First Person Peculiar

by Mike Resnick

  This one’s name was Vasily Petrovitch, and he’d had even more experience than his predecessor at governing worlds. His first official act was to petition to change the name of the world to Petrovitch 7 on all existing maps and charts. His second act was to sue the Department of Cartography for insisting that the world was and would remain Beta Prognani II. By the time he’d run through his appeals and actually traveled to MacArthur 4 to begin governing the place, almost two years had passed.

  Petrovitch decided to make the rounds of the various villages, explaining to each community that we’d meant no disrespect and that while he personally thought “Blue Demons” was a rather cute, endearing sobriquet, we were happy to apologize and call them whatever they wanted. It was when he tried to hire an interpreter that he made two more discoveries: first, MacArthur 4 had a barter economy, and no interpreter was willing to work for money, and second, he needed close to 100 translators, because MacArthur 4’s natives spoke 17 major languages and 86 minor dialects.

  That was when Petrovitch decided that the way to win the Blue Demons over, other than calling them the all-but-unpronounceable name they preferred, was to unite them through a single language and a single government.

  It didn’t take him long to decide that Terran was the ideal language for the Blue Demons, despite the fact that the structure of their mouths and the shape of their tongues made it impossible for them to utter explosives. In addition, the few Blue Demons who actually managed to learn Terran tended to sound dead drunk whenever they spoke it.

  Then he had to confront the problem of how to spread the word that the planet needed a single governing body and a new language. He couldn’t do it by radio or video, because radio and video didn’t exist on MacArthur 4. He couldn’t do it with computers, because they’d never seen a computer. Besides, there was no electric or nuclear power on the planet, and he knew he could never convince the Republic to pay for the cost of wiring the whole world while they all lived in huts and teepees.

  So he called in a team of experts, mostly alien anthropologists. Their conclusion: since two-thirds of the Blue Demons never visited even a neighboring village, the first order of business was to make them a mobile society. You can’t minister to a single tribe without arousing the ire and jealousy of all the others, and you can’t have a global community if they’re not talking to each other.

  But they can’t talk to each other, noted Petrovitch. That’s one of the problems we’re trying to solve.

  They’re just like Men or any other race, said the experts with absolute conviction. Put them in a room together and sooner or later they’ll find a way to communicate—and once a single language becomes dominant, it will be that much easier to convert them all to Terran, and then we can start doing great things for them, bring them God and medicine and space travel and all the other benefits of a galactic civilization.

  So the trick, they concluded, is to make it easy for the Blue Demons’ far-flung communities to make contact with each other.

  How we do that, asked Petrovitch.

  We cover the planet with a series of roads, said the experts. Super-highways, even.

  But they don’t have any vehicles, noted Petrovitch.

  Trust us, said the experts. We’ll build roads from one village to another, and the Blue Demons will follow them. Within a few years we can introduce automobiles, and then communications systems, and then …

  How much is this going to cost, asked Petrovitch.

  We have no idea, said the experts with a collective shrug; that’s not our concern.

  It’s our concern, agreed the economists, and it seems only reasonable to make the Blue Demons pay for the roads. After all, they’re the ones who will benefit from them.

  What do you propose they pay with, asked Petrovitch. They don’t use money, you know.

  We’ll take payment in those alien cattle they breed and use for barter, said the economists. (They weren’t really cattle, of course. In fact, they didn’t look anything like cattle—but calling them cattle was easier than finding out what they actually were, and so cattle they became.)

  What will we do with the cattle, asked Petrovitch.

  Let nature take its course, explained the economists. They produce one calf a year. If the mother weighs 1,200 pounds and the calf weighs 120 before his first birthday, that’s a ten percent per annum return on our investment. Once we’re a major economic player in the planetary economy, we’ll be in a better position to introduce the Republic’s currency and gently bring the Blue Demons into the system. Of course, they added, we’ll never charge for medicine or any other form of humanitarian aid, because that’s the kind of race we are.

  Petrovitch had a feeling that there was a flaw in there somewhere, but they were the experts, not him. He considered everything he was told, approved a master plan, and left to pursue his court case. He died of a brain aneurism—or perhaps it was a broken heart—shortly after losing his final appeal to change the planet’s name from MacArthur 4 to Petrovitch 7.

  It was seven years later that the Republic took a plebiscite to see if MacArthur 4 would like to apply for membership.

  Not a single Blue Demon voted.

  Obviously they didn’t understand what we’re asking them to do, concluded the experts. So they went around with interpreters to explain the glories of being a cog in the vast and all-powerful Republic machine. This time 187 Blue Demons voted. 186 opposed joining. The remaining voter spent most of his time rubbing cattle dung all over his body and howling at the moon, and somehow didn’t seem representative of his people, no matter how much the Republic tried to convince itself that it was the 186 who were out of step with the rest of the Blue Demons.

  So they sent in more experts to study the situation—and in the fullness of time they paid a visit to the Miracle Brigade, as they always do.

