Far From This Earth

by Chad Oliver

  Simpson clenched his fists, but didn’t move.

  “You were sent to Arcturus III to survey the culture here. It’s my job to allocate land for Earth colonies on other planets like this one. I depend on the reports you guys send in. So what do you do? You stumble over this interesting deal where there’s a pretty elaborate culture based on a river network that’s choked with fish. They go and build some impressive squares out in the brush. It’s great stuff, but there’s nothing mysterious about it, and you know it. Just the same, you concoct this cock-and-bull story about the Wisdom of the Ancients and advise us to keep hands-off for a hundred years. You admit all this?”

  Simpson shrugged.

  “Okay, Ed. Now, I’m curious as hell. What in the devil did you think you were doing—and why did you do it?”

  Simpson took a deep breath. “You wouldn’t understand—not unless you knew the Lkklah. If you’d come with me down into the village—”

  “I don’t want to know the Lkklah—and I don’t want to wind up in a stewpot, either.”

  The look in Simpson’s eyes now was neither regret nor fear.

  It was hate.

  “I thought I was getting a hundred years of peace for some people I liked,” he said evenly. “I did it to do them a favor, and if you don’t like it I don’t give a damn.”

  Mavor got up, his green eyes narrowed with anger. “You did it to do them a favor,” he repeated. “You simple-minded jackass.”

  Simpson started for him.

  Mavor stood up straight, a trace of a smile on his lips. He looked Simpson right in the eye and waited.

  Simpson stopped.

  “It’s too late now,” Simpson said wearily. “You’ll get your lousy planet no matter what I do.”

  “Exactly,” Mavor said.

  Mavor punched the stud on his wrist radio which threw a beam to the satellite transmitter and then to the waiting space liner. The landing sphere would pick him up where it had set him down.

  “What happens now?” Simpson said, “Do I go back in the brig on bread and water?”

  “You do your job,” Mavor said shortly. “I’ll make it back to the spring.”

  Simpson frowned. “You don’t mean—”

  “Don’t tell me what I mean and what I don’t mean. You’re an anthropologist and you were hauled out here at considerable expense to do a job: establish the land-use patterns of the highest culture on Arcturus III. Do your job, and this time do it right. I’ll decide what to do about you when I see what your fieldwork looks like—and this time let’s have some facts.”

  “I’m not sure I care to do your dirty work for you,” Simpson said. “These people are my friends—”

  “Do it or go to jail,” Mavor said.

  The older man turned and started back along the trail, the north wind in his face. It was a long way back to the pickup point, and he wasted no time on backward glances.

  Edward Simpson stood for almost an hour where he was, facing the sea.

  There were tears in his eyes.

  “The bastard,” he said, over and over again. “The dirty, blind, self-righteous bastard.”

  Then, very slowly, he started down toward the plank houses and the laughter of the people who had been his friends.

  The trip from Arcturus III to Earth was uneventful.

  On November 21, 2044, Norman Mavor was back in his office. His formal blue suit was neatly pressed, his straight gray hair faultlessly combed. His green eyes were calm and patient.

  He looked a little older; that was the only change.

  “Well, Basil,” he said to the cross-legged chimpanzee, “here we go again.”

  He flipped a switch.

  “Send in Bill Shackelford,” he said, and smiled a little.

  He waited.

  Shackelford got there in ten minutes flat. He was smoking a cigar when he came in, and he had evidently fortified himself with a shot of bottled courage.

  “I guess this is where I get the old heave-ho,” Shackelford said. He looked like he hadn’t been sleeping any too well.

  I considered it,” Mavor said.

  Shackelford carefully took the cigar out of his mouth. “Can me then, Mr. Mavor. I made a mistake, I admit that. But I’m not doing any crawling.”

  Mavor raised his eyebrows. “You’ve already heard about Arcturus III, I take it?”

  “Word gets around.”

  Mavor nodded. “Unfortunate business, Bill. But Simpson just made an honest mistake; it could have happened to anyone. I don’t fire people for making mistakes, Bill.”

  “You said—”

  “I said I had considered firing you. I didn’t say what for.”

