He glanced around the room, spoke in the same tongue the Rushes had used.
Ted Graham said, “I don’t understand you, mister.”
The man put a hand to his flickering belt. Both Ted and Martha Graham felt themselves rooted to the floor, a tingling sensation vibrating along every nerve.
Again the strange language rolled from the man’s tongue, but now the words were understood.
“Who are you?”
“My name’s Graham. This is my wife. What’s going—”
“How did you get here?”
“The Rushes—they wanted to trade us this house for our trailer. They brought us. Now look, we—”
“What is your talent—your occupation?”
“Tax accountant. Say! Why all these—”
“That was to be expected,” said the man. “Clever! Oh, excessively clever!” His hand moved again to the belt. “Now be very quiet. This may confuse you momentarily.”
Colored lights filled both the Grahams’ minds. They staggered.
“You are qualified,” said the man. “You will serve.”
“Where are we?” demanded Martha Graham.
“The coordinates would not be intelligible to you,” he said. “I am of the Rojac. It is sufficient for you to know that you are under Rojac sovereignty.”
Ted Graham said, “But—”
“You have, in a way, been kidnapped. And the Raimees have fled to your planet—an unregistered planet.”
“I’m afraid,” Martha Graham said shakily.
“You have nothing to fear,” said the man. “You are no longer on the planet of your birth—nor even in the same galaxy.” He glanced at Ted Graham’s wrist. “That device on your wrist—it tells your local time?”
“Yes.”
“That will help in the search. And your sun—can you describe its atomic cycle?”
Ted Graham groped in his mind for his science memories from school, from the Sunday supplements. “I can recall that our galaxy is a spiral like—”
“Most galaxies are spiral.”
“Is this some kind of a practical joke?” asked Ted Graham.
The man smiled, a cold, superior smile. “It is no joke. Now I will make you a proposition.”
Ted nodded warily. “All right, let’s have the stinger.”
“The people who brought you here were tax collectors we Rojac recruited from a subject planet. They were conditioned to make it impossible for them to leave their job untended. Unfortunately, they were clever enough to realize that if they brought someone else in who could do their job, they were released from their mental bonds. Very clever.”
“But—”
“You may have their job,” said the man. “Normally you would be put to work in the lower echelons, but we believe in meting out justice wherever possible. The Raimees undoubtedly stumbled on your planet by accident and lured you into this position without—”
“How do you know I can do your job?”
“That moment of brilliance was an aptitude test. You passed. Well, do you accept?”
“What about our baby?” Martha Graham worriedly wanted to know.
“You will be allowed to keep it until it reaches the age of decision—about the time it will take the child to reach adult stature.”
“Then what?” insisted Martha Graham.
“The child will take its position in society—according to its ability.”
“Will we ever see our child after that?”
“Possibly.”
Ted Graham said, “What’s the joker in this?”
Again the cold, superior smile. “You will receive conditioning similar to that which we gave the Raimees. And we will want to examine your memories to aid us in our search for your planet. It would be good to find a new inhabitable place.”
“Why did they trap us like this?” asked Martha Graham.
“It’s lonely work,” the man explained. “Your house is actually a type of space conveyance that travels along your collection route—and there is much travel to the job. And then—you will not have friends, nor time for much other than work. Our methods are necessarily severe at times.”
“Travel?” Martha Graham repeated in dismay.
“Almost constantly.”
Ted Graham felt his mind whirling. And behind him, he heard his wife sobbing.
* * *
The Raimees sat in what had been the Grahams’ trailer.
“For a few moments, I feared he would not succumb to the bait,” she said. “I knew you could never overcome the mental compulsion enough to leave them there without their first agreeing.”
Raimee chuckled. “Yes. And now I’m going to indulge in everything the Rojac never permitted. I’m going to write ballads and poems.”
“And I’m going to paint,” she said. “Oh, the delicious freedom!”
“Greed won this for us,” he said. “The long study of the Grahams paid off. They couldn’t refuse to trade.”
“I knew they’d agree. The looks in their eyes when they saw the house! They both had…” She broke off, a look of horror coming into her eyes. “One of them did not agree!”
“They both did. You heard them.”
“The baby?”
He stared at his wife. “But—but it is not at the age of decision!”
“In perhaps eighteen of this planet’s years, it will be at the age of decision. What then?”
His shoulders sagged. He shuddered. “I will not be able to fight it off. I will have to build a transmitter, call the Rojac and confess!”
“And they will collect another inhabitable place,” she said, her voice flat and toneless.
“I’ve spoiled it,” he said. “I’ve spoiled it!”
YOU TAKE THE HIGH ROAD
Lewis Orne clasped his hands behind his back until the knuckles showed white. He stared darkly out his second-floor window at the morning on Hamal II. The big yellow sun already above the distant mountains dominated a cloudless sky. It promised to be a scorcher of a day.
Behind him Orne could hear a scratchy pen rasping across paper as the Investigation and Adjustment operative made notes on their just-completed interview.
So maybe I was wrong to push the panic button, thought Orne. That doesn’t give this wise guy the right to be such a heel! After all—this is my first job. They can’t expect perfection the first time out!
