"I got a better one. How's this. There's this alien life form that's way
ahead of us. Their civilization is so old that they don't have any
records of when it began and how it was in the early days. They've gone
beyond things like wars and depressions and revolutions, and greed for
power or any of these things giving us a bad time here on Earth. They're
all like scholars, get it? And some of them are pretty jolly well taken
by Earth, especially the way we are right now, with all the problems,
get it? Things developing so fast we don't know where we're going or how
we're going to get there."
* * * * *
I finished my beer and clapped my hands for Mouley. "How do you mean,
_where we're going_?"
"Well, take half the countries in the world today. They're trying to
industrialize, modernize, catch up with the advanced countries. Look at
Egypt, and Israel, and India and China, and Yugoslavia and Brazil, and
all the rest. Trying to drag themselves up to the level of the advanced
countries, and all using different methods of doing it. But look at the
so-called advanced countries. Up to their bottoms in problems. Juvenile
delinquents, climbing crime and suicide rates, the loony-bins full of
the balmy, unemployed, threat of war, spending all their money on
armaments instead of things like schools. All the bloody mess of it.
Why, a man from Mars would be fascinated, like."
Mouley came shuffling up in his babouche slippers and we both ordered
another schooner of beer.
Paul said seriously, "You know, there's only one big snag in this sort
of talk. I've sorted the whole thing out before, and you always come up
against this brick wall. Where are they, these observers, or scholars,
or spies or whatever they are? Sooner or later we'd nab one of them.
You know, Scotland Yard, or the F.B.I., or Russia's secret police, or
the French Sûreté, or Interpol. This world is so deep in police,
counter-espionage outfits and security agents that an alien would slip
up in time, no matter how much he'd been trained. Sooner or later, he'd
slip up, and they'd nab him."
I shook my head. "Not necessarily. The first time I ever considered this
possibility, it seemed to me that such an alien would base himself in
London or New York. Somewhere where he could use the libraries for
research, get the daily newspapers and the magazines. Be right in the
center of things. But now I don't think so. I think he'd be right here
in Tangier."
"Why Tangier?"
"It's the one town in the world where anything goes. Nobody gives a damn
about you or your affairs. For instance, I've known you a year or more
now, and I haven't the slightest idea of how you make your living."
"That's right," Paul admitted. "In this town you seldom even ask a man
where's he's from. He can be British, a White Russian, a Basque or a
Sikh and nobody could care less. Where are _you_ from, Rupert?"
"California," I told him.
"No, you're not," he grinned.