Win Some, Lose Some

by Mike Resnick

  “That is incorrect,” I say.

  “Oh?”

  “A matter of semantics,” I point out gently. “They are indigenous. You are the aliens.”

  “Well, they could do with some lessons in behavior from us aliens, then,” he growls.

  We walk up the long ramp to the Tomb and are about to enter it, when the woman stops.

  “I’d like a holo of the three of you standing in the entrance,” she announces. She smiles at me. “Just to prove to our friends we were here, and that we met a real Antarean.”

  The man walks over and stands on one side of me. The child reluctantly moves to my other side.

  “Now put your arm around Herman,” says the woman.

  The child steps back, and I see a mixture of contempt and disgust on his face. “I’ll pose with it, but I won’t touch it!”

  “You do what your mother says!” snaps the man.

  “No way!” says the child, stalking sulkily back down the ramp. “You want to hug him, you go ahead!”

  “You listen to me, young man!” says the man, but the child does not stop or give any indication that he has heard, and soon he disappears behind a temple.

  It was Tcharock, the founder of the 30th Dynasty, who decreed that the person of the Emperor was sacrosanct and could not be touched by any being other than his medics and his concubines, and then only with his consent.

  His greatest advisor was Chaluba, who extended Tcharock’s rule to more than 80% of the planet and halted the hyper-inflation that had been the 29th Dynasty’s legacy to him.

  One night, during a state function, Chaluba inadvertantly brushed against Tcharock while introducing him to the Ambassador from far Domar.

  The next morning Tcharock regretfully gave the signal to the executioner, and Chaluba was beheaded. Despite this unfortunate beginning, the 30th Dynasty survived for 1,062 Standard years.

  The woman, embarrassed, begins apologizing to me. But I notice that she, too, avoids touching me. The man goes off after the child, and a few moments later the two of them return—which is just as well, for the woman has begun repeating herself.

  The man pushes the child toward me, and he sullenly utters an apology. The man takes an ominous step toward him, and he reluctantly reaches out his hand. I take it briefly—the contact is no more pleasant for me than for him—and then we enter the Tomb. Two other groups are there, but they are hundreds of meters away, and we cannot hear what their guides are saying.

  “How high is the ceiling?” asks the woman, training her camera on the exquisite carvings overhead.

  “38 meters,” I say. “The Tomb itself is 203 meters long and 67 meters wide. The body of Beldorian V is in a large vault beneath the floor.” I pause, thinking as always of past glories. “On the Day of Mourning, the day the Tomb was completed, a million Antareans stood patiently in line outside the Tomb to pay their last respects.”

  “I don’t mean to ask a silly question,” says the woman, “but why are all the buildings so enormous?”

  “Ego,” suggests the man, confident in his wisdom.

  “The Maker of All Things is huge,” I explain. “So my people felt that any monuments to Him should be as large as possible, so that He might be comfortable inside them.”

  “You think your God can’t find or fit into a small building?” asks the man with a condescending smile.

  “He is everyone’s God,” I answer. “And while He can of course find a small temple, why should we force Him to live in one?”

  “Did Beldorian have a wife?” asks the woman, her mind back to smaller considerations.

  “He had five of them,” I answer. “The tomb next to this one is known as The Place of Beldorian’s Queens.”

  “He was a polygamist?”

  I shake my head. “No. Beldorian simply outlived his first four queens.”

  “He must have died a very old man,” says the woman.

  “He did not,” I answer. “There is a belief among my people that those who achieve public greatness are doomed to private misery. Such was Beldorian’s fate.” I turn to the child, who has been silent since returning, and ask him if he has any questions, but he merely glares at me without speaking.

  “How long ago was this place built?” asks the man.

  “Beldorian V died 6,302 Standard years ago. It took another 17 years to build and prepare the Tomb.”

  “6,302 years,” he muses. “That’s a long time.”

  “We are an ancient race,” I reply proudly. “A human anthropologist has suggested that our 3rd Dynasty commenced before your ancestors crossed over the evolutionary barrier into sentience.”

