"Let us speak of pleasanter things," Bbulas interrupted again.
"Tomorrow night, we are holding a potlatch and we should be honored to
have the pleasure of your company."
"Delighted," Raoul bowed.
"I was wrong," Cyril said. "This is not a remarkable example of
cultural diffusion. It is a remarkable example of a diffuse culture."
* * * * *
"But I cannot understand," Raoul said to Cyril later, in the imagined
privacy of their hut. "Why are you suspicious of this charming,
friendly people, so like the natives that the textbooks lead one to
expect?"
_Naturally_, Skkiru--having made his way in through a secret passage
known only to the entire population of the city and explicitly designed
for espionage, and was spying outside the door--thought, _we are
textbook natives. Not only because we were patterned on literary
prototypes, but because Bbulas never really left school--in spirit,
anyway. He is the perpetual undergraduate and his whole scheme is
nothing more than a grandiose Class Night._
"Precisely what I've been thinking," Cyril said. "So like the
textbooks--all the textbooks put together."
"What do you mean? Surely it is possible for analogous cultural
features to develop independently in different cultures?"
"Oh, it's possible, all right. Probability--particularly when it comes
to such a great number of features packed into one small culture--is
another matter entirely."
"I cannot understand you," Raoul objected. "What do you want of these
poor natives? To me, it seems everything has been of the most idyllic.
Rapport was established almost immediately."
"A little too immediately, perhaps, don't you think? You haven't had
much experience, Raoul, so you might not be aware it usually isn't as
easy as this."
Cyril flung himself down on one of the cots that had been especially
hardened for Terrestrial use and blew smoke rings at the ceiling.
Skkiru was dying for a cigarette himself, but that was another cultural
feature the Snaddrath had to dispense with now--not that smoking was
insufficiently primitive, but that tobacco was not indigenous to the
planet.
"That is because they are not a hostile people," Raoul insisted.
"Apparently they have no enemies. Nonetheless, they are of the utmost
interest. I hardly expected to land a society like this on my very
first field trip," he added joyfully. "Never have I heard of so dynamic
a culture! Never!"
"Nor I," Cyril agreed, "and this is far from being my very first
field trip. It has a terribly large number of strange elements in
it--strange, that is, when considered in relationship to the society
as a whole. Environmental pressures seem to have had no effect upon
their culture. For instance, don't you think it rather remarkable that
a people with such an enormously complex social structure as theirs
should wear clothing so ill adapted to protect them from the weather?"
* * * * *
"Well," Raoul pointed out enthusiastically--another undergraduate type,
Skkiru observed, happiest with matters that either resembled those in
books or came directly from them, so that they could be explicitly
pigeonholed--"the Indians of Tierra del Fuego wore nothing but
waist-length sealskin capes even in the bitterest cold. Of course, this
civilization is somewhat more advanced than theirs in certain ways, but
one finds such anomalies in all primitive civilizations, does one not?"
"That's true to a certain extent. But one would think they'd at least
have developed boots to cope with the mud. And why was the beggar the
only one to wear mudshoes? Why, moreover--" Cyril narrowed his eyes and
pointed his cigarette at Raoul--"did he wear them only the first time
and subsequently appear barefooted?"
"That _was_ odd," Raoul admitted, "but--"
"And the high priest spoke of thrashing that boy. You should know, old
chap, that cruelty to children is in inverse ratio to the degree of
civilization."
Raoul stared at his colleague. "My faith, are you suggesting that we go
see how hard they hit him, then?"
Cyril laughed. "All I suggest is that we keep a very open mind about
this society until we can discover what fundamental attitudes are
controlling such curious individual as well as group behavior."
"But assuredly. That is what we are here for, is it not? So why are you
disturbing yourself so much?"
But it was Raoul, Skkiru thought, who appeared much more disturbed
than Cyril. It was understandable--the younger man was interested only
in straightforward ethnologizing and undoubtedly found the developing
complications upsetting.
"Look," Cyril continued. "They call this place a hut. It's almost a
palace."
_My God_, Skkiru thought, _what kind of primitive conditions are they
used to?_
"That is largely a question of semantics," Raoul protested. "But
regard--the roof leaks. Is that not backward enough for you, eh?" And
Raoul moved to another part of the room to avoid receiving indisputable
proof of the leakage on his person. "What is more, the sanitary
arrangements are undeniably primitive."
