Gordon Dickson - 8 Short Stories and Novellas Part 5

V.

Three days later he was recovered enough to take a ride in his motorized go-cart over to Roy Marlie's office. He found Roy there, and his uncle.

"Hi, Tommy," said Chuck, wheeling through the door. "Hi, Chief."

"How you doing, son?" asked Member Thomas Wagnall. "How's the leg?"

"Doc says I can start getting around on surgical splints in a day or two." Chuck looked at them both.

"Well, isn't anybody going to tell me what happened?"

"Those two natives were carrying you when we finally located the three of you," said Tommy, "and we ".

"They were?" said Chuck.

"Why, yes." Tommy looked closely at him. "Didn't you know that?"

"I I was unconscious before they started carrying me, I guess," said Chuck.

"At any rate, we got you all back here in good shape." Tommy went across the room to a built-in cabinet and came back carrying a bottle of scotch, capped with three gla.s.ses, and a bowl of ice. "Ready for that drink now?"

"Try me," said Chuck, not quite licking his lips. Tommy made a second trip for charged water and brought it back. He pa.s.sed the drinks around.

"How," he said, raising his gla.s.s. They all drank in appreciative silence.

"Well," said Tommy, setting his gla.s.s down on the top of Roy's desk, "I suppose you heard about the conference." Chuck glanced over at Roy, who was evincing a polite interest.

"I heard they had a brief meeting and put everything off for a while," said Chuck.

"Until they had a chance to talk things overbetween themselves , yes," said Tommy. He was watching his nephew somewhat closely. "Rather surprising development. We hardly know where we stand now, do we?"

"Oh, I guess it'll work out all right," said Chuck.

"You do?"

"Why, yes," said Chuck. He slowly sipped at his gla.s.s again and held it up to the light of the window.

"Good scotch."

"All right!" Tommy's thick fist came down with a sudden bang on the desk top. "I'll quit playing around.

I may be nothing but a chairside Earth-lubber, but I'll tell you one thing. There's one thing I've developed in twenty years of politics and that's a nose for smells. And something about this situation smells! I don't know what, but it smells. And I want to find out what it is.

Chuck and Roy looked at each other.

"Why, Member," said Roy. "I don't follow you."

"You follow me all right," said Tommy. He took a gulp from his gla.s.s and blew out an angry breath. "All right off the record. But tell me!"

Roy smiled.

"You tell him, Chuck," he said.

Chuck grinned in his turn.

"Well, I'll put it this way, Tommy," he said. "You remember how I explained the story about Big Brother Charlie that gave us the name for this project?"

"What about it?" said the Member.

"Maybe I didn't go into quite enough detail. You see," said Chuck, "the two youngest brothers were twins who lived right next door to each other in one town. They used to fight regularly until their wives got fed up with it. And when that happened, their wives would invite Big Brother Charlie from the next town to come and visit them."

Tommy was watching him with narrowed eyes. "What happened, of course," said Chuck, lifting his gla.s.s again, "was that after about a week, the twins weren't fighting each other at all." He drank.

"All right. All right," said Tommy. "I'll play straight man. Why weren't they fighting with each other?"

"Because," said Chuck, putting his gla.s.s back down again, "they were both too busy fighting with Big Brother Charlie."

Tommy stared for a long moment. Then he grunted and sat back in his chair, as if he had just had the wind knocked out of him.

"You see," said Roy, leaning forward over his desk, "what we were required to do here was something impossible. You just don't change centuries-old att.i.tudes of distrust and hatred overnight. Trying to get the Lugh and the Tomah to like each other by any pressures we could bring to bear was like trying to move mountains with toothpicks. Too much ma.s.s for too little leverage. But wecould change the att.i.tudes of both of them toward us."

"And what's that supposed to mean?" demanded Tommy, glaring at him.

"Why, we might and did arrange for them to find out that, like the twins, they had more in common with each other than either one of them had with Big Brother Charlie. Not that we wanted them, G.o.d forbid, to unite in activelyfighting Big Brother: We do need this planet as a s.p.a.ce depot. But we wanted to make them see that they two form one unit with us on the outside. They don't like each other any better now, but they've begun to discover a reason for hanging together."

"I'm not sure I follow you," said Tommy, dryly.

"What I'm telling you," said Roy, "is that we arranged a demonstration to bring home to them the present situation. They weren't prepared to share this world with each other. But when it came to their both sharing it with a third life form, they began to realize that the closer relative might see more eye-to-eye with them than the distant one. Chuck was under strict orders not to intervene, but to manage things so that each of them would be forced to solve the problems of the other, with no a.s.sistance from Earth or its technology."

"Brother," Chuck grunted, "the way it all worked out I didn't have to 'manage' a thing. The 'accident' was more thorough than we'd planned, and I was pretty much without the a.s.sistance of our glorious technology myself. Each of them had problems I couldn't have solved if I'd wanted to . . . but the other one could."

"Well," Roy nodded, "they are the natives, after all. We are the aliens. Just how alien, it was Chuck's job to demonstrate."

