The Human Edge

by Gordon R. Dickson

  She looked up into his face and something that might almost have been a smile twitched at her expressionless mouth. She opened her lips and began to recite in an atrocious accent.

  "Frendz, Rawmans, Cundzrememns, I cauzm nodt do burrey Shaayzar, budt do brayze ymn. Dee eefil dwadt memn dooo—"

  "Never mind! Never mind!" cried the Consul, furiously; and the girl shut up. "You must have been out of your head!" he barked, and swung about on Ansash. "Very clever, my friend," he grated. "My compliments to Yara. I suppose you know the real Sara Illoy came back of her own accord, the day after this man left."

  "I had heard some mention of it," said Ansash, without inflection.

  "Very clever indeed," said the Consul. "So it's a choice between handing this man over to your justice to be strangled, or accepting a situation in which contact between our two races on this planet is permanently frozen in a state of Middle-Age restricted contact and chicanery."

  "The choice is yours," said Ansash, as if he might have been remarking on the weather.

  "I know. Well, don't worry," said the Consul, turning to fling the last three words at Coley. "You know as well as I do I have no choice. Human life must be preserved at all costs. I'll get you safely off-planet, Yunce; though I wouldn't advise you to go boasting about your part in this little adventure. Not that anyone would do anything but laugh at you, if you did." He turned to look at Ansash. "I'm the real loser as you all know," he added softly. "Yara'll never rate an Ambassador, and I'll never rate a promotion. I'll spend the rest of my professional life here as Consul."

  "Or," put in Coley, "in jail."

  Three heads jerked around to look at him.

  "What kind of a sucker do you take me for?" snarled Coley, spinning around upon the girl. His long arm shot out, there was a very humanlike shriek, and the girl staggered backward, leaving her blonde locks in Coley's fist. Released, a mass of chestnut hair tumbled down to frame a face that was suddenly contorted with shock.

  "I learned to look for the gimmick in something before I could walk." He threw the blonde wig in the direction of the Consul's desk. "This set-up of yours stunk to high heaven right from the beginning. So the girl's gone! How'd she get out of the Compound in the first place? How come you didn't call in regular help from the authorities back at Sol? You were all just sitting back waiting for a tough boy you could use, weren't you?"

  He glared around at the three in the room. None of them answered; but they all had their eyes on him.

  "I don't know what kind of racket you've got here," he said. "But whatever it is, you didn't want the Humans to win the Game, did you? You wanted things to stay just the way they are now. Why?"

  "You're out of your head," said the Consul, though his face was a little pale.

  "Out of my head!" Coley laughed. "I can feel the difference between Ansash and you, Consul. You think I wouldn't notice that the girl I was with was a Yaran, almost right off the bat? And who could suppose I would need a knife when I left Tannakil, but the man who knew I could use one? How come I never saw her eat anything but fruit? A native Yaran wouldn't have restricted her diet." He leaned forward. "Want me to tell you what the deal was?"

  "I think," said the Consul, "We've listened to enough of your wild guessing."

  "No you haven't. Not on your life," said Coley. "I'm back among Humans, now. You can't shut my mouth and get away with it; and either you listen to me, or I'll go tell it to the star-marines. I don't suppose you own them."

  "Go ahead, then," said the Consul.

  Coley grinned at him. He walked around the Consul's desk and sat down in the Consul's chair. He put his feet on the table.

  "There's a world," he said, examining the rather scuffed toes of his boots with a critical eye. "It seems to be run on the basis of an idea about some sort of Game, which is practically a religion. However, when you look a little closer, you see that this Game thing isn't much more than a set of principles which only a few fanatics obey to the actual letter. Still, these principles are what hold the society together. In fact, it goes along fine until another race comes along and creates a situation where the essential conflict between what everybody professes to believe and what they actually believe will eventually be pushed into the open." Coley glanced over at the Consul. "How'm I doing?"

  "Go on," said the Consul, wincing.

