[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Startling Stories, February 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
Director Unterbaum of the Intercolonial Office rose from his chair as
the pair came in. "I take it you haven't met before?" he said. "Mr. and
Mrs. Lanzerotti, this is Ann Starnes, the recording photographer, and
Robert Heidekopfer, one of our better writers."
There were smiles and acknowledgments. Unterbaum touched a pair of
buttons on his desk and two chairs slid out of the walls to make a
group of five. "Sit down, please," he said. "Now I'm not going to mince
words. The reason you're here is because the Council wants you--three
of you, at least--to undertake a mission. Vincent--" he indicated
Lanzerotti, who nodded a dark head--"already knows something about it,
but for the benefit of Miss Starnes and Mr. Heidekopfer, I will say
that we want to send you to Tolstoia."
Heidekopfer smiled and said, "Sounds better than that trip to the polar
mines on Mars, eh Ann?"
"Warmer, anyhow," said the girl, turning a carefully-kept blonde head.
"But I thought Tolstoia was closed to visitors."
"The patriarch has agreed to let a delegation in for this visit," said
Unterbaum, "so we can render a fair and unbiased report on Tolstoia,
in word, picture and observation. The point is this; there are some
islands about three hundred miles off the coast of Tolstoia, between it
and South Bergenland--the Wrightley Islands. They have no resources,
but Tolstoia wants to colonize them." He touched buttons again, and a
map appeared on the wall showing the almost-round shape of the island
nation, with the islands and the tip of South Bergenland at the right.
Unterbaum went on: "They're uninhabited, so there isn't any objection
from the Demographic Commission, although it's unusual for one of the
hermit-states to expand. But there are certain features of the request
that make the Council inclined to go slow; or at least to want more
information."
He stopped, seeming to wait for a question, so Heidekopfer asked it.
"What are they?"
* * * * *
Lanzerotti answered, "To begin with, the place was founded in
accordance with the philosophy of Count Leo Tolstoi, a Russian
writer of some centuries back. The Russians discovered that a sect
of people who believed in his ideas was growing up in their country,
and considered it a threat to the organization of their state. They
couldn't dispose of the Tolstoians under the genocide laws, so they
appealed to the Council and it agreed to expatriate all the Tolstoians
the Russians could identify."
"Then it was a penal colony, like the Moon mines?" inquired Heidekopfer.
"No," said Lanzerotti. "As a matter of fact, when the announcement was
made, the Tolstoians came forward in numbers and identified themselves.
But they thought they were going to have a reservation set apart for
them in Russia itself, and when they found they were going to an island
on Venus, there was a certain amount of resentment."
"Do you think it still exists? That if they're allowed to get hold of
the islands, they'll do something drastic--say start a war?"
"Not after all these years," said Lanzerotti. "It's nearly three
centuries, and national resentments don't last that long without
something to feed on. Besides, pacifism was one of Tolstoi's doctrines."
"Then what are we supposed to look for?"
Lanzerotti spread his hands. "We don't know. That's what's worrying
the Diplomatic Division. Asking for more territory indicates a rising
birth-rate, but the kind of territory they're asking for doesn't
promise a rise serious enough to worry the Demographic Commission. We
don't consider it likely that Tolstoianism has become militant. But to
be honest, we just don't know."
Ann Starnes smiled. "It sounds like hunting for a needle in a haystack
when you don't even know whether there's any needle," she said.
"On the contrary," said Unterbaum, "we're fairly certain there is a
needle, and a sharp one. What we need to know is what kind of needle it
is before someone gets stuck with it. Listen--" He snapped up one of
the lids in his desk and spun a wheel of recording tape. "Planes aren't
allowed to land in Tolstoia, of course, but every once in a while
one comes down there, and occasionally a yacht or fishing-craft gets
wrecked on the coast. Now the normal procedure in such a case with a
hermit-state is that they hold survivors and notify someone to come and
get them. They stopped doing that about eighty years ago."
"What do you mean?" said Heidekopfer. "Stopped notifying or stopped
rescuing survivors?"
"It isn't quite certain," said Unterbaum, "but here's the sequence,
such as it is. Seventy-eight years ago Bernard Jones and his wife
disappeared while on a flight from MacNider to South Bergenland." He
indicated the map. "You see, that would carry them close to Tolstoia.
