At the end of the interview Claude Thompson was perspiring, mopping his face with a silk handkerchief and casting quick glances at his men.
Mike Terry put a hand on Raeder’s shoulder. “Here is the man who has agreed to become your victim—if you can catch him.”
“We’ll catch him,” Thompson said, his confidence returning.
“Don’t be too sure,” said Terry. “Jim Raeder has fought wild bulls—now he battles jackals. He’s an average man. He’s the people—who mean ultimate doom to you and your kind.”
“We’ll get him,” Thompson said.
“And one thing more,” Terry said, very softly. “Jim Raeder does not stand alone. The folks of America are for him. Good Samaritans from all corners of our great nation stand ready to assist him. Unarmed, defenseless, Jim Raeder can count on the aid and good-heartedness of the people, whose representative he is. So don’t be too sure, Claude Thompson! The average men are for Jim Raeder—and there are a lot of average men!”
Raeder thought about it, lying motionless in the underbrush. Yes, the people had helped him. But they had helped the killers, too.
A tremor ran through him. He had chosen, he reminded himself. He alone was responsible. The psychological test had proved that.
And yet, how responsible were the psychologists who had given him the test? How responsible was Mike Terry for offering a poor man so much money? Society had woven the noose and put it around his neck, and he was hanging himself with it, and calling it free will.
Whose fault?
“Aha!” someone cried.
Raeder looked up and saw a portly man standing near him. The man wore a loud tweed jacket. He had binoculars around his neck, and a cane in his hand.
“Mister,” Raeder whispered, “please don’t tell!”
“Hi!” shouted the portly man, pointing at Raeder with his cane. “Here he is!”
A madman, thought Raeder. The damned fool must think he’s playing Hare and Hounds.
“Right over here!” the man screamed.
Cursing, Raeder sprang to his feet and began running. He came out of the ravine and saw a white building in the distance. He turned toward it. Behind him he could still hear the man.
“That way, over there. Look, you fools, can’t you see him yet?”
The killers were shooting again. Raeder ran, stumbling over uneven ground, past three children playing in a tree house.
“Here he is!” the children screamed. “Here he is!”
Raeder groaned and ran on. He reached the steps of the building, and saw that it was a church.
As he opened the door, a bullet struck him behind the right kneecap.
He fell, and crawled inside the church.
The television set in his pocket was saying, “What a finish, folks, what a finish! Raeder’s been hit! He’s been hit, folks, he’s crawling now, he’s in pain, but he hasn’t given up! Not Jim Raeder!”
Raeder lay in the aisle near the altar. He could hear a child’s eager voice saying, “He went in there, Mr. Thompson. Hurry, you can still catch him!”
Wasn’t a church considered a sanctuary? Raeder wondered.
Then the door was flung open, and Raeder realized that the custom was no longer observed. He gathered himself together and crawled past the altar, out the back door of the church.
He was in an old graveyard. He crawled past crosses and stars, past slabs of marble and granite, past stone tombs and rude wooden markers. A bullet exploded on a tombstone near his head, showering him with fragments. He crawled to the edge of an open grave.
They had deceived him, he thought. All of those nice average normal people. Hadn’t they said he was their representative? Hadn’t they sworn to protect their own? But no, they loathed him. Why hadn’t he seen it? Their hero was the cold, blank-eyed gunman, Thompson, Capone, Billy the Kid, Young Lochinvar, El Cid, Cuchulain, the man without human hopes or fears. They worshiped him, that dead, implacable robot gunman, and lusted to feel his foot in their face.
Raeder tried to move, and slid helplessly into the open grave.
He lay on his back, looking at the blue sky. Presently a black silhouette loomed above him, blotting out the sky. Metal twinkled. The silhouette slowly took aim.
And Raeder gave up all hope forever.
“WAIT, THOMPSON!” roared the amplified voice of Mike Terry.
The revolver wavered.
“It is one second past five o ‘clock! The week is up! JIM RAEDER HAS WON!”
