She shrugged. "Oh, they're polite enough. But just try and make them do
something they don't want to! They're completely undisciplined--they're
fed when they please, they sleep when they please, they do whatever
they like. They have schools for them, but it's completely up to the
children whether they want to go or not. The parents haven't a thing to
say about it. No one ever lays a hand to them, no matter what they do."
"I haven't noticed any quarreling," he said, surprised at his own
observation. It was true. He hadn't seen a sign of it, even between the
children themselves, though they made enough noise yelling and romping.
"Oh, those tactics fit them perfectly for this society," she said
indifferently. "The adults here are just like the children. Nobody ever
does any work."
"But that's impossible. The food, the houses, the--"
"Well, I suppose I exaggerated. They do things they don't like once in
awhile, if they want the end product enough. But mostly, if they can't
make a big game of it, they don't do it. Tomorrow's nut-gathering day,"
she added irrelevantly.
"Nut-gathering day?"
"Yes. Everybody frolics off into the hills to pick nuts. Like a picnic.
That's what I mean--if they didn't consider it a pleasure outing, the
nuts could hit them on the head, and they'd never bother to pick them
up." She cocked her head at him. "Want to go?"
"Go where? Nut-gathering, you mean?" He laughed. "No, thanks."
"Thought you might like to study the natives in their day-to-day
activities, get the real local flavor. You might learn something, at
that. Though I guess you'd have a rough time climbing the trees."
"I've had an hour a day at gymnastics for the past three years."
"Yes, you look in good shape." Her glance swept over him approvingly.
"But gymnastics and those trees are two different things. The edible
nuts grow on the tall trees, not the short ones, and they sway in the
wind. The young men do most of the climbing. They're pretty wonderful
physical specimens, I'll say that." She glanced at one of them near by,
who was whispering in the ear of a Nemarian girl.
Kirk felt oddly annoyed. They were magnificent physical specimens, he
thought. But then so were the women and children. He realized that he
hadn't seen a sickly or weak-looking native since he arrived. Even the
old people kept their magnificent posture, and managed to make age seem
a matter of gathering wisdom instead of collecting infirmities. Weren't
they ever sick, he wondered.
"The girls are lovely, too," he reminded her.
"Yes, but try to get near one of them," she flashed back. "They prefer
their own." Her eyes narrowed. "They're pleasant people, but they're
not pleasant to live with. It gets on your nerves after awhile."
"Why didn't you leave, Jeannette?"
"On the spaceship you came on?"
"Yes. There may not be another for five years."
"That's the big question," she said slowly. "I'm not sure I know the
answer. I half intended to leave on the ship when it came. But when it
came down to it, I didn't leave." She stared ahead of her. "Something
about the place gets you. Maybe it's the life. Maybe you get used to
lying around in the sun, and you feel kind of frightened at returning
to all the hustle and bustle of Terra. And then, you keep waiting,
hoping that--"
"Hoping what?"
For a moment, she looked defenseless and a little hurt. Then the
cynical smile came back. "You don't even know what you're hoping for,
really," she said lightly.
He knew she was evading him.
* * * * *
He lay in bed later, wondering what Jeannette could have meant, what
could account for that brief hurt look.
She was an attractive girl, he thought idly. He wondered why he
felt nothing for her, when the native girl aroused in him such an
unreasonable longing. It would be a good deal more convenient to fall
for Jeannette.
He couldn't afford to get mixed up with his maid.
Remembering her, he suddenly felt his body trembling.
All right, he told himself, so she's an ignorant, backward native on a
planet nobody ever heard of. Practically a savage. And even here, she's
just a maid, a cleaning woman. Nobody a Planetary Administrator could
think about getting mixed up with. But how do they turn them out like
that?
How do they turn them out like that, he thought--every movement
fluid, every position graceful, every gesture exquisite? How does
this nonentity of a planet turn out a girl with the kind of walk the
video-stars back home practice and work years to approach? With a
voice with that indescribable music and precision? With a flawless
skin, radiant hair, a serenity and self-confidence that would make the
greatest beauties on Terra envious? With a quiet, careless pride that
made him, the new ruler of her planet, awkward and insecure in the
presence of his own servant?
Jeannette had been jealous, he realized suddenly. She was jealous of
these girls, of their grace, of their radiance. Her cynicism covered a
bitter envy.
For a long time he lay there, trying to sleep, haunted by Nanae's
luminous eyes.
* * * * *
He started working the next morning.
