“You forget that I’m an active officer in the Fleet and you’re a civilian.”
“There’s no law that prevents an officer from trading on his own account.”
“As a matter of fact, there is such a law.”
“Oh, that,” Owen said. “No one pays any attention to that old statute anymore.”
“I do,” Frank said.
“That’s what I like about you, Frank,” Owen said. “You’re honest and that means I can trust you. That’s why I’m going to put thirty-one L5 engine components into the hold of your scoutship and not even ask you to sign a piece of paper. I know you, Frank, and I know you’ll be honest with me on this matter.”
“I’m not taking your engines,” Frank said, “and that’s that.”
“Are you so afraid of doing a humanitarian deed?”
“Since when is selling engines for you a humanitarian deed?”
“It’s selling engines for us and it’s humanitarian because those poor Saurians need all the help they can get.”
“Why not just give them the engines, then?”
“Because I had to pay for them,” Owen said. “I won’t be able to keep up my good deeds unless I get paid for them.”
Frank saw nothing strange in this proposition. The self-serving nature of it disturbed him, however. “I don’t like the idea of making a profit on people’s misery,” Frank said.
“Then give your percentage to charity,” Owen said. “Just make sure I get mine. Seriously, Frank, you’ll be helping the Saurians in the only really tangible way you can. You’ll be giving them a chance to defend themselves and a way to strike back at the Ichtons.”
Frank didn’t much like it, but he found the logic inescapable. Thinking it over, it seemed to him that by selling the engine parts to the Saurians he would be doing something for them. And it was perfectly in line with his orders to warn the Saurians of their imminent danger of attack. So he could follow Owen’s scheme, do his duty, and also provide for himself in his old age. What was wrong with making a profit? Everybody else did it! Why should he hold out? And as for becoming a partner with Owen Staging, well, what was wrong with that? He could do a lot worse He had done a lot worse most of his adult life, serving in the Fleet.
“All right,” Frank said. “I’ll do it.”
Owen Staging stuck out a meaty red hand. “Put her there, partner.”
Luminos was a small planet in the region of the galactic center. Although close to its neighbors, it was far enough from the next planet bearing intelligent life to require a full-fledged space era technology for trading and cultural exchange. This technology the Saurians of Luminos had not yet achieved, though they were right on the verge of it when the Alliance contacted them.
On Luminos, even electrical generators were still fairly recent developments. The Saurians were only one or two generations away from gas lighting.
After a long boring trip in space, the planet became visible on Frank’s viewscreen as a blue and green globe, laced with stringy veils of white cloud. Frank began radioing while still well out to space. He got no response. He turned toward the planet’s surface, moving in a shallow deceleration curve. Soon he could pick out cities and roadways, the usual indicators of civilization. The Saurians still weren’t making any attempt to communicate with him, nor had they responded to his own broadcasts.
As Frank piloted his scoutship down low through the atmosphere, his radio finally crackled into life. A voice demanded in the Southhoe dialect used by many races of the Star Central region, “Who is that?”
Frank identified himself as an officer of the Fleet, detached from the Hawking and sent to the planet Luminos as a special messenger bearing important news.
There was a stunned silence at the other end. A Saurian said, “Just a minute . . .” There was a delay of several minutes. Frank continued to decelerate. It was a bit of a bore, having to go through all this confusion, but that was how it often was with races that had little experience with others not of their kind. Every race that came to spacefaring went through the shock of discovering other forms of intelligent life where before they had thought they were alone. This was bad enough. What was worse was discovering that these other forms of intelligent life often brought with them problems nobody was ready for. This seemed to be the case with the Saurians.
The Saurian came back on the air. “Just a minute, I’m getting my orders . . .” There was another delay, then the Saurian said, “We’re putting aside a special landing area for you. We are calling officials from all over the planet to be present for your arrival.”
“No need for all that,” Frank said. “I come with news of an urgent situation that I need to bring to the attention of any responsible official.”
“Don’t tell me about it,” the voice said. “I’m just an aircraft landing officer.”
Down on the ground, huge crowds had gathered. They were overflowing all the runways except the one assigned to Frank, where a cordon of uniformed police kept a semblance of order. After landing and closing down his engines, Frank allowed small tracked vehicles to approach his craft. They maneuvered the scoutship to a section of the field where a reviewing stand had been placed and grandstands hastily erected. The crowd was already in place when Frank finally emerged. A covering of royal velvet led from his spaceship to the most elaborately decorated spot on the reviewing stand. Frank walked down this and was greeted by a small, splendidly dressed group of Saurians.
At first Frank and the Saurians just looked at each other, because they were physically quite unalike. Frank looked like a typical man. The Saurians looked like typical dogs of the Airedale variety, with a bit of hyena thrown in for good measure, and with opposable thumbs on a fingered hand rather than the claws more common among the canine species. Frank was not prejudiced toward creatures of shapes other than his. Multiplicity had long been the rule in the great assembly of star-roving peoples. The Saurians, however, were new to the situation, and they gawked at Frank and passed comments among themselves in lowered voices, which, nonetheless, Frank heard and understood.
