by Judith Field
Paul knew this. He was Katie’s dependent, and she only asked for a few bucks now and then for her priceless support.
“Slavery is a relative condition, Paul Ack—Paul. The way we do it, you serve our race as go-fers for five centuries. During that time, you learn the ropes of the Conclave’s civilization. There are almost a hundred and fifty intelligent species out there: trading, quarrelling, exploring, exchanging knowledge and ideas and goods. We have raised up about twenty of them ourselves. We’ve been doing it for three thousand Earth years, and we’re good at it.”
“We had slaves. Wasn’t such a good deal for them. Short, hard lives, no getting ahead for most of them.”
“Well… when you live poor for five hundred years, you become focused. You can see how rich everyone else is, and you want in. Plus, concessions.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Would you like to look at the contract, or would you like a summary?”
If this guy was a nut he was at least an interesting nut. Paul had no explanation for the image of the eel he kept seeing, that he was seeing right now, behind Sanjay’s grins. It didn’t seem like one of his hallucinations, which were less detailed, grainier. Why would a giant eel wear torso armor? But of course this was New York City; Paul supposed that explained itself. “Summary,” he said.
“I’ve spent sixteen years on Earth. Fifteen were doing research on your species. The last year has been trying to find a responsible person to sign the contract.”
“‘Responsible’ is a hard word to swallow, under the circumstances. Did you really think it would be easy to find someone to sell out the human race?”
“We will have to present the signer to our ruling body at some point. A fool won’t do, and neither will Mister Greedy. We need someone educated, who can read and understand the contract and sign it with full knowledge of what it means for the human species.”
“How’d you say that’s working out for you, so far?”
Sanjay blanched and then changed the subject: “Your medicine has advanced a good deal in the last few centuries, but it’s still crude. One of the concessions is that we will cure all your chronic conditions, Paul. Right after someone signs the contract. Various cancers, incurable venereal diseases, sickle cell, and on and on. About five hundred of them, in all. Sound good?”
“It’s the conditions that are a little hard to swallow.” Did this guy really think Paul was going to sign such a document? And do what, solidify Sanjay’s delusions? Sell the human race into slavery with the signature of a single person? Get real!
“This is how we do things. It’s the best way. Your species becomes a client race of ours, and you hide behind us while you check out the galaxy. You need time to see some of what there is to be seen. Right now you’re primitives, clowns.”
Paul was amused by this description. “Starships?”
“No, sir. Dimensional travel. Much cheaper, faster, safer than ships. It’s all mathematics and folded space and time. Principle is easy, execution is hard. But, we didn’t invent it, we just use it. There are about a dozen races much more advanced than ourselves, Paul. Eventually, four hundred years down the road, you would meet the friendlier of these.”
“And if I do this, sign us into slavery, you’ll cure my own condition.”
“We’ll cure all the mental illnesses. And remove the genes from the gene pool that precipitate most of them to start with.”
“We can already do that.”
“In a clunky, sloppy way. Our way would get the whole problem, all the underliers, not just the major culprits. In a single generation, no more mental illness. Not from genes, anyway.”
“So what’s in it for me, if you’re proposing to cure all of us?” Again Paul was amused. This was the stupidest conversation he’d ever had, but at least it was enjoyable. It beat talking mental illness with Katie or having a shouting match with Jonathan. He wiped tears from his eyes. The headache and the murmuring voices that defined his condition were harsh today, he was having to use a lot of energy to keep them at bay, and he was going to wear out pretty soon.
Sanjay reached out with one hand and pointed a finger at the side of Paul’s head. The headache and the voices went away.
“Notice anything about Katie today?” Sanjay asked.
“She’s not barking or cursing or snapping,” Paul said. He had noticed, but their conversation was too short to bring it up with her.
“I’ve used our techniques on her already, to show you what we can do. She has stress-induced schizophrenia, with a genetic predisposition for the condition. She drank my witch’s brew, and voila, she was cured. She was ill for a week while it worked on her, then her condition was gone. Katie can get in the system now. She has another chance.”
“What would happen to ‘the system’ if we’re slaves?”
“Gone. Replaced by our system for client races. Some of you stay on Earth, but we rule it. Billions of you are taken away to our worlds, where you’d work in our houses and shops for the next five hundred years. Those left on Earth would work for the new government, which would be us. About a billion of my species would move here, for the duration. Over the next few centuries you’d slowly earn your freedom, as a new species in the galaxy.”
“You won’t give us the cures for these conditions unless someone signs the contract?”
“Are you being difficult on purpose, Paul?”
“We could trade for those cures. No need for slavery.” Paul was getting into this now, might as well whoop it up with this bozo for a while, pass the morning. As a programmer he had to negotiate his rates and working conditions; this wasn’t so different from that. It was still quite cold out, but the chatter had warmed him up. He was enjoying himself more than he had in a long time. It felt really, really weird to have no headache and no voices, and he wondered what Sanjay did to take them away. They sure as hell hadn’t gone away on their own.
“Do you expect us to just give you dimensional warp?” Sanjay said with heat. “Just give you planet charts to the galaxy? Just give you advanced cybernetics?”
