* * * * *
They carried Nayova to his house, stayed with him until he showed signs
of recovering, and then left.
"Why didn't you use a drug?" Templin demanded.
"Possible allergy or serum reaction. We don't know enough about these
people to take chances--they're humanoid, not human."
"They can fool machines, though, can't they?"
Eckert didn't reply.
"All right, I know they can't," Templin said grudgingly. "He was
telling the truth all the time, wasn't he?"
Eckert nodded. "I never did think he was lying. They don't seem to be
the type; their culture doesn't allow for it."
They were silent for a while, walking quietly in the lanes between the
shuttered, seemingly untenanted houses.
"I'm glad," Templin said quietly. "It's off my mind. It's hard to
believe that anybody here would ... deliberately kill somebody else."
Templin's reactions would be worth something now for Eckert to study.
They wouldn't be inhibited by his conviction that the natives had
murdered his best friend. Just what reactions and emotions he would
display, Eckert wasn't sure, nor how Templin's psychology, so similar
to Pendleton's, would help solve the problem.
They had eliminated one possibility, but that still left them with the
one they had started with.
_Why had Pendleton taken the short way out?_
* * * * *
A breeze scampered through the open door and played tag with the papers
on the desk. Eckert swore without annoyance and calmly started chasing
those that had been blown on the floor.
"What did Pendleton have to say in his reports?" Templin sat in the
doorway, his eyes barely open. He had begun taking siestas in the early
afternoon, after their usual light lunch. It was pleasant to sit on the
worn wood and feel the warmth of sun and smell the crisp freshness of
the outdoors, or maybe watch the kids playing in the lane, catching the
butterflies that floated past in the afternoon air.
"About what you'd expect. Mostly reports on the industry, climate,
system of government, and general anthropological information that
he thought might prove interesting. As far as I can see, he didn't
lack enthusiasm for making the reports. If anything, he grew more
enthusiastic as time went on. He practically wrote us treatises on
every phase of life on Tunpesh."
Templin's eyes closed all the way.
"Any indication in his reports that he didn't like it here?"
"Just the other way around. Everything points to the fact that he liked
the climate, the people, the way they lived."
"I don't blame him," Templin murmured. "This is a lovely place to be.
The climate is wonderful, the people are happy, hard-working. The
society itself seems to be--perfect. Sometimes you can't help but
compare it too damn favorably to Earth."
Eckert shoved the papers to one side and came over to where Templin
sat. He felt rather lazy himself. The warmth and sunshine corroded
ambition, as it did in most climates like this.
"You know, there isn't any crime here," Templin continued. He laughed
to himself. "Except the minor crime wave we caused when we landed here
five months ago. No criminals, no villains foreclosing mortgages, no
gamblers bleeding the gullible white, and nobody trying to sell gold
bricks. I can't get over it."
* * * * *
A butterfly flapped into the sunlight that glistened on his tunic, like
a drop of water on a piece of black velvet. It hung there for a moment
and then was off, its wings flashing.
Eckert watched it go in a sort of torpor. It was pleasant to relax and
slip the leash off your thoughts quietly and see where they took you.
Maybe it was a sort of letdown. They had expected six months of danger
in a potentially criminal culture, and instead it had been paradise.
As Templin said, you couldn't help but compare it to Earth. No greed,
no belligerency, no contempt for the rights of others. No cynicism, no
sarcasm, and no trampling crowds in the stores. The little important
things....
"Where did you go last night, Ray?"
Templin stirred. "A community meeting. Almost like a Quaker meeting.
You get up and say what you think. The one last night was about some
local government issues. They talked it over, decided what to do, and
how much each person should contribute. The original democracy, Ted."
Eckert was wide awake. "I wonder why I wasn't invited." He felt
slightly put out that Templin should have been asked to something like
that and he hadn't been.
"I wasn't invited," Templin said. "I invited myself."
"Have you noticed," Eckert mused, "we haven't been invited to too many
functions lately?"
