Golden Age of Science Fiction Vol VIII

by Various

  "I'll do what I can," he promised.

  As he left the schoolroom she collapsed in a straight-backed chair--thin and unattractive, like Ann herself--and her shoulders shook with silent, bitter grief.

  * * * * *

  Martin Lord took the familiar path to Niaga's village. The setting sun still spread its dying fire across the evening sky, but he walked slowly through the deep, quiet shadows of the forest. He came to the stream where he had met Niaga; he paused to dip his sweat-smeared face into the cool water cascading over a five foot fall.

  A pleasant flood of memory crowded his mind. When he had first met Niaga, almost a week before, she had been lying on the sandy bank of the stream, idly plaiting a garland of red and blue flowers. Niaga! A copper-skinned goddess, stark naked and unashamed in the bright spot light of sun filtered through the trees. Languorous, laughing lips; long, black hair loosely caught in a net of filmy material that hung across her shoulder.

  The feeling of guilt and shame had stabbed at Lord's mind. He had come, unasked, into an Eden. He didn't belong here. His presence meant pillage, a rifling of a sacred dream. The landing had been a mistake.

  Oddly enough, the Ceres had landed here entirely by chance, the result of a boyish fling at adventure.

  Martin Lord was making a routine tour of representative trade cities before assuming his vice-presidency in the central office of Hamilton Lord, Inc. It had been a family custom for centuries, ever since the first domed ports had been built on Mars and Venus.

  Lord was twenty-six and, like all the family, tall, slim, yellow-haired. As the Lords had for generations, Martin had attended the Chicago University of Commerce for four years, and the Princeton Graduate School in Interstellar Engineering four more--essential preparations for the successful Federation trader. In Chicago Martin had absorbed the basic philosophy of the Federation: the union of planets and diverse peoples, created by trade, was an economy eternally prosperous and eternally growing, because the number of undiscovered and unexploited planets was infinite. The steady expansion of the trade cities kept demand always one jump ahead of supply; every merchant was assured that this year's profits would always be larger than last. It was the financial millennium, from which depression and recession had been forever eliminated. At Princeton Lord had learned the practical physics necessary for building, servicing and piloting the standard interstellar merchant ships.

  Martin Lord's tour of the trade cities completed his education. It was his first actual contact with reality. The economy of progress, which had seemed so clear-cut in the Chicago lecture halls, was translated into a brawling, vice-ridden, frontier city. In the older trade cities, the culture of man had come to dominate the occupied worlds. No trace of what alien peoples had been or had believed survived, except as museum oddities.

  This, Lord admitted to himself, was conquest, by whatever innocuous name it passed. But was it for good or evil? In the first shock of reality, Martin Lord had doubted himself and the destiny of the Federation. But only for a moment. What he saw was good--he had been taught to believe that--because the Federation was perfection.

  But the doubt, like a cancer, fed and grew in the darkness of Lord's soul.

  * * * * *

  On the home trip a mechanical defect of the calibration of the time-power carried the Ceres off its course, light years beyond the segment of the Galaxy occupied by the Federation.

  "We've burned out a relay," Don Howard reported.

  "Have we replacements?" Lord asked.

  "It's no problem to fix. But repairs would be easier if we could set the ship down somewhere."

  Lord glanced at the unknown sun and three satellite planets which were plotted electronically on his cabin scanning screen. His pulse leaped with sudden excitement. This was his first--and last--chance for adventure, the only interstellar flight he would command in his lifetime. When he returned to earth, he would be chained for the rest of his days to a desk job, submerged in a sea of statistical tables and financial statements.

  "Run an atmosphere analysis on those three worlds, Mr. Howard," he said softly.

  Driven by its auxiliary nuclear power unit, the ship moved closer to the new solar system. In half an hour Don Howard brought Lord the lab report. Two of the planets were enveloped in methane, but the third had an earth-normal atmosphere. Lord gave the order for a landing, his voice pulsing with poorly concealed, boyish pleasure.

  The Ceres settled on a hilltop, its cushioning rockets burning an improvised landing area in the lush foliage. As the airlock swung open, Lord saw half a dozen golden-skinned savages standing on the edge of the clearing. As nearly as he could judge, they were men; but that was not too surprising, because a number of planets in the Federation had evolved sentient species which resembled man. The savages were unarmed and nearly naked--tall, powerfully built men; they seemed neither awed nor frightened by the ship.