"The roofs of many palaces leak, and there is no plumbing to speak of,
and still they are not called huts. And tell me this--why should the
metal-workers be the pariahs? Why _metal-workers_?"
Raoul's eyes opened wide. "You know there is often an outcast class
with no apparent rationale behind its establishment. All the tapes--"
"True enough, but you will remember that the reason the smiths of
Masai were pariahs was that they manufactured weapons which might tempt
people to commit bloodshed. I keep remembering them, somehow. I keep
remembering so many things here...."
"But we have seen no weapons on this planet," Raoul argued. "In fact,
the people seem completely peaceful."
"Right you are." Cyril blew another smoke ring. "Since this is a planet
dependent chiefly upon minerals, why make the members of its most
important industry the out-group?"
"You think it is that they may be secretly hostile?"
Cyril smiled. "I think they may be secretly something, but hardly
hostile."
_Aha_, Skkiru thought. _Bbulas, my splendidly scaled friend, I will
have something interesting to tell you._
* * * * *
"You idiot!" Bbulas snarled later that night, as most of the Snaddrath
met informally in the council chamber belowground, the new caste
distinctions being, if not forgotten, at least in abeyance--for
everyone except Bbulas. "You imbecile!" He whirled, unable to repress
his Snadd emotions after a long behaviorally Terran day. "I have half a
mind to get rid of you by calling down divine judgment."
"How would you do that?" Skkiru demanded, emboldened by the little cry
of dismay, accompanied by a semi-somersault, which Larhgan gave. In
spite of everything, she still loved him; she would never belong to
Bbulas, though he might plan until he was ochre in the face.
"Same way you did the rope trick. Only you wouldn't come back, my
boy. Nice little cultural trait for the ethnologists to put in their
peace pipes and smoke. Never saw such people for asking awkward
questions." Bbulas sighed and straightened his antennae with his
fingers, since their ornaments made them too heavy to allow reflective
verticalization. "Reminds me of final exams back on Gambrell."
"Anthropologists _always_ ask awkward questions--everybody knows that,"
Larhgan put in. "It's their function. And I don't think you should
speak that way to Skkiru, Bbulas. Like all of us, he's only trying to
do his best. No man--or woman--can do more."
She smiled at Skkiru and his hearts whirled madly inside him. Only a
dolt, he thought, would give way to despair; there was no need for this
intolerable situation to endure for a lifetime. If only he could solve
the problem more quickly than Bbulas expected or--Skkiru began to
understand--wanted, Larhgan could be his again.
"With everybody trying to run this planet," Bbulas snarled, taking off
his headdress, "no wonder things are going wrong."
Luccar intervened. Although it was obvious that he had been enjoying
to a certain extent the happy anonymity of functionless yam-stealer,
old elective responsibilities could not but hang heavy over a public
servant of such unimpeachable integrity.
"After all," the old man said, "secretly we're still a democracy, and
secretly I am still President, and secretly I'm beginning to wonder if
perhaps we weren't a little rash in--"
"Look here, all of you," Bbulas interrupted querulously. "I'm not doing
this for my own amusement."
* * * * *
_But that's just what you are doing_, Skkiru thought, _even though you
wouldn't admit it to yourself, nor would you think of it as amusement._
"You know what happened to Nemeth," Bbulas continued, using an argument
that had convinced them before, but that was beginning to wear a little
thin now. "Poorest, most backward planet in the whole Galaxy. A couple
of ethnologists from Earth stumbled on it a little over a century ago
and what happened? More kept on coming; the trade ships followed. Now
it's the richest, most advanced planet in that whole sector. There's no
reason why the same thing can't happen to us in this sector, if we play
our cards carefully."
"But maybe these two won't tell other anthropologists about us," Luccar
said. "Something the older one remarked certainly seemed to imply as
much. Maybe they don't want the same thing to happen again--in which
case, all this is a waste of time. Furthermore," he concluded rather
petulantly, "at my age, I don't like running about in the open; it's
not healthful."