"They know we're busy," Templin said lazily. "They're too polite to ask
us to go some place if they thought we were busy doing something else."
"You like it here, don't you, Ray?"
Templin brushed idly at a marauding mosquito. "It took me pretty long
to warm up to it, but I guess I do."
They only had a month left, Eckert knew--a month to do practically
nothing but lie in the sun and watch the people. Oh, they could go
through the motions of investigating and look over Pendleton's old
records and reports, but there was nothing in them of any value.
He yawned and sat down and settled his back against the door frame. It
began to look as if they'd never find out why Pendleton had done what
he had. And it didn't seem to matter, somehow.
* * * * *
Eckert opened the door slowly. Templin was asleep on the bed, the
sunlight lying in bands across his tanned, bare back. He had on a strip
of white cloth, knotted at the waist in imitation of what the natives
wore.
It was mussed now, and the knot had started to come loose.
He looked a lot healthier than he had when they had first landed. More
peaceful, more content. He appeared to have gained ten pounds and shed,
five years in the last six months.
And now the vacation was over. It was time to go back.
"Ray," Eckert called out to him softly.
Templin didn't stir, but continued his soft and very regular breathing.
Eckert found a book and dropped it on the floor with a thud. Templin
woke up, but didn't move.
"What do you want, Ted?"
"How did you know it was me?"
Templin chuckled, as if it were hugely funny. "Riddles yet. Who else
would it be? No Tunpeshan would be rude enough to wake somebody up in
the middle of a nap, so it had to be you."
"You know what you would have done if somebody had awakened you like
that five months ago?"
Templin tried to nod, but was slightly handicapped by the bed
underneath him. "I would have pulled my trusty atomgun and plugged him."
Eckert went over to where they kept their luggage and started pulling
the boxes out from the wall. "Well, I've got good news for you. A liner
just landed to pick us up. They were going through this sector and they
got an order from the Service to stop by for us. Some cargo-wallopers
will be here in a few minutes to help us with our gear."
"Ted."
Eckert paused.
"Yes?"
"I'm not going back."
"Why not?" Eckert's face had a look of almost clinical curiosity on it.
"Why should I? I like it here. I want to live here the rest of my life."
* * * * *
The pieces began to fall in place.
"I'm not so sure you'd like it, Ray. Not after a while. All your
friends are back on Earth. Everybody you know is back there. It's just
the novelty of something new and something different here. I've felt
that way a lot of times in different cultures and different societies.
You'd change your mind after a while."
"Those aren't reasons, Ted. Why should I go back to a world where most
of the people are unhappy at some time and a few people all the time?
As far as I'm concerned, Tunpesh is my home now, and I don't intend to
leave it."
Eckert was fascinated. It was like a case history unfolding right
before his eyes.
"Are you sure you would enjoy it here for the rest of your life? Have
you made any friends to take the place of those back home?"
"It takes time to become acquainted, even more time to make friends,"
Templin said defensively.
"You can't desert the Service," Eckert pointed out. "You still have
your duty."
Templin laughed in his pillow. "It won't work, Ted. Duty's just a catch
word, a jingo phrase. They can get along without me and you know it."
"What about Pendleton, Ray? He died here, you know, in mysterious
circumstances."
"Would going back help him any? He wasn't murdered; we know that. And
why do people commit suicide? For what one of several thousand possible
reasons did Pendleton? We don't know. We'll never know. And if we did
know, what good would it do?"
He had changed a lot in six months, Eckert saw.
Too much.
"What if I told you I knew why Pendleton killed himself?" Eckert asked.
"And that you would do the same if you stayed here?"
"Don't use it, Ted. It's poor psychology. It won't work."
The pieces made a perfect picture. But Templin was going back whether
he wanted to or not. The only difficulty was that, deep underneath,
Eckert sympathized with him. Perhaps if he had been younger, less
experienced....
"Then you won't go back with us?"