The Year's Best Science Fiction 5

by Judith Merril

  “Nothing wrong with the goonie,” he said, a little sullenly. “I don’t deserve a smart goonie. I don’t deserve to associate with grown men. I’m still a kid with no sense.”

  “Well, now,” I said with a grin. “Far be it from me to disagree with a man’s own opinion of himself. What happened?”

  “I told you about this Carl Hest? The office manager?”

  I nodded.

  “This morning my monthly reports were due. I took them into Libo City with my libolines. I wasn’t content just to leave them with the receiving clerk, as usual. Oh, no! I took them right on in to Mr. High-and-mighty Hest, himself. I slapped them down on his desk and I said, ‘All right, bud, see what you can find wrong with them this time.’”

  Paul began scraping the dottle out of his pipe and looked at me out of the corner of his eyes.

  I grinned more broadly.

  “I can understand,” I said. “I was a Company man once, myself.”

  “This guy Hest,” Paul continued, “raised his eyebrows, picked up the reports as if they’d dirty his hands, flicked through them to find my dozens of mistakes at a glance. Then he went back over them—slowly. Finally, after about ten minutes, he laid them down on his desk. ‘Well, Mr. Tyler,’ he said in that nasty voice of his. ‘What happened to you? Come down with an attack of intelligence?’

  “I should have quit when my cup was full,” Paul said, after I’d had my laugh. “But oh, no. I had to keep pouring and mess up the works—I wasn’t thinking about anything but wiping that sneer off his face. ‘Those reports you think are so intelligent,’ I said, ‘were done by a goonie.’ Then I said, real loud because the whole office was dead silent, ‘How does it feel to know that a goonie can do this work as well as your own suck-up goons—as well as you could, probably, and maybe better?’

  “I walked out while his mouth was still hanging open. You know how the tenderfeet are. They pick up the attitude that the goonie is an inferior animal, and they ride it for all it’s worth; they take easily to having something they can push around. You know, Jim, you can call a man a dirty name with a smile, and he’ll sort of take it; maybe not quite happy about it but he’ll take it because you said it right. But here on Libo you don’t compare a man with a goonie—not anytime, no how, no matter how you say it.”

  “So then what happened?” I’d lost my grin suddenly.

  “It all happened in front of his office staff. He’s got a lot of those suck-ups that enjoy his humor when he tongue-skins us stupid bastards from out in the field. Their ears were all flapping. They heard the works. I went on about my business around town, and it wasn’t more than an hour before I knew I was an untouchable. The word had spread. It grew with the telling. Maybe an outsider wouldn’t get the full force of it, but here in Libo, well, you know what it would mean to tell a man he could be replaced by a goonie.”

  “I know,” I said around the stem of my pipe, while I watched his face. Something had grabbed my tailbone and was twisting it with that tingling feeling we get in the face of danger. I wondered if Paul even yet, had fully realized what he’d done.

  “Hell! All right, Jim, goddamn it!” he exploded. “Suppose a goonie could do their work better? That’s not going to throw them out of a job. There’s plenty of work, plenty of planets besides this one—even if the Company heard about it and put in goonies at the desks.”

  “It’s not just that,” I said slowly. “No matter how low down a man is, he’s got to have something he thinks is still lower before he can be happy. The more inferior he is, the more he needs it. Take it away from him and you’ve started something.”

  “I guess,” Paul agreed, but I could see he had his reserve of doubt. Well, he was young, and he’d been fed that scout-master line about how noble mankind is. He’d learn.

  “Anyhow,” he said. “Friend of mine, better friend than most, I’ve found out, tipped me off. Said I’d better get rid of that goonie clerk, and quick, if I knew which side was up. I’m still a Company man, Jim. I’m like the rest of these poor bastards out here, still indentured for my space fare, and wouldn’t know how to keep alive if the Company kicked me out and left me stranded. That’s what could happen. Those guys can cut my feet out from under me every step I take. You know it. What can I do but knuckle under? So—I brought the goonie back.”

  I nodded.