"If they don't tell other anthropologists about us," Bbulas said,
his face paling to lime-green with anxiety, "we can spread the news
unobtrusively ourselves. Just let one study be published, even under
false coordinates, and we can always hire a good public relations man
to let our whereabouts leak out. Please, everybody, stick to your
appointed tasks and let me do the worrying. You haven't even given this
culture a chance! It's hardly more than a day old and all I hear are
complaints, complaints, complaints."
"You'd better worry," Skkiru said smugly, "because already those
Terrans think there's something fishy about this culture. Ha, ha! Did
you get that--fishy?"
Only Larhgan laughed. She loved him.
"How do you know they're suspicious?" Bbulas demanded. "Are you in
their confidence? Skkiru, if you've been talking--"
"All I did was spy outside their door," Skkiru said hastily. "I knew
_you_ couldn't eavesdrop; it wouldn't look dignified if you were
caught. But beggars do that kind of thing all the time. And I wanted to
show you I could be of real use."
He beamed at Larhgan, who beamed back.
"I could have kept my findings to myself," he went on, "but I came to
tell you. In fact--" he dug in his robe--"I even jotted down a few
notes."
"It wasn't at all necessary, Skkiru," Bbulas said in a tired voice.
"We took the elementary precaution of wiring their hut for sound and a
recorder is constantly taking down their every word."
"Hut!" Skkiru kept his antennae under control with an effort, but his
retort was feeble. "They think it's a palace. You did them too well,
Bbulas."
"I may have overdone the exterior architecture a bit," the high priest
admitted. "Not that it seems relevant to the discussion. Although I've
been trying to arrange our primitivism according to Terrestrial ideas
of cultural backwardness, I'm afraid many of the physical arrangements
are primitive according to our conceptions rather than theirs."
* * * * *
"Why _must_ we be primitive according to Terran ideas?" Luccar wanted
to know. "Why must we be slaves even to fashions in backwardness?"
"Hear, hear!" cried an anonymous voice.
"And thank you, Skkiru," the former President continued, "for telling
me they were suspicious. I doubt that Bbulas would have taken the
trouble to inform me of so trivial a matter."
"As high priest," Bbulas said stiffly, "I believe the matter, trivial
or not, now falls within my province."
"Shame!" cried an anonymous voice--or it might have been the same one.
Bbulas turned forest-green and his antennae twitched. "After all, you
yourself, Luccar, agreed to accept the role of elder statesman--"
"Yam-stealer," Luccar corrected him bitterly, "which is not the same
thing."
"On Earth, it is. And," Bbulas went on quickly, "as for our assuming
primitive Earth attitudes, where else are we going to get our attitudes
from? We can't borrow any primitive attitudes from Nemeth, because
they're too well known. And since there are no other planets we know
of with intelligent life-forms that have social structures markedly
different from the major Terran ones--except for some completely
non-humanoid cultures, which, for physiological reasons, we are
incapable of imitating--we have to rely upon records of primitive
Terran sources for information. Besides, a certain familiarity with
the traits manifested will make the culture more understandable to
the Terrans, and, hence, more attractive to them psychologically." He
stopped and straightened out his antennae.
"In other words," Skkiru commented, emboldened by a certain aura of
sympathy he felt emanating from Larhgan, at least, and probably from
Luccar, too, "he doesn't have the imagination to think up any cultural
traits for himself, so he has to steal them--and that's the easiest
place to steal them from."
"This is none of your business, Skkiru," Bbulas snapped. "You just beg."
"It's the business of all of us, Bbulas," Luccar corrected softly.
"Please to remember that, no matter what our alloted roles, we are all
concerned equally in this."
"Of course, of course, but please let me handle the situation in my own
way, since I made the plans. And, Skkiru," the Dilettante added with
strained grace, "you may have a warm cloak to wear as soon as we can
get patches welded on."
Then Bbulas took a deep breath and reverted to his old cheer-leader
manner. "Now we must all get organized for the potlatch. We can give
the Terrans those things the Ladies' Aid has been working on all year
for the charity bazaar and, in exchange, perhaps they will give us more
chocolate bars--" he glanced reproachfully at Skkiru--"and other food."
"And perhaps some yams," Luccar suggested, "so that--God save us--I can
steal them."
"I'll definitely work on that," Bbulas promised.