  "The only thing is, this is a conflict which the race has not yet advanced far enough to take. If it came to the breaking point today, half the race would feel it their duty to go fanatic and start exterminating the other half of the race who felt that it was time to discard the old-fashioned Games Ethic." He paused.

  "Go on," said the Consul, tonelessly.

  "Now, let's suppose this world has a Consul on it, who sees what's happening. He reports back to Sol that the five stages or the Game consist of (1) trying to rid yourself of your enemy by refusing to acknowledge his existence, as a child ignores what it does not like. (2) By reacting against your enemy thoughtlessly and instinctively, as a youth might do. (3) By organized warfare—young manhood. (4) By trickery and subtlety—middle-age. (5) By teaching him your own superior philosophy of existence and bringing him by intellectual means to acknowledge your superiority—old age.

  "The only trouble with this, the Consul reports, is that the Yaran philosophy is actually a more primitive one than the human; and any attempt to conquer by stage five would induce a sort of general Yaran psychosis, because they would at once be forced to admit a philosophical inferiority and be unable to admit same."

  "All right, Mr. Yunce," said the Consul. "You needn't go on—"

  "Let me finish. So Sol answers back that they sympathize, but that they cannot violate their own rigid rules of non-interference, sanctity of a single human life, etc., for any situation that does not directly threaten Humanity itself. And this Consul—a dedicated sort—resolves to do the job himself by rigging a situation with help from one of the more grown-up Yarans and a young lady—"

  "My aide-de-camp," said the Consul, wearily. Coley bowed a little in the direction of the girl.

  "—a situation where a tough but dumb Human sets out inside the Rules of the Game, but so tears them to shreds that the Game-with-Humans is abandoned and set aside—where it will rot quietly and disappear as the two races become more and more acquainted, until it gradually is forgotten altogether. Right?"

  Coley looked at him. They looked back at him with peculiarly set faces. Even the Yaran's face had something of that quality of expression to it. They looked like people who, having risked everything on one throw or the dice and won, now find that by gambling they have incurred a sentence of death.

  "Fanatics," said Coley, slowly, running his eyes over them. "Fanatics. Now me—I'm a business man." He hoisted himself up out of his chair. "No reason why I shouldn't get on down to the pad, now, and catch the first ship out of here. Is there?"

  "No, Mr. Yunce," said the Consul, bleakly. The three of them watched him stalk around the desk and past them to the door. As he opened the door the Consul cleared his throat.

  "Mr. Yunce—" he said.

  Coley stopped and turned, the door half open.

  "Yes?" he said.

  "What's—" the Consul's voice stuck in his throat. "Wait a minute," he said. "I'll give you a ride to your ship."

  He came around the desk and went out with Coley. They went down and out of the Consulate, but all during the short ride to the Compound's landing pad for the big interspace ships, the Consul said not another word.

  He was silent until they reached the ramp leading up to the ship then in ready position.

  "Anywhere near Arga IV?' Coley asked the officer at the ramphead.

  "No, Sirius and back to Sol. Try the second ship down. Deneb, and you can get a double transfer out of Deneb Nine."

  Coley and the Consul walked down onto the ramp leading up to the entrance port on the second ship, some twenty feet up the steel sides.

  "Farewell," said Coley, grinning at the Consul and
starting up the ramp.

  "Yunce!" the word tore itself at last from the Consul's lips.

  Coley stopped, turned around and looked a few feet down into the older man's pleading eyes.

  "What can I do for you?' he said.

  "Give me a price," said the Consul.

  "A price?" Coley, grinning, spread his hands. "A price for what?

  "For not reporting this back on Sol. If you do, they'll have to take action. They won't have any choice. They'll undo everything you did."

  "Oh, they wouldn't do that," said Coley. He grinned happily, leaned down and slapped the smaller man on the shoulder. "Cheer up," he said. The Consul stared up at him. Slowly, the older man's eyebrows came together in a searching frown.

  "Yunce?" he said. "Who . . . ? Just who are you anyway?"

