The Brave New World 56 The Ancient Wisdom Of Sun Tzu

The information coming in was grim. Most of the year's harvest in the southern hemisphere had been destroyed. According to optimistic predictions, global food production would drop to a third of what it was the previous year. The worst-case scenario had it pegged at ten percent of what it had been. And once the existing stocks of artificial fertilizer and insecticides were exhausted, there would be no more. That blasted Patel woman had forced this measure through right away. She had made it one of the cornerstones of her plan for Earth's environmental revival. But without fertilizer and insecticides, yields would drop through the floor.

Odongo reflected that Sonia Patel probably liked the notion of cutting Earth's population by half. She had always held Earth was overpopulated, that the number of people spurred to ever-increasing consumption was at the root of all environmental problems. She didn't have any children. She wasn't even married! There was something inhuman about her.

Jean Caron, on the other hand, showed all the symptoms of being very human. When Nelson Odongo entered his office, he found Caron walking in circles around the room, alternately mopping his sweating face with a big handkerchief and nervously scratching his head and neck. The look he gave Odongo was the look of an animal that had been chased into a corner. The he erupted with a torrent of words:

"This is crazy, Nelson. It's madness! Do you realize I, do you realize we will have next to no control over what's happening over there? It's going to be one gigantic free-for-all. Millions of colonies all competing with each other. Millions and millions and millions of people grabbing as much as they can, as fast as they can. We're going to have colonial wars left and right and center. And I'm not naive, oh no. Many of our governors will join in, if they can smell a profit."

"They're working for you as independent contractors," Odongo reminded him. "You can fire any of them any time, for misconduct or however you may want to phrase it."

"Oh no I can't. I have to get it approved by the Council. By two hundred territory governors whose only interest is in maximizing the income from their New World territories. Wars can be very profitable when they're played out with weapons that don't cost millions of dollars apiece, or per use."

"You think the Council might disapprove of your decisions?"

"No. I don't just think so, I'm certain of it. Because the way it's set up, they are all going to protect their little fiefdoms. Not so little, actually big and very profitable."

"Calm down, Jean. Drink a gla.s.s of water and sit down and listen to me. That's good, please pour me one as well if you'd be so kind. Thank you. Now listen closely, my friend. The art of being a politician involves getting people to do what they don't want to do. This is what politics is all about."

"But how am I supposed - "

"Stop," said Odongo. "Calm down and drink your water and listen. There are several areas in which you can act freely, without having to secure an approval from the Council. To give you an example, you'll be compiling an annual evaluation report on each territorial governor's performance. If you find it below par, you can apply a penalty of up to half a governor's income. Don't you think that's a very potent persuader?"

"But they'll eat me alive when I do that."

"No. The governors you'll punish will want to eat you alive, yes. But they won't dare to. Because all the governors you did not punish will be kissing your hands and bursting with eagerness to obey your every wish. Just make sure not to punish too many at any one time. Chop a few, and you'll see the others jump into line. That's how it works."

"Is that what you do? Is that your method?"

"No, it's not my method," Odongo said with dignity. "It was invented by a very wise Chinese military scholar called Sun Tzu. Have you heard of him?"

"The Art of War?"

"Precisely. He is the author. Do you know how he became the Chinese emperor's most trusted military advisor?"

"No."

"The emperor had serious disciplinary problems with his harem of concubines. So he asked Sun Tzu for help in restoring order. He thought that if Sun Tzu could succeed where the emperor himself couldn't, he would make a good supreme commander of the imperial army.

"Sun Tzu accepted this challenge. All the concubines were a.s.sembled in a chamber, talking and laughing. Sun Tzu stood in front of them and told them to be quiet and form orderly ranks. They laughed, and shouted insults at him. He turned to the emperor and asked if he was free to employ whatever means he thought appropriate to discipline the concubines. The emperor granted him this permission.

"Sun Tzu picked out every tenth concubine and had her instantly executed. The rest of them immediately became very well-behaved. I suggest your model your technique on Sun Tzu's, my dear Jean. And you won't have to execute anybody. Just make them a little less rich than they'd be otherwise. It will work miracles, I a.s.sure you."

"It could work," Jean Caron said reluctantly. He grimaced and threw Odongo a glance and tried to smile. Yes, deep down he knew that would work. But it went completely against his nature. He liked universal agreement, he liked it when everyone loved Jean Caron, he liked to be surrounded by friends.

"It WILL work, I promise you. Now, have your people made any progress on the colonization scheme?"

"Yes. It's pretty much certain we will have to go with two types of colonization licenses."

"Two? Why? What do you mean?"

"Well, we have to differentiate between colonizers and colonists. Colonizers being the people who want to establish a colony in the New World, and who are qualified to do so. By virtue of being intelligent, knowledgeable, good organizers, and so on."

