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The Sentimentalists
By MURRAY LEINSTER
Illustrated by HUNTER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction April 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
You do not always have to go looking for a guardian angel. He may be looking for you--but perhaps for somebody else's benefit!
Rhadampsicus and Nodalictha were on their honeymoon, and consequentlythey were sentimental. To be sure, it would not have been easy forhumans to imagine sentiment as existing between them. Humans wouldhardly associate tenderness with glances cast from sets of sixteeneyes mounted on jointed eye stalks, nor link langorous thrills witha coy mingling of positronic repulsion blasts--even when the emissionof positron blasts from beneath one's mantle was one's normal personalmode of locomotion. And when two creatures like Rhadampsicus andNodalictha stood on what might be roughly described as their heads andtwined their eye stalks together, so that they gazed fondly at eachother with all sixteen eyes at once, humans would not have thought ofit as the equivalent of a loving kiss. Humans would have screamed andrun--if they were not paralyzed by the mere sight of such individuals.
Nevertheless, they were a very happy pair and they were verysentimental, and it was probably a good thing, considered from allangles. They were still newlyweds on their wedding tour--they had beenmarried only seventy-five years before--when they passed by the sunthat humans call Cetis Gamma.
Rhadampsicus noted its peculiarity. He was anxious, of course, fortheir honeymoon to be memorable in every possible way. So he pointed itout to Nodalictha and explained what was shortly to be expected. Shelistened with a bride's rapt admiration of her new husband's wisdom.Perceiving his scientific interest, she suggested shyly that they stopand watch.
* * * * *
Rhadampsicus scanned the area. There were planets--inner ones, andthen a group of gas giants, and then a very cosy series of three outerplanets with surface temperatures ranging from three to seven degreesKelvin.
They changed course and landed on the ninth planet out, where thelandscape was delightful. Rhadampsicus unlimbered his traveling kit andprepared a bower. Nitrogen snow rose and swirled and consolidated ashe deftly shifted force-pencils. When the tumult subsided, there was asnug if primitive cottage for the two of them to dwell in while theywaited for Cetis Gamma to accomplish its purpose.
Nodalictha cried out softly when she entered the bower. She wasfascinated by its completeness. There was even running liquid hydrogenfrom a little rill nearby. And over the doorway, as an artistic andappropriate touch, Rhadampsicus had put his own and Nodalictha'sinitials, pricked out in amber chlorine crystals and intertwined withinthe symbol which to them meant a heart. Nodalictha embraced him fondlyfor his thoughtfulness. Of course, no human would have recognized it asan embrace, but that did not matter.
Happily, then, they settled down to observe the phenomenon that CetisGamma would presently display. They scanned the gas giant planetstogether, and then the inner ones.
On the second planet out from the sun, they perceived small bipedanimals busily engaged in works of primitive civilization. Nodalicthawas charmed. She asked eager questions, and Rhadampsicus searchedhis memory and told her that the creatures were not well known, buthad been observed before. Limited in every way by their physicalconstitution, they had actually achieved a form of space travel bymeans of crude vehicles. He believed, he said, that the name theycalled themselves was ”men.”
* * * * *
The sun rose slowly in the east, and Lon Simpson swore patiently ashe tried for the eighteenth time to get the generator back again in afashion to make it work. His tractor waited in the nearby field. Thefields waited. Over in Cetopolis, the scales and storesheds waited,and somewhere there was doubtless a cargo ship waiting for a spacegramto summon it to Cetis Gamma Two for a load of _thanar_ leaves. And ofcourse people everywhere waited for _thanar_ leaves.
A milligram a day kept old age away--which was not an advertisingslogan but sound, practical geriatric science. But _thanar_ leaveswould only grow on Cetis Gamma Two, and the law said that all habitableplanets had to be open for colonization and land could not be withheldfrom market.
There was too much population back on Earth, anyhow. Therefore theCetis Gamma Trading Company couldn't make a planetwide plantation andkeep _thanar_ as a monopoly, but could only run its own plantation forresearch and instruction purposes for new colonists. Colonists had tobe admitted to the planet, and they had to be sold land. But there areways of getting around every law.
Lon Simpson swore. The Diesel of his tractor ran a generator. Thegenerator ran the motors in the tractor's catawheels. But this wasthe sixth time in a month that the generator had broken down, andgenerators do not break down.
Lon put it together for the eighteenth time this breakdown, and itstill wouldn't work. There was nothing detectably wrong with it, but hecouldn't make it work.
Seething, he walked back to his neat, prefabricated house. He picked upthe beamphone. Even Cathy's voice at the exchange in Cetopolis couldnot soothe him, he was so furious.
”Cathy, give me Carson--and don't listen!” he said tensely.
He heard clickings on the two-way beam.
