Various Fiction

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Various Fiction Page 92

by Robert Sheckley


  “That shouldn’t be difficult. There is no such thing as an inferior race.”

  “They taught you that in school. Proving it is something else. All right, we might as well prepare a philosophical brief, to begin with.”

  He pressed two buttons on his desk. A stenographer hurried in, pad and pencil ready. She was followed by the interpreter, leading an Aingo.

  The Chief walked three complete circles around the sorry-looking little creature, frowning deeply.

  “Take it away,” he said to the interpreter. “What am I supposed to do with this? Take it away and bring me the biggest, fattest, happiest one you can find.”

  “This is the best of the bunch,” the interpreter said apologetically. “That hangdog look is muscular configuration, not emotional. And they all stoop like that. The snuffling seems to be a hereditary rather than—”

  “All right,” the Chief cut in impatiently. “Let’s get on with it. Ask him how he feels about being snatched off his planet.”

  THE interpreter questioned, they listened carefully to the Aingo’s answering squeal. “He says he feels very grateful, sir.” The Chief looked surprised. “No indignation, eh?” He turned to the stenographer. “Put down, ‘Peaceful, cooperative attitude. A genuine sign of moral sufficiency.’ Now ask him why he’s grateful.”

  “He says he’s grateful because the Delgens made them stop fighting each other.”

  The Chief rubbed his bald head worriedly. “Do they fight often?”

  “All the time,” the interpreter replied sadly.

  The Chief said to the stenographer, “Scratch that first out. Now write, ‘Bold, combative attitude, well suited to face independently the problems of everyday existence’.”

  Sims cleared his throat. “Ask him if many are killed when they fight.”

  “No one is ever killed,” was the translation. “We don’t fight very well.”

  The Chief gave Sims a look of sheer bafflement. “Scratch it out,” he told the stenographer. “Ask the Aingo what it wants.”

  “Nothing,” was the answer.

  “Aha! Write, ‘Desire to be left in peace, to continue all-important spiritual growth.’ ”

  The Aingo squealed anxiously for several seconds.

  “But they don’t want to be left alone,” the interpreter said. “It seems they get very lonely and nervous.”

  “Do they want to be slaves?”

  The Aingo thought carefully before answering.

  “They don’t care,” the interpreter said.

  The Chief said to the stenographer, “Put down, ‘Passive resistance, an almost saintly spirit of gentle reproach against the overbearing Delgens, the culmination of long years of—”

  The Aingo squealed again.

  “He says they might like being slaves,” the interpreter explained. “He says the Delgens are strong and masterful, and strong and masterful people should rule weak and inferior people.”

  “He said that, did he?” the Chief roared.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get him out of here! Get him out before I brain him! These damned people want to be slaves. They deserve to be slaves. But they aren’t going to be slaves!” The stenographer asked, “Shall I type any of this?”

  “Throw it all out,” the Chief said. “Sims, get the specialists to work. This case comes up pretty soon and we have to find some grounds for Aingo equality.” He turned to the interpreter, who was standing near the door. “Get that damned spiritless animal out of here! I don’t see what the Delgens want them for!”

  The Aingo smiled as it was led out. It evidently enjoyed being shouted at.

  SIMS was given the job of organizing the reports of the various specialists. Their findings were depressing.

  Physically, the Aingoes seemed to be an error of nature. They had poor eyesight and defective hearing, faulty coordination and inferior musculature. Almost any disease could floor them, and did. They matured rapidly—if their habitual state of imbecility could be called maturity—and died rapidly. They should have had a life span of twenty to thirty years. Instead, the average Aingo was fortunate if he lived five.

  Ecologically, the findings were all negative. On the one hand, the Aingoes seemed incapable of imposing even the most rudimentary civilization on even the gentlest planet. On the other hand, they were unable to exist either independently, symbiotically or parasitically, in a natural state.

