by C. L. Moore
He thought again, almost regretfully, of the lovely thing he had coveted hurtling away down the vortex with lightnings bathing it through the blackness.
Had he destroyed it? He did not know. He was a little sorry now that anger for his ruined treasures had made him lose his temper when they ran. Futile, scuttling little beings—they had cheated him out of beauty because of their own impotence against him, but he was not even angry about that now. Only sorry, with vague, confused sorrows he did not bother to clarify in his mind. Regret for the loss of a lovely thing, regret that he had expected danger from them and been disappointed, regret perhaps for his own boredom, that did not bother any longer to probe into the motives of living things. He was growing old indeed.
The vortex still roared through the darkened screen. He stepped back from it, letting opacity close over the surface of the portal, hushing all sound. His eyes were a tranquil yellow. Tomorrow he would hunt again, and perhaps tomorrow ...
He went out slowly, walking with long, soundless strides that made the steel mosaics sing faintly beneath his feet.
The End
THE IRON STANDARD
Astounding Science Fiction - December 1943
with Henry Kuttner
(as by Lewis Padgett)
Padgett presents a neat problem in how to earn a living in a rigidly frozen economy. The explorers had inventions to sell—but there was a law against inventions!
-
"So the ghost won't walk for a year—Venusian time," Thirkell said, spooning up cold beans with a disgusted air.
Rufus Munn, the captain, looked up briefly from his task of decockroaching the soup. "Dunno why we had to import these. A year plus four weeks, Steve. There'll be a month at space before we hit Earth again."
Thirkell's round, pudgy face grew solemn. "What happens in the meantime? Do we starve on cold beans?"
Munn sighed, glancing through the open, screened port of the spaceship Goodwill to where dim figures moved in the mists outside. But he didn't answer. Barton Underhill, supercargo and handy man, who had wangled his passage by virtue of his father's wealth, grinned tightly and said, "What d'you expect? We don't dare use fuel. There's just enough to get us home. So it's cold beans or nothing."
"Soon it will be nothing," Thirkell said solemnly. "We have been spendthrifts. Wasting our substance in riotous living."
"Riotous living!" Munn growled. "We gave most of our grub to the Venusians."
"Well," Underhill murmured, "they fed us—for a month."
"Not now. There's an embargo. What do they have against us, anyhow?"
Munn thrust back his stool with sudden decision. "That's something we'll have to figure out. Things can't go on like this. We simply haven't enough food to last us a year. And we can't live off the land—" He stopped as someone unzipped the valve screen and entered, a squat man with high cheekbones and a beak of a nose in a red-bronze face.
"Find anything, Redskin?" Underhill asked.
Mike Soaring Eagle tossed a plastisac on the table. "Six mushrooms. No wonder the Venusians use hydroponics. They have to. Only fungi will grow in this sponge of a world, and most of that's poisonous. No use, skipper."
Munn's mouth tightened. "Yeah. Where's Bronson?"
"Panhandling. But he won't get a fal." The Navaho nodded toward the port. "Here he comes now."
After a moment the others heard Bronson's slow footsteps. The engineer came in, his face red as his hair. "Don't ask me," he murmured. "Don't say a word, anybody. Me, a Kerry man, trying to bum a lousy fal from a shagreen-skinned so-and-so with an iron ring in his nose like a Ubangi savage. Think of it! The shame will stay with me forever."
"My sympathy," Thirkell said. "But did you get any fals?"
Bronson glared at him. "Would I have taken his dirty coins if he'd offered them?" the engineer yelled, his eyes bloodshot. "I'd have flung them in his slimy face, and you can take my word for it. I touch their rotten money? Give me some beans." He seized a plate and morosely began to eat.
Thirkell exchanged glances with Underhill. "He didn't get any money," the latter said.
Bronson started back with a snort. "He asked me if I belonged to the Beggars' Guild! Even tramps have to join a union on this planet!"