  Coley grinned and winked at him. And then he burst into a loud laugh, swing about and went trotting up the airlock ramp and into the ship, still laughing. At the airlock, he stopped, turned, and threw something white that fluttered and side-slipped through the air until it fell on the concrete pad by the Consul's feet. The consul leaned over and picked it up.

  It was a folded sheaf of paper, sealed with a melt-clip with no identifying symbol upon it. On one side it was stamped top secret.

  The Consul hesitated, broke it open and looked at it. What stared back up at him was that same report he had written back to the authorities on Sol five years before, concerning the Yaran Game of Five and its possible disastrous conclusion. Clipped to it was a little hand-printed note in rather rakish block capitals.

  "when searching through government lists don't look a gift horse in the mouth."

  Scratched in the lower right hand corner of the note, as if in idle afterthought, was a small A4.

 

  TIGER GREEN

  There is a type of sf (more often appearing in movies or TV or in stories by writers from outside the genre than in works by real sf writers) which has the highly advanced, highly ethical aliens drop in and threaten to exterminate us evil warlike humans. Such stories make me wonder who died and made those self-righteous aliens God, and why their one and only highly advanced, highly ethical solution is to exterminate intelligent species which don't come up to their standards. My reaction is that those aliens are long overdue for a good, swift pie in the face. As you read this story, you may wonder just what this intro has to do with it. Keep reading. . . .

  I

  A man with hallucinations he cannot stand, trying to strangle himself in a homemade straitjacket, is not a pretty sight. But after a while, grimly thought Jerry McWhin, the Star Scout's navigator, the ugly and terrible seem to backfire in effect, filling you with fury instead of harrowing you further. Men in crowds and packs could be stampeded briefly, but after a while the individual among them would turn, get his back up, and slash back.

  At least—the hyperstubborn individual in himself had finally so reacted.

  Determinedly, with fingers that fumbled from lack of sleep, he got the strangling man—Wally Blake, an assistant ecologist—untangled and into a position where it would be difficult for him to try to choke out his own life again. Then Jerry went out of the sick-bay storeroom, leaving Wally and the other seven men out of the Star Scout's complement of twelve who were in total restraint. He was lightheaded from exhaustion; but a berserk something in him snarled like a cornered tiger and refused to break like Wally and the others.

  When all's said and done, he thought half-crazily, there's worse ways to come to the end of it than a last charge, win or lose, alone in the midst of all your enemies.

  Going down the corridor, the sight of another figure jolted him a little back toward common sense. Ben Akham, the drive engineer, came trudging back from the air-lock corridor with a flame thrower on his back. Soot etched darkly the lines on his once-round face.

  "Get the hull cleared?" asked Jerry. Ben nodded exhaustedly.

  "There's more jungle on her every morning," he grunted. "Now those big thistles are starting to drip a corrosive liquid. The hull needs an antiacid washing. I can't do it. I'm worn out."

  "We all are," said Jerry. His own five-eleven frame was down to a hundred and thirty-eight pounds. There was plenty of food—it was just that the four men left on their feet had no time to prepare it; and little enough time to eat it, prepared or not.

  Exploration Team Five-Twenty-Nine, thought Jerry, had finally bitten off more than it could chew, here on the second planet of Star 83476. It was nobody's fault. It had been a gamble for Milt Johnson, the Team captain, either way—to land or not to land. He had landed; and it had turned out bad.

  * * *

  By such small things was the scale toward tragedy tipped. A communication problem with the natives, a native jungle evidently determined to digest the spaceship, and eight of twelve men down with something like suicidal delirium tremens—any two of these things the Team could probably have handled.

  But not all three at once.

  Jerry and Ben reached the entrance of the Control Room together and peered in, looking for Milt Johnson.

  "Must be ootside, talking to that native again," said Jerry.

  "Ootside?—oot-side!" exploded Ben, with a sudden snapping of frayed nerves. "Can't you say 'out-side'?—'out-side,' like everybody else?"

  The berserk something in Jerry lunged to be free, but he caught it and hauled it back.

