The book’s website (description, excerpts, etc) is: www.homagetoluxenben.org

Given the reception such proposals have received thus far, there seems to be no harm in throwing another into the hopper.  Why not allow both the euro and the drachma to circulate as official currencies?  It is, after all, not such a radical notion; several countries today operate in that dual-currency mode either formally or informally.

The transition might come about in some such manner.  Let’s say Greece were to pledge as collateral a wad of fixed assets—a number of islands, say, a fleet of ships, their Ouzo distillery, the Parthenon, whatever—and, in exchange, the EU would allow the country to introduce enough drachma to meet all its obligations.  At the end of a fixed period of, say, twenty-five years, all drachma would be recalled at a one-to-one conversion rate.  With such a suddenly replenished treasury, Greece could comfortably meet its debt payments and begin to rebuild its economy introducing its critically needed reforms along the way.  Normal trade would resume and protests fade away.

Assuming that the euro would be treated as “good” money and the “drachma” as bad, the rule that “bad money drives out good” would likely take hold.  Euros would get squirreled away in bank accounts and drachma used in most internal transactions.  Especially at first, a lopsided open-market rate would likely prevail.  But several favorable changes would also result.  Greek goods would be more competitive on the world market, tourism would expand thanks to a strengthened euro, and interest rates fall.  Then, in time, as drachmas became more respectable and the settlement date approached, they would, I believe, be forced to rise in value.

Bondholders left with drachma could convert them in the free market that, initially at least, would leave them with heavy exchange losses.  On the other hand, they might prefer to hold drachma until such time Greece got on its feet and its currency stabilized.

At the end of the prescribed period, therefore, Greece would hopefully be on its feet able to withdraw the drachma, take its pledged assets out of the pawn shop, and see the Parthenon returned to its original site to the relief of all concerned.  Works for me.

As it turned out, an August 18th segment of the NBC Nightly News helped fill in the details Obama left unsaid.  It reported that Siemens, one of the world’s largest manufacturing companies, was having difficulty filling 3,400 jobs in one of its US based plants.  Eric Spiegel, its CEO, explained why:

“The environment we’re in today requires a lot more in depth math skills and computer skills.  Digital manufacturing many people call it.  Also IT skills.  Almost everything we make has some kind of software associated with it…These jobs are much more demanding than they were ten or  twenty years ago.  There are job opportunities but right now there’s a skill mismatch.  We need to fill that mismatch for training.  By the way, the US will have more jobs because there will be more companies wanting to invest in the United States if they see that skill base…in place.”

When one multiplies this isolated example by the number of companies throughout the US struggling to stay competitive in an ever-more technical environment, one begins to recognize the damage being done to the employment situation by the inability of  the US labor force to take on the work being offered.  But that’s just part of the picture.  To comprehend the full story, one has to add the jobs lost by the exodus of companies from the US motivated, in part, by their requirement for more skilled workers.  Nor can one neglect the intangible number of jobs withheld from our shores altogether by the reluctance of international companies to cope with our untrained—and, from a practical standpoint, largely untrainable—work force.  Granted it is impossible to express the sum total of these lost job opportunities in hard numbers, but its overall impact is both all too quantifiable and brutally clear: nine-plus per cent unemployment among those seeking work and sixteen-plus if discouraged workers are factored in.  All told, twenty-five million Americans either unemployed or forced to work part time.

THE COMPACT

How did this freefall in the American workers’ ability to compete in the world happen?  If one had only President Obama’s July’s truncated comment to go by, one would assume that our under-educated work force was a fixture of the American scene as natural and as homegrown as, let’s say, Yellowstone’s Old Faithful’s routine eruptions.  Certainly, neither he nor the political party he heads had anything to do with it.  But another of his telling comments suggests otherwise.  Steven Brill in his recent book, “Class Warfare” reports that, early on in his administration, the President ended an Oval Office conference on education reform with “Just make sure we don’t poke the unions in the eye with this”—a remark that can only be interpreted as “Don’t do anything to release the stranglehold the unions have on public education.”

The fact is America’s misfortune did not arise out of the blue.  The President may well harbor a sincere desire to see the American worker as the best trained in the world and our children among the best educated.  But, as he inadvertently illuminated in his poke-in-the-eye comment, his hands are tied.  For all his proverbial commitment to change, Obama can’t change a thing in this area without upsetting the applecart.  All he can do is enforce the terms of an apparently unbreakable, not to say notorious, compact between his party and the teachers unions.  Stripped of its political obfuscations, the compact provides for the Democrats’ sale of public education to the unions in exchange for the unions’ grant of political power to the party.   More particularly, the compact gained the Democratic party four-million deliverable teacher robo-votes, the unions’ enormous political clout with the general public, and, last but by no means least, millions in political donations.  Together the NEA and the NFT spent $67 million on political races from 1989 to 2019.  And millions more were spent by their local and regional affiliates.

For their part, the unions gained authority over 98,817 public schools and their state and local school boards.  And, unfortunately, the age-old expression, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” proved as applicable as ever.  Once the unions got the unfettered right to do with K-12 education what they willed, they transmogrified its primary function into a huge automatic teller machine dispensing boatloads of cash and perks to union officials and their minions.  The antiquated notion that schools were for kids became a delusion fostered by the unions’ powerful propaganda machine upon a naïve public sentimentally fixated on the pious image of the underpaid, hard-working, devoted teacher.  The 555 staff members of the NEA, wielding a $307 million annual budget, knows better and continues doing what they’re paid to do: bulking up union membership, raking in union dues (as much as $900 per teacher per year), and catering to teacher demands at the expense of our childrens’ education.

Step back for a moment from the terms of the compact and consider its broader ramifications.  Whereas at first glance it would seem to evenly blanket K-12 education throughout the United States, its impact is disparate.  One way or another, children from well-to-do families can deflect the worst of its influence—better teachers in suburbia, private schools, outside tutoring, university catch-up classes, and so on.  And, to a lesser extent, kids from middle-class families, too, have a decent chance of at least partly shrugging off the handicap of a public education in the good old USA.  Many will find their way to a decent university and others, with any ambition, can benefit from courses offered by community colleges.  But when it comes to poor kids, it’s a different story.  We’re pushing them out into the world without any of the buffers available to their better off piers.  Educationwise, they’re virtually helpless.  That’s a terrible thing to do to children.  You might as well send them across a busy street blindfolded.

To my mind, you’d have to go back to Hitler’s and Stalin’s partition of Poland to find an agreement as debased as that between the Democratic Party and the teachers unions.  And what makes it all the more contemptible is the posturing of the compact’s beneficiaries as defenders of the downtrodden.  Downtrodden, right.  Look who’s doing the trodden!

CRITICISM

There has been nothing secret about the embrace of the Democratic Party and the teachers  unions and its consequences.  Indeed, it would have been unnatural if the bludgeoning of our schools by thugs in broad daylight had escaped notice.  The fact that it had not been overlooked is evidenced by these revealing book titles:

“Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can’t Read, Write, or Add” by Charles Sykes, 1996

“Conflicting Missions? Teachers Unions and Educational Reform” by Tom Loveless (2000)

“The Teacher Unions: How They Sabotage Educational Reform and Why” by Myron Lieberman, (2000)

“It’s the Teacher, Stupid! Thoughts on Restructuring Education in the United States” by Pierson Melcher (2006)

“The Deserved Collapse of Public Schools: How We Have Been Hornswoggled and Bamboozled. Even Flummoxed and Hoodwinked by Entrenched Educrats” by Richard Neal (2006)

“The War Against Hope: How Teachers’ Unions Hurt Children, Hinder Teachers, and Endanger Public Education” by Rod Page (2007)

“Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union” by Clarence Taylor (2011)

“Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools” by Terry Moe (2011)

 Nor has the entertainment industry ignored the crisis in education.  A cursory check of the Internet found these five documentaries all strongly critical of the teachers unions:

“Crisis in the Classroom” (TV, 1996)

 “Race to Nowhere” (2009)

“The Lottery” (2010)

“Waiting for Superman” (2010)

“The Cartel, Education plus Politics Equals Cash” (2010)

FROM PERIODICALS

Additionally, a long string of articles have, for many years, appeared in media outlets such as the New Yorker Magazine, Reason, Time, and the Wall Street Journal.  Together they constitute a rapsheet on the teachers unions from which I have arbitrarily selected a handful of illustrative quotes and organized them for the reader’s convenience:

DESPOTISM:

Mr. Moe’s thesis is that the unions ability to protect the interests of their members is virtually unmatched in American society…[they are] the nation’s top contributors to federal elections. (The Wall Street Journal, Learning the Hard Way, August 20, 2011)

[Moe] describes the unions’ influence in every political arena and their constant efforts to shore up their power.  For example, the teachers unions make sure that school-board elections are scheduled when there will be low voter turnout, making it easy to control the outcome with the votes and resources the union can supply.  School board members elected with  union support, in turn, are just the kind of “management” that unions like on the other side of the bargaining table when contract negotiations begin.  In Mr. Moe’s view, this kind of rigged process helps to embed anti-student policies such as teacher tenure, seniority preferences, and lock-step pay. (The Wall Street Journal, Learning the Hard Way, August 20, 2011)

Substantial criticism has been leveled against the NEA and other teacher  unions for allegedly putting the interest of teachers ahead of students and consistently opposing changes that critics claim would help students but harm union interests.  The NEA has often opposed measures such as merit pay, school vouchers, weakening of teacher tenure, certain curricular changes, the No Child Left Behind Act, and many accountability reforms. (Wikipedia, article on National Education Association)

For years, union leaders have lambasted as antiteacher pretty much every proposal to expand charter schools, improve teacher evaluation, and turn around low-performing schools. (Time Magazine, Quiet Riot: Insurgents Take On Teachers’ Unions, August 11, 2011)

Former top officers at the National Education Association Kansas and Nebraska state chapters summarized their union’s stance on reform…”The NEA has been the single biggest obstacle to education reform in this country.  We know because we worked for the NEA.” (TeachersUnionExposed.com, Teachers Unions Oppose Educational Reform)

CRIMINALITY:

In March, 2001, a secretary in the Port Charlotte, Florida embezzled $66,000.  In October of the same year, long-time Broward Teachers Union president, Toni Gentile was arrested on child pornography charges.  The local union paid him a goldern parachute valued at $140,000…And in April 2003, the FBI and Miami police raided the headquarters of the United Teachers of Dade after receiving a tip that president Pat Tornillo has embezzled or misspent millions of dollars in union dues.  Critics charge that the scandals are symbolic of deeper organizational biases and problems within the NEA. (Wikipedia, article on National Education Association)