  “Too bad you didn’t keep it under your hat, the way I have,” I said. “But it’s done now.”

  I sat and thought about it. I wasn’t worried about my part in it—I had a part because everybody would know I’d trained the goonie, that Paul had got him from me. It wasn’t likely a little two-bit office manager could hurt me with the Company. They needed me too much. I could raise and train, or butcher, goonies and deliver them cheaper than they could do it themselves. As long as you don’t step on their personal egos, the big boys in business don’t mind slapping down their underlings and telling them to behave themselves, if there’s a buck to be made out of it.

  Besides, I was damn good advertising, a real shill for their recruiting offices. “See?” they’d say. “Look at Jim MacPherson. Just twenty years ago he signed up with the Company to go out to the stars. Today he’s a rich man, independent, free enterprise. What he did, you can do.” Or they’d make it seem that way. And they were right. I could go on being an independent operator so long as I kept off the toes of the big boys.

  But Paul was a different matter.

  “Look,” I said. “You go back to Libo City and tell it around that it was just a training experiment I was trying. That it was a failure. That you exaggerated, even lied, to jolt Hest. Maybe that’ll get you out from under. Maybe we won’t hear any more about it.”

  He looked at me, his face stricken. But he could still try to joke about it, after a fashion.

  “You said everybody finds something inferior to himself,” he said. “I can’t think of anything lower than I am. I just can’t.”

  I laughed.

  “Fine,” I said with more heartiness than I really felt. “At one time or another most of us have to get clear down to rock bottom before we can begin to grow up.”

  I didn’t know then that there was a depth beyond rock bottom, a hole one could get into, with no way out. But I was to learn.

  * * * *

  I was wrong in telling Paul we wouldn’t hear anything more about it. I heard, the very next day. I was down in the south valley, taking care of the last planting in the new orchard, when I saw a caller coming down the dirt lane between the groves of pal trees. His rickshaw was being pulled by a single goonie, and even at a distance I could see the animal was abused with overwork, if not worse.

  Yes, worse, because as they came nearer I could see whip welts across the pelt covering the goonie’s back and shoulders. I began a slow boil inside at the needless cruelty, needless because anybody knows the goonie will kill himself with overwork if the master simply asks for it. So my caller was one of the new Earthers, one of the petty little squirts who had to demonstrate his power over the inferior animal.

  Apparently Ruth had had the same opinion for instead of treating the caller as an honored guest and sending a goonie to fetch me, as was Libo custom, she’d sent him on down to the orchard. I wondered if he had enough sense to know he’d been insulted. I hoped he did.

  Even if I hadn’t been scorched to a simmering rage by the time the goonie halted at the edge of the orchard—and sank down on the ground without even unbuckling his harness— I wouldn’t have liked the caller. The important way he climbed down out of the rickshaw, the pompous stride he affected as he strode toward me, marked him as some petty Company official.

  I wondered how he had managed to get past Personnel. Usually they picked the fine, upstanding, cleancut hero type—a little short on brains, maybe, but full of noble derring-do, and so anxious to be admired they never made any trouble. It must have been Personnel’s off day when this one got through—or maybe he had an uncle.

  “Afternoon,” I gr
eeted him, without friendliness, as he came up.

  “I see you’re busy,” he said briskly. “I am, too. My time is valuable, so I’ll come right to the point. My name is Mr. Hest. I’m an executive. You’re MacPherson?”

  “Mister MacPherson,” I answered dryly.

  He ignored it.

  “I hear you’ve got a goonie trained to bookkeeping. You leased it to Tyler on a thousand-dollar evaluation. An outrageous price, but I’ll buy it. I hear Tyler turned it back.”

  I didn’t like what I saw in his eyes, or his loose, fat-lipped mouth. Not at all.

  “The goonie is unsatisfactory,” I said. “The experiment didn’t work, and he’s not for sale.”

  “You can’t kid me, MacPherson,” he said. “Tyler never made up those reports. He hasn’t the capacity. I’m an accountant. If you can train a goonie that far, I can train him on into real accounting. The Company could save millions if goonies could take the place of humans in office work.”

