It was a great rock statue of a female of Earth. She was broad-shouldered, full-bosomed, wide-hipped, and wore voluminous skirts that came right down to her heavy-soled shoes. Her back was a little bent, her head a little bowed, and her face was hidden in her hands, deep in her toil-worn hands. Rdina tried in vain to gain some glimpse of the tired features behind those hiding hands. He looked at her a long while before his eyes lowered to read the script beneath, ignoring the Earth-lettering, running easily over the flowing Martian curlicues:
Weep, my country, for your sons asleep,
The ashes of your homes, your tottering towers.
Weep, my country, O, my country, weep!
For birds that cannot sing, for vanished, flowers,
The end of everything,
The silenced hours.
Weep! my country.
There was no signature. Rdina mulled it through many minutes while the others remained passive. Then he turned to Speedy, pointed to the Martian script.
“Who wrote this?”
“One of your people. He is dead.”
“Ah!” said Rdina. “That songbird of Skhiva’s. I have forgotten his name. I doubt whether many remember it. He was only a very small poet. How did he die?”
“He ordered us to enclose him for some long and urgent sleep he must have, and—”
“The amafa” put in Rdina, comprehendingly. “And then?”
“We did as he asked. He warned us that he might never come out.” Speedy gazed at the sky unconscious that Rdina was picking up his sorrowful thoughts. “He has been there nearly two years and has not emerged.” The eyes came down to Rdina. “I don’t know whether you can understand me, but he was one of us.”
“I think I understand.” Rdina was thoughtful. He asked, “How long is this period you call nearly two years?”
They managed to work it out between them, translating it from Terran to Martian time-terms,
“It is long,” pronounced Rdina. “Much longer than the usual amafa, but not unique. Occasionally, for no known reason, someone takes even longer. Besides, Earth is Earth and Mars is Mars.” He became swift, energetic as he called to one of his crew. “Physician Traith, we have a prolonged amafa case. Get your oils and essences and come with me.” When the other had returned, he said to Speedy, “Take us to where he sleeps.” Reaching the door to the walled-up cave, Rdina paused to look at the names fixed upon it in neat but incomprehensible letters. They read: DEAR DEVIL.
“What do those mean?” asked Physician Traith, pointing.
“Do not disturb,” guessed Rdina carelessly. Pushing open the door, he let the other enter first, closed it behind him to keep all others outside.
They appeared an hour later. The total population of the city had congregated outside the cave to see the Martians. Rdina wondered why they had not permitted his. crew . . . to satisfy their natural curiosity, since it was unlikely that they would be more interested in other things—such as the fate of one small poet. Ten thousand eyes were upon them as they came into the sunlight and fastened the cave’s door. Rdina made contact with Speedy, gave him the news.
Stretching himself in the light as if reaching toward the sun, Speedy shouted in a voice of tremendous gladness which all could hear.
“He will be out again within twenty days.”
At that, a mild form of madness seemed to overcome the two-leggers. They made pleasure-grimaces, piercing mouth-noises and some went so far as to beat each other.
Twenty Martians felt like joining Fander that same night The Martian constitution is peculiarly susceptible to emotion.
This is hot a story about alien invaders, either gentle or less gentle, but it is a story about an alien con man and the problems he creates for hardworking law enforcement officers in a satisfactorily distant future.
PARTY OF THE TWO PARTS
by
WILLIAM TENN
GALACTOGRAM FROM STELLAR SERGEANT O-DIK-VEH, COMMANDER OF OUTLYING PATROL OFFICE 1001625, TO HEADQUARTERS DESK SERGEANT HOY-VEH-CHALT, GALACTIC PATROL HEADQUARTERS ON VEGA XXI—(PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS TO BE TRANSMITTED AS A PERSONAL, NOT OFFICIAL, MESSAGE AND AS SUCH WILL BE CHARGED USUAL HYPERSPACE BATES)
My dear Hoy:
I am deeply sorry to trouble you again, but, Hoy, am I in a jam! Once more, it’s not something that I did wrong, but something I didn’t do right—what the Old One is sure to wheeze is “a patent dereliction of obvious duty.” And since I’m positive he’ll be just as confused as I, once the prisoners I’m sending on by slow light-transportartive (when he reads the official report that I drew up and am transmitting with them, I can see him dropping an even dozen of his jaws), I can only hope that this advance message will give you enough time to consult the best legal minds in Vegan Headquarters and get some sort of solution worked out.