Shame and outrage over the Atlantic Public Schools last week as a big state investigation laid out findings of massive, systemic cheating—by teachers.  Teachers changing student scores on standardized tests to make their schools look better than they were.  Not subtle cheating, but gross, flagrant, eraser-on-the-page cheating.  Weekend pizza parties where teachers went through stacks of standardized tests, erasing wrong answers, filling in right ones.  And there’s evidence this hasn’t only happened in Atlanta. (National Public Radio, “On Point with Tom Ashbrook, July 11, 2011)

DISFUNCTION:

David Frum has correlated the drop in student achievement since the 1960’s with a simultaneous increase in teacher pay and recruitment of less-qualified teachers, beginning in the 1970’s…The inept and lazy gained a huge increment in job security.  Assignments would be distributed by seniority rather than skill. (Wikipedia, article on National Education Association)

The regulations are so onerous that principals rarely even try to fire a teacher.  Most just put the bad ones in pretend-work jobs, or sucker another school into taking them…The city payrolls include hundreds of teachers who have been deemed incompetent, violent, or guilty of sexual misconduct.  Since the schools are afraid to let them teach, they put them in so-called “rubber rooms” instead.  There they read magazines, play cards, and chat, at a cost to New York taxpayers of $20 million a year. (Reason Magazine, How to Fire an Incompetent Teacher, 2006)

Or look at Chicago.  In a school district that has by any measure failed its students—only 28.5 percent of 11^th graders met or exceeded expectations on that state’s standardized tests—Newsweek reported that only 0.1 percent of teachers were dismissed for performance-related reasons between 2005 and 2008. (TeachersUnionExposed.com, Protecting Bad Teachers)

INCOMPETENCE:

Since 1970, America has more than doubled the real dollars spent on K-12 education.  We have increased the number of teachers by more than a third, created legions of nonteaching staff, and raised salaries and benefits across the board.  Yet fewer than 40% of the students who graduate from high school are ready for college.  At the same time, students from other countries are moving ahead of us, scoring higher—often much higher—on international tests of reading, math, and science skills. (The Wall Street Journal, Learning the Hard Way, August 20, 2011)

Several decades ago American students were at the top of every subject; we’re now below average of developed countries and even several developing nations…Looking at all countries assessed, the United States ranks 35^th in math literacy [below Spain, Russia, Azerbaijan, etc.] and 29^th in scientific literacy [below Estonia, Hungary, Croatia, Latvia etc].  When it comes to reading, our rank is better at 18^th   [but still below Canada, Australia, Poland, etc].  Needless to add, China outranked us in each of these categories. (TeachersUnionExposed.com, International Competitiveness)

What can the President do to “get these kids educated?” Should we spend more money?  If you look at spending per primary school student by country, the United States ranks fourth worldwide. #1 Denmark, $6,713; #2 Switzerland, $6,470; #3 Austria, $6,065; #4 United States, $6,043; …#12 France, $3,752; #13 Germany, $3,531, #14 United Kingdom, $3,329. (dailyplunge.com)

STUPIDITY:

The author briefly refers to the now-infamous “rubber rooms,” the reassignment centers he first described in the New Yorker magazine in 2009, where teachers with especially bad records, whom it takes years to fire, were sent to kill time instead of, as before, being given make-work chores at schools. (The Wall Street Journal, Learning the Hard Way, August 20, 2011)

The NEA was criticized in August 2002 for the appearance of a lesson plan…that encouraged teachers to remove all references to Muslim terrorists  [related to the] September 11^th attacks. (Wikipedia, National Education Association)

…policies that seem to lack common sense…Here are some examples of how the zero tolerance hatchet is wielded in public schools…In Hurst, Texas, a 16-year-old honor student was expelled from high school after a security guard found a butter knife in the bed of his pickup truck parked on the school grounds.  The knife apparently fell out of a box of household items  he and his father had transported the previous day from his grandmother’s home to a local Goodwill store. (ourcivilization.com/dumb)

FADDISHNESS:

“Why Johnny Can’t Add: The Failure of the New Math” by Morris Kline] is a cogent and viciously sharp reading of the problems the author saw in 1972 that has been exacerbated up to today.  It is [a] must for teachers and administrators if there is going to be any profound changes in education.  The frustration level is so high in education today there might be hope if the people in the position to make changes will listen, unlike in ‘1972’.  It would be irresponsible to the educators’ profession and the students who are served not to read this book. (book review on Amazon.com)

Why can’t Johnny Read?  Because he’s being taught in the wrong way, says Flesch, and he’s right.  I know.  I was being taught that way in 1959, and I couldn’t learn to read either.  What can you do about it?  Well, if its your own child, teach them yourself, using phonics…But if the question is, what can you do about the failure of our schools, the answer is “Nothing.”…The book was published in 1955.  After 44 years, the situation has only gotten worse.  This is because the people running the public school system want it this way, and the country’s parents won’t fire them all.  Sad but true. (book review on Amazon.com of “Why Johnny Can’t Read” by Rudolf Flesch, 1900)

A two-year study of first and second-graders in California’s Inglewood Unified School District compared phonics to whole language instruction.  By the end of the second grade, phonics students scored more than a year above grade level in word recognition, passage recognition and vocabulary.  In the ability to sound out and pronounce new words, these students scored almost four years above grade level. (B. C. Bruns on bcbruns.tripod.com)

“Faddishness” deserves an afterword.  No sooner has one unsupported notion proven totally unproductive; the education establishment seems compelled to latch onto another with equal single-minded vigor. (witness whole language, new math, zero tolerance, bilingual education, set theory, etc) It’s latest craze is “learning styles”—the supposition that children learn, and therefore must be taught, in different ways. Presumably, this too will pass when proven invalid, but, of course, not without the unpardonable cost in money and distraction that have accompanied every other idiotic fad that has captured the fancy of education’s hierarchy with too much time on their hands and too little sense to occupy it constructively.

POLITICAL REACTION

Why hasn’t this overwhelming case against the teacher unions and their protectors translated thus far into political action of the intensity needed to instigate major change?  For one thing, nothing can be expected from the Democrats for obvious reasons.  On the other hand, one might have expected the Republican Party, supposedly in opposition, to pick up the banner of school reform and make it a key plank in their platform.  That has not happened.  Rather than pitching in to right the evident wrongs in education, they have taken a pass.  To my knowledge, none of the Republican candidates for presidential nomination has made education reform a central talking point in their campaign.  After all, why invite controversy when votes can be won by assuming the ennobling posture of simply not being Democrats?

Nor, for that matter, has any other political party exactly covered itself with glory in this matter.  I would have thought the issue might fit nicely within the Tea Party’s anti-establishment agenda, but, their criticism of the public school system seems largely limited to its failure to turn out students who are sufficiently patriotic and/or religious.

The Libertarians at least have had the good sense to advocate the abolishment of the Department of Education.  And, of course, they are dead right in this regard.  Until the accession of Arne Duncan as its head (more on this later) the department’s only function has been to demonstrate the Democrats’ fealty to education by dumping wheelbarrows full of cash down its rat hole.  But, like the Tea Partiers, the Libertarians have ducked education’s central issue.

Finally, this list of dishonorable mentions would be incomplete without the inclusion of the academics who inhabit our institutions of higher learning.  No group has had a better opportunity to evaluate the injuries inflicted upon the nations’ youth by the teachers unions, yet whatever disapproval they’ve expressed has been untargeted.  It’s as though the grossly unprepared students sent to them were another of those facts of life about which nothing specific could be done—another manifestation of the Old-Faithful phenomenon.  One can’t help being reminded of the failure of the 1930’s  liberals to condemn the outrages committed by their erstwhile exemplars in the USSR.

TUG OF WAR

Admittedly in the last few years, the country has gradually bestired itself regarding education reform.  The shift in sentiment has prompted several states— Indiana, Utah, Wisconsin, Ohio, and New Jersey among them—to summon the courage to face down the unions on at least some issues. Even Obama seems to have somewhat relaxed his protective stance.  My guess is that he would now reword his original demand to, “just make sure we don’t poke out both eyes of the unions with this.”  His appointment to head the Department of Education, Arne Duncan, has initiated a “Race to the Top” program that seeks to dismiss ineffective teachers, institute merit pay, expand the number of charter schools, and encourage states to make schools accountable based on standardized testing.  Whereas the program has encouraged a number of states to make school choice more available and to undertake other “R2T” reforms, its rewards pale in comparison with the $800 billion the federal government doles out routinely for education regardless of performance.

The fact is that the attempts to change the system—school vouchers, the creation of charter schools, the formation of reform-minded organizations, the initiation of government programs, and so on—are merely jabs here and there at the union beast that no doubt annoy it but do little more.  Essentially, it remains as powerful as ever and capable of striking back when sufficiently provoked.  For example, earlier this year the unions were successful in removing Michelle Rhee from her position as Chancellor of the Washington DC School District.  During the three and a half years Ms Rhee was on the job, she had taken on the  unions to rapidly introduce the steps she felt necessary to turn around perhaps the worst school system in the country.  She closed 23 schools, fired 36 principals, cut 121 office jobs, and instituted gifted-child programs. Obviously, such an effective activist reformer posed an intolerable threat, so the unions threw millions of dollars at her removal.

Counterattacking on other fronts, the unions were successful in reducing Wisconsin’s funding for its model Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and cutting back on Pennsylvania’s tax credits for private donations to its Educational Improvement Credit thereby reducing by 6,000 the number of scholarships provided under the program.  Then, as recently as this August, the unions managed to convince a New York State Supreme Court judge to throw out a new provision in the state’s regulations that enabled authorities to fire teachers whose student test scores were markedly below average.  The union’s argument was that student performance was an insufficient indicator of a teacher’s competence.

A scoreboard displaying the net result of this tug of war between the teachers unions and their would-be reformers would look like this:  according to the Center for Education Reform, in 2010 the number of charter schools grew by 9% to 5,453 and now serve more than 1.7 million students.  Hurray for the home team!  But they are playing in the minor leagues.  When compared to the reality of 98,817 public school with their 49,266,000 enrollment, the achievements of the decades-old charter school movement look rather anemic.  And somewhat overstated besides when taking into account the limitations with which most of them are encumbered by union-inspired state regulations.

