After a half a year of this stalemate that you abhor, a woman's nuclear knife won't work any more.
Her stove begins failing. Her washer doesn't do a good job. The temperature-humidity control in her house dies on a hot summer day. What happens?"
He paused for an answer, and Sutt said calmly,
"Nothing.
People endure a good deal in war."
"Very true.
They do.
They'll send their sons out in unlimited numbers to die horribly on broken spaceships.
They'll bear up under enemy bombardment, if it means they have to live on stale bread and foul water in caves half a mile deep.
But it's very hard to bear up under little things when the patriotic uplift of imminent danger is not present. It's going to, be a stalemate.
There will be no casualties, no bombardments, no battles. "There will just be a knife that won't cut, and a stove that won't cook, and a house that freezes in the winter.
It will be annoying, and people will grumble."
Sutt said slowly, wonderingly,
"Is that what you're setting your hopes on, man?
What do you expect?
A housewives' rebellion? A Jacquerie? A sudden uprising of butchers and grocers with their cleavers and bread-knives shouting 'Give us back our Automatic Super-Kleeno Nuclear Washing Machines.'"
"No, sir," said Mallow, impatiently,
"I do not.
I expect, however, a general background of grumbling and dissatisfaction which will be seized on by more important figures later on."
"And what more important figures are these?"
"The manufacturers, the factory owners, the industrialists of Korell.
When two years of the stalemate have gone, the machines in the factories will, one by one, begin to fail.
Those industries which we have changed from first to last with our new nuclear gadgets will find themselves very suddenly ruined.
The heavy industries will find themselves, en masse and at a stroke, the owners of nothing but scrap machinery that won't work."
"The factories ran well enough before you came there, Mallow."
"Yes, Sutt, so they did - at about one-twentieth the profits, even if you leave out of consideration the cost of reconversion to the original pre-nuclear state.
With the industrialist and financier and the average man all against him, how long will the Commdor hold out?"
"As long as he pleases, as soon as it occurs to him to get new nuclear generators from the Empire." And Mallow laughed joyously,
"You've missed, Sutt, missed as badly as the Commdor himself.
You've missed everything, and understood nothing.
Look, man, the Empire can replace nothing.
The Empire has always been a realm of colossal resources. They've calculated everything in planets, in stellar systems, in whole sectors of the Galaxy.
Their generators are gigantic because they thought in gigantic fashion.
"But we, -we, our little Foundation, our single world almost without metallic resources, -have had to work with brute economy.
Our generators have had to be the size of our thumb, because it was all the metal we could afford.
We had to develop new techniques and new methods, -techniques and methods the Empire can't follow because they have degenerated past the stage where they can make any really vital scientific advance.
"With all their nuclear shields, large enough to protect a ship, a city, an entire world; they could never build one to protect a single man.
To supply light and heat to a city, they have motors six stories high, -I saw them - where ours could fit into this room.
And when I told one of their nuclear specialists that a lead container the size of a walnut contained a nuclear generator, he almost choked with indignation on the spot.
"Why, they don't even understand their own colossi any longer. The machines work from generation to generation automatically, and the caretakers are a hereditary caste who would be helpless if a single D-tube in all that vast structure burnt out. "The whole war is a battle between those two systems, between the Empire and the Foundation; between the big and the little.
To seize control of a world, they bribe with immense ships that can make war, but lack all economic significance.
We, on the other hand, bribe with little things, useless in war, but vital to prosperity and profits.
"A king, or a Commdor, will take the ships and even make war.
Arbitrary rulers throughout history have bartered their subjects' welfare for what they consider honor, and glory, and conquest. But it's still the little things in life that count - and Asper Argo won't stand up against the economic depression that will sweep all Korell in two or three years."
Sutt was at the window, his back to Mallow and Jael.
It was early evening now, and the few stars that struggled feebly here at the very rim of the Galaxy sparked against the background of the misty, wispy Lens that included the remnants of that Empire, still vast, that fought against them.
Sutt said, "No. You are not the man."
"You don't believe me?"
"I mean I don't trust you.
You're smooth-tongued.