"You mean " exploded Tommy, "that you threw away a half-million-dollar vehicle that you made that crash-landing in the ocean on purpose!"

"Off the record, Tommy," said Chuck, holding up a reminding finger. "As for the pot, it's on an undersea peak in forty fathoms. As soon as you can get us some more equipment it'll be duck soup to salvage it."

"Off the record be hanged!" roared Tommy. "Why, you might have killed them. You might have had one or the other species up in arms! You might "

"We thought it was worth the risk," said Chuck mildly. "After all, remember I was sticking my own neck into the same dangers."

"You thought!" Tommy turned a seething glance on his nephew. He thrust himself out of his chair and stamped up and down the office in a visible effort to control his temper.

"Progress is not made by rules alone," misquoted Chuck complacently, draining the last scotch out of his gla.s.s. "Come back and sit down, Tommy. It's all over now."

The older man came glowering back and wearily plumped in his chair.

"All right," he said. "I said off the record, but I didn't expect this. Do you two realize what it is you've just done? Risked the lives of two vital members of intelligent races necessary to our future! Violated every principle of ordinary diplomacy in a hairbrained scheme that had nothing more than a wild notion to back it up! And to top it off, involved me me , a Member of the Government! If this comes out n.o.body will ever believe I didn't know about it!"

"All right, Tommy," said Chuck. "We hear you. Now, what are you going to do about it?"

Earth District Member 439 Thomas L. Wagnall blew out a furious breath.

"Nothing!" he said, violently. "Nothing."

"That's what I thought," said Chuck. "Pa.s.s the scotch."

CONTENTS.

DANGER HUMAN.

By Gordon R. d.i.c.kson

DANGER -- HUMAN, Astounding December 1957, (c) 1957 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.

The s.p.a.ceboat came down in the silence of perfect working Order--down through the cool, dark night of a New Hamps.h.i.+relute spring. There was hardly any moon and the path emerg-ing from the clump of conifers and snaking its way across the dim pasture looked like a long strip of pale cloth, carelessly dropped and forgotten there.

The two aliens checked the boat and stopped it, hovering, some fifty feet above the pasture, and all but invisible against the low-lying clouds. Then they set themselves to wait, their Woolly, bearlike forms settled on haunches, their uniform belts glinting a little in the s.h.i.+elded light from the instrument panel, talking now and then in desultory murmurs.

"It's not a bad place," said the one of junior rank, looking down at the earth below.

"Why should it be?" answered the senior.

The junior did not answer. He s.h.i.+fted on his haunches.

"The babies are due soon," he said. "I just got a message."

"How many?" asked the senior.

"Three--the doctor thinks. That's not bad for a first birthing."

"My wife only had two."

"I know. You told me."

They fell silent for a few seconds. The s.p.a.ceboat rocked almost imperceptibly in the waters of night.

"Look--" said the junior, suddenly. "Here it comes, right on schedule."

The senior glanced overside. Down below, a tall, dark formhad emerged from the trees and was coming out along the path.A little beam of light shone before him, terminating in a blob of illumination that danced along the path ahead, lighting his way. The senior stiffened.

"Take controls," he said. The casualness had gone out of hisvoice. It had become crisp, impersonal.

"Controls," answered the other, in the same emotionlessvoice.

"Take her down."

"Down it is."

The s.p.a.ceboat dropped groundward. There was an odd sort of soundless, lightless explosion--it was as if concussive wave hadpa.s.sed, robbed of all effects but one. The figure dropped, the light rolling from its grasp and losing its glow in a tangle of short gra.s.s. The s.p.a.ceboat landed and the two aliens got out.

In the dark night they loomed furrily above the still figure. It was that of a lean, dark man in his early thirties, dressed inclean, much-washed corduroy pants and checkered wool lumber-jack s.h.i.+rt. He was unconscious, but breathing slowly, deeply andeasily.

"I'll take it up by the head, here," said the senior. "You takethe other end. Got it? Lift! Now, carry it into the boat."

The junior backed away, up through the s.p.a.ceboat's open lock, grunting a little with the awkwardness of his burden.

"It feels slimy," he said.

"Nonsense!" said the senior. "That's your imagination."

Eldridge Timothy Parker drifted in that dreamy limbo be-tween awakeness and full sleep. He found himself contemplat-ing his own name.

Eldridge Timothy Parker. Eldridgetimothyparker. EldridgeTIMOTHYparker.

ELdrlDGEtiMOthyPARKer. . . .

There was a hardness under his back, the back on which he was lying--and a coolness. His flaccid right hand turned flat, feeling. It felt like steel beneath him. Metal? He tried to situp and b.u.mped his forehead against a ceiling a few inches over-head. He blinked his eyes in the darkness-- Darkness?

He flung out his hands, searching, feeling terror leap up inside him. His knuckles bruised against walls to right and left. Frantic, his groping fingers felt out, around and about him. He was walled in, he was surrounded, he was enclosed.

Completely.