Star Well

by Alexei Panshin

  On the other hand, it is undeniable that the Empire desperately needs balance wheels—call them Inspector Generals if you like. The Empire is inherently unstable. The Navy is saddled with all the disadvantages of size, of bureaucracy, of endless confining regulations. Corners are cut, laws are openly broken, little men are victimized, bribes are taken, and those whose idea of art is fragmentation, destruction and death everywhere flourish. Who stands for stability? Phibbses? Something better is needed.

  Grant that you need Inspector Generals. Where are they to be found?

  You cannot cultivate a garden and produce Inspector Generals. You cannot educate an Inspector General. You cannot train an Inspector General. You cannot turn a handle and let a machine crank out an Inspector General.

  The job requires intelligence, honesty, individuality, creativity, judgment, and a wide variety of subtle talents not commonly considered to be part of the ordinary human battery, and subsumed under the inaccurate catchall title of “luck.” “Luck” is a noise made by those who lack these talents and wish to dismiss them with a sniff.

  You can take it as an axiom: celebrities who travel meet only fools, creeps, panhandlers and climbers. People they would truly like to meet never have the bad taste to present themselves. The quality that makes them worth meeting automatically determines they will never be met.

  The same applies to Inspector Generals. The only possible candidates are those unsuited for the office.

  It may just be that Inspector Generals don’t really exist at all. They may be no more than a rumor invented to keep children good and men honest. In fact, I rather think that may be so.

  Villiers escorted Louisa Parini into the Grand Hall. She was obviously minding her best manners and he made a point of matching them. Mrs. Bogue’s admonitions had nothing to do with it, and neither, for that matter, did whatever plans or hopes she had in mind. It is simply in the nature of things that young girls being taken out to dinner by old friends of the family should play the game of being grown up, and that the friends, being friends, should indulge them. When both know what is going on, it can be great fun. The only question is how long the game is to be maintained before it is dropped in favor of more comfortable conversation Villiers saw Louisa seated. The previous night, Miss Maybelle Lafferty had been seated across from him with the room as background, and at this very same table. We already know why she was seated against the room instead of against the wall. But mark that she had been seated across the table. Villiers took the same seat as before but seated Louisa next to him.

  She was dressed becomingly in a style appropriate to her age. Her dress was blue, her brown hair was pulled back and caught in a silver circlet, and she wore a silver brooch. The two pieces were her only jewelry, and her dress had white trimming, but no ribbons or lace. She looked like everybody’s idea of a daughter: warm, bright, reasonably cute, demure, friendly and well-behaved. She wasn’t like that at all, but that is the way she looked.

  Villiers ordered for them. The girl was the same homely, red-cheeked thing who had served him before. She seemed disturbed to see him.

  “Oh, Mr. Villiers,” she said. “I thought you left tonight.”

  “No,” he said. “I decided to stay on just a little longer. The food here is too good to leave.”

  That was one of the things that Louisa remembered liking about him. While he lied little, he was excellent at being oblique. Adults tend not to count this among the endorsable virtues, but anyone who has had occasion to avoid answering a direct question directly and found that they could not will share Louisa’s admiration. She herself was only moderately skillful at being oblique, but rather able nonetheless at keeping private what she wished not to be known. Alice was a wheedler and thought she had all that was to be wheedled. Mrs. Bogue was a pumper and didn’t even realize that there was oil to be pumped. If they only knew. If they only knew. Ha.

  The girl said, “Yes, sir,” and left.

  Louisa said, “How long has the tip of your left little finger been missing, Tony? You didn’t have that before, did you?”

  He looked at his hand. Not the whole joint, but the tip, down below the nail, was missing. It has not suddenly been misplaced. It has been missing all along. It’s simply that no one has noticed it up until now. Don’t wonder about it—just tell me the color of your next door neighbor’s eyes.

  “No, that’s reasonably new. I had an accident. Something like two years ago; I was on Livermore.”

