“Agreed. But did you give them your word not to set up your own tourist bureau?”
Cart looked startled. “The subject was never mentioned.”
“Then keeping your word doesn’t enter into it. It won’t be necessary to arrest those hirelings who manage the Earthling tourist bureaus to make them behave. To put a stop to their larcenous prices, their stingy wages, their insulting brochures. The compound of the Hilton is inside the city gates … and it’s not under diplomatic immunity the way their embassy is; it is a private business, no more, no less. Or pretends to be—I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. The Greater Helium Chamber of Commerce Hospitality Bureau can sell tours inside that compound just as legally as those other two bureaus. But at lower prices and paying higher wages and giving better service—better service because the best couriers—most experienced, best guards, best command of English—will go where wages are higher. Tawm Takus would jump at the chance and so would Kach Kachkan; their present boss is an oaf. Hell’s bells, Cart, Tawm and Kach and Tira alone could set up a better service than these bunglers—Tira selling tours in the inn’s compound, Tawm and Kach each leading groups of warrior couriers and doing the interpreting.”
“My mother holds Tira’s indentures … and I don’t think Tira wants to leave the palace.”
“Just an illustration of how easy it is. Your Lady Mother might be amused to allow one of her slaves to make fools of greedy Earthling businessmen. Do you know a noble of high honor, not greedy, and yet a shrewd head for business?”
“That’s a tall order. But …. Yes, I can think of three.”
“Put one of them in charge. Or use all three, with the senior as chairman of the board—Earthling idiom—and the most able as president and chief executive. I’ll help set it up—but I’ll keep out of sight and so will you. But you supply some initial capital—it won’t take much—and hang on to fifty-one percent of the stock through a trusted friend. Cart, if you do this, it might not be necessary to sell unused jewelry to buy gyros. If you are patient, tourists will buy those gyros for you.”
“How long would it take?”
“I won’t guess; I lack data. But it must not be hurried; you must not be greedy just to get gyros. Did my cousin ever tell you the story of the goose that laid the golden eggs?”
“No, I don’t …. Yes, he did! Many cycles ago. A ‘goose’ is an Earthling animal that lays eggs, which, so I hear, most do not. This one laid golden eggs and the peasant killed it to get at the gold inside—only there wasn’t any inside. Right?”
“Correct. So treat this goose with tender loving care and it will produce gold for you for endless cycles. Be greedy and you’ll kill it.”
“I see your point. But I think I would rather command an army in battle than run a business.”
“Pick the right man and you won’t have to run it. Just don’t let him get greedy. I’ll help. I can start by rewriting these brochures so that they will be still more attractive but not insulting.”
Cart pounded a table. “Yes! That must stop. Today! Zeb, if you are through advising me—I value your advice and thank you for it and plan to use it—I’ll send the guard for those two knaves!”
“Fine. But may I suggest something more to do to them?”
“Flog them? I may yet … but they must have a trial for that.”
“Flogging them might cause a stink with the Earthling Embassy. But this will hurt them worse in the long run. How many clerks do you have who can read English? Especially business records in English, mostly figures?”
“Eh? None. I can do it, Thuv can do it, Tira possibly. No clerks.”
“Hmm …. There are about twenty artists copying Gay Deceiver’s manuals—in English and lots of figures. Cart, send for those two managers. But send a large-enough guard to fetch back every business record in each office. And be sure to get all those brochures—confiscate them as insulting to your realm. While you are skinning them alive for the libelous language in their advertising, artists can start copying their business records.”
“What excuse do I give for seizing their records? In Helium, a common tradesman would draw sword rather than submit to such indignity.”
“Use a search warrant to—”
“What is a search warrant?”
“In this case it’s a farce. But Earthlings are used to obeying them. A document signed by Joe Doakes—anybody—with the title under his name of ‘Chief Tax Inspector of Helium.’ It orders them to produce forthwith all their records for official inspection and verification. You endorse under it: ‘Approved, Carthoris, Regent.’ Better send a zitadar’s freight chariot; the papers may be bulky. Meanwhile, enjoy yourself making those two wish they had never been hatched. Born. While your artists start copying, I’ll stay out of sight, but you send copies to me as fast as they are made. Once I’ve read them I’ll be able to write a manual on how to run a tourist bureau in Helium—and do it right; not the way they’ve been doing it. And I’ll be able, with Deety’s help, to tell you exactly how much gold has been going back to Earth when it was earned here by your citizens—and should have stayed here.”
