The Best Policy
Randall Garrett
From Robert Silverberg’s “Earthmen and Strangers” anthology, 1966:
When human beings begin to encounter strangers in the universe, conflict is likely to erupt. Earthmen, by and large, are an aggressive sort of people, and it would not be surprising to run into a race of equally aggressive, militaristic creatures Out There. This could produce a nasty crash as one culture meets the other in a head-on impact.
However, one feature of alien beings is their alienness: They are not likely to think the way we do. This story suggests, in a deliciously deadpan way, how a suitably clever human can befuddle and bamboozle his extraterrestrial captors simply by telling the truth. Randall Garrett, who wrote it, is a bearded, booming-voiced man who now makes his home in Texas and who has spent considerable time studying the art of creating confusion without exactly lying. His high-spirited stories have been appearing in science fiction’s leading magazines since 1944, with some time out for service with the United States Marine Corps.
The Best Policy
by Randall Garrett
Thagobar Larnimisculus Verf, Borgax of Fenigwisnok, had a long name and an important title, and he was proud of both. The title was roughly translatable as “High-Sheriff-Admiral of Fenigwisnok,” and Fenigwisnok was a rich and important planet in the Dal Empire. Title and name looked very impressive together on documents, of which there were a great many to be signed.
Thagobar himself was a prime example of his race, a race of power and pride. Like the terrestrial turtles, he had both an exo- and an endoskeleton, although that was his closest resemblance to the chelonia. He was humanoid in general shape, looking something like a cross between a medieval knight in full armor and a husky football player clad for the gridiron. His overall color was similar to that of a well-boiled lobster, fading to a darker purple at the joints of his exoskeleton. His clothing was sparse, consisting only of an abbreviated kilt embroidered with fanciful designs and emblazoned with a swirl of glittering gems. The emblem of his rank was engraved in gold on his plastron and again on his carapace, so that he would be recognizable both coming and going.
All in all, he made quite an impressive figure, in spite of his five feet two in height.
As commander of his own spaceship, the Verf, it was his duty to search out and explore planets which could be colonized by his race, the Dal. This he had done diligently for many years, following exactly his General Orders as a good commander should.
And it had paid off. He had found some nice planets in his time, and this one was the juiciest of the lot.
Gazing at the magniscreen, he rubbed his palms together in satisfaction. His ship was swinging smoothly in an orbit high above a newly-discovered planet, and the magniscreen was focused on the landscape below. No Dal ship had ever been in this part of the galaxy before, and it was comforting to have discovered a colonizable planet so quickly.
“A magnificent planet!” he said. “A wonderful planet! Look at that green! And the blue of those seas!” He turned to Lieutenant Pelquesh. “What do you think? Isn’t it fine?”
“It certainly is, Your Splendor,” said Pelquesh. “You should receive another citation for this one.”
Thagobar started to say something, then suddenly cut it short. His hands flew out to the controls and slapped at switch plates; the ship’s engines squealed with power as they brought the ship to a dead stop in relation to the planet below. In the magniscreen, the landscape became stationary.
He twisted the screen’s magnification control up, and the scene beneath the ship ballooned outward, spilling off the edges as the surface came closer.
“There!” he said. “Pelquesh, what is that?”
It was a purely rhetorical question. The wavering currents of two hundred odd miles of atmosphere caused the image to shimmer uncertainly, but there was no doubt that it was a city of some kind. Lieutenant Pelquesh said as much.
“Plague take it!” Thagobar snarled. “An occupied planet! Only intelligent beings build cities.”
“That’s so,” agreed Pelquesh.
Neither of them knew what to do. Only a few times in the long history of the Dal had other races been found—and under the rule of the Empire, they had all slowly become extinct. Besides, none of them had been very intelligent, anyway.
“We’ll have to ask General Orders,” Thagobar said at last. He went over to another screen, turned it on, and began dialing code numbers into it.