Captain Munn scowled thoughtfully. "No, it isn't a union, Bronson, or even much like the medieval guilds. The tarkomars are a lot more powerful and a lot less principled. Unions grew out of a definite social and economic background, and they fill a purpose—a check-and-balance system that keeps building. I'm not talking about unions; on Earth some of 'em are good—like the Air Transport—and some are graft-ridden, like Undersea Dredgers. The tarkomars are different. They don't fulfill any productive purpose. They just keep the Venusian system in its backwater."
"Yes," Thirkell said, "and unless we're members, we aren't allowed to work—at anything. And we can't be members till we pay the initiation fee—a thousand sofals."
"Easy on those beans," Underhill cautioned. "We've only ten more cans."
There was silence. Presently Munn passed cigarettes.
"We've got to do something, that's certain," he said. "We can't get food except from the Venusians, and they won't give it to us. One thing in our favor: the laws are so arbitrary that they can't refuse to sell us grub—it's illegal to refuse legal tender."
Mike Soaring Eagle glumly sorted his six mushrooms. "Yeah. If we can get our hands on legal tender. We're broke—broke on Venus—and we'll soon be starving to death. If anybody can figure out an answer to that one—"
-
This was in 1964, three years after the first successful flight to Mars, five years since Dooley and Hastings had brought their ship down in Mare Imbrium. The Moon, of course, was uninhabited, save by active but unintelligent algae. The big-chested, alert Martians, with their high metabolism and their brilliant, erratic minds, had been friendly, and it was certain that the cultures of Mars and Earth would not clash. As for Venus, till now, no ship had landed there.
The Goodwill was the ambassador. It was an experiment, like the earlier Martian voyage, for no one knew whether or not there was intelligent life on Venus. Supplies for more than a year were stowed aboard, dehydrates, plastibulbs, concentrates, and vitamin foods, but every man of the crew had a sneaking hunch that food would be found in plenty on Venus.
There was food—yes. The Venusians grew it, in their hydroponic tanks under the cities. But on the surface of the planet grew nothing edible at all. There was little animal or bird life, so hunting was impossible, even had the Earthmen been allowed to retain their weapons. And in the beginning it had seemed like a gala holiday after the arduous space trip—a year-long fete and carnival in an alien, fascinating civilization.
It was alien, all right. The Venusians were conservative. What was good enough for their remote ancestors was quite good enough for them. They didn't want changes, it seemed. Their current set-up had worked O.K. for centuries; why alter it now?
The Earthmen meant change—that was obvious.
Result: a boycott of the Earthmen.
It was all quite passive. The first month had brought no trouble; Captain Munn had been presented with the keys of the capital city, Vyring, on the outskirts of which the Goodwill now rested, and the Venusians brought food in plenty—odd but tasty dishes from the hydroponic gardens. In return, the Earthmen were lavish with their own stores, depleting them dangerously.
And the Venusian food spoiled quickly. There was no need to preserve it, for the hydroponic tanks turned out a steady, unfailing supply. In the end the Earthmen were left with a few weeks' stock of the food they had brought with them, and a vast pile of garbage that had been lusciously appetizing a few days before.
Then the Venusians stopped bringing their quick-spoiling fruits, vegetables and meat-mushrooms and clamped down. The party was over. They had no intention of harming the Earthmen; they remained carefully friendly. But from now on it was Pay as You're Served—and no checks cashed. A big meat-mushroom, enough fo
r four hungry men, cost ten fals.
Since the Earthmen had no fals, they got no meat-mushrooms—nor anything else.
In the beginning it hadn't seemed important. Not until they got down to cases and began to wonder exactly how they could get food.
There was no way.
So they sat in the Goodwill eating cold beans and looking like five of the Seven Dwarfs, a quintet of stocky, short, husky men, big-boned and muscular, especially chosen for their physiques to stand the rigors of space flight—and their brains, also specially chosen, couldn't help them now.
It was a simple problem—simple and primitive. They, the representatives of Earth's mightiest culture, were hungry. They would soon be hungrier.
And they didn't have a fal—nothing but worthless gold, silver and paper currency. There was metal in the ship, but none of the pure metal they needed, except in alloys that couldn't be broken down.
Venus was on the iron standard.