If there’s any kind of solution available by the time he reads my report, the Old One won’t be nearly as angry at my dumping the problem on his lap. But I have an uneasy, persistent fear that Headquarters is going to get as snarled up in this one as my own office. If it does, the Old One is likely to remember what happened in Outlying Patrol Office 1001625 the last time—and then, Hoy, you will be short one spore-cousin.
It’s a dirty business all around, a real dirty business. I use the phrase advisedly. In the sense of obscene, if you follow me.
As you’ve no doubt suspected by now, most of the trouble has to do with that damp and irritating third planet of Sol, the one that many of its inhabitants call Earth. Those damned chittering bipeds cause me more sleeplessness than any other species in my sector. Sufficiently advanced technologically to be almost at Stage 15—self-developed interplanetary travel—they are still centuries away from the usually concurrent Stage 15A—friendly contact by the galactic civilization.
They are, therefore, still in Secretly Supervised Status, which means that I have to maintain a staff of about two hundred agents on their planet, all encased in clumsy and uncomfortable protoplasmic disguises, to prevent them from blowing their silly selves up before the arrival of their spiritual millennium.
On top of everything, their solar system only has nine planets, which means that my permanent headquarters office can’t get any further away from Sol than the planet they call Pluto, a world whose winters are bearable, but whose summers are unspeakably hot. I tell you, Hoy, the life of a stellar sergeant isn’t all gloor and skubbets, no matter what Rear Echelon says.
In all honesty, though, I should admit that the difficulty did not originate on Sol III this time. Ever since their unexpected and uncalled-for development of nuclear fission, which as you know, cost me a promotion, I’ve doubled the number of undercover operatives on the planet and given them stem warning to report the slightest technological spurt immediately. I doubt that these humans could invent so much as an elementary time-machine now, without my knowing of it well in advance.
No, this time it all started on Rugh VI, the world known to those who Eve on it as Gtet. If you consult your atlas, Hoy, you’ll find Rugh is a fair-sized yellow dwarf star on the outskirts of the Galaxy, and Gtet an extremely insignificant planet which has only recently achieved the status of Stage 19—primary interstellar citizenship.
The Gtetans are a modified ameboid race who manufacture a fair brand of ashkebac, which they export to their neighbors on Rugh IX and Xn. They are a highly individualistic people and still experience many frictions living in a centralized society. Despite several centuries of advanced civilization, most Gtetans look upon the Law as a delightful problem in circumvention rather than as a way of life.
An ideal combination with my bipeds of Earth, eh?
It seems that a certain L’payr was one of the worst troublemakers on Gtet. He had committed almost every crime and broken almost every law. On a planet where fully one-fourth of the population is regularly undergoing penal rehabilitation, L’payr was still considered something quite special. A current Gtetan saying, I understand, puts it, “You’re like L’payr, fellow�
�you don’t know when to stop I”
Nonetheless, L’payr had reached the point where it was highly important that he did stop. He had been arrested and convicted for a total of 2,342 felonies, just one short of the 2,343 felonies which, on Gtet, make one a habitual criminal and, therefore, subject to life imprisonment. He made a valiant effort to retire from public life and devote himself to contemplation and good works but it was too late. Almost against his will, as he insisted to me under examination in my office, he found his mind turning to foul deeds left undone, illegalities as yet unperpetrated.