There was a pandemonium of cheering from the studio audience.
The Thompson gang, gathered around the grave, looked sullen.
“He’s won, friends, he’s won!” Mike Terry cried. “Look, look on your screen! The police have arrived, they’re taking the Thompsons away from their victim—the victim they could not kill. And all this is thanks to you, Good Samaritans of America. Look folks, tender hands are lifting Jim Raeder from the open grave that was his final refuge. Good Samaritan Janice Morrow is there. Could this be the beginning of a romance? Jim seems to have fainted, friends, they’re giving him a stimulant. He’s won two hundred thousand dollars! Now we’ll have a few words from Jim Raeder!”
There was a short silence.
“That’s odd,” said Mike Terry. “Folks, I’m afraid we can’t hear from Jim just now. The doctors are examining him. Just one moment...”
There was a silence. Mike Terry wiped his forehead and smiled.
“It’s the strain, folks, the terrible strain. The doctor tells me...Well, folks, Jim Raeder is temporarily not himself. But it’s only temporary!JBC is hiring the best psychiatrists and psychoanalysts in the country. We’re going to do everything humanly possible for this gallant boy. And entirely at our own expense.”
Mike Terry glanced at the studio clock. “Well, it’s about time to sign off folks. Watch for the announcement of our next great thrill show. And don’t worry, I’m sure that very soon we’11 have Jim Raeder back with us.”
Mike Terry smiled, and winked at the audience. “He’s bound to get well, friends. After all, we’re all pulling for him!
FEAR IN THE NIGHT
There are regulations to govern the conduct of First Contact spaceships, rules drawn up in desperation and followed in despair, for what rule can predict the effect of any action upon the mentality of an alien people?
Jan Maarten was gloomily pondering this as he came into the atmosphere of Durell IV. He was a big, middle-aged man with thin ash-blond hair and a round worried face. Long ago, he had concluded that almost any rule was better than none. Therefore he followed his meticulously, but with an ever-present sense of uncertainty and human fallibility.
He circled the planet, low enough for observation, but not too low, since he didn’t want to frighten the inhabitants. He noted the signs of a primitive-pastoral civilization and tried to remember everything he had learned in Volume 4, Projected Techniques for First Contact on So-called Primitive-pastoral Worlds, published by the Department of Alien Psychology. Then he brought the ship down on a rocky, grass-covered plain, near a typical medium-sized village, but not too near, using the Silent Sam landing technique.
“Prettily done,” commented Croswell, his assistant, who was too young to be bothered by uncertainties.
Chedka, the Eborian linguist, said nothing. He was sleeping, as usual.
Maarten grunted something and went to the rear of the ship to run his tests. Croswell took up his post at the viewport.
“Here they come,” Croswell reported half an hour later. “About a dozen of them, definitely humanoidal.” Upon closer inspection, he saw that the natives of Durell were flabby, dead-white in coloration, and deadpan in expression. Croswell hesitated, then added, “They’re not too handsome.”
“What are they doing?” Maarten asked.
“Just looking us over,” Croswell said. He was a slender young man with an unusually large and lustrous mustache which he had grown on the long journey out from Terra. He stroked it with the pride of a ma
n who has been able to raise a really good mustache.
“They’re about twenty yards from the ship now,” Croswell reported. He leaned forward, flattening his nose ludicrously against the port, which was constructed of one-way glass.
Croswell could look out, but no one could look in. The Department of Alien Psychology had ordered the change last year, after a Department ship had botched a first contact on Carella II. The Carellans had stared into the ship, become alarmed at something within, and fled. The Department still didn’t know what had alarmed them, for a second contact had never been successfully established.
That mistake would never happen again.
“What now?” Maarten called.
“One of them’s coming forward alone. Chief, perhaps. Or sacrificial offering.”
“What is he wearing?”
“He has on a—a sort of—will you kindly come here and look for yourself?”