  Over the circle of scorched earth Lord heard the sound of their voices. For a fleeting second the words seemed to make sense--a clear, unmistakable welcome to the new world.

  But communication was inconceivable. This planet was far beyond the fringe of the Federation. Lord was letting his imagination run away with him.

  He flung out his arms in a universally accepted gesture of open-handed friendship. At once the talk of the natives ceased. They stood waiting silently on the burned ground while the men unwound the landing ladder.

  * * * * *

  Lord made the initial contact himself. The techniques which he had learned in the University of Commerce proved enormously successful. Within ten minutes rapport was established; in twenty the natives had agreed to submit to the linguistic machines. Lord had read accounts of other trailblazing commercial expeditions; and he knew he was establishing a record for speed of negotiation.

  The savages were quite unfrightened as the electrodes were fastened to their skulls, entirely undisturbed by the whir of the machine. In less than an hour they were able to use the common language of the Federation. Another record; most species needed a week's indoctrination.

  Every new development suggested that these half-naked primitives--with no machine civilization, no cities, no form of space flight--had an intellectual potential superior to man's. The first question asked by one of the broad-shouldered savages underscored that conclusion.

  "Have you come to our world as colonists?"

  No mumbo-jumbo of superstition, no awe of strangers who had suddenly descended upon them from the sky. Lord answered, "We landed in order to repair our ship, but I hope we can make a trade treaty with your government."

  For a moment the six men consulted among themselves with a silent exchange of glances. Then one of them smiled and said, "You must visit our villages and explain the idea of trade to our people."

  "Of course," Lord agreed. "If you could serve as interpreters--"

  "Our people can learn your language as rapidly as we have, if we can borrow your language machine for a time."

  Lord frowned. "It's a rather complex device, and I'm not sure--you see, if something went wrong, you might do a great deal of harm."

  "We would use it just as you did; we saw everything you turned to make it run." One of the golden-skinned primitives made a demonstration, turning the console of dials with the ease and familiarity of a semantic expert. Again Lord was impressed by their intelligence--and vaguely frightened.

  "You could call this the first trade exchange between your world and ours," another savage added. "Give us the machine; we'll send you fresh food from the village."

  The argument was logical and eventually the natives had their way. Perhaps it was Ann Howard's intervention that decided the point. She vehemently disapproved; a gift of techniques should be withheld until she had examined their cultural traditions. But Martin Lord was a trade agent, and he had no intention of allowing his mission to be wrecked by the ephemeral doubts of a teacher. Here at the onset was the time to make it clear that he was in command. He gave the natives the machine.<
br />
  As the six men trudged across the burned earth carrying the heavy apparatus easily on their shoulders, Lord wondered if either he or Ann Howard had much to do with the negotiations. He had an unpleasant feeling that, from the very beginning, the natives had been in complete control of the situation.

  * * * * *

  Less than an hour after the six men had departed, a band of natives emerged from the forest bearing gifts of food--straw baskets heaped with fruit, fresh meat wrapped in grass mats, hampers of bread, enormous pottery jars filled with a sweet, cold, milky liquid. Something very close to the miraculous had occurred. Every native had learned to use the Federation language.

  A kind of fiesta began in the clearing beside the Ceres. The natives built fires to cook the food. The women, scantily dressed if they were clothed at all, danced sensuously in the bright sunlight to a peculiarly exotic, 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 the stimulants used in the Federation. Lord drank a long draught from a mug brought him by one of the women. The effect was immediate. He felt no dulling of his reason, however; no loss of muscular control, but instead a stealthy relaxation of mental strain joined with a satisfying sense of physical well-being. A subtle shifting in prospective, in accepted values.

  The savage feast, which grew steadily more boisterous, Lord would have called an orgy under other circumstances. The word did occur to him, but it seemed fantastically inapplicable. Normally the behavior of his men would have demanded the severest kind of disciplinary action. But here the old code of rules simply didn't apply and he didn't interfere with their enjoyment.

  The afternoon sun blazed in the western sky; heat in shimmering waves hung over the clearing. Lord went into the ship and stripped off his uniform; somehow the glittering insignia, the ornamental braid, the stiff collar--designed to be impressive symbols of authority--seemed garish and out of place. Lord put on the shorts which he wore when he exercised in the capsule gym aboard ship.

  Outside again, he found that most of the men had done the same thing. The sun felt warm on his skin; the air was comfortably balmy, entirely free of the swarms of flies and other insects which made other newly contacted frontier worlds so rugged.

