xxiii

As I left the sanctum sanctorum I ran into Goldie coming in. I was feeling grouchy and simply nodded. Not sore at Goldie. Boss! Damn him. Supercilious, arrogant voyeur! I went to my room and got to work, so that I could stop fuming.

First I punched for the names and addresses of all the Shipstone corporations. While these were printing I called for histories of the complex. The computer named two, an official company history combined with a biography of Daniel Shipstone, and an unofficial history footnoted "muckrake." Then the machine suggested several other sources.

I told the terminal to print out both books and I asked it for printouts of other sources if four thousand words or less, summarized if not. Then I looked over the corporations list:

Daniel Shipstone Estate, Inc. Muriel Shipstone Memorial Research Laboratories

Shipstone Tempe

Shipstone Gobi

Shipstone Aden

Shipstone Sahara

Shipstone Arica

Shipstone Death Valley

Shipstone Karroo

Shipstone Never-Never

Shipstone Ell-Four

Shipstone Ell-Five

Shipstone Stationary

Shipstone Tycho

Shipstone Ares

Shipstone Deep Water

Shipstone Unlimited, Ltd.

Sears-Montgomery, Inc.

Prometheus Foundation

Coca-Cola Holding Company Billy Shipstone School for

Interworld Transport Corporation Handicapped Children

Jack and the Beanstalk, Pty. Wolf Creek Pass Nature Preserve

Morgan Associates A¤o Nuevo Wild Life Refuge

Out-Systems Colonial Shipstone Visual Arts Museum

Corporation and School

I looked at this list with easily controlled enthusiasm. I had known that the Shipstone trust had to be bigÄwho does not have half a dozen Shipstones within easy reach, not counting the big one in your basement or foundation? But now it seemed to me that studying this monster would be a lifetime career. I was not that much interested in Shipstones.

I was nibbling around the edges when Goldie stopped by and told me that it was time to put on the nosebag. "And I have instructions to see to it that you do not spend more than eight hours a day at your terminal and you are to take a full weekend every week."

"Ah so. Tyrannical old bastard."

We started for the refectory. "Friday . .

"Yes, Goldie?"

"You are finding the Master grumpy and sometimes difficult."

"Correction. He is always difficult."

"Mmm, yes. But what you may not know is that he is in constant pain." She added, "He can no longer take drugs to control it."

We walked in silence while I chewed and swallowed that one. "Goldie? What is wrong with him?"

"Nothing, really. I would say that he is in good health... for his age.

"How old is he?"

"I don't know. From things I have heard I know that he is over a hundred. How much over I can't guess."

"Oh, no! Goldie, when I went to work for him, he could not have been more than seventy. Oh, he used canes but he was very spry. He moved as fast then as anyone."

"Well... it's not important. But you might remember that he hurts. If he is rude to you, it is pain talking. He thinks highly of you."

"What makes you think so?"

"Ah ... I've talked too much about my patient. Let's eat."

In studying the Shipstone corporate complex I did not attempt to study Shipstones. The wayÄthe only wayÄto study Shipstones would be to go back to school, get a Ph.D. in physics,-add on some intense postdoctoral study in both solid state and plasma, get a job with one of the Shipstone companies and so impress them with your loyalty and your brilliance that you are at long last part of the inner circle controlling fabrication and quality.

Since that involves about twenty years that I should have started back in my teens, I assumed that Boss did not intend me to take that route.

So let me quote from the official or propaganda history:

Prometheus, a Brief Biography and Short Account of the Unparalleled Discoveries of Daniel Thomas Shipstone, &S., MA., Ph.D., LL.D., L.H.D., and of the Benevolent System He Founded.

Äthus young Daniel Shipstone saw at once that the problem was not a shortage of energy but lay in the transporting of energy. Energy is everywhereÄin sunlight, in wind, in mountain streams, in temperature gradients of all sorts wherever found, in coal, in fossil oil, in radioactive ores, in green growing things. Especially in ocean depths and in outer space energy is free for the taking in amounts lavish beyond all human comprehension.

Those who spoke of "energy scarcity" and of "conserving energy" simply did not understand the situation. The sky was "raining soup"; what was needed was a bucket in which to carry it.

With the encouragement of his devoted wife Muriel (n‚e Greentree), who went back to work to keep food on the table, young Shipstone resigned from General Atomics and became the most American of myth-heroes, the basement inventor. Seven frustrating and weary years later he had fabricated the first Shipstone by hand. He had foundÄ What he had found was a way to pack more kilowatt-hours into a

smaller space and a smaller mass than any other engineer had ever dreamed of. To call it an "improved storage battery" (as some early accounts did) is like calling an H-bomb an "improved firecracker." What he had achieved was the utter destruction of the biggest industry (aside from organized religion) of the western world.

For what happened next I must draw from the muckraking history and from other independent sources as I just don't believe the sweetness and light of the company version. Fictionalized speech attributed to Muriel Shipstone:

"Danny Boy, you are not going to patent the gadget. What would it get you? Seventeen years at the most... and no years at all in threefourths of the world. If you did patent or try to, Edison, and P. G. and E., and Standard would tie you up with injunctions and law suits and claimed infringements and I don't know what all. But you said yourself that you could put one of your gadgets in a room with the best research team G.A. has to offer and the best they could do would be to melt it down and the worst would be that they would blow themselves up. You said that. Did you mean it?"

"Certainly. If they don't know how I insert theÄ"

"Hush! I don't want to know. And walls have ears. We don't make any fancy announcements; we simply start manufacturing. Wherever power is cheapest today. Where is that?"

The muckraking author fairly frothed at the "cruel, heartless monopoly" held by the Shipstone complex over the prime necessities of "all the little people everywhere." I could not see it that way. What Shipstone and his companies did was to make plentiful and cheap what used to be scarce and dearÄthis is "cruel" and "heartless"?

The Shipstone companies do not have a monopoly over energy. They don't own coal or oil or uranium or water power. They do lease many, many hectares of desert land... but there is far more desert not being cropped for sunshine than the Shipstone trust is using. As for space, it is impossible to intercept even one percent of all the sunshine going to waste inside the orbit of Luna, impossible by a factor of many millions. Do the arithmetic yourself otherwise you'll never believe the answer.

So what is their crime?

Twofold:

a) The Shipstone companies are guilty of supplying energy to the human race at prices below those of their competitors;