“I think I said, we could trade for these things.”
“Trade what, bobbleheads? That’s about all you have that would amuse us, and nothing else you have has value. The flow of value, let me assure you, would be entirely one-way.”
Paul chewed on this. Sanjay had been thinking about all this for a while, apparently. Paul saw the eel standing there; were its eyes redder than they were before, as it got riled up?
“You could hook us up with a less advanced species than your own, and we could form a relationship with them. You could skim a percentage for doing the hook-up.”
“I see. We could introduce you to other primitives, and the two of you could trade sticks and stones, and maybe advance a hundred years in some areas and not at all in others, instead of advancing ten thousand years in five centuries.”
“In five centuries we could meet a bunch of other races like ourselves,” Paul mused. “We advance a century here, a century there, and in five centuries we’ll be thousands of years ahead.”
“Not as far as we’d take you, I assure you. Our methods may strike you as harsh, because you have only your own ugly sort of slavery to compare ours to, but our slaves are our clients, and we bring them on board with the full intention of making them partners, in the future. Now, we were discussing concessions.”
“Thought we were done with that.”
“Just starting, actually. You already know about diet and exercise; we would refine that. Your species knows nothing about fish and seafood, not a thing. With proper refinement of seafood, you should be living two hundred and fifty, three hundred years. That’s for the ones who don’t want the machines. We could teach you this. We will teach you this if you sign on.”
“But now that I know that, I could pass it on.”
Here came Sanjay’s wide grin, and behind him the eel was grinning as well.
“You won’t remember a thing of our little talk, if y
ou decide not to sign, Paul. You’d have the puzzle of Katie’s cure, for a little while, until she realizes she can get into the system now and doesn’t have to live on the streets. Then Katie will leave, and you’ll be stuck with Jonathan. How will that go for you, I wonder?”
Paul was into it now, ready to wheel and deal, and he said, “I think I need more, personally, than a cure everyone is going to get.” He had no intention of signing anything, though he was getting curious about reading this ‘contract.’ Hard copy of Sanjay’s delusions might make a more enjoyable read than the sci-fi novel he was currently into.
“Ah, what’s in it for me, you say? Wealth, Paul. Favored position. Adjunct to Earth, maybe. Real wealth, right from the start. All the new toys. A living example of what others will get, over the centuries, to provide a beacon for those who dislike slavery.”
“How much wealth?” This was the same as negotiating a contract for programming—Paul was delighted. This made him feel like the old days, before mental illness destroyed his life.
“Let us say, fifty billion dollars. Measured in the new system, but enough to be an eye-opener. Richest man on Earth.”
“Make it a hundred billion.”
“No. Fifty is more than enough. Cure for your illness, a complete cure and no nasty genes to pass on to your children. That kind of wealth brings choice of excellent females, Paul. You used to date. I’ve found your comments here and there, on the Internet, from before you got sick. You dated a lot. Not a playboy, but a good-time boy. You’re forty-five years old, that’s just young enough to start a family, if you get a move-on.”
Paul was startled by this; he hadn’t thought this way in years. He was just starting to think in terms of family, just starting to size women up this way, when his sickness took it all away.
Sanjay snapped his fingers to interrupt Paul’s reverie. “Concessions.”
“More?”
“You see me as an eel with a silver vest, right?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not a vest. My entire torso is cybernetic. I’m what my people call a ‘partial.’ With all of my major organs replaced by machines, I should live fifteen-hundred Earth years. I could go ‘full’ at any time, and become immortal. About half of us do this. We’ve had this technology for over a thousand years, Paul, we’re very good at it. It’s what we offer the rest of the species, our special understanding of machines and flesh. We’ll offer your species partial cybernetics for the term of their slavery and full cybernetics after you’re a free species again. Immortality.”
“I’m pretty sure most people aren’t going to want to live as machines.”
“They might not mind living as organic machines. I was an early adopter, which was why my machinery is so blatant and so crude. My machines are familiar and comforting, and I’m not ready to go ‘full’ just yet. Later versions are entirely organic. The machines invade your body and remake it, almost from scratch. You’re quite sick for about a month, and then you’re immortal. Free to client races, once they’ve served.”
“I’d want to see it demonstrated on someone else before I took that leap,” Paul said.
Sanjay shrugged. “As you wish. There’d be plenty of adopters, I assure you, especially among the elderly and soon-to-die.”
“The Earth would develop a serious overpopulation problem.”
“Which is why you must purchase the dimensional warp and start settling other worlds. Earth is getting full already, and immortality would fill it right up. Fortunately, there are many millions of Earth-type worlds out there, Paul. Millions.”
“I heard you the first time.” Paul wondered how to keep Sanjay talking, how to string him along, when suddenly he remembered how lucid Katie was. No barking. No snapping. No cursing at every little thing. He remembered Sanjay stretching out a finger and removing the headache, and a cold shiver went up his spine. What if this guy was for—
“I’ve spoken enough,” Sanjay said. “I’ll leave you the contract, Paul. Read it. Think about it. You should have enough time to take it in, before your next attack. I’ll return then.”