  “Maybe we spent a long time living in the trees,” says the man, clearly unimpressed and just a bit defensive. “But look how quickly we passed you once we climbed down.”

  “If you say so,” I answer noncommittally.

  “In fact, everybody passed you,” he persists. “Look at the record: How many times has Antares been conquered?”

  “I am not sure,” I lie, for I find it humiliating to speak of it.

  When the Antareans learned that Man’s Republic wished to annex their world, they gathered their army in Zanthu and then marched out onto the battlefield, 300,000 strong. They were the cream of the planet’s young warriors, gold of eye, the reticulated plates of their skin glistening in the morning sun, prepared to defend their homeworld.

  The Republic sent a single ship that flew high overhead and dropped a single bomb, and in less than a second there was no longer an Antarean army, or a city of Zanthu, or a Great Library of Cthstoka.

  Over the millennia Antares was conquered four times by Man, twice by the Canphor Twins, and once each by Lodin XI, Emra, Ramor, and the Sett Empire. It was said that the parched ground had finally quenched its thirst by drinking a lake of Antarean blood.

  As we leave the Tomb, we come to a small, skinny rapu. He sits on a rock, staring at us with his large, golden eyes, his expression rapt in contemplation.

  The human child pointedly ignores him and continues walking toward the next temple, but the adults stop.

  “What a cute little thing!” enthuses the woman. “And he looks so hungry.” She digs into her shoulder bag and withdraws a sweet that she has kept from breakfast. “Here,” she says, holding it up. “Would you like it?”

  The rapu never moves. This is unique not only in the woman’s experience, but also in mine, for he is obviously undernourished.

  “Maybe he can’t metabolize it,” suggests the man. He pulls a coin out, steps over to the rapu, and extends his hand. “Here you go, kid.”

  The rapu, his face frozen in contemplation, makes no attempt to grab the coin.

  And suddenly I am thinking excitedly: You disdain their food when you are hungry, and their money when you are poor. Could you possibly be the One we have awaited for so many millennia, the One who will give us back our former glory and initiate the 44th Dynasty?

  I study him intently, and my excitement fades just as quickly as it came upon me. The rapu does not disdain their food and their money. His golden eyes are clouded over. Life in the streets has so weakened him that he has become blind, and of course he does not understand what they are saying. His seeming arrogance comes not from pride or some inner light, but because he is not aware of their offerings.

  “Please,” I say, gently taking the sweet from the woman without coming into actual contact with her fingers. I walk over and place it in the rapu’s hand. He sniffs it, then gulps it down hungrily and extends his hand, blindly begging for more.

  “It breaks your heart,” says the woman.

  “Oh, it’s no worse than what we saw on Bareimus V,” responds the man. “They were every bit as poor—and remember that awful skin disease that they all had?”

  The woman considers, and her face reflects the unpleasantness of the memory. “I suppose you’re right at that.” She shrugs, and I can tell that even though the child is still in front of us, hand outstretched, she has alread
y put him from her mind.

  I lead them through the Garden of the Vanished Princes, with its tormented history of sacrifice and intrigue, and suddenly the man stops.

  “What happened here?” he asks, pointing to a number of empty pedestals.

  “History happened,” I explain. “Or avarice, for sometimes they are the same thing.” He seems confused, so I continue: “If any of our conquerors could find a way to transport a treasure back to his home planet, he did. Anything small enough to be plundered was plundered.”

  “And these statues that have been defaced?” he says, pointing to them. “Did you do it yourselves so they would be worthless to occupying armies?”

  “No,” I answer.

  “Well, whoever did that”—he points to a headless statue—“ought to be strung up and whipped.”

  “What’s the fuss?” asks the child in a bored voice. “They’re just statues of aliens.”

  “Actually, the human who did that was rewarded with the governorship of Antares III,” I inform them.

  “What are you talking about?” says the man.

