The People Trap

by Sheckley, Robert;

  “No difficulty there,” Erum said. “In fact, it’ll be a veritable orai of a pleasure to have a man from your distant and glorious civilization in our midst.”

  Jackson restrained a snicker. “The only other difficulty I can imagine is the question of legal tender. I don’t have any of your currency, of course; but I have certain quantities of gold, platinum, diamonds, and other objects which are considered valuable on Earth.”

  “They are considered valuable here, too,” Erum said. “Quantities, did you say? My dear sir, we will have no difficulties; not even a blaggle shall mit or oivs, as the poet said.”

  “Quite so,” Jackson replied. Erum was using some words he didn’t know, but that didn’t matter. The main drift was clear enough. “Now, suppose we begin with a nice industrial site. After all, I’ll have to do something with my time. And after that, we can pick out a house.”

  “Most decidedly prominex, “ Erum said gaily. “Suppose I just raish through my listings here.. .Yes, what do you say to a bromicaine factory? It’s in a first-class condition and could easily be converted to vormanufacture or used as it is.”

  “Is there any real market for bromicaine?”Jackson asked.

  “Well, bless my meurgentan, of course there is! Bromicaine is indispensable, though its sales are seasonable. You see, refined bromicaine, or ariisi, is used by the protigash devolvers, who of course, harvest by the solstice season, except in those branches of the industry that have switched over to ticothene revature. Those from a steadily—”

  “Fine, fine,” Jackson said. He didn’t care what a bromicaine was and never expected to see one. As long as it was a gainful employment of some kind, it filled his specifications.

  “I’ll buy it,” he said.

  “You won’t regret it,” Erum told him. “A good bromicaine factory is a garveldis hagatis, and menifov as well.”

  “Sure,” Jackson said, wishing that he had a more extensive Hon vocabulary. “How much?”

  “Well, sir, the price is no difficulty. But first you’ll have to fill out the ottanbrit form. It is just a few sken questions which ny naga of everyone.”

  Erum handed Jackson the form. The first question read: “Have you, now or at any past time, elikated mushkiesforsically? State date of all occurrences. If no occurrences, state the reason for transgrishal reduct as found.”

  Jackson read no further. “What does it mean,” he asked Erum, “to elikated mushkies forsically?”

  “Mean?” Erum smiled uncertainly. “Why, it means exactly what it says. Or so I would imagine.”

  “I meant,” Jackson said, “that I do not understand the words. Could you explain them to me?”

  “Nothing simpler,” Erum replied. “To elikate mushkies is almost the same as a bifurprobishkai.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Jackson said.

  “It means—well, to elikate is really rather simple, though perhaps not in the eyes of the law. Scorbadising is a form of elikation, and so is manrub gating. Some say that when we breathe drosically in the evening subsis, we are actually elikating. Personally, I consider that a bit fanciful.”

  “Let’s try mushkies, “Jackson suggested.

  “By all means, let’s!” Erum replied, with a coarse boom of laughter. “If only one could—eh!” He dug Jackson in the ribs with a sly elbow.

  “Hm, yes,” Jackson replied coldly. “Perhaps you could tell me what, exactly, a mushkie is?”

  “Of course. As it happens, there is no such thing,” Erum replied. “Not in the singular, at any rate. One mushkie would be a logical fallacy, don’t you see?”

  “I’ll take your word for it. What are mushkies?”

  “Well, primarily, they’re the object of elikation. Secondarily, they are half-sized wooden sandals which are used to stimulate erotic fantasies among the Kutor religionists.”

  “Now we’re getting some place!” Jackson cried.

  “Only if your tastes happen to run that way,” Erum answered with discernible coldness.

  “I meant in terms of understanding the question on the form—”

  “Of course, excuse me,” Erum said. “But you see, the question asks if you have ever elikated mushkies forsically. And that makes all the difference.”

  “Does it really?”

  “Of course! The modification changes the entire meaning.”

  “I was afraid that it would,” Jackson said. “I don’t suppose you could explain what forsically means?”

