Cohone gently pried Witta’s fingers from his arm.
“I’m coming back,” he said. “Go tell your people that.”
“Thank you. Thank you. Thank . . .” said Witta, backing away. He turned, scrambled to his feet and ran into the dark safety of the king’s house.
“You see?” said Cohone, grimly, turning to the man beside him. On that individual, the twin stars of a Departmental General glittered in the yellow sunlight. “Do you believe me now about the effects of what Mallard tried to do?”
“I believe you,” the DG nodded. “It’s plain enough what he tried. And if he’d succeeded we’d be patting him on the back right now. But it backfired on him—and I still don’t understand exactly why. These people haven’t developed consciences yet, surely.”
“Of course not!” said Cohone. “They’ve got what came before conscience and was meant to do the same work. Custom. I warned Mallard that if he pressed these people too hard, they’d bounce back at him. You realize that was all he did that was unworkable—press them too hard? Everything else was quite acceptable by their standards, the advantage-taking, the enslaving of captives, the killing of helpless people for sacrifice? He only made that one mistake—being too successful.”
“Too successful?” the DG raised his sandy eyebrows. He was as tall as Cohone, but more athletically built, in spite of his age—which was perhaps twenty years older than that of the amateur xenosociologist.
“That’s what I said.” Abruptly, Cohone started to walk back toward the pod and the DG came along with him. “He was giving Rajn advice; and everything he got Rajn to do, worked. Actually, it was Rajn who became too successful. He was doing nothing but breaking custom and coming up covered with roses every time he did it. Finally, he went too far in killing my converts.”
“But I thought these village people had no use for the converts?”
“They didn’t. But the converts were Homskarters,after all. If killing them turned out to be a successfulthing, then who was next to be sacrificed to a changeof custom? Custom to these people is like commonlaw was before written statutes—the only machinerythere is to make sure the world works right. When itbegan to look like Rajn could kill his own people andget away with it, that had to be a sign that a devilwas loose in the world.”
“And we know who the devil was, unfortunately,”said the DG.
“Unfortunately,” said Cohone, grimly, “so did the Homskarters. So they took the obvious step—replaced Rajn with a conservative king and locked the devil up in a cage where he couldn’t cause anymore trouble.”
“Well, well,” said the DG. They were at the entrance to the pod. He stopped. “In any case, it’s worked out well. It looks like you’ll have them eat-ng out of your hand when you get back here.”
Cohone also stopped. He frowned.
“If I do come back,” he answered slowly.
The DG looked closely at him.
“If I understand Homskarter,” he said, “what you just said to that new king was—”
“But then you said,” Cohone darted a glance at him, “that if Mallard had been successful you’d be patting him on the back right now. He told me you HQ people were operating privately on a principle of survival of the fittest—that anything anyone could make work would be accepted. I didn’t believe it—then. I don’t think that way myself; and I don’t know that I want to work with people who do.”
“Look here, Bill,” said the DG, putting his hand on the edge of the open hatch and leaning toward Cohone. He lowered his voice earnestly and confidentially, “Mallard told you the truth, and you might as well face it as a fact. We’re a young race, a small race, just beginning to stick our nose out into the universe. How the hell do we know what’s right to do when we run across a planet of intelligent non-human locals? A decision’s been made arbitrarily that the best thing to do is to help them along toward the same sort of technological civilization that made us what we are today—”
“You needn’t go over the rule book with me,” broke in Cohone impatiently. “I’m not talking about general principles—”
“But I am,” persisted the DG, “because general principles are what’s at issue here. I say, the decision’s been made to help them along because maybe if we cast our bread on waters it’ll come back to us some day when they’ve reached a civilized level and we need friends. But how do we help them? What’s wrong and what’s right? We can try to apply our own ethical and moral standards, but who knows if that’s the best thing for them?”
“It’s better than survival of the fittest,” said Cohone, “which is just another way of saying what works is justified—after the act.”
“Exactly,” said the DG.
“Well, it didn’t work here,” said Cohone with near-savage satisfaction. He pointed into the pod. “Go take another look at your success story.”
“He’s not a success story,” said the DG.
“You just said he was.”
“No,” said the DG. “You said he was. From our standpoint he ended by failing. That wipes him out. Survival of the fittest means just what it says. His way failed. Your way, judging from what that local said back there, is working.”
He poked a rigid finger into Cohone’s chest.