Cart grinned. “I’m going to enjoy this. Dola! Send in my secretary. Uh … Zeb, could you spare Tira for a bit? She writes the prettiest hand in English I’ve ever seen.”
“Of course. Send a runner for her. I’ll be on my way.”
“Kaor. Zeb? No more misunderstandings between us, ever.”
“I hope not, Cart. Kaor.”
XXVIII
Zebadiah
It took five days for twenty-one artists to copy the records of the tourist bureaus. I read the copies as quickly as each file came in, still had time to put the finishing touches on Gay Deceiver. That fifth evening, after sending the servants to bed, I gathered the others in the Carter sleeping room.
“Family, aside from having Hilda edit my rough drafts of advertising copy for the Greater Helium Hospitality Company, we are, as far as I know, ready to travel. Comment? Suggestions? Motions? Jake?”
“I’m ready, son. I hate to stop studying under Mobyas Toras. God willing, I’ll come back someday.”
“We will. We could spend our tenth wedding anniversary here. Bring all the kids and let ’em ride thoats.” I added, “Doc, was Mobyas Toras able to throw any more light on Hilda’s pet ‘Black Hat’?”
“It is not my ‘pet Black Hat’!”
“He’s mine, Sharpie, because he’s dead. That’s the way I like my green-blooded aliens: dead as long as possible.”
“Zebadiah, don’t tease Aunt Hilda. This awake she was a bit morning sick.”
“I was not, either! Just something I ate. I feel fine, just fine.”
“How about you, Deety? Have you had any ‘something you ate’?”
“Me? Healthy as a thoat … and twice as hungry.”
“Just wondered, darling. You’ve been up earlier than me three mornings running.”
“Because you’ve stayed up late reading bookkeeping. You can stop wondering. I’m going to have this hungry little monster as easy as Thu lays an egg.”
“Jake, I asked you a question … but the conversation got as confused as it usually does. We ought to use Robert’s Rules of Order.”
“If we did, Zebbie, you’d always be making points of order.”
“Pipe down, Sharpie, and let your henpecked husband have the floor.”
“Jacob, do you feel henpecked?”
“Fifth Amendment. Zeb, nothing more about aliens than I already reported. Mobyas knew what I meant, said that it was long before he was hatched, then took me and introduced me to the custodian or chief historian—translates either way, I think—of the Palace of Memories. Language trouble, I should have taken Tira along. But the date is uncertain. However, it was indeed a major infestation and not from this planet. The only new item, I got just today, from Cart. He says that if the boss of the Palace of Memories doesn’t know, nobody knows—at least in Helium. He added that Helium’s written records go back more
than ten thousand cycles.”
“Did he mean ten thousand Barsoomian years? Or was that his translation of the idiom equivalent to our ‘Since the mind of man runneth not to the contrary’—that is to say, a period too long to reckon historically?”
“You ask him. I didn’t take it as an idiom.”
“Guess it doesn’t matter—the vermin are dead.”
“Zebadiah, if you don’t shut up about aliens, it will be ‘something I ate.’ In your lap.”
“Sorry, dear. Want to sit in my lap, instead?”
“Yes.”
“Then do so. Here you weigh only twenty-two kilos—less than four-tenths gee. But the surface gravity might be much more than one gee on whatever planet we are on two days from now.”
“ ‘Two days!’ Zebbie, you don’t mean it. You’re teasing.”
“I’m sorry to say I’m not teasing, Hilda dear. We’ve been here longer than we had planned. Ask your husband.”
“We didn’t plan anything. We just got out of town fast as we could scram—with aliens snapping at our tails.”
“Hilda my beloved, Zeb means ‘planned after we got here.’ But we’ve got to get you two to a civilized planet ….”
