9 Tales of Space and Time Read online

  “It looks like there are no bandits around,” Blackie Turner scratched his head thoughtfully, “because a successful bandit is called a Duke or something, and an unsuccessful one is dead. So . . . what do we do?”

  A highly complex, mixed expression was growing on Carl Seaman’s face, compounded partly of dawning conviction, partly of diabolic intent. “I think I’ve got it! We’ve got to teach somebody whom the Duke won’t or can’t kill, and who will learn. Well, the old tyrant has three sons and seven daughters. Number One is, of course, all set to become the next Duke; Number Three is bound for the priesthood. But Number Two, having been kicked out of the temple for misbehavior, having been cursed out by the priest, and being ineligible for the succession, is currently engaged in being a Grade A hellion.

  “He’s mean and ornery and no good—but he’s smart. He’s technically a sort of captain of a crew of men, the local guardsmen. The Duke, damn him, won’t kill this boy out of hand; the kid is wild, but he’s smart . . . and he’d just love to set up as a bandit on his own!”

  “He won’t teach anybody,” Bowman sighed. “He’ll keep it as his own trade secret—the secret-weapon idea will appeal mightily to him.

  “And I still believe you’ve got the Duke placed wrong.”

  Blackie Turner exploded a short, hard sound from his chest. “Dammit, Bull, you’re as bad as the Duke. Politicians have, age after age, reported how ‘it can’t be done’, and kept other people from even trying it! Now what do you suggest, for God’s sake?”

  Bowman looked around the group of angry faces. “The thing you are not showing . . . patience. You can’t change a culture in a day; we have no authority to do any such thing anyway. We’re here to observe, to gather data, and the fact that there was a planet here at all is purely an accident. We aren’t even supposed to have landed. We’re not getting the data that we were sent to get—we’re supposed to be studying that sun—and Wake effects.”

  “I’ve got all the data I can get on the Wake,” Wainwright snapped. “Mulling the same readings over for twenty-five hundred years isn’t the usual scientific procedure. There’s a Wake here all right; Carl and I have also gathered all the data on the star that we can. We’re now gathering data on the planetary system.”

  “In your technical field, I acknowledge your competence and judgment. But none of us is competent as a cultural engineer; Gay is a psychophysician and has done a lot of studying in sociology—such as we have. But she is not an authority on the subject, even in the limited terms of what we know as the subject. Actually, our sociology is extremely limited. This is only the second time that Bureau of Exploration ships have found intelligent aliens—and the first people they found were barely able to use fire.

  “Carl, you’re an astrophysicist. How much astrophysics would we have if we’d studied only our own sun and never seen any other star?”

  “Bull, you remind me painfully of the Duke. If we don’t do something now, it may be half a century before any other expedition gets out here. How can we do something? Not how can we get tangled up in higher authority, red tape, political maneuverings, and general buck-passing.” Gay turned decisively and coldly away from Bowman, and continued to Carl Seaman.

  “Carl, can you teach Second Stonehill? Will he learn?”

  “He’s a crazy kid; in some ways he’ll be easier than Ishtock and in some ways, of course, a lot harder. The language difficulty remains. I can’t explain the whole science of chemistry, because they don’t have the faintest beginnings of the idea. They have magic potions, which is about as close as they come. So, we teach him to make a magic potion that goes boom. Blackie Magic,” he grinned toward Blackie Turner, the ship’s biochemist who’d worked out a rudimentary technique for producing a highly unreliable but usable gunpowder from the local materials.

  Bowman turned to look out the bubble dome. The Paradan equivalent of a horse, tiny in the distance, was dragging a corpse out of the squalid town. Ishtock, no doubt.

  “We’ll have difficulty reaching Second Stonehill at first,” said Gay carefully. “We’ll have to plan something; nobody in the town will have anything to do with us. They’ll probably be even more skittish now that Ishtock’s been killed.

