rduk would be retired on an adequate pension after thirty years
regular employment or at the age of sixty. When he had wanted to
know where the money would come from, he had been told that there
would be a sales tax, and that the pensions must all be spent within
thirty days, which would stimulate business, and the increased
business would provide tax money to pay the pensions.

"We have a joke about three Gilgameshers space-wrecked on an
uninhabited planet," he said. "Ten years later, when they were
rescued, all three were immensely wealthy, from trading hats with
each other. That's about the way this thing will work."

One of the lady social workers bristled; it wasn't right to make
derogatory jokes about racial groups. One of the professors
harrumphed; wasn't a parallel at all, the Self-Sustaining Rotary
Pension Plan was perfectly feasible. With a shock, Trask recalled
that he was a professor of economics.

Alvyn Karffard wouldn't need any twenty ships to loot Marduk. Just
infiltrate it with about a hundred smart confidence men and inside
a year they'd own everything on it.

That started them all off on Zaspar Makann, though. Some of them
thought he had a few good ideas, but was damaging his own case by
extremism. One of the wealthier nobles said that he was a reproach
to the ruling class; it was their fault that people like Makann
could gain a following. One old gentleman said that maybe the
Gilgameshers were to blame, themselves, for some of the animosity
toward them. He was immediately set upon by all the others and
verbally torn to pieces on the spot.

Trask didn't feel it proper to quote Goodman Mikhyl to this crowd.
He took the responsibility upon himself for saying:

"From what I've heard of him, I think he's the most serious threat
to civilized society on Marduk."

They didn't call him crazy, after all he was a guest, but they
didn't ask him what he meant, either. They merely told him that
Makann was a crackpot with a contemptible following of half-wits,
and just wait till the election and see what happened.

"I'm inclined to agree with Prince Trask," Bentrik said soberly.
"And I'm afraid the election results will be a shock to us, not to
Makann."

He hadn't talked that way on the ship. Maybe he'd been looking
around and doing some thinking, since he got back. He might have
been talking to Goodman Mikhyl, too. There was a screen in the room.
He nodded toward it.

"He's speaking at a rally of the