by Chad Oliver
Earth needed a frontier, and now she had one. One hundred and three planets meant many things to many people, but first and foremost they meant a fantastic new market potential. They were a shot in the arm for a planet geared to production. Potentially.
There were flies in the ointment.
Centuries are long, and they are full. No mere record of explorations and inventions can tell you much about a century. People live and work and die, and sometimes a single day is too much for the historians.
Earth had changed. It had to change, or there would have been no exploration of space. It had to change, or the first travelers to far Centaurus might have had no Earth to come back to.
Earth changed.
You can’t sell a plow to a man who doesn’t know what agriculture is. You can’t sell a car to a man who has no roads. You can’t take a man’s money if he has never heard of money. You can’t produce for a market unless the market’s there.
The new planets could not be profitable markets until they were further developed. Outright exploitation, in the year 2100, was out of the question. Colonialism was a dead duck—and that was one duck nobody cared to dig up again.
Okay. Where do we go from here?
Socioculturology was a fairly well developed science; it was quite possible to predict mass developments under any given set of conditions. The scientists could deal with the situation—but the scientists didn’t make the policy. A long wrangle broke out in the United World Council. What was ethical? What was practical? How could the job be financed?
Meantime, there the planets were. It was important to know more about the people who lived on them, and to maintain contact with them. Anthropologists went in for a year or so, and made their reports. But who was willing to go out in the middle of nowhere and stay there for twenty years, to establish squatter’s rights for industry? It was economically unsound to rotate personnel; it took over a year to reach most of the planets, and it was expensive. Stations had to be maintained until teams could be lawfully sent into the area to develop markets.
Who would go? It took more than money to make a man leave his home for twenty years on an alien world. The man had to be qualified. It was no job for an adventurer
His job was to “really get to know” the natives. That meant, in practice, that he met as many of them as he could within a very restricted area; planets were big places. It was his job to maintain friendly relations. But under no conditions could he tamper with the native culture. He had to keep his hands off.
This was their world, and they must be permitted to live their lives undisturbed—for the present.
Bob Wistert turned on the couch. Why had he come, really? And Helen—what had she hoped to find here?
We were going to live a new life, close to the land. We were going to start over, just the two of us.
And now—
Exhausted, he slept. He dreamed that Anthony Thunderton was coming at him with a steel axe that glinted in iced moonlight.
When he awoke, it was dark enough to see faint stars in the sky, and there was no wind.
Anthony Thunderton met them at the door.
“Come in,” he said.
They stepped inside. The living room was lean and spare with simple wooden furniture. It was not a cold room. There were bright rugs on the floor and the lights were soft gold. Over the fireplace was a painting of Thunderton’s wife; her rather broad face, dark hair and black eyes closely resembled Thunderton himself.
“I’ll put the dinner on,” Thunderton said. “We’ll eat in twenty minutes.”
They sat silently, caught between anxiety and embarrassment. The house was neat and clean—surprisingly so, since Thunderton lived alone. He was back in three minutes, with Martinis on a polished wood tray. He handed them their drinks.
“Here’s to continued good fellowship in our primitive wonderland,” he said with a perfectly straight face.
He served them dinner on an open porch; the bugs were kept out by a miniature force screen. They had tender white meat from a rabbit-like animal, green salad, and ears of corn that Thunderton grew in a garden. When they had eaten, there was wine.
Bob Wistert was tense and nervous. There were a lot of years ahead of them. Sooner or later, they would have to get things straight. For his part, he wanted it to be sooner. Now. He watched Thunderton carefully, wondering. Despite his stoutness, Thunderton was not a big man—but he dominated the porch. He was not a man to fool with. Bob wasn’t at all sure how to proceed.
Anthony Thunderton helped him.
“I guess you’re wondering about the axes,” he said quietly.
Bob hesitated, but Helen spoke up. “Yes,” she said. “We were.”
With great deliberation, Thunderton took out a cigar and lit it. His face was impassive. “There are many questions in the universe,” he said. “For example, what brought you two all the way across space to this?”
