Nearly Complete Short Fiction, page 90
It was, therefore, with a warm feeling of a job well done that I returned to my headquarters on Pluto in response to Pah-Chi-Luh’s summons.
Needless to say, this feeling quickly changed to the most overpowering dismay. After getting the background from the overwrought corporal, I interviewed the Gtetan extradition force. They had been in touch with their home office and were threatening a major galactic scandal if the Patrol’s arrest of L’payr were not upheld and L’payr remanded to their custody.
“Are the most sacred and intimate details of our sex life to be shamelessly flaunted from one end of the Universe to the other?” I was asked angrily. “Pornography is pornography—a crime is a crime. The intent was there—the overt act was there. We demand our prisoner.”
“How can you have pornography without titillation?” L’payr wanted to know. “If a Chumblostian sells a Gtetan a quantity of krrgllwss—which they use as food and we use as building material—does the shipment have to be paid for under the nutritive or structural tariffs? The structural tariffs obtain, as you well know, Sergeant. I demand immediate release!”
BUT the most unpleasant surprise of all awaited me with Blatch. The terrestrial was sitting in his cell, sucking the curved handle of his umbrella.
“Under the code governing the treatment of all races on Secretly Supervised Status,” he began as soon as he saw me, “and I refer not only to the Rigellian-Sagittarian Convention, but to the statutes of the third cosmic cycle and the Supreme Council decisions in the cases of Khwomo vs. Khwomo and Farziplok vs. Antares XII, I demand return to my accustomed habitat on Earth, the payment of damages according to the schedule developed by the Nobri Commission in the latest Vivadin controversy. I also demand satisfaction in terms of—”
“You seem to have acquired a good deal of knowledge of interstellar law,” I commented slowly.
“Oh, I have, Sergeant—I have. Mr. L’payr was most helpful in acquainting me with my rights. It seems that I am entitled to all sorts of recompenses—or, at least, that I can claim entitlement. You have a very interesting galactic culture, Sergeant. Many, many people on Earth would be fascinated to learn about it. But I am quite prepared to spare you the embarrassment which such publicity would cause you. I am certain that two reasonable individuals like ourselves can come to terms.”
When I charged L’payr with violating galactic secrecy, he spread his cytoplasm in an elaborate ameboid shrug.
“I told him nothing on Earth, Sergeant. Whatever information this terrestrial has received—and I will admit that it would have been damaging and highly illegal—was entirely in the jurisdiction of your headquarters office. Besides, having been wrongfully accused of an ugly and unthinkable crime, I surely had the right to prepare my defense by discussing the matter with the only witness to the deed. I might go further and point out that, since Mr. Blatch and myself are in a sense co-defendants, there could be no valid objection to a pooling of our legal knowledge.”
Back in my office, I brought Corporal Pah-Chi-Luh up to date.
“It’s like a morass,” he complained. “The more you struggle to get out, the deeper you fall in it! And this terrestrial! The Plutonian natives who’ve been guarding him have been driven almost crazy. He asks questions about everything—what’s this, what’s that, how does it work. Or it’s not hot enough for him, the air doesn’t smell right, his food is uninteresting. His throat has developed an odd tickle, he wants a gargle, he needs a—”
“Give him everything he wants, but within reason,” I said. “If this creature dies on us, you and I will be lucky to draw no more than a punishment tour in the Black Hole in Cygnus. But as for the rest of it—look here, Corporal, I find myself in agreement with the extradition party from Gtet. A crime has to have been committed.”
STELLAR Corporal Pah-Chi-Luh stared at me. “You—you mean . . .”
“I mean that if a crime was committed, L’payr has been legally arrested and can therefore be taken back to Gtet. We will then hear no more from him ever and we will also be rid of that bunch of pseudopod-clacking Gtetan shysters. That will leave us with only one problem—Osborne Blatch. Once L’payr is gone and we have this terrestrial to ourselves, I think we can handle him—one way or another. But first and foremost, Corporal Pah-Chi-Luh, a crime—some crime—has to have been committed by L’payr during his sojourn on Earth. Set up your bed in the law library.”
Shortly afterward, Pah-Chi-Luh left for Earth.
Now please, Hoy, no moralistic comments! You know as well as I do that this sort of thing has been done before, here and there, in Outlying Patrol Offices. I don’t like it any more than you, but I was faced with a major emergency. Besides, there was no doubt but that this L’payr, ameboid master criminal, had had punishment deferred far too long. In fact, one might say that morally I was completely and absolutely in the right.
Pah-Chi-Luh returned to Earth, as I’ve said, this time disguised as an editorial assistant. He got a job in the publishing house that had brought out the biology textbook. The original photographs were still in the files of that establishment. By picking his man carefully and making a good many mind-stimulating comments, the stellar corporal finally inspired one of the technical editors to examine the photographs and have the material on which they were printed analyzed.
The material was frab, a synthetic textile much in use on Gtet and not due to be developed by humanity for at least three centuries.
In no time at all, almost every woman in America was wearing lingerie made of frab, the novelty fabric of the year. And since L’payr was ultimately responsible for this illegal technological spurt, we at last had him where we wanted him!