 GENUINE REFORM

The reality is the country continues to endure the teachers union predations.  Tragically the great majority of students in our public schools march into the world with only a smattering of the knowledge they need to compete in it.  Furthermore, the harm done by the teacher unions extends far beyond the education field itself; it has created a sense of defeatism in the American psyche.  The average America instinctively recognizes that we are no longer the smartest kid on the block.  That much of the air has leaked out of our innovation balloon.  That we are in danger of surrendering our first place standing in technology or perhaps have already done so.  That scientific progress the worldover is rushing forward and we are being nudged to the sidelines where we can only watch in dumb wonderment.  That China will soon overtake our manufacturing sector.  And that our kids know less about geography, American and world history, and the fundamentals of freedom and democracy than their counterparts a generation ago.

For all these reasons, it should be clear that the recapture of our public schools is of vital importance.  Indeed, more important than many of the emotionally-charged issues that galvanize our attention.  America will survive intact whether or not the word “God” is inserted in the National Anthem, whether or not the abortion rights or the prolife advocates triumph, and whether or not gay couples marry.  America will not survive in its present form if the education gap is allowed to continue intact and we sink to the level of an underdeveloped country dependent of our agriculture and mining industries.  It’s bad enough that we’re saddling each of our kids with tens of thousands of dollars of national debt, but to deprive them of the means to overcome it is truly unconscionable.

So what is to be done?  A letter-writing campaign?  A march on Washington?  Raising Cain at school board meetings.  No doubt all of these traditional exercises of democracy would be of some help, but to my mind, the educational crisis requires stronger action.  Look at it this way.  Would any of the multitude of reform measures be necessary if it were not for the teachers unions?  In the absence of the unions, would we need charter schools, school vouchers, and all the rest?  Obviously, not.  The solution to the dilemma we face in education thus speaks for itself.  Seldom has our nation faced a major dilemma in which the solution was so self evident.

Get rid of the unions and we get rid of the bulk of education’s structural problems.  And once this cloud hanging over our schools has been lifted, we can begin to undertake real improvement in the educational process in an unbiased, rational manner.

BELLING THE CAT

The only question that remains is how?  Three approaches come to mind:

One:  A great deal of money is already being donated by charitable individuals, corporations, and non-profits.  Why not channel those funds where they could do the most good—that is, provide start-up financing for the rank and file of teachers willing to organize a new union that genuinely represents them.  Certainly they would have plenty of reasons for doing so.  Their declaration of independence could include freedom from the drudgery of endless paperwork, opportunity to exercise their individual teaching skills, less emphasis on standardized testing, an end to experimental methodologies, a return to teaching fundamentals, better enforcement of discipline, authority to expel trouble makers, revised textbooks less concerned with social objectives and more concerned with facts, and greatly reduced unions dues thanks to a more frugal administration and the elimination of political activity. Surely enough teachers would subscribe to these changes to form an invigorated group eager to take the helm.  In addition the new slate could count on the return of a goodly number of former teachers who left the profession on account of the present conditions in the classroom.

In fact, the uprising has already begun.  Quietly and diplomatically, to be sure, as befits the profession, but noticeable nonetheless.  In Los Angeles, the recently formed NewTLA is already posing a credible challenge to the mighty United Teachers of Los Angeles on such issues as teacher seniority.  Meanwhile, at the other end of the continent in New York City, 3,500 teachers joined the Educators for Excellence (E4E) to lobby for “an elevated profession of teachers who want to be accountable.”  And in six chapters in major cities across the country, Teach Plus is recruiting dedicated, effective teachers to create reforms from within.  These fledgling groups don’t all have precisely the same objectives nor the same approach to implementing them, but they do share the same general frustration and the same determination to reform the system.  The teachers unions may not hear them yet, but the drums are beating.

Two: Politicians are known by the company they keep, and if the company is shown to be as unpopular as the teachers unions have become, the Democrats might well question the viability of their compact with their erstwhile friends.  After all, do they really want to be seen standing side-by-side with the ghosts of Orval Faubus and George Wallace at schoolhouse door barring a better education for America’s children?  Would not a safer course be to whisper a few words in the ears of their AFL-CIO comrades suggesting that its time they clean house.  And once the parent union no longer shelters the renegade teachers union under its umbrella, it would be free to welcome their squeaky-clean replacements.

Three: I’m no attorney, but it seems to me a number of legal channels could be pursued against the  officials of the teacher unions.  To begin with, a convincing case can be made by the government against them on the grounds they knowingly deceived the public and, in so doing, caused it immeasurable harm.  After all, if the attorney general can find reason to initiate legal action against a few alleged perpetrators in the financial industry for occasionally lying to their investors, how much stronger a case can be made against union officials who purposely and maliciously misled the public for decades on end?  Should not the fate of our children take precedence over the fate of our portfolios?  As a separate matter, having sabotaged our economic system as determinedly—and certainly more effectively—than U.S. based terrorists, union officials should be investigated on charges of sedition.  If they did not take kickbacks from Chinese manufacturers, they left money on the table.  Moreover, parents would be well justified in filing civil cases against the unions.  Penalties due parents could be readily calculated by taking the lifelong earnings of a professional engineer, subtracting from them the earnings of a part time parking lot attendant, then adding the collateral damages stemming from the pain and suffering inflicted upon parents by their live-in scion.  Throw in dereliction of duty charges by the teachers themselves, and it’s safe to say union officials will have enough on their hands defending themselves to voluntarily surrender their present position of power.

By whichever of these means are used to oust the teacher unions, the bottom line is that our patience is at an end.  We’ve had enough of their foot dragging, enough of their pontificating, enough of their duplicity, enough of their arrogance, enough of their callousness, enough of their posturing, enough of their asininity, and enough of their veniality.  Both eyes, Mr. President!  Throw the bums out!

Just because they are inane, doesn’t necessarily mean the OWS demonstrators are harmless any more than the cherubic appearance of children entitles them to play with matches.  Despite their peaceful demeanor thus far, I find the mob worrisome.  Protestors in Italy have already turned nasty and, it seems to me, the same thing could easily get out of hand here.  At the drop of a hat, an amicable band of marchers can morph into  a nasty destructive mob on the strength of as little as a single bloody nose, a thrown brick, or an overturned car.  Society operates on a thinner margin of safety than is commonly supposed.

Obviously, President Obama doesn’t share my concerns for his comments, if anything, have tended to justify, if not actually, encourage the protests.  Had I a suspicious mind, I would suspect that he is not at all unhappy with anything that shifts public attention from his own doorstep to those of Goldman Sachs et al.  A leader who is reckless enough to stoke the fires of class hatred is, I fear, capable of any action that he believes politically advantageous regardless of the risk of burning the house down.

If one only listened to the media’s taped interviews, one would assume that the OWS demonstrators spoke with one mind.  But the illusion only reflects the single-mindedness of the liberal media.  One thoughtful glance at the crowd’s variety of occupations, ages, and economic status would assure anyone of their diversity.

Consider, for instance, the recent anti-heroics of one Hiram Stolz.  The day began for Hiram in its usual manner.  He crawled out of his sleeping bag, tore open his cereal box (courtesy the Kellog Corporation), poured on milk (courtesy Borden Corporation) sprinkled on a packet of sugar (courtesy C & H corporation), and then dutifully shouldered his “Down with Corporations” placard to join his comrades for the march ahead serenely unaware that his anti-capitalist stance suffered from any internal contradictions whatsoever.  Hiram’s spirits were so invigorated by the presence of so many of his comrades that he scarcely looked where he was going.  Thus he accidentally tripped on a curb, fell head-first onto the pavement and was knocked out cold.  Dragged to the sidewalk, he was propped up against a light post and left to recover on his own while the march rolled on ahead.

As his consciousness gradually returned, Hiram tried to focus on the cityscape before him and, in so doing, allowed his mind to drift lazily among its attractive buildings and public spaces.  In his blurred state of mind, he gradually came to appreciate the systems that had brought him his breakfast and realized, with a start,  that they were but a tiny part of the vast network of supply lines that stretched around the globe to satisfy his needs.  It then struck him how remarkably dependable were these supply lines despite their unbelievable multiplicity of parts.  And, to his considerable surprise, he was forced to conclude that what made the fantastically intricate system work was the universality of moneyed transactions at all its junction points or, more succinctly,  the ubiquity of greed.  Hiram’s political world had turned upside down before he knew it.

Making his way back to Zuccotti Park, Hiram found a park bench on which to ponder the flood of ideas that filled his head once the dam of leftist dogma had been breached.  Yes, it was true that capitalistic systems created inequities, but those inequities were necessary for economic development because they incentivized participants to strive for a higher rung on the ladder.  And it was that competition that gave rise to the greater individual effort, innovation, and risk taking that, taken together, produced prosperity.  In short, the iconic free market  was not just a way to enlarge the proverbial pie, it was the only way.

Now filled with admiration and wonder of the system he had only a few hours before been hell bent to smash, the born-again capitalist scratched his head.  Looking around at the shiny skyscrapers on all sides and the parade of successful people weaving in and out of them, he was struck with yet one more powerful thought.  There was one thing missing from this prosperous panorama, himself.

The abruptness of this last revelation prompted Hiram to stand and pace back and forth.  The blame for his being a spectator to prosperity rather than one of its participants, he decided,  lay with his parents who were ungracious enough to deposit him among the ranks of the underprivileged—i.e., those who society determined were not entitled to the benefits of capitalism.  Hiram reluctantly concluded that the self-same capitalistic system that was so good at increasing the size of the pie, not only did a rotten job of dividing it equitably, it didn’t even make an effort  to do so.  Instead, like the mother bird that kept stuffing worms down the neck of its fattest chick, the system sought out the most raucous, least needy recipients and stuffed cash into them.  Not overtly, of course.  Over time the system developed more subtle, socially acceptable means to accomplish the same thing: better access to higher education, better business connections, better investment opportunities, more favorable governmental policies, and more lucrative savings thanks to the wonders of compound interest.  The point is that no matter how tolerable a diversity of wealth a young, virtuous capitalistic system might start off with,  each subsequent revolution of the economic cycle aggravated its wealth disparity.

Having experienced this bewildering, roller-coaster portrayal of capitalism from one of incarnate evil, to one boasting a cornucopia horn of plenty, to an Elysian Field prominently posted with “Keep Out.  No Trespassing” signs, Hiram retreated back to his park bench to collect his thoughts.  But despite his best efforts, they refused to collect and, instead, flew off in all directions leaving the young man in a dispirited funk that devolved into an uneasy sleep.