Deep in the bowels of the huge ship, the General Orders robot came sluggishly to Me. In its vast memory lay ten thousand years of accumulated and ordered facts, ten thousand years of the experiences of the Empire, ten thousand years of the final decisions on every subject ever considered by Thagobar’s race. It was more than an encyclopedia—it was a way of life.
In a highly logical way, the robot sorted through its memory until it came to the information requested by Thagobar; then it relayed the data to the screen.
“Hm-m-m,” said Thagobar. “Yes. General Order 333,953,-216-A-j, Chapter MMCMXLDC, Paragraph 402. ‘First discovery of an intelligent or semi-intelligent species shall be followed by the taking of a specimen selected at random. No contact shall be made until the specimen has been examined according to Psychology Directive 659-B, Section 888,077-q, at the direction of the Chief Psychologist. The data will be correlated by General Orders. If contact has already been made inadvertently, refer to GO 472,678-R-s, Ch. MMMCCX, Par. 553. Specimens shall be taken according to…’ ”
He finished reading off the General Order and then turned to the lieutenant. “Pelquesh, you get a spaceboat ready to pick up a specimen. I’ll notify psychologist Zandoplith to be ready for it.”
Ed Magruder took a deep breath of spring air and closed his eyes. It was beautiful; it was filled with spicy aromas and tangy scents that, though alien, were somehow homelike—more homelike than Earth.
He was a tall, lanky man, all elbows and knees, with nondescript brown hair and bright hazel eyes that tended to crinkle with suppressed laughter.
He exhaled the breath and opened his eyes. The city was still awake, but darkness was coming fast. He liked his evening stroll, but it wasn’t safe to be out after dark on New Hawaii, even yet. There were little night things that fluttered softly in the air, giving little warning of their poisonous bite, and there were still some of the larger predators in the neighborhood. He started walking back toward New Hilo, the little city that marked man’s first foothold on the new planet.
Magruder was a biologist. In the past ten years, he had prowled over half a dozen planets, collecting specimens, dissecting them with precision, and entering the results in his notebooks. Slowly, bit by bit, he was putting together a pattern—a pattern of life itself. His predecessors stretched in a long line, clear back to Karl von Linne, but none of them had realized what was missing in their work. They had had only one type of life to deal with—terrestrial life. And all terrestrial life is, after all, homogenous.
But, of all the planets he’d seen, he liked New Hawaii best. It was the only planet besides Earth where a man could walk around without a protective suit of some kind—at least, it was the only one discovered so far.
He heard a faint swishing in the air over his head and glanced up quickly. The night things shouldn’t be out this early!
And then he saw that it wasn’t a night thing; it was a metallic-looking globe of some kind, and—
There was a faint greenish glow that suddenly flashed from a spot on the side of the globe, and all went blank for Ed Magruder.
Thagobar Verf watched dispassionately as Lieutenant Pelquesh brought the unconscious specimen into the biological testing section. It was a queer-looking specimen; a soft-skinned, sluglike paro
dy of a being, with a pale, pinkish-tan complexion and a repulsive, fungoidal growth on its head and various other areas.
The biologists took the specimen and started to work on it. They took nips of skin and samples of blood and various electrical readings from the muscles and nerves.
Zandoplith, the Chief Psychologist, stood by the commander, watching the various operations.
It was Standard Procedure for the biologists; they went about it as if they would with any other specimen that had been picked up. But Zandoplith was going to have to do a job he had never done before. He was going to have to work with the mind of an intelligent being.
He wasn’t worried, of course; it was all down in the Handbook, every bit of Proper Procedure. There was nothing at all to worry about.
As with all other specimens, it was Zandoplith’s job to discover the Basic Reaction Pattern. Any given organism could react only in a certain very large, but finite number of ways, and these ways could be reduced to a Basic Pattern. All that was necessary to destroy a race of creatures was to get their Basic Pattern and then give them a problem that couldn’t be solved by using that pattern. It was all very simple, and it was all down in the Handbook.