”My generator's gone,” he said sourly when Carson answered. ”I'verepaired it twice this week. It looks like it was built to stopworking! What is this all about, anyhow?”
The representative of the Cetis Gamma Trading Company sounded bored.
”You want a new generator sent out?” he asked without interest. ”Yourcrop credit's still all right--if the fields are in good shape.”
”I want machinery that works!” Lon Simpson snapped. ”I want machinerythat doesn't have to be bought four times over a growing season! And Iwant it at a decent price!”
”Look, those generators come out from Earth. There's freight on them.There's freight on everything that comes out from Earth. You peoplecome to a developed planet, you buy your land, your machinery, yourhouse, and you get instruction in agriculture. Do you want the companyto tuck you in bed at night besides? Do you want a new generator ornot?”
”How much?” demanded Lon. When Carson told him, he hit the ceiling.”It's robbery! What'll I have left for my crop if I buy that?”
* * * * *
Carson's voice was still bored. ”If you buy it and your crop's up tostandard, you'll owe the crop plus three hundred credits. But we'llstake you to next growing season.”
”And if I don't?” demanded Lon. ”Suppose I don't give you all my workfor nothing and wind up in debt?”
”By contract,” Carson told him, ”we've got the right to finishcultivating your crop and charge you for the work because we'veadvanced you credit on it. Then we attach your land and house for thebalance due. And you get no more credit at the Company stores. Andpassage off this planet has to be paid for in cash.” He yawned. ”Don'tanswer now,” he said without interest. ”Call me back after you calmdown. You'd only have to apologize.”
Lon Simpson heard the click as he began to describe, heatedly, whatwas in his mind. He said it anyhow. Then Cathy's voice came from theexchange. She sounded shocked but sympathetic.
”Lon! Please!”
He swallowed a particularly inventive description of the manners,morals and ancestry of all the directors and employees of the CetisGamma Trading Company. Then he said, still fuming, ”I told you not tolisten!”
His wrongs overcame him again. ”It's robbery! It's peonage! They've gotevery credit I had! They've got three-quarters of the value of my cropcharg
ed up for replacements of the lousy machinery they sold me--andnow I'll end the growing season in debt! How am I going to ask you tomarry me?”
”Not over a beamphone, I hope,” said Cathy.
He was abruptly sunk in gloom.
”That was a slip,” he admitted. ”I was going to wait until I got paidfor my crop. It looked good. Now--”
”Wait a minute, Lon,” Cathy said. There was silence. She gave somebodyelse a connection.
The phone-beams from the colony farms all went to Cetopolis andCathy was one of the two operators there. If or when the colony gotprosperous enough, there would be a regular intercommunication system.So it was said. Meanwhile, Lon had a suspicion that there might beanother reason for the antiquated central station.
Cathy said brightly, ”Yes, Lon?”
”I'll come in to town tonight,” he said darkly. ”Date?”
”Y-yes,” stammered Cathy. ”Oh, yes!”
He hung up and went back out to the field and the tractor. He began tothink sourly of a large number of things all at once. There was a lawto encourage people to leave Earth for colonies on suitable planets.There was even governmental help for people who didn't have fundsof their own. But if a man wanted to make something of himself, hepreferred to use his own money and pick his own planet and choose hisown way of life.
Lon Simpson had bought four hectares of land on Cetis Gamma Two. He'dpaid his passage out. He'd given five hundred credits a month for aninstruction course on the Company's plantation, during which time he'dlabored faithfully to grow, harvest, and cure _thanar_ leaves for theCompany's profit. Then he'd bought farm machinery from the Company--anda house--and very painstakingly had set out to be a colonist on his own.
* * * * *
Just about that time, Cathy had arrived on a Company ship and taken upher duties as beamphone operator at Cetopolis. It was a new colony,with not more than five thousand humans on the whole planet, all ofthem concentrated near the one small town with its plank sidewalks andprefabricated buildings. Lon Simpson met Cathy, and his labors on his_thanar_ farm acquired new energy and purpose.
But he was up against a shrewd organization. His inordinately expensivefarm machinery broke down. He repaired it. After a time it could notbe repaired any longer and he had to buy more. Before the _thanar_plants were half grown, he owed more than half his prospective crop formachinery replacements.
Now he could see the method perfectly. The Company imported allmachinery. It made that machinery in its own factories, machinerythat was designed to break down. So this year--even if nothing elsehappened--Lon would wind up owing more for machinery replacements thanthe crop would bring.
It was not likely that nothing else would happen. Next season hewould start off in debt, instead of all clear, and if the same thinghappened he would owe all his crop and be six thousand credits behind.By harvest after next, his farm and house could be foreclosed for debtand he could either try to work for other colonists--who were in theprocess of going through the same wringer themselves--or hire out as afarmhand on the Company's plantation. He would never be able to savespace-fare away from the planet. He would be very much worse off thanthe assisted emigrants to other planets, who had not invested all theyowned in land and machinery and agricultural instructions.
