Already Among Us

by Unknown

  "Ah, but if the idea is to burn them up, why not give the prize to Number 43? They'd be ready to drop dead with chagrin. To think that a mere man should beat them at their own specialty! They'd never be able to hold their heads up again. The man wouldn't feel too happy about it, either. Yes, if it's a matter of getting back at these humans for the things they've done to me, if it's a question of showing them what I really think of them, Number 43 should get it.

  "On the other hand, I'm supposed to be a model of fairness. That's why I got the job in the first place. Remember, Ronar? Come on, let's go in and try tasting them again. Eat a mouthful of each cake, much as you hate the stuff. Choose the best on its merits."

  * * * * *

  They were babbling when he walked in, but the babbling stopped quickly. The chairman said, "Are we ready, Mr. Ronar?"

  "All ready."

  The three cakes were placed before him. Slowly he took a mouthful of Number 17. Slowly he chewed it and swallowed it. Number 43 followed, then Number 64.

  After the third mouthful, he stood lost in thought. One was practically as good as another. He could still choose which he pleased.

  The assemblage had quieted down. Only the people most concerned whispered nervously.

  Mrs. Cabanis, to her psychologist husband: "If I don't win, it'll be your fault. I'll pay you back for this."

  The good doctor's fault? Yes, you could figure it that way if you wanted to. If not for Dr. Cabanis, Ronar wouldn't be the judge. If Ronar weren't the judge, Mrs. C. would win, she thought. Hence it was all her husband's fault. Q.E.D.

  The male baker to his wife: "If he gives the prize to me, I'll brain him. I should never have entered this."

  "It's too late to worry now."

  "I could yell 'Fire'," he whispered hopefully. "I could create a panic that would empty the hall. And then I'd destroy my cake."

  "Don't be foolish. And stop whispering."

  The young post-honeymooning husband: "You're going to win, dear; I can feel it in my bones."

  "Oh, Greg, please don't try to fool me. I've resigned myself to losing."

  "You won't lose."

  "I'm afraid. Put your arm around me, Greg. Hold me tight. Will you still love me if I lose?"

  "Mmmm." He kissed her shoulder. "You know, I didn't fall in love with you for your cooking, sweetheart. You don't have to bake any cakes for me. You're good enough to eat yourself."

  "He's right," thought Ronar, as he stared at her. "The man's right. Not in the way he means, but he's right." And suddenly, for one second of decision, Ronar's entire past seemed to flash through his mind.

  The young bride never knew why she won first prize.

  Yo Ho Hoka!

  Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson

  Space-going teddy bears! What a charming high concept! The tubby golden-furred Hokas of the planet Toka were s-f fan favorites from the 1950s to the 1980s. Yet when they were introduced, they seemed to be harbingers of bad luck. The first Hoka stories were published in the minor magazines Other Worlds Science Stories (May 1951) and Universe Science Fiction, which ceased publication almost as soon as they were printed. It was with the Hokas’ fourth adventure and their move in 1955 to the much larger and more stable The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction that the series really took off. The first six stories were lightly rewritten into a novel, Earthman’s Burden (Gnome Press, July 1957), delightfully illustrated by Edd Cartier, and there was no looking back.

  The series’ recurring character is harried young Terran space explorer Alexander Braithwaite Jones, who didn’t discover Toka but did get marooned there. The three-feet-tall plump bearlike Hokas had just been introduced to Earth literature by the cultural missionaries of the interstellar Interbeing League, and they were fascinated – not by the academic literature but by the cheap adventure novels left behind by the spaceships’ crewmen. By the time Alex Jones got to Toka, the independent Hoka tribes had remodeled themselves upon the exaggerated stereotypes of those pulps. The first Hokas that Alex met had become a ripsnorting Western town full of rootin’-tootin’ teddy-bear cowboys. Alex’s experiences before he could return to Earth convinced the Interbeing League that he was the Hoka expert par excellence, so he was promptly sent back to Toka as the IB’s official Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. Subsequent novelettes brought Alex to a Hokan Space Patrol, Sherlock Holmes’ London, a den of Arrr, matey! pirates, Mowgli’s jungle, Casey at the Bat’s early 20th-century baseball, and more. Anderson & Dickson kept the series going for over twenty years, through new stories and a confusing array of remixed and repackaged collections. The finale was the first collection of everything in a 50th anniversary volume: The Sound & the Furry: the Complete Hoka Stories (Science Fiction Book Club, March 2001), published about halfway between Dickson’s death that January and Anderson’s in July.

