Do Unto Others

by Mark Clifton

  Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction June 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  DO UNTO OTHERS

  BY MARK CLIFTON

  _Illustrated by Ed Emsh_

  ]

  _Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.... And the natives of Capella IV, philosophers at heart, were not ones to ignore the Golden Rule...._

  * * * * *

  My Aunt Mattie, Matthewa H. Tombs, is President of the Daughters ofTerra. I am her nephew, the one who didn't turn out well. ChristenedHapland Graves, after Earth President Hapland, a cousin by marriage,the fellows at school naturally called me Happy Graves.

  "Haphazard Graves, it should be," Aunt Mattie commented acidly thefirst time she heard it. It was her not very subtle way of remindingme of the way I lived my life and did things, or didn't do them. Sheshuddered at anything disorderly, which of course included me, and itwas her beholden duty to right anything which to her appeared wrong.

  "There won't be any evil to march on after you get through, AuntMattie," I once said when I was a child. I like now to think that evenat the age of six I must have mastered the straight face, but I'mafraid I was so awed by her that I was sincere.

  "That will do, Hapland!" she said sternly. But I think she knew Imeant it--then--and I think that was the day I became her favoritenephew. For some reason, never quite clear to me, she was my favoriteaunt. I think she liked me most because I was the cross she had tobear. I liked her most, I'm sure, because it was such a comfortableride.

  A few billions spent around the house can make things quitecomfortable.

  She had need of her billions to carry out her hobbies, or, as shecalled it, her "life's work." Aunt Mattie always spoke in clichesbecause people could understand what you meant. One of these hobbieswas her collection of flora of the universe. It was begun by hermaternal grandfather, one of the wealthier Plots, and increased as thefamily fortunes were increased by her father, one of the more ruthlessTombs, but it was under Aunt Mattie's supervision that it came, so tospeak, into full flower.

  "Love," she would say, "means more to a flower than all thescientific knowledge in the world." Apparently she felt that the smallarmy of gardeners, each a graduate specialist in duplicating the rightplanetary conditions, hardly mattered.

  The collection covered some two hundred acres in our grounds at thewest side of the house. Small, perhaps, as some of the more vulgardisplays by others go, but very, very choice.

  The other hobby, which she combines with the first, is equallyexpensive. She and her club members, the Daughters of Terra (D.T.s forshort), often find it necessary to take junkets on the family spaceyacht out to some distant planet--to straighten out reprehensibleconditions which have come to her attention. I usually went along totake care of--symbolically, at least--the bags and (their) baggage.

  My psychiatrist would say that expressing it in this way shows I havenever outgrown my juvenile attitudes. He says I am simply a case ofarrested development, mental, caused through too much over-shadowingby the rest of the family. He says that, like the rest of them, I haveinherited the family compulsion to make the universe over to my ownliking so I can pass it on to posterity with a clear conscience, andmy negative attitude toward this is simply a defense mechanism becauseI haven't had a chance to do it. He says I really hate my aunt's floracollection because I see it as a rival for her affection. I tell himif I have any resentments toward it at all it is for the long hoursspent in getting the latinized names of things drilled into me. I askhim why gardeners always insist on forcing long meaningless names uponnon-gardeners who simply don't care. He ignores that, and says thatsubconsciously I hate my Aunt Mattie because I secretly recognize thatshe is a challenge too great for me to overcome. I ask him why, if Isubconsciously hate Aunt Mattie, why I would care about how muchaffection she gives to her flora collection. He says, ahah! We aremaking progress.

  He says he can't cure me--of what, I'm never clear--until I find themeans to cut down and destroy my Aunt Mattie.

  This is all patent nonsense because Aunt Mattie is the rock, the firmfoundation in a universe of shifting values. Even her cliches areprecious to me because they are unchanging. On her, I can depend.

  He tells Aunt Mattie his diagnoses and conclusions, too. Unethical?Well now! Between a mere psychiatrist and my Aunt Mattie is there anydoubt about who shall say what is ethical?

  After one of their long conferences about me she calls me into herstudy, looks at me wordlessly, sadly, shakes her head, sighs--thensquares her shoulders until the shelf of her broad, although maiden,bosom becomes huge enough to carry any burden, even the burden of myalleged hate. This she bears bravely, even gratefully. I might resentthis needless pain the psychiatrist gives her, except that it reallyseems to make her happier in some obscure way.

  Perhaps she has some kind of guilt complex, and I am her deservedpunishment? Aunt Mattie with a guilt complex? Never! Aunt Mattie knowsshe is right, and goes ahead.

  So all his nonsense is completely ridiculous. I love my Aunt Mattie. Iadore my Aunt Mattie. I would never do anything to hurt my AuntMattie.

  Or, well, I didn't mean to hurt her, anyway. All I did was wink. Ionly meant....

  * * * * *

  We were met at the space port of Capella IV by the planetadministrator, himself, one John J. McCabe.

  It was no particular coincidence that I knew him. My school wasprogressive. It admitted not only the scions of the establishedfamilies but those of the ambitious families as well. Its graduates,naturally, went into the significant careers. Johnny McCabe was one ofthe ambitious ones. We hadn't been anything like bosom pals at school;but he'd been tolerant of me, and I'd admired him, and fitfully toldmyself I should be more like him. Perhaps this was the reason AuntMattie had insisted on this particular school, the hope that some ofthe ambition would rub off on me.

  Capella IV wasn't much of a post, not even for the early stages in ayoung man's career, although, socially, it was perhaps the bestbeginning Johnny's family could have expected. It was a small planet,entirely covered by salt. Even inside the port bubble with itsduplication of Earth atmosphere, the salt lay like a permanent snowscene. Actually it was little more than a way station along the spaceroute out in that direction, and Johnny's problems were little morethan the problems of a professional host at some obscure resort. Butno doubt his dad spoke pridefully of "My son, a planet administrator,"and when I called on the family to tell them I'd visited their son, Iwouldn't be one to snitch.

  There was doubt in my mind that even Johnny's ambition could make theplanet into anything more than it was already. It had nothing wewanted, or at least was worth the space freight it would cost to shipit. The natives had never given us any trouble, and, up until now, wehadn't given them any. So Earth's brand upon it was simply a smallbubble enclosing a landing field, a hangar for checkup and repair ofships requiring an emergency landing, some barracks for the men andwomen of the port personnel, a small hotel to house stranded spacepassengers while repairs were made to their ship, or stray V.I.P.'s.

  A small administration building flying Federated Earth flag, and awarehouse to contain supplies, which had to be shipped in, completedthe installation. The planet furnished man nothing but water pumpedfrom deep in the rock strata beneath the salt, and even that had to betreated to remove enough of the saline content to make it
usable. Atthe time, I didn't know what the natives, outside our bubble, livedon. The decision to come had been a sudden one, and I hadn't had morethan enough time to call the State Department to find out who theplanet administrator might be.

  I was first out of the yacht and down the landing steps to the saltcovered ground. Aunt Mattie was still busy giving her ship captain hisinstructions, and possibly inspecting the crew's teeth to see ifthey'd brushed them this morning. The two members of her specialcommittee of the D.T.'s who'd come along, a Miss Point and a Mrs.Waddle, naturally would be standing at her sides, and a half pace tothe rear, to be of assistance should she need them in dealing withmales.

  There was a certain stiff formality in the way McCabe, flanked by hisown two selected subordinates, approached the ship--until I turnedaround at the foot of the steps and he recognized me.

  "Hap!" he yelled, then. "Happy