“Lunchtime,” said one of Hiram’s fellow demonstrator as he thrust a baloney sandwich into our friend’s hands.  As luck would have it, Hiram found his sandwich wrapped in an essay called “Rich Man, Poor Man” printed from this very same blog.  With no other reading material at hand, he studied the article with increasing interest as he ate his simple lunch.  Thanks to the article, he was able to coax his wayward thoughts together into a legitimate, intelligible cause worth embracing.  Now that he accomplished what he had come for, there was no need to stick around Wall Street.  Hiram packed his few belongings and headed back to the one place he could occupy in comfort, home.

 “…the ten years since Sept. 11 have been the longest period without a major terrorist attack on the United States since the 1960’s.

 That success, however, has not come cheaply.  The conflict in Afghanistan is now the longest military engagement in American history.  More than 6,000 service members have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and upwards of 40,000 seriously wounded.  The Congressional Research Service estimates the price tag of the two wars to be at least $1.3 trillion and counting, not including the medical and disability costs associated with treating war veterans, the hit to the global economy caused by the 10-year spike in oil prices, or the rise in military, intelligence, and homeland security spending.”

“The Existential Threat” by Romesh Ratnesar
Bloomberg Business Week, Sept. 12, 2011

THE DILEMMA

As Mr. Ratnesar relates in the above, confronting terrorism is an expensive proposition.  On the battlefield, we encounter asymmetrical warfare in which our highly-visible, relatively slow-moving conventional forces find themselves pitted against elusive bands of irregulars with superior knowledge of the terrain and, in all likelihood, the sympathies of the local population.  Whereas we must spread our resources over a range of defensive positions, terrorists have the ability to launch surprise attacks when and where they choose.  Whereas our armies require extensive logistical support over extended supply lines, terrorists can practically live off the land.  And, most critically of all, the value we place on human life inhibits our decision-making compared to the abandonment with which terrorist leaders are willing to sacrifice the lives of their recruits.  Not surprisingly, then, asymmetrical warfare translates into our incurring a vastly disproportionate share of the cost.

Off the battlefield, the war against terrorism is even more lopsided.  We have to keep guard on an impossibly long list of possible terrorist targets and take into consideration the menu of possible weapons they have no qualms in utilizing.  And, again, terrorists enjoy the advantage of choosing when and where they may strike.

Given all of the above, it’s small wonder that many have concluded that we simply can’t afford a war against terrorism.  No matter how important it is that we bear our burden of “responsibility,” or how vital our so-called national interest, or how compelling the need of repressed populations, or how villainous our presumed antagonists, we dare not venture onto the battlefield.

But the other side of the coin is how we can afford not to keep obsessing about terrorism?  For one thing, we may not have a choice.  Terrorism may confront us whether we like it or not.  And thanks to the ever-increasing destructive power afforded by new technologies, allied with the communicative ability of the Internet to breed fanaticism, we have to be concerned that somewhere, at some time, some demented group will unleash some form of mass destruction upon this country.  In a word, its potential threat is, indeed, existential.

It would seem, then, that we face an untenable situation.  Heads, we lower our defenses and terrorism wins.  Tails, we confront terrorism aggressively, and we lose.

TURNING TABLES

Picture a terrorist attack on Country A unfolding in this manner:

Within hours after the attack, in Country B the civilian leadership associated with the terrorists’ movement, are arrested by the World Police Force (WPF) and held for trial by an international court.  Included in the roundup are all known agitators for the terrorists’ cause along with its known financial supporters in Countries A, B, and C.  The offices and training camps run by the movement are attacked by drones.  Schools espousing the terrorists’ dogma are shut down.  Caches of arms confiscated.  Known sympathizers are picked up and questioned as to their affiliation and possible involvement.

Meanwhile, on the public relations front, publicists for the WPF flood the news channels with reports regarding the progress of their retaliatory measures.  The names, photos, and background of those arrested and those still at large are promulgated.  Materials uncovered in raids on the organization’s offices are made public.  Editorialists expound on the degree to which the terrorist movement has been weakened by their ill-advised attack while the attack itself is considered a side show and its details related to the back pages.  Meanwhile, dispatches released by the terrorist organization are dismissed by the major news channels as unauthorized reports.

The following morning, those terrorists, who have managed to slip through the dragnet, ponder whether their attack has helped their cause or hurt it.  Their doubts are resolved when messages come in from their leaders who are still at large demanding an end to all further attacks.  Depressed, the now unemployed fighters wonder which side Alah is really on.  By noon, their conclusions lead them to turn in their AK-47’s and enroll in a course in accounting.

Sounds good to me.  But not, I am confident, to those ever alert civil libertarians who could not fail to notice that the scenario I’ve outlined trampled on an entire shelf-full of statutes.  What of the implied guilt by association? the absence of standards of proof? the abuse of sovereign prerogatives? the assumption of innocence? the violation of the rules of war? and the host of other offenses that even the dullest attorney could readily determine?

And, of course, such criticism would be well justified.  Agreed; the impetus for a victory over a renegade band of terrorists cannot be allowed to weaken the integrity of the law. Existing law, that is.

A POSSIBLE ALTERNATIVE

By definition every criminal has violated one law or another.  But, I would argue, terrorists represent a different kettle of fish.  They have stripped themselves of any national identity, they have ignored the very concept of recognizable battle-lines, they have routinely failed to distinguish between civilians and military personnel, and they have hidden their real identities.  The only association they have with civilized norms happens in the unlikely case they are ever apprehended.  In other words, they have deliberately positioned themselves outside the operative climate our body of laws was meant to cover.

Not surprisingly, this mismatch of terrorist crime and its intended punishment under the law has proven ineffectual.  Trials of terrorists have taken inordinately long and produced more legal knots than convictions.  There’s been no way to stop the flow of incendiary recruitment propaganda either in the form of speeches or Internet sites.  Foreign countries that continue to openly harbor terrorists have suffered no more than occasional token remonstrances.  In short, we’ve been trying to deter the jihadist crime wave by applying laws written before it even existed.  We might as well have tried to prosecute Mafia bosses under the Code of Hammurabi.

Patchwork changes to our current criminal statutes would be better than nothing, but what is really needed, it seems to me, is a completely new legal system for terrorists capable of dealing with the new form of criminality they have invented for themselves. Such a system would have to include:

1. A new international terrorist code of law
2. New courts to adjudicate cases under that code
3. A new international police force to enforce the court’s judgments

A NEW CODE OF LAW:

It goes without saying that I have neither the training nor ability—not to mention, the authorization—to write a new code, but a few thoughts in its connection inevitably come to mind:

What sort of compensation should the new code prescribe for terrorist destruction of life and property?  As tempting as an eye-for-an-eye might sound like a useful guideline, a little reflection dissuades one from its implementation.  Alternatively, incarceration would be effective if terrorists are caught, but that can by no means be taken for granted.  That leaves punishment that relies on punitive monetary judgment as the main deterrent under the new law.  Property damage could be assessed relatively easily.  And, provided the new terrorism laws were properly structured, the same could be said for damages to life and limb.  For starters, the new code would have to include a schedule listing all manner of occupations and their average annual earnings.  Multiplied by the years left in the victims’ working life, these earnings could then serve as the basis for compensating survivors.  To this penalty would be added whatever other claims were appropriate for pain and suffering.  And this sum would be subject to double or triple damages as the code authors saw fit such as in the case of murdered children.

Having determined the amount of the damages, the question then arises as to who is to pay for them.  To me, this is a non-sequitur.  Terrorists don’t spring out of nowhere.  They’re created and nurtured by cultures that are allowed to breed in countries that are readily identified.  Thus, to my mind, it would be altogether reasonable to hold such countries responsible for whatever damages their resident terrorists see fit to inflict outside their borders: Iraq for terrorist acts of the PKK on Turkey, Lebanon for the derelictions of Hezbollah in Israel, and so on.  In the case of multiple residences having been involved—let’s say the FARC in Columbia and Venezuela or our Al-Qaeda friends from all over the place—penalties would be prorated among them.  Should any country neglect to shoulder its part of the assessment, the others would be held fully liable for any open balances.  And, finally, I would have the same rules apply to cases in which terrorists were responsible for an attack in their own country, for example, Jemaah Islamiyah’s bombing in Bali. Indonesia.

No doubt the affected countries would plead innocence on the grounds that terrorists are beyond their control and/or that any given attack originated elsewhere.  But equally strong counterarguments could be made. In the same way parents are held liable for the anti-social acts of their unruly children, countries should be held to account for their native terrorists.  True, a degree of arbitrariness would necessarily be associated with any such determination, but that is the case with the administration of all legal codes.  We, in the west, have grown to tolerate it because of the overall net benefits the codes provide and, no doubt, the accused countries would, in time, come to accept it as well. In truth, most of the countries harboring terrorism are so acclimated to absolutism in their affairs generally, they should readily accept whatever little is added by their encounters with the new system of justice.

The only remaining question is how such fines would be collected.  As law-abiding citizens of the world, most countries could be expected to readily pay any fines levied against them, but there can always be black sheep in any family so the new code must anticipate exceptions.  The confiscation of ships and planes with their cargoes would provide one source of cash and banking accounts around the world would provide another.  If these sources proved insufficient, then the law would allow the takeover of refineries, port facilities, and factories to close any remaining gap.

THE NEW COURTS:

The new laws would, of course, have to be adjudicated.  But attempting to convene conventional courts would provide terrorists with just the kind of law-and-order targets they find irresistible.  Presiding justices, prosecutors, bailiffs, and jurists would all be fair game.  And with their unerring focus on the purely innocent, blowing up assembled  spectators would, no doubt, strike them as practically mandatory.  To prevent such eventualities, a formidable security presence would be required giving rise to the old asymmetry problem once again.

I would suggest, instead, that terrorism cases be held in a virtual courthouse in which the identity of all the participants, except the accused, themselves, be kept absolutely secret until revealed, let’s say, fifty years hence unless, in the unlikely case, sanity of the world had been restored at some prior date.  An added layer of security could be achieved by seeing to it that even the participants could not be sure they participated—for example, six people might be chosen for each position on the jury, but only one randomly-selected decision among the six would be effectuated.  The design of such a system should not prove too difficult for our talented technologists and, referring to the cloud as Allah, would, I am confident, earn it the approval of the Muslim world.

ENFORCEMENT:

The scenario recounted earlier makes it clear, I believe, that police forces, as presently constituted, could not competently enforce the new terrorism code as I’ve envisioned it.  Among other things, they could not cross borders or be counted on to arrest officials of their own government.  This blog contains a description of a World Police Force (see “The Path to World Government, Part III, posted April 1, 2011 under the “Current Events” tag) who would be ideally suited for the job.