  “The second human conquest of the Antares system was led by Commander Lois Kiboko,” I begin. “She defaced or destroyed more than 3,000 statues. Many were physical representations of our deity, and since she and her crew were devout believers in one of your religions, she felt that these were false idols and must be destroyed.”

  “Well,” the man replies with a shrug, “it’s a small price to pay for her saving you from the Lodinites.”

  “Perhaps,” I say. “The problem is that we had to pay a greater price for each successive savior.”

  He stares at me, and there is an awkward silence. Finally I suggest that we visit the Palace of the Supreme Tyrant.

  “You seem such a docile race,” she says awkwardly. “I mean, so civilized and unaggressive. How did your gene pool ever create a real, honest-to-goodness tyrant?”

  The truth is that our gene pool was considerably more aggressive before a seemingly endless series of alien conquests decimated it. But I know that this answer would make them uncomfortable, and could affect the size of my tip, so I lie to them instead. (I am ashamed to admit that lying to aliens becomes easier with each passing day. Indeed, I am sometimes amazed at the facility with which I can create falsehoods.)

  “Every now and then each race produces a genetic sport,” I say, and I can see she believes it, “and we Antareans are so docile, to use your expression, that this particular one had no difficulty achieving power.”

  “What was his name?”

  “I do not know.”

  “I thought you took fourteen years’ worth of history courses,” she says accusingly, and I can tell she thinks I am lying to her, whereas every time I have actually lied she has believed me.

  “Our language has many dialects, and they have all evolved and changed over 36,000 years,” I point out. “Some we have deciphered, but to this day many of them remain unsolved mysteries. In fact, right at this moment a team of human archaeologists is hard at work trying to uncover the Tyrant’s name.”

  “If it’s a dead language, how are they going to manage that?”

  “In the days when your race was still planetbound, there was an artifact called the Rosetta Stone that helped you translate an ancient language. We have something similar—ours is known as the Bosperi Scroll—that comes from the Great Tyrant’s era.”

  “Where is it?” asks the woman, looking around.

  “I regret to inform you that both the archaeologists and the Bosperi Scroll are currently in a museum on Deluros VIII.”

  “Smart,” says the man. “They can protect it better on Deluros.”

  “From who?” asks the woman.

  “From anyone who wants to steal it, of course,” he says, as if explaining it to a child.

  “But I mean, who would want to steal the key to a dead language?”

  “Do you know what it would be worth to a collector?” answers the man. “Or a thief who wanted to ransom it?”

  They discuss it further, but the simple truth is that it is on Deluros because it was small enough to carry, and for no other reason. When they are through arguing I tell her that it is because they have devices on Deluros that will bring back the faded script, and she nods her head thoughtfully.

  We walk another 400 meters and come to the immense Palace of the Kings. It is made entirely of gold, and becomes so hot from the rays of the sun that one can touch the outer surface only at night. This was the building in which all the rulers of the 7th through the 12th Dynasties resided. It was from here that my race received the Nine Proclamations of Ascendancy, and the Charter of Universal Rights, and our most revered document, the Mabelian Declaration.

  It was a wondrous time to have lived, when we had never tasted defeat and all problems were capable of solution, when stately caravans plied their trade across secure boundaries and monarchs were just and wise, when each day brought new triumphs and the future held infinite promise.

  I point to the broken and defaced stone chair. “Once there were 246 jewels and precious stones embedded in the throne.”

  The child walks over to the throne, then looks at me accusingly. “Where are they?” he demands.

  “They were all stolen over the millennia,” I reply.

  “By conquerors, of course,” offers the woman with absolute certainty.

  “Yes,” I say, but again I am lying. They were stolen by my own people, who traded them to various occupying armies for food or the release of captive loved ones.