  I knew there were guys who’d sell their own mothers into a two-bit dive if they thought it would impress the boss, but I didn’t believe this one had that motive. There was something else, something in the way his avid little eyes looked me over, the way he licked his lips, the way he came out with an explanation that a smart man would have kept to himself.

  “Maybe you’re a pretty smart accountant,” I said in my best hayseed drawl, “but you don’t know anything at all about training goonies.” I gestured with my head. “How come you’re overworking your animal that way, beating him to make him run up those steep hills on those rough roads? Can’t you afford a team?”

  “He’s my property,” he said.

  “You’re not fit to own him,” I said, as abruptly. “I wouldn’t sell you a goonie of any kind, for any price.”

  Either the man had the hide of a rhinoceros, or he was driven by a passion I couldn’t understand.

  “Fifteen hundred,” he bid. “Not a penny more.”

  “Not at any price. Good day, Mr. Hest.”

  He looked at me sharply, as if he couldn’t believe I’d refuse such a profit, as if it were a new experience for him to find a man without a price. He started to say something, then shut his mouth with a snap. He turned abruptly and strode back to his rickshaw. Before he reached it, he was shouting angrily to his goonie to get up out of that dirt and look alive.

  I took an angry step toward them and changed my mind. Whatever I did, Hest would later take it out on the goonie. He was that kind of man. I was stopped, too, by the old Liboan custom of never meddling in another man’s affairs. There weren’t any laws about handling goonies. We hadn’t needed them. Disapproval had been enough to bring tenderfeet into line, before. And I hated to see laws like that come to Libo, morals-meddling laws—because it was men like Hest who had the compulsion to get in control of making and enforcing them, who hid behind the badge so they could get their kicks without fear of reprisal.

  I didn’t know what to do. I went back to planting the orchard and worked until the first sun had set and the second was close behind. Then I knocked off, sent the goonies to their pal groves, and went on up to the house.

  Ruth’s first question, when I came through the kitchen door, flared my rage up again.

  “Jim,” she said curiously, and a little angry, “why did you sell that clerk to a man like Hest?”

  “But I didn’t,” I said.

  “Here’s the thousand, cash, he left with me,” she said and pointed to the corner of the kitchen table. “He said it was the price you agreed on. He had me make out a bill of sale. I thought it peculiar because you always take care of business, but he said you wanted to go on working.”

  “He pulled a fast one, Ruth,” I said, my anger rising.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Right after supper I’m going into Libo City. Bill of sale, or not, I’m going to get that goonie back.”

  “Jim,” she said, “be careful.” There was worry in her eyes. “You’re not a violent man—and you’re not as young as you used to be.”

  That was something a man would rather not be reminded of, not even by his wife—especially not by his wife.

  * * * *

  Inquiry in Libo City led me to Hest’s private cottage, but it was dark. I couldn’t arouse any response, not even a goonie. I tried the men’s dormitories to get a line on him. Most of the young Earthers seemed to think it was a lark, and their idea of good sportsmanship kept them from telling me where to find him. From some of them I sensed a deeper, more turgid undercurrent where good, clean fun might not be either so good or so clean.

  In one of the crowded saloons there was a booth of older men, men who’d been here longer, and kept a disdainful distance away from the new Earthers.

  “There’s something going on, Jim,” one of them said. “I don’t know just what. Try that hell-raisin’, snortin’ female. Hest’s always hanging around her.”

  I looked around the booth. They were all grinning a little. So the story of how Hest had outfoxed me had spread, and they could enjoy that part of it. I didn’t blame them. But I could tell they didn’t sense there was anything more to it than that. They told me where to locate Miriam Wellman’s cottage, and added as I started to leave, “You need any help, Jim, you know where to look.” Part of it was to say that in a showdown against the Earthers they were on my side, but most of it was a bid to get in on a little fun, break the monotony.

  I found the woman’s cottage without trouble, and she answered the door in person. I told her who I was, and she invited me in without any coy implications about what the neighbors might think. The cottage was standard, furnished with goonie-made furniture of native materials.