  “Oh, Fiona is from Livermore.”

  “Who is Fiona?”

  “One of the other girls going to Nashua. But go on.”

  “I was temporarily without funds, so out of necessity I took a job rather than throw myself on the charity of the Fathers of Livermore, a council with notoriously limited and unpleasant notions of charity. I once read that practices not too different were considered proper punishment for religious unbelief in pre-Common Era times.”

  “But you didn’t really get a job and work?”

  “Perhaps not, but for the sake of the story let’s say that I did work. This was when they were having the last great run of the white-homed rinderbeasts. The black-homed ones are smaller and faster and live in too rugged country to make it worth the trouble of digging them out, though I prefer them. They’re far more affectionate and more hardy, too. Anyway, the word came that they were beginning to swarm and they were hiring every free able-bodied man they could find. I signed on as a flanker. Beaters work behind and ran the sound machines: whistles, booms, sirens, gongs. Flankers work the sides and supervise the stringmen, net boomers, and dirt wallahs.”

  “I’m not sure I want to hear this,” Louisa said. “You didn’t really work a straight job, Tony?”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was supervising.”

  “I still don’t like to hear about it. You wouldn’t really do anything like that.”

  “Don’t you want to hear the part where the rendering machine lost its king cog and the tripwire took off the end of my finger? The rinderbeast never got rendered. In fact, it ate the end of my finger and died.”

  “Oh, that never happened,” Louisa said.

  “Well, I admit that the story needs polishing. But you would like the moral. I haven’t had the finger repaired as a reminder to myself never to take another straight job.”

  “I like that,” she said.

  “And here is our dinner,” he said. “It’s just as well that the story had to be shortened.”

  So you see just how long the formal manners lasted. And you have a look at Villiers showing to better advantage than he does across a gaming table or making a cubitiflection in front of a bad-tempered woman of middle years.

  The waitress rolled her cart to the side of the table and opened it to show the steaming platters under the hood.

  “Here you are, sir,” she said, and completely contrary to custom lifted a dish to the table. As she did, she bent close to Villiers and said, “I have to tell you. Be careful. They’re watching you and they’re asking questions.”

  “Who?” Villiers asked quietly.

  “Mr. Shirabi and Mr. Godwin.” Then in normal tones, she said, “There you are.”

  “Thank you,” Villiers said.

  Srb and Torve were eating together in another and lesser dining room. Prices were lower, food was simpler, the decor was plainer, and the service was distinctly better. It is a minor paradox that over-prompt service can cost an otherwise superb eating place its Wu and Fabricant 4A rating. Wu and Fabricant respect a proper sense of self-importance.

  Torve the Trog was eating from a heaping plate of kumquats, Moravian sugar-grass, and ruvelo, a red root-paste common in this octant as a staple starch. These kumquats were of a variety developed in modem times and Torve was eating only the sweet golden rinds and setting the little fruits aside. He would carefully strip the entire peel, set the naked fruit on a plate at his right, break the peel into little pieces, and then dip
a piece into the rubelo, bring it out heavy with the red paste, and pop it neatly into his mouth. Then he would chew it at much greater length than anyone would ever think necessary.

  “May I have one of your kumquats?” Srb asked, motioning at the side plate.

  Torve passed the plate across the table. “Do, please. I only eat rinds. Fruit does not agree with my digestion.”

  He was a vegetarian, eating no meat whatsoever except for jellied whiteworms, a delicacy with little general appeal, but one he relished. Trogs in general were not vegetarians. Quite the opposite, in fact—they ordinarily relished their meat. Torve was a vegetarian by philosophy, however, for reasons obscure. The worms were a lapse that he apparently could not keep himself from making, but stolidly denied and attempted to hide as best he could. He apparently felt it a matter of shame, as well he might. Whiteworms.

  Srb’s meal was more usual. He began with chowder, proceeded to braised atman haunch sided with rubelo, sugar-grass, thet eyes, and Lima beans, and ended with a large slice of cheesecake. This is not to mention the kumquats. His beverage was beer.