“Looks like he’s descended from a monkey, don’t you think?”
“Yes, or possibly a baboon.”
“I wonder what color his ass is?”
“Jethro, not so loud, he’ll hear you!”
These Saurians and their boorish comments were about what you’d expect from an unsophisticated new race first encountering one of the high galactic civilizations.
Meanwhile, the opening ceremony looked like it was becoming a flop. The Saurians stood around in their splendid uniforms and looked uncomfortable and unsure what to do next. Frank had been trained for these situations. He took two steps forward, raised his right hand with the fingers opened in a universal gesture of peace, and said in a clear voice, “Hello, I am a friendly messenger from a place beyond your sky. You do know about other races in the galaxy, don’t you?”
“We’ve heard,” the eldest of the Saurians said. “But we still do not entirely believe.”
“Better believe it,” Frank said. “There are many worlds out there, and many different kinds of people, and not all of them are friendly. In fact—”
He stopped. The eldest Saurian had raised a hand in a universal gesture that asked for a pause or break or change of venue.
“Yes,” Frank said. “What’s the matter?”
“It sounds,” the Saurian said “as if you have a serious matter to discuss.”
“Yes, if you consider an approaching race of venomous insects a serious matter.”
“I must ask you,” the Saurian said, “not to say anything about that at this time.”
“Why ever not?” Frank asked.
“What we have here is a stranger-welcoming ceremony. That must be completed. Then we can turn to the information-disseminating phase of our relationship. Also, you can’t tell the information because there is no one present to tell it to.”
“There’s you,” Frank pointed out.
�
��I am what we call in our own language a hectator second class. That means I take trash in and out of buildings. You simply do not give official messages to someone like me.”
“Suppose I tell one of these fellows,” Frank said, indicating the other two Saurians.
“No,” the hectator said. “They are my assistants, which is to say, even less than nothing.”
“Surely I can tell someone! What about all these people here?” Frank indicated the big crowd of alert hyena-headed Airedales in the reviewing stand, watching the proceedings with the greatest sign of interest.
“Audiences always turn up when something happens,” the hectator said. “They come for the show. But they aren’t going to listen to you. It’s not their job.”
“Look,” Frank said, “I’ve got to give my information to someone and get out of here.”
“It’s a problem,” the hectator said. He thought for a minute. “You could always write it out, and I’ll see that it gets to someone who knows what to do with it.”
Frank was tempted. This assignment didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. But it was his duty to make sure that the Saurians really understood about the Ichton danger. Besides, there were the spaceship engines he’d taken aboard for Owen. Now that he had overcome his qualms about selling them, he was suddenly interested in doing so. He could really use some money for his retirement. Selling the L5s presented a fairly honorable way of earning it. He just needed to be patient.
“I’m going back to my ship now,” Frank said. “I want to tell my information to someone quick. Otherwise I’ll broadcast it to your capital city through my loudspeakers.”
Hectator said, “That would never do. No one would listen. The officials always interpret and explain matters of any importance for the people.”
“But this is urgent!”
“Oh. In that case, wait right here. I’ll go find out what they want to do.”
The hectator went away and whispered with a small group of Saurians at one side of the reception platform. After a while the hectator came back.
“They said they’d send someone to talk to you tomorrow.”
“But didn’t you tell them this is urgent?”
“They said that they’re not prepared to accept your unsupported word on that this early in the game.”
The next morning an official came to call on him. Before Frank could speak, the official raised one pink-fingered paw.
“You must understand,” the official said, “we officials don’t really run anything. Luminos is an anarchy with no one really in charge. But people like to have rulers they can follow when that seems the best way to go, and blame when the officials turn out to be wrong. So we appoint people. It makes things easier.”
“Your local arrangements are no concern of mine. I’ve brought news of the utmost urgency.”
“So I gather. But I’m not the one to tell it to.”
“That’s what the hectator said.”
“And very correctly, too. What would we do with mere hectators running the government?”
“Why can’t I tell it to you?”
“Because I’m not supposed to be told anything important.”
“Who is?”
“I think you’d better speak with Rahula.”
Over the next few days Frank learned that the Saurians had many ceremonies of an extremely boring nature and he was supposed to be the centerpiece of all of them. They mainly involved a lot of bowing and posturing, all of it performed with fixed smiles on everyone’s faces. The Saurians were extremely cautious, though perhaps “suspicious” would be a better word. It was obvious that they were not a sophisticated people. They kept sneaking looks at Frank, like they couldn’t quite believe he was there. Their newspapers had front-page stories about him, getting all the details wrong and pointing out in tedious detail how Frank was a sample of man from the future and going into endless specious detail on how the Saurians stacked up against him. All in all, it looked like the Saurians were having a bad case of culture shock.