There was no use putting it off, he thought. Nemar seemed to act like
a drug, gradually depriving you of your drive and ambition. He wasn't
going to give it a chance to let its poison seep into him.
He flung himself into his duties as Planetary Administrator with a grim
determination. He struggled to organize the affairs of the planet on
a more efficient basis. He introduced new methods and techniques. He
worked tirelessly, relentlessly, hardly noticing their passage as one
day followed another. And every moment he could spare, he devoted to
the project for finding something of value to export.
He was going to put this planet on the map. He didn't know how yet, but
he was going to do it.
He was going to turn his misfortune into a triumph.
Every hint of a possibility was followed up with eagerness.
Every lead, every clue, was the subject of exhaustive study and
investigation. His days were a succession of guarded hopes and
disappointments, of surges of optimism and long stretches of
discouragement. He pushed his wearied body into greater and greater
efforts, working unflaggingly through the day and most of the night,
spurred by the anger that still burned in him.
The natives, he knew, looked at the light burning late into the night
and thought he was a little crazy. He gave up eating with them. It was
too easy, there by the river, to drift into staying later and later,
drinking their hot wine, chatting, watching the dancing. It was too
hard to resist the temptation of midnight swimming later with the young
men and women at the nearby beach, with revels and bonfires on the
lavender sands afterward.
* * * * *
At the end of two weeks, he sat on his bed, taking stock of what he had
accomplished.
It was very little.
And he was very tired.
The tiredness was familiar. It was just like school all over again,
he thought, the same long exhausting hours of driving oneself
relentlessly. He wondered when he'd be able to relax. He didn't dare
relax now. When he had a lead, a definite hope of some kind, he could
begin to let up. But not till then. It would be too easy to give up and
let go altogether, go the way Jerwyn had gone.
He was beginning to understand why Jerwyn had given up.
He was beginning to understand a lot of things--the odd, cryptic
remarks he had heard about the natives when he first arrived, the mixed
admiration and exasperation they seemed to arouse.
He remembered a man named Gandhi from ancient Indian history.
The Nemarians could have given Gandhi lessons.
Working with them was like working with an invisible wall of resistance
that weakened here and strengthened there, gave in unexpectedly at one
place and resisted implacably at another.
At times his plans were praised; then they were put into effect with an
efficiency that astonished him. At other times they were criticized,
in a casual, friendly manner that enraged him. Then they were not put
into effect at all. When he insisted on obedience, the natives reacted
with an attitude of patient tolerance, and did nothing. Most of the
time, his orders were received indifferently and carried out with an
agonizing slowness.
He pushed and prodded them. He reasoned with them. He shouted at them.
He reaped nothing but frustration.
They didn't hate him. He knew that. He had never seen a trace of malice
in their expressions. People smiled at him when he passed, and children
came up to tug at his hand and ask him to come to visit their house.
There was none of the stony hatred here he knew existed in many places
for the all-powerful Galactic Union.
They simply seemed to lack all appreciation of the importance of his
position.
Yet they knew, he thought. They knew he had what amounted to almost
unlimited power over their planet. They knew a space-fleet that had
burned life off the face of entire planets lay at his disposal. They
knew he could crush any rebellion instantly.
But, of course, they weren't rebelling, he thought. They weren't even
openly uncooperative. There it was again: they weren't even unfriendly;
they deluged him with constant invitations.
They knew of his power, but they acted as if it didn't exist.
And he wasn't sure they weren't going to win with him, as they had
with Jerwyn. The Galactic Union did not look with approval on any call
for aid except in a military crisis; such a request was in effect an
affidavit of failure. Besides, he didn't want to complain. He didn't
want to set himself against them. He was working for them, not just for
himself.
He sighed and began to get ready for bed.
Primitive people had always fought progress and change. They had always
clung to old, outworn methods. But there was more to it than that, he
thought. Primitive people were usually full of superstitious fear of
change, but the Nemarians were not afraid. You couldn't think of them
as fearful. They knew the danger--they knew the strength and power that
faced them--but they were not afraid. They didn't even "handle with
care".
Where did their courage come from?
Or was it just blind stupidity, he thought, a refusal to look facts in
the face, to admit that they were the helpless, backward subjects of an
immensely more powerful and more advanced civilization?
He pulled off a shoe absently, and he thought of all the documents and
reports he had read about Nemar. Ross had given them to him, and he had
searched in them for a clue to help him understand why Ross was sending
him here. He had read and reread them, and they had told him little
more than Ross himself about Nemar.