  Srb subscribed to a theory of great antiquity concerning the foundation of civilization, a theory beyond proof, but sufficiently within the bounds of possibility to merit endorsement. Civilization depends on stable living conditions for populations of some size that will allow them to build, invent, coin, keep records, and stock supplies for making war. Civilization in this sense is not possible for migrant populations, that is, populations whose staff of life is roots, berries and wild animal carcasses, the search for which keeps them eternally on the move. Civilization is the offspring of the invention of agriculture. But why did man take up agriculture? Not to allow himself to build, invent, coin, keep records, and stock rocks. That could not be foreseen. No, the invention of agriculture was to save men trouble in collecting the wherewithal for making beer. And when he drank beer, which he liked to do, Srb relished the thought that he was secretly preserving civilization without its knowledge, as was his duty.

  Srb ate a kumquat and followed it with beer. “I noticed you talking to a gentleman this afternoon. Did he meet you?”

  “Yes, is Mr. Anthony Villiers. He is copacetic fellow.”

  “He did seem of pleasant appearance.”

  “He is touring Empire, seeing everything. I travel with him sometimes.”

  “Hmm. Perhaps you might introduce me to him later.”

  “Is possible. Have another kumquat.”

  , You may well wonder why Villiers should have been warned of the attentions being paid him. The waitress was neither sexually attractive nor notably intelligent, and she and Villiers were from completely different strata of society. Why should she warn him? It may be question-begging to say it, but Villiers was copacetic. In any case, accept that she did.

  “What was that about?” Louisa asked.

  “Nothing in particular,” Villiers said, calmly serving them. “I’m being watched, and followed, and my baggage has been searched.”

  “Who’s following you?”

  “Don’t be obvious about looking. At an angle to my left, not the table against the wall, but the next row, the gentleman in gray who looks out of place here in the Grand Hall.”

  “Oh, I see him. Alice would be thrilled to death. She loves things like this.”

  “Another of the flock?”

  “Yes. She’s the girl I share a room with. She’s really very romantic. Why are they following you?”

  “I’m not completely sure. There’s some sort of illegal operation going on here, I think, and they’re worried that I might have come to close to it.” He closed the hood of the hot cart. “I had a notion as to what it might be, but then I wasn’t able to check it out. But let’s talk about more important things. How did your father prevail upon Miss McBurney to accept you?”

  “Oh, you know Daddy. He bought one recommendation and encouraged several others. And he had Jack the Hand put together a proper set of papers.”

  “What are you supposed to be?”

  “It’s easy,” she said. “I’m fifteen. My name is Louisa Parini. I have an older brother named Roger who is a senior lieutenant in the Navy, and I have a two year old sister named Anne. I have one mother. Daddy is a second son who had to go into trade. He imports rugs. Ornamental rugs for walls, not floors. His brother is old and has no children, and Daddy is his heir, and someday he’ll be a margrave.”

  “Isn’t that last gilding the lily just a bit?”

  She set down her fork and looked at him. “What do you mean? Daddy proved every word.”

  “You do seem to know your lines.”

  “I’ve got a perfect memory,” she said. “I can tell you anything you want to know down to the name of our gorf. I could bore you with stories.”

  That may seem unnecessarily boastful, but Louisa was not without her pride. She did know her story. It was her business to, and she did. The brother of her story was imaginary, but not the two year old sister, and even at two Anne knew what to say some of the time and what to do if she didn’t know what to say: cry.

  “Is your daddy still wearing his beard?” Vilhers asked. “Oh, sure.”

  “I always envied him that,” Villiers said. “It wouldn’t suit me, but he has the size to wear it. Why did he decide to send you to school?”

  “Oh, that was terrible,” she said. “He just got the idea from somewhere and he wouldn’t let it go. You know the way he gets when he makes his mind up. He wants me to learn to be a lady. But I can do it well enough already. I don’t have to go to school. But he made me go and I couldn’t change his mind.”

