The whole hideous effect was like the dream of a boorish monomaniac; a painting in dirty and muted pastels by a totally untalented abstract artist. It would’ve made the worst pre-stellar Terrestrial industrial slum look like a riot of gay spontaneity.
“Welcome to the gay, carefree capital of the Duglaari Empire,” groaned Robin Morel. “Ugh! This is enough to justify a war of extermination, all by itself!”
Somehow, the remark seemed no more than a statement of sober fact.
“And here comes the reception committee,” said Max Bergstrom.
Squat, tank-like vehicles were pouring out of one of the smaller buildings and racing across the landing field. There must’ve been nearly two dozen of them, all mounting wicked-looking portable lasecannons. The tanks ringed the ship, trained the muzzles of their lasecannons inward towards it, and ground to a halt.
About a half dozen Duglaari disembarked from one of the vehicles and trotted towards the ship on their long, powerful legs. From this distance, it was hard to make out their features, but easy enough to spot the long-barreled energy rifles that all but the Doog in the lead were carrying.
“Raul, Jay, let’s go down to the airlock and greet our guests,” Lingo said,
By the time they had reached the airlock, the Doogs had reached the ship and the leader had climbed up to the airlock door on a movable ramp. As soon as they opend the airlock, they found themselves face to face with their first live Duglaari.
The Doog, at first glance, seemed to be all limbs and neck. He was an upright biped, with two arms, two legs, no tail and one head. That seemed to be the extent of his resemblance to a human being.
The legs were long and powerful, and covered, like the rest of the body, with a fine brown fur. They sprouted from a small, spherical body about the size and shape of a large, hairy beachball. Two long, muscular arms grew abruptly from the equator of the spherical body, ending in large, six-digited hands, with two opposable thumbst="/p>
A long, apparently flexible neck supported a large triangular head, which sported two enormous, bat-like ears. The face, the only part of the creature not covered by the fine brown fur, consisted of two large red eyes with black irises on either side of one huge nostril set flush with the leathery brown skin, and a disconcertingly human mouth.
The Doog stood roughly the height of a man, and was dressed in short black boots, and a plain, armless and legless dun-colored smock.
He pushed his way past them and stood to one side while ten more Doogs poured through the airlock. The only noticeable difference between them and the first Doog was that they wore gray smocks and carried ugly-looking energy rifles.
“Who’s in charge here?” barked Lingo.
The Doog in the dun smock glared at him unblinkingly; not a difficult task, since his eyes had no lids.
“I am Haarar Ralachapki Koris. I am in charge of this squad,” said the Doog, in grammatically perfect English, but with a weird lack of regard for syllable stresses.
“You speak quite good English, Haarar Koris,” admitted Lingo.
“I am a graduate of the Institute of Human Studies. It is part of my function to be able to distort my speech-patterns in the approved human manner,” Koris said, pronouncing every syllable independently, clearly and with absolute equality of stress.
Palmer somehow instantly preferred the mangled English of the Fleet commander.
“Is this your largest room?” asked Koris.
“Of course not. Why?”
“This cubicle is too cramped for us to remain for any length of time,” Koris said. “As you must know, you vermin have a decidedly unpleasant odor. Prolonged confinement in such close quarters with human vermin would tend to produce in my digestive tract a disturbance analogous to what you call nausea. That would not be desirable.”
Palmer clenched and unclenched his fists convulsively, but Lingo and Ortega seemed unruffled.
“As any fool can plainly see,” Lingo said dryly, “this cubicle is an airlock, designed only for entering and leaving the ship.”
“Not being ‘any fool,’ ” said Koris, with utter lack of humor or rancor, “I would not be privy to such data. Let us continue this discussion elsewhere. Already it is possible for me to detect tiny but undesirable tremors beginning in my digestive tract.”
“We’ll go to the common room, then,” said Lingo. “Please do us the courtesy of not vomiting on the rug.”
“You are due no courtesy, vermin,” said Koris, following Lingo into the corridor and motioning his troops to follow. “Nevertheless, I will endevour to refrain from emptying my digestive tract. The wasting of nutrients is not desirable.”
