Time Will Run Back

Chapter 11

PETER moved quickly into the Inner Circle. While Bolshekov was still away, he was made a member of the Party. Only about one in every ten Protectors, he learned, was so honored.

“I must act quickly,” was the only explanation Stalenin gave him.

A week later he became one of the 140 members of the Central Committee of the Party. His promotion was the fastest in the annals of Wonworld. Articles about him appeared in the New Truth and were reprinted everywhere. He was credited with all sorts of prodigies he had never performed. Nowhere did he find it once mentioned that he was Stalenin’s son.

With Adams he inspected innumerable government bureaus. His principal impression was of mountains of paper work. “Every pin produced in Wonworld is recorded,” he was proudly told. It certainly was. At least in triplicate, and sometimes through endless carbon copies. Peter wondered whether the time and expense of recording the pins weren’t greater than that of making them.

At the headquarters of the Bureau of State Security—the secret police—Peter walked past miles of steel cabinets. A complete dossier, he found, was kept about every person in Wonworld. There was a vast amount of cross-filing. In addition to every person’s serial number, name if any, annual photograph, finger prints, biography, family connections if any, occupation, friends and acquaintances, there was also a notation of what he could be accused of in an emergency.

“Just to keep everybody in line,” explained Kilashov. Kilashov was head of the secret police and a member of the Politburo. “This emergency accusation,” he said, “isn’t necessarily the one used when an accusation has to be made. But it’s often a great time saver.”

“What evidence have you,” Peter asked, “that these accusations are true?”

Kilashov smiled grimly. “There is no better evidence than a man’s own confession, and we know how to get that.”

Adams took Peter on an inspection tour of shops and stores. There were not many. People often had to come long distances to get to them. “This means a great economy in distribution costs,” he was told. He invariably found fewer and poorer goods for sale in the shops themselves than in the shop windows. The latter were mainly samples, he learned, not yet turned out in quantity—things scheduled for the next Five-Year Plan.

No item could be bought, moreover, except with a specific ration coupon for that particular kind of item. There were no proletarian ration tickets for specialties. There were merely bread ration tickets for bread, chicken ration tickets for chicken, shoe ration tickets for shoes....

“Suppose a man breaks a shoelace?” Peter asked.

“Each pair of shoes,” Adams explained, “is sold with an extra pair of laces.” “And if he breaks even this second pair—?” “He can get a third pair of laces by applying for a special coupon and swearing out an affidavit that the breakage was an accident. His application for this special coupon, however, is recorded against him on his passport, his labor book, and in the secret police dossiers.”

“Doesn’t that procedure rather discourage applications for special shoelace coupons?” “It certainly does. And it discourages the breaking of shoelaces, dishes, or anything else.”

With his eyes sharpened by experience and by Adams’ dry comments, Peter became increasingly appalled by the carelessness, waste and chaos in production. The output of one item never seemed to match that of any other. There would be too many suits of one size and too little of another. Whole housing projects would be held up because of a shortage of tar paper. But in the Moscow district there were far more window frames than could be used in the planned new housing because the window-frame makers had proudly exceeded their quota.

“Bolshekov must have read of your promotion in the newspapers, Peter,” said Stalenin. “In his last report from Kansas he adds casually that it would contribute to your education to go out there and see conditions at first hand. Of course all he really wants is to have you under his eye. But you should go.”

“What does he say about Kansas?”

“A million peasants have already died there this year from starvation and typhoid. At least another million will die before the year end.”

“What does he say caused the food shortage?”

“The drought. The worst in history.”

“Can’t food be brought in from other sections?”

“Into Kansas? Which is supposed to feed other sections?”

“But—”

“We simply haven’t the transport,” said Stalenin. “Practically all the bread being consumed in Moscow now is from wheat from the Argentine. Of course Russia must get priority in everything; and there just isn’t any more wheat to be had from the Argentine—But you can get all that from Bolshekov.”

“When do you want me to start?” “Tomorrow. Bolshekov is at Wichita. You are to meet him there. Sergei is making all the arrangements for your trip.”