* * * * *
Skkiru was glad that, as beggar, he held no prominent position at the
feast--in reality, no position at all--for he hated fish. And fish,
naturally, would be the chief refreshment offered, since the Snaddrath
did not want the Terrans to know that they had already achieved that
degrading dependency upon the tin can that marks one of the primary
differences between savagery and civilization.
There were fish pâté on rice crackers, fish soup with rice, boiled
fish, baked fish, fried fish and a pilau of rice with fish. There were
fish chitlins, fish chips, fish cakes, fish candy and guslat--a potent
distillation of fermented fish livers--to wash it all down. And even
in the library, where Skkiru sought refuge from the festivities, fishy
fumes kept filtering down through the ventilating system to assail his
nostrils.
Bbulas had been right in a way, Skkiru had to admit to himself upon
reflection. In trying to improve his lot, Skkiru had taken advantage of
the Snaddrath's special kinetic talents, which had been banned for the
duration--and so he had, in effect, committed a crime.
This time, however, he would seek to uplift himself in terms acceptable
to the Terrans on a wholly indigenous level, and in terms which
would also hasten the desired corruptive process--in a nice way,
of course--so that the Snaddrath civilization could be profitably
undermined as fast as possible and Larhgan be his once again. It was a
hard problem to solve, but he felt sure he could do it. Anything Bbulas
could do, he could do better.
Then he had it! And the idea was so wonderful that he was a little
sorry at the limited range it would necessarily cover. His part really
should be played out before a large, yoomping audience, but he was
realistic enough to see that it would be most expedient for him to give
a private performance for the Earthmen alone.
On the other hand, he now knew it should be offered outside the hut,
because the recorder would pick up his cries and Bbulas would be in a
spin--as he would be about any evidence of independent thinking on the
planet. Bbulas was less interested in the planet's prospering, it was
now clear to Skkiru, than in its continuing in a state where he would
remain top fish.
* * * * *
Fortunately, the guslat had done its work, and by the time the Earthmen
arrived at the door to their hut, they were alone. The rest of the
company either had fallen into a stupor or could not trust themselves
to navigate the mud.
The Earthmen--with an ingeniousness which would have augured well for
the future development of their race, had it not already been the
(allegedly) most advanced species in the Galaxy--had adapted some spare
parts from their ship into replicas of Skkiru's mudshoes. They did,
in truth, seem none too steady on their feet, but he was unable to
determine to what degree this was a question of intoxication and what
degree a question of navigation.
"Alms, for the love of Ipsnadd." He thrust forward his begging bowl.
"Regard, it is the beggar! Why were you not at the festivities, worthy
mendicant?" Raoul hiccuped. "Lovely party. Beautiful women. Delicious
fish."
Skkiru started to stand on his head, then remembered this was no longer
a socially acceptable expression of grief and cast his eyes down. "I
was not invited," he said sadly.
"Like the little match girl," Raoul sympathized. "My heart bleeds for
you, good match gi--good beggar. Does your heart not bleed for him,
Cyril?"
"Bad show," the older ethnologist agreed, with a faint smile. "But
that's what you've got to expect, if you're going to be a primitive."
He was very drunk, Skkiru decided; he must be, to phrase his sentiments
so poorly. Unless he--but no, Skkiru refused to believe that. He didn't
mind Cyril's being vaguely suspicious, but that was as far as he wanted
him to go. Skkiru's toes apprehensively started to quiver.
"How can you say a thing like that to a primitive?" Raoul demanded. "If
he were not a primitive, it would be all right to call him a primitive,
but one does not accuse primitives of being primitives. It's--it's
downright primitive; that's what it is!"
"You need some coffee, my boy." Cyril grinned. "Black coffee. That
guslat of theirs is highly potent stuff."
They were about to go inside. Skkiru had to act quickly. He slumped
over. Although he had meant to land on the doorstep, he lacked the
agility to balance himself with the precision required and so he fell
smack into the mud. The feel of the slime on his bare feet had been bad
enough; oozing over his skin through the interstices of his clothing,
it was pure hell. What sacrifices he was making for his planet! And
for Larhgan. The thought of her would have to sustain him through this
viscous ordeal, for there was nothing else solid within his grasp.
"Ubbl," he said, lifting his head from the ooze, so that they could see
the froth coming out of his mouth. "Glubbl."
* * * * *