He waved his hand and the night came closer. There was no moon yet and the station made a small circle of light in the darkness. The black trees were still. On the edge of the sand the cool sea drummed with long, even beats.
“Don’t change the subject, Tony,” Bob said.
“All questions are one in the end,” Thunderton said. He smiled. “The hell with that, though. Suppose I tell you why you’re here.”
“Suppose you do,” Bob said.
Thunderton folded his powerful hands and clamped the cigar more firmly in his mouth. “I don’t know you very well, so you’ll have to allow for errors. Still, I think I can hit it pretty close.”
“We’re waiting,” Bob said, his irritation showing in his voice.
“I’ll take you first, Mr. Wistert. I should hazard a guess that you are one of that strange breed known as the intense idealist. You probably write poetry or do something equally foolish in your spare time. Naturally, you will compensate for this by insisting that you’re the most practical damned man that ever lived. You’re interested in our charming native friends out there in the woods—you think they have a unique way of life which must be preserved. You think of yourself as their protector. You regard Earth as phony, so you’ve trotted out here to live in the Great Outdoors—with all modern conveniences, of course.”
Bob leaned forward. “Listen, Mac, about one more crack out of you—”
Anthony Thunderton ignored him. “And you, fair lady,” he said to Helen, “have always wondered why you weren’t satisfied with your life. You’ve built an intellectual wall around yourself because you don’t seem to fit anywhere. You’ve come out here with your man to find something you’ve never found. You won’t find it here, either. It’s in yourself if it’s anywhere.”
Helen said nothing.
Bob stood up. “If the ‘Boy Psychologist’ is through with his string of bromides, maybe we can get back to the axes.”
“Maybe we can,” agreed Thunderton, chewing his cigar.
“Do you deny that you’ve been giving steel axes to the natives?”
“Have you ever heard me deny it?”
“Forget the double-talk. Do you admit it?”
“Certainly. I’m proud of it, if it comes to that.”
Bob stared at him. Thunderton sat there, calmly smoking his cigar. He might have said, “Why, yes, I often have prunes for breakfast.”
“You must be stark staring nuts!” Bob said.
“Thank you, sir. You are a born diplomat.”
Bob sat down again. He leaned forward, trying desperately to make contact with this man. “Look here, Tony. Don’t you realize that those axes will utterly destroy those people out there? Don’t you understand that they’re human too? Can’t you see that you’re ripping their lives apart, leaving them with nothing? Do you think you’re God?”
“To answer the first and least emotional of your questions, I do realize that the axes will destroy those people. That is my intention.”
Bob slammed his fist down on the table. “You won’t get away with it! You may
be able to push those people around, but you can’t push me around.”
“Most heroic,” Thunderton said. Carefully, he took a pistol out of his pocket and held it loosely in his hand. “I just don’t want you to get carried away,” he explained. “Rather good pun, if I do say so myself.”
Bob looked at Helen, utterly at a loss for words. The man was insane, that was the only possible explanation—
“Now,” Thunderton said, “if you will be good enough to pour yourself another glass of wine—don’t try throwing it in my face, by the way, as it annoys me—I’d like to tell you exactly how I intend to destroy the natives. After that, I’ll give you a short history lesson. After that, I’ll put the gun away and we shall see what we shall see.”
Bob thought of several rash plans, but settled for doing as he was told. The wine, at any rate, was good.
“Very well,” Thunderton said. “Here are the details. I think you’ll find them interesting.”
Bob and Helen waited.
Around them, the long, long night was only beginning.
Thunderton replaced what was left of his cigar with a new one.
“Steel axes are curious things,” he said with obvious relish. “You can chop down trees with them, bash in heads with them, or use them for money. On many worlds, a steel axe is a wonderfully effective new invention—a jump forward of maybe a hundred thousand years of time. On other worlds, a steel axe is a tiresome and outmoded antique. It sort of depends on where you are—or perhaps I should say, when you are.”