Thagobar turned his head from the operating table to look at Zandoplith. “Do you think it really will be possible to teach it our language?”
“The rudiments, Your Splendor,” said the psychologist. “Ours is, after all, a very complex language. We’ll give him all of it, of course, but it is doubtful whether he can assimilate more than a small portion of it. Our language is built upon logic, just as thought is built upon logic. Some of the lower animals are capable of the rudiments of logic, but most are unable to grasp it.”
“Very well; we’ll do the best we can. I, myself, will question it.”
Zandoplith looked a little startled. “But, Your Splendor! The questions are all detailed in the Handbook!”
Thagobar Verf scowled. “I can read as well as you, Zandoplith. Since this is the first semi-intelligent life discovered in the past thousand years or so, I think the commander should be the one to do the questioning.”
“As you say, Your Splendor,” the psychologist agreed.
Ed Magruder was placed in the Language Tank when the biologists got through with him. Projectors of light were fastened over his eyes so that they focused directly on his retinas; sound units were inserted into his ears; various electrodes were fastened here and there; a tiny network of wires was attached to his skull. Then a special serum which the biologists had produced was injected into his bloodstream. It was all very efficient and very smoothly done. Then the Tank was closed, and a switch was thrown.
Magruder felt himself swim dizzily up out of the blackness. He saw odd-looking, lobster-colored things moving around while noises whispered and gurgled into his ears.
Gradually, he began to orient himself. He was being taught to associate sounds with actions and things.
Ed Magruder sat in a little four-by-six room, naked as a jaybird, looking through a transparent wall at a sextette of the aliens he had seen so much of lately.
Of course, it wasn’t these particular bogeys he’d been watching, but they looked so familiar that it was hard to believe they were here in the flesh. He had no idea how long he’d been learning the language; with no exterior references, he was lost.
Well, he thought, I’ve picked up a good many specimens, and here I am, a specimen myself. He thought of the treatment he’d given his own specimens and shuddered a little.
Oh, well. Here he was; might as well put on a good show—stiff upper lip, chin up, and all that sort.
One of the creatures walked up to an array of buttons and pressed one. Immediately, Magruder could hear sounds from the room on the Other side of the transparent wall.
Thagobar Verf looked at the specimen and then at the question sheet in his hand. “Our psychologists have taught you our language, have they not?” he asked coldly.
The specimen bobbled his head up and down. “Yup. And that’s what I call real force-feeding, too.”
“Very well; I have some questions to ask; you will answer them truthfully.”
“Why, sure,” Magruder said agreeably. “Fire away.”
“We can tell if you are lying,” Thagobar continued. “It will do you no good to tell us untruths. Now—what is your name?”
“Theophilus Q. Hassenpfeffer,” Magruder said blandly.
Zandoplith looked at a quivering needle and then shook his head slowly as he looked up at Thagobar.
“That is a lie,” said Thagobar.
The specimen nodded. “It sure is. That’s quite a machine you’ve got there.”
“It is good that you appreciate the superiority of our instruments,” Thagobar said grimly. “Now—your name.”
“Edwin Peter St. John Magruder.”
Psychologist Zandoplith watched the needle and nodded.
“Excellent,” said Thagobar. “Now, Edwin—”
“Ed is good enough,” said Magruder.
Thagobar blinked. “Good enough for what?”
“For calling me.”
Thagobar turned to the psychologist and mumbled something. Zandoplith mumbled back. Thagobar spoke to the specimen.
“Is your name Ed?”
“Strictly speaking, no,” said Magruder.
“Then why should I call you that?”
“Why not? Everyone else does,” Magruder informed him.
Thagobar consulted further with Zandoplith and finally said: “We will come back to that point later. Now… uh… Ed, what do you call your home planet?”
“Earth.”
“Good. And what does your race call itself?”