“Helium is civilized!”
“… with human beings who don’t lay eggs. Because neither Zeb nor I is an MD, much less one specializing in obstetrics. We aren’t going to take chances with you two … and we may have to check many planets. If we don’t find one fairly soon, I would favor sneaking back to Earth-Zero.”
“No!”
“My darling daughter, your husband could put us down at night in someplace such as New Zealand. Or Tasmania. Use phony names and claim to be distressed travelers, say, from Canada. We’ve lost our IDs ….”
“Jake, with the gold we have in Gay Deceiver—just a tiny fraction of it—I guarantee to buy convincing IDs anywhere. Give me an hour in the wrong end of town in any big city and I can smell out the right black market.”
“Zebadiah, you don’t know that New Zealand, or Tasmania, is any safer than Snug Harbor was—and we felt safe there. They got your cousin Ed in Sumatra—of all places! We know too much—they want us dead. I don’t want to be dead, with a baby inside me! I don’t ever want to go home! I’d rather take my chances here. Women had babies long before there were obstetricians.”
“Yes, and a lot of them died, too. Deety, I don’t want to lose you. I don’t intend to.”
“I was just going to say,” Doc Burroughs said mildly, “that Earth-Zero is a last resort. Zeb, it seems to me that we should translate outwards along both ‘tau’ and ‘teh’, both positive and negative, looking for a satisfactory Earth-Zero analog. It appears likely, albeit from meager data, that one-quantum translations have universes—thus analogs of Earth—very similar each to its nearest neighbor.”
“That may be the best search routine, Jake—but I have a suggestion we might use first.”
“Do you mean Earth-Ten?” asked Hilda. “Its people are humans just like us. And advanced, too, or they wouldn’t have spaceships. Noticed, while I was helping you to decipher that bookkeeping, that several tourists signed themselves ‘MD.’ ”
“How do you know they’re human like us?” demanded Deety. “They may lay eggs.”
“Belly buttons.”
“Thuv has a belly button. So does Dej’, so does Tira and all our girls. All Red women have belly buttons.”
“They all have lovely navels,” agreed Hilda. “All you named. But it’s not a scar from tying off the cord. The egg’s umbilicus goes to the nutriment. It’s absorbed, just before hatching—no scar, just a deep dimple. I’ve been learning about local biology; it’s fascinating.”
“Maybe these Earth-Ten tourists are like that, too.”
“Deety girl, many tourists go around with their bellies showing, as we’ve both noticed. I’ve seen too many hospital cases not to know a Caesarean scar when I see one—and I’ve seen several on tourist families. Viviparous. Jacob, it might be possible to hire one of those MD. tourists to stay over to take care of us.”
“A lottery, dearest. If we use an Earth-Ten MD, we will go to Earth-Ten, and get the best. Zeb, you said you had a suggestion for something we might try first?”
“Rotation. Now that I have, thanks to Cart, a small spectroscope custom-made by the optical experts of Helium Observatory, I can spot a Sol-type star in seconds. Check to see, I mean. No need to check white giants or red giants or red dwarfs—just any nearby star that looks promising. We can check the sheaf of ninety-degree rotations almost as fast as you can twist the dials.”
“Stipulated, Zeb—but what is the advantage? We know that Earth—our native Earth—has analogs strung out like beads. Suppose you find a star of matching spectral type of Sol. You’re assuming that it will have an Earth-like planet. Stipulating that you may be right—even probably right; it’s an appealing hypothesis—it may not have humans on it. Or perhaps it has … but they are in the Stone Age. Highly unlikely that they will match or surpass us. No, I retract that. No data, so I must refrain from assigning even a vague probability.”
“It might be an advantage, Jake. Something Mobyas told you, and you repeated to me. You were almost boyishly pleased—a great compliment, coming from him, so you told me.”
“Oh! That I had achieved theory for quantized rotation at the same time as theory for quantized translation. He said that the two had been worked out—as theory, since he still doesn’t believe that we use it—that it was learned two steps, a thousand cycles apart. The simpler—translation—coming first. It was at that point that he decided that I was a mathematician, even though a narrowly specialized one. That’s why I was, yes, boyishly gleeful. He’s hard to impress. Very!”