  The Republic’s representative was a mousy little fellow named Duncan Smythe. He never used a simple word when he could latch onto a complex one, he never walked when he could mince, and he seemed very unhappy that he didn’t have a longer nose so he could look down it at me.

  “So that’s the situation,” he said after laying the problems out for me. “We’ve expended almost two billion credits creating the most exhaustive system of roads and highways on this godforsaken little dirtball, and in four months of observation not a single Blue Demon ever availed himself of them. Furthermore, we’ve offered to inoculate them against diseases, and they have categorically refused to accept our magnanimous gesture.” He paused uncomfortably, then continued: “And we almost had a riot when we tried to convert them to a monied economy.”

  “A riot,” I repeated, unsurprised.

  “A riot,” he confirmed.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “You told them you were installing a hut tax, and the only way for them to pay it was to work for cash.”

  “How did you know?” he said, surprised.

  “Because no bureaucrat ever met an old, discredited idea that he wasn’t certain would work if only he was in charge of it,” I replied. “Which did they do—burn their own huts or kill your tax collectors?”

  “Neither,” replied Smythe. “They slaughtered half our herd of cattle under cover of night, and offered to let the other half live only if we paid them a tribute exactly equal to the planetary total of hut taxes.”

  I smiled. “And here everyone was saying that they weren’t creative.”

  “You say that almost admiringly,” he accused me.

  “I admire innovation,” I said. “And since I’m not likely to find it in the Republic’s bureaucracy, I tend to admire it wherever I encounter it.”

  “I’ve heard about your department and its attitude,” he said. “Just whose side are you on?”

  “We’re pretty much on our own side.”

  “You’re supposed to be loyal to the Republic,” Smythe said severely.

  “Our job is pulling the Republic’s fat out of the fire after well-meaning assholes put a torch to
it,” I replied. “You wouldn’t believe how thoroughly that erodes our respect for the Republic and its well-meaning representatives. I just wish some of you idiots would learn from your mistakes. I suppose I might as well wish for a trillion credits while I’m at it.”

  “I don’t have to sit here and listen to this.”

  “No, you don’t,” I agreed. “In fact, the sooner you stalk off in a petulant huff, the sooner I can analyze the situation and figure out how best to salvage it.”

  He glared at me. “They say that your group comes up with unique solutions, that you’re problem-solvers of last resort.” He drew himself up to his full five and a half feet, and tried to make his voice harsh; it just sounded laughable. “They’d better be right.” He got up, frowned furiously, and minced out the door.

  I resisted the urge to ask him what would happen if they were wrong.

  * * *

  I knew better than to try to hire an interpreter. For one thing, the only remuneration he’d accept would be cattle, and I didn’t have any. For another, the Republic had stockpiled so much hostility that I wasn’t sure I could trust his translations. So I spent a month taking sleep-intensive language disks, and when I finally landed on MacArthur 4 I was moderately fluent in the three most common languages.

  There was no one waiting to greet me at the tiny spaceport that the original governor had built. As far as I could ascertain, there were no Men on the world at all. There was nothing except a few hundred million Blue Demons, separated by distance and language and custom, and united only in their distrust of the human race.

  Just the kind of situation we face every day.

  I left the spaceport and figured I’d follow one of the highways to whatever village it led to. I knew that it was a warm arid planet, so I’d come prepared with cotton, sweat-absorbing clothes and a broad-brimmed hat to shade my eyes. Even so, as I walked down the concrete causeway I became uncomfortably warm and began sweating pretty heavily.

  When I’d gone a little over a mile, with no villages or huts or teepees in sight, I paused to wipe the sweat from my eyes and inadvertently knocked my hat off my head. As I reached down to pick it up, I could feel the heat rising from the sun-baked pavement.

  I walked a little farther and saw a herd of animals grazing off in the distance. They didn’t look like the cattle that the Blue Demons used for currency, and since they were quickly aware of my presence and didn’t run off, I concluded that they’d never been hunted as meat animals—at least not this herd.

  I spent most of the day walking along the highway. From time to time I had the feeling that I was being watched, but I could never spot any Blue Demons. When twilight came I pulled a meal out of my pack, sat down with my back propped up against the trunk of a smooth alien tree, and had dinner. I took a couple of adrenaline pills and another that oxygenated my blood, which would keep me going until my body had totally adjusted to the planetary conditions. I spent the next couple of hours considering the problems the Republic had created and left behind, and felt I had pretty good notion of how to solve them as the night air finally began to cool things down.

  When I woke up the next morning I was surrounded by half a dozen Blue Demons. A couple had war clubs and one held a crude spear, but no one was striking any threatening postures. They were just staring at me; rather the way you stare at a snake while trying to decide whether or not he’s poisonous and whether he looks annoyed with you.

  “Good morning, brothers,” I greeted them.

  “You speak our language,” said the nearest, sounding mildly surprised.

  “I have been banished to your world,” I replied, “so I thought I had better learn to communicate with you.”

  “The Republic has banished you? What terrible crimes have you committed?”