There was something peculiar about all those documents, he thought,
something odd about the way they were written. They described
an undeveloped planet without valuable resources or any kind of
technology, in no way out of the ordinary. But between the lines was
something that said this planet was out of the ordinary, in spite of
the apparent facts. There was the unavoidable feeling that something
was left unsaid.
What were they trying to hide? Why hadn't they let him know what he was
in for?
Terrans had been coming for forty years. In forty years, they must have
learned something. They must have found out something about what made
these people the way they were, and about how to deal with them. There
should have been warnings and suggestions and at least, if nothing
else, descriptions of methods that had been tried and failed. It should
all have been there, out in the open; it should have been down in black
and white: this is the situation, so far as we know it; these are the
problems.
Instead, there had been only routine description, and veiled hints and
allusions.
He hadn't been here long, he thought. There was a lot to learn here
yet. The other Terrans, the ones who had been here a long time, knew
something he didn't know. He could tell from their faces, from their
attitude toward him. Cortland didn't know, or he would have told him,
and some of the others didn't either, but most of them did. They knew
something, but whether it was pleasant or unpleasant knowledge, he
couldn't tell. Whatever it was, it affected them. They neglected their
work, and they had a different look from the Terrans back home.
Jerwyn had known, and he hadn't told him. He'd said he'd have to live
here to find out.
He lay down and stretched out wearily on the bed.
Well, the answers here exist, he thought. Somehow, when he had all
the pieces, the jigsaw would have to fit together and make a coherent
picture.
Maybe he was looking in the wrong direction.
But he didn't know where to look.
He thought of the day he had just been through, remembering incident
after incident when he had had all he could do to keep his temper
under control. Annoyance welled up in him again, as he recalled the
series of frustrations, the useless arguments.
His mind was still revolving in an upheaval of confusion and anger as
he fell asleep.
* * * * *
It was barely past dawn when he awoke. He tried to fall asleep again
and failed. Giving up, he dressed and wandered into the other room and
the garden beyond. He felt the early morning coolness slipping over
his shoulders like a garment, and a sense of the futility of all his
struggling filled him. He felt a sudden longing to rest, bask in the
sun, live as the natives did in sunny, amiable unconcern.
He stiffened, annoyed at himself. That would mean giving up everything
he had worked so hard for all his life, ending up as a lazy failure. He
felt a surge of anger inside him toward something he could hardly name.
As he stood there, he saw two Nemarian children, a boy and a girl about
five years old, emerge from the trees and begin to pick the shimmering
flowers in the garden. Irritation rose hotly in him. He knew that it
was out of proportion, built out of a hundred frustrating incidents,
but he found he didn't want to control it. He wanted to lash out at
somebody.
"Stop stealing my flowers!" he yelled. He was surprised at the
harshness of his own voice.
The children did not start fearfully or run, as he expected. They
turned and stared at him in an unconcerned manner. "You can't steal
flowers," the boy said matter-of-factly. "They don't belong to
anybody." He looked at Kirk questioningly. "You didn't plant them, did
you?"
Kirk stared at him, speechless.
The boy went on, his tone slightly indignant. "Anyway, it's very rude
of you to speak to us like that!"
"They are quite right," an angry voice cut in. Kirk whirled around to
find Nanae standing beside him, a basket in her hand. Her hair, radiant
in the sunlight, was caught back from her face with a green ribbon, and
the brown, gold-flecked eyes, for once, were not soft, but sparkling
with anger. "These are my sister's children," she said icily. "They
help me gather flowers for your table. Do you think just because they
are young you have the right to treat them without respect?"
Staring at her angry face, Kirk felt his own anger ebbing. Into his
mind a forgotten incident flashed back from his childhood. Through a
door left ajar in a neighboring apartment he had seen a ripe purple
fruit imported from a newly discovered planet, and had taken it,
curious to find out what unsynthetic food might taste like. He had been
discovered, and angrily whipped and locked in his room. He remembered
wiping away the tears, alone in his room, smarting with humiliation,
and vowing he would show them, he would show them all; he would grow
up to be so powerful he could have anything he wanted, and everybody
would be afraid of him.
He looked now at Nanae, who had put an arm around each of the children,
cradling them to her. His anger left him completely. Remembering the
hurt child he had once been, he found himself longing for the touch of
softness and kindness that had never come to him, wishing that even now
for a moment he could take the children's place--lay his head against
her breast, and feel her fold him in and brush her hand through his
hair. He felt something melting inside of him. He could feel the lines
of his face softening as he looked at them.