  "Get hold of yourself!" he snapped.

  "Well . . . I wouldn't mind you sounding like a blasted Scotchman all the time!" growled Ben, getting himself, nevertheless, somewhat under control. "It's just you always do it when I don't expect it!"

  "If the Lord wanted us all to sound alike, he'd have propped up the Tower of Babel," said Jerry wickedly. He was not particularly religious himself, but he knew Ben to be a table-thumping atheist. He had the satisfaction now of watching the other man bite his lips and control himself in his turn.

  Academically, however, Jerry thought as they both headed out through the ship to find Milt, he could not really blame Ben. For Jerry, like many Scot-Canadians, appeared to speak a very middle-western American sort of English most of the time. But only as long as he avoided such vocabulary items as "house" and "out," which popped off Jerry's tongue as "hoose" and "oot." However, every man aboard had his personal peculiarities. You had to get used to them. That was part of spaceship—in fact, part of human—life.

  They emerged from the lock, rounded the nose of the spaceship, and found themselves in the neat little clearing on one side of the ship where the jungle paradoxically refused to grow. In this clearing stood the broad-shouldered figure of Milt Johnson, his whitish-blond hair glinting in the yellow-white sunlight.

  * * *

  Facing Milt was the thin, naked, and saddle-colored humanoid figure of one of the natives from the village, or whatever it was, about twenty minutes away by jungle trail. Between Milt and the native was the glittering metal console of the translator machine.

  " . . . Let's try it once more," they heard Milt saying as they came up and stopped behind him.

  The native gabbled agreeably.

  "Yes, yes. Try it again," translated the voice of the console.

  "I am Captain Milton Johnson. I am in authority over the crew of the ship you see before me."

  "Gladly would I not see it," replied the console on translation of the native's gabblings. "However—I am Communicator, messenger to you sick ones."

  "I will call you Communicator, then," began Milt.

  "Of course. What else could you call me?"

  "Please," said Milt, wearily. "To get back to it—I also am a Communicator."

  "No, no," said the native. "You are not a Communicator. It is the sickness that makes you talk this way."

  "But," said Milt, and Jerry saw the big, white-haired captain swallow in an attempt to keep his temper. "You will notice, I am communicating with you."

  "No, no."

  "I see," said Milt patiently. "You mean, we aren't communicating in the sense th
at we aren't understanding each other. We're talking, but you don't understand me—"

  "No, no. I understand you perfectly."

  "Well," said Milt, exhaustedly. "I don't understand you."

  "That is because you are sick."

  Milt blew out a deep breath and wiped his brow.

  "Forget that part of it, then," he said. "Many of my crew are upset by nightmares we all have been having. They are sick. But there are still four of us who are well—"

  "No, no. You are all sick," said Communicator earnestly. "But you should love what you call nightmares. All people love them."

  "Including you and your people?"

  "Of course. Love your nightmares. They will make you well. They will make the little bit of proper life in you grow, and heal you."

  * * *

  Ben snorted beside Jerry. Jerry could sympathize with the other man. The nightmares he had been having during his scant hours of sleep, the past two weeks, came back to his mind, with the indescribably alien, terrifying sensation of drifting in a sort of environmental soup with identifiable things changing shape and identity constantly around him. Even pumped full of tranquilizers, he thought—which reminded Jerry.

  He had not taken his tranquilizers lately.

  When had he taken some last? Not since he woke up, in any case. Not since . . . yesterday, sometime. Though that was now hard to believe.

  "Let's forget that, too, then," Milt was saying. "Now, the jungle is growing all over our ship, in spite of all we can do. You tell me your people can make the jungle do anything you want."

  "Yes, yes," said Communicator agreeably.

  "Then, will you please stop it from growing all over our spaceship?"

  "We understand. It is your sickness, the poison that makes you say this. Do not fear. We will never abandon you." Communicator looked almost ready to pat Milt consolingly on the head. "You are people, who are more important than any cost. Soon you will grow and cast off your poisoned part and come to us."