The Edgar Pangborn Megapack Read online

  WRIGHT: A moment, please.… I cannot go back to Earth, Captain Slade. You mean it with the greatest kindness but it is impossible.

  SLADE: Why, forgive me, I supposed—I took it for granted—

  WRIGHT: My place is here. This is my work. These are my people.

  TEJRON: I knew—I knew—

  WRIGHT: What, my dear? I don’t understand.

  TEJRON: Oh, I should keep silent: this is for you to decide. But you’ve said it. You won’t leave us.

  WRIGHT: No. No, I won’t ever leave you. This is my home.

  SLADE: But—

  SPEARMAN: Can’t argue with the passion of an expatriate. The grass is always greener—

  PAUL: It could be no other way, Captain, at least for Dr. Wright and me, and I’m certain my wife will say the same when she comes back.

  WRIGHT: In some ways, Captain, the distance between Earth and Lucifer is greater than the simple light years between our two stars.

  SLADE: I’m—sorry. Wasn’t expecting it, that’s all. Let me get used to the idea a little.

  SPEARMAN: You can consider me neutral, Captain Slade. I have no place on Lucifer. One more utopia. Idealism running contrary to obvious facts. It will break up—fine-spun intellectual quarrels—no central control.

  PAUL: Until, sometime, a strong man takes over and makes an empire out of it…?

  WRIGHT: Please—

  SPEARMAN: No comment.…

  STERN: If I might differ with you, Mr. Spearman, it seems to me—after being shown over this lovely island—the domesticated cattle and those wonderful white beasts—the plantations and the houses—the perfect English and adult thinking of our new friends—above all, the school—it seems to me that Dr. Wright and his colleagues are realists of the first water. Of course I’m strongly prejudiced in their favor, because—well, during the twelve years of our journey I dreamed constantly of some such achievement as this myself. So it’s like coming home. I’m a doctor, Mr. Spearman; before I was chosen for the journey, I ran a clinic. As an intern, I had a lot of ambulance and emergency service at one of the big hospitals in Melbourne; I saw a superabundance of—let’s call them obvious facts. Now I think the sunny quiet here, the good health and intelligence of the children, the gardens, the devotion of these people to each other and to their work, the searching thought they’ve given to their laws and their future—I fancy those are obvious facts too…?

  WRIGHT: Man is neither good nor bad, but both. But he can swing the balance.

  STERN: Too right. I think I understand you, Doctor—why you want to stay here. I think I understand it very well.

  SLADE: I wouldn’t urge you. It’s only that I—took something else for granted. Foolishly. Let me be just a listener.

  ELIS: And let me fill your cup. You’re behind us, Captain.

  MINIAAN: The big jug is empty. How’d’at happen?

  MUSON: Portrait of a fat woman going away with another big jug.

  PAUL: Bless you, lady.

  MUSON: It was you that finished emptying it. I think.

  NISANA: Couldn’t have been me.…

  STERN: Are there any important physiological differences?

  WRIGHT: Nothing of first importance. Minor differences in blood chemistry, shape of hands and feet. Our friends have the hind brain in the spinal column, which may be the reason for their better muscular co-ordination and—you know, Doctor, I have often wished that the human race of Earth, which we call Charin, had more room in its head for the expansion of the frontal lobes.

  ELIS: I have a very high opinion of your frontal lobes, Christopher Wright. I have noticed that sometimes a large skull merely rattles.

  STERN: Just the same the point is well taken.

  PAUL: Might call it the miracle of the lobes and wishes.

  PAKRIAA: Why don’t you wait till Muson comes back…?

  SALLY MARINO: Don’t you—now, maybe this is a foolish question—don’t you have to work awfully hard—I mean, with so few technical aids? The—oh, oil lamps, the necessarily primitive—of course, you’ve done miracles to have as much as you do have, starting from almost nothing. What I’m trying to say, doesn’t mere survival take up so much time and effort that it—well, wears you down?

  PAUL: We have shelter, clothing, enough to eat—

  MINIAAN: And drink.

