Impact
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allowing his mission to be wrecked by the ephemeraldoubts of a teacher. Here at the onset was the time to make it clear thathe was in command. He gave the natives the machine.
As the six men trudged across the burned earth carrying the heavy apparatuseasily on their shoulders, Lord wondered if either he or Ann Howard hadmuch to do with the negotiations. He had an unpleasant feeling that, fromthe very beginning, the natives had been in complete control of thesituation.
* * * * *
Less than an hour after the six men had departed, a band of natives emergedfrom the forest bearing gifts of food--straw baskets heaped with fruit,fresh meat wrapped in grass mats, hampers of bread, enormous pottery jarsfilled with a sweet, cold, milky liquid. Something very close to themiraculous had occurred. Every native had learned to use the Federationlanguage.
A kind of fiesta began in the clearing beside the _Ceres_. The nativesbuilt fires to cook the food. The women, scantily dressed if they wereclothed at all, danced sensuously in the bright sunlight to a peculiarlyexotic, minor-keyed music played on reed and percussion instruments.Laughing gaily, they enticed members of Lord's crew to join them.
The milky drink proved mildly intoxicating--yet different from thestimulants used in the Federation. Lord drank a long draught from a mugbrought him by one of the women. The effect was immediate. He felt nodulling of his reason, however; no loss of muscular control, but insteada stealthy relaxation of mental strain joined with a satisfying sense ofphysical well-being. A subtle shifting in prospective, in accepted values.
The savage feast, which grew steadily more boisterous, Lord would havecalled an orgy under other circumstances. The word did occur to him, but itseemed fantastically inapplicable. Normally the behavior of his men wouldhave demanded the severest kind of disciplinary action. But here the oldcode of rules simply didn't apply and he didn't interfere with theirenjoyment.
The afternoon sun blazed in the western sky; heat in shimmering waveshung over the clearing. Lord went into the ship and stripped off hisuniform; somehow the glittering insignia, the ornamental braid, the stiffcollar--designed to be impressive symbols of authority--seemed garish andout of place. Lord put on the shorts which he wore when he exercised inthe capsule gym aboard ship.
Outside again, he found that most of the men had done the same thing. Thesun felt warm on his skin; the air was comfortably balmy, entirely free ofthe swarms of flies and other insects which made other newly contactedfrontier worlds so rugged.
As he stood in the shelter of the landing ladder and sipped a second mugof the white liquor, Lord became slowly aware of something else. Divestedof their distinguishing uniforms, he and his crew seemed puny and ill-fedbeside the natives. If physique were any index to the sophistication of aculture--but that was a ridiculous generalization!
He saw Ann Howard coming toward him through the crowd--stern-faced,hard-jawed, stiffly dignified in her uniform. The other women among thecrew had put on their lightest dress, but not Ann. Lord was in no frame ofmind, just then, to endure an interview with her. He knew precisely whatshe would say; Ann was a kind of walking encyclopedia of the conventions.
Lord slid out of sight in the shadow of the ship, but Ann had seen him. Heturned blindly into the forest, running along the path toward the village.
In a fern-banked glen beside the miniature waterfall he had met Niaga.
* * * * *
No woman he had ever known seemed so breathtakingly beautiful. Her skin hadbeen caressed by a lifetime's freedom in the sun; her long, dark hair hadthe sheen of polished ebony; and in the firm, healthy curves of her bodyhe saw the sensuous grace of a Venus or an Aphrodite.
In a fern-banked glen beside a miniature waterfall, MartinLord first saw Niaga.]
She stood up slowly and faced him, smiling; a bright shaft of sunlight fellon the liquid bow of her lips. "I am Niaga," she said. "You must be one ofthe men who came on the ship."
"Martin Lord," he answered huskily. "I'm the trade agent in command."
