Gentle Invaders

by Hans Stefan Santesson

  A weary, bleary and excessively hoarse Pah-Chi-Luh finally dragged himself to the extradition party on spindly tentacles and informed them that, after much careful consideration, he had come to the conclusion that L’payr was innocent of any crime during his stay on Earth.

  “Nonsense,” he was told by the spokesman. “A crime was committed. Arrant and unquestioned pornography was sold and circulated on that planet. A crime has to have been committed.” Pah-Chi-Luh went back to L’payr and asked, miserably, how about it? Didn’t it seem, he almost pleaded, that all the necessary ingredients of a crime were present? Some kind of crime?

  “True,” L’payr said thoughtfully. “They have a point. Some kind of crime may have been committed—but not by me. Osborne Blatch, now . . .”

  Stellar Corporal Pah-Chi-Luh completely lost his heads.

  He sent a message to Earth, ordering Osborne Blatch to be picked up.

  Fortunately for all of us, up to and including the Old Oae, Pah-Chi-Luh did not go so far as to have Blatch arrested. The Earthman was merely held as a material witness. When I think what the false arrest of a creature from a Secretly Supervised world could lead to, especially in a case of this sort, Hoy, my blood almost turns liquid.

  But Pah-Chi-Luh did commit the further blunder of incarcerating Osborne Blatch in a cell adjoining L’payr’s. Everything, you will observe, was working out to the ameboid’s satisfaction—including my young assistant.

  By the time Pah-Chi-Luh got around to Blatch’s first interrogation, the Earthman had already been briefed by his neighbor. Not that the briefing was displayed overmuch—as yet.

  “Pornography?” he repeated in answer to the first question. “What pornography? Mr. Smith and I had been working on an elementary biology text for some time and we were hoping to use new illustrations throughout. We wanted larger, clear pictures of the sort that would be instantly comprehensible to youngsters—and we were particularly interested in getting away from the blurry drawings that have been used and re-used in all textbooks, almost from the time of Leeuwenhoek. Mr. L’payr’s series on the cycle of ameboid reproduction was a godsend, in a sense, they made the first section of the book.”

  “You don’t deny, however,” Corporal Pah-Chi-Luh inquired remorselessly, “that, at the time of the purchase, you knew those pictures were pornographic? And that, despite this knowledge, you went ahead and used them for the delectation of juveniles of your race?”

  “Edification,” the elderly human schoolteacher corrected him. “Edification, not delectation. I assure you that not a single student who studied the photographs in question—which, by the way, appeared textually as drawings—received any premature erotic stimulation thereby. I will admit that, at the time of purchase, I did receive a distinct impression from the gentleman in the next cell that he and his kind considered the illustrations rather racy—”

  “Well, then?”

  “But that was his problem, not mine. After all, if I buy an artifact from an extraterrestrial creature—a flint fist-axe, say, or a cauldron for pouring boiling oil upon the stormers of walled cities—and I use them both in completely peaceful and useful pursuits—the former to grub onions out of the ground and the latter to cook the onions in a kind of soup—have I done anything wrong?

  “As a matter of fact, the textbook in question received fine reviews and outstanding commendations from educational and scientific authorities all over the nation. Would you like to hear some of them? I believe I may have a review or two in my pocket. Let me see. Yes, just by chance, I seem to have a handful of clippings in this suit. Well, well! I didn’t know there were quite so many. That is what the Southern Prairie States Secondary School, Gazette has to say—‘A substantial and noteworthy achievement. It will live long in the annals of elementary science pedagoguery. The authors may well feel . . .”

  It was then that Corporal Pah-Chi-Luh sent out a despairing call for me.

  Fortunately, I was free to give the matter my full attention, the Saudi Arabia-Ganymede affair being completely past the danger point. Had I been tied up . . .

  After experimenting with all kinds of distractions, including secret agents disguised as dancing girls, we had finally managed to embroil the young mystic in a tremendous theological dispute on the exact nature and moral consequences of the miracles he was wreaking. Outstanding Mohammedan religious leaders of the region had lined up on one side or the other and turned the air blue with quotations from the Koran and later Sunnite books. The mystic was drawn in and became so involved in the argument that he stopped thinking about his original objectives and irreparably broke the mental connection with Ganymede.