"That makes sense."

"Colonists, on the other hand, would be the people who want to live a second life in the New World. And that includes almost everyone. Who wouldn't want to experience an extra couple of hundred years of life? Especially since this also offers an opportunity to make more money? And I mean make more money literally. The reports that are coming in make it clear that the New World is exceptionally rich in natural resources, and that those resources include plenty of gold and silver."

"All right, point taken," said Odongo. "So you propose to have a different kind of license for the people you call colonizers, and for the ones you call colonists?"

"Yes. You see, it's obvious by now we'll have a limited number of the timon implant kits. The cubes disappear after dispensing around 100,000 items per cube. A very rough estimate puts the number of cubes that have appeared around the world at around 100,000 as well. So we're looking at a maximum of maybe 10 billion implant kits, actually a billion or two less, because you also have to count the hiber beds and doc.u.mentation scrolls and so on."

"We'll be able to make timon implant kits ourselves, in time."

"No doubt. But we'll need timon for that. And so far, no one has found any timon in the New World."

"I'm sure it's just a question of time."

"Everything is a question of time. But we have a problem we need to solve right now."

"And your solution is?"

"We have a limited supply of implant kits and hiber beds, so we have to limit the demand. I talked to Troll. He proposes that anyone who replicates in the New World automatically forfeits their guaranteed income. That would include both colonizers and colonists."

"That sounds good. It will likely cut the demand by half right away."

"In addition, colonizers will have to pay for their licenses. Troll suggests an equivalent of one year's worth of guaranteed income. In exchange, they'll each get four implant kits and two hiber beds. They'll also receive two sets of clothing, a set of basic tools, a month's supply of food, and some construction materials upon replicating in the New World."

"That sounds quite generous. How will they receive those, anyway?"

"From their district governor. Every colonizer will register their colony in their local Colonial Office, and fix a founding date. Their district governor will deliver the goods on that date to the predetermined location, by water or land. There won't be a problem with that. All my governors are already busy building s.h.i.+ps and carts and breeding horses over there."

"All right, let's a.s.sume that will work. What about the second type of license? The colonists, as opposed to colonizers?"

"They pay a month's worth of guaranteed income for a single timon implant kit and hiber bed. No clothing, no food, no tools."

"Sounds like a waste of implant kits and hiber beds to me. Most of them will be doomed to failure."

"Not if they join a colony. A government colony - pardon me, an administrative center - or a private, independent enterprise. They can work out the terms with the colony owners, who I'm sure will be more than happy to acquire extra labor for their projects."

"I like it," said Odongo. "It's simple, it's flexible, and it promises to bring in lots of revenue. Yes, I like it a lot."

"Thank you. The only big problem that remains is getting the governor network in place. We'll need around a million."

"What?! A million governors?"

"Yes. Initially, we thought that a hundred thousand would ensure excellent coverage. But the tenfold difference in scale means we need ten times as many."

"You feel you can manage a million district governors?"

"No. I feel I can manage two hundred territorial governors. Each territorial governor will manage a number of area governors. The area governors will manage regional governors. And each regional governor will manage governors of the districts in his or her region. So it will be quite manageable from the administrative point of view. What I'm not sure about is how manageable this will be from the political point of view. There will be all sorts of cliques and alliances and counter-alliances popping up all over the place. And that's just the governor network, Nelson. Add tens of millions of private, independent colonies into the mix, and you've got a gigantic free-for-all, win-or-die situation. I really don't know how all this is going to turn out."

"Neither do I," said Nelson Odongo. "Neither does anyone else. We'll all have to press forward and make adjustments as necessary."

"It really would have been better to have at least a year to set all this up."

"We cannot afford the time. A year here equals ten years over there. There are already hundreds of thousands of wildcat operations in the New World, you know that. And we must immediately begin sending food from the New World."

"Nelson, I really can't promise you all this will work. It might blow up in our faces."

"I know. I don't expect you to promise me that everything will be fine. You know, this situation reminds me of what I faced when I became head of the OAU - Organization of African Unity. African unity was a joke at that time. There were a hundred wars being waged on the continent. Within a few years, there were just a handful. I adopted a personal motto that proved to work very well. Perhaps you should consider adopting it for yourself."

"What was it? I mean, your personal motto?"

"Off with his head, Jean. Off with his head. Or hers."

Nelson Odongo smiled at the horrified expression that appeared on Caron's face, and added:

"Emulate the great Sun Tzu, Jean. There really is no better teacher than him, even though he lived thousands of years ago."

"I will try," said Jean Caron.

"No. Don't 'try'. Just do it," said Nelson Odongo, the man who'd brought peace to the war-ravaged African continent by cutting off carefully selected heads.

Then he went off to yet another meeting, leaving Caron deep in thought.

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