Paul was going to protest, but Sanjay held up a hand to stop him. He popped open the valise and dug out a paper binder—black, of course—and handed it to Paul.
“I’ll see you in six days, Paul. Good luck.”
“My attacks are usually every couple of weeks. I should have weeks before the next one.”
“Your condition is getting worse. Your next attack will be in six days and will last about ten days. If you decide not to sign, better bulk up.”
Sanjay turned around without further comment and took off, the eel showing through him a dozen times as he went down the sidewalk. Then he disappeared around the corner. Paul fingered the binder, sat down on the Super Bag, and opened to page one. There was no cover sheet, no introduction, no executive summary; just fifty pages, two-sided, of legalese. He flipped through the document, and every page was dense with small type and long paragraphs. There were lots of sub-paragraphs and bullet points. Paul began to read.
¤
Five days went by. Paul’s headache and the voices and the noises returned within an hour of Sanjay’s departure, and for the next five days Paul wept. It was difficult to focus, but he fought the noise day after day and pushed through the pages of the contract. As Sanjay said, it was all there. The document began with the selling out of Homo sapiens and the dissolution of human governments and the arrival of the Sleen, who were the eels. Legal right of the Sleen to enslave the human race on the signature of a single Homo sapiens, three pages. Terms of slavery, in minute detail, forty pages. Economics under the Sleen, seven pages. Rights under the Sleen, fourteen pages, three pages of which were a list of the conditions the Sleen proposed to mitigate. Paul scanned the legalese with squinted eyes, remembering the eel slithering down the icy sidewalk. On the fourth day of reading, Paul’s headache changed to the spike-in-the-forehead type that meant one of his fits was coming. He took pains to visit the homeless shelter and evacuate his bowels in preparation for another attack. He stopped eating solid food.
During these long days Paul wondered if Sanjay was causing his attacks, to pressure him to sign the contract. If Sanjay could take away headaches, couldn’t he cause them to begin with? A race that could justify enslaving an entire species on the signature of one member of that species could justify damned near anything.
All during the reading of the contract Paul wondered how real all of this was. This binder full of paper was definitely real, no hallucination there. He talked to Katie about it, and she saw the binder, too. But, a space alien wanting to enslave the entire human race on the signature of one member of the species—! Surreal, totally surreal. Who was Sanjay really? Was he an anthropologist with a really weird hook, or some jerk having a little fun at the expense of the homeless? Space alien. And what did he expect Paul to do, sign the damned thing? Sell little children into five centuries of slavery, in return for curing his condition and giving him a pile of money? Fifty billion dollars, feh. How could he take that seriously?
He turned it over and over in his mind, selling out the people of Earth in return for becoming the richest man on the dirtball. And the slavery was only temporary, that was spelled out in the contract again and again. Five centuries, and then it was over, and the human race was ushered in as a junior member of the Conclave for what the Sleen referred to as a ‘golden age.’
What had the human race done for Paul lately? Sorry, can’t help you with the mental illness, living-on-the-streets thing. Can’t help you when the punks come to beat you up, can’t help you when the temperature drops to minus ten degrees. Good luck with the dwindling bank account and crapping yourself every two weeks. What exactly did he owe America, or humanity in general? They couldn’t be bothered to look out for him, should he be troubled to look out for them? But what about the children, didn’t he have some obligation not to burden them with centuries of misery? But if the Sleen were going to give humanity a bright
future, didn’t he owe it to the human race to put them through a little pain now in return for future payoffs? When the human race won through their five centuries and joined the rest of the galaxy, Paul might be seen as a hero.
How could he be expected to make a decision like this in six days?
On the fifth day he finished reading the contract. It ended with the emancipation of the human race and its associate membership in the Conclave, so it had, as far as contracts went, a happy ending. Guarantees of Paul’s payment were included (half a page), as were various guarantees for the safety and well-being of Homo sapiens under the Sleen. Paul knew contracts, having read and signed probably fifty of them during his twenty years as a programmer. There was plenty of wiggle room in this one, despite the strict wording and careful definitions. There was room for horror, depending on the spin you gave certain terms. The two pages on ‘reproduction of Homo sapiens’ spelled out family size and what constituted a family, under the Sleen. When you read it, nothing alarming, but there was wiggle room for downright fascism.
Paul read, and he thought about it all, and the fifth day went by in a haze of pain. Sanjay said Paul was going to slip away again on the sixth day. Paul broached this with Katie, who kept giving him weird, furtive glances but didn’t say anything direct for days.
“I’ll stick around this time, Paul, but after that I’ll be living in the shelters,” she said at the end of the fifth day. “I’ll come around every few days just to see how you’re doing, but Jonathan will have to look after you, in the future.”
There had been no sign of Jonathan for something like seven days, and Paul kicked his box and got no response. Finally Paul opened the box, and there was Jonathan, dead and frozen amongst the pile of blankets he used instead of a sleeping bag. No sign of violence. Heart attack or some such, Paul figured. Seeing death so near was upsetting. Was Paul going to die as well, in the near future? If Katie came by every few days to check on him, would that be enough to keep him alive?
“We have to get the cops,” Katie spat.