Great Bend, Kansas. Peter was at breakfast in his private car. He gazed out the train window. The station platform was crowded with begging peasants. They stared at him, and at the food still on his table, with hollow eyes. Women held up infants for him to see—deformed little monsters with big heads, horribly swollen bellies, and skeleton limbs dangling from them.

He got up and went to the train kitchen. “Something must be done for these people!”

“We have only enough for ourselves, Comrade Uldanov,” said the chief cook. “And I am under absolute orders not to give—”

“Then at least let the rest of my own breakfast be given to them!”

“We are under absolute orders from Moscow not to permit that either, Comrade Uldanov. Whatever you leave untouched is eaten by members of the train crew.”

Beaten, Peter returned to his seat. He was ashamed to look out again until the train started to move. At the edge of the platform men and women were lying prone, staring up out of expressionless eyes. A mass funeral procession went by.

The whole trip had been a nightmare. He had taken off from Moscow on a large bomber. He could not now remember the number of dreary stops for refueling and repairs—in Siberia, Alaska, Canada, CVA. They had had to land first at a forced labor camp in Siberia, where Peter had seen hundreds of scarcely human creatures, mostly women, filthy and in rags, working in complete silence, many of them up to their knees in muddy water. Armed guards watched their every movement.

The plane had come down twice in Alaska, in clearings in the wilderness.

Because of Peter’s curiosity, they had flown relatively low when they got to the remote district of CVA. A guide had pointed out to him, every now and then, a herd of elk or bison roaming the prairie states; but there were few signs of human habitation.

The original plan had been to fly direct to Wichita, but the plane had had to make a forced landing at a place that had once been the site of the proud capitalist city of Denver. For a whole day Peter, accompanied by a member of the plane’s crew, had wandered among the crumbling and deserted ruins.

Peter tried to imagine what Denver must have been like in the days of its glory, when the barbarian capitalist chiefs held court. The only sign of life he found now was a lizard.

It had finally been discovered that the plane would have to wait for new parts from Moscow, and Peter had been forced to finish the journey to Wichita on this single-track railroad.

They passed one more station—Hutchinson—without stopping. He was grateful for that.

At Wichita he was conducted to Bolshekov’s waiting automobile. Bolshekov stood just outside, looking taller, gaunter, more green-complexioned than ever. He looked Peter up and down. “Congratulations on your amazing promotion!” His tone was bitingly sarcastic.

A crowd of starving peasants and workers stonily watched them drive off.

About fifteen minutes later, in the open country, the chauffeur had to stop to change a tire. Everyone got out. Peter noticed thick weeds along the roads and vacant fields full of wild sunflowers. All the seeds had been picked out of the blossoms.

They started off again.

A light rain began to fall. Peter felt his first wave of hope, almost of elation. “Rain!” he shouted.

Bolshekov stared at him as if he had said something stupid.

“But doesn’t this break the drought?” Peter asked. “Won’t this mean relief?”

“It’s nothing.”

“But I thought your whole trouble was caused by the greatest drought on record?”

“True.”

“But what has the comparison actually been? How much rainfall did Kansas have in the last six months or so? How does that compare with the second worse year?”

“Am I being cross-examined?” asked Bolshekov coldly.

Peter dropped the subject. What was really wrong? Was this the greatest drought on record, or wasn’t it? Or—it occurred to him suddenly—was it a drought at all? Was it merely government propaganda—the “official” explanation of the famine?

They arrived at a collectivized farm, the first Peter had seen. Broken-down tractors were rusting in the rain. Not a single tractor was in working order.

Bolshekov sent for the director. “The last mechanic on our state farm who knew how to fix tractors died of starvation last month, Your Highness,” explained the director. “We filed an application through the regular channels for a replacement, but so far not a word from Moscow. We have also filed applications for the replacement of broken tractor parts.”

“How long ago?”

“Two months.”

“And nothing has happened?”

“Yes, Your Highness. Yesterday we received a reply saying that our application had been made on form S-27-Q, which has been obsolete for three months, and that we must obtain new forms from the Central Printing Office.”

“And have you acted?”

“We have been searching, Your Highness, for the proper form on which to apply for forms to the Central Printing Office. The central office doesn’t seem to have furnished—”

“Arrest that man,” ordered Bolshekov.