  For a while, this left a continuing problem on that satellite—it looked as if the civilization of disembodied intellects might eventually come to some approximation of the real truth. Luckily for us, the entire business had been viewed there also as a religious phenomenon and, once telepathic contact was lost, the intellect who had been communicating with the human, and had achieved much prestige thereby, was thoroughly discredited. It was generally believed that he had willfully and deliberately faked the entire thing, for the purpose of creating skepticism among the more spiritual members of his race. An ecclesiastical court ordered the unfortunate telepath to be embodied alive.

  It was therefore, with a warm feeling of a job well done that I returned to my headquarters on Pluto in response to Pah-Chi-Luh’s summons.

  Needless to say, this feeling quickly changed to the most overpowering dismay. After getting the background from the overwrought corporal, I interviewed the Gtetan extradition force. They had been in touch with their home office and were threatening a major galactic scandal if the Patrol’s arrest of L’payr was not upheld and L’payr remanded to their custody.

  “Are the most sacred and intimate details of our sex life to be shamelessly flaunted from one end of the Universe to the other?” I was asked angrily. “Pornography is pornography—a crime is a crime. The intent was there—the overt act was there. We demand our prisoner.”

  “How can you have pornography without titillation?” L’payr wanted to know. “If a Chumblostian sells a Gtetan a quantity of krrgllwss—which they use as food and we use as building material—does the shipment have to be paid for under the nutritive or structural tariffs? The structural tariffs obtain, as you well know, Sergeant. I demand immediate release!”

  But the most unpleasant surprise of all awaited me with Blatch. The terrestrial was sitting in his cell, sucking the curved handle of his umbrella.

  “Under the code governing the treatment of all races on Secretly Supervised Status,” be began as soon as he saw me, “and I refer not only to the Rigellian-Sagittarian Convention, but to the statutes of the third cosmic cycle and the Supreme Council decisions in the cases of Khwomo vs. Khwomo and Farziplok vs. Antares XII, I demand return to my accustomed habitat on Earth, the payment of damages according to the schedule developed by the Nobri Commission in the latest Vivadin controversy. I also demand satisfaction in terms of—”

  “You seem to have acquired a good deal of knowledge of interstellar law,” I commented slowly.

  “Oh, I have, Sergeant—I have, Mr. L’payr was most helpful in acquainting me with my rights. It seems that I am entitled to all sorts of recompenses—or, at least, that I can claim entitlement. You have a very interesting galactic culture, Sergeant. Many, many people on Earth would be fascinated to learn about it. But I am quite prepared to spare you the embarrassment which such publicity would cause you. I am certain that two reasonable individuals like ourselves can come to terms.”

  When I charged L’payr with violating galactic secrecy, he spread his cytoplasm in an elaborate ameboid shrug.

  “I told him nothing on Earth, Sergeant. Whatever information this terrestrial has received—and I will admit that it would have been damaging and highly illegal—was entirely in the jurisdiction of your headquarters office. Besides, having been wrongfully accused of an ugly and unthinkable crime, I surely had
the right to prepare my defense by discussing the matter with the only witness to the deed. I might go further and point out that since Mr. Blatch and myself are in a sense co-defendants, there could be no valid objection to a pooling of our legal knowledge.”

  Back in my office, I brought Corporal Pah-Chi-Luh up to date. “It’s like a morass,” he complained. “The more you struggle to get out, the deeper you fall in it I And this terrestrial I The Plutonian natives who’ve been guarding him have been driven almost crazy. He asks questions about everything—what’s this, what’s that, how does it work. Or it’s not hot enough for him, the air doesn’t smell right, his food is uninteresting. His throat has developed an odd tickle, he wants a gargle, he needs a—”

  “Give him everything he wants, but within reason,” I said. “If this creature dies on us, you and I will be lucky to draw no more than a punishment tour in the Black Hole in Cygnus. But as for the rest of it—look here, Corporal, I find myself in agreement with the extradition party from Gtet A crime has to have been committed.”

  Stellar Corporal Pah-Chi-Luh stared at me. “You—you mean . . .”