  “It’s the old, old business of ‘The Gods forbid it; if you do it, you will have bad luck, and the Gods will punish.’ Then when somebody does do the tabooed, the tribe punishes the taboo-breaker, and they say to each other, ‘See, it is even as the authorities said. He broke the taboo, and see what bad luck he had. Proves the taboo is right.’

  “Well, the Duke has proven the taboo is right.”

  Bowman turned quietly and went down the companionway. The lock door cycled, and presently they saw him walking off across the plain toward the town.

  Carl looked after him suspiciously. “Now what’s that damned politician going to do?”

  “Oh, forget him,” Wainwright snapped. “He won’t do anything; he doesn’t have Higher Authorization to do it.”

  “Hal, the guy isn’t stupid. He’s worked out some sort of pidgin language with these people; I can’t make heads or tails of his talk with them—it isn’t Paradan, or anything else—but they apparently can.”

  “He’s probably busy studying their politics. The one thing that bothers him is that we don’t give a damn that his uncle is the political head of the Exploration Bureau. Since none of us will ever go on an expedition again, to hell with him. Let’s get to work.

  “Gay, what would that young Second want? What bait can we offer? And doesn’t he have a name other than ‘Second’?” Wainright asked.

  “His local name is Blu’t. It means ‘second’, however, and is pretty much of a title rather than a name. There’s a hierarchy system; the Duke, then the First of Stonehill Castle-town, then Second, of course, and finally Third of Stonehill. If they have other names, we haven’t gotten ’em. The daughters, of course, and the Duke’s five wives, don’t count in their society,” Gay said with suppressed anger. “One of the basic faults with this civilization is that the women have no voice in affairs; it’s just another aspect of suppression of the individual. They won’t have a sound society until there is sexual equality.”

  Carl stirred somewhat uneasily. “But what can we use for baiting Second? That’s the immediate problem.” Privately, he was somewhat unsure of Gay’s good judgment on that particular subject—particularly in view of the fact that the Paradan humanoids had, as Gay well knew, a two-to-one ratio of female to male births. Polygamy, which Gay violently hated, was something that would be a little difficult to eliminate—unless half of all female babies were slaughtered at birth.

  “Blackie, maybe you could answer that better? Psychological bait works only after contact has somehow been established. Can we make some jewels?” Gay asked.

  “Hmmm. That’s a thought! Those we found locally included diamonds, which we can’t make, but also rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. A little impure fused alumina—a little cutting on the mineralogical polishing bench . . . you’re right, Gay! I go to counterfeit some jewels!” Blackie grinned widely and rubbed his hands. His heavy black eyebrows and round, full face contrasted oddly with each other, and with the diabolic gleam of plotting as he started for the after part of the ship. “Rubies, emeralds, sapphires . . . coming right up! Have a king’s ransom for you in half an hour!”

  Gay smiled tightly. “Now there’s a move Bull Bowman could understand . . . old-fashioned bribery!”

  The Duke of Stonehill was, in more accurate translation, “The Defender of the People of Stonehill”. He was a broad, stocky man, past the middle of his people’s life span, which averaged about one eighth of Parado’s long year. The quasi-hair, quasi-feathering on his round head was gray, and broken by scars in two places. The dense, hard leather of the Paradan armor helmets was not always quite adequate to turn the blow of a heavy sword; the helmet, which at the moment jogged at the side of the saddle of his horselike mount, bore a strong resemblance to a crudely stitched crash helme
t. An affair somewhat resembling a split stovepipe could be attached to the shoulders of his armor, and the helmet sat firmly on that when the Duke was in full battle array.

  His face was heavy and immobile, deeply furrowed, with tiny creases around the gray-black eyes. He rode his mount easily and alertly. Though well along in life, his body was hard and muscular; the young guardsmen who rode along behind him seemed no straighter than he. He was a hard master, a vigorous and alert master—and master, also, of himself.

  The stench of open sewers, slops spilled in the dirty streets, and thoroughly unwashed people did not bother him; an efficient living entity learns to detect and react to the unexpected. The known and expected can be ignored. The common citizens of Stonehill-town drew aside respectfully, holding their hands together above their heads in salute as the Duke rode by.