The other Solarians were already in the common room when they arrived; Lingo, Ortega and Palmer in the lead, Koris and his troops immediately behind. As soon as Koris had his head inside the room, he shrilled orders to his troops in a language that hurt the ears—tremendous variations in pitch, but absolutely constant in volume and totally devoid of stress differentials.
The ten armed Doogs spread themselves out along all four walls at regular intervals, completely boxing the seven humans in. They trained their energy rifles inward and stood, immobile and ready.
“I was not informed that there were so many of your vermin on this ship,” Koris said, in his emotionless monotone. His great membranous ears jiggled convulsively, perhaps a sign of some unreadable emotion.
“It wasn’t any of your business,” Lingo snapped.
“You are on the planet Duglaar, vermin,” Koris droned, his voice unchanging, but his ears flapping madly like the wings of a bat. “You are prisoners of the Duglaari Empire. It is not your function to decide what is my business and what is not. It is not your function to dispute the statements, questions or orders of an officer of the Duglaari Empire. You are prisoners. Your functions are to obey my orders and answer my questions; nothing more and nothing less.”
“We are not prisoners,” Lingo said.
Koris screeched something in Duglaari. The guards snapped to full alert, their six-fingered hands tightening on their guns.
“If you try to escape,” Koris said, “you will be killed. Should you somehow regain control of this ship, it will be destroyed by the armed vehicles surrounding it. In the statistically improbable event that you manage to get it off the ground, a thousand lasecannon are already zeroed in on it. In the one chance in seven point three that you do reach the upper limits of the atmosphere, the three full Fleets patrolling the planet will surely….”
“That’s quite enough,” snapped Lingo. “I’m convinced that we can’t escape. Spare me the gory details.”
“The quantity of gore produced is entirely up to you, vermin,” Koris said. “You are to fulfill the proper functions of prisoners or face instant death.”
“I told you, we’re not prisoners. We’re a diplomatic mission and we demand to be treated as such.”
“You are prisoners,” droned Koris. “You are enemies. You are within the territory of the Duglaari Empire. Therefore you are prisoners. There is no other possible classification for you to occupy. I do not comprehend this concept of diplomatic mission.”
“I see my error,” Lingo said evenly. “I shouldn’t have expected you to understand the concept. It is something beyond you. You are a soldier, eh? What is your function?”
“You are right, vermin,” said Koris, the motion of his ears dampening somewhat, “I am a soldier of the Duglaari Empire. My function is to cause the enemies of the Empire to suffer defeat and destruction. A soldier’s function is to destroy the enemy.”
“What’s he trying to do,” Palmer muttered sotto voce to Ortega, “get us killed?”
“Shut up,” Ortega hissed. “He knows what he’s doing.”
“Is it ever a soldier’s function to surrender?” asked Lingo.
“I have not been taught the concept,” replied Koris.
“I didn’t think so,” said Lingo. “Surrender means to disarm oneself and give oneself over to the ene
my in the hope that the outcome of such action will be preferable to the outcome of continued fighting.”
Koris batted his ears furiously. “Only vermin have need of such a concept. Such a concept is superfluous to the soldiers of the Duglaari Empire, since the only outcome of continued fighting possible is eventual Duglaari victory. It is undesirable for my proper function to even possess knowledge of such a concept. Therefore, I shall have it erased from my memory as soon as this unpleasant task is completed.”
That really got him going! Palmer thought. Now he could sense what Lingo was doing. Logic was the Duglaari strength; might it not also be their weakness?
“So you would say that surrender is something you do not even wish to consider, something you are not equipped to comprehend?”
“Surrender is a concept for the use of vermin only, a derangement of the inferior human brain to which a Duglaari soldier is immune.”
“Well,” drawled Lingo, “it just so happens that we are here to surrender the entire Human Confederation to the Duglaari Empire. Try comprehending that!“
Koris said nothing, but his ears suddenly wilted, as if their supporting cartilage had turned to jelly.