  PAUL: What we call a family, Sally, is made up of members of all three races. Such a unit may have seven or eight adults or more. Shelter, food—the basic needs are supplied by each family working for itself; the large family unit distributes the labor pretty well; and, if any family was stricken with misfortune (none has been so far) the others would all help as a matter of course. Now, we do have the germs of beginning industries in textiles, sugar—

  MINIAAN: Wine making.

  ABARA: The lady is pied.

  MINIAAN: The lady is not pied. Only very happy, and Vestoia is a dead city, and the little illuama will be making their nests where—Oh, Abara, you venerable ruin, I love you, I love you.…

  ABARA: Well, not right here in front of all these nice people.…

  MUKERJI: Beautiful way of life. Oh, here’s Muson. Have we drunk to everybody? Seems as though we must have overlooked somebody, earlier.

  NISANA: I don’t think so. Yes, we have. Let’s drink to the olifants.

  WRIGHT: And their seven calves.…

  PAUL: In textiles, for instance—Nisana does no housework because her worktime is at the loom; each household sends somebody over to work in the fiber and sugar plantations across the lake. The system works, Sally, in this very tiny community where everyone knows and respects everyone else, where all the laws and customs encourage the ironing out of differences before they become serious. And so far, work has never become oppressive. Most of it we enjoy; the boring, unpleasing jobs are shared because we know they have to be done and we don’t want anyone to have to carry too much of their weight. And so far, we don’t hunger for the complex and fascinating possessions we knew on Earth. Such hungers will come. Communities will grow. The best laws will fail sometimes; there will be disputes, mistakes, injustices. But we are forewarned by memories of Earth. Doc, I’m trying to say things you could say better—

  WRIGHT: No. Go on.

  PAUL: Well.… We plan, tentatively, a hundred family units here at Jensen City, a population of maybe a thousand adults, no larger. When that point is reached (several years away) then we must plan and build another town, probably here on the island. At that point we add new problems and perplexities. We may not need a monetary system until there are several towns; when we do, it will not develop haphazardly, but with the aid of all past knowledge we possess, for safeguard and guidance.

  SLADE: And when there are fifteen or twenty such communities?

  PAUL: They will want an over-all government; a miniature of a federal system, we suppose. A republic, with fully functional representative procedures, checked and safeguarded against every abuse of power. Because in all our study and memories of history, we’ve found no other type of government that can operate with fairness to majorities and minorities alike and leave men as free as any social animal can ever be free. For that matter, Captain, we sometimes glance ahead to a time when there will be hundreds or thousands of towns: a time when our great-grandchildren of all three races may want to experiment with large cities, elaborate industries. Such things will bring their own heavy difficulties, but we have reason to hope that our great-grandchildren will have the patience and courage to solve them as they arise. Brodaa, tell them about the school.

  BRODAA: I am not good in exposition, Paul.… We are—strict, Captain, that the children should learn all the tested factual knowledge we can give them. They must read, speak, write—clearly, precisely, honestly. We do not allow them to leave a method half learned, a task half do
ne. If there is a question, they must search for an answer; if there is no sufficient answer known, they must learn to test the insufficient answers and wait judgment. My own language has flaws—I am an old woman—I still go to school, to Paul, Mashana Dorothy, Dr. Wright, to learn more for my own sake and for the little ones I teach. They must learn the fundamental methods and facts as soon as they can start to think at all. We are never afraid of teaching any child too much or too soon—we respect them. Oh, Mashana, I was wishing you would return.

  DOROTHY: Need has arisen for the Dope? What goes on more or less?

  ELIS: Education.

  PAUL: How is—

  SPEARMAN: How is she?

  DOROTHY: She is asleep, Ed. Nothing to worry about.

  PAKRIAA: She will be healed.

  MIJOK: Education on Lucifer. Pakriaa and I have the pleasantest part of the teaching, I think. We show them the ways of the forest and the open ground, the plants and other living things, how to hunt without cruelty or waste, how to be safe and happy alone in the woods at night, when to fear and not to fear. As Samis shows them the care of the tame beasts, and the work in the plantations.…

  WRIGHT: I’ll add a little too, though Brodaa could do it better—

  MUKERJI: Come here, kink.

