Gongonk Island, with its blue-gray Company buildings, and the Terran
green of the farms, and the spaceport with its ring of mooring-pylons
empty since the _City of Pretoria_ had lifted out, two days before,
for Terra, was dropping away behind. Von Schlichten held his lighter
for Paula Quinton, then lit his own cigarette.
"I was rather horrified, Friday afternoon, at the way you and Colonel
O'Leary and Mr. Blount were blaspheming against Stanley-Browne," she
said. "His book is practically the sociographers' Koran for this
planet. But I've been checking up, since, and I find that everybody
who's been here any length of time seems to deride it, and it's full
of the most surprising misstatements. I'm either going to make myself
famous or get burned at the stake by the Extraterrestrial Sociographic
Society after I get back to Terra. In the last three months, I've been
really too busy with Ex-Rights work to do much research, but I'm
beginning to think there's a great deal in Stanley-Browne's book that
will have to be reconsidered."
"How'd you get into this, Miss Quinton?" he asked.
"You mean sociography, or Ex-Rights? Well, my father and my
grandfather were both extraterrestrial sociographers--anthropologists
whose subjects aren't anthropomorphic--and I majored in sociography
at the University of Montevideo. And I've always been in sympathy
with extraterrestrial races; one of my great-grandmothers was a
Freyan."
"The deuce; I'd never have guessed that, as small and dark as you
are."
"Well, another of my great-grandmothers was Japanese," she replied.
"The family name's French. I'm also part Spanish, part Russian, part
Italian, part English ... the usual modern Argentine mixture."
"I'm an Argentino, too. From La Rioja, over along the Sierra de
Velasco. My family lived there for the past five centuries. They came
to the Argentine in the Year Three, Atomic Era."
"On account of the Hitler bust-up?"
"Yes. I believe the first one, also a General von Schlichten, was what
was then known as a war-criminal."
"That makes us partners in crime, then," she laughed. "The Quintons
had to leave France about the same time; they were what was known as
collaborationists."
"That's probably why the Southern Hemisphere managed to stay out of
the Third and Fourth World Wars," he considered. "It was full of the
descendants of people who'd gotten the short end of the Second."
"Do you speak the Kragan language, general?" she asked. "I understand
it's entirely different from the other Equatorial Ulleran languages."
"Yes. That's what gives the Kragans an entirely different semantic
orientation. For instance, they have nothing like a subject-predicate
sentence structure. That's why, Stanley-Browne to the contrary
notwithstanding, they are entirely non-religious. Their language
hasn't instilled in them a predisposition to think of everything as
the result of an action performed by an agent. And they have no
definite parts of speech; any word can be used as any part of speech,
depending on context. Tense is applied to words used as nouns, not
words used as verbs; there are four tenses--spatial-temporal present,
things here-and-now; spatial present and temporal remote, things which
were here at some other time; spatial remote and temporal present,
things existing now somewhere else, and spatial-temporal remote,
things somewhere else some other time."
"Why, it's a wonder they haven't developed a Theory of Relativity!"
"They have. It resembles ours about the way the Wright Brothers'
airplane resembles this aircar, but I was explaining the
Keene-Gonzales-Dillingham Theory and the older Einstein Theory to King
Kankad once, and it was beautiful to watch how he picked it up. Half
the time, he was a jump ahead of me."
The aircar began losing altitude and speed as they came in over
Kraggork Swamp; the treetops below blended into a level plain of
yellow-green, pierced by glints of stagnant water underneath and
broken by an occasional low hillock, sometimes topped by a stockaded
village.
"Those are the swamp-savages' homes," he told her. "Most of what you
find in Stanley-Browne about them is fairly accurate. He spent a lot
of time among them. He never seems to have realized, though, that they
are living now as they have ever since the first appearance of
intelligent life on this planet."
"You mean, they're the real aboriginal people of Uller?"
