by Ted White
“Is this the off season, or something?” I asked.
“No, there are others here. But the lands are vast— you must remember that. This particular garden alone covers almost fifty square miles. And we do not throng in great herds, to trample it all underfoot.”
That put my back up momentarily—it hit too close to the way the parks were mistreated back home. But then I thought it through. This was but one garden; we were on a large continent dotted with them. The entire population of the United States could find room for itself in this incredible parkland without overcrowding it. It was something to think about.
“Who tends all this?” I asked.
“Most of it tends itself,” Shama replied, and then, at my blank look, added, “We have developed the science of botany a long way. By tampering with a plant’s genetic pattern, we can structure it to perform almost any function within its natural repertory. Weeds do not grow here; they cannot. The plants that do all follow the landscaping patterns you see before you. The grass—” She stooped and picked a blade, and handed it to me. “—has never been cut. It grows only to this height. See for yourself.”
The blade was pointed; not flat as it would be if it had been cut. I stared at it. DNA, RNA, a few color spreads from LIFE magazine ran through my head. Sure, it made sense. We couldn’t do it yet, but it was possible.
It was in all these little things, much more than the gaudy force-fields and all that, that I came to respect just how far Suolan was advanced over us.
It was a strange couple of days. In some ways it was our honeymoon, but in another way it was, I sensed all too dimly, the lull before the storm. I kept feeling that it was all too good to last. Here, alone, we were two people together—two lovers. But when we returned to civilization, we were going to find ourselves forced apart again. I could sense it.
This fatalistic view made me sceptical of the love we kept telling each other we’d found together. I wanted to believe in it—how desperately I wanted to believe that!— but from the back of my head a quietly cynical voice would remind me of the obstacles, the unlikelihood of it all. Back in Suolanian society, how would we fit together?
The result of all this was to make me moody at times, often more surly than happy. I had preferred the forest; there the alienness had a natural quality to it. Here it underscored the vast gap between her culture and mine.
So I wasn’t as sorry as I might’ve been, when a dingus on her wrist buzzed, and she said, “Oh, oh! That’s the signal to return to the flier; there’s a message coming in.”
“Should we hurry?”
“No need; it’ll be recorded. But we mustn’t dally, either. I’m sure it’s a summons from Kallarnu. He must have gotten the Council together!”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
But when we got back to Shalianna, early in the evening, and went to Kallamu’s apartment, it turned out that the Council was not going to meet until the next afternoon, or perhaps the day after that.
“It was not up to me to press them any further,” said Kallamu in explanation. “It was enough that I should have been able to get them to meet at all this period. They are not much interested in the offworld status of backwater worlds such as Earth.”
“Yeah?” I said. “If you’d given that ‘backwater world’ a few more years before trying to stab it in the back, you’d have found out a few things.”
“Mr. Ronald Archer, do not misunderstand me, please,” said Kallamu. “I have the greatest sympathy for your cause. It is not at all worthy of the Condominium that we should take the course that we do toward worlds not yet well-developed enough to have acquired space travel, yes, and atomics—”
Shama gasped.
“Yes, atomics. I know where Mr. Ronald Archer comes from and what he knows, and I know you know. So there is no need to conceal the fact among ourselves. At any rate, we wish—or our party wishes—to elevate your status from what you would call colonial to that of a Free Protected Associate. We would give you back planetary government and will make available to you those technological developments of ours which at this time will fit in with your economy and not wreak too much change upon it too quickly. In return, we would continue to manage your affairs in the sphere of Galactic politics, and will retain a favored position in your offworld
trading. You may install a permanent delegation here at Shalianna, two members of which will become associate members of the Council when matters concerning Earth’s interstellar relations and trade come up.
‘This, at least, is what we hope to achieve tomorrow or the next day, in the discussions with the Council.”
It didn’t sound like all that great an arrangement to me. Earth would still be a protectorate, considered incompetent to conduct its own “foreign affairs,” and forced to give favorable trade terms to our “protectors.”
“You seem unhappy, Mr. Ronald Archer. But please consider the realities of your situation—of your planet’s situation. At present it is a colony, pure and simple, and has no choice in the matter. There is nothing whatsoever that Earth can do, on its own, to change its status in the foreseeable future. I am sorry, but this is a flat truth that you might as well face.
“Now, we are going to try to change as much of that as possible. I hope you will swallow what is no doubt rightful indignation and cooperate with us as much as you can.”
“Very well,” I said, a note of irritation in my voice.
“Now then. A number of council members have expressed a desire to meet you informally. We are holding a small informal gathering at Korkotta’s apartment elsewhere in this building. I believe Korkotta is one of the few Suolanians—along with Sharna here—who has developed something of a taste for the Earthly beverages that contain high quantities of nonpurified alcohol.” He smiled, or made an attempt to. “I am afraid I have never been able to comprehend this strange thirst for medicinal relaxation, but I hope you will understand that it implies that Korkotta is not entirely unwilling to make an effort to understand Earth and its ways. . . . And as Korkotta, as Chairman, has five votes in the Council, you will see that this is no small gain.”