“Homo sapiens.”
“And the significance of that, if any?”
Magruder considered. “It’s just a name,” he said, after a moment.
The needle waggled.
“Another lie,” said Thagobar.
Magruder grinned. “Just testing. That really is a whizzer of a machine.”
Thagobar’s throat and face darkened a little as his copper-bearing blue blood surged to the surface in suppressed anger. “You said that once,” he reminded blackly.
“I know. Well, if you really want to know, Homo sapiens means ‘wise man.’ ”
Actually, he hadn’t said “wise man”; the language of the Dal didn’t quite have that exact concept, so Magruder had to do the best he could. Translated back into English, it would have come out something like “beings with vast powers of mind.”
When Thagobar heard this, his eyes opened a little wider, and he turned his head to look at Zandoplith. The psychologist spread his horny hands; the needle hadn’t moved.
“You seem to have high opinions of yourselves,” said Thagobar, looking back at Magruder.
“That’s possible,” agreed the Earthman.
Thagobar shrugged, looked back at his list, and the questioning went on. Some of the questions didn’t make too much sense to Magruder; others were obviously psychological testing.
But one thing was quite clear, the lie detector was indeed quite a whizzer. If Magruder told the exact truth, it didn’t indicate. But if he lied just the least tiny bit, the needle on the machine hit the ceiling—and, eventually, so did Thagobar.
Magruder had gotten away with his first few lies—they were unimportant, anyway—but finally, Thagobar said: “You have lied enough, Ed.”
He pressed a button, and a nerve-shattering wave of pain swept over the Earthman. When it finally faded, Magruder found his belly muscles tied in knots, his fists and teeth clenched, and tears running down his cheeks. Then nausea overtook him, and he lost the contents of his stomach.
Thagobar Verf turned distastefully away. “Put him back in his cell and clean up the interrogation chamber. Is he badly hurt?”
Zandoplith had already checked his instruments. “I think not, Your Splendor; it is probably only slight shock and nothing more. However, we will have to retest him in the next s
ession anyhow. We’ll know then.”
Magruder sat on the edge of a shelflike thing that doubled as a low table and a high bed. It wasn’t the most comfortable seat in the world, but it was all he had in the room; the floor was even harder.
It had been several hours since he had been brought here, and he still didn’t feel good. That stinking machine had hurt! He clenched his fists; he could still feel the knot in his stomach and—
And then he realized that the knot in his stomach hadn’t been caused by the machine; he had thrown that off a long time back.
The knot was caused by a towering, thundering-great, ice-cold rage.
He thought about it for a minute and then broke out laughing. Here he was, like a stupid fool, so angry that he was making himself sick! And that wasn’t going to do him or the colony any good.
It was obvious that the aliens were up to no good, to say the least. The colony at New Hilo numbered six thousand souls—the only humans on New Hawaii, except for a couple of bush expeditions. If this ship tried to take over the planet, there wouldn’t be a devil of a lot the colonists could do about it. And what if the aliens found Earth itself? He had no idea what kind of armament this spaceship carried nor how big it was—but it seemed to have plenty of room inside it.
He knew it was up to him. He was going to have to do something, somehow. What? Could he get out of his cell and try to smash the ship?
Nope. A naked man inside a bare cell was about as helpless as a human being can get. What, then?
Magruder lay on his back and thought about it for a long time.
Presently, a panel opened in the door and a red-violet face appeared on the other side of a transparent square in the door.
“You are doubtless hungry,” it said solemnly. “An analysis of your bodily processes has indicated what you need in the way of sustenance. Here.”
The quart-size mug that slid out of a niche in the wall had an odd aroma drifting up from it. Magruder picked it up and looked inside. It was a grayish-tan, semitranslucent liquid about the consistency of thin gravy. He touched the surface with his finger and then touched the finger with his tongue. Its palate appeal was definitely on the negative side of zero.
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