"They and the Jeel cannibals, whom we are doing our best to
exterminate," he replied. "You see, at one time, the dominant type of
mobile land-life was the thing we call a shellosaur, a big thing,
running from five to fifteen tons, plated all over with silicate
shell, till it looked like a six-legged pine-cone. Some were
herbivores and some were carnivores. There are a few left, in remote
places--quite a few in the Southern Hemisphere, which we haven't
explored very much. They were a satisfied life-form. Outside of a
volcano or an earthquake or an avalanche, nothing could hurt a
shellosaur but a bigger shellosaur.
"Finally, of course, they grew beyond their sustenance-limit, but in
the meantime, some of them began specializing on mobility instead of
armor and began excreting waste-matter instead of turning it to shell.
Some of these new species got rid of their shell entirely. _Parahomo
sapiens Ulleris_ is descended from one of these.
"The shellosaurs were still a serious menace, though. The ancestors of
the present Ulleran, the proto-geeks, when they were at about the Java
Ape-Man stage of development, took two divergent courses to escape the
shellosaurs. Some of them took to the swamps, where the shellosaurs
would sink if they tried to follow. Those savages, down there, are
still living in the same manner; they never progressed. Others
encountered problems of survival which had to be overcome by
invention. They progressed to barbarism, like the people of the
fishing-villages, and some of them progressed to civilization, like
the Konkrookans and the Keegarkans.
"Then, there were others who took to the high rocks, where the
shellosaurs couldn't climb. The Jeels are the primitive, original
example of that. Most of the North Uller civilizations developed from
mountaineer-savages, and so did the Zirks and the other northern
plains nomads."
"Well, how about the Kragans?" Paula asked. "Which were they?"
Von Schlichten was scanning the horizon ahead. He pulled over a pair
of fifty-power binoculars on a swinging arm and put them where she
could use them.
"Right ahead, there; just a little to the left. See that brown-gray
spot on the landward edge of the swamp? That's King Kankad's Town.
It's been there for thousands of years, and it's always been Kankad's
Town. You might say, even the same Kankad. The Kragan kings have
always provided their own heirs, by self-fertilization. That's a
complicated process, involving simultaneous male and female
masturbation, but the offspring is an exact duplicate of the single
parent. The present Kankad speaks of his heir as 'Little Me,' which is
a fairly accurate way of putting it."
He knew what she was seeing through the glasses--a massive butte of
flint, jutting out into the swamp on the end of a sharp ridge, with a
city on top of it. All the buildings were multi-storied, some piling
upward from the top and some clinging to the sides. The high
watchtower at the front now carried a telecast-director, aimed at an
automatic relay-station on an unmanned orbiter two thousand miles
off-planet.
"They're either swamp-people who moved up onto that rock, or they're
mountaineers who came out that far along the ridge and stopped," she
said. "Which?"
"Nobody's ever tried to find out. Maybe if you stay on Uller long
enough, you can. That ought to be good for about eight to ten honorary
doctorates. And maybe a hundred sols a year in book royalties."
"Maybe I'll just do that, general.... What's that, on the little
island over there?" she asked, shifting the glasses. "A clump of
flat-roofed buildings. Under a red-and-yellow danger-flag."
"That's Dynamite Island; the Kragans have an explosives-plant there.
They make nitroglycerine, like all the thalassic peoples; they also
make TNT and catastrophite, and propellants. Learned that from us, of
course. They also manufacture most of their own firearms, some of them
pretty extreme--up to 25-mm for shoulder rifles. Don't ever fire one;
it'd break every bone in your body."
"Are they that much stronger than us?"
He shook his head. "Just denser, heavier. They're about equal to us in
weight-lifting. They can't run, or jump, as well as we can. We often
come out here for games with the Kragans, where the geeks can't watch
us. And that reminds me--you're right about that being a term of
derogation, because I don't believe I've ever knowingly spoken of a
Kragan as a geek, and in fact they've picked up the word from us and
apply it to all non-Kragans. But as I was saying, our baseball team
has to give theirs a handicap, but their football team can beat the
daylights out of ours. In a tug-of-war, we have to put two men on our
end for every one of theirs. But they don't even try to play tennis
with us."