The scratching pen began to wear on Orne’s nerves.
Creases furrowed his square forehead. He put his left hand up to the rough window wooden frame, ran his right hand through the stiff bristles of his close-cropped red hair. The loose cut of his white coverall uniform—standard for agents of the Rediscovery and Re-education Service—accentuated Orne’s blocky appearance. He had the thick muscles and no-fat look of someone raised on a heavy planet—in his case, Chargon of the Gemma System. There was a full jowled bulldog appearance to his face. It was an effective disguise for a pixie nature.
At the moment, however, he was feeling decidedly unpixielike.
If I’m wrong, they’ll boot me out of the service, he thought. There’s too much bad blood between R-and-R and the Investigation and Adjustment people. But there’ll be some jumping if I’m right about this place!
Orne shook his head. But I’m probably wrong.
The more he thought about it the more he felt that it had been a stupid move to call in the I–A. This planet of Hamal II probably was not aggressive by nature. There probably was no danger here of providing arms to a potential war maker.
Someone clumped down the stairs at the other end of the building. The floor shook under Orne’s feet. This was an old building—the government guest house—and built of rough lumber. The room carried the sour smell of many former occupants.
From his second-floor window Orne could see part of the cobblestone market square of this village of Pitsiben. Beyond the square he could make out the wide track of the ridge road that came up from the Plains of Rogga. Along the road stretched a doubl
e line of moving figures: farmers and hunters coming for market day in Pitsiben. Amber dust hung over the road. It softened the scene, imparted a romantic, out-of-focus look.
The farmers leaned into the pushing harness of their low two-wheeled carts, plodding along with a heavy-footed swaying motion. They wore long green coats, yellow berets tipped uniformly over the left ear, yellow trousers with the cuffs darkened by the dust of the road, open sandals that revealed horny feet splayed out like the feet of draft animals. The carts were piled high with green and yellow vegetables seemingly arranged to carry out the general color scheme.
Brown-clothed hunters moved with the line, but to one side like flank guards. They strode along, heads high, cap feathers bobbing. Each carried a bell-muzzled fowling piece at a jaunty angle over one arm, a spyglass in a leather case over the left shoulder. Behind the hunters trotted their apprentices pulling three-wheeled carts overflowing with swamp deer, ducks and porjos, the snake-tailed rodents that Hamal natives considered such a delicacy.
On the distant valley floor Orne could see the dark red spire of the I–A ship that had come flaming down just after dawn of this day—homing on his transmitter. The ship, too, seemed set in a dreamlike haze: blue smoke from kitchen fires in the farm homes that dotted the valley. The red shape towered above the homes, looking out of place, like an ornament left over from holiday decorations for giants.
As Orne watched, a hunter paused on the ridge road, unlimbered his spyglass, studied the I–A ship.
The smoke and the hot yellow sun conspired to produce a summery appearance to the countryside—a look of lush growing. It was essentially a peaceful scene, arousing in Orne a deep feeling of bitterness.
Damn! I don’t care what the I–A says! I was right to call them. These people of Hamal are hiding something. They’re not peaceful! The real mistake that was made here was made by that dumbo on First-Contact when he gabbled about the importance we place on a peaceful history!
* * *
The pen scratching stopped, and the I–A man cleared his throat.
Orne turned, looked across the low room at the operative. The I–A man sat at a rough table beside Orne’s unmade bed. Papers and report folders were scattered all around him on the table. A small recorder weighted one stack. The I–A man slouched in a bulky wooden chair. He was a big-headed, gangling figure with over-large features, a leathery skin. His hair was dark and straggling. His eyelids drooped. They gave to his face that look of haughty superciliousness that was like a brand mark of the I–A. The man wore patched blue fatigues without insignia. He had introduced himself as Umbo Stetson, chief I–A operative for this sector.
Stetson noted Orne’s attention, said, “I believe I have everything now. Let’s just check it over. You landed here ten weeks ago, right?”
“Yes. I was set down by a landing boat from the R-and-R transport, Arneb Rediscovery.”
“And this was your first mission?”
“Yes. I graduated from Uni-Galacta with the class of ’07, and did my apprentice work on Timurlain.”
Stetson frowned. “Then you came out here to this newly re-discovered backwater planet?”
“That’s right.”
“I see. You were just full of the old rah-rah, the old missionary spirit to uplift mankind and all that sort of thing.”
Orne blushed, scowled.
“They’re still teaching that ‘cultural renaissance’ bushwah at dear old Uni-Galacta, I see,” said Stetson. He put a hand to his breast, raised his voice: “We must re-unite the lost planets with the centers of culture and industry, and take up the glorious onward march of mankind that was stopped so brutally by the Rim Wars!”
He spat on the floor.
“I think we can skip all this,” muttered Orne.
Stetson chuckled. “You’re sooooo right! Now … what’d you bring with you when you landed?”
“I had a dictionary compiled by the First-Contact man, but it was pretty sketchy in—”
“Who was that First-Contact, by the way?”
“I never met him but his name’s in the dictionary: Andre Bullone.”
