The Best Policy

by Randall Garrett

  He could guess what it contained: a score, more or less, of various amino acids, a dozen vitamins, a handful of carbohydrates, and a few percent of other necessities. A sort of pseudo-protoplasmic soup; an overbalanced meal.

  He wondered whether it contained anything that would do him harm, decided it probably didn’t. If the aliens wanted to dope him, they didn’t need to resort to subterfuge, and besides, this was probably the gunk they had fed him while he was learning the language.

  Pretending to himself that it was beef stew, he drank it down. Maybe he could think better on a full stomach. And, as it turned out, he was right.

  Less than an hour later, he was back in the interrogation chamber. This tune, he was resolved to keep Thagobar’s finger off that little button.

  After all, he reasoned to himself, I might want to lie to someone, when and if I get out of this. There’s no point in getting a conditioned reflex against it.

  And the way the machine had hurt him, there was a strong possibility that he just might get conditioned if he took very many jolts like that.

  He had a plan. It was highly nebulous—little more than a principle, really, and it was highly flexible. He would simply have to take what came, depend on luck, and hope for the best.

  He sat down in the chair and waited for the wall to become transparent again. He had thought there might be a way to get out as he was led from his cell to the interrogation chamber, but he didn’t feel like tackling six heavily armored aliens all at once. He wasn’t even sure he could do much with just one of them. Where do you slug a guy whose nervous system you know nothing about, and whose body is plated like a boiler?

  The wall became transparent, and the alien was standing on the other side of it. Magruder wondered whether it was the same being who had questioned him before, and after looking at the design on the plastron, decided that it was.

  He leaned back in his chair, folded his arms, and waited for the first question.

  Thagobar Verf was a very troubled Dal. He had very carefully checked the psychological data with General Orders after the psychologists had correlated it according to the Handbook. He definitely did not like the looks of his results.

  General Orders merely said: “No race of this type has ever been found in the galaxy before. In this case, the commander will act according to GO 234,511,006-R-g, Ch. MMCDX, Par. 666.”

  After looking up the reference, he had consulted with Zandoplith. “What do you think of it?” he asked. “And why doesn’t your science have any answers?”

  “Science, Your Splendor,” said Zandoplith, “is a process of obtaining and correlating data. We haven’t enough data yet, true, but we’ll get it. We absolutely must not panic at this point; we must be objective, purely objective.” He handed Thagobar another printed sheet. “These are the next questions to be asked, according to the Handbook of Psychology.”

  Thagobar felt a sense of relief. General Orders had said that in a case like this, the authority of action was all dependent on his own decision; it was nice to know that the scientist knew what he was doing, and had authority to back it.

  He cut off the wall polarizer and faced the specimen on the other side.

  “You will answer the next several questions in the negative,” Thagobar said. “It doesn’t matter what the real and truthful answer may be, you will say No; is that perfectly clear?”

  “No,” said Magruder.

  Thagobar frowned. The instructions seemed perfectly lucid to him; what was the matter with the specimen? Was he possibly more stupid than they had at first believed?

  “He’s lying,” said Zandoplith.

  It took Thagobar the better part of half a minute to realize what had happened, and when he did, his face became unpleasantly dark. But there was nothing else he could do; the specimen had obeyed orders.

  His Splendor took a deep breath, held it for a moment, eased it out, and began reading the questions in a mild voice.

  “Is your name Edwin?”

  “No.”

  “Do you live on the planet beneath us?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have six eyes?”

  “No.”

  After five minutes of that sort of thing, Zandoplith said: “That’s enough, Your Splendor; it checks out; his nervous system wasn’t affected by the pain. You may proceed to the next list.”

  “From now on, you will answer truthfully,” Thagobar said. “Otherwise, you will be punished again. Is that clear?”

  “Perfectly clear,” said Magruder.

  Although his voice sounded perfectly calm, Magruder, on the other side of the transparent wall, felt just a trifle shaky. He would have to think quickly and carefully from now on. He didn’t believe he’d care to take too much time in answering, either.

  “How many Homo sapiens are there?”

  “Several billions.” There were actually about four billions, but the Dal equivalent of “several” was vaguely representative of numbers larger than five, although not necessarily so.

  “Don’t you know the actual number?”

  “No,” said Magruder. Not right down to the man, I don’t.

  The needle didn’t quiver. Naturally not—he was telling the truth, wasn’t he?

  “All of your people surely aren’t on Earth, then?” Thagobar asked, deviating slightly from the script. “In only one city?”

  With a sudden flash of pure joy, Magruder saw the beautifully monstrous mistake the alien had made. He had not suspected until now that Earthmen had developed space travel. Therefore, when he had asked the name of Magruder’s home planet, the answer he’d gotten was “Earth.” But the alien had been thinking of New Hawaii! Wheeee!

  “Oh, no,” said Magruder truthfully. “We have, only a few thousand down there.” Meaning, of course, New Hawaii, which was “down there.”

  “Then most of your people have deserted Earth?”

  “Deserted Earth?” Magruder sounded scandalized. “Heavens to Betsy, no! We have merely colonized; we’re all under one central government.”

