Free Executive by Piers Anthony Page B

it.
    We tapped its communications with the home base and with Ganymede, hoping to intercept a revealing message. The transmissions were coded, of course, but our technicians decoded them as rapidly as they were sent. Saturn was aware of that; Saturn did the same to ours. Saturn was too canny to put anything truly private into any such transmissions. So we got nothing, as expected—and the ship moved on. Six days till arrival now.
    My sister Faith came to see me. I had appointed her to the Department of Poverty: it was her job to eliminate it. She was having a problem getting started. “We need full employment, at fair wages, with fair working conditions,” she said. “My consultants tell me that there simply aren't enough jobs and that legislation will be required to define the wages and conditions. The only possible answer...” She hesitated.
    “Out with it,” I said.
    “Is for the government to become the Employer of Last Resort, for all those who cannot otherwise find work.”
    I called Stonebridge. “What's the price tag for the government to become the Employer of Last Resort for all the unemployed?”
    “Three hundred billion dollars minimum,” he replied without hesitation. “That assumes a thirty-three percent cost of administration, which I fear is conservative.”
    “But if they were working, paying their way—”
    “At what jobs? Believe me, Tyrant, it would be far cheaper to put them all on welfare—and cheaper yet to simply hand them each the money.”
    “But that would lead to complete indifference to working for a living!”
    “Exactly. Therefore, that is no solution to your problem. Don't try to eliminate unemployment that way.”
    He faded off.
    I sighed as I returned to Faith. “Let's see whether Gerald Phist is making progress at providing new jobs.” I called him.
    “Good news, Tyrant,” Phist said as he came on screen. “I am developing a program that will virtually eliminate waste and fraud, and reduce the cost of industry by enabling us to produce the same products and services with only seventy percent of the personnel!”
    “Seventy percent,” I said, not reacting with quite the joy he expected. “That means—”
    “About thirty million jobs saved,” he finished. “No more inefficient duplication of effort.”
    “And thirty million more unemployed,” I concluded.
    “Well, perhaps new industries can be developed to take up the slack—”
    “Work on it,” I advised him, signing off.
    I looked at Faith, and she looked at me. “Believe me,” I told her, “when I find an answer, you'll be the first to know. Meanwhile, work things out as well as you can.”
    “I think you're in over your head, Tyrant,” she replied.
    “In more than one respect,” I agreed wanly. Certainly the Tyrancy was not getting off to a polished start.
    Meanwhile, that dread ship moved closer to Ganymede. It might as well have been a planet-buster headed inexorably for the heart of the Planet of Jupiter!
    We tried to arrange for a “coincidental” encounter with the ship: a playboy yacht that lost its bearings and strayed into the Saturn vessel's path. But the ship was the soul of courtesy, putting on the screen an English-speaking officer, who provided meticulous and accurate bearings for the stray. Now there were only five days till arrival.
    Roulette called. She was in charge of crime—the elimination thereof. “Crime is costing the planet hundreds of billions of dollars per year,” she informed me. “Much of it relates to drugs and gambling. But to eliminate those we have to eliminate the hard-core criminal element. We can spot most of the bad types, but can you keep them out of circulation?”
    More unemployed! “I'll work on it,” I told her without conviction.
    “She's onto an ugly truth,” Spirit said. “Ninety percent of the crime is done by ten percent of the criminals. That is, most people may stray once or twice but aren't hard-core, while a few are solidly into it. We