Palmer grinned grimly. Obviously, the creature was shocked at the concept of surrendering one’s entire race to the enemy. And who could blame him!
“Well,” said Lingo, “what’s the matter? Aren’t you equipped to consider this proposal?”
“I am not,” droned Koris, his ears coming to furious life.
“You mean to tell me,” snapped Lingo, “that all you Doogs are so stupid that none of you can consider a simple offer of surrender?”
Koris flapped his ears madly. “Cease your arrogance, vermin,” he droned. “The Council of All Wisdom can comprehend all things. Such alien concepts as you suggest are clearly within the function of the Council of Wisdom to deal with, rather than a soldier such as myself.”
“You mean you intend to take us before the Kor and the Council of Wisdom?” Lingo cried, in great mock surprise.
“You are correct, vermin,” said Koris, his ears at last at rest. “The Council and the Kor will know how to deal with this bizarre matter.”
“I see we have no choice,” sighed Lingo. “If you’ll give us time to change into the proper clothes….”
“What you are wearing now will be quite sufficient,” Koris said.
Lingo shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said. “Of course you must realize that these clothes are full of human microscopic parasites, and the clothes I mentioned are completely sterilized. I admire your courage, if not your prudence.”
“You will change into the sterile clothes, vermin.”
“Very well. The six of us will be ready in a few minutes.”
“I count seven of you, vermin.”
“Please,” whined Lingo, rolling his eyes horribly, “there are only six of us—four men and two women.”
“You are demented, vermin. There are three females: one with brown top-fur, one with red and one with yellow.”
All the Solarians except Linda Dortin moaned horribly and wrung their hands.
“What is going on?” demanded Koris.
Lingo sighed, and said to the other Solarians: “He’s an alien, after all. What can you expect?” Then he turned to Koris.
“The blond woman you claim to see does not officially exist,” he said. “Not for the past two days, and not for two days to come. It is a part of human functioning, but there is an absolute taboo against even mentioning it. The non-existent woman must remain on the ship. To do otherwise would be an unthinkable insult to your Kor, and both we and yourself would have to answer for the terrible consequences.”
Koris stood silent for a moment, apparently digesting this new evnce of human illogicality.
“Very well,” he finally said. “The yellow-haired female may remain on the ship. Escape is impossible, and in any case, she can be as easily disposed of here as in the Hall of Wisdom.”
“Disposed of? What are you talking about?”
“Do not further display your stupidity, vermin,” droned Koris. “You have penetrated to the surface of Duglaar itself. You are to actually view the interior of the Hall of Wisdom. Surely you must realize that no human vermin can possibly be permitted to retain the data you now possess. There is, after all, a probability of one in several trillion that you might somehow escape. That probability must be reduced to exactly zero. Therefore, as soon as the Kor and the Council of Wisdom have finished interrogating you, you will of course all be immediately killed.”
Chapter VIII
LINGO ducked into his cabin and emerged carrying a pile of clothes. “Here, Jay,” he said, “put it on.”
“What is it?” Palmer asked dubiously. The clothing seemed to be some kind of garish uniform, all green and scarlet and gold braid.
“Dress uniform,” Lingo muttered. “Let’s say we…uh…anticipated that you might need it, so we had one made.”
Palmer fingered the uniform sourly. “Doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen.”
“Just put the thing on,” Lingo said impatiently. “It’s been designed for psychological effect, not for elegance. We’ve got to create a certain impression, and that Ambassador’s uniform is part of it. No time to argue about it now. Just hustle it on, and get back to the common room before our Doog friends start getting trigger-happy.”
Then Lingo stepped into his cabin and slammed the door behind him.
Palmer stood self-consciously for a moment just outside the common room. He looked and felt like a comic-opera field marshal. The uniform had bright green pants and shirt, heavy gold-braided epaulets, a Sam Browne belt fastened by a gigantic ornate brass buckle, calf-length black boots tooled in gold and green, a snow-white cap with brass braided visor, and a long flaming scarlet cape. A square foot of ribbons adorned the tunic’s breast.