"Don't the other natives make their own firearms?"
"No, and we're not going to teach them how. The thalassic peoples here
in the Equatorial Zone are fairly good empirical, teaspoon-measure,
chemists. Well, no, alchemists. They found out how to make
nitroglycerine, and use it for blasting and for bombs and mines, and
they screw little capsules of it on the ends of their arrows. Most of
their chemistry, such as it is, was learned in trying to prevent
organic materials, like wood, from petrifying. Up in the north, where
it gets cold, they learned a lot about metallurgy and ceramics, and
about forced-draft pneumatics, from having to keep fires going all
winter to thaw frozen food. They make air-rifles, to shoot metal
darts."
The aircar came in, circling slowly over the town on the big rock, and
let down on the roof of the castle-like building from which the
watchtower rose. There were a dozen or so individuals waiting for
them--the five Terrans, three men and two women, from the telecast
station, and the rest Kragans. One of these, dark-skinned but with
speckles no darker than light amber, armed only with a heavy dagger,
came over and clapped von Schlichten on the shoulder, grinning
opalescently.
"Greetings, Von!" he squawked in Kragan, then, seeing Paula, switched
over to the customary language of the Takkad Sea country. "It makes
happiness to see you. How long will you stay with us?"
"Till the _Aldebaran_ gets in from Konkrook, to pick up the rifles,"
von Schlichten replied, in Lingua Terra. He looked at his watch. "Two
hours and a half ... Kankad, this is Paula Quinton; Paula, King
Kankad."
He took out his geek-speaker and crammed it into his mouth. Before any
other race on Uller, that would have been the most shocking sort of
bad manners, without the token-concealment of the handkerchief. Kankad
took it as a matter of course. At some length, von Schlichten
explained the nature of Paula's sociographic work, her connection with
the Extraterrestrials' Rights Association, and her intention of going
to the Arctic mines. Kankad nodded.
"You were right," he said. "I wouldn't have understood all that in
your language. If I had read it, maybe, but not if I heard it." He put
his upper right hand on Paula's shoulder and uttered a clicking
approximation of her name. "I make you one of us," he told her. "You
must come back, after the work stops at the mines; if you want to
learn about my people, I'll show you what you want to see, and tell
you what you want to know. But why not stay here? Why bother about
those geeks at the mines; the Company treats them much better than
they deserve. Stay here with us; we will make you happy to be with
us."
Paula replied slowly: "I thank Kankad, but I must go. Those on Terra
who sent me here want me to learn for myself how the workers at the
mines are treated. But I will come back--in a hundred, a hundred and
fifty days."
Kankad's opal-jeweled grin widened. "Good! We'll be waiting for you."
He turned and introduced another Kragan, about his own age, who wore
the equipment and insignia of a Company native-major and was freshly
painted with the Company emblem. "This is Kormork. He and I have borne
young to each other. Kormork, you watch over Paula Quinton." He
managed, on the second try, to make it more or less recognizable.
"Bring her back safe. Or else find yourself a good place to hide."
Kankad introduced the rest of his people, and von Schlichten
introduced the Terrans from the telecast-station. Then Kankad looked
at the watch he was wearing on his lower left wrist.
"We will have plenty of time, before the ship comes, to show Paula the
town," he suggested. "Von, you know better than I do what she would
like to see."
He led the way past a pair of long 90-mm guns to a stone stairway. Von
Schlichten explained, as they went down, that the guns of King
Kankad's Town were the only artillery above 75-mm on Uller in
non-Terran hands. They climbed into an open machine-gun carrier and
strapped themselves to their seats, and for two hours King Kankad
showed her the sights of the town. They visited the school, where
young Kragans were being taught to read Lingua Terra and studied from
textbooks printed in Johannesburg and Sydney and Buenos Aires. Kankad
showed her the repair-shops, where two-score descendants of Kragan
riever-chieftains were working on contragravity equipment, under the
supervision of a Scottish-Afrikaner and his Malay-Portuguese wife; the
small-arms factory, where very respectable copies of Terran rifles and
pistols and auto-weapons were being turned out; the machine-shop; the
physics and chemistry labs; the hospital; the ammunition-loading
plant; the battery of 155-mm Long Toms, built in Kankad's own shops,
which covered the road up the sloping rock-spine behind the city; the
printing-shop and book-bindery; the observatory, with a big telescope
and an ingenious orrery of the Beta Hydrae system; the nuclear-power
plant, part of the original price for giving up brigandage.