Korkotta’s apartment seemed to cover two whole floors —but the floors were like none I’d ever seen. It was as if two empty stories had been filled with moveable small patches of floor at various levels, suspended with no visible means of support in midair.
One could stand on one level, resting one’s elbow on another floor, or walk a few steps forward, find oneself rising through the air slowly, and step over onto the floor you’d been leaning on. It would have been nightmarish if it hadn’t been designed with such skill as somehow to make it look quite natural.
Two or three dozen Suolanians were gathered there on various levels. A bowl of hundreds of Dorions lay on a small table by the entrance, and I could detect the faint scent of them in the air.
Kallarnu offered me a half dozen of the Dorions, and took several for himself. Shama did likewise, and they each opened one. I followed suit.
For a moment it was like being adrift in a sea of rich spices, and my feelings of irritation and disgust welled up to the surface and floated away. . . .
There seemed to be no surge forward of people eager to meet me, yet Kallarnu was slowly shepherding me around the various rooms and levels, introducing me.
They seemed rather distant, for the most part, and quite as usual with the Angels. But there seemed for once to be a faint touch of curiosity, even if mixed with amusement. I began to wonder if this was the sort of sensation, much amplified, that Mingus seemed not to have worried about back at Hitler’s little gathering. If so, he was a better man than I, for I found the irritation returning to me.
Eventually I was introduced to a Suolanian who was tall even for an Angel—almost two feet taller than I, though quite slender. He was the first Suolanian I had noticed whose blond hair had turned to grey, and his face was lined and worn. It was Korkotta.
He answered the unspoken question. “Ah, the interesting Mr. Ronald A
rcher. You are one of the more interesting phenomena to have come up in my term as chairman, though I have only been such for forty-five years.”
He sighed. “It took me fifty-five years to get that far. I fear the present crises will prevent my getting any farther. Almost Kallarnu tempts me to do an unquestionably good deed for you, sir, but ... I do not know. At 150, I am getting close to the end of my prime years, and perhaps I am wearier than I should be. Ah, but here, sir, I forget my duties.”
He turned and took a bottle of what turned out to be none other- than Jack Daniels’; he saw my expression and smiled. “We shall make you feel as much at home as possible, my boy.”
My boy! I hadn’t been called that in years! I smiled involuntarily.
He did not seem to notice, as he poured a drink each for himself, Sharna, and I, and offered one to Kallamu, who hastily refused.
Korkotta handed us our drinks, and in a surprisingly familiar way raised his glass to ours for a toast. “To . . .” He paused a moment and observed me quizzically. ‘To . . . contentment, sir.”
We clicked glasses and drank. The Jack Daniels’ was like meeting an old friend after a long, long time among absolute strangers.
“I, uh, have perhaps another surprise for you, Mr. Ronald Archer,” Korkotta said almost hesitantly. “I don’t know if you smoke, but I have found myself attracted to more than one of your pleasant Earthly vices. ...”
And he pulled out a package of filter Luckies, offering me one.
I grinned. “Old home week,” I said, accepting it. He selected one carefully, handling it as if he had not yet quite got the hang of it, and then produced a box of small wooden matches, the kind the flossy restaurants have at the front desk instead of plebeian book matches. He lit one with great gusto, observing the flame for a moment, as if he’d not gotten used to that yet either, and then we lit our cigarettes.
He puffed at his rapidly but with great pleasure, and I concealed a smile. He wasn’t just going out of his way to make me feel at home, he obviously enjoyed the cigarette even if he wasn’t smoking it quite properly.
We conversed of trivialities for a while, and the gathering seemed to become more relaxed.
After a while I began to feel rather tired, and I found a large chair near a wall-length window opening on a magnificent Thassonian sunset.
I caught myself yawning. I shrugged and sat down. The colors in the rug before me began to spin, and I wondered if that was some new Suolanian trick. Clever bastards, you had to give them that. . . .
. . . Then I was fully awake again.
“That’s a good way to get killed,” I told myself. The sound of my own words, subvocalized in my throat, brought me to a sharper awareness. “There’s at least ten Germans within a hundred yards. All I need is to fall asleep and have one land on top of me.”
I reached over and scooped up a handful of crisp dry snow, rubbing it over my face. That ought to keep me on the stick for a while. I wondered where Jimmy had gotten to.
Held had gone off to my left when we’d reached the forest. He wanted to check out a thin wisp of smoke he had spotted.
Someone nearby whistled low, twice. Jimmy. I whistled back carefully, and he stepped out cautiously from a tree about 10 yards away.
Then I saw movement behind him. I signalled frantically at him to get down, but it was too late. He crumpled to the snow as I heard the dull “crack-crack” of a German rifle.
“Damn,” I muttered to myself, and, crouching low, moved slowly towards his body. Jimmy lay quite still. I tried to spot that movement behind him again, but all was quiet. The dim twilight smudged details within a few feet. I felt uneasy, and I moved cautiously.
I reached his body and saw that he was still alive. Kneeling, I picked up his M-1, and squeezed off several shots at the bush the German had fired from.
There was a muffled distant curse and the Jerry stood up, holding his shoulder, and shouting. Then he tried to lift the rifle with his injured arm.