  As he stood in the shelter of the landing ladder and sipped a second mug of the white liquor, Lord became slowly aware of something else. Divested of their distinguishing uniforms, he and his crew seemed puny and ill-fed beside the natives. If physique were any index to the sophistication of a culture--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 the crew had put on their lightest dress, but not Ann. Lord was in no frame of mind, just then, to endure an interview with her. He knew precisely what she 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. He turned 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 had been caressed by a lifetime's freedom in the sun; her long, dark hair had the sheen of polished ebony; and in the firm, healthy curves of her body he saw the sensuous grace of a Venus or an Aphrodite.

  She stood up slowly and faced him, smiling; a bright shaft of sunlight fell on the liquid bow of her lips. "I am Niaga," she said. "You must be one of the 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 had been making and put it around his neck. When she came close, the subtle perfume of her hair was unmistakable--like the smell of pine needles on a mountain trail; new grass during a spring rain; or the crisp, winter air after a fall of snow. Perfume sharply symbolic of freedom, heady and intoxicating, numbing his mind with the ghosts of half-remembered dreams.

  "I was coming to your ship with the others," she said, "but I stopped here to swim, as I often do. I'm afraid I stayed too long, day-dreaming on the bank; 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 no one 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 he knew he could not apply the code of his culture to hers; emotionally it was a difficult concept to accept. If his standards were invalid, his definitions might be, too. Perhaps this society was no more primitive than--No! A mature people would always develop more or less the same mechanical techniques, and these people had nothing remotely like a machine.

  "You sent us a gift," she said. "It is only proper for us to return the kindness."

  "You have made a rather miraculous use of the language machine in a remarkably short period of time."

  "We applied it to everyone in the village. We knew it would help your people 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 a pause, she added very slowly, with her eyes fixed on his, "Mr. Lord, do you plan to make a colony here?"

  "Eventually. After we repair the ship, I hope to negotiate a trade treaty with 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 not free 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's the largest trading company in the Federation. We have exclusive franchises 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 something I 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 word in 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's a rather unusual use of the word, isn't it? For us, government is a synonym 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 of a truth in human relationship; it doesn't have to be enforced. What sane person would violate a truth? What would you do, Martin Lord, if I told you 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 trade franchise; we'd have to set up a trusteeship and let the teachers run your planet until you had learned the basic processes of social organization."

  Niaga turned away from him, her hands twisted together. She said, in a soft whisper that was flat and emotionless, "We have a council of elders, Martin Lord. You can make your treaty with them." Then, imperceptibly, her voice brightened. "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 in our villages and to get better acquainted with us."

  * * * * *

  Niaga left him,
then; she said she would go to the village and send out the summons for the council. By a roundabout path, Lord returned to the clearing around the Ceres. The forest fascinated him. It was obviously cultivated like a park, and he was puzzled that a primitive society should practice such full scale conservation. Normally savages took nature for granted or warred against it.

  He came upon a brown gash torn in a hillside above the stream, a place where natives were apparently working to build up the bank against erosion. In contrast to the beauty that surrounded it, the bare earth was indescribably ugly, like a livid scar in a woman's face. In his mind Lord saw this scar multiplied a thousand times--no, a million times--when the machines of the galaxy came to rip out resources for the trade cities. He envisioned the trade cities that would rise against the horizon, the clutter of suburban subdivisions choking out the forests; he saw the pall of industrial smoke that would soil the clean air, the great machines clattering over asphalt streets.

  For the first time he stated the problem honestly, to himself: this world must be saved exactly as it was. But how? How could Lord continue to represent Hamilton Lord, Inc., as a reputable trade agent, and at the same time save Niaga's people from the impact of civilization?

  It was sunset when he returned to the Ceres. On the clearing the festivities were still going on, but at a slower pace. Ann Howard was waiting for Lord at the door of his cabin. She registered her official disapproval of the revelry, which Lord had expected, and then she added,

  "We can't make a treaty with them; these people have no government with the authority to deal with us."

  "You're wrong, Ann; there's a council of elders--"

  "I beg to differ, Mr. Lord." Her lips made a flat, grim line against her teeth. "This afternoon I made a point of talking to every native in the clearing. Their idea of government is something they call the law of humanity. Whether it is written down or not, I have no way of knowing; but certainly they have no such thing as a central authority. This rather indicates a teacher trusteeship for the planet, I believe."