  We spend a few more minutes examining the vanished glory of the Palace of the Kings, then walk out the door and approach the next crumbling structure. It is the Hall of the Thinkers, revered to this day by all Antareans, but I know they will not understand why a race would create such an edifice to scholarship, and I haven’t the energy to explain, so I tell them that it is the Palace of the Concubines, and of course they believe me. At one point the child, making no attempt to mask his disappointment, asks why there are no statues or carvings showing the concubines, and I think very quickly and explain that Lois Kiboko’s religious beliefs were offended by the sexual frankness of the artifacts and she had them all destroyed.

  I feel guilty about this lie, for it is against the Code of Just Behavior to suggest that a visitor’s race may have offended in any way. Ironically, while the child voices his disappointment, I notice that none of the three seems to have a problem accepting that another human would destroy millennia-old artwork that upset his sensibilities. I decide that since they feel no guilt, this one time I shall feel none either. (But I still do. Tradition is a difficult thing to transcend.)

  I see the man anxiously walking around, looking into corners and behind pedestals, and I ask him if something is wrong.

  “Where’s the can?” he says.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The can. The bathroom. The lavatory.” He frowns. “Didn’t any of these goddamned concubines ever have to take a crap?”

  I finally discern what he wants and direct him to a human facility that has been constructed just beyond the Western Door.

  He returns a few minutes later, and I lead them all outside, past the towering Onyx Obelisk that marked the beginning of the almost-forgotten 4th Dynasty. We stop briefly at the Temple of the River of Light, which was constructed over the river, so that the sacred waters flow through the temple itself.

  We leave and turn a corner, and suddenly a single structure completely dominates the landscape.

  “What’s that?” asks the woman.

  “That is the Spiral Ramp to Heaven,” I answer.

  “What a fabulous name!” she enthuses. “I just know a fabulous story goes with it!” She turns to me expectantly.

  “There was a time, before our scientists knew better, that people thought you could reach heaven if you simply built a tall enough ramp.”

  The child guffaws.

  “It is true,” I continue. “Construction was
begun during the 2nd Dynasty, and continued for more than 700 years until midway through the 3rd. It looks as if you can see the top from here, but you actually are looking only at the bottom half of it. The rest is obscured by clouds.”

  “How high does it go?” asked the woman.

  “More than nine kilometers,” I say. “Three kilometers higher than our tallest mountain.”

  “Amazing!” she exclaims.

  “Perhaps you would like a closer look at it?” I suggest. “You might even wish to climb the first kilometer. It is a very gentle ascent until you reach the fifth kilometer.”

  “Yes,” she replies happily. “I think I’d like that very much.”

  “I’m not climbing anything,” says the man.

  “Oh, come on,” she urges him. “It’ll be fun!”

  “The air’s too thin and the gravity’s too heavy and it’s too damned much like work. One of these days I’m going to choose our itinerary, and I promise you it won’t involve so goddamned much walking.”

  “Can we go back and watch the game?” asks the child eagerly.

  The man takes one more look at the Spiral Ramp to Heaven. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ve seen enough. Let’s go back.”

  “We really should finish the tour,” says the woman. “We’ll probably never be in this sector of the galaxy again.”

  “So what? It’s just another backwater world,” replies the man. “Don’t tell your friends about the Stairway to the Stars or whatever the hell it’s called and they’ll never know you missed it.”

  Then the woman comes up with what she imagines will be the clinching argument. “But you’ve already agreed to pay for the tour.”

  “So we’ll cut it short and pay him half as much,” says the man. “Big deal.”

  The man pulls a wad of credits out of his pocket and peels off three ten-credits notes. Then he pauses, looks at me, pockets them, and presses a fifty-credit note into my hand instead.

  “Ah, hell, you kept your end of the bargain, Herman,” he says. Then he and the woman and child begin walking back to the hotel.

  The first aliens ever to visit Antares were rude and ill-mannered barbarians, but Perganian II, the greatest Emperor of the 31st Dynasty, decreed that they must be treated with the utmost courtesy. When the day of their departure finally arrived, the aliens exchanged farewells with Perganian, and one of them thrust a large, flawless blue diamond into the Emperor’s hand in payment for his hospitality.