  “I certainly can!” Erum said. “Our conversation now could—with a slight assist from the deme imagination—be termed a forsically designed talk.”’

  “Ah,” said Jackson.

  “Quite so,” said Erum. “Forsicallyis a mode, a manner. It means ‘spintually-forward-leading-by-way-of-fortuitous-friendship.’“

  “That’s a little more like it,” Jackson said. “In that case, when one elikates mushkies forsically—”

  “I’m terribly afraid you’re on the wrong track,” Erum said. “The definition I gave you applies only to conversations. It is something rather different when one speaks of mushkies.”

  “What does it mean then?”

  “Well, it means—or rather it expresses—an advanced and intensified case of mushkie elikidation, but with a definite nmogmetic bias. I consider it a rather unfortunate phraseology, personally.”

  “How would you put it?”

  “I’d lay it on the line and to hell with the fancy talk,” Erum said toughly. “I’d come right out and say: ‘Have you now or at any other time dunfiglers voc in illegal, immoral, or insirtis circumstances, with or without the aid and/or consent of a brachniian? If so, state when and why. If not, state neugris kris and why not.”

  “That’s how you’d put it, huh?” Jackson said.

  “Sure, I would,” Erum said defiantly. “These forms are for adults, aren’t they? So why not come right out and call a spigler a spigler a spey? Everybody dunfiglers voc some of the time, and so what? No one’s feelings are ever hurt by it, for heaven’s sake. I mean, after all, it simply involves oneself and a twisted old piece of wood, so why should anyone care?”

  “Wood?” Jackson echoed.

  “Yes, wood. A commonplace, dirty old piece of wood. Or at least that’s all it would be if people didn’t get their feelings so ridiculously involved.”

  “What do they do with the wood?” Jackson asked quickly.

  “Do with it? Nothing much, when you come right down to it. But the religious aura is simply too much for our so-called intellectuals. They are unable, in my opinion, to isolate the simple primordial fact—wood—from the cultural volturneiss which surrounds it at festerhiss, and to some extent at uuis, too.”

  “That’s how intellectuals are,” Jackson said. “But you can isolate it, and you find—”

  “I find it’s really nothing to get excited about. I really mean that. I mean to say that a cathedral, viewed correctly, is no more than a pile of rocks, and a forest is just an assembly of atoms. Why should we see this case differently? I mean, really, you could elikate mushkies forsically without even using wood! What do you think of that?”

  “I’m impressed,” Jackson said.

  “Don’t get me wrong! I’m not saying it would be easy,or natural, or even right. But still, you damned well could! Why, you could substitute cormedgrayti and still come out all right!” Erum paused and chuckled. “You’d look foolish, but you’d still come out all right.”

  “Very interesting,” Jackson said.

  “I’m afraid I became a bit vehement,” Erum said, wiping his forehead. “Was I talking very loudly? Do you think perhaps I was overheard?”

  “Of course not. I found it all very interesting. I must leave just now, Mr. Erum, but I’ll be back tomorrow to fill out that form and buy the property.”

  “I’ll hold it for you,” Erum said, rising and shaking Jackson’s hand warmly. “And I want to thank you. It isn’t often that I have the opportunity for this kind of frank no-holds-barred conversation
.”

  “I found it very instructive,” Jackson said. He left Erum’s office and walked slowly back to his ship. He was disturbed, upset, and annoyed. Linguistic incomprehension irked him, no matter how comprehensible it might be. He should have been able to figure out, somehow, how one went about elikating mushkies forsically.

  Never mind, he told himself. You’ll work it out tonight, Jackson baby, and then you’ll go back in there and cannonball through them forms. So don’t get het up over it, man.

  He’d work it out. He damned well had to work it out, as he had to own a piece of property.

  That was the second part of his job.

  Earth had come a long way since the bad old days of naked, aggressive warfare. According to the history books, a ruler back in those ancient times could simply send out his troops to seize whatever the ruler wanted. And if any of the folks at home had the temerity to ask why he wanted it, the ruler could have them beheaded or locked up in a dungeon or sewn up in a sack and thrown into the sea. And he wouldn’t even feel guilty about doing any of those things because he invariably believed he was right and they were wrong.

