I was awed by the awesomeness of it all. I who had never played the market felt the urge to phone my broker, if I could find one, and get plugged into the great data banks. Sell a hundred GFX! Buy two hundred CCC! Off a point! Up two! This was the core of life; this was the essence of being. The mad rhythm of it caught me completely. I longed to rush toward the computer shaft, spread my arms wide, embrace its gleaming vertical bulk. I envisioned its lines reaching out through the world, even unto the reformed socialist brethren in Moscow, threading a communion of dollars from city to city, and extending perhaps to the Moon, to our coming bases on the planets, to the stars themselves… capitalism triumphant!
The guide faded away. President Norton of the Stock Exchange stepped forward again, beaming pleasantly, and said. “Now, if I can help you with any further problems—”
“Yes,” said Vornan mildly. “What is the purpose, please, of a stock exchange?”
The executive reddened and showed signs of shock. After all this detailed explication… to have the esteemed guest ask what the whole thing was about? We looked embarrassed ourselves. None of us had thought that Vornan had come here ignorant of the basic uses of this enterprise. How had he let himself be taken to the Exchange without knowing what it was he was going to see? Why had he not asked before this? I realized once again that if he were genuine, Vornan must view us as amusing apes whose plans and schemes were funny to watch for their own sake; he was not so much interested in visiting a thing called a Stock Exchange as he was in the fact that our Government earnestly desired him to visit that thing.
“Well,” said the Stock Exchange man, “am I to understand, Mr. Vornan, that in the time that you — that you come from there is no such thing as a securities exchange?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Perhaps under some other name?”
“I can think of no equivalent.”
Consternation. “But how do you manage to transfer units of corporate ownership, then?”
Blankness. A shy, possibly mocking smile from Vornan-19.
“You do have corporate ownership?”
“Pardon,” Vornan said. “I have studied your language carefully before making my journey, but there are many gaps in my knowledge. Perhaps if you could explain some of your basic terms—”
The executive’s easy dignity began to flee. Norton’s checks were mottled, his eyes were flickering like those of a beast trapped in a cage. I had seen something of the same look on Wesley Bruton’s face when he had learned from Vornan that his magnificent villa, built to endure through the ages like the Parthenon and the Taj Mahal, had vanished and been forgotten by 2999, and would have been retained only as a curiosity, a manifestation of baroque foolishness, if it had survived. The Stock Exchange man could not comprehend Vornan’s incomprehension, and it unnerved him.
Norton said, “A corporation is a — well, a company. That is, a group of individuals banded together to do something for profit. To manufacture a product, to perform a service, to—”
“A profit,” said Vornan idly. “What is a profit?”
Norton bit his lip and dabbed at his sweaty forehead. After some hesitation he said, “A profit is a return of income above costs. A surplus value, as they say. The corporation’s basic goal is to make a profit that can be divided among its owners. Thus it must be efficiently productive, so that the fixed costs of operation are overcome and the unit cost of manufacturing is lower than the market price of the product offered. Now, the reason why people set up corporations instead of simple partnerships is—”
“I do not follow,” said Vornan. “Simpler terms, please. The object of this corporation is profit, to be divided among owners, yes? But what is an owner?”
“I was just coming to that. In legal terms—”
“And what use is this profit that the owners should want it?”
I sensed that a deliberate baiting was going on. I looked in worry at Kolff, at Helen, at Heyman. But they seemed hardly to be perturbed. Holliday, our government man, was frowning a bit, but perhaps he thought Vornan-19’s questions more innocent than they seemed to me.
The nostrils of the Stock Exchange man flickered ominously. His temper seemed to be held under tight restraint. One of the media men, alive to Norton’s discomfiture, moved close to flash a camera in his face. He glowered at it.
“Am I to understand,” Norton asked slowly, “that in your era the concept of the corporation is unknown? That the profit motive is extinct? That money itself has vanished from use?”
“I would have to say yes,” Vornan replied pleasantly. “At least, as I comprehend those terms, we have nothing equivalent to them.”
“This has happened in America?” Norton asked in incredulity.
“We do not precisely have an America,” said Vornan. “I come from the Centrality. The terms are not congruous, and in fact I find it hard to compare even approximately—”
“America’s gone? How could that be? When did it happen’?”
“Oh, during the Time of Sweeping, I suppose. Many things changed then. It was long ago. I do not remember an America.”
F. Richard Heyman saw an opportunity to scrape a little history out of the maddeningly oblique Vornan. He swung around and said, “About this Time of Sweeping that you’ve occasionally mentioned. I’d like to know—”
He was interrupted by a geyser of indignation from Samuel Norton.
“America gone? Capitalism extinct? It just couldn’t happen! I tell you—”
One of the executive’s aides moved hurriedly to his side and urgently murmured something. The great man nodded. He accepted a violet-hued capsule from the other and touched its ultrasonic snout to his wrist. There was a quick whirr, an intake of what I suppose was some kind of tranquilizing drug. Norton breathed deeply and made a visible effort to collect himself.
More temperately, the Stock Exchange leader said to Vornan, “I don’t mind telling you that I find all this hard to believe. A world without America in it? A world that doesn’t use money? Tell me this, will you, please: Has the whole world gone Communist where you come from?”
There ensued what they call a pregnant silence, during which cameras and recorders were busy catching tense, incredulous, angry, or disturbed facial expressions. I sensed impending disaster. At length Vornan said, “It is another term I do not understand. I apologize for my extreme ignorance. I fear that my world is much unlike yours. However” — at this point he produced his glittering smile, drawing the sting from his words — “it is your world, and not mine, that I have come here to discuss. Please do tell me the use of this Stock Exchange of yours.”
But Norton could not shake his obsession with the contours of Vornan-19’s world. “In a moment. If you’ll tell me, first, how you make purchases of goods — a hint or two of your economic system—”
“We each have all that any person would require. Our needs are met. And now, this idea of corporation ownership—”
Norton turned away in despair. Vistas of an unimaginable future stretched before us: a world without economics, a world in which no desire went unfulfilled. Was it possible? Or was it all the oversimplified shrugging away of details that a mountebank did not care to simulate for us? One or the other, I was beguiled. But Norton was derailed. He gestured numbly to one of the other Stock Exchange men, who came forward brightly to say, “Let’s start right at the beginning. We’ve got this company that makes things. It’s owned by a little group of people. Now, in legal terms there’s a concept known as liability, meaning that the owners of a company are responsible for anything their company might do that’s improper or illegal. To shift liability, they create an imaginary entity called a corporation, which bears the responsibility for any action that might be brought against them in their business capacity. Now, since each member of the owning group has a share in the ownership of this corporation, we can issue stock, that is, certificates representing proportional shares of beneficial interest in the…”