From the first minute of his arrival Frank was trying to get the Saurians to discuss the Ichton situation with him. But they didn’t want to talk official business or to get down to anything important. “Look,” they told him, “don’t get us wrong, it’s a very great pleasure to have you here with us. We’re really honored, if you know what we mean, but before we can discuss interstellar matters we need to finish the new interstellar conference hall. Then we’ll have a place worthy of receiving an ambassador like yourself. Believe me, we want to consider your important tidings just as soon as we are set up for it.”
“Look,” Frank told them, “this matter of the Ichtons, it won’t wait . . .”
But they wouldn’t listen. They would just smile and back away from his presence, leaving him finally talking to himself. Othnar Rahula was the only one who would even pretend to listen to him.
Othnar Rahula was a member of the Saurian aristocracy and was in every way a being to be reckoned with. He was handsome as Saurians go. His ears were always cocked attentively, a sign of good breeding in man and beast alike.
Rahula was affable but there was a mystery about him. Frank couldn’t figure out what sort of job he held or what his position was in the Saurian scheme of things. He seemed to be important, and other Saurians were in awe of him, but he never seemed to do anything. It was not polite to ask directly, so Frank decided to put some questions to the Saurian servant who brought his dinner.
“What government post does Rahula hold?” he asked Dramhood, the servant.
“Government post?” Dramhood was puzzled.
“All the government officials seem to defer to Rahula’s opinion. Yet he doesn’t seem to have an official function.”
“I understand what you mean,” Dramhood said. “Rahula has a function, but it’s a natural one, not an official one.”
“What is it?”
“Rahula is this year’s official Exemplifier for the Saurian race.”
Upon further questioning, Frank learned that the Saurians worked on a role-model system. Every year the high priests of the culture, duly elected by newspaper vote, went to an ancient monastery high in the mountains, there to confer and decide who would become this year’s role model for the inhabitants of Luminos. Rahula was that year’s standard-bearer of cultural self-identity, the one the other Saurians wanted to model themselves on.
This custom, Frank learned, had some interesting consequences. What the role model did was what everyone wanted to do. What he believed quickly became what everyone believed. What he thought was what was on everyone’s mind, and what he considered unimportant hardly counted at all.
After a week on Luminos, Frank had been unable to get any response to his threats and warnings about the Ichtons. His mention of the spaceship engines he wanted to sell had met with polite disinterest. This led Frank to conjecture that the Saurians had by no means reached their full intellectual potential yet. In fact, as Othnar Rahula remarked one afternoon, sitting in the cabin of Frank’s scoutship, where Frank had asked him for tea, “We’ve just entered into the idea of even having a potential. We’ve just discovered intellect and all of its pleasures. It’s like we’ve just woken up onto the stage of galactic history and here you come telling us we’re in danger.”
Frank said, “I’m sorry if your intellect is taking a beating by discovering you’re not the only kids on the block.”
“I understand your metaphor,” Rahula said. “I think it does not apply in our case. Or, perhaps, it does. I don’t know. I just know that it’s pretty shoddy when you come here from a superior civilization and tell us that we are about to be wiped out by a race of large carnivorous insects.”
“So you were paying attention to what I’ve been talking about all week!” Frank said.
“Yes, of course. But frankly, Frank, your news is too important to take seriously. Besides, I mean, if it’s so important to do something, why don’t you sentient beings with battle fleets do something about
it?”
“Maybe I haven’t somehow made myself clear,” Frank said. “We, the allied forces, are doing everything about it that we can. The war has been going on for years. Either we destroy the Ichtons or they wipe us out.”
“Well, it may be as you say,” Rahula said in a tone that left no doubt as to his uncertainties.
“You simply are not acting in a realistic manner,” Frank said.
“Is that what you asked me here for?”
Frank shook his head. “The real reason I’ve invited you to my ship is to try to convince you of the emergency one last time.”
“It’s easier for us to believe you’re mistaken in your facts about the Ichtons,” Rahula said, “or that you are drunken or drugged or a crazy person. It is very difficult for us to think that our entire race may be going down the tubes in a couple of weeks due to an alien invasion we can’t do anything about. If the Ichtons come, we will bargain with them. We are a clever people. We will come out all right.”
“Your strategy of bargaining,” Frank said, “is based upon a delusion. I have something to show you.” Frank touched a button on the scoutship’s switchboard. Well-oiled motors sprang into instant hum. Rahula sat up, startled. The great tuft of silky blond hair that depended from a knob in the center of his forehead rustled with the sound almost that of a snake shedding a skin.
“You have started the ship’s engines!” he said.
“I’m taking you for a little ride,” Frank told him.
The spacecraft doors clanged shut. Machinery hummed into life. Red and green lights flashed, then steadied.
“I don’t want to go for a ride!”
The generators kicked in, and a low throbbing replaced the sudden, high-pitched whine of servos. Lights flashed on the banks of dials above the instrument panel. There was a soft chittering sound as circuits opened and closed.
Rahula said, “You must let me out of this ship at once. I have a luncheon appointment in fifteen minutes.”
“You’re going to see what I want to show you,” Frank said. “Think you can bargain with these guys? I’m going to give you an idea of what it means for a planet to come up against the Ichton horde.”
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