“You see,” Bolshekov said to Peter as they drove off, “how hopeless the whole problem is. The same story everywhere. The collectivized farm directors blame the tractor parts makers for delays in deliveries. The parts makers blame their suppliers in turn, or tell us that the state farms are careless in handling the machinery....”

After inspecting three more collectivized farms, with much the same results, Bolshekov called it a day. They drove back to the hotel Broadview in Wichita.

“Dinner will be brought up to your room at six,” Bolshekov told Peter. “Come to my suite at eight.”

Peter decided to go for a walk, but the moment he stepped out of his hotel he was besieged by starving beggars. Men and women, more dead than alive, were lying on the sidewalks. He had nothing to offer but nontransferable ration coupons. He bought the local newspaper, Humanity, and immediately returned to his hotel room to read about the famine.

On the front page was a prominent story about a young coal miner who during his six-hour shift had cut one hundred and two tons of coal instead of the usual seven tons. The story sounded vaguely familiar, even to the figures, but the name and place were new to him. There was also a picture of two well-fed, laughing young peasant girls carrying a banner. The leading editorial denied that there was any distinction between Marxism and Leninism.

He went carefully through the whole paper.

There was not a word about the existence of a famine.

In the evening, Bolshekov explained to Peter the economic system under which the state farms operated.

“Just before I was put in charge, the system was for the State to take everything that each collective farm produced over and above what was necessary for the sustenance of the workers on the collectives. That system broke down. The collectives would raise only enough for their own sustenance, and leave little or nothing for the State. So I reversed the rule. My system was to set up first a minimum quota of grain, vegetables or livestock for each collective to turn over to the government. Only when that was filled was the collective allowed to retain the quota for its own sustenance.”

“But suppose,” Peter asked, “that the quota you took away from a collective left its workers without enough to live on?”

“They starved, of course. And though they probably deserved to, we were later forced to change the formula again, to our present formula.... Our government investigators now figure first what ought to be the normal production of grain, livestock, and so forth, of each State farm. This assumed ‘normal’ yield isn’t the maximum possible, but it is better than the expected average, for it assumes good weather, good growing conditions, good management and hard work. Then we deduct from this total ‘normal’ yield the amount needed for the sustenance of the workers and managers of the collective itself. This is called the Sustenance Quota, and the balance is called the Government Quota.”

“Suppose, Your Highness, that the total yield of a collective farm in a year is only 75 per cent of its calculated ‘normal’ yield?”

“Then the government only gets 75 per cent of its normal quota, and the collective gets only 75 per cent of its Sustenance Quota. Nothing could be fairer than that, could it?”

“Can the workers on a collective live on only 75 per cent of their Sustenance Quota?”

“Barely. But that is why they will try to make sure of reaching their full quota the following year.”

“How do you know, Your Highness, that the quotas have been fairly assigned to each collective?”

“A government investigator who assigns too small a quota is simply liquidated.”

“And if he assigns too large a quota—too big a quota for the collective to be fairly expected to reach?”

“Oh, that is what the collectives are always contending! That’s their stock excuse for every failure.”

Peter thought it wise not to press this particular question further. “But suppose,” he continued, “that a collective farm exceeds its set normal production quota?”

“The surplus above the Sustenance Quota all goes to the government, of course.”

“Why, Your Highness, doesn’t the government apply the same rule in reverse? That is, if the collective produces 110 per cent of its total quota, why not increase the State’s share only 10 per cent and allow the collective’s own share to increase 10 per cent?”

“But what would the collectives do, in a socialist society, with a surplus above their own needs? Withhold it? Waste it? Wonworld needs every bushel of grain it can get.”

“But if you allowed the collectives to keep the surplus above the quota to be set aside for the State, or even a proportional percentage of the surplus,” said Peter, thinking out loud, “wouldn’t that give them an incentive to produce more?”

“Merely for themselves? In an equalitarian society?” asked Bolshekov. “And just what do you mean by incentive? That sounds to me like the language of capitalism. Are you talking of private profit?”

Peter confusedly apologized for the suggestion.