“Oh—Any relation to High Commissioner Ipscott Bullone?”
“I don’t know.”
Stetson scribbled something on one of his papers. “And that report says this is a peaceful planet with a primitive farming-hunting economy, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Uh, huh. What else’d you bring with you?”
“The usual blanks and files for my reports—and a transmitter.”
“And you pushed the ‘panic button’ on that transmitter two days ago, eh? Did we get here fast enough for you?”
Orne glared at the floor.
Stetson said, “I suppose you’ve the usual eidetic memory crammed with cultural-medical-industrial information.”
“I’m a fully qualified R-and-R agent.”
“We will observe a moment of reverent silence,” said Stetson. Abruptly, he slammed a hand onto the table. “It’s just plain damn’ stupidity! Nothing but a political come-on!”
Orne snapped to angry attention. “What do you mean?”
“This R-and-R dodge, son. It’s an attention getter … it’s perpetuating some political lives. But you mark my words: we’re going to re-discover just one planet too many; we’re going to give its people the industrial foundation they don’t deserve—and we’re going to see another Rim War to end all Rim Wars!”
Orne took a step forward. “Why’n hell do you think I pushed the panic button here?”
Stetson sat back. “My dear fellow, that’s what we’re just now trying to determine.” He tapped his front teeth with the pen. “Now … just why did you call us?”
“I told you I’m not sure! It’s just—” He shrugged.
“You felt lonely and decided you wanted the I–A to come hold your hand. Is that it?”
“Oh go to hell!” barked Orne.
“In due time, son. In due time.” Stetson’s drooping eyelids drooped even farther. “Now … just what’re they teaching you R-and-R dummies to look for these days?”
Orne swallowed an angry reply. “Do you mean in war signs?”
“What else?”
“We’re supposed to look for fortifications, for war games among the children, for people drilling or other signs of armylike group activities, for war scars and wounds on people and buildings, for indications of wholesale destruction and … you know, things like that.”
“Gross evidence,” said Stetson. “Do you consider this adequate?”
“No I don’t!”
“You’re sooooo right,” said Stetson. “Hm-m-m.… Let’s dig a little deeper: What bothers you about these people?”
Orne sighed. “They have no spirit, no bounce. No humor. The atmosphere around this place is perpetual seriousness bordering on gloom.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I … I uh—” Orne wet his lips with his tongue. “I uh … told the Leaders’ Council one day that our people are very interested in a steady source of froolap bones for making left-handed bone china saucers.”
Stetson jerked forward. “You what?”
“I uh … told the—”
“Yeah! I got that. What happened?”
“They asked for a detailed description of the froolap and the accepted method of preparing the bones for shipment.”
“And what’d you tell them?”
“Well, I.… Well, according to my description they decided that Hamal doesn’t have any froolaps.”
“I see,” said Stetson.
“That’s what’s wrong with the place: no froolaps.”
Stetson took a deep breath, sat back. He tapped his pen on the table, stared into the distance.
* * *
Now I’ve done it, thought Orne. Why can’t I keep my big mouth shut? I’ve just convinced him that I’m nuts!
“How’re they taking to re-education?” asked Stetson.
“Oh, they’re very interested in the industrial
end. That’s why I’m here in Pitsiben village. We located a tungsten source nearby and—”
“What about their medical people?” asked Stetson. “Are they on their toes?”
“I guess so,” said Orne. “But you know how it is with medical people—they often have the idea that they already know everything. I’m making progress, though.”
“What’s their medical level?”
“They’ve got a good basic knowledge of anatomy … surgery and bone setting. That sort of thing.”
“You got any ideas why these people are so backward?” asked Stetson.
“Their history says this planet was accidentally seeded by sixteen survivors—eleven women and five men—from a Tritshain cruiser that was disabled in some engagement or other during the early part of the Rim Wars. They landed with a lifeboat without much equipment and little know-how. I take it that it was mostly the black gang that got away.”
“And here they sat until R-and-R came along,” said Stetson. “Lovely. Just lovely.”
“That was five hundred Standard years ago,” said Orne.
“And these gentle people are still farming and hunting,” murmured Stetson. “Oh lovely.” He glared up at Orne. “How long would it take a planet such as this one—granting the aggressive drive—to become a definite war menace?”
Orne said, “Well … there are two uninhabited planets in this system that they could grab for raw materials. Oh, I’d say twenty to twenty-five years after they got the industrial foundation on their own planet.”
“And how long before the aggressive core would have the know-how to go underground … if necessary … so that we’d have to blast the planet apart to get at them?”
“Six months to a year.”
“You are beginning to see the sweet little problem you R-and-R dummies are creating for us!” Stetson abruptly pointed an accusing finger at Orne. “And let us make just one little slip! Let us declare a planet aggressive and bring in an occupation force and let your spies find out we made a mistake!” He doubled his hand into a fist. “Ahah!”
“They’ve already started building the factories to produce machine tools,” said Orne. “They’re quick enough.” He shrugged. “They soak everything up like some dark gloomy sponge.”
The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert Page 23