  The irrepressibly enthusiastic Hokas were a source of much fun throughout s-f fandom. In “Yo Ho Hoka!” Alex Jones disguises himself as the pirate Captain Greenbeard, and Poul Anderson participated in many a World Science Fiction Convention’s Masquerade as Captain Greenbeard. Futuristic interstellar teddy bears would seem to be a natural for TV cartoons, and Anderson claimed after the 1970s that he had put his daughter through college on the option money he was paid from TV animation studios for the TV cartoon rights for the Hokas. Yet something went wrong, and there were never any Hoka TV cartoons. Many fans said that, considering what such cartoons did to the Smurfs and to the Star Trek and Star Wars images, it may have been just as well.

  ALEXANDER Jones was in trouble again. His lean form strode through narrow, cobbled streets between half-timbered houses, automatically dodging horse-drawn carriages. The “horses” were dinosaurian monstrosities, but otherwise Plymouth was a faithful small-scale copy of what the Hokas thought its original had been, circa 1800 A.D. in Earth's England. (This England was not to be confused with the Tokan Great Britain, which had been brought up to a Victorian level of civilization.)

  The natives who thronged the streets made a respectful way for him, closing in again behind. He heard the awed whispers: “Bli'me, it's the Plenipotentiary 'imself! . . . Look thar, Alf, ye'll allus remember ye saw the great Jones wid yer own blinkin' eyes. . . . Wonder wot e's after? . . . Prob'ly Affairs of State. . . . Yus, ye can see that on the poor lad, it's mykin' 'im old afore 'is time . . .” These citizens were variously dressed: cocked hats, tailcoats, knee breeches; burly dock wallopers in carefully tattered work clothes; red-coated musketeers; long skirts on the females; and no few males in striped jerseys and bell-bottomed trousers, for Plymouth was a major base of His Majesty's Navy.

  Now and then Alex's lips moved. “Old Boney,” he muttered. “I keep telling them and telling them there isn't any Napoleon on this planet, but they won't believe me! Damn Old Boney! Blast these history books!”

  He turned in at the Crown and Anchor, went through a noisy bar where Hokas sat puffing churchwardens and lying about their exploits with many deep-sea oaths, and proceeded up a narrow stair. The room which he had engaged was clean, though the furniture was inconvenient for humans with twice the Hoka height and half the breadth of beam. Tanni looked up at him from a crudely printed newspaper with horror in her eyes. She had left the children with their nurse, to accompany him here.

  “Alex!” she cried. “Listen to this, dear. They're getting violent—killing each other!” She read from the Gazette: “Today the notorious highwayman Dick Turpin was hanged on Tyburn Hill—”

  “Oh that,” said Alex, relieved. “Turpin gets hanged every Thursday. It's wonderful sport for all.”

  “But--”

  “Didn't you know? You can't hurt a Hoka by hanging him. Their neck musculature is too strong in proportion to their weight. If hanging hurt Dick Turpin, the police would never do it. They're proud of him.”

  “Proud!”

  “Well, he's part of the eighteenth-century pattern they're trying so hard to follow, isn't he?” Alex sat down and ran a hand through his hai
r. He was sometimes surprised it hadn't turned gray yet.

  “Poor dear,” said Tanni sympathetically. “How did it go?” They had flown here only today from Mixumaxu, and she was still a little puzzled as to the nature of their mission.

  “I couldn't get any sense out of the Admiralty Office at all,” said Alex. “They kept babbling about Old Boney. I can't convince them that these pirates represent a real menace.”

  “How did it ever happen, darling? I thought the imposed cultural patterns were always modified so as to exclude violence.”