  “That’s too bad,” Villiers said. “I know your school. It’s pretty strict.”

  “And four years,” she said. She laid a hand on his sleeve. “Please, Tony, won’t you help me? I don’t want to go. I can already see what it’s like. It’s all rules. I don’t want to live life by rules and schedules. I want to make it up as I go along the way you do, and Daddy, and everybody else.”

  “Maybe you ought to find out what living life by rules and schedules is like. Most people prefer it.”

  “I know I won’t like it, Tony. And you never lived that way.”

  Villiers moved his chair back and relaxed. “You’re wrong, Louisa. It’s only in the last several years that I’ve made my life up as I went along. Since just before I met your father. Oh, I did break the rules, which you won’t be able to do, but I lived under them.”

  Louisa said, “Why could you break the rules?”

  “Well, because my background could stand investigation. If they threw me out of one place—which they did—there was always another. You’re going to have to be more careful. But there are things they can teach you.”

  “I’m always careful. Sometimes I get sick of being careful. You’re not going to help me, are you? You’re just like Daddy.” A sudden thought struck her. “Did Daddy hire you?”

  "What?”

  “Did Daddy hire you to see that I don’t skip out of here?"

  Villiers laughed. “No, your father didn’t hire me.” “Well, I wouldn’t put it past him to have me watched.” “As a matter of fact,” Villiers said, “I would appreciate your telling me where to contact your father. I have a job for Jack the Hand.”

  “You aren’t going to help me, though.”

  “I need help rather worse than you do right now,” Villiers said. “I’m not in a position to help anyone. I have no money at all I have debts here that I can’t pay. What I have to do now is discover some way to settle my bills and get passage to Yuten.”

  She brightened visibly. “Oh, well”

  Villiers said, “No, my own way. I’m not on the con.”

  “I know,” she said. “But I could teach you. We could be partners. I know everything Daddy knows.” “Everything?”

  “Well, everything basic. You make most of it up to fit the circumstances.”

  “You’d better finish your dessert”

  “Oh, please.�
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  “I’m thinking about it. I am thinking about it.” Villiers stared off into the distance, and Louisa, cheered by this evidence of the consideration he was giving her proposition, pitched into her dessert. The idea of aiding Villiers in swindling their way from planet to planet tickled her fancy; it was a far more appealing picture than any that Alice Tutuila had ever painted in romantic transport, and it had the advantage of down-to-earth reality without being drab, dismal and dull. In short, it was as close to being the life she wished for as anybody could have designed, and not only was it possible, Villiers was actually considering it. The joys of fifteen year old girls in alt are notorious, and Louisa Parini was no ordinary fifteen year old girl. But she concealed her emotion behind her custard.

  Villiers sat up abruptly. Louisa’s eyes swiveled to him immediately, though she continued to eat.

  “All right,” he said.

  “All right?” Her voice rose.

  “No, all right, look at the far side of the room. Do you see the large young fellow in the brown coat? Sitting with him is an attractive girl in green with a black coronet braid.”

  “I do see them,” Louisa said.

  “If I’m not mistaken, within the next few minutes a man will come to their table and drag the girl away. Eat slowly and watch.”

  Louisa nodded and returned to her food, but kept an eye on the table. While they waited, Villiers told of his encounter with Maybelle Lafferty and Henry Maurice.

  “And you got the note, but you didn’t go?”

  “No. Oh, here’s Henry now. Watch.”

  They watched, and as they watched there was a reprise of the previous night’s good work. Henry was rude. Maybelle fought tears. Adams (it was Adams, of course) rose and spoke. Henry seized Maybelle by the wrist and led her from the room to a privy conversation, she shooting a last glance of entreaty to Adams. Adams, after a long moment of contemplation, reseated himself. He, however, unlike Villiers, had sufficient sensibility not to return immediately to the conclusion of his meal, but sat silently in company with his thoughts.