Maarten, at his instrument bank, had been assembling a sketchy picture of Durell. The planet had a breathable atmosphere, an equitable climate, and gravity comparable to that of Earth. It had valuable deposits of radioactives and rare metals. Best of all, it tested free of the virulent microorganisms and poisonous vapors which tended to make a Contacter’s life feverishly short.
Durell was going to be a valuable neighbor to Earth, provided the natives were friendly—and the Contacters skillful.
Maarten walked to the viewport and studied the natives. “They are wearing pastel clothing. We shall wear pastel clothing.”
“Check,” said Croswell.
“They are unarmed. We shall go unarmed.”
“Roger.”
“They are wearing sandals. We shall wear sandals as well.”
“To hear is to obey.”
“I notice they have no facial hair,” Maarten said, with the barest hint of a smile. “I’m sorry, Ed, but that mustache—”
“Not my mustache!” Croswell yelped, quickly putting a protective hand over it.
“I’m afraid so.”
“But, Jan, I’ve been six months raising it!”
“It has to go. That should be obvious.”
“I don’t see why,” Croswell said indignantly.
“Because first impressions are vital. When an unfavorable first impression has been made, subsequent contacts become difficult, sometimes impossible. Since we know nothing about these people, conformity is our safest course. We try to look like them, dress in colors that are pleasing, or at least acceptable to them, copy their gestures, interact within their framework of acceptance in every way—”
“All right, all right,” Croswell said. “I suppose I can grow another on the way back.”
They looked at each other; then both began laughing. Croswell had lost three mustaches in this manner.
While Croswell shaved, Maarten stirred their linguist into wakefulness. Chedka was a lemur-like humanoid from Eboria IV, one of the few planets where Earth maintained successful relations. The Eborians were natural linguists, aided by the kind of associative ability found in nuisances who supply words in conversation—only the Eborians were always right. They had wandered over a considerable portion of the Galaxy in their time and might have attained quite a place in it were it not that they needed twenty hours sleep out of twenty-four.
Croswell finished shaving and dressed in pale green coveralls and sandals. All three stepped through the degermifier. Maarten took a deep breath, uttered a silent prayer and opened the port.
A low sigh went up from the crowd of Durellans, although the chief—or sacrifice—was silent. They were indeed humanlike, if one overlooked their pallor and the gentle sheep-like blandness of their features—features upon which Maarten could read no trace of expression.
“Don’t use any facial contortions,” Maarten warned Croswell.
Slowly they advanced until they were ten feet from the leading Durellan. Then Maarten said in a low voice, “We come in peace.”
Chedka translated, then listened to the answer, which was so soft as to be almost undecipherable.
“Chief says welcome,” Chedka reported in his economical English.
“Good, good,” Maarten said. He took a few more steps forward and began to speak, pausing every now and then for translation. Earnestly, and with extreme conviction, he intoned Primary Speech BB-32 (for humanoid, primitive-pastoral, tentatively nonaggressive aliens).
Even Croswell, who was impressed by very little, had to admit it was a fine speech. Maarten said they were wanderers from afar, come out of the Great Nothingness to engage in friendly discourse with the gentle people of Durell. He spoke of green and distant Earth, so like this planet, and of the fine and humble people of Earth who stretched out hands in greeting. He told of the great spirit of peace and cooperation that emanated from Earth, of universal friendship, and many other excellent things.
Finally he was done. There was a long silence.
“Did he understand it all?” Maarten whispered to Chedka.
The Eborian nodded, waiting for the chiefs reply. Maarten was perspiring from the exertion and Croswell couldn’t stop nervously fingering his newly shaven upper lip.
The chief opened his mouth, gasped, made a little half turn, and collapsed to the ground.
It was an embarrassing moment and one uncovered by any amount of theory.
The chief didn’t rise; apparently it was not a ceremonial fall. As a matter of fact, his breathing seemed labored, like that of a man in a coma.
Under the circumstances, the Contact team could only retreat to their ship and await further developments.