  “Are you asking me a riddle?”

  “Hardly.” Mavor tilted his chair back. “I want you to take charge of working up the new data from Arcturus III; we’ve got about two years before the hearing. I want you to make absolutely certain those natives don’t get one inch more territory than they’re entitled to under the law. Will you do it?”

  Shackelford sat down. He looked blankly at his cigar, then slipped it into the disposer.

  “It’s a dirty job,” he said finally.

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  “You mean I’m not fired?”

  “Not yet.” Mavor reached into a desk drawer and pulled out the morning’s New York Times, folded to the editorial page. “Did you see where I got my name in the paper again?”

  “I saw,” Shackelford said cautiously.

  “The usual rave notice,” Mavor observed. He cleared his throat. “Norman Mavor, Integrator of Interstellar Affairs, returned yesterday from another junket, this time to Arcturus III. He announced with evident pride that he had managed to obtain legal rights to yet another planet for colonization. This man, whose job it is to protect the rights of extraterrestrial natives, has shown a consistent disregard for the very natives he is sworn to support. It seems safe to say that no man on this planet has done more to rob native peoples of their homelands than Norman Mavor….”

  “I read it,” Shackelford said.

  “And agreed, no doubt.” Mavor put the paper away. “I think I should start a scrapbook.”

  “You don’t like natives, do you?” Shackelford said, almost in spite of himself.

  “Not particularly,” Mavor admitted.

  “And you want me to go over Arcturus III with a fine-toothed comb, to grab all we can get.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You know most of the planet will be occupied by simple hunting peoples. That means they won’t have private ownership of land—only vague band territories, and a few water-holes. Even the Lkklah, from what I’ve heard, won’t have much beyond a coastal strip and a few acres of bush.”

  “That’s right. Legally, the people of Arcturus III don’t own their world at all—they just own a few square miles of it. We do give them their hunting territories, and marginal safety zones as well. We keep out trespassers. Don’t you think that’s pretty generous?”

  Shackelford began to get very red in the face. “I think it shows a colossal gall!” he said, his voice louder than he had intended. “What’s the matter with you? What do you use instead of a heart—a cake of ice?”

  Mavor actually smiled. “Loyalty from one’s subordinates is always touching,” he said.

  Shackelford got up and began waving his arms. “You don’t have to fire me, Mavor. I quit!”

  “Never mind,” Mavor said. “Sit down.”

  Shackelford looked into the green eyes, hesitated, and sat down.

  Mavor sized his man up, and wondered.

  Was Bill ready?

  Or did he need more time, like Simpson?

  He looked down at his desk, almost embarrassed. He found it hard to go on.

  But he was no longer young, and he was tired.

  “Bill,” he said softly, “do you know why I almost fired you?”

  Shackelford, uncertain what role he was playing, just shook his head numbly.

&
nbsp; Mavor hunched forward, for once forgetting the neat press on his clothes. “You came busting in here a few months back with what you thought was a real ding-dong lulu, like the artists of Centarius VI. You thought we really had something, and do you know what you said to me?”

  Shackelford shook his head again.

  “These people aren’t just a bunch of savages, Mr. Mavor—they’re unique. They’ve done something nobody ever managed before.”

  Shackelford flushed. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Yes, you did. You meant that those people were exceptional, and entitled to special treatment. Not just a bunch of savages, as you so charmingly phrased it.”

  “Well—”

  “Well, they weren’t anything special. Most people aren’t. They were just plain old dirty people. No telepaths, no human spaceships, no child supermen with wet diapers. Isn’t that a crashing shame?”

  “Look, you said you didn’t even like natives. You’ve squeezed ’em out of every last square foot—”

  “Oh, drop dead.” Mavor rumpled his gray hair with his gnarled fingers. “I said I didn’t like natives particularly. I don’t. I’m just old-fashioned enough, just unsophisticated enough, so that I kind of admire human beings in general. I don’t give a damn whether they’re primitives or live in New York—or both. The odd notion that a man has to be some kind of freak before he’s worth anything gives me a royal pain in the sacrum.”

