It was a world of greedy Dynasts—each contending for the right to pillage and enslave. But one man's valor became a shining shield.
It was blazing hot in the noon sun, and he considered chartering an autojet to the city, as he always had before. But though a jet was faster than the monorail it was also more expensive. Acutely mindful that he had left the service and would earn no more juicy credit bonuses, he took the monorail instead.
The monorail shot up toward the Palms-Pine pass of the San Jacinto Mountains. From the crest of the grade Hunter could look back at the flat, cemented field of the spaceport and the ragged teeth of the launching tubes rearing high on the Mojave. Ahead of him, misted by the blue haze of industrial smog, was Los Angeles, the capital city of Sector West—and indirectly the capital of the entire planet.
Each of the eleven sectors into which the Earth was divided was controlled by one of the two cartels, as an agricultural or industrial appendage of the western metropolis. It was a paternal relationship, although no comparable city had been permitted to develop and company mercenaries policed the sectors.
Children who exhibited any spark of initiative or ability were skimmed off from the hinterland to Sector West and thrown into the competitive struggle of the general school. If they fought to the top there, they were integrated as adults into the hierarchy of the cartels
Essential plants, naturally. Everything was always essential, and government spokesmen always made pretty speeches deploring the situation. It was a pattern familiar to Hunter for years. One of the cartels would pay Young to strike factories belonging to the other. Then a second bribe, paid by the struck cartel, bought off the strike. Occasionally a sop of bonus credits had to be dished out to the faithful.
I wasn't thinking of technology, Captain. Civilization isn't machines. It's people. Our accumulation of knowledge is tremendous, but essentially it means nothing because we know so little about ourselves. It's absurd to talk of making something better until we really know the individual we're making it for.
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