Half an hour later, a native approached the ship and conversed with Chedka, keeping a wary eye on the Earthmen and departing immediately.
“What did he say?” Croswell asked.
“Chief Moreri apologizes for fainting,” Chedka told them. “He said it was inexcusably bad manners.”
“Ah!” Maarten exclaimed. “His fainting might help us, after all—make him eager to repair his ‘impoliteness.’ Just as long as it was a fortuitous circumstance, unrelated to us—”
“Not,” Chedka said.
“Not what?”
“Not unrelated,” the Eborian said, curling up and going to sleep.
Maarten shook the little linguist awake. “What else did the chief say? How was his fainting related to us?”
Chedka yawned copiously. “The chief was very embarrassed. He faced the wind from your mouth as long as he could, but the alien odor—”
“My breath?” Maarten asked. “My breath knocked him out?”
Chedka nodded, giggled unexpectedly and went to sleep.
Evening came, and the long dim twilight of Durell merged imperceptibly into night. In the village, cooking fires glinted through the surrounding forest and winked out one by one. But lights burned within the spaceship until dawn. And when the sun rose, Chedka slipped out of the ship on a mission into the village. Croswell brooded over his morning coffee, while Maarten rummaged through the ship’s medicine chest.
“It’s purely a temporary setback,” Croswell was saying hopefully. “Little things like this are bound to happen. Remember that time on Dingoforeaba VI—”
“It’s little things that close planets forever,” Maarten said.
“But how could anyone possibly guess—”
“I should have foreseen it,” Maarten growled angrily. “Just because our breath hasn’t been offensive anywhere else—here it is!”
Triumphantly he held up a bottle of pink tablets. “Absolutely guaranteed to neutralize any breath, even that of a hyena. Have a couple.”
Croswell accepted the pills. “Now what?”
“Now we wait until—aha! What did he say?”
Chedka slipped through the entry port, rubbing his eyes. “The chief apologizes for fainting.”
“We know that. What else?”
“He welcomes you to the village of Lannit at your convenience. The chief feels that this incident shouldn’t alter the course of friends
hip between two peace-loving, courteous peoples.”
Maarten sighed with relief. He cleared his throat and asked hesitantly, “Did you mention to him about the forthcoming ah—improvement in our breaths?”
“I assured him it would be corrected,” Chedka said, “although it never bothered me.”
“Fine, fine. We will leave for the village now. Perhaps you should take one of these pills?”
“There’s nothing wrong with my breath,” the Eborian said complacently.
They set out at once for the village of Lannit.
When one deals with a primitive-pastoral people, one looks for simple but highly symbolic gestures, since that is what they understand best. Imagery! Clear-cut and decisive parallels! Few words but many gestures! Those were the rules in dealing with primitive-pastorals.
As Maarten approached the village, a natural and highly symbolic ceremony presented itself. The natives were waiting in their village, which was in a clearing in the forest. Separating forest from village was a dry stream bed, and across that bed was a small stone bridge.
Maarten advanced to the center of the bridge and stopped, beaming benignly on the Durellans. When he saw several of them shudder and turn away, he smoothed out his features, remembering his own injunction on facial contortions. He paused for a long moment.
“What’s up?” Croswell asked, stopping in front of the bridge.
In a loud voice, Maarten cried, “Let this bridge symbolize the link, now eternally forged, that joins this beautiful planet with—” Croswell called out a warning, but Maarten didn’t know what was wrong. He stared at the villagers; they had made no movement.
“Get off the bridge!” Croswell shouted. But before Maarten could move, the entire structure had collapsed under him and he fell bone-shakingly into the dry stream.
“Damnedest thing I ever saw,” Croswell said, helping him to his feet. “As soon as you raised your voice, the stone began to pulverize. Sympathetic vibration, I imagine.”
Now Maarten understood why the Durellans spoke in whispers. He struggled to his feet, then groaned and sat down again.
Is That What People Do? Page 26