CONCLUSION

The extension of law and order has long been a salient feature of mankind’s progress.  When the Ming Dynasty Chinese got tired of raids from their northern neighbors, they built a 3,900 mile “fence” and established order within.  When Englishmen got weary of highwaymen, they hanged them.  When the wild west got too wild for settlers to pursue their normal lives, they called in the sheriff.  And so it has been throughout history; for their self-preservation, peaceable people have laid down rules against criminal activity and enforced them.  What I propose is no more that a further step along this same well-worn pathway.

The punitive power of the law is, of course, secondary to its deterrent effect.  Civilized society counts on enough wrongdoers being dissuaded out of fear of punishment to reduce their numbers to manageable size.  And that certainly is the intent of the system I’ve proposed.  Its main objective is to marshal the incentives of governments, the public, and, most important of all, the ideologues, in preventing violence—everyone united to ensure that “Terrorism Doesn’t Pay.”

What brought this riveting description back to mind after so many years was the recent series of financial tremors emanating from the US and abroad: lowered sovereign American, Italian, and Spanish bond ratings; the imminent collapse of Dexia, a major Belgian bank; the likelihood of a Greece default; the urgency with which the European Community is attempting to shore up its banking system; the precarious financial structure of Ireland and Portugal; the rumored bankruptcy of American Airlines; the unsettling gyrations of the stock market; the looming worldwide recession; along with any number of equally ominous indications.

Nor was my unease relieved by Alan Abelson’s piece in the October 10, 2011 issue of Barron’s.  In it, this veteran financial reporter quoted a senior International Monetary Fund advisor who warned of “a meltdown in sovereign debt that might well spread throughout the European banking system and thence throughout the global financial system, including the U.S.  Should that happen, he postulates, it could prove more serious than the crisis of 2008.”

At times, these days, I find myself slipping into an altered state of mind in which I detect among the people, who are supposed to keep things running, a certain detachment as though they are just going through the motions for the sake of appearances.  Nobody seems to be in control of anything.  Nobody seems to know what’s going to happen next or, if they do, they’re not telling.  I see them pretending to go about their business but, all the while, keeping their ears attuned for that faint sound of distant rumbling high up on the mountain.  A sound, you know, somewhat like faraway thunder but unaccountably intermixed with crackling noises of some sort.

“Somebody chopped down the cherry tree that I was very fond of.  Do you know who did it?” he asked his son.

“No,” said the boy, “but I’ll find out.”

Barack sat down in front of his little toy screen and studied it for a minute.  “Now I know,” he exclaimed.  “It was the rich kid down the block.”

Upon hearing that, Barack’s father gave his boy a big hug.  He had learned his lessons well.

MORAL: Judge not a person by what he does, but by what his teleprompter says.

While lunching alfresco at an out-of-the-way café, I struck up a conversation with an English-speaking gentleman at a nearby table.  He was an elderly resident of the city evidently with time on his hands and not at all reticent about sharing it with a total stranger.  Also evident was that whatever constraints he placed on his drinking habits, the time of day was not among them.

Whether it was my camera or the dozen other clues that marked me unmistakably as a tourist, his inevitable first question was directed at my impression of his city.  My response was, I suppose, as inevitable as his question.  I praised its river setting, its architecture, its transportation system, and its several other attributes that came easily to mind.  I then followed these remarks with a pleasantry regarding how complex the Czech language seemed to a foreigner.  My guide book noted that the only language to which Czech bore any resemblance was Finnish and, having been to Finland, I should have been forewarned.  But, I told my new acquaintance, even with this heads-up, I was not fully prepared for the improbably-long, multiple combinations of vowels and consonants that the Czech language seemed to throw together so haphazardly.

To my surprise, my formerly jovial acquaintance turned suddenly serious and asked how I had found out.  Then apparently mistaking my puzzled expression as evidence of caution, he said I had nothing to fear from him on account of my discovery.  Indeed, he was among those who had long advocated revealing the truth to the world.  Surely in a city that was becoming every day more cosmopolitan, there would be others like myself who stumbled on its secret.  Thus it was only a matter of time before the country’s ruse was exposed.  Faced with this prospect, many Czechs like himself argued that an early, forthcoming public confession would be less damaging to the nation’s reputation than a belated admission to a national embarrassment.  For now, the political conservatives held the upper hand and there was nothing the Honesty Now opposition could do.  Internally, that is.  However, should an outsider, like myself, take it upon himself to reveal the truth, the entire Czech Republic would be forever in his debt.  And why not me whose authorship of a blog—an admission I had allowed to slip out earlier in our conversation—enabled me undertake a leak that was potentially so beneficial to millions of people?

I told the old man I had to respectfully decline the assignment for several reasons—prominent among which was that I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about.

This was not a problem, he said.  I had already uncovered the key elements; he would supply the background and fill in the details.  And before I could object, he proceeded to do so.  It had begun innocently enough, he began.  In the hardscrabble years immediately following WW2, the Czech people had all they could do to survive.  Fortunately, donor organizations came in, each of which naturally communicated in their country of origin.  Thus any Czech who could convey his needs directly to one of these nonprofits, deservedly or not, won a disproportionate share of its handouts.  Given this premium on linguistic skills, Czechs devoted more and more of their attention to the second languages with which they had already been introduced in school—tongues the country’s location in Central Europe made mandatory in any case.  So it was that French, German, Russian, and/or English gradually invaded their work places and homes as Czechs endeavored to improve their fluency.

To make a long story short, I was told, even after the country recovered economically, its citizenry clung to habits acquired in more difficult times as they drifted further and further away from their native language.  This trend, of course, alarmed the authorities for whom the preservation of their national culture was paramount.  But by the time the full extent of the erosion was officially recognized, it was too late.  There was no way to restore Czech as their lingua franca.

Eventually, a compromise was arrived at.  In their homes and local gatherings, people were free to communicate any way they wished.  However, as a face-saving measure, in any situation in which foreigners were liable to be present, Czech was to be spoken exclusively.  But even in this circumstance, an exception had to be grudgingly allowed.  Since by this time so many young people knew only sort of a pidgin Czech, called Czechish, they were allowed to substitute it on the grounds it sounded authentic enough for outsiders.

Sadly, from the standpoint of traditionalists, each of the following generations interpreted this concession more liberally.  The content of legitimate Czech words in Czechish kept dropping with each passing year even as the number of those resorting to it grew. All of which devolved into today’s deplorable situation.  The cultural rot that had begun within a minority of Czech youth, had, by now, engulfed the entire population, my informant revealed sadly between long draughts of pilzner. For a time there remained a cohort of elders who used Czech in ordinary conversation, but they constituted a diminishing and, eventually, a disappearing minority.  The last true Czech speaker died some seven years before and now only a handful of academicians could painfully piece together native classic literature with frequent recourse to old Czech-German dictionaries.

But, I protested, with Czech a dead language, how did people communicate with one another—let’s say, a husband conversant with Russian and his wife, German.  Sign language, was the old man’s confident reply.  Everyone was proficient with it from their youngest days.  True, as in my example, a couple might find it somewhat cumbersome in bed, but this was more than made up for by the amicability it offered at the kitchen table where soundless spats seldom expanded into lasting quarrels.

As proof of his assertions, my informant returned to my own experience.  What I mistakenly interpreted as spoken Czech on the street and in trams was no more than a flow of inventive noises created at the spur of the moment.  Normally speakers took inspiration from a lone Czech word at the start, then improvised upon it much as Antonin Dvorak would do with a folk melody.  And what I had taken as good-natured banter between Czech interlocutors was actually gentle fun-making at the expense of their naïve listener.

My expression must have conveyed my displeasure over this last piece of news, for my informant quickly added that I need not take it personally.  Bandying gibberish about had become a national pastime engaged in more for its own sake than for discomfiting strangers—a bit of innocent fun that harmed no one.  Then finding me still dissatisfied, he sought to interject a more cheerful note by abruptly changing the subject.  Did I want to know what a chess player here said upon cornering his opponent’s king?

Not really, I said and started to leave.  But you will break the news? he shouted behind me.  You must!

From the restaurant, I made my way to the station where I was to catch my bus to Nuremberg.  The combination of fresh air, my bloodstream’s dissipated alcoholic content, and the snatches of perfectly normal conversation I heard on the street restored my rationality.  I pictured the old man chuckling as he waited for the next tourist to whom he could spin his yarn all over again.

And yet.  Arriving at the station a few minutes early, I found a bench distant enough from any gatherings to avoid contact but close enough to observe their comings and goings.  It may have been my imagination but it seemed that here and there individual Czechs went out of their way to glance furtively at the signage in English and German the station’s management had seen fit to distribute in out-of-the-way corners.  More significantly, I felt sure I saw a toddler raise his hands and begin to sign.  The observation was, however, a fleeting one for he had time for no more than a few gestures before he was caught in the act by his mother and promptly punished by having his hands slapped.  Swinging around to see who might have noticed this infraction, the woman stared at me intently for a moment, then, sniveling child in tow, turned her back and hurried off.  Then no sooner had I digested that incident when I noticed a young man approaching a nearby information desk.  He did not need the camcorder slung over his shoulder to establish himself as a tourist; his brightly patterned walking shorts and a mismatched, loud t-shirt would have done just as well.  Starting to address his question to the matron behind the desk in perfect, if slightly stilted, English, he hadn’t finished his first sentence when she flew into a rage and, with flailing arms, banished him from the desk. I was startled by the matron’s behavior—behavior that was, to say the least, uncharacteristic of what was normally a particularly sweet-tempered occupation—until I realized that the young man was not just obviously a tourist, he was too obviously a tourist.  Once more I was overwhelmed by suspicions as to the secrets behind the seemingly happy faces I was observing.  Could my conversation with the old man be entirely dismissed or was it a fortuitous, once-in-a-lifetime chance to be involved in something of national importance?

An hour or so into the bus trip I crossed into Germany and I felt the weight of the Czech Republic’s dark undercurrents lifted from my shoulders.  The old man could go to hell.  I owed him nothing.  Besides I’m not sure I really believed him anyway.

In this positive frame of mind, I went to find Eddie, my newfound information source, who, I hoped, would forearm me with enough knowledge of the Research facility to deal more confidently with its personnel.  Besides I had another motive in interrogating the little beast.  The previous day’s junket to the Pageant had left me, for the first time, curious about what undercurrents might be circulating beneath Semiland’s placid surface.  Thus far, whenever I had a question about SVI’s doings, I habitually ran to Matilda for information.  After our outing, however, I began to realize that she invariably sided with the company on every issue I raised.  Eddie, I suspected, would prove to be a more open minded resource.