  I knew they lived in family units, so I gave them an answer that made sense to them. “I ran off with the king’s woman. And now I am here, probably forever, and I must make the best of it.” I paused and looked from one to another. “I would not presume to live in your village, among your people. But may I live just beyond it until I am better acquainted with your world, for I am sure I will have many questions to ask.”

  I could see it in their faces: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. They put their heads together, spoke in low whispers, and finally turned back to me. “You may come with us.”

  “Thank you,” I said, getting to my feet and grabbing my backpack.

  They headed off across the uneven grasslands, paralleling the road, and I fell into step beside them.

  “Excuse me, my brethren,” I said innocently, “but why don’t we walk on the highway? After all, it is level, and has no obstructions.”

  “Men made it, Men can use it,” said one of the Blue Demons contemptuously.

  “So you will use nothing Men have given you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I knew they were wrong,” I said.

  The Blue Demons all stopped and stared at me. “Wrong about what?” demanded the leader.

  “About why you refuse to use the highways,” I replied. “I knew you must have a reason, and that you weren’t cowards.”

  “They call us cowards?”

  I shrugged. “They say you are afraid to walk on the roads, but I was sure they must be wrong.”

  “They put the roads here to cripple and kill us!” said the leader.

  “Watch,” said another. He spat onto the sun-baked highway. Within a minute his saliva began bubbling and quickly evaporated. “Would you walk on that?”

  “I walked on it all the way from the spaceport,” I said.

  “And it didn’t burn your feet?”

  “My feet never touched it.”

  “I had hoped you might be different,” he said wearily. “I was mistaken. All Men are liars.”

  “Wait!” I said, trying to look surprised. I pointed to my shoes. “You think these are my feet?”

  “Of course.”

  I took off a shoe and held it up. “They are artifacts created to protect my feet. We call them shoes.”

  Each Blue Demon in turn examined the shoe with various amazed mutterings.

  “They protect my feet from heat, from cold, from rain, from snow, even from thorns and stones that I step on,” I explained.

  The leader stood next to me and looked down at both our feet. “They would not protect me,” he said.

  “That is because your feet are shaped differently,” I answered. “But if you made a shoe that fit around your foot, it would afford you the same protection my shoes afford me.”

  He studied the shoe again, his fingers probing every inch of it.

  “What is it made of?”

  Reprocessed petroleum products, but you don’t need to know that yet. “Cured animal skins,” I said.

  “We do not kill our cattle,” he said, using his unpronounceable word for cattle. “Would you bind your feet with Man’s paper money, or affix his coins to the bottoms of your toes?”

  I pointed to a distant herd of grazing herbivores. “Do you use them for currency?”

  “No.”

  “Then your problem is solved.”

  “I only wanted to know how you managed to walk on the roads,” he said. “We have no desire to walk on Man’s highways.”

  “You’re right, of course,” I said. “They’re Men’s highways. Why should you care that they think you’re a race of ignorant cowards?”

  “Why indeed?” he agreed with just a hint of hesitation in his voice.

  We walked another mile across the uneven vegetation, and then another Blue Demon fell into step beside me.

  “What else do they say about us?”

  “Nothing,” I replied.

  “Nothing?”

  “They feel a race that is too cowardly to walk on the roads and too ignorant to protect their feet isn’t worth talking about,” I said. “That’s why they’ve decided to deposit their lawbreakers on your planet. They don’t think it’s good for anything else.”


  “I will wait by the spaceport and kill them!” bellowed the largest of the Blue Demons.

  “Well, yes, you could do that,” I admitted. “But that would just convince them that you are ignorant killers rather than ignorant pastoralists.”

  Cowardly hadn’t worked that well, but ignorant was doing its job. I clammed up, and we walked all the way to the village in silence.

  They were pretty decent folk. They let me sleep in an empty teepee that night, and the next day about a dozen of them of both sexes showed up and helped me build a hut. It only took about two hours, and then they left me alone while I explored the village and surrounding area.

  Three days later the leader showed up in the ugliest, smelliest, most ill-fitting pair of moccasins anyone ever saw.

  “It doesn’t work,” he complained. “They keep falling apart, and stones and thorns pierce through them, and the odor attracts unwelcome flesh-eaters.” He stared at me reproachfully. “I should have known better than to listen to a Man.”

  “Well, listen a little more and I’ll tell you what you did wrong,” I said. I spent the rest of the day showing him how to cure a hide, how to make a sturdy thread from the creature’s gut, and how to reinforce the soles so that nothing could puncture them.

  It took him another three weeks (and another two dozen dead herbivores, each killed for about two percent of its hide) to make a mildly workable pair of moccasins, but he finally did it, then walked up and down the highway that ran beside the village with his contempt for the Republic written all over his face.

  Within another month every member of the village could fashion a crude pair of shoes, and suddenly they had something to trade neighboring villages besides cattle.

  Of course, no village wanted to deplete its stock of four-legged currency to buy shoes, so each village studied the items and began making their own. The “enlightened” villages realized they’d better make more shoes in a hurry, before the more distant villages learned to make their own, and I taught them how to use the wind to power some crude machines that could turn out shoes a little faster than before.