"You’re the success,” he said. “So we go with you—until something trips you up and you fail. Andyou’ll go along with us—or else regret to your dying day that you didn’t finish up what you’ve started herewith these people.”
He withdrew his finger and stepped away through the hatch into the pod, leaving Cohone alone in the sunlight.
“Coming?” he asked from within the shadow of the hatch. “Or staying?”
“I’ll call for transport when I need it,” answered Cohone harshly. “Right now I’ve got to clean up the mess your professional left.”
Manai Elies, the white Med Service patch on her jacket shoulder taking the sunlight brilliantly as she stepped back out of the pod, emerged and turned to speak to the DG.
“Mallard’s quiet. He’ll be easy to handle up at the station,” she said. “I’d better make some physiological tests of these natives while I’m here, just in case there was some off-world contamination as a result of Mallard’s fun and games. I’ll call for transport myself as soon as I need it—possibly a day or two.”
“Very well,” said the DG from within. A moment later the hatch closed and the pod lifted, dwindling rapidly to nothingness in the blue of the sky. Cohone looked at Manai penetratingly for a second, but her face was calm. He turned away to look back at the village, where a few timid faces were beginning to peer more bravely from doorways and windows.
“I’ve got to get the station here back on a working basis,” he said—aloud, but not looking at Manai. “Right now Witta and the others are ready to fall allover themselves to please me. But I’ve got to nail down the lessons they learned from having Harb among them, while the effect’s still strong.”
“So,” said Manai. “You’ll be staying after all.”
Cohone laughed, a little bitterly.
“Staying?” he looked at her, at that. “Of course I’m staying. Mallard was just what I needed here—just the sort of leverage I’d been praying for and couldn’t get through official channels.”
She gazed steadily at him and put her hand on his arm almost soothingly.
“What do you mean?” she asked gently.
“Mean?” Cohone’s laugh was still bitter. “I mean I’m a monster—a thoroughly bloody-minded person, ten times as bad as Mallard was!”
He stared at her for a moment, then began to talk quickly, almost angrily.
“Don’t you think I saw through him from the first? From the first I knew what was going to happen if he tried what he wanted to try. He was an innocent—an innocent with a diploma! I wanted him to try it, so I could use the results—don’t you see?.”
“You warned him—”
“Of course I warned him. I warned him, knowing he wouldn’t listen. And I knew th
at someone trying what he’d decided to try would have made sure Sector Headquarters and any other superior post wouldn’t know what was going on here, or wouldn’t become alerted in time to interfere. He didn’t want any interference. He!”
“Were you that sure it would all work out just like this?”
“I knew it would work out to this kind of a result.” Suddenly he looked at her almost appealingly. “I couldn’t let the chance pass, the chance to replace an intelligent, but dangerous king like Rajn—who was hard to handle—with a dull-witted conservative like Witta, who could be maneuvered within the official guidelines—safely within the cultural pattern. And I was able to get away with using him because it was he who was the amateur—he who didn’t know what dynamite he was playing with when he tried to change a people like this, all at once, by main force!”.
“It’s all right,” said Manai. “He was wrong and tried to do the wrong thing. You tried to do the right thing and it came out right.”
“But I made myself worse than he was, in order to do it. I went along with it, knowing what it would cost him, what it would cost in the lives of Homskarters and others—” he broke off, and laughed again. But for the first time his laugh was more weary then bitter.
“Ah, hell!” he said. “It’s done! Now things can go forward. I’m a bloody-minded man, all right, but it’s a bloody-minded culture here, and I’ve lived with it all these years.”
“You’re not a bloody-minded man,” said Manai. “Don’t tell yourself that unless you really want to be one.”
“Well, I don’t.” He sighed, but again he sounded more weary than bitter. “All right, perhaps I’m not thoroughly there yet. But I’ve reached the point where I wanted results, I simply went after them and got them, never mind the cost.”
Manai did not seem convinced. She looked at him closely.
“You loved Rajn, didn’t you?” she said. “He was your friend. In fact, you love all these people.”
He started. Almost, he shied away from her.
“Me? Love them? God, no!” he said, explosively. “I can barely stand the sight of them, after all these years!”
He turned abruptly from her, and went striding off,back into the village.
“Witta!” he shouted, his voice hard. “Witta, come out here! There’s things you’re going to have to dofrom now on, if I’m going to make you people safe from devils like the last one—and a lot of the other troubles you’re always getting yourselves into, too!”
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