And so one day, quite casually—hardly noticing, as it were—he committed another major crime. But this one was so ineffably ugly, involving an offense against the moral code as well as civil legislation, that the entire community turned against L’payr.
He was caught selling pornography to juvenile Gtetans.
The indulgence that a celebrity may enjoy turned to wrath and utter contempt. Even the Gtetan Protective Association of Two Thousand Time Losers refused to raise funds for his bail. As his trial approached, it became obvious to L’payr that he was in for it. His only hope lay in flight.
He pulled the most spectacular coup of his career—he broke out of the hermetically sealed vault in which he was being guarded around the clock (how he did this, he consistently refused to tell me up to the time of his lamented demise or whatever you want to call it) and escaped to the spaceport near the prison. There, he managed to steal aboard the pride of the Gtetan merchant fleet, a newly developed interstellar ship equipped with two-throttle hyperspace drive.
This ship was empty, waiting for a crew to take it out on its maiden run.
Somehow, in the few hours at his disposal before his escape was known, L’payr figured out the controls of the craft and managed to lift it off Gtet and into hyperspace. He had no idea at this time that, since the ship was an experimental model, it was equipped with a transmitting device that kept the spaceport informed of its location.
Thus, though they lacked the facilities to pursue him, the Gtetan police always knew exactly where he was. A few hundred ameboid vigilantes did start after him in old-fashioned, normal-drive ships, but after a month or so of long and fatiguing interstellar travel at one-hundredth his speed, they gave up and returned home.
For his hideout, L’payr wanted a primitive and unimportant corner of the Galaxy. The region around Sol was ideal. He materialized out of hyperspace about halfway between the third and fourth planets. But he did it very clumsily (after all, Hoy, the best minds of his race are just beginning to understand the two-throttle drive) and lost all of his fuel in the process. He barely managed to reach Earth and come down.
The landing was effected at night and with all drives dosed, so that no one on the planet saw it. Because living conditions on Earth are . . . so different from Gtet, L’payr knew that his mobility would be very limited. EEs one hope was to get help from the inhabitants. He had to pick a spot where possible contacts would be at a maximum and yet accidental discovery of his ship would be at minimum. He chose an empty lot in the suburbs of Chicago and quickly dug his ship in.
Meanwhile, the Gtetan police communicated with me as the local commanding officer of the Galactic Patrol. They told me where L’payr had hidden and demanded extradition. I pointed out that, as yet, I lacked jurisdiction, since no crime of an interstellar nature had been committed. The stealing of the ship had been done on his home planet—it had not occurred in deep space. If, however, he broke any galactic law while he was on Earth, committed any breach of the peace, no matter how slight . . .
“How about that?” the Gtetan police asked me over the interstellar radio. “Earth is on Secretly Supervised Status, as we understand it. It is illegal to expose it to superior civilizations. Isn’t L’payr landing there in a two-throttle hyperspace-drive ship enough of a misdemeanor to entitle you to pick him up?”
“Not by itself,” I replied. “The ship would have to be seen and understood for what it was by a resident of the planet. From what we here can tell, no such observation was made. And so long as he stays in hiding, doesn’t tell any human about us and refrains from adding to the technological momentum of Earth, L’payr’s galactic citizenship has to be respected. I have no legal basis for an arrest.”
Well, the Gtetans grumbled about what were they paying the star tax for, anyway, but they saw my point. They warned me, though, about L’payr—sooner or later his criminal impulses would assert themselves. He was in an impossible position, they insisted. In order to get the fuel necessary to leave Earth before his supplies ran out, he’d have to commit some felony or other—and as soon as he did so and was arrested, they wanted their extradition request honored.
“The filthy, evil-minded old pervert,” I heard the police chief mutter as he clicked off.
I don’t have to tell you how I felt, Hoy. A brilliant, imaginative ameboid criminal at large on a planet as volatile culturally as Earth! I notified all our agents in North America to be on the alert and settled back to wait it out with prayerfully knotted tentacles.