“We know all that,” Bob said. He was not pleased with himself for having said it, but he had been stung, and he wanted to sting back.
“Our somewhat ignorant friends out there in the forest,” Thunderton said, jerking his thumb toward the dark wall of pinelike trees, “are still living in a stone-age culture. That means that their technology is pretty crude stuff, even if it did take the human animal the better part of a million years to get that far on Earth. A stone axe takes time to make, as you doubtless know, and flint has the unhappy property of shattering or losing its edge if you whack it into a tree too many times. A steel axe can save you a lot of time, it lasts longer, and it gets the job done more efficiently. Of course, that happens to be irrelevant.”
“Why?” Helen asked.
Thunderton grinned around his cigar. “I don’t give a hoot in hell how long it takes them to chop down a tree. I’m interested in knocking their culture apart in the quickest possible way.”
Bob Wistert eyed the gun in Thunderton’s hand and shifted his weight on the chair. Why? Why is he trying to destroy them? What’s in it for him? What kind of a man is he? What kind of a man—
“Interesting business,” Thunderton said. “I’ve made quite a study of it—can’t afford to make mistakes, you know. There are two things about the native culture that are important. The first is that the society is set up in such a way that the old men, the tribal elders, run the show. They get the best food, the best women, and the best places around the fire. Those old buzzards are really powerful, too—their authority is real, and damned near absolute. Okay. I don’t care. That’s one way to do things. But look at this: the symbol of their authority is the stone axe. An old man is the only person who can own a stone axe. If a woman or a boy wants to use one, they have to go to ‘Old Man Mose’ and get his permission. There’s a complex taboo system thrown up around the stone axes, naturally. If you use one without permission, you’ve had it. It’s a cute system; all the old men have to do is threaten to hold back the axes, and that’s all the power they need.”
I knew those axes were important. But Tony knows more than I do. Is it too late to stop him?
Thunderton puffed on his cigar. “The second important thing is that those axes have to be made out of a special kind of stone—and there are no such stones within two hundred miles of here. The old men have to trade for them. There’s a network of trade that almost crosses this continent—and it’s based on area specialization in the manufacture of stone axes. The tribal elders around here supply wood for the handles—that’s all they do. Somebody else supplies the stone. Another tribe makes the axes. All the old men have trading partners in other villages, and regular trade routes they follow seasonally. Get the picture?”
“I’m beginning to,” Bob said quietly.
“Let me fill in the details,” Thunderton said. He smiled with genuine pleasure. “I go into this set-up with a crate or so of steel axes—I made ’em myself, by the way. I give the steel axes to the women and the young men. At first, they’re afraid to take them. I take them aside and explain to them—look, these aren’t stone axes! These aren’t sacred! They can’t hurt you—there are no taboos around them! Try ’em and see! Well, they do try them. No bolt of lightning strikes, they don’t get sick and die. And damned if they don’t work better than the old stone axes! Okay. The chain reaction starts. Nobody has to ask the permission of the old codgers anymore—they’ve got their own axes. The authority of the old men goes down the drain. The boys and young men stop giving the old men all the good deals. They figure they’re already big shots—they’ve got something the old men haven’t got. The stone axes are suddenly anachronisms. The old men get discouraged. Why make that long, hard trading expedition? Say! Maybe if they play their cards right they can get some of those new axes with the hard, sharp blades!”
Thunderton crushed out his cigar. “That does it. A few steel axes, and presto! The whole web of tribal interrelationships breaks down—why trade for something useless? The power of the gods is challenged. The social organization collapses; the younger generation starts feeling its oats. In a word, the old culture is kaput. Neat, eh?”
“Yeah,” said Bob. “Neat.”
Why has he done this thing? What kind of a man—
“You spoke of a history lesson,” Helen said.
Anthony Thunderton stood up, the gun still held loosely in his hand. He looked out into the night, toward the sand and the sea and the quiet.
“Have you ever heard of the American Indian?” he asked.