The little beast was seated contentedly on one of the benches surrounding the courtyard just outside the cafeteria.  Seeing me, he proffered a grubby handful of cheddar-flavored popcorn from a huge bag at his side but did not seem overly disappointed when I declined as I sat down beside him.

I began our conversation by asking him how he had ended up in Research in the first place.

“We only got here a little while ago.  Went through orientation—maybe the class just before yours—just like everybody else.  Passed all their tests.  Assumed I was a shoo-in for trustyship.

“But you weren’t?”  I hardly knew what to ask next.  His modest size should have made his conferment practically automatic.  Understandably, the smaller the Semi the fewer qualms the curators had about letting him wander about unescorted.  Aware of my embarrassment, he answered my question without my having to state it.

“They were worried about my teeth,” the little beast explained.  “See.”  Eddie unhinged his jaw and opened his mouth wide for my inspection.  One look and I had no trouble sympathizing with the curators’ concern.  His incisors may have lacked the heft of those of a saber-toothed tiger, but their proportions were similar.  All in all, his dentition would have been impressive for an ani­mal three times his size.

“I kept telling them I was a vegetarian.  Which was true.  Largely true, at any rate.  There aren’t many of us up here and we tend to keep our distance.  A Ruinecamian Fellowship Society would have trouble attracting new members, you know.”  The little beast curled his lips back in an expression that I supposed would have been thought win­some by oth­ers of his kind.  “The zoologists they brought in claimed my species couldn’t have devel­oped teeth like mine munching on water­cress.  Didn’t buy my explanation about them being a throw­back from a carnivorous branch we didn’t even talk about any more.”

“I take it you didn’t bring up your protein predilec­tions?”

“Hell no, why should I?” Eddie said defensively. “So the next thing I know, they throw me into a cage with a lot of what they called ‘tidbits.’  One day it’d be a bunch of mice.  Next day it’d be ham­sters.  Every goddamn hyperactive, bite-sized animal they could think of.  They even installed a little barbecue grill with a shelf full of sauces.”

“How long did that go on?”

“For over a month.  Geez, every time I rolled over I was afraid I was going to squash something,” the little beast recalled unhappily.

“I take it you didn’t snap at the bait.”

“Who’d want disgust­ing stuff like that?  Packing away other species is your cup of tea, remem­ber?  Anyway, they finally let me out a couple of weeks ago.  God, I hope you’re wrong about them throwing me back in there.  It got pretty tiresome.”

“But otherwise the staff treated you okay?”

“Yeah, on the whole, I’d have to say they were a pretty civil bunch.  Let me out to stretch my legs whenever I wanted.  That sort of thing.”

“That’s good to hear.  I’ll have a chance to talk to my friend Neuman tomorrow.  Find out what kind of treatment he’s had.”

“He’ll be okay,”  Eddie said.  “I wouldn’t worry about him.”

“I hadn’t until I ran into a guy named Conrad at the Pageant last night.  Claimed the company was out to screw us every way it could.  Tried to get me to join Surge.  You’ve heard of them?”

“Who in Semiland hasn’t?”

“Who are they?”

“Beats me.  Came out of nowhere a couple of months ago.”

“I don’t know what they’re bitchin’ about.  Seems to me we’ve got it pretty good here.  Matty says Conrad’s a weasel.  Doesn’t believe a word he says.”

Eddie looked doubtful.  “Matty’s a company gal.  Personally, I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

“But what’s the point?  I mean even if every inmate signed up with Surge, it wouldn’t change anything.  The company holds all the cards.”

“I wouldn’t say that.  SVI’s in hot water.  Last thing they need is another front to fight on.”

“Hot water?”

“Financial trouble.  Big time.”

“Really?” I said in surprise.  “First time I heard about it.  They’re such a huge outfit.  Ventureland must make them a mint.  And with all those spaceships out there.  Hard to believe when you look around this place.  You sure?”

“Yeah, the words gotten around.  Course that’d be the last thing Matty’d talk about.”

“But you would, right?”

“It’s kinda of long story.”

“That ‘s all right.  I haven’t got anything better to do.”

I settled comfortably back against the bench backrest, gazed at the sky, and waited expectantly for Eddie’s narrative to unfold.  But when no sound was forthcoming, I turned back to my companion.  His agitated whiskers bespoke a distracted state of mind.

“I’m starved,” he said.  To demonstrate his plight, Eddie held his now empty popcorn bag upside down and shook out the crumbs.  Without further explanation, the little beast hightailed it back to the cafeteria and I was left wondering whether or not he would return.  But he reappeared a few minutes later with a refilled bag and composed expression.  He plopped down beside me and prepared to fill me in.

“When SVI got started, they made tons of money.  Luxan technology was years ahead and the gooks were willing to pay anything to get it.  Machine tools, computers, medical devices, software, you name it.  So all they had to do was plunk down on just about any underdeveloped planet, stiff the natives for everything they had on board, and bring home the loot in whatever form the they could profit from: goods, gold, zoo specimens, whatever.

“But as time went on, pickings got slimmer.  Their advanced customers got tired of paying through the nose for Luxenben’s higher manufacturing and distribution costs.  And paying SVI a fat profit besides.  So over the years, their customers learned how to make most everything they needed on their own.  Lower volume and thinner profits for SVI.  Other planets just plain ran out of gold.  And now that they’ve got the zoo filled with just about every creature imaginable, it didn’t make much sense to haul in more.”

“But couldn’t they always find new planets to sell to?  There’s got to be a lot of them out there?” I asked.

“Good question.  Yeah, plenty of them.  More than enough to provide a marketplace big enough for SVI and every other trading company out there.  Trouble is they can’t touch them.”

“Why’s that?”

“Regulations.  They go way back.  Back when the companies could sell any technology they wanted to any planet they wanted to.”

“Free trade, in other words.  What’s wrong with that?” I asked.

“Herculus is what’s wrong.  Herculus was a highly advanced planet that lapped up whatever technology SVI ships had to offer.  Paid for it all in hard currency.  Became the company’s top customer.  Written up in their newsletters and everything.  Problem was Herculus already had armies armed to the teeth.  Grabbed ahold of all that new stuff like it was a gift from heaven.  And where do you think they applied it?”

“Oh, oh.”

“Right.  Took them less than one-hundred years after SVI first landed.  The war killed off all animal life, and plant life died out too over the years.  They say  you can’t find a blade of grass on it even today.”

“Pretty much like Haydes, I guess.  The planet that Weyland  talked about.”

“Except you could say that in Herculus’s case, Luxenben was as much to blame as dichotomania.  You can imagine the political uproar that caused.  Ethical Luxenben knocking off millions of intelligent beings like that.  So the government rushed through regulations prohibiting all contact with newly discovered planets except to acquire zoo specimens and make scientific observations.  Only exceptions were planets that, like Luxenben, were united in a single government so that there was no possibility of a large scale war.”

“So that stopped SVI from gaining new customers.”

“Pretty much.  They found a few stable ones, but not many.  And meanwhile their existing base kept shrinking like I said.  The bottom line is that SVI’s bottom line stinks.  And with the company on  the ropes like that dependent on Ventureland to pay the bills, Surge’s got more leverage.”

“I guess  that’s why Conrad was harping on the company selling those bags of popcorn.”

“That’s nothing compared to the fuss Surge’s making about the Church in the Round.  Conrad tell you about that?”

“Nope.”

“Don’t worry.  He’ll get around to it.  You can’t argue with him.  SVI is milking Ventureland for all its worth.  Maybe they have  to.  I don’t know.”

“Who’s the church for?”

“We Semis.  Interdenominational.  Any recognized religious organization that wants to use it.”

“The Fulls are so bent on their own religion, I’m surprised they’re so tolerant.”

“Tolerance?  I’d call it expedience.  All that praying and hallelujahing keeps us divided and easier to govern.  Another thing.  The Fulls didn’t want us attending their own churches, least of all the Shrine, seeing how close it is to the zoo, you know.  What it boils down to is that we can practice any damn religion we want to as long as it’s not their’s.  That’s tolerance for  you.”

Despite Eddie’s anti-company version, my inclination was to give our hosts the benefit of the doubt.  “That’s your interpretation.  Maybe they don’t want to impose their own beliefs.  Sounds to me like they were showing respect for cultural differences.”

“Respect?  Yeah.  That’s it,” Eddie said with a tooth-filled smile.

Eddie had opened up another subject I was ignorant of and I began to question him further on it, but he was in no mood to talk any longer.  I could see the church for myself if I liked.  It was in easy walking distance, he said, and gave me directions to a section of the zoo I had not thus far ventured into.

As I watched the little beast plod purposely back to the cafeteria, it occurred to me that with his furrowed brow, rumpled clothing, and whittled-down frame, he could pass for an itinerant philosopher trundling about town contributing, on the cheap, his sagacity to one thought-provoking assignment after another.

Until now I had had no reason to distinguish between the ultimately satisfying ambiance of the zoo and the efficacious workings of the planet as a whole—it was as though they belonged to the same unbroken, utopian continuum.  Now that I was aware of the zoo’s discord, that link had been shattered.  Implied in Eddie’s account was the possibility that Space Ventures, Incorporated could actually go bankrupt.  Perhaps fall into other hands or cease operations entirely.  If so, what would become of us inmates?  From what I had heard of Luxenben’s smaller zoos, it was unlikely that a new operator would be as attentive to our needs as SVI had been.  And life, as an unemployable Semi, outside a patron’s custody was virtually unthinkable.  Even SVI’s promised escape hatch seemed in jeopardy; it was doubtful that a company on the verge of dissolution would be in position to honor its commitment to return desirous Semis to their native planets.

Sadly, it appeared as if Ventureland, like Earth, had its share of good guys and bad guys.  The trouble would be telling them apart.

*    *    *

With the afternoon open and my curiosity whetted, after lunch I made my way to the chapel.  It was not hard to find.  Once I came within its vicinity, a series of signs guided me to the Church in the Round that I took to be my destination.

A line of Surge picketers was the first thing I saw of  the place.  The placards they carried made clear they were strongly opposed to something, but just what I did not at first understand.  One read, “Religion in, Money out” and another “Keep Your Noses Out of Our Bibles.”  However, when I came nearer the church, the source of the picketers’ complaint and Eddie’s cynicism was clear enough.

Enclosed within a beautiful arboreal setting and lavishly ornamented with flower beds, hedges, and natural stone walks, the church possessed all the elements one would wish for in a pastoral religious institution: a raised altar, pulpit, and circumferential pews all made up of sturdy, beautifully-fitted, blond wood fixtures and all.  But, unfortunately, the Church in the Round did not stop there.