  “Oh, yes, yes, ... but some dimwit out in space learned how the Hokas go for Earth fiction and smuggled some historical novels into this sector. Pirates, forsooth!” Alex grinned bitterly. “You can imagine what the idea of swaggering around with a cutlass and a Jolly Roger could do to a Hoka. The first I heard, there were a couple of dozen ships turned pirate, off to the Spanish Main... wherever on Toka they've decided that is! So far no trouble, but they're probably fixing to attack some place like the Bermuda we've established.”

  “Criminals?” Tanni frowned, finding it hard to believe of her little friends.

  “Oh, no. Just ... irresponsible. Not really realizing it'll mean bloodshed. They'll be awfully sorry later. But that'll be too late for us, sweetheart.” Alex looked gloomily at the floor. “Once Headquarters learns I've permitted a war-pattern to evolve on this planet, I'll be out on my ear and blacklisted from here to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. My only chance is to stop the business before it blows up.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Tanni inadequately. “Can't they understand? I'd like to give those bureaucrats back home a piece of—”

  “Never mind. You have to have iron-bound regulations to run a civilization the size of ours. It's results that count. Nobody cares how I get them, but get them I must.” Alex got up and began rummaging in their trunk.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Tanni.

  “That green beard... the one I wore to the Count of Monte Cristo's masquerade ball last week... thought it'd come in handy.” Alex tossed articles of apparel every which way, and Tanni sighed. “You see, I've already been to the Admiralty in my proper persona, and they wouldn't order out the fleet to catch those pirates—said the routine patrols were adequate. Going over their heads, through Parliament and the King, would take too long... Ah, here!” He emerged with a hideous green beard, fully half a meter in length.

  “I'll go direct to Lord Nelson, who's in town,” he went on. “It'd best to do it incognito, to ovoid offending the Admiralty; this beard is disguise enough, not to be included in the Hokas' Jones-Gestalt. Once along with him, I'll reveal myself and explain the situation. He's pretty level-headed, I'm told, and will act on his own responsibility.” He put the beard to his chin and the warmth of his body stuck it as fast as a natural growth—more so, for the synthetic fibers could not be cut or burned.

  Tanni shuddered at the loathsome sight. “How do yo get it off?” she asked.

  “Spirits of ammonia. All right, I'm on my way again.” Alex stooped to kiss her and wondered why she shrank away. “Wait around till I get back. It may take a while.”

  The foliage flapped around his chest as he went downstairs. “Scuttles my hatches!” said someone. “What is it?”

  “Seaweed,” theorized another. “He's been too long underwater.”

  Alex reached the dock and stared over the tangle of rigging and tall masts which lay beyond. The Hokas had built quite a sizable navy in expectation of imminent Napoleonic invasion, and HMS Intolerable lay almost side by side with Incorrigible and Pinafore. Their mermaid figureheads gleamed gilt in the light of the lowering sun—this is, Alex assumed the fishtailed Hoka females to be mermaids, though the four mammaries were so prominent as to suggest ramming was still standard naval practice. He couldn't see where the Victory was. Casting about for assistance, he spotted a patrol of sailors swinging along with a burly little Hoka in the lead. “Ahoy!” he yelled.

  The patrol stepped smartly up to him, neat in their English Navy uniforms. “Tell me,” said Alex, “how do I get out to the flagship? I must see Admiral Lord Nelson at once.”

  “Stow my top-hamper!” squeaked the leader. “You can't see the Admiral, mate. 'Tain't proper for a common seaman to speak to the Admiral unless spoken to first.”

  “No doubt,” said Alex. “But I'm not a common seaman.”

  “Aye, that you are, mate,” replied the other cheerfully. “Pressed right and proper as a common seaman, or me name's not Billy Bosun.”

  “No, no, you don't understand—” Alex was beginning, when the meaning filtered through to him. “Pressed?”

  “Taken by the press gang of Billy Bosun for His Majesty's frigate Incompatible,” said the Hoka. “And a fair bit of luck for you, mate. The worst hell-ship afloat, not counting the Bounty, and we sail on patrol in two hours. Toss the prisoner into the gig, men.”

