tions."

Smith waited for a flat "no" to the suggestion. The Asian leader
apparently knew a great deal more about the West's armaments than Smith
knew about the East. The Peoplesfriend had nothing to gain by revealing
the military strength of his own hemisphere. But he paused, watching
Smith with an expressionless stare.

"I accept that for further consideration, at least," Ivan said at last.

John XVI hovered between elation and suspicion. Suspicion won. "Of
course there must be some method to assure that accurate figures are
divulged."

"That could probably be settled."

Again the President was shocked. It was all too easy. Something was
rotten about the whole thing. The Peoplesfriend agreed too readily to
things that seemed to be to his disadvantage. The discussion continued
for several hours, during which both men presented viewpoints and
postponed agreement until a later meeting.

"Stockpiles of fissionable material," said the President, "which could
quickly be converted to weapons use should also be discussed."

Ivan frowned. "I mentioned before that we have no need of atomic
armaments, nor any plans for building them. Our defense is secured by
something entirely different, a weapon which serves an industrial
function in time of peace, and a weapon which I might add was largely
responsible for our abandoning Marxism. A single discovery, Andrei
Sorkin's, made communist doctrine not only a wrong solution, but a wrong
solution to a problem that had ceased to exist."

"What problem are you referring to?"

"The use of human beings as automatic devices in a corporate
machine--the social-structure of industry, in which the worker was
caught and bolted down and expected to perform a single, highly
specialized task. That of course, is almost a definition of the word
'proletarian'. We no longer have a true proletariat. For that reason, we
are no longer Marxist--although the name 'communist' has survived with
its meaning changed."

The conference ended after setting the time for another meeting. John
Smith XVI felt that he had been groping in the dark, because of the
information-vacuum that kept him from even making a reasonable guess as
to Ivan's real aims. He kept feeling vaguely that Ivan was just playing
along, reacting according to the opportunity of the moment, not
particularly caring what Smith did next. But leaders of states just did
not proceed so carelessly--not unless they were fools, or unless they
w