Nuts. Stark staring nuts. Or—
He pointed the gun at Bob Wistert, casually.
“Well?”
“Come off of it, Tony. Of course I’ve heard of the American Indian. There’s a statue in Washington. We learn about them in school. People write novels about them.”
“Hooray. What do you think of the Indian, Mr. Wistert?”
Bob shrugged. “They were an interesting people. I guess they got a dirty deal. They were the first and all that.”
Thunderton nodded. “I notice you use the past tense,” he said. “I suppose that’s the point, really. Did you find them quaint when you studied them, Mr. Wistert? Unique way of life? Sort of like the natives out there in the woods?”
“I don’t know. That’s not a fair question. Anyway, I didn’t destroy them. That’s more than you can say, whatever you’re driving at.”
“How do you know you didn’t?”
“Look, I know you speak English. Try a little and forget the riddles.”
Thunderton sighed. “Time for the history lesson. Topic for tonight: The American Indian. Listening time: two minutes. Hang on, boys and girls.”
“I don’t understand—”
“Be quiet, Bob,” Helen said. “Let him finish.”
He looked at his wife in astonishment.
“We’ll skip all the romantic guff, with your permission,” Thunderton said. “You know who the Indians were, and you’ve heard all about the broken treaties and the smallpox. Okay. How about after all that was over? How about when everything was friendly, when the Indians weren’t a threat any longer? How about the reservations and all the people who admired the Indian ways of life?”
“I’ll bite,” Bob said. “How about them?”
“This about them: by the middle of the twentieth century, most people did not hate the Indians. They were colorful, interesting. Many people tried to preserve what was left of the Indian cultur
es. Sure, maybe the reservation schools were poor and under-staffed. Sure, maybe an Indian kid had nothing to look forward to because he couldn’t get a good education and compete in the white world. Sure, maybe they were backward and caught in a trap. Didn’t they make pretty pots? Didn’t they weave colorful blankets? Weren’t they fascinating?”
Thunderton sat down and spun the pistol on his finger. “Oh, people meant well, all right. Nobody bothered to tell the Indian about real estate deals and mineral rights and stocks and bonds and con men. Nobody bothered to make sure he could stand on his own hind legs and fight for his rights after he became a citizen. Nobody told him he might lose his land when he became ‘free’. Hell, education was expensive. It was easier to just turn him loose and hope for the best. People meant well, most of them. It was all very high-minded. But this is 2104. Where are the Indians? Let’s see—there’s a statue in Washington, there’s that lovely novel about the wicked cavalry troopers—”
“I see what you mean,” Bob said. “But those natives aren’t Indians, and this is 2104. We’ve learned a few things in the last century or so. They’re working out a fair program back there in the Council, they’ll figure out the right thing to do. I’m afraid I don’t get the connection. Your speech was pretty—but you’re the one who destroyed those natives.”
Thunderton ignored him. “A few more points, Mr. Wistert. Maybe the policy will be a dandy one; scientific and all that. Back in Spain, along about 1520, they had an enlightened policy toward the Indians. But it was a long way from Spain to Mexico; some of the boys with Cortez didn’t pay much attention to the nice policy. Okay. Suppose the policy they develop is a good one, and suppose, just for the hell of it, it’s honored to the letter. So what? So they’ll come out here and tell those natives what to do—for the good of the natives, of course. Why not ask the natives what they want? Excuse me; I detest idealists.”
Thunderton poured himself a glass of wine with his free hand.
“Get this,” he said. “Industry is coming out here, whether the natives like it or not. We’re here, and they’ve got to change. I don’t say it’s right and I don’t say it’s wrong. That’s just the way it works, Mr. Wistert. I’ve got maybe thirty years before the teams come in on Sirius Seven. I can’t do much, and I can’t reach many of the people on this planet. But, by God, when those teams come in here, there are going to be a few natives around who know what the score is. They’re going to speak English, they’re going to know how money works, and they’re going to know about the law. They’re going to have a chance. After that, if they throw it away, that’s their business.”