  Mentally, no test could be devised that would rate them above ingratiating imbecile. Their perceptions were slow. They had no true emotions except for a feeble antagonism toward their own kind. They had no ambition; that drive was replaced by a vague uneasiness and an evident desire to be taken care of.

  They had nothing resembling morals or morality.

  But Sims did discover what the Delgens wanted them for.

  It seemed that the Aingoes could climb trees and therefore pick fruit in the great orchards of Delge.

  “That’s everything,” Sims said, handing in the last of his reports.

  The Chief scanned it briefly and dropped it on his desk.

  “Is there anything we can use?” Sims asked.

  “Not a thing,” the Chief said. “We just don’t have a case.”

  “If I hadn’t let the Delgen fleet go to the planet Moira—”

  “It wouldn’t have made any difference. The law is still based on the relative-inferiority rulings. Any court, no matter how favorably disposed, would have to find against us.”

  But Sims couldn’t forgive himself for the mistake he had made. Things might have been different on Danton IV.

  He went over the whole situation again in his mind—the forty-two pips on the radar, the contact with the Delgen fleet, the talk with Captain Olche . . .

  “Wait a minute!” Sims burst out. “Isn’t there a law against removing an indigenous people from their planet for the purpose of exploitation?”

  “There is,” the Chief said. “But it’s easily circumvented. If the Delgens left a sizable percentage of Aingoes on the planet as I assume they did—”

  “They claimed they didn’t!”

  “Hmm. Let’s see. The Delgens said that they rescued the Aingoes. Their statement implies that conditions on the Aingo planet were too dangerous to support life. If we can show otherwise, if we can prove unnatural interference—”

  Sims stood up. “I’ll leave right now.”

  “The court sits tomorrow,” the Chief said. “I’ve asked for endocrine readings. That should stall them for a few days.”

  “I’ll find something,” Sims promised.

  “You’d better,” the Chief told him.

  IN the Council Cutter, Sims arrived at LG 34232-2, the unnamed planet of the Aingoes. He took photographs and readings of the Aingo sun and atmosphere readings of the planet. He radioed this data back to Headquarters, then swung low over the planet, searching for signs of habitation.

  The Aingo planet was smaller than Mars; it seemed to be almost entirely ocean, bordered by jungle areas. He found no intelligent life.

  Sims conducted a painstaking search over the most temperate of the land masses. Still there was nothing to see except small, frightened animal and bird life.

  The Delgens had removed every one of the Aingoes.

  He landed the ship for a closer look at the planet. In the jungle, he found a profusion of animal and bird life and myriad insects. Nothing seemed particularly menacing. The vegetation was lush and varied; some of it, presumably, was edible.

  He radioed the Chief. “This appears to be a completely livable planet,” he reported. “A little hot and damp for comfort, but certainly not dangerous.”

  “Have you found any signs of villages?” the Chief demanded. “I’m still looking.”

  “Good. You may come across something. We’ll need it, too. The court has ruled against any more physical evidence on the Aingoes. They say they’ve seen enough.”

  “Can you stall them any longer?”

  “I couldn’t stall them at
all. The case has been running for only two days, but it’s drawing to a close—against us. Still, the Council is hunting through all our data. They may pull something out of the hat.”

  “I’ll let you know when I find something,” Sims said, and signed off.

  He slept aboard his ship, and the next morning began a search of the temperate zone at treetop level. He found nothing. The next day he was out again.

  At noon, he spotted a little irregularity in the jungle, a patch less thick than the rest. He landed and went to it on foot.

  IT was jungle, like all the rest.

  But the growth was sparser, the trees smaller, greener, less massive. The patch had a certain regularity which was out of place in the irregular and asymetrical jungle. Looking it over, Sims felt sure that civilization had been responsible for this growth, not nature.

  He walked to the center and began to dig.

  Half a foot down, he found shards of pottery and a shattered gourd. These fragments appeared of very recent origin.

  Two feet down, he found a bronze fork.