  “How many are there in each colony?” Thagobar had completely abandoned the script now.

  “I don’t know exactly,” Magruder told him, “but not one of our colonized planets has any more occupants on it than Earth.”

  Thagobar looked flabbergasted and flicked off the sound transmission to the prisoner with a swift movement of his finger.

  Zandoplith looked pained. “You are not reading the questions from the Handbook,” he complained.

  “I know, I know. But did you hear what he said?”

  “I heard it.” Zandoplith’s voice sounded morose.

  “It wasn’t true, was it?”

  Zandoplith drew himself up to his full five feet one. “Your Splendor, you have taken it upon yourself to deviate from the Handbook, but I will not permit you to question the operation of the Reality Detector. Reality is truth, and therefore truth is reality; the Detector hasn’t erred since—since ever!”

  “I know,” Thagobar said hastily. “But do you realize the implications of what he said? There are a few thousand people on the home planet; all the colonies have less. And yet, there are several billion of his race! That means they have occupied around ten million planets!”

  “I realize it sounds queer,” admitted Zandoplith, “but the Detector never lies!” Then he realized whom he was addressing and added, “Your Splendor.”

  But Thagobar hadn’t noticed the breach of etiquette. “That’s perfectly true. But, as you said, there’s something queer here. We must investigate further.”

  Magruder had already realized that his mathematics was off kilter; he was thinking at high speed.

  Thagobar’s voice said: “According to our estimates, there are not that many habitable planets in the galaxy. How do you account, then, for your statement?”

  With a quick shift of viewpoint, Magruder thought of Mars, so many light-years away. There had been a scientific outpost on Mars for a long time, but it was a devil of a long
way from being a habitable planet.

  “My people,” he said judiciously, “are capable of living on planets with surface conditions which vary widely from those of Earth.”

  Before Thagobar could ask anything else, another thought occurred to the Earthman. The thousand-inch telescope on Luna had discovered, spectroscopically, the existence of large planets in the Andromeda Nebula. “In addition,” he continued blandly, “we have found planets in other galaxies than this.”

  There! That ought to confuse them!

  Again the sound was cut off, and Magruder could see the two aliens in hot discussion. When the sound came back again, Thagobar had shifted to another tack.

  “How many spaceships do you have?”

  Magruder thought that one over for a long second. There were about a dozen interstellar ships in the Earth fleet—not nearly enough to colonize ten million planets. He was in a jam!

  No! Wait! A supply ship came to New Hawaii ever six months. But there were no ships on New Hawaii.

  “Spaceships?” Magruder looked innocent. “Why, we have no spaceships.”

  Thagobar Verf shut off the sound again, and this time, he made the wall opaque, too. “No spaceships? No spaceships ? He lied… I hope?”

  Zandoplith shook his head dolefully. “Absolute truth.”

  “But—but—but—”

  “Remember what he said his race called themselves?” the psychologist asked softly.

  Thagobar blinked very slowly. When he spoke, his voice was a hoarse whisper. “Beings with minds of vast power.”

  “Exactly,” said Zandoplith.

  Magruder sat in the interrogation chamber for a long time without hearing or seeing a thing. Had they made sense out of his statements? Were they beginning to realize what he was doing? He wanted to chew his nails, bite his lips, and tear his hah-; instead, he forced himself to outward calm. There was a long way to go yet.

  When the wall suddenly became transparent once more, he managed to keep from jumping.

  “Is it true,” asked Thagobar, “that your race has the ability to move through space by means of mental power alone?”

  For a moment, Magruder was stunned. It was beyond his wildest expectations. But he rallied quickly.

  How does a man walk? he thought.

  “It is true that by using mental forces to control physical energy,” he said carefully, “we are able to move from place to place without the aid of spaceships or other such machines.”

  Immediately, the wall blanked again.

  Thagobar turned around slowly and looked at Zandoplith. Zandoplith’s face looked a dirty crimson; the healthy violet had faded.

  “I guess you’d best call in the officers,” he said slowly; “we’ve got a monster on our hands.”

  It took three minutes for the twenty officers of the huge Verf to assemble in the Psychology Room. When they arrived, Thagobar asked them to relax and then outlined the situation.

  “Now,” he said, “are there any suggestions?”

  They were definitely not relaxed now. They looked as tense as bowstrings.

  Lieutenant Pelquesh was the first to speak. “What are the General Orders, Your Splendor?”

  “The General Orders,” Thagobar said, “are that we are to protect our ship and our race, if necessary. The methods for doing so are left up to the commander’s discretion.”

  There was a rather awkward silence. Then a light seemed to come over Lieutenant Pelquesh’s face. “Your Splendor, we could simply drop an annihilation bomb on the planet.”

  Thagobar shook his head. “I’ve already thought of that. If they can move themselves through space by means of thought alone, they would escape, and their race would surely take vengeance for the vaporization of one of their planets.”

  Gloom descended.

  “Wait a minute,” said Pelquesh. “If he can do that, why hasn’t he escaped from us?”

  Magruder watched the wall become transparent. The room was filled with aliens now. The big cheese, Thagobar, was at the pickup.

