Foundation - Isaac Asimov [91]
“Once before you tried that last trick.”
“Not very hard, Sutt. The right time has only just come. Now listen.” Mallow’s eyes narrowed.
“When I first landed on Korell,” he began, “I bribed the Commdor with the trinkets and gadgets that form the trader’s usual stock. At the start, that was meant only to get us entrance into a steel foundry. I had no plan further than that, but in that I succeeded. I got what I wanted. But it was only after my visit to the Empire that I first realized exactly what a weapon I could build that trade into.
“This is a Seldon crisis we’re facing, Sutt, and Seldon crises are not solved by individuals but by historic forces. Hari Seldon, when he planned our course of future history, did not count on brilliant heroics but on the broad sweeps of economics and sociology. So the solutions to the various crises must be achieved by the forces that become available to us at the time.
“In this case,—trade!”
Sutt raised his eyebrows skeptically and took advantage of the pause. “I hope I am not of subnormal intelligence, but the fact is that your vague lecture isn’t very illuminating.”
“It will become so,” said Mallow. “Consider that until now the power of trade has been underestimated. It has been thought that it took a priesthood under our control to make it a powerful weapon. That is not so, and this is my contribution to the Galactic situation. Trade without priests! Trade alone! It is strong enough. Let us become very simple and specific. Korell is now at war with us. Consequently our trade with her has stopped. But,—notice that I am making this as simple as a problem in addition,—in the past three years she has based her economy more and more upon the nuclear techniques which we have introduced and which only we can continue to supply. Now what do you suppose will happen once the tiny nuclear generators begin failing, and one gadget after another goes out of commission?
“The small household appliances go first. After a half a year of this stalemate that you abhor, a woman’s nuclear knife won’t work any more. Her stove begins failing. Her washer doesn’t do a good job. The temperature-humidity control in her house dies on a hot summer day. What happens?”
He paused for an answer, and Sutt said calmly, “Nothing. People endure a good deal in war.”
“Very true. They do. They’ll send their sons out in unlimited numbers to die horribly on broken spaceships. They’ll bear up under enemy bombardment, if it means they have to live on stale bread and foul water in caves half a mile deep. But it’s very hard to bear up under little things when the patriotic uplift of imminent danger is not present. It’s going to be a stalemate. There will be no casualties, no bombardments, no battles.
“There will just be a knife that won’t cut, and a stove that won’t cook, and a house that freezes in the winter. It will be annoying, and people will grumble.”
Sutt said slowly, wonderingly, “Is that what you’re setting your hopes on, man? What do you expect? A housewives’ rebellion? A Jacquerie? A sudden uprising of butchers and grocers with their cleavers and breadknives shouting ‘Give us back our Automatic Super-Kleeno Nuclear Washing Machines.’ ”
“No, sir,” said Mallow, impatiently, “I do not. I expect, however, a general background of grumbling and dissatisfaction which will be seized on by more important figures later on.”
“And what more important figures are these?”
“The manufacturers, the factory owners, the industrialists of Korell. When two years of the stalemate have gone, the machines in the factories will, one by one, begin to fail. Those industries which we have changed from first to last with our new nuclear gadgets will find themselves very suddenly ruined. The heavy industries will find themselves, en masse and at a stroke, the owners of nothing but scrap machinery that won