Half an hour before the ship from Konkrook was due, they had arrived
at the airport, where a gang of Kragans were clearing a berth for the
_Aldebaran_. From somewhere, Kankad produced two cold bottles of Cape
Town beer for Paula and von Schlichten, and a bowl of some boiling-hot
black liquid for himself. Von Schlichten and Paula lit cigarettes;
between sips of his bubbling hell-brew, Kankad gnawed on the stalk of
some swamp-plant. Paula seemed as much surprised at Kankad's disregard
for the eating taboo as she had been at von Schlichten's open flouting
of the convention of concealment when he had put in his geek-speaker.
"This is the only place on Uller where this happens," von Schlichten
told her. "Here, or in the field when Terran and Kragan soldiers are
together. There aren't any taboos between us and the Kragans."
"No," Kankad said. "We cannot eat each others' food, and because our
bodies are different, we cannot be the fathers of each others' young.
But we have been battle-comrades, and worksharers, and we have learned
from each other, my people more from yours than yours from mine.
Before you came, my people were like children, shooting arrows at
little animals on the beach, and climbing among the rocks at
dare-me-and-I-do, and playing war with toy weapons. But we are growing
up, and it will not be long before we will stand beside you, as the
grown son stands beside his parent, and when that day comes, you will
not be ashamed of us."
It was easy to forget that Kankad had four arms and a rubbery,
quartz-speckled skin, and a face like a lizard.
"I have always wished that some of your people could come to Terra, to
study," von Schlichten said. "I was talking about it with Sid
Harrington, only a short while ago. He thinks it would be a good
thing, for your people and for mine."
"Yes. I want Little Me, when he's old enough to travel, to visit your
world," Kankad said. "And some of the other young ones. And when
Little Me is old enough to take over the rule of our people, I would
like to go to Terra, myself."
"Some day, I am going to return to Terra; I would like to have you
make the trip with me," von Schlichten said.
"That would be wonderful, Von!" Kankad exclaimed. "I want to see your
world, before I die. It must be a wonderful place. A world is what its
people make it, and your people must be able to make anything of your
world that you would want."
"We almost made a lifeless desert, like the poles of Uller, out of our
world, once," von Schlichten told him. "Four hundred and more years
ago, we fought great wars among ourselves, with weapons such as I hope
will never even be thought of on Uller. Our whole Northern Hemisphere,
where our greatest nations were, was devastated; much of it is
wasteland to this day. But we put an end to that folly in time; we
made one nation out of all our people, and swore never to commit such
crimes again, and then we built the ships that took us out to the
stars. But I want you to see our world, and some of the other worlds
that we have visited, I think you would like it."
"I know I would. And with you to tell me what the things I would see
meant...." Kankad was silent for a moment. Then he spoke again,
changing the subject abruptly.
"I hope Paula will pardon me, but isn't Paula the kind of Terran that
bears young?"
"That's right, Kankad. I never bore any, yet, but that's the kind of
Terran I am."
"I like Paula," Kankad said. "She has come all the way from Terra to
help us, and to learn about us. Of course, the Kragans don't need that
kind of help, and the geeks, who would stick a knife in her as soon as
she turned her back on them, don't deserve it. But she wants to learn
about us, just as I want to learn about Terra. Von, why don't you and
Paula have young?" he asked. "I think that would be fine. Then, Little
Paula-Von and Little Me could be friends, long after the three of us
are dead and gone."