  “No! Wait!” yelled Alex, frantically trying to pull his beard loose. “Let me explain! You don't know who I am. You can't--”

  As he himself had remarked, the Hoka musculature is amazingly strong. He landed on his head in the bottom of the gig and went out like a light.

  “Pressed man to speak with you, Cap'n Yardly,” said Billy Bosun, ushering Alex into the captain's cabin.

  The human blinked in the light from the cabin portholes and tried to brace himself against the rolling of the ship. He had been locked in the forward hold all night, during which time HMS Incompatible had left Great Britain far behind. He had gotten over a headache and a tendency of seasickness, but was wild with the thought that every minute was taking him farther from Tanni and his desperately urgent mission. He started at the blue-coated, cocked-hatted Hoka who sat behind the desk facing him, and opened his mouth to speak; but the other beat him to it.

  “Does, does he?” growled Captain Yardly. The fur bristled on his neck. “Thinks he signed on for a pleasure cruise, no doubt! We'll teach him different, b'gad, won't we, Bosun?

  “Aye, sir,” said Billy, stiffly.

  “Wait, Captain Yardly!” cried Alex. “Let me just have a word with you in private—”

  “Private eh, private, damme!” exploded the Hoka. “There's no such thing as privacy about the King's ship. Ain't that right, Bosun?”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “But if you'll just listen to me for a moment—” wailed Alex.

  “Listen, b'gad! I don't listen to men, do I, Bosun?”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “Nothing in the articles of war that makes it my duty to listen! My duty's to flog, b'gad; keelhaul, damme; drive the mutinous dogs till they drop; Stap my vitals, eh, Bosun?” Captain Yardly snorted with indignation.

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Alex took a firm grip on his temper. He reminded himself that there was no used arguing with a Hoka once he had decided to play a certain role. The only way to handle him was to act along. Alex forced his face into a meek expression.

  “Sorry, Captain,” he said. “The truth is, I've come to confess that I'm not what I appear to be.”

  “Well, that's different!” huffed the officer. “Nothing against my listening to a man's confession as long as I flog him afterwards anyway.”

  Alex gulped, and quickly continued: “The truth is, Captain, this green beard of mine is false. You probably think I'm one of these outworlders you see occasionally, but without it, you'd recognize me at once. I'll be you can't guess who I really am.”

  “Done!” roared the captain.

  “Huh?” said Alex.

  “I can wager I can guess who you are. Your name's Greenbeard.”

  “No—no—”

  “Said so yourself.”

  “No, I said--”

  “SILENCE!” thundered the captain. “You've lost your wager. No carping, damme. It's not done. Not sporting at all. I'm appointing you first mate, Mr. Greenbeard, in accordance with regulations--”

  “Regulations?” stammered Alex. “What regulations?”
<
br />   “Pressed man always appointed first mate,” snorted Captain Yardly, “in spite of his well-known sympathy for the crew. Got sympathy for the crew, haven't you?”

  “Well... I suppose so...” stammered Alex, weakly— “I mean... what kind of first mate would I be—No, wait, I'm all mixed up. I mean—”

  “No back talk, if you please!” interrupted the Hoka. “Step lively and drive her smartly, Mr. Greenbeard. We're headed 'round the Horn and I want no malingerers aboard.”

  “The Horn?” goggled Alex.

  “You heard me, Mr. Greenbeard.”

  “But--” protested Alex, wildly, as Billy Bosun started pulling him by main force out of the cabin. “How... how long a voyage is this supposed to be?”

  The captain's face dropped suddenly into an unhappy, embarrassed expression.

  “That depends,” he said morosely, “on which way we go.”

  And he turned and vanished through a connecting door into the inner cabin. His voice came back, somewhat muffled: “Clap on all sail, Mr. Greenbeard, and call me if the weather freshens.”

  The words were followed by what sounded like a sob of desperation.

  Giving up further argument as a bad job, Alex went back on deck. A stiff breeze drove the Incompatible merrily over a sea which sparkled blue, to the sound of creaking boards and whining rigging. The crew moved industriously about their tasks, and Alex hoped he wouldn't be needed to direct them. He could pilot a spaceship between the starts, but the jungle of line overhead baffled him.