"I am honored." Impulsively she took the garland of flowers which she hadbeen making and put it around his neck. When she came close, the subtleperfume of her hair was unmistakable--like the smell of pine needles on amountain trail; new grass during a spring rain; or the crisp, winter airafter a fall of snow. Perfume sharply symbolic of freedom, heady andintoxicating, numbing his mind with the ghosts of half-remembered dreams.
"I was coming to your ship with the others," she said, "but I stopped hereto swim, as I often do. I'm afraid I stayed too long, day-dreaming on thebank; time means so little to us." Shyly she put her hand in his. "But,perhaps, no harm is done, since you are still alone. If you have taken noone else, will I do?"
"I--I don't understand."
"You are strangers; we want you to feel welcome."
"Niaga, people don't--that is--" He floundered badly. Intellectually heknew he could not apply the code of his culture to hers; emotionally itwas a difficult concept to accept. If his standards were invalid, hisdefinitions might be, too. Perhaps this society was no more primitivethan--No! A mature people would always develop more or less the samemechanical techniques, and these people had nothing remotely like amachine.
"You sent us a gift," she said. "It is only proper for us to return thekindness."
"You have made a rather miraculous use of the language machine in aremarkably short period of time."
"We applied it to everyone in the village. We knew it would help yourpeople feel at ease, if we could talk together in a common tongue."
"You go to great pains to welcome a shipload of strangers."
"Naturally. Consideration for others is the first law of humanity." After apause, she added very slowly, with her eyes fixed on his, "Mr. Lord, do youplan to make a colony here?"
"Eventually. After we repair the ship, I hope to negotiate a trade treatywith your government."
"But you don't intend to stay here yourself?"
"I couldn't."
"Have we failed in our welcome? Is there something more--"
"No, Niaga, nothing like that. I find your world very--very beautiful."The word very inadequately expressed what he really felt. "But I'm notfree to make the choice."
She drew in her breath sharply. "Your people, then, hold you enslaved?"
He laughed--uneasily. "I'm going home to manage Hamilton Lord; it'sthe largest trading company in the Federation. We have exclusivefranchises to develop almost five hundred planets. It's my duty,Niaga; my responsibility; I can't shirk it."
"Why not--if you wanted to?"
"Because I'm Martin Lord; because I've been trained--No, it's somethingI can't explain. You'll just have to take my word for it. Now tell me:how should I go about negotiating a treaty with your people?"
"You spoke of the government, Martin Lord; I suppose you used the wordin a symbolic sense?"
"Your chieftain; your tribal leader--whatever name you have for them."
* * * * *
Her big, dark eyes widened in surprise. "Then you meant actual men? It'sa rather unusual use of the word, isn't it? For us, government is asynonym for law."
"Of course, but you must have leaders to interpret it and enforce it."
"Enforce a law?" This seemed to amuse her. "How? A law is a statement ofa truth in human relationship; it doesn't have to be enforced. What saneperson would violate a truth? What would you do, Martin Lord, if I toldyou we had no government, in your sense of the word?"
"You can't be that primitive, Niaga!"
"Would it be so terribly wrong?"
"That's anarchy. There'd be no question, then, of granting us a tradefranchise; we'd have to set up a trusteeship and let the teachers run yourplanet until you had learned the basic processes of social organization."
Niaga turned away from him, her hands twisted together. She said, in a softwhisper that was flat and emotionless, "We have a council of elders, MartinLord. You can make your treaty with them."
Then, imperceptibly, her voicebrightened. "It will take a week or more to bring the council together.And that is all to the good; it will give your people time to visit inour villages and to get better acquainted with us."
* * * * *
Niaga left him, then; she said she would go to the village and send outthe summons for the council. By a roundabout path, Lord returned to theclearing around the _Ceres_. The forest fascinated him. It was obviouslycultivated like a park, and he was puzzled that a primitive society shouldpractice such full scale conservation. Normally savages took nature forgranted or warred against it.
He came upon a brown gash torn in a hillside above the