And there was Cathy. She owed for her passage. It would be years beforeshe could pay that back, if ever. She couldn't live in the farmhandbarracks. They might as well give up thinking about each other.
It was a system. Beautifully legal, absolutely airtight. Not a thingwrong with it. The Company had a monopoly on _thanar_, despite the law.It had all the cultivated land on Cetis Gamma Two under its control,and its labor problem was solved. Its laborers first paid somethinglike sixteen thousand credits a head for the privilege of trying tofarm independently for a year or two, and then became farmhands forthe Company at a bare subsistence wage.
Lon Simpson was in the grip of that system. He had taken the generatorapart and put it back together eighteen times. There was nothingvisibly wrong with it. It had been designed to break down with nothingvisibly wrong with it. If he couldn't repair it, though, he was outfifteen hundred credits, his investment was wiped out, and all hishopes were gone.
He took the generator apart for the nineteenth time. He wondered grimlyhow the Company's designers made generators so cleverly that they wouldstop working so that even the trouble with them couldn't be figuredout. It was a very ingenious system.
* * * * *
Out on the ninth planet, Rhadampsicus explained the situation to hisbride as they waited for the interesting astronomical phenomenon.They were quite cosy, waiting. Their bower was simple, of course.Frozen nitrogen walls, and windows of the faint bluish tint of oxygenice. Rhadampsicus had grown some cyanogen flower-crystals to make theplace look homelike, and there was now a lovely reflection-pool inwhich liquid hydrogen reflected the stars. Cetis Gamma, the localsun, seemed hardly more than a very bright and very near star--it wasfour light-hours away--and it glimmered over the landscape and madeeverything quite charming.
Nodalictha, naturally, would not enter the minds of the male bipedson the inner planet. Modesty forbade such a thing--as, of course, theconscientiousness of a brand-new husband limited Rhadampsicus to thethoughts of the males among the bipeds. But Nodalictha was distressedwhen Rhadampsicus told her of what was occurring among the bipeds. Heguided her thoughts to Cathy, in the beamphone exchange at Cetopolis.
”But it is terrible!” said Nodalictha in distress when she had absorbedCathy's maiden meditations. She did not actually speak in words andsoundwaves. There is no air worth mentioning at seven degrees Kelvin.It's all frozen. A little helium hangs around, perhaps. Nothing else.The word for communication is not exactly the word for speech, but itwill do. Nodalictha said, ”They love each other! In a cute way, theyare like--like we were, Rhadampsicus!”
Rhadampsicus played a positron-beam on her in feigned indignation.If that beam had hit a human, the human would have curled up in ascorched, smoking heap. But Nodalictha bridled.
”Rhadampsicus!” she protested fondly. ”Stop tickling me! But can't youdo something for them? They are so cute!”
And Rhadampsicus gallantly sent his thoughts back to the second planet,where a biped grimly labored over a primitive device.
* * * * *
Lon Simpson, staring at the disassembled generator, suddenly blinked.The grimness went out of his expression. He stared. An idea hadoccurred to him. He went over it in his mind. He blew out his breath ina long whistle. Then, very painstakingly, he did four or five thingsthat completely ruined the generator for the extremely modest trade-inallowance he could have gotten for it at the Company store.
He worked absorbedly for perhaps twenty minutes, his eyes intent. Atthe end of that time he had threads of unwound secondary wire stretchedback and forth across a forked stick of _dhil_ weed, and two smallpieces of sheet iron twisted together in an extremely improbablemanner. He connected the ends of the secondary wire to contacts in histractor. He climbed into the tractor seat. He threw over the drivecontrol.
The tractor lurched into motion. The Diesel wasn't running. But thetractor rolled comfortably as Lon drove it, the individual motors inthe separate catawheels drawing power from a mere maze of wires acrossa forked stick--plus two pieces of sheet iron. There was plenty ofpower.
Lon drove the tractor the rest of the morning and all afternoon with avery peculiar expression on his face. He understood what he had done.Now that he had done it, it seemed the most obvious of expedients. Hefelt inclined to be incredulous that nobody had ever happened to thinkof this particular device before. But they very plainly hadn't. Itwas a source of all the electric power anybody could possibly want.The voltage would depend on the number of turns of copper wire arounda suitably forked stick. The amperage would be whatever that voltagecould put through whatever was hooked to it.
He no longer needed a new generator for his tractor. He had one.
He didn't even need a Diesel.
With adequate power--he'd been having to nurse the Diesel along,too, lately--Lon Simpson ran his tractor late into the twilight. Hecultivated all the ground that urgently needed cultivation, and atleast one field he hadn't hoped to get to before next week. But hisexpression was amazed. It is a very peculiar sensation to discoverthat one is a genius.
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