-
"—there's got to be an answer," Munn said stubbornly, his hard-bitten, harsh face somber. He pushed back his plate with an angry gesture. "I'm going to see the Council again."
"What good will that do?" Thirkell wanted to know. "We're on the spot, there's no getting around it. Money talks."
"Just the same, I'm going to talk to Jorust," the captain growled. "She's no fool."
"Exactly," Thirkell said cryptically.
Munn stared at him, beckoned to Mike Soaring Eagle and turned towards the valve. Underhill jumped up eagerly.
"May I go?"
Bronson gloomily toyed with his beans. "Why do you want to go? You couldn't even play a slot machine in Vyring's skid row—if they had slot machines. Maybe you think if you tell 'em your old man's a Tycoon of Amalgamated Ores, they'll break down and hand out meal tickets—eh?"
But his tone was friendly enough, and Underhill merely grinned. Captain Munn said, "Come along, if you want, but hurry up." The three men went out into the steaming mists, their feet sloshing through sticky mud.
It wasn't uncomfortably hot; the high winds of Venus provided for quick evaporation, a natural air conditioning that kept the men from feeling the humidity. Munn referred to his compass. The outskirts of Vyring were half a mile away, but the fog was, as usual, like pea soup. On Venus it is always bird-walking weather. Silently the trio slogged on.
"I thought Indians knew how to live off the land," Underhill presently remarked to the Navaho. Mike Soaring Eagle looked at him quizzically.
"I'm not a Venusian Indian," he explained. "Maybe I could make a bow and arrow and bring down a Venusian—but that wouldn't help, unless he had a lot of sofals in his purse."
"We might eat him," Underhill murmured. "Wonder what roast Venusian would taste like?"
"Find out and you can write a best seller when you get back home," Munn remarked. "If you get back home. Vyring's got a police force, chum."
"Oh, well," Underhill said, and left it at that. "Here's the Water Gate. Lord—I smell somebody's dinner!"
"So do I," the Navaho grunted, "but I hoped nobody would mention it. Shut up and keep walking."
The wall around Vyring was in the nature of a dike, not a fortification. Venus was both civilized and unified; there were, apparently, no wars and no tariffs—a natural development for a world state. Air transports made sizzling noises as they shot past, out of sight in the fog overhead. Mist shrouded the streets, torn into tatters by occasional huge fans. Vyring, shielded from the winds, was unpleasantly hot, except indoors where artificial air conditioning could be brought into use.
Underhill was reminded of Venice: the streets were canals. Water craft of various shapes and sizes drifted, glided or raced past. Even the beggars travelled by water. There were rutted, muddy footpaths beside the canals, but no one with a fal to his name ever walked.
The Earthmen walked, cursing fervently as they splashed through the muck. They were, for the most part, ignored.
A water taxi scooted towards the bank, its pilot, wearing the blue badge of his tarkomar, hailing them. "May I escort you?" he wanted to know.
Underhill exhibited a silver dollar. "If you'll take this—sure." All the Earthmen had learned Venusian quickly; they were good linguists, having been chosen for this as well as other transplanetary virtues. The phonetic Venusian tongue was far from difficult.
It was no trouble at all to understand the taxi pilot when he said no.
"Toss you for it," Underhill said hopefully. "Double or nothing."
But the Venusians weren't gamblers. "Double what?" the pilot inquired. "That coin? It's silver." He indicated the silver, rococo filigree on the prow of his craft. "Junk!"
"This would be a swell place for Benjamin Franklin," Mike Soaring Eagle remarked. "His false teeth were made of iron, weren't they?"
"If they were, he had a Venusian fortune in his mouth," Underhill said.
"Not quite."
"If it could buy a full-course dinner, it's a fortune," Underhill insisted.
The pilot, eyeing the Earthmen scornfully, drifted off in search of wealthier fares. Munn, doggedly plodding on, wiped sweat from his forehead. Swell place, Vyring, he thought. Swell place to starve to death.
-
Half an hour of difficult hiking roused Munn to a slow, dull anger. If Jorust refused to see him, he thought, there was going to be trouble, even though they'd taken away his guns. He felt capable of tearing down Vyring with his teeth. And eating the more edible portions.