Sourly, Palmer wondered why Lingo had failed to supply a ceremonial sword.
The Solarians were already in the common room, and their uniforms seemed designed to make Palmer feel even more ludicrous. All but Linda Dortin, who was to remain on the ship, were dressed in black from head to toe, dead, totally unadorned black; plain black boots, black cotton pants, and black leather shirts. They were bareheaded, and the only insignia on thewas a tiny golden sunburst on the left breast.
Somehow, the total effect was terribly sinister and infinitely earnest; a uniform that was not quite a uniform—almost a priest’s habit. But dark indeed would be the rites led by such priests….
As they looked him over approvingly, it was painfully obvious that the Solarians were suppressing their laughter only by the most heroic efforts.
Even Koris, as he surveyed the peacock in the nest of falcons, seemed moved by some unreadable emotion—his head weaved erratically on the end of his long flexible neck, and his ears twitched convulsively.
“Come, vermin,” Koris droned. “We proceed to the Council of Wisdom.”
As they stepped down onto the concrete of the field, onto the surface of Duglaar itself, the sheer strangeness of the place hit Palmer with its full force. The city, spread around them as far as the eye could see, glass and metal in the dull gray light, seemed more a gigantic factory or monstrous machine than a city as such—Palmer could not conceive of a park or amusement section, a lake or even a stray blade of grass in that vast, ugly conglomeration of globes and boxes. There was an indefinable humming regularity about the sounds of the city, as if of an enormous engine, with all parts meshing smoothly.
And the smell of the air—a harsh, chemical, disinfectant smell, the odor of hospitals, of dynamos, of great impersonal public buildings. Not merely an artificial smell, but the odor of artificiality itself.
Palmer shivered convulsively, though the air was quite warm and though he was practically trotting to keep up with the strides of the long-legged Doogs. Robin and Fran were looking around with the same disdainful expression. Half of Max’ mind seemed back on the ship with Linda. Ling
o and Ortega were also elsewhere, wrapped up in their thoughts, and noticing their surroundings only mechanically.
Now they were nearing the entrance to the Hall of Wisdom, itself. The main entrance to what was, in a sense, the capitol building of the entire Duglaari Empire, was simply a large rectangular hole in the smooth plastic wall.
“Enter, vermin,” ordered Koris.
Instead of the great open area that one would’ve expected the entrance of a large public building to open onto, Palmer and the Solarians found themselves in a small sealed chamber. The open entranceway was the rear wall; the two side walls were translucent and featureless plastic.
The wall facing the entranceway consisted of ten closed panels, each with a small light over it, and what looked like the coding board of a small computer.
Koris made straight for the coding board and manipulated the typewriter-like series of buttons built into the console.
“I have coded us into the Council of Wisdom,” Koris informed them. “We will now await ourdaictives.”
After a few moments, the lights over two of the panels lit up, and the panels slid upward, revealing smooth-walled tunnels, with moving-strips for floors. A quick clatter came from the computer-console, and a few lines of curlicued Duglaari letters appeared on the little screen above the incod-ing buttons.
Koris glanced at the message on the screen.
“Vermin, take the right-hand input channel,” he droned. “Soldiers of the Empire will take the left. We leave you now, vermin. You have been coded into an input channel of the Council of Wisdom. Do not suppose that you may deviate from directives just because you are unguarded. No guards are required once you are incoded. Any attempt to deviate from directives will immediately result in your destruction. Go.”
Lingo led them through the open doorway and onto the moving-strip. As the strip bore them on, into the bowels of the Hall of Wisdom, Palmer glanced back and saw that the panel had slid shut behind them.
The strip carried them inward and, every twenty yards or so, it came to an intersection of three to five separate passageways. But there was no question of choosing which passageway to follow; as they approached each intersection, panels slid down blocking off all passageways but one and the strip carried them through the approved tunnel. The Council of Wisdom itself was carrying them inexorably towards whatever fate awaited them.
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