  “But—”

  “Listen, Junior,” Mavor said. “This is the old inhuman monster talking, and he may gobble you alive if you don’t pay attention. It’s only been a few stinking hundred years since primitive peoples were thought of as animals, and hunted down with dogs. This whiz-bang technological culture of ours is still expanding—and if you think one starry-eyed gent can stop it with his mighty idealistic soul you’ve got rocks in your head. We’ve got laws now that give them some protection at least. Sure, I think they should be let alone to live as they please. We should keep out. Maybe we should have kept out of America, too, but we didn’t. It may be news to you, Bill, but I am not the United Nations. I’m just a civil servant with a nasty job.”

  “You could get out—”

  Mavor laughed. It was a strange sound. “Would it help those people out there if you had my job?” Or Simpson, he thought. That trick of his would have been uncovered within five years—and then what would have become of the Lkklah? “Suppose all the people here were positive you were cheating a little in favor of the aliens. That’s the way they think of them, you know—as aliens. Believe me, it’s better this way.”

  Shackelford stood up, visibly shaken. “But why don’t you tell people? Why do you let them—”

  Mavor jerked his thumb toward the door. “Run along,” he said.

  Shackelford left.

  Norman Mavor was very tired.

  He shook a finger at the picture of the chimpanzee on his desk. “Basil,” he said, “you’re a fraud. Beneath that hairy exterior there beats a heart of purest gold.”

  He hated the lectures; they were the toughest part.

  “Hooray for me,” he whispered, and wondered.

  Two years later, in December, they held the hearings concerning Arcturus III.

  The copter with NORMAN MAVOR discreetly lettered on the cabin sides floated down through a flurry of snow and landed on the roof of the Adjudication Building. Mavor and Karl Hauser, his balding legal expert, climbed out.

  The wind was cold behind the driven snow.

  “When autumn comes the north wind blows,” Mavor said. “The leaves turn brown and fall, and the people know that they too must die….”

  “What the hell is that, old man?”

  “Some poetry I heard once. Nothing important. Let’s go.”

  They rode the private elevator down, and then walked along the spotless corridor. Mavor’s green suit was crisply pressed, and not a hair on his head was out of place. He walked erect, and his deep green eyes looked neither to the right nor to the left.

  “I figure we can argue Old Fishface out of a quarter of the planet,” Karl said jubilantly. “Not bad.”

  “Oh, we’re hot stuff,” Mavor said.

  Some people recognized him, and there were the usual whispered catcalls.

  Mavor gave no sign that he had heard.

  The heavy glass doors of the hearing room hissed open.

  The Colonial Development Committee was waiting.

  Together, their briefcases under their arms, Mavor and Karl Hauser walked into the chamber.

  “Give ’em hell,” Karl Hauser whispered.

  “I’ll do my best,” said Mavor.

  PILGRIMAGE

  There was something desperately wrong with Grandpa Erskine and everyone in Pryorville knew it. It was not, of course, the mere fact that Grandpa was a hopeless crackpot; that had been obvious for fifty years, and Grandpa’s radical eccentricities were as much a part of the Pryorville Way of Life as barbecues, charades, and the girl next door.

  This time it was far more alarming.

  For one thing, Grandpa was happy. He beamed benevolently at small children and his normally acid remarks had lost much of their sting. For another, Grandpa was actually working despite his firm and loudly proclaimed opinion that industriousness was the one infallible mark of a feeble mind. It was true that no one could quite figure out what Grandpa was doing, but he was working. And, most sinister of all, Grandpa had been caught in the act of being enthusiastic about the forthcoming annual Pryorville Pilgrimage. In the light of his candid manifesto that the Pilgrimage represented mankind’s closest approach yet to the Ultimate Boredom, this was downright frightening.