  This policy, technically called the droit du seigneur; was one of the most remarkable features of the laissez-faire capitalism which the ancients knew.

  But, down the slow passage of centuries, cultural processes were inexorably at work. A new ethic came into the world; and slowly but surely, a sense of fair play and justice was bred into the human race. Rulers came to be chosen by ballot and were responsive to the desires of the electorate. Conceptions of Justice, Mercy, and Pity came to the forefront of men’s minds, ameliorating the old law of tooth and talon and amending the savage bestiality of the ancient time of unreconstruction.

  The old days were gone forever. Today, no ruler could simply take; the voters would never stand for it.

  Nowadays one had to have an excuse for taking.

  Like for example a Terran citizen who happened to own property all legal and aboveboard on an alien planet, and who urgently needed and requested Terran military assistance in order to protect himself, his home, his means of a legitimate livelihood…

  But first he had to own that property. He had to really own it, to protect himself from the bleeding-hearts Congressmen and soft-on-aliens newsmen who always started an investigation whenever Earth took charge of another planet.

  To provide a legal basis for conquest—that was what the contactors were for.

  “Jackson,” Jackson said to himself, “you gonna git yourself that little old bromicaine factory tomorrow and you gonna own it without let or hindrance. You hear me, boy? I mean it sincerely.”

  On the morrow, shortly before noon, Jackson was back in the city. Several hours of intensive study and a long consultation with his tutor had sufficed to show him where he had gone wrong.

  It was simple enough. He had merely been a trifle hasty in assuming an extreme and invariant isolating technique in the Hon use of radicals. He had thought, on the basis of his early studies, that word meaning and word order were the only significant factors required for an understanding of the language. But that wasn’t so. Upon further examination, Jackson found that the Hon language had some unexpected resources: affixation, for example, and an elementary form of reduplication. Yesterday he hadn’t even been prepared for any morphological inconsistencies; when they had occurred, he had found himself in semantic difficulties.

  The new forms were easy enough to learn. The trouble was, they were thoroughly illogical and contrary to the entire spirit of Hon.

  One word produced by one sound and bearing one meaning—that was the rule he had previously deduced. But now he discovered eighteen important exceptions—compounds produced by a variety of techniques, each of them with a list of modifying suffixes. For Jackson, this was as odd as stumbling across a grove of palm trees in Antarctica.

  He learned the eighteen exceptions, and thought about the article he would write when he finally got home.

  And the next day, wiser and warier, Jackson strode meaningfully back to the city.

  4.

  In Erum’s office, he filled out the Government forms with ease. That first question—”Have you, now or at any past time, elikated mushkies forsically? ‘‘—he could now answer with an honest no. The plural “mushkies” in its primary meaning represented in this context the singular “woman.” (The singular “mushkies”used similarly would denote an uncorporeal state of femininity.)

  Elikation was, of course, the role of sexual termination, unless one employed the modifier “forsically.” If one did, this quiet term took on a charged meaning in this particular context, tantamount to edematous polysexual advocation.

  Thus, Jackson could honestly write that, as he was not a Naian, he had never had that particular urge.

  It was as simple as that. Jackson was annoyed at himself for not having Figured it out on his own.

  He filled in the rest of the questions without difficulty, and handed the paper back to Erum.

  “That’s really quite skoe,” Erum said. “Now, there are just a few more simple items for us to complete. The first we can do immediately. After that, I will arrange a brief official ceremony for the Property Transferral Act, and that will be followed by several other small bits of business. All of it should take no more t-han a day or so, and then the property will be all yours.”

  “Sure, kid, that’s great,” Jackson said. He wasn’t bothered by the delays. Quite the contrary, he had expected many more of them. On most planets, the locals caught on quickly to what was happening. It took no great reasoning power to figure out that Earth wanted what she wanted, but wanted it in a legalistic manner.