He was very sporting about it, Hoy.
“The end of a long road for me, Sergeant,” he said resignedly. “I congratulate you. Crime does not pay. Lawbreakers always lose.”
“Right,” I agreed. “About time you learned that.”
I WENT off to prepare the extradition forms, without a care in the Galaxy. There was Blatch, of course, but he was only a human. And by this time, having gotten involved in all kinds of questionable dealings myself, I was determined to make quick work of him. After all, one might as well get blasted for a skreek as a launt!
But when I returned to escort the Gtetan to his fellow-ameboids, I almost fell through the surface of Pluto. Where there had been one L’payr, there were now two! Smaller L’payrs, of course—half the size of the original, to be exact—but L’payrs unmistakably.
In the interval, he had reproduced!
How? That gargle the Earthan had demanded, Hoy. It had been L’payr’s idea all along, his last bit of insurance. Once the Earthman had received the gargle, he had smuggled it to L’payr, who had hidden it in his cell, intending to use it as a last resort.
That gargle, Hoy, was salt water!
So there I was. The Gtetans informed me that their laws covered such possibilities, but much help their laws were to me.
“A crime has been committed, pornography has been sold,” the spokesman reiterated. “We demand our prisoner. Both of him!”
“Pursuant to Galactic Statutes 6,009,371 through 6,106,514,” Osborne Blatch insisted, “I demand immediate release, restitution to the extent of two billion Galactic Megawhars, a complete and written—”
And . . .
“It’s probably true that our ancestor, L’payr, committed all sorts of indiscretions,” lisped one of the two young ameboids in the cell next to Osborne Blatch, “but what does that have to do with us? L’payr paid for his crimes by dying in childbirth. We are young and innocent. Don’t tell us the big, powerful Galaxy believes in punishing little children for the sins of their parents!” What would you have done?
I shipped the whole mess off to Patrol Headquarters—the Gtetan extradition party and their mess of judicial citations, Osborne Blatch and his umbrella, the biology textbook, the original bundle of pornographic pictures, and last but not at all least, two—count ’em, two—dewy young ameboids. Call them L’payr sub-one and L’payr sub-two. Do anything you like with them when they get there, but please don’t tell me what it is!
And if you can figure out a solution with the aid of some of the more ancient and wiser heads at headquarters, and figure it out before the Old One ruptures a gloccistomorph, Pah-Chi-Luh and I will be pathetically, eternally grateful.
If not—well, we’re standing by here at Outlying Patrol Office 1001625 with bags packed. There’s something to be said for the Black Hole in Cygnus—invaluable experience for a Patrolman.
Personally, Hoy, I’d say that the whole trouble is caused by creatures who insist on odd and colorful methods of continuing their race, instead of doing it sanely and decently by means of spore-pod explosion!
1955
The Servant Problem
When politics is a game, there is only one rule: Follow the leader. But the question is: Who’s the leader and where’s he going?
THIS was the day of complete control . . .
Garomma, the Servant of All, the World’s Drudge, the Slavey of Civilization, placed delicately scented fingertips to his face, closed his eyes and allowed himself to luxuriate in the sensation of ultimate power, absolute power, power such as no human being had even dared to dream of before this day.
Complete control. Complete . . . Except for one man. One single ambitious maverick of a man. One very useful man. Should he be strangled at his desk this afternoon, that was the question, or should he be allowed a few more days, a few more weeks, of heavily supervised usefulness? His treason, his plots, were unquestionably coming to a head. Well, Garomma would decide that later. At leisure.
Meanwhile, in all other respects, with everyone else, there was control. Control not only of men’s minds but of their glands as well. And those of their children.
And, if Moddo’s estimates were correct, of their children’s children.
“Yea,” Garomma muttered to himself, suddenly remembering a fragment of the oral text his peasant father had taught him years ago, “yea, unto the seventh generation.”
What ancient book, burned in some long-ago educational fire, had that text come from, he wondered? His father would not be able to tell him, nor would any of his father’s friends and neighbors; they had all been wiped out after the Sixth District Peasant Uprising thirty years ago.
An uprising of a type that could never possibly occur again. Not with complete control.
SOMEONE touched his knee gently, and his mind ceased its aimless foraging. Moddo. The Servant of Education, seated below him in the depths of the vehicle, gestured obsequiously at the transparent, missile-proof cupola that surrounded his leader down to the waist.
“The people,” he stated in his peculiar half-stammer. “There. Outside.”
Yes. They were rolling through the gates of the Hovel of Service and into the city proper. On both sides of the street and far into the furthest distance were shrieking crowds as black and dense and exuberant as ants on a piece of gray earthworm. Garomma, the Servant of All, could not be too obviously busy with his own thoughts; he was about to be viewed by those he served so mightily.
He crossed his arms upon his chest and bowed to right and left in the little dome that rose like a tower from the squat black conveyance. Bow right, bow left, and do it humbly. Right, left—and humbly, humbly. Remember, you are the Servant of All.