  Two days before the Pilgrimage all of these symptoms were much in evidence and it was apparent that a crisis was near. Grandpa Erskine woke up at the crack of dawn and did not even bother to take a potshot at the squawking blue jay in the tree outside his window with the air-rifle he kept on hand for that express purpose. He slapped down the hall in his antediluvian slippers, gently cursing the throw-rugs on the slick wood floor, and sailed into the bathroom. He lathered his face and shaved the gleaming pink skin with a straight razor, after which he applied a liberal portion of Wild Stag Lotion; since Cousin Bess particularly despised the smell of Wild Stag, saying that it made her bilious, he managed to splatter a good deal of the stuff here and there around the room. He employed two black oval brushes to slick back his rather lank white hair, carefully combed his white chin-beard, and marched back into the hall stark naked.

  There were numerous pious slogans hanging in little brown frames on the flowered yellow wallpaper. Grandpa detested them all, but he reserved his most devastating scowl for the one that read: A GOOD WOMAN WITH A GOOD BABY IN A GOOD HOUSE MAKES A GOOD MAN GODLY. About an acre of wall-space was taken up by a rogues’ gallery of faded photographs of past members of the Erskine clan with assorted wives and children. A fair number of the men were dressed in Confederate uniforms and fearsome black beards. All the women wore high-necked dresses, unbecoming hair styles, and perpetually stern looks of all-inclusive disapproval. The children were stiff, scared, and scrubbed. Grandma was there too, on the lower right. Grandpa thought she looked a little tired.

  Once in his room, Grandpa dressed with a care that almost amounted to fussiness. He pulled on his tight black trousers and looped the suspenders over his soft white shirt. He neatly knotted a black string tie, buttoned up his silk-lined vest, and shrugged into his black frock coat. He sat down on the bed and after considerable heaving and cussing managed to pull on his polished cowboy boots. He topped off the ensemble with a wide-brimmed black hat, admired his reflection in the cracked mirror, and stepped over to the bookcase. He tugged at his beard a moment, considering. He had gotten excellent results in the past with The Life of the Marquis de Sade and also with James Joyce’s Ulysses, but only with the town’s few literate people. He reached for Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which was reliable, but then changed his mind and chose a large volume entitled
General Sherman: American Hero. He chuckled gleefully to himself. General Sherman was surefire.

  Grandpa emerged from the room with the book under his arm. He clumped down the winding stairs, pausing on the landing to listen. Yes, he heard the babble of female voices; the ladies were up and about. Grandpa took a deep breath and burst into song as he continued down the stairs, giving quite a spirited rendition of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

  The feminine voices ceased abruptly.

  Grandpa marched into the living room, removed his hat, and bowed magnificently. “A good morning to you, Cousin Bess,” he said, “and to you, my dear Mrs. Jackson. Where the hell is my breakfast?”

  Cousin Bess, a large henlike woman who played the part of a Pioneer Wife in the Pilgrimage, did not bat an eye. Mrs. Jackson, who was on the Steering Committee and built along the general lines of a lead pencil, fluttered her small fan and blushed.

  “The coffee is on the stove,” Cousin Bess said.

  Grandpa sighed. “Is chivalry dead?” he asked. “Has it come to this—that a gentleman must fry his own eggs?”

  “You are no gentleman,” Cousin Bess said. “I declare.”

  Grandpa clamped his hat back on his head. “I shall dine at the hotel and air my grievances among the white trash,” he announced. “As a Pioneer Wife, my dear, you would be sacrificed to the Indians at the drop of a wagon wheel.”

  “Well, I declare,” said Cousin Bess.

  “Well, I declare,” echoed Mrs. Jackson.

  “I too declare,” Grandpa said and stomped outside, slamming the heavy door behind him.

  He paused on the large porch, stepped behind one of the white pillars to get out of the breeze, and fired up a good black cigar. He puffed on it contentedly, climbed down the porch steps, and set off toward town.

  Grandpa felt fine.

  He would have a good breakfast and four cups of coffee and then he could settle down to the day’s work.

  His only problem was that he was not yet exactly sure where he would steal the television set.

  Far above the town, where the blue of the sky gave way before the star-sprinkled blackness of space, the great ship waited. It moved only enough to compensate for the rotation of the Earth. Its mission was almost complete but its scientists were still curious. It was standard practice, of course, to work through a native, and preferably one who was ready and willing to violate his culture’s taboos for a suitable reward. But the old codger’s choice of payment had been singularly odd….