Page 29 of Safe Enough

“But the big owners had hundreds of slaves. Suppose they all slacked off, just a tiny percentage each? A hogshead here, a hogshead there, weeds in the fields, crops planted too late to get the rain? Then what?”

The man in the shackles didn’t answer.

Socrates said, “I have more than hundreds of associates. I have thousands ultimately. Suppose they all made small mistakes?”

“Can’t help it. I try hard.”

“I’m sure you do. But what if all of you were as sloppy?”

“It was a small amount.”

“As was a single hogshead of sugar.”

“That’s my point. And it was a genuine mistake.”

“So you want me to show mercy?”

“Please.”

“But then what about the power of example?”

“It was a mistake. That’s all.”

Socrates stepped over to the corner of the room and picked up the gas can. It was made of red metal, and it had an angled spout. The liquid inside sloshed and moved and exhaled vapor and made thin keening sounds as tiny waves broke against the inside walls. Socrates hefted it high and stepped back to the shackled man and tipped it like a teapot and drizzled a thin stream over the man’s head. The man moved, and the stream bathed the hollows above his collarbones and his neck and his back. The man gasped, like the gas was very cold or like he was very afraid or both. Socrates kept it going a full thirty seconds, the best part of another gallon. Then he returned the can to the corner of the room and started walking circles again.

He said, “It was my money, not yours.”

The man in the shackles said, “I apologize.”

“For what?”

“For the mistake.”

“Do you think an apology is enough?”

“Yes.”

“Convince me.”

The man in the shackles took a deep breath, fully aware that what came next would be crucial. He said, “Any process has inefficiencies at the edges. With the sugar, you know, some of it must have gotten spilled. Some of the liquid must have leaked. It’s inevitable. You can’t drive yourself crazy, looking for perfection.”

“Now you’re worried about my spiritual welfare?”

“I’m just saying. There are going to be losses. And mistakes. You can’t worry about all of them.”

“I don’t,” Socrates said. “Not all of them. Because you’re right. One hundred percent perfection is impossible. Therefore, I set realistic targets.”

“Then we’re okay.”

“No,” Socrates said. “We’re not okay. Because you exceeded the target. Three hundred grand, maybe four, that’s within the margin. But you took five. That’s outside the margin.”

“But you’ve got billions. You’re a very rich man.”

“Actually, I’m an unbelievably rich man.”

“So a mistake about half a million is like losing a dime under the sofa cushion.”

Socrates took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, took a cigarette from the pack, and put it between his lips. He held his lighter in his hand. It was a plastic Bic, shaped like a cylinder, disposable, nothing fancy. He didn’t spark it up. He just played with it, rotating it fast between his fingers, like a tiny twirling baton. He said, “One assumes that physiologically sugar is important to the human organism in small quantities, but that those small quantities were extremely hard to find in nature so that the craving had to be correspondingly huge and permanent. That’s what those old British plantation owners found, anyway. They sold all the sugar they could produce. Demand didn’t fall away, even after people were getting enough. They became addicted to sweetness.”

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