Three months later one of the fishing vessels, which are the only form
of communication the Tolstoians have, turned up at MacNider. It had
a letter from Mrs. Jones. She said her husband had died in a crash
landing, and she was staying in Tolstoia with the permission of the
authorities."
"Anything wrong about that?" asked Heidekopfer.
"There's nothing wrong with any of this," said Unterbaum, "at least as
far as that instance goes. It's other things. Nothing has been heard of
Mrs. Jones since. Seventy-six years ago, a musician named Bruno Zaleski
went on a yachting trip in the South Ocean with a party of three. They
never came back. After the usual interval letters came through from
all of them. They said they found Tolstoia a Venusian paradise and were
going to stay. Zaleski was heard from again. At the time of the next
incident, one year later, his brother received a letter telling how
happy he was."
* * * * *
He paused for a moment. "The incident sixty-seven years ago was the
beginning of a new series. It concerned a man named Walter Artem,
another plane case. Like Jones, he disappeared. One of the Tolstoian
fishing-craft brought him back, but he was dead. They had preserved his
body carefully. I'll show you the picture."
He touched the stud and the watchers found themselves gazing at a
coffin, partly glassed so the occupant was visible to the waist. Rose
Lanzerotti gave a little cry and with reason, for the face within was
peculiarly horrible; bloated and suffused with blood, the neck swelling
out over a clearly visible rope.
"They explained he had hanged himself," Unterbaum continued.
"I have a question," said Ann Starnes. "Why did they go to all the
trouble of preserving him just the way he died? It sounds as though
they were afraid somebody might get suspicious."
"That's what I thought," said Unterbaum. "But there's an explanation.
The records show that the Tolstoians, even while they were in Russia,
showed a peculiar reverence for their dead when they were important
people. It's a hold-over from their twentieth century leader Lenin.
They preserve bodies this way so they're visible. The explanation
that came with Artem's body was that the Tolstoians didn't know how
important he was, but thought he might be big enough to deserve
preservative treatment."
"Polite of them," murmured Lanzerotti.
"Very," said Unterbaum. "Almost too polite. Because it was
repeated--since Artem there have been six cases of castaways on
Tolstoia committing suicide and being delivered at MacNider in
preserved form."
"All hangings?" asked Heidekopfer.
"No. One stabbing, three shootings, two overdoses of soporifics. There
are autopsy records on those, and they're legitimate."
"Seems a high proportion of suicides among the castaways," said
Heidekopfer. "Can anything be made of that?"
"Nobody seemed to think so," said Unterbaum. "Seven suicides out of a
given group over a period of eighty years isn't much, after all. The
thing that stirred up our office was the discovery that in the past
eighty years not one castaway has come back alive. They've either been
crated out as suicides or sent through letters saying they have decided
to become citizens of Tolstoia."
He paused a moment to let that sink in. "A number of these cases are
rather special. There was Carmenilla Baio, forty-four years ago. She
was a video dancer on a flight from MacNider to South Bergenland. Sent
out the usual letter saying she had decided her future lay in Tolstoia,
and followed it with another one a couple of years later. That's
ordinary enough, but the case made the news, and when we went through
the records, we found that when she disappeared she had been married
only three months and was passionately devoted to her husband. Her
second letter was written in a kind of code, and asked him to fake an
accident and join her there."
"Did he?" asked Ann Starnes.
"Any possibility of forgery in those letters?" asked Heidekopfer at the
same time.
Unterbaum turned to the girl. "No to your question. As for the other
one, Carmenilla Baio's private code was certainly no forgery."
Heidekopfer said, "It appears that the Tolstoians compel them to stay
there, and if they argue, bump them off. Is that it?"
"That would be a charge of genocide. I do not think--" began Lanzerotti.
"I don't either," said Unterbaum. "The Tolstoians wouldn't expose
themselves to such a thing, especially in view of their origins. No,
I'm convinced they have been quite honest, leaning over backward--as
witness the preserved suicides--but there's some factor in the equation
we don't know. And I won't deny that there's danger in the trip."
"Then I'm going," said Rosa Lanzerotti, decisively. She was a small
woman with vivid Italiote coloring.
Ann Starnes said, "Might as well square the party off, hadn't we? It
would be nice to have someone to handle the recording tapes and films."
Unterbaum frowned. "The Intercolonial Office--" he began.
Lanzerotti said, "I believe that psychologists recognize it as a
temperamental danger to send two men and one woman on a protracted
expedition."
"I ought to know better than to argue with a diplomat," said Unterbaum.