  “We are curious,” he said, “to know why, if you can go anywhere at will, you have stayed here. Why don’t you escape?”

  More fast thinking. “It is not polite,” Magruder said, “for a guest to leave his host until the business at hand is finished.”

  “Even after we… ah… disciplined you?”

  “Small discomforts can be overlooked, especially when the host is acting in abysmal ignorance.”

  There was a whispered question from one of Thagobar’s underlings and a smattering of discussion, and then:

  “Are we to presume, then, that you bear us no ill will?”

  “Some,” admitted Magruder candidly. “It is only because of your presumptuous behavior toward me, however, that I personally am piqued. I can assure you that my race as a whole bears no ill will whatever toward your race as a whole or any member of it.”

  Play it up big, Magruder, he told himself. You’ve got ’em rocking—I hope.

  More discussion on the other side of the wall.

  “You say,” said Thagobar, “that your race holds no ill will toward us; how do you know?”

  “I can say this,” Magruder told him; “I know—beyond any shadow of a doubt—exactly what every person of my race thinks of you at this very moment.

  “In addition, let me point out that I have not been harmed as yet; they would have no reason to be angry. After all, you haven’t been destroyed yet.”

  Off went the sound. More heated discussion. On went the sound.

  “It has been suggested,” said Thagobar, “that, in spite of appearances, it was intended that we pick you, and you alone, as a specimen. It is suggested that you were sent to meet us.”

  Oh, brother! This one would have to be handled with very plush gloves.

  “I am but a very humble member of my race,” Magruder said as a prelude—mostly to gain time. But wait! He was an extraterrestrial biologist, wasn’t he? “However,” he continued with dignity, “my profession is that of meeting alien beings. I was, I must admit, appointed to the job.”

  Thagobar seemed to grow tenser. “That, in turn, suggests that you knew we were coming.”

  Magruder thought for a second. It had been predicted for centuries that mankind would eventually meet an intelligent alien race.

  “We have known you were coming for a long time,” he said quite calmly.

  Thagobar was visibly agitated now. “In that case, you must know where our race is located in the galaxy; you must know where our home base is.”

  Another tough one. Magruder looked through the wall at. Thagobar and his men standing nervously on the other side of it. “I know where you are,” he said, “and I know exactly where every one of your fellows is.”

  There was sudden consternation on the other side of the wall, but Thagobar held his ground.

  “What is our location then?”

  For a second, Magruder thought they’d pulled the rug out from under him at last. And then he saw that there was a per feet explanation. He’d been thinking of dodging so long that he almost hadn’t seen the honest answer.

  He looked at Thagobar pityingly. “Communication by voice is so inadequate. Our coordinate system would be completely unintelligible to you, and you did not teach me yours if you will recall.” Which was perfectly true; the Dal would have been foolish to teach their coordinate system to a specimen—the clues might have led to their home base. Besides, General Orders forbade it.

  More conversation on the other side.

  Thagobar again: “If you are in telepathic communication with your fellows, can you read our minds?”

  Magruder looked at him superciliously. “I have principles, as does my race; we do not enter any mind uninvited.”

  “Do the rest of your people know the location of our bases, then?” Thagobar asked plaintively.

  Magruder’s voice was placid. “I assure you, Thagobar Verf, that every one of my people, on every planet belonging to our race, knows as mu
ch about your home base and its location as I do.”

  Magruder was beginning to get tired of the on-and-off sound system, but he resigned himself to wait while the aliens argued among themselves.

  “It has been pointed out,” Thagobar said, after a few minutes, “that it is very odd that your race has never contacted us before. Ours is a very old and powerful race, and we have taken planets throughout a full half of the galaxy, and yet, your race has never been seen nor heard of before.”

  “We have a policy,” said Magruder, “of not disclosing our presence to another race until it is to our advantage to do so. Besides, we have no quarrel with your race, and we have never had any desire to take your homes away from you. Only if a race becomes foolishly and insanely belligerent do we trouble ourselves to show them our power.”

  It was a long speech—maybe too long. Had he stuck strictly to the truth? A glance at Zandoplith told him; the chief psychologist had kept his beady black eyes on the needle all through the long proceedings, and kept looking more and more worried as the instrument indicated a steady flow of truth.

  Thagobar looked positively apprehensive. As Magruder had become accustomed to the aliens, it had become more and more automatic to read their expressions. After all, he held one great advantage: they had made the mistake of teaching him their language. He knew them, and they didn’t know him.

  Thagobar said: “Other races, then, have been… uh… punished by yours?”

  “Not in my lifetime,” Magruder told him. He thought of Homo neanderthalensis and said: “There was a race, before my time, which defied us. It no longer exists.”

  “Not in your lifetime? How old are you?”

  “Look into your magniscreen at the planet below,” said the Earthman in a solemn tone. “When I was born, not a single one of the plants you see existed on Earth. The continents of Earth were nothing like that; the seas were entirely different.

  “The Earth on which I was born had extensive ice caps; look below you, and you will see none. And yet, we have done nothing to change the planet you see; any changes that have taken place have come by the long process of geologic evolution.”