As the shrieks rose in volume, he caught a glimpse of Moddo nodding approval from beneath. Good old Moddo. This was his day of triumph as well. The achievement of complete control was most thoroughly and peculiarly the achievement of the Servant of Education. Yet Moddo sat in heavy-shadowed anonymity behind the driver with Garomma’s personal bodyguards; sat and tasted his triumph only with his leader’s tongue—as he had for more than twenty-five years now.
Fortunately for Moddo, such a taste was rich enough for his system. Unfortunately, there were others—one other at least—who required more . . .
Garomma bowed to right and left and, as he bowed, looked curiously through the streaming webs of black-uniformed motorcycled police that surrounded his car. He looked at the people of Capital City, his people, his as everything and everyone on Earth was his. Jamming madly together on the sidewalks, they threw their arms wide as his car came abreast of them.
“Serve us, Garomma,” they chanted. “Serve us! Serve us!”
He observed their contorted faces, the foam that appeared at the mouth-corners of many, the half-shut eyes and ecstatic expressions, the swaying men, the writhing women, the occasional individual who collapsed in an unnoticed climax of happiness. And he bowed. With his arms crossed upon his chest, he bowed. Right and left. Humbly.
LAST week, when Moddo had requested his views on problems of ceremony and protocol relative to today’s parade, the Servant of Education had commented smugly on the unusually high incidence of mob hysteria expected when his chiefs face was seen. And Garomma had voiced a curiosity he’d been feeling for a long time.
“What goes on in their minds when they see me, Moddo? I know they worship and get exhilarated and all that. But what precisely do you fellows call the emotion when you talk about it in the labs and places such as the Education Center?”
The tall man slid his hand across his forehead in the gesture that long years had made thoroughly familiar to Garomma.
“They are experiencing a trigger release,” he said slowly, staring over Garomma’s shoulder as if he were working out the answer from the electronically pinpointed world map on the back wall. “All the tensions these people accumulate in their daily round of niggling little prohibitions and steady coercions, all the frustrations of ‘don’t do this and don’t do this, do that’ have been organized by the Service of Education to be released explosively the moment they see your picture or hear your voice.”
“Trigger release. Hm! I’ve never thought of it quite that way.”
Moddo held up a hand in rigid earnestness. “After all, you’re the one man whose life is supposedly spent in an abject obedience beyond anything they’ve ever known. The man who holds the—the intricate strands of the world’s coordination in his patient, unwearying fingers; the ultimate and hardest-worked employee; the—the scapegoat of the multitudes!”
Garomma had grinned at Moddo’s scholarly eloquence. Now, however, as he observed his screaming folk from under submissive eyelids, he decided that the Servant of Education had been completely right.
On the Great Seal of the World State was it not written: “All Men Must Serve Somebody, But Only Garomma Is the Servant of All” ?
Without him, they knew, and knew irrevocably, oceans would break through dikes and flood the land, infections would appear in men’s bodies and grow rapidly into pestilences that could decimate whole districts, essential services would break down so that an entire city could die of thirst in a week, and local officials would oppress the people and engage in lunatic wars of massacre with each other. Without him, without Garomma working day and night to keep everything running smoothly, to keep the titanic forces of nature and civilization under control. They knew, because these things happened whenever “Garomma was tired of serving.”
What were the unpleasant interludes of their lives to the implacable dreary—but, oh, so essential!—toil of his? Here, in this slight, serious-looking man bowing humbly right and left, right and left, was not only the divinity that made it possible for Man to exist comfortably on Earth, but also the crystallization of all the sub-races that ever enabled an exploited people to feel that things could be worse, that relative to the societal muck beneath them, they were, in spite of their sufferings, as lords and monarchs in comparison.
NO wonder they stretched their arms frantically to him, the Servant of All, the World’s Drudge, the Slavey of Civilization, and screamed their triumphant demand with one breath, their fearful plea with the next: “Serve us, Garomma! Serve us, serve us, serve us!”
Didn’t the docile sheep he had herded as a boy in the Sixth District mainland to the northwest, didn’t the sheep also feel that he was their servant as he led them and drove them to better pastures and cooler streams, as he protected them from enemies and removed pebbles from their feet, all to the end that their smoking flesh would taste better on his father’s table? But these so much more useful herds of two-legged, wellbrained sheep were as thoroughly domesticated. And on the simple principle they’d absorbed that government was the servant of the people and the highest power in the government was the most abysmal servant.
His sheep. He smiled at them paternally, possessively, as his special vehicle rolled along the howling, face-filled mile between the Hovel of Service and the Educational Center. His sheep. And these policemen on motorcycles, these policemen on foot whose arms were locked against the straining crowds every step of the way, these were his sheepdogs. Another kind of domesticated animal.
That’s all he had been, thirty-three years ago, when he’d landed on this island fresh from a rural Service of Security training school to take his first government job as a policeman in Capital City. A clumsy, over-excited sheepdog. One of the least important sheep-dogs of the previous regime’s Servant of All.
But three years later, the peasant revolt in his own district had given him his chance. With his special knowledge of the issues involved as well as the identity of the real leaders, he’d been able to play an important role in crushing the rebellion. And then, his new and important place in the Service of Security had enabled him to meet promising youngsters in the other services—Moddo, particularly, the first and most useful human he had personally domesticated.