  As for why she wanted it that way—that wasn’t too hard to fathom, either. A great majority of Terrans were idealists, and they believed fervently in concepts such as truth, justice, mercy, and the like. And not only did they believe, they also let those noble concepts guide their actions—except when it would be inconvenient or unprofitable. When that happened, they acted expediently, but continued to talk moralistically. This meant that they were “hypocrites”—a term which every race has its counterpart of.

  Terrans wanted what they wanted, but they also wanted that what they wanted should look nice. This was a lot to expect sometimes, especially when what they wanted was ownership of someone else’s planet. But in one way or another, they usually got it.

  Most alien races realized that overt resistance was impossible and so resorted to various stalling tactics.

  Sometimes they refused to sell, or they required an infinite multiplicity of forms or the approval of some local official who was always absent. But for each ploy the contactor always had a suitable counterploy.

  Did they refuse to sell property on racial grounds? The laws of Earth specifically forbade such practices, and the Declaration of Sentient Rights stated the freedom of all sentients to live and work wherever they pleased. This was a freedom that Terra would fight for, if anyone forced her to.

  Were they stalling? The Terran Doctrine of Temporal Propriety would not allow it.

  Was the necessary official absent? The Uniform Earth Code Against Implicit Sequestration in Acts of Omission expressly forbade such a practice. And so on and so on. It was a game of wits Earth invariably won, for the strongest is usually judged the cleverest.

  But the Naians weren’t even trying to fight back. Jackson considered that downright despicable.

  The exchange of Naian currency for Terran platinum was completed and Jackson was given his change in crisp fifty-Vrso bills. Erum beamed with pleasure and said, “Now, Mr. Jackson, we can complete today’s business if you will kindly trombramcthulanchierir in the usual manner.”

  Jackson turned, his eyes narrowed and his mouth compressed into a bloodless downward-curving line.

  “What did you say?”

  “I merely asked you to—”

  “I know what you asked! But what does it mean?”

  “Well, it means—it means—” Eru
m laughed weakly. “It means exactly what it says. That is to say—ethybolically speaking—”

  Jackson said in a low, dangerous voice, “Give me a synonym.”

  “There is no synonym,” Erum said.

  “Baby, you better come up with one anyhow,” Jackson said, his hand closing over Erum’s throat.

  “Stop! Wait! Ulp!” Erum cried. “Mr. Jackson, I beg of you! How can there be a synonym when there is one and only one term for the thing expressed—if I may so express it?”

  “You’re putting me on!” Jackson howled. “And you better quit it, on account of we got laws against willful obfuscation, intentional obstructionism, implicit superimposition, and other stuff like you’re doing. You hear me?”

  “I hear you.” Erum trembled.

  “Then hear this: stop agglutinating. you devious dog! You’ve got a perfectly ordinary run-of-the-mill analytical-type language, distinguished only by its extreme isolating tendency. And when you got a language like that, man, then you simply don’t agglutinate a lot of big messy compounds. Get me?”

  “Yes, yes,” Erum cried. “But believe me, I don’t intend to numniscaterate in the slightest! Not noniskakkekaki, and you really must debruchili that!”

  Jackson drew back his fist, but got himself under control in time. It was unwise to hit aliens if there was any possibility that they were telling the truth. Folks on Terra didn’t like it. His pay could be docked; and if, by some unlucky chance, he killed Erum, he could be slapped with a six-month jail sentence.

  But still…

  “I’ll find out if you’re lying or not!” Jackson screamed, and stormed out of the office.

  He walked for nearly an hour, mingling with the crowds in the slum quarters of Grath-Eth, below the gray, evil-smelling Ungperdis. No one paid any attention to him. To all outward appearances, he could have been a Naian, just as any Naian could have been a Terran.

  Jackson located a cheerful saloon on the corner of Niis and Da Streets and went in.

  It was quiet and masculine inside. Jackson ordered a local variety of beer. When it was served, he said to the bartender, “Funny thing happened to me the other day.”