  Five feet down, he found a piece of shiny blue plastic. He stared at it for a long time.

  Pottery, baked from clay, is a primitive skill. The production of bronze is not so simple. Tin and copper of some purity must be alloyed in the proper quantities. Bronze marks the beginnings of the science of metallurgy. And plastics are even more complex. Before you can make a bit of shiny blue plastic, you must have a genuine technology.

  At some time in their history, the Aingoes had had this technology!

  To judge by what he had found, they had retrogressed, sinking finally below the basic village stage. They had retreated from civilization. But perhaps the retreat had not been unaided.

  Someone like the Delgens, plowing the Aingo villagers under, assisting the rapid jungle to hide any evidence of former glories or future promise.

  The standby on the radio blared, and Sims hurried to answer it.

  “Sims,” the Chief said, “I want you off that planet at once.”

  “I can’t leave yet,” Sims protested. “I’ve found evidence of unnatural interference. It can’t be refuted. It’s absolutely—”

  “I’m giving you a direct order. You are to leave immediately.”

  “But, Chief!” Sims cried. “The evidence—”

  “We analyzed the data you sent on the Aingo sun. It’s prenova, Sims, and radiating like a bomb! It can flash at any moment!”

  “Then the Delgen rescue mission—”

  “Was technically a rescue mission.”

  “And the case?”

  “It closed a few hours ago. The Moira courts declared the Aingoes an inferior race, suitable for enslavement.”

  BACK at headquarters, Sims dumped all his evidence on the Chief’s desk. “Look at it! We can appeal, can’t we? Take the case to a higher court?”

  “We aren’t going to appeal,” the Chief said.

  “Rescuing a person doesn’t give anyone a right to enslave him,” Sims said angrily. “Now we’ve got something to base an appeal on.”

  “We aren’t going to appeal. That’s orders.”

  “Your orders?”

  “Orders from the Council.

  They checked all the physical data on the Aingoes and decided not to fight the case any further.” Sims was so shocked, he sat down without being asked. “But why?” he demanded.

  “Don’t ask me,” the Chief said gloomily.

  “Do they think the Aingoes really should be enslaved, that it would be best, under the circumstances?”

  “The Council isn’t in the habit of explaining its decisions to its clerks, janitors, secretaries, or anybody else. Kindly stop asking me questions. You did a fine job, Sims. Now forget it.”

  “I resign,” Sims said.

  “I don’t accept your resignation.” The Chief glared angrily at him. “Do you think the Aingoes are the only race in the Galaxy? It’s the others we’ve got to worry about, because there’s really going to be trouble now. Get your ship checked out.”

  Sims saluted stiffly and hurried out to his ship.

  A SWARM of journalists descended on Delge IV and a flood of books was written on the first authorized slavery in the Confederacy.

  A steady stream of beautiful garden products continued to be shipped from Delge.

  If there is one thing typical of would-be slavers, it is that they won’t sit back and envy a successful slaver’s good luck. All over the Confederacy, planets short of labor and without funds for machinery tried to turn the precedent into a rule, just as the Chief had predicted.

  The courts were choked with cases. Sims, along with the other Council agents, was furiously busy tracking down evidence to break them.

  “We can’t let another Aingo case happen again,” the Chief said. “If it does, we’re sunk. I want every single one smashed . . . and smashed flat!”

  It took trickery and sometimes bloodshed to get the evidence, but the agents brought it back. The Council scientists discovered and the Council lawyers proved example after example of drugging, hypnosis and memory-erasure on a mass scale.

  The trick, of course, had been to make intended slave races as nearly like the Aingoes as possible. The counter-measure was to find out how it was done in each instance. Knowing what to look for, the scientists won every time, though a few cases looked hopeless right up to the last moment.

  Sims was called back to Headquarters. He was exhausted, but the Chief and the others looked close to collapse. They were all haggard, edgy, worried.