L’payr had listened to most of this conversation over his own ship’s receiver. Naturally, the first thing he did was to remove the directional device which had enabled the Gtetan police to locate him. Then, as soon as it was dark again, he managed, with what must have been enormous difficulty, to transport himself and his little ship” to another area of the city. He did this, too, without being observed.
He made his base in a slum tenement neighborhood that had been condemned to make way for a new housing project and therefore was practically untenanted. Then he settled back to consider his problem.
Because, Hoy, he had a problem.
He didn’t want to get in any trouble with the Patrol, but if he didn’t get his pseudopods on a substantial amount of fuel very soon, he’d be a dead ameboid. Not only did he need the fuel to get off Earth, but the converters—which, on this rather primitive Gtetan vessel, changed waste matter back into usable air and food—would be stopping very soon if they weren’t stoked up, too.
His time was limited, his resources almost non-existent. The spacesuits with which the ship was furnished, while cleverly enough constructed and able to satisfy the peculiar requirements of an entity of constantly fluctuating format, had not been designed for so primitive a planet as Earth. They would not operate too effectively for long periods away from the ship.
He knew that my OP office had been apprised of his landing and that we were just waiting for some infraction of even the most obscure minor law. Then we’d pounce—and, after the usual diplomatic formalities, he’d be on his way back to Gtet, for a nine-throttle Patrol ship could catch him easily. It was obvious that he couldn’t do as he had originally planned—make a fast raid on some human supply center and collect whatever stuff he needed.
His hope was to make a trade. He’d have to find a human with whom he could deal and offer something that, to this particular human in any case, was worth the quantity of fuel L’payr’s ship needed to take him to a less policed corner of the Cosmos. But almost everything on the ship was essential to its functioning. And L’payr had to make his trade without (1) giving away the existence and nature of the galactic civilization, or (2) providing the inhabitants of Earth with any technological stimulus.
L’payr later said that he thought about the problem until his nucleus was a mass of corrugations. He went over the ship, stem to stem, again and again, but everything a human might consider acceptable was either too useful or too revealing. And then, just as he was about to give up, he found it.
The materials he needed were those with which he had committed his last crime!
According to Gtetan law, you see, Hoy, all evidence pertaining to a given felony is retained by the accused until the time of his trial. There are very complicated reasons for this, among them the Gtetan juridical concept that every prisoner is known to be guilty until he manages, with the aid of lies, loopholes and brilliant legalisms, to convince a hard-bo
iled and cynical jury of his peers that they should, in spite of their knowledge to the contrary, declare him innocent. Since the burden of the proof rests with the prisoner, the evidence does likewise. And L’payr, examining this evidence, decided that he was in business.
What he needed now was a customer. Not only someone who wanted to buy what he had to sell, but a customer who had available the fuel he needed. And in the neighborhood which was now his base of operations, customers of this sort were rare.
Being Stage 19, the Gtetans are capable of the more primitive forms of telepathy—only at extremely short ranges, of course, and for relatively brief periods of time. So, aware that my secret agents had already begun to look for him and that, when they found him, his freedom of action would be ever more circumscribed, L’payr desperately began to comb through the minds of any terrestrials within three blocks of his hideout.
Days went by. He scuttled from mind to mind like an insect looking for a hole in a collector’s jar. He was forced to shut the ship’s converter down to one-half operation, then to one-third. Since this cut his supply of food correspondingly, he began to hunger. For lack of activity, his contractile vacuole dwindled to the size of pinpoint. Even his endoplasm lost the turgidity of the healthy ameboid and became dangerously thin and transparent.
And then one night, when he had about determined to take his chances and steal the fuel he needed, his thoughts ricocheted off the brain of a passerby, came back unbelievingly, examined further and were ecstatically convinced. A human who not only could supply his needs, but also, and more important, might be in the market for Gtetan pornography!
In other words, Mr. Osborne Blatch.
Gentle Invaders Page 19