  The Duke looked straight ahead, his eyes alone betraying to the most observant that he was a deeply worried man. His craggy face and rigidly erect body were seemingly those of a determined and fearless warrior, sure and experienced, who knew where he was going and what he would do when he got there.

  Down the twisting street the little retinue went, to stop before the Temple. The Duke’s hand went up, swept horizontally, and crisply pointed directly downward. The guardsmen, without a word, spread out in front of the Temple, dismounted, and stood to their mounts.

  The Duke dismounted and, alone, entered the worn gray granite building. Just within the doorway he halted, laid aside the ceremonial dagger and the efficient sword he wore, stood silently for a moment with bowed head, then put his hands together above his head and stood erect. “I would seek the favor of a word with you, oh my Mother’s Older Brother!” he said softly.

  “Enter, then, my Nephew,” the hidden priest answered.

  The Duke walked forward, pushed aside a hanging drape, and entered a second room. Dim light entered through slabs of an alabaster-like stone, cut and polished to translucent thinness. The Duke, stopping for a moment, leaned down and rested his hands in deep depressions worn by the friction of the hands of worshipers of two thousand years. The hard granite was hollowed out four inches deep; so it had been for all the Duke’s life—so, therefore, it must always have been, and so must it always be. These things, like the stars, never changed; and from Parado’s surface, the stars did not change in all a man’s lifetime. There was no procession of the equinox that they could experience; their year was too long.

  The Duke stood again and entered the priest’s inner chamber. The man who stood to greet him was clothed in a simple pair of white shorts; his head was frosted with sparse growth. The eyes were old but keenly alert.

  The Duke stood straight, with his hands together above his head. “I salute you, Protector of the Wisdoms.”

  The priest duplicated the gesture of greeting and said, “I salute you, Defender of the People.” His thin old arms came down and he gestured to the Duke to be seated on one of the mats on the stone floor. “How may Wisdom serve you?”

  The Duke seated himself and looked at the old priest for some moments in troubled silence. “I am afraid, Uncle, for none of the Laws or the Customs I know can help me and I do not think that there is Wisdom that can help me.

  “Today I ended the work of Ishtock, the Smith.” The Duke reached into a pouch at his side and produced a crudely forged single-barreled, single-shot flintlock pistol. “He had made a thing which was not a thing-to-be-made. It is not a thing which is a not-to-be-made, according to any Law or Custom. But it seems to me that this should be a thing-not-to-be-made, and because he made a thing which was not within any classification of Law or Custom, and without consultation with you, Uncle, or with me, I ended his work.

  “Now I ask for Wisdom’s help.”

  The priest looked at the crude pistol. “What is this thing?”

  “Ishtock was shown the making of it by the Star People. There is a potion they taught him, which is Star Fire. Some of this potion is put in the hole; a small lump of lead wrapped in grease-smeared cloth is pushed in on top. When this device is worked, the Star Fire potion coughs most loudly and expels the leaden lump. The lump is hurled farther than my strongest bowman can send a shaft. It can penetrate the strongest armor. This is a thing I do not like, but I do not find that there is either Law or Custom that forbids it.”

  The old philosopher-priest turned it over in his hands silently for some time. The Duke waited quietly as the old man thought about this strange and difficult problem. Finally the Uncle sighed and lifted his head decisively.

  “This, I think, is a thing-not-to-be-made, and these are my reasons for so holding. Consider them, Nephew, and if I be wrong, help me find Wisdom, for Wisdom is not the possession of one.” There was a slight slurring to the cadence as he spoke the last sentence, the mechanical tone of repeating an old and familiar invocation. Silently the Duke nodded.

  “This is a thing unlike the things our own people use; this is a very strange and difficult idea we must consider, one I find very hard to speak about, even in words we know. This is a thing-that-does-things; it is not a thing-that-is. It is not like a sword, or a bow, or a hammer or a saw; those are tools that men well skilled and well trained can use. A man who has patience, and values and respects his efforts and the work which is his life, can devote time and effort to practice and learn to use well the tools he lives with. A man who is lazy, or unwilling to spend hours in practice, cannot use those tools well.

