My Ishmael (Ishmael 3) - Page 29

“Last time you were here, you worked out what would happen if one tribe of Erratic Retaliators suddenly started playing Annihilator. Do you remember?”

“Yes. Their neighbors would eventually join forces to stop them.”

“That’s right, and ordinarily this would work perfectly well. Why didn’t it work against the Takers in the Fertile Crescent?”

“I assume it didn’t work there for the same reason it didn’t work here in the New World. The Takers were able to generate unlimited supplies of the stuff that wins wars. This made them unbeatable by tribal peoples, even working together.”

“Yes, that’s right. New circumstances can undermine any strategy, even if it’s worked flawlessly for a million years, and a tribe with virtually unlimited agricultural resources playing Annihilator was certainly something new. The Takers were irresistible, and this led them to imagine themselves to be the agents of human destiny itself. It still does, of course.”

“It sure does.”

“What I want to look at now is the revolution in its fiftieth year. The Takers have overrun four tribes to the north of them, called, let’s say, the Hullas, the Puala, the Cario, and the Albas. The Puala made most of their living by agriculture even before they were overrun by the Takers, so the change has been least stressful for them. The Hullas, by contrast, were hunter-gatherers who did only a minimum of what we would call agriculture. The Albas had been herder-collectors for some time. And the Cario had maintained a few staple crops that they supplemented by hunting and gathering. Before being overrun by the Takers, these tribes had coexisted in the usual way, giving as good as they got and occasionally initiating raids on one another. Just to be sure you haven’t forgotten, what is this Erratic Retaliator strategy in aid of?”

“In aid of?”

“Why do they have it? Why do they need any strategy at all?”

“They’re competitors. This strategy keeps them on an even footing with each other.”

“But the Takers put an end to the Erratic Retaliator game among them, because the program here is that the Hullas, the Puala, the Cario, and the Albas are now going to be Takers. That’s the way people are meant to live, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“So the Erratic Retaliator strategy is out the window for these peoples.”

“Right.”

“But what keeps them on an even footing with each other now?”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s a good question.… Maybe they don’t have anything to compete over?”

Ishmael nodded enthusiastically. “That’s a terribly interesting idea, Julie. How would that come about, do you suppose?”

“Well, they’re sort of all on the same side now.”

“In other words, perhaps tribalism was actually the cause of competition, rather than an evolved way of handling competition. With the disappearance of discrete tribes, competition just melts away, and peace on earth ensues.”

I told him I didn’t know about the peace-on-earth part.

“Let’s say you’re the Cario. It’s been a dry summer, Julie, and your neighbors to the north, the Hullas, have dammed a stream you use to irrigate your crops. Since you’re all on the same side now, do you just shrug and let your crops wither?”

“No.”

“So evidently being all on the same side doesn’t put an end to intraspecies competition after all. What do you do?”

“I guess I’d ask the Hullas to dismantle their dam.”

“Certainly. And they say no thanks. They’ve dammed the stream in order to irrigate their own crops.”

“Maybe they could sort of share the water.”

“They say they don’t care to. They need all the water they can get.”

“I could appeal to their sense of fair play.”

A heavy wheezing sound reached me through the glass and I looked up

to see Ishmael enjoying a good laugh. When he was finished, he said, “I trust you’re making a joke.”

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