Rising above the pews were rows upon rows of bleacher seats—some eight in all—and beyond them stood a high chainlink fence entirely surrounding the church-cum-entertainment venue.  The only entrance was through a wood stall containing two ticket windows.  And mounted on the stall’s front wall was a large signboard on which was posted the services/shows of the day, their times, and ticket price which varied, I gathered, according  to their duration and exoticism.

As it happened, an event—to use a generic term—was taking place inside when I arrived and I was interested in seeing it.  However, uncertain of the rules, I hesitated just outside the entrance until a friendly arm, extended from one of the ticket windows, waved me in free of charge.  Just beyond the stall, the entryway divided in two.  Taking the walk denoted for Semis, I turned into the church proper and took a seat among the pews.

The sacred rites being performed had no significance to me since I knew nothing of the religion from which they derived, but they did strike me as being more theatrically costumed and lavishly produced than I would have expected of a normal religious ritual—that is, until I learned later that the officiating officials got a cut of the house and, not surprisingly, spiced up the service for popular consumption.  In any case, my fellow worshippers were as totally absorbed in the proceedings as any comparable group of congregants on Earth.  Prayer books in hand, they dutifully followed the service, kneeling, standing, and chanting on cue, and seemingly insensible to the role they played in the affair.

I gazed at the gaping Fulls ringing the church in the half-filled paid-seating stands, and guessed this was not a bad turnout for a mid-afternoon, weekday program.  They were a respectful audience, or at least tried to be.  Granted there were prominent signs directing the audience to observe decorum during the service but these, I suspected, were largely superfluous.  Common regard for the expression of devotion, no matter how seemingly bizarre, was probably the stronger motivator.  On the other hand, there were the inevitable occasional outbreaks of giggling and elbow nudging by the younger set and popcorn-bag rattling by one and all.  Certainly there were no overt acts of derision but, had there been, I noticed there were husky attendants who looked perfectly capable of quickly ushering out any hecklers.

Frankly, I was not sorry when it was all over.  The service shortly became a bore and there was nothing happening in the stands to arouse further interest.  I shook hands with one of the Semi chaplains at the door and headed back to the dorm to get Matty’s opinion of what had struck me as an indefensible commercialization of religion.  Certainly my earlier image of the company as a bastion of religious freedom was more than a little tarnished.

Nothing I told the old bird was a surprise to her.  She knew all about the church and, indeed, had attended a wedding there only a few weeks before.  Moreover, she was perfectly comfortable with what she called a win-win-win arrangement.  Win for us Semis who would otherwise have no place to congregate.  Win for the Semi clergy who, prior to the church’s construction, had no sanctuary with which to identify and no place to hold services except in the sometimes inclement open air.  And win, obviously, for the company whose income from  the Church in the Round was nearly that of what it derived from general admission.

“But, surely,’ I argued, “there are other, less offensive, means of raising money.”

“Name one,” she snapped.

“Well, I can’t.  Not off the top of my head.  But…”

“How about our feeding times?  Or lovemaking?  Like those any better?”

“Come on, you know…”

“Look,” she demanded.  “Has it ever occurred to you how the company can afford all of our freeloading?  It’s profit from trading is only a trickle of what it made in the old days.  Ventureland is what’s putting food on the table and don’t you forget it.  Or go join Surge and make sure we all starve to death.  You’re in league with them or you’re out.  Make up your mind.”

“Out, Matty.  Out.”

“Neuman,” I told her excitedly.  “I know how we can find him.”

When it was apparent she had not heard me the first time, I repeated my remarks but with no better luck.  The old bird’s hearing was not good under the best circumstances and the surrounding babble did not help matters.  Every Pageant-goer seemed to have something to say, whether it was a com­parison between this year’s performance and last, praise for the de­livery of this or that actor, or a declaration from one of the more sea­soned attendees that, however smoothly directed this production, it could not hold a candle to the spirited ren­dition “x” years ago¾“x” being approximately one-half the age of the said authority.  Even solitary individuals could not keep their mouths shut, but whether this was to vo­calize views already known to the conversant head telepathi­cally or simply to avoid calling attention to their unaccom­panied status, I had no way of knowing. (To this day, I am not sure if the Luxanders extra­ordi­nary physiognomy tended to assuage loneliness by virtue of always having a built-in listener or, in fact, intensified that despair on ac­count of the certain boredom that listener was bound to experience.)

“What did you say?” Matty asked when she deemed that the crowd had thinned sufficiently for us to converse.

“Neuman,” I repeated a third time.  “I know how we can find him.”

“Oh no,” she replied as she wagged her head back and forth, “I’m not going up again.”

“You don’t have to.  You’ve found him already.”

Matty looked at me strangely.  “It wasn’t Neuman.  I told you it was one of them.  Some poor guy with a headectomy.”

“No, not him.  The other one.  You know.  The one with a fringe on top.”

“Neuman’s bald?  Why didn’t you say so?”

“Not bald; religious!  He always wears a white yarmulke.  From thirty feet, he must have looked bald.”

“I thought I saw creases,” Matty reflected, “but I figured they might have been an illusion; you know, like the canals, you know.  At twelve knots, you gotta be careful.”

“Next time, how about sticking to reconnaissance, and let me handle the interpretation,” I suggested smugly.

“There isn’t going to be any next time if you don’t brief me right,” Matilda hissed. “I’m sick of these wild goose chases.”

“Oh, come on, Matty.  You did me a big favor and I really appreciate it.  What do I do now?  You said he was part of a group from Research?”

“Yeah, I recognized the Full in charge.  Phillip Mulhouse.  He’s a case worker on the staff.”

The Re­search Institute.  The first thing that came to mind was Surge’s circular.  Conrad’s insinuations about the place took on a more ominous note now that they struck closer to home.  “I don’t like the idea of his being held there.”

“Because of what Conrad said?  I told you Surge makes up things all the time just to stir up trouble.  I guarantee you, they know nothing about it.”

“Do you?  Have you heard anything about what they’re doing in there?  It’s got to have something to do with Semis.  Why else would it be here?”

“Use your common sense.  Research is a scientific facility.  There’s bound to be plenty of things about us Semis that their scientists would be interested in.  Our evolution, taxonomy, DNA we have in common, whatever.”

“If it’s that innocent, why keep it locked up?  Nobody can get in without a pass.”

“For the same reason all commercial labs are kept off limits.  Why would they give their competitors a look at what they’re doing.  Nothing sinister about it.  It’s security, plain and simple.”

“All right.  But I’m still worried.  Look how long he’s been locked up in there.”

Matty scrolled her pupils upward.  “Why do you say ‘locked up?’  Those guys weren’t chained together in leg irons.  I told you they were being supervised, that’s all. “Look, if you’re so concerned about your buddy, why don’t you try to see him?”

“See him?  How?”

“How do you think?  Just call and ask.”

“And they’d let me in?  Just like that?”

“No harm in trying.”

From behind came the injunction, “Hey, wait up!”

Matilda swiveled her head around to peer behind us.  The next thing I knew she was coiling her neck into an attack position and ruffling her feathers as noisily as possible.  After spinning around to see what alarmed the old bird, I would have mim­icked her reaction had I the wherewithal.  There was Ed­die thumping his way towards a junction of his walk with ours.  It lay just ahead.

Instinctively I looked for some sign of guilt but there was nothing in his smiling countenance or con­fident quick steps to suggest that he had recently dined on anything more controversial than tofu.  Evidently it was a matter of out of sight, out of mind.  Short of rudeness that, God only knows why, seemed impermissible at the time, there was no escaping his company on the single path that would take us back to the dormitory.

“Geez, they really stretched things out, didn’t they?” Eddie said by way of a greeting.  “Never would have happened back on Ruinecam.  The whole audience would have walked out an hour ago.  Myself included.”

I could see Matty’s feathers quiver slightly evidenc­ing, no doubt, an underlying attack of goose flesh.  Nevertheless,  she managed to contain herself.  Sounding almost concili­atory, she said, “Greta told me how little patience you Ruinecamian males have.”

“She ought to know, I guess.”  Eddie‘s lips opened in a weak smile.  “She tested it enough.”

“You mean her complaining about her kids?  The poor dear said that instead of apologizing, you practically chewed her head off.”

“Greta said that?”  Eddie shook his head wistfully and gave a low, almost inaudible whistle.

“Her very words.  She said you guys could fly off the handle at the least little thing.  She had every right to be upset,” insisted Matty.

“Not according to her marriage vows.  She was supposed to love, honor, obey, and keep her damned mouth shut.”

“That’s not the way females are treated here, and you know it.”

“So what?  You’re trying to apply Luxan mores retroactively to a marriage that had nothing to do with them.  Won’t wash.  There are multicultural issues involved.   Sociobiological differ­ences.”

“Sociobiological differ­ences, my claws.”  Matty hissed.  “You can’t go around murdering people whenever you feel like it.”

“I don’t.  Only when I’m hungry.  It’s a matter of survival,” declared Eddie.  “Ruinecamians  have to recy­cle their community supply of protein.  It’s the only way we can make it.”

“Hogwash!  You can get all the protein you want right in the dining room three times a day.”  Matty shot back.

Fearing that my lack of moral support might be con­tri­buting to Matty’s anger, I took this be­lated opportu­nity to come to her aid.  “Matty’s right,” I admonished. “Commu­nal protein’s no excuse for your wolfing down your family like a string of sausages.”

“Oh, you’re saying sausages would have been okay, I suppose,” Eddie countered.

“Of course they’re okay.”

“Real sausages?  Like in grinding up animals and stuffing them back in their own intestines?”

I was at a loss to answer, but not Matty. “Don’t give me that,” she squawked.  “A salami on rye is one thing.  A family on a roll, is another.”

“Right,” Eddie retorted.  “It’s the difference between exploiting every animal you can get your hands on and making do among your own kind.  On Ru­inecam there really isn’t any choice.  Everybody’s half starved all the time.  If we want meat, there’s none of this la-de-da detouring to the butcher shop for the simple reason there aren’t any butcher shops.  We’re the only animal species left, so when things get bad enough—when there’s not even enough beans to go around—all we can do is eat family style.  Provided the kids don’t skedaddle first.”

“But you’re not on Ruinecam,” I declared stoutly.  “You’re on Luxenben.  Here the common practice—not to mention elementary good manners—dic­tates that when one takes one’s family to dinner, as many indi­viduals ex­it the meal as first entered into it.”

Eddie flattened his ears back, an indication I gathered of mounting surliness.  “That’s easy for you to say.  But you can’t grow up on Ruinecam without developing certain reflexes.  And they don’t go away just be­cause you happen to switch habitats.  Fast on the gnaw, you know what I mean?”