  “I mean that if a crime was committed, L’payr has been legally arrested and can therefore be taken back to Gtet. We will then hear no more from him ever and we will also be rid of that bunch of pseudopod-clacking Gtetan shysters. That will leave us with only one problem—Osborne Blatch. Once L’payr is gone and we have this terrestrial to ourselves, I think we can handle him—one way or another. But first and foremost, Corporal Pah-Chi-Luh, a crime—some crime—has to have been committed by L’payr during his sojourn on Earth. Set up your bed in the law library.”

  Shortly afterward, Pah-Chi-Luh left for Earth.

  Now please, Hoy, no moralistic comments! You know as well as I do that this sort of thing has been done before, here and there, in Outlying Patrol Offices. I don’t like it any more than you, but I was faced with a major emergency. Besides, there was no doubt but that this L’payr, ameboid master criminal, had had punishment deferred far too long. In fact, one might say that morally I was completely and absolutely in the right.

  Pah-Chi-Luh returned to Earth, as I’ve said, this time disguised as an editorial assistant. He got a job in the publishing house that had brought out the biology textbook. The original photographs were still in the files of that establishment. By picking his man carefully and making a good many mind-stimulating comments, the stellar corporal finally inspired one of the technical editors to examine the photographs and have the material on which they were printed analyzed.

  The material was fahrtuch, a synthetic textile much in use on Gtet and not due to be developed by humanity for at least three centuries.

  In no time at all, almost every woman in America was wearing lingerie made of fahrtuch, the novelty fabric of the year. And since L’payr was ultimately responsible for this illegal technological spurt, we at last had him where we wanted him!

  He was very sporting about it, Hoy.

  “The end of a long road for me, Sergeant. I congratulate you. Crime does not pay. Lawbreakers always lose. Law-enforcers always win.”

  I went off to prepare the extradition forms, without a care in the Galaxy. There was Blatch, of course, but he was a mere human. And by this time, having gotten involved in all kinds of questionable dealings myself, I was determined to make quick work of him. After all, one might as well get blasted for a skreek as a launtl

  But when I returned to escort the Gtetan to his fellow-ameboids, I almost fell through the surface of Pluto. Where there had been one L’payr, there were now two! Smaller L’payrs, of course—half the size of the original, to be exact—but L’payrs unmistakable.

  In the interval, he had reproduced!

  How? That gargle the Earthman had demanded, Hoy. It had been L’payr’s idea all along, his last bit of insurance. Once the Earthman had received the gargle, he had smuggled it to L’payr, who had hidden it in his cell, intending to use it as a last resort.

  That gargle. Hoy, was salt water!

  So there I was. The Gtetans informed me that their laws covered such possibilities, but much help their laws were to me.

  “A crime has been committed, pornography has-been sold,” the spokesman reiterated. “We demand our prisoner. Both of him!”

  “Pursuant to Galactic Statutes 6,009,371 through 6,106,514,” Osborne Blatch insisted, “I demand immediate release, restitution to the extent of two billion Galactic Megawhars, a complete and written—”

  And.

  “It’s probably true that our ancestor, L’payr, committed all sorts of indiscretions,” lisped the two young ameboids in the cell next to Osborne Blatch, “but what does that have to do with us? L’payr paid for his crimes by dying in childbirth. We are very young and very, very innocent. Surely the big old Galaxy doesn’t believe in punishing little children for the sins of their parents!”

  What would you have done?

  I shipped the whole mess off to Patrol Headquarters—the Gtetan extradition party and their mess of judicial citations, Osborne Blatch and his umbrella, the biology textbook, the original bundle of pornographic pictures, and last but not at all least, two—count ’em two—dewy young ameboids. Call them L’payr sub-one and L’payr sub-two. Do anything you like with them when they get there, but please don’t tell me what it is!

  And if you can figure out a solution with the aid of some of the more ancient and wiser heads at headquarters, and figure it out before the Old One ruptures a gloccistomorph, Pah-Chi-Luh and I will be pathetically, eternally grateful.

  If not—well, we’re standing by here at Outlying Patrol Office 1001625 with bags packed. There’s a lot to be said for the Black Hole in Cygnus.

  Personally, Hoy, I’d say that the whole trouble is caused by creatures who insist on odd and colorful methods of continuing their race, instead of doing it sanely and decently by means of spore-pod explosion!

  THE END