  “I’ll come right to the point, Miss Wellman,” I said.

  “Good,” she answered crisply. “The boys will be gathering for their meeting, and I like to be prompt.”

  I started to tell her what I thought of her meetings, how much damage she was doing, how far she was setting Libo back. I decided there wouldn’t be any use. People who do that kind of thing, her kind of thing, get their kicks out of the ego-bloating effect of their power over audiences and don’t give a good goddamn about how much damage they do.

  “I’m looking for Carl Hest,” I said. “I understand he’s one of your apple-polishers.”

  She was wearing standard coverall fatigues, but she made a gesture as if she were gathering up folds of a voluminous skirt to show me there was nothing behind them. “I am not hiding Carl Hest,” she said scornfully.

  “Then you know he is hiding.” I paused, and added, “And you probably know he conned my wife out of a valuable goonie. You probably know what he’s got in mind to do.”

  “I do, Mr. MacPherson,” she said crisply. “I know very well.”

  I looked at her, and felt a deep discouragement. I couldn’t see any way to get past that shell of hers, that armor of self-righteousness— No, that wasn’t it. She wasn’t quoting fanatic, meaningless phrases at me, clouding the issue with junk. She was a crisp business woman who had a situation well in hand.

  “Then you know more than I do,” I said. “But I can guess some things. I don’t like what I can guess. I trained that goonie, I’m responsible. I’m not going to have it— well, whatever they plan to do with it—just because I trained it to a work that Hest and his toadies don’t approve.”

  ‘“Very commendable sentiments, Mr. MacPherson,” she said dryly. “But suppose you keep out of an affair that’s none of your business. I understood that was Liboan custom, not to meddle in other people’s doings.”

  “That was the custom,” I said.

  She stood up suddenly and walked with quick, short strides across the room to a closet door. She turned around and looked at me, as if she had made up her mind to something.

  “It’s still a good custom,” she said. “Believe it or not, I’m trying to preserve it.”

  I looked at her dumfounded.

  “By letting things hap
pen, whatever’s going to happen to that goonie?” I asked incredulously. “By coming out here and whipping up the emotions of these boys, stirring up who knows what in them?”

  She opened the door of the closet and I could see she was taking out a robe, an iridescent, shimmering thing.

  “I know precisely what I’m stirring up,” she said. “That’s my business. That’s what I’m here for.”

  I couldn’t believe it. To whip up the emotions of a mob just for the kicks of being able to do it was one thing. But to do it deliberately, knowing the effect of arousing primitive savagery...

  She turned around and began slipping into the garment. She zipped up the front of it with a crisp motion, and it transformed her. In darkness, under the proper spotlights, the ethereal softness completely masked her calculating efficiency.

  “Why?” I demanded. “If you know, if you really do know, why?”

  “My work here is about finished,” she said, as she came over to her chair and sat down again. “It will do no harm to tell you why. You’re not a Company man, and your reputation is one of discretion...The point is, in mass hiring for jobs in such places as Libo, we make mistakes in Personnel. Our tests are not perfect.”

  “We?” I asked.

  “I’m a trouble-shooter for Company Personnel,” she said.

  “All this mumbo-jumbo,” I said. “Getting out there and whipping these boys up into frenzies . . .”

  “You know about medical inoculation, vaccination,” she said. “Under proper controls, it can be psychologically applied. A little virus, a little fever, and from there on, most people are immune. Some aren’t. With some, it goes into a full-stage disease. We don’t know which is which without test. We have to test. Those who can’t pass the test, Mr. MacPherson, are shipped back to Earth. This way we find out quickly, instead of letting some Typhoid Marys gradually infect a whole colony.”

  “Hest,” I said.

  “Hest is valuable,” she said. “He thinks he is transferred often because we need him to set up procedures and routines. Actually it’s because he is a natural focal point for the wrong ones to gather round. Birds of a feather. Sending him out a couple months in advance of a trouble-shooter saves us a lot of time. We already know where to look when we get there.”