Luckily, Jorust was available. The Earthmen were ushered into her office, a big, luxurious room high above the city, with windows open to the cooling breezes. Jorust was skittering around the room on a high chair, equipped with wheels and some sort of motor. Along the walls ran a slanting shelf, like a desk and presumably serving the same function. It was shoulder-high, but Jorust's chair raised her to its level. She probably started in one corner in the morning, Munn thought, and worked her way around the room during the day.
Jorust was a slim, gray-haired Venusian woman with a skin the texture of fine shagreen, and alert black eyes that were wary now. She climbed down from her chair, gestured the men to seats, and took one herself. She lit a pipe that looked like an oversized cigarette holder, stuffing it with a cylinder of pressed yellow herbs. Aromatic smoke drifted up. Underhill sniffed wistfully.
"May you be worthy of your fathers," Jorust said politely, extending her six-fingered hand in greeting. "What brings you?"
"Hunger," Munn said bluntly. "I think it's about time for a showdown."
Jorust watched him inscrutably. "Well?"
"We don't like being pushed around."
"Have we harmed you?" the Council head asked.
Munn looked at her. "Let's put our cards on the table. We're getting the squeeze play. You're a big shot here, and you're either responsible or you know why. How about it?"
"No," Jorust said after a pause, "no, I'm not as powerful as you seem to think. I am one of the administrators. I do not make the laws. I merely see that they are carried out. We are not enemies."
"That might happen," Munn said grimly. "If another expedition comes from Earth and finds us dead—"
"We would not kill you. It is untraditional."
"You could starve us to death, though."
Jorust narrowed her eyes. "Buy food. Any man can do that, no matter what his race."
"And what do we use for money?" Munn asked. "You won't take our currency. We haven't any of yours."
"Your currency is worthless," Jorust explained. "We have gold and silver for the mining—it is common here. A difal—twelve fals—will buy a good deal of food. A sofal will buy even more than that."
She was right, of course, Munn knew. A sofal was one thousand seven hundred twenty-eight fals. Yeah!
"And how do you expect us to get any of your iron money?" he snapped.
"Work for it, as our own people do. The fact that you are from another world does not dispose of your obligatory duty to create through labor."
; "All right," Munn pursued, "we're willing. Get us a job."
"What kind?"
"Dredging canals! Anything!"
"Are you a member of the canal dredgers' tarkomar?"
"No," Munn said. "How could I have forgotten to join?"
Jorust ignored the sarcasm. "You must join. All trades here have their tarkomars."
"Lend me a thousand sofals and I'll join one."
"You have tried that before," Jorust told him. "Our moneylenders reported that your collateral was worthless."
"Worthless! D'you mean to say we've nothing in our ship worth a thousand sofals to your race? It's a squeeze play and you know it. Our water purifier alone is worth six times that to you."
Jorust seemed affronted. "For a thousand years we have cleansed our water with charcoal. If we changed now, we would be naming our ancestors fools. They were not fools; they were great and wise."
"What about progress?"
"I see no need for it," Jorust said. "Our civilization is a perfect unit as it stands. Even the beggars are well fed. There is no unhappiness on Venus. The ways of our ancestors have been tested and found good. So why change?"
"But—"
"We would merely upset the status quo if we altered the balance," Jorust said decisively, rising. "May you be worthy of your fathers' names."
"Listen—" Munn began.
But Jorust was back on her chair, no longer listening.
-
The three Earthmen looked at one another, shrugged and went out. The answer was definitely no.
"And that," Munn said, as they descended in the elevator, "is emphatically that. Jorust plans to have us starve to death. The word's out."
Underhill was inclined to disagree. "She's all right. As she said, she's just an administrator. It's the tarkomars who are the pressure group here. They're a powerful bloc."
"They run Venus. I know." Munn grimaced. "It's difficult to understand the psychology of these people. They seem unalterably opposed to change. We represent change. So they figure they'll simply ignore us.,'
"It won't work," Underhill said. "Even if we starve to death, there'll be more Earth ships later."