I’m a pretty good shot. I squeezed off one more round, got him in the shoulder again, and watched the rifle drop as he spun away to the ground. I never much cared for killing people, even Germans.
I got Jimmy in a fireman’s lift and started hauling him back to the edge of the forest. I heard the sound of distant rifle shots. Bark sprayed away from a nearby tree, and a chip stung me in the cheek.
Another shot and a needle of pain ran along my right calf. I stumbled for a moment, then started walking forward again.
Then there were highter-pitched shots. The Jerries had run into a couple of other GI’s on patrol.
It looked like I was going to make it after all. I wondered if Jimmy was still alive. ...
... I thought I’d find A1 Morris there, and I was right. The cop-killer had just kneeled down at the side of the stream to catch a drink of water in his hands. “Stay right there, Al,” I said from the other side of the stream. “Just keep your hands in the water there while I come over.”
Al Morris froze. He knew how accurately I could fire the long-barrelled .38 revolver I was aiming at his chest. I started to wade across the stream.
But though Al was a cop-killer he wasn’t exactly a coward. A bit of a fool, maybe. When I reached the middle of the stream the water was up to my knees. Al started to move his left hand.
I put a bullet an inch away from his hand in the water. “I know you’re left handed, Al; don’t try it again. You know I could have shot you down in your tracks, and I’d have gotten a medal for it too.”
“You’d’a done me a favor, Archer,” he said glumly, as I reached him where he kneeled. I frisked him from behind, and told him to get up. . . .
. . . “Don’t ever forget,” Dad said, “you’re an Archer, and that’s important. But you’re also a man, and that’s important. Some of us Archers didn’t always remember, maybe, but we’ve tried. None of us ever had the world by the tail, but we never made it worse, neither. Do what you can. I did.” Then he died. . . . . . . Crécy and Agincourt. Brave men. Honest, plain, loyal. “Remember Harry Fift shouting to us as the French came closer? And only 43 dead! More ale!”. . .
. . . Stood with die Black Prince, heard him praise us. . . .
. . . The Comanches yelling and closing in. “Damn that sutler! It’s hand to hand, boys, 30 to 10!”
One made it. . . .
. . . “The ship’ll never make it through this hurricano. And a Spanish seventy-four waiting for us if it does!”. . • What, why, why, why, how. . . .
. . . Good and bad, like anybody. . . .
. . . Schweitzer, Dooley, Damien, sacrifice. . . .
... “Progress, gentlemen, is never assured. But assuredly, we do progress.” School? Never heard—
Questions, please.
Questions, please.
Questions. Please.
I awoke in Shama’s apartment with the battered grandfather of hangovers and the temper of a skinned cat wearing a barbed-wire shirt.
“What the hell did those bastards feed me last night?” I growled as I tried to sit up. Well, at least I was in bed and not on another crummy couch.
It was late afternoon; sunlight flashed off the next tower into the wall-wide window.
Shama was sitting at a low desk communicator. She turned to me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It was in the cigarette.”
“What was in the cigarette, god damn it!”
“They wanted to see what you were like, and what you knew, and what Earth was like.”
“Ahhh, come on, now,” I muttered, lying back for a moment to see if the walls of the room would stop pulsating in and out. “A doped cigarette—that’s right out of some old pulp magazine, with grinning Chinamen, or Fu Manchu! That’s crazy!” But talking didn’t seem to improve things. First the ceiling would touch my forehead, then the walls would come in and hit me on the ears. . .- . “They’ve run Earth for a quarter of a century. They know it inside and out. What kind of crap—”
“Not a single one of them had
ever met an Earthman before,” Shama said gently. “And,’ then, perhaps you don’t realize how much you really know. . . .”
“I know I'm just about fed up with all this. Let me go back and join the Communists or something. Maybe I can accomplish something” I shut my eyes. The walls of the room were pulsating faster, and thoughts of heaving began to occupy my mind. I cursed again.
Sharna was sitting beside me on the bed. I heard a rustle, and she thrust something under my nose.
I smelled summer and newmown hay and spicy clover and roast beef and potatoes and the throbbing in my head tuned itself downward to a mild muted hum of discomfort.
“Mmm,” I said. “Ever think of putting that stuff on the market?”
“Feel better?” She leaned over as if to kiss me.
I sat up and turned away from her. “I feel like a rag-doll the Doberman’s been chewing on. I still haven’t heard a good reason for all this.”
She stood up. “Well, one thing it means is that you and every man, woman, and child on Earth have been Associate Citizens of the Condominium for approximately four hours now.”
I looked up in surprise.
“You’ve won, Ronald Archer.”
“But that’s wrong! That’s no reason at all, dammit,” I shouted, shortly after she tried to explain to me why and what had happened.
“I suppose it must seem like an anticlimax. I am sorry, Ronald, that the realities of life are often much less heroic than we would like to believe them—”
“Hell, I know that. But this is ludicrous!”
“Nevertheless, Earth is free now, as free as it will ever be, at least for some centuries now, with galactic affairs as they are now.”
“But you tell me they decided this because they like me, they like the kind of world that lousy doped cigarette made me tell them about. Because—”