I could well imagine that poor Matty was torn between two of her strongest allegiances.  On the one hand, she was a strong feminist, and what feminist could help being of­fended by so grievous an example of uninhibited male appe­tite?  At the same time, the Semi Compound had no stauncher advocate of genetic diversity than Matilda; no matter who or what the curators saw fit to fling into the Upsem Dorm, the good creature was always there to lend the newcomer a helping hand.  Her liberal attitude in this regard showed through as well in her role as the dorm’s unofficial house mother.  In­appropriate behavior on the part of one Semi or another was a daily occurrence, but good Matty could always be counted on to handle it with a common sense mix of understanding, and firmness.  She stopped challenging the little beast and allowed him to continue recounting the deprivations he had suffered on his native planet.

Pleased with the op­portunity to strengthen his case, Eddie proceeded to unburden himself of long suppressed images.  The social order on Ruinecam had collapsed along with the original kingdoms sev­eral cen­turies before, and since then the planet had sunk deeper and deeper into anarchy.  Nowadays tribal chieftains ruled with only their own self-preservation in mind—a not unreasonable objective given the regularity with which they were assassinated.

The same shock waves that destroyed Ruinecam’s politi­cal or­der also swept away personal liberties, the administration of justice, standards of behavior, and decent living standards.  The only place to find even mention of former lifestyles was in children’s books in which once common amenities were referred to as magical gifts dispensed by fairy god­mothers.

When I asked the cause of Ruinecam’s disintegration, Eddie recounted the history of his unfortunate planet.  It so happened that on Ruinecam precocious sexuality, hyperactive libidos, short gesta­tion periods, and estimable fecundity combined to create a most formidable birth rate that, in the past, had been merci­fully held in check by a corre­spondingly formidable death rate.  When medical advances reduced infant mor­tality and lengthened life spans, the population dam gave way and, in a surprisingly few generations, an unman­ageable flood of little beasties engulfed the land.  At the advent of this torrent of pups, the more farsighted of the Ruinecamian statesmen recognized that the planet could not long sustain so drastic an imbal­ance and argued for drastic remedies.  However, even such obvious measures as not allowing a family of four on relief to return for more assistance as a family of five, was characterized as insensitive and voted down.  Thus prevailing attitudes, regarded as empathetic at the time, allowed population growth to continue unabated.

When the political system literally collapsed under the weight of Ruinecamian avoirdupois, the planet reverted to primitive social and economic structures albeit at the expense of previous standards.  Over time, customs took hold that only a few generations before would have been regarded with utmost abhorrence.  For example, the tra­di­tional function of funerals was expanded not only to re­move one more mouth from the table, but to incrementally re­load the table itself, as it were, at least for the mourn­ers lucky enough to be invited.  As part of the etiquette sur­rounding this ritual, Eddie recalled, bunches of vegeta­bles were sent to the bereaved instead of funeral wreathes, broths substituted for embalming fluids, and ice sculpture replaced candelabra alongside the laid-out loved one.

Going on in this unhappy vein, Eddie related that births—particularly those within the bonds of wedlock where, it was presumed, at least a degree of premeditation was in­volved—became subject to increasing public disfavor. And those obste­tricians, who, in quest of illicit profits, de­parted from their ethical abortion practices, were confined to back-alley birth mills.  Legal disputes were oftentimes settled by the award of the loser to the winner which, grim as it sounds, was not as un­civilized as those out-of-court settlements in which justice was meted out by the faster jaw.

Matty asked the little beast if he foresaw any hope for improvement in the status of his compatriots.  Might not, for example, a restoration of religious principles play a constructive role in the absence of politi­cal order? Eddie’s surprising response was that organized religion had never lost its hold on the Ruinecamian soul, and, in fact, every custom he described was fully in accord with current religious principles.  The same priest, for example, who put on his chasuble to deliver a eulogy, would, at its conclusion, just as gingerly replace it with a napkin.  Indeed, religion had come to play an even larger role in their affairs as secular authority dimmed, but this, if anything, had served only to widen the latitude afforded their behavioral practices thanks to the legendary elasticity of religious scruples when accommodation de­manded.

The only balm offered by the church for the misery of life upon Ruinecam was the virtue of resignation and, under­standably enough, this attribute it raised above all others.  Never in this life was one expected to find anything on Ru­inecam better than what he had—the only purpose of life be­ing endurance, the only wanted virtues, fortitude and tithing.

Eddie would have been better advised to stop there but, given this rare chance to unburden himself, concluded his horrendous account with a brief description of Ruinecam’s judicial system.  It was, he said, enlisted—or compelled, however one chose to characterize it—to do its share in controlling population growth.  The death sentence was not only universally applied to all major crimes but a host of minor infractions as well, including burglary, jaywalking, mugging, double-parking, pick pocket­ing, nagging, shoplifting, and littering, to name a few of the more common.

I assumed the little beast was prepared to go on but he was momentarily distracted by one of his animalcule houseguests.  He produced a half smile, excused him­self, and, with a polite lift of his eyebrows, lunged back­wards in its pursuit.  I took the opportunity to glance at Matilda to see how she was taking his last disclosure.  As I feared, not well.  The calm she had exhibited the last few minutes had been an affectation that could no longer be sustained.  Latching upon one particular word in his account, Matty’s eyes flashed emergency signals and her head abruptly switched into an unsustainably fast wind­shield-wiper mode.

“Did you say ‘nagging?’” she spit out as she hopped from one foot to the other.

As ill-suited as Eddie’s dentition seemed to be for the purpose, the hunt was soon over, the prize bagged, and the proud hunter en­abled to return to the subject at hand.

“What?” Eddie responded with understandable caution.

“Nagging!  That was on your list of capital crimes!”

“Yeah, I guess so.  Like I said, lots of…”

For a moment the poor bird took to stabbing her bill repeatedly into her feathers, as though frenetic preening was far and away the most effective response to the situation possible.  Then, whip­ping her beak from her breast cage as though she were draw­ing a revolver from its holster, she emitted an open-billed shriek and, with a few vio­lent flaps, catapulted into the dark­ness.

If there were any doubt in my mind as to the depth of Matilda’s indignation, her impulsive flight re­solved it, for, although she had qualified years before and maintained a license ever since, I knew she hated night flying.  I hoped she would have the presence of mind to simply follow the lighted path back to the dorm and call it quits.  Just the thought of her gal­livanting about in the dark, dependent upon outworn in­stru­men­tation and unpracticed skills, made me cringe as I stood there on the path, my eyes turned in the direction in which the old bird had disappeared.

Eddie, on the other hand, was unperturbed.  “She’ll be all right once she gets a little circulation past that air-cooled brain of hers,” he noted comfortingly.

I felt guilty.  I owed it to poor, open-hearted Matilda to have been more supportive than I was.  Fearful that my mo­tives may have been misconstrued by Eddie as an indication of sympathy for him—or, worse yet, as some sort of invita­tion for male bonding—I trudged ahead with as much speed and as little conversation as possible.  Eddie’s doings were none of my business and I wanted to hear no more of them.

“Slow down, willya?” he called out.  “I want to ask you something.  Do you think the curators will be pissed?”

“I’d be surprised if they weren’t.  They didn’t go to all the trouble of putting together the collection just to see it eaten away.  Remember orientation?  Why in the hell do you think they spent so much time talking about healthful lifestyles?  Not just for our health, that’s for sure.”

“Hell, I didn’t give it a second thought at the time.  What do you think they’ll do to me?”

“How should I know?  But I’d be surprised if they let you keep your trusty status.”

“Don’t even talk like that.  Not after all the grief I went through qualifying.  One stretch in that place is enough.  I’ve had it with Research.”

I abruptly slowed my pace and allowed Eddie to catch up.  “Research?  You were interred there?”  For yet another time that evening the institution loomed large.

“Yeah.  Seemed like forever.”

“Were you able to move around?  Talk to other Semis?” I asked.

“Just a few of the cleaning people.  They got quite a few Semis in there doing the menial stuff.”

“I have a friend in there.  His name is Neuman?  We came here together.”

“Nope.  But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t there.  It’s a big place,” said Eddie.  “What’s he in for?”

“I don’t know.  Some minor infraction, maybe.  He can be a little delusional too.  The kid’s only nineteen, and the change in planets could have shook him up some.”

“Hmph!” Eddie shrugged.  “Psycho case, huh.  They handled those in a different building.  It’s restricted.  Guards and everything.”

The very word “restricted,” in the gloom of this late hour, conjured up Conrad’s forebodings.  I wished Matty hadn’t prevented me from reading the Surge’s flyer.  “I’m going to try to see him tomorrow.  What goes on inside that place, anyway.  Before I go I…

Eddie cut me off.  “It’s been a long day.  What’d say we put it off till after breakfast.  Be glad to talk about it then, okay?”

“Sure.  See you in the courtyard outside the cafeteria?”

“Suits me.”
With each of us dwelling on our own thoughts, what lit­tle distance remained to the dorm was accomplished without further conversation.  As we neared the lighted entrance, we saw Matilda dead ahead, perched on a heavy branch overhanging the walk.  I could tell that all was not well.  The old bird sat unmov­ing, panting heavily through her opened beak.  The dull orbs of her eyes bulged outward as though pressured by recol­lections of her night-flying escapade and her left leg was bent painfully at the knee.

“Don’t ask,” she said landing heavily on the walkway beside me.

In contrast with Matty’s dejection, Eddies spirits rose when we neared the Upsem Dorm.  While I held back to keep company with Ma­tilda who could gain ground only by taking one painful hop at a time, he strutted confidently ahead in the van.

One end of the first floor was reserved for married couples and it was a window in one of these units that Eddie attended to as he neared the building.  His interest was rewarded when, to our surprise, out of the window popped Greta’s head shouting a friendly, pique-free greeting.  Eddie immediately responded with a warm salutation of his own that led me to suspect that reconciliation and possibly even a new litter was in the offing.

Greta’s resurrection led me to reevaluate the little beast in a somewhat more forgiving light.  I had to ad­mit that behind that gruff aspect and formida­ble rows of teeth, Eddie had a pretty good head on his shoul­ders.  It seemed to me that he had acquitted himself about as well as anyone could under the circumstances.  Just how well that sin­gle head of his would stand up against those of his Enforcement Agency prosecu­tor in the Zoo’s Depart­ment of Internal Security was an­other matter; concoct­ing a defense against a charge of familycide ag­gravated by can­nibalism would, I feared, have its difficulties.