone knows what a living hell that was.
“In the middle of all this, my good friend Zad Obomi has performed the miracle of creating the equivalent of an African Switzerland, free from alliances that might drag it into wars it didn’t care about, as happened to Sierra Leone and Gambia; not being milked of irreplaceable resources by a richer foreign ally, as happened to the Congo—and so forth.
“Beninia’s a poverty-stricken country, but it’s a wonderful place to live. About five per cent of its people fled there from tribal clashes on adjacent territory, but there’s been no tribal violence in Beninia. There are four language-groups, but there’s been no conflict such as we’ve seen right close to home in Canada, or in Belgium prior to partition. It’s a peaceful country, and it seems to me it’s got something too valuable to be swallowed up by greedy neighbours merely because President Obomi can’t live forever.”
He fell silent. Glancing around at his colleagues, Norman detected expressions of puzzlement, and his heart sank.
Old GT coughed politely. She said, “I hardly need point out the relevance of what Mr. Masters has told us. An access point to the developing African market which is free of civil commotion and the other hazards of an African beach-head is quite remarkable, isn’t it?”
Norman saw the puzzled looks disappear, and felt a stir of honest admiration at Old GT’s ingenuity in manipulating her staffers.
“Next,” GT continued, “I call on Norman House, whom Mr. Masters personally recommends to initiate our negotiations with the Beninian government. Norman?”
The big moment was here. For a terrible pulsebeat-long span of time he felt panic, as though amnesia had wiped away everything he had carefully rehearsed to say. The sensation, however, passed so rapidly that he was already speaking before he realised he had recovered.
He said, “Thank you, GT,” and noticed the rustle of reaction. Traditionally, junior VP’s said “Miss Buckfast” or—by analogy with the form of address to the British Queen—“ma’am”. Several eyebrows were raised to signal recognition of impending promotion. Norman was too preoccupied to care. He had expended infinite pains on sounding out his colleagues, trying to judge the approach that would most impress them, and Rex had put a computer at his disposal to evaluate the various possibilities in terms of their personality-profiles; an instant of inattention could waste all that trouble.