  “But this is a strange thing; a fool, a child, a lout who does not respect his own efforts and work, and hence has no respect for the worth of one who has expended effort and time in learning to accomplish, can use this thing. This is a strange device that has skill and strength built into it; an infant can pull this bow to destroy the strongest and wisest man. Here is strength a man need not earn, so that men lose respect for strength and the effort of gaining skill and power.

  “Here is strength gained without self-discipline, self-training, and self-control.

  “But here, also—and this troubles me—is an idea I have never before encountered. It is not in this thing itself but what lies behind it and beyond it. It is the idea of”—the old man shook his head, as though to clear it—“I cannot clearly say it, and I’m not sure I have an idea or a delusion. But the idea occurs to me, seeing this and considering it, of things that do actions without there being thought. These have never before seemed separable; now I wonder. It is very hard to say.”

  For a man whose thinking was in a language almost totally lacking in the words to express this new meaning, who had never before encountered anything vaguely approximating his concept, the old Uncle was doing very well indeed. Vaguely, he had found the root concept that lay behind the robot, the self-guiding and self-controlling ship, the automatic lathe: that doing can be separate from knowing-understanding; that a machine can exist that is more than a tool, but is a tool-that-uses-tools.

  The Duke looked troubled and uncertain, and respectful. The situation was one that primitive people know well and have learned to live with. There are mysteries in their cosmos; there are things that are, and cannot be understood and so must be feared—but such people live with fear and are not shaken. Death is a mystery they must live with and accept as a personal end. Storms and fire are mysteries; one lives with them, accepting their existence, and accepting one’s own ignorance.

  So the Duke accepted that the old philosopher-priest saw here a mystery which he himself did not see. For him, the pistol was a weapon; the implication of machines and machine-concepts he did not see. In the society of his people he did not need to. The philosopher-priest did not need to meet in battle with the attackers with weapons, and he did not need to battle with ideas.

  The old Uncle shook himself again. “I think that idea is real, and I think it can be made to be a good and wise idea. But this thing is not the way.

  “So I hold that this is a thing-not-to-be-made.

  “You did well in ending Ishtock’s work.”

 
The Duke nodded slowly. “Ishtock was a good man and a worthy workman. It is the Star People who corrupted him.”

  The old Uncle rose to his feet and began to pace slowly back and forth, his head bowed, and his hands knit together behind his back. “That is the major problem, my Nephew. Properly, it is my problem, not yours—but now we must acknowledge that it is ours, for this is a very great problem indeed.

  “God is necessary to all peoples of intelligence; God is All-Truth, and therefore there is and there can be but one God in all the universe. I now know that until these Star People came, I had no notion of the extent of that universe—yet the fundamentals apply. There is and can be but one All-Truth. But God has many names and many attributes; each people will know some of His attributes, and some of His Names. We are greater than the animals, for we know more of His attributes. The Star People are in some respects greater than we—but in some respects they are, clearly, less than we. Had they been aware of all the attributes of All-Truth we know, they would not have corrupted Ishtock, for that was an evil thing.

  “My Nephew,” the old philosopher stopped his pacing and looked directly at the Duke, “I cannot give you an answer now. I do not understand the attributes of All-Truth they understand or what they believe. Until I do, I cannot give you Wisdom with which to work. Therefore, there is only the Wisdom that it is never wise to act without plan; action cannot be undone—but plans can be remade.

  “Since you have ended the work of Ishtock, others of the people will not be willing to listen easily to the Star People. We have some time for study.

  “The only danger of too hasty action lies with those of Stonehill-town who have no respect for Custom and Law and Wisdom.” The old Uncle looked levelly into the Duke’s eyes.

  The Duke stirred uneasily and dropped his eyes to the stone flooring. “I am not always wise, oh my Mother’s Older Brother,” he said hesitantly. “Second is a very great problem to me. There is a good mind there, but a wildness I cannot understand. If he will but be patient, in a few more periods he will be a good man.”