  “We can’t go on like this,” the Chief said. “The slavers know how busy we’re kept, so they’re increasing the pressure. We’re bound to slip up sooner or later and then they’ll have us.”

  “We could add more agents,” said Sims, “hire more scientists and lawyers.”

  “Budget,” the Chief replied wearily. “We don’t have the money. You can’t ask people to work for nothing.”

  “There are some who will.” The Chief looked unbelievingly at him. “Who, for instance?”

  “People we helped escape slavery. Pick the smartest, train them—”

  “I’m ahead of you,” said the Chief, jumping to his feet. “And I’ve got just the man to take charge of the training program.”

  “You have? Who?”

  “You,” the Chief said.

  “But I’m needed out in the field,” Sims objected. “My sector is falling behind schedule.”

  “We all are. Get busy and maybe we can beat back this damned assault.”

  SIMS pushed through whole classes of agents; the races that had escaped enslavement were eager to cooperate and many of their representatives were bright as well as eager. Some were not, though, and they were added as brawn, which was needed more and more as the battle grew tougher and more audacious. The courts weren’t choked any more; they were nearly drowned in the tidal wave of cases. Sims had no solution for this, nor did anyone else.

  “That’s the loophole they’ll get us by,” said the Chief gloomily. “We’re through, or will be in a little while. I’ve been going on the principle that a good general never knows when he’s licked, but I’d have to be a complete idiot not to recognize an absolutely hopeless situation when I see one. I’m just praying the Dark Ages don’t last too long, once they descend on us.”

  It was then that a call came through from Delge. When the Chief took it, his face brightened and his back grew straight and proud again.

  “Get a ship ready, Sims,” he snapped out in his old brisk style. “There’s a petition for a change of status on Delge.”

  Sims rocked back, astonished. “You mean those miserable Aingo runts are rioting?”

  “Worse,” the Chief grinned cheerfully.

  Sims was baffled all the way to Delge.

  Upon landing, they were met by a delegation of towering seven-foot Delgens. Even before they left the ship, the Delgens were shouting:

  “—won’t stand for it!”

  “—no jus
tice in the Galaxy!”

  “—doublecrossed by the Council!”

  Then a solitary Aingo appeared—simply appeared—out of the empty air. Physically, he was the same as Sims remembered, but as tall now as the Delgens and there was something almost overwhelming about his confident bearing.

  “Quiet!” the Aingo ordered. The Delgens instantly became silent.

  “I beg forgiveness,” the Aingo said diplomatically. “I should have had them penned before your arrival. They’re such vociferous beasts—”

  “Penned?” Sims repeated blankly.

  “Of course. We keep the slaves penned when they aren’t working. They taught us the practice when the situation was reversed.”

  “But I thought . . . What the hell has happened here?”.

  “I think your superior should explain that.”

  THE Chief was grinning satisfiedly. “You don’t get it?”

  “Am I supposed to?” Sims asked in confusion.

  “No. The Council didn’t, either, till the Aingoes radioed us for a change of status—”

  “The Aingoes did?”

  “Sure. Their race was going through a period of high mutational change. It began as a retrogression, a rapid sinking from civilization to savagery, as a result of the radiation from their prenova sun. The Delgens found them at the absolute null.”

  “And then the mutation reversed itself,” Sims finished dazedly, “as soon as they were out of the radiation field. Well, there’s no problem. We just get the court to throw out the slavery decision.”

  “It’s not that simple,” said the Chief. “The Aingoes want to enslave the Delgens now!”

  “What?”

  “All right, we made a mistake,” a Delgen plucked up enough courage to protest. “But that’s no reason to enslave us.”

  “You are an inferior race,” the Aingo pointed out. “Can you transpose instantaneously? Can you grommich? Can you stel?” The Delgen looked humiliated. “No, but still it’s wrong to enslave us.”

  “Wrong? Oh, no question of it. But since it’s in a good cause, you will remain slaves until we decide otherwise—if we ever do. Now back to your pens!”

 

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