“Jake, if a race as intelligent and as long-lived as the race in which Mobyas Torus is a member, took nearly two thousand Earth years to go from one step to the second … possibly the queer-jointed aliens have never made that second step.”
Deety looked bright-eyed. “Pop! We would get away from them forever. I vote to rotate.”
“Deety ….”
“Yes, Zebadiah?”
“It will not be decided by vote. The only one who understands this mode of travel—your father—will decide. I’m captain, underway. But I will take Gay Deceiver where Doctor Burroughs tells me to take her.”
“Yessir.”
“Your tongue looks coated ….”
“Is not!”
“… in glory. Let’s bring this meeting to order. Unless someone else has a comment, Doctor, I think we can get underway the day after tomorrow, early. Does that suit you, sir?”
“Yes, Captain. We’ll do it that way.”
“Jacob, I don’t want to leave so soon.”
Burroughs patted his wife’s hand. “Dearest one, not one of us wants to leave this pleasant place … and our friends. But we must.”
Deety straightened up. “Aunt Hilda … I don’t want to leave Thu, and Dej’, and Cart … and Tira and all our sweet girls … and Tommy Tucker and Kach—and especially Kanakook because I can’t tell her why I must leave or that I will come back to see her!” Deety brushed at a tear. “But it wouldn’t be easier a month from now; it would be harder. If I were deciding—I’m not—I would rather leave tomorrow, not the day after. Say goodbye quickly and go! Oh, whoever thought up that nonsense about ‘parting is such sweet sorrow!’ ”
“Chap by the name of Shakespeare,” I said. “But he was writing for money. Anything for a tear. Or a laugh. Either way, he got paid. He killed ’em off, at the end—and got paid for that, too.”
“I know he did. Made me cry. What a shameful way for a grown man to make a living! I wish Kanakook could talk, I wish!”
Late the following afternoon I took the last of his new advertising copy to the prince regent—glumly; I’d put off as long as possible telling Cart that we were leaving. I was admitted, plumped it down on a table near the prince, and said, “There it is, Cart. The new come-ons for the tourists,
and the last of my notes on how to run a tourist business. Good luck with it.” I took a deep breath and blurted out, “We’re leaving tomorrow.”
The Regent did not answer. Embarrassed, I said, “Well? What are you looking grim about? You knew we planned to leave as soon as we could refit; you know, too, that I’ve stuck around longer than we had planned to help you with this job.” I indicated the new copy. “So why cloud up? We’ve enjoyed your lavish hospitality; we’ve tried to repay it by being helpful. Wish us luck and send us on our way—but smile!”
Carthoris did not smile. “Zeb, what is the meaning of the English word ‘extradition’? It’s new to me.”
That raised my eyebrows. “It’s a legal process, used on Earth, by which one nation requests another to return a fugitive from justice to the nation from which the fugitive fled. It’s more complicated than that, but that’s the gist of it. Why?”
“I thought from the context that the meaning was something of that sort … but I’m sorry to hear you confirm it.”
“Why ‘sorry’? Has some tourist been a bad boy back home? Has he asked you for sanctuary? Or has one of your own people taken refuge in the Earthling Embassy? It can happen both ways … and can get very complicated. I’m no lawyer—not on Earth and certainly not on Barsoom. But I’ve had a couple of courses in law and I was attached to an embassy once—I’ve seen extradition. What’s the situation? If I can throw light on it, I will.”
The prince was very slow in answering. “Zeb, you’ve never had to rule a nation. Or have you?”
“Me? Hell, no!”
“But you are a military officer.”
“Yes. But that’s nothing like ruling a country.”
“There is some similarity. As an officer, did you ever have to perform in your public and official capacity some duty which, in your private and personal self, you deplored?”
I thought hard and grimly. “Yes. Sometimes a duty can be very unpleasant—to put it mildly. But inescapable.”
“Zeb, less than a ten-day ago I said to you ‘No more misunderstandings between us, ever’—you remember?”
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