  DOROTHY: Why, he loves you! That one won’t usually go to anybody but Muson. His wife is due to have kittens and he’s blue about it.

  MUKERJI: Kittens—kinkens—

  DOROTHY: Just kittens. Seven at one whack. Oof—shet ma mouf.

  HELEN: Mother, if you looked at seven kittens now they’d be fourteen.

  DOROTHY: Such comment, from a lady allowed to sit up late. Such, I might add, perfectly accurate comment. Sleepy, baby?

  HELEN: Not a bit.

  DOROTHY: You are too. You snuggle like a kitten half full of milk. Half an hour, huh?

  HELEN: Mm.

  WRIGHT: We see to it, Captain, that our children are not stuffed with inflated words, equivocal words. When you talk with them, they won’t be chattering to you about freedom, democracy, truth, justice. They learn these words closely; we see to it that they learn them with caution. When they use them we say—define, define. Democracy by what means, within what limits, toward what end? Freedom from what, for what? For what’s the profit if I rattle on about freedom in a semantic vacuum? I am free to speak, not free to kill and wound; I must be free from slavery to the whims of others. I can never be free from the bonds of a hundred duties, responsibilities, loyalties to persons I love and principles I cherish. Words without definition are sheer noise, and noise never drummed any race into Paradise. Oh, the thing’s obvious as a child’s building blocks—but I recall how on Earth men tended to forget it twenty-four hours a day, and here on Lucifer we forget it often enough—myself included. But we do not forget it when we teach our children.… One other thing—before this wine takes me back to second childhood—as soon, Captain, as their minds are old enough—

  AREK: Where did Spearman go?

  WRIGHT: Oh, he—he just stepped out, I think. Stretch his legs or something. As soon as their minds are old enough to think with some independence and explore, we insist that they start the lifetime struggle with man’s primary dilemma—

  ELIS: I hoped you would speak of that, my brother.

  WRIGHT: That he is an individual, his self-hood precious and inviolate, yet he must live in harmony with other individuals whose right to life and welfare is as certain as his own. Approach the study of society from any direction you will, that problem is at the heart of it, and must be a thousand generations from now, because it must be met anew with every infant born. We think, here, that the most rewarding answer is in the old virtues of self-knowledge, charity, honesty, forbearance, patience. Now, those are all words that demand definition and multiple definition; on that basis we have our children study them, search the depth and height of them, in the not so simple problems of childhood through the tougher ones of adolescence and maturity. We make them understand that lip service will not do: if one is to make himself honest he must eat honesty with breakfast, sweat with it in the sun, laugh and play and suffer with it and lie down with it at night until it’s near as the oxygen in his blood. Yes, we aim high. Cruelly high, would you say? We don’t think so. Perfection is a cold spot on top of a mountain, and nobody ever climbed there. We have trouble and fun and arguments; sometimes the garden weeds grow until tomorrow or the day after, but we sleep well.

  DOROTHY: Speaking of perfection and goodness and things and stuff—I know it was Paul who put those violin strings by Nan’s bed, but which one of you supplied them?

  SLADE: Well, he told me—

  DOROTHY: Will it be all right if I reach over this daughter of mine and kiss you?

  SLADE: They did brief us, back on Earth, that we must respect local customs—

  MIJOK: And perhaps even another drink could do him no harm.

  PAKRIAA: He’s pied.

  ELIS: I would not say that. Speaking as Governor, I say that the local wine industry deserves every encouragement it can get—and has, ever since Samis’ favorite kink had kittens in the bottom of the vest bat.

  SAMIS: Correction.

  MIJOK: Best vat. Speaking as Lieutenant Governor. Just elected—did it myself.

  MUSON: The toastmistress has been quiet lately.

  NISANA: Who, me?

  PAUL: By acclamation, yes.

  NISANA: Le’me think. We did drink to the children—those in bed and those who ought to be—

  HELEN: ’Ception.

  DOROTHY: Great big woman. You weigh a ton, sweet stuff, ’n’ so do your eyelids, they do.

  NISANA: And we drank to the olifants. No no—I am too happy—my mind is a lake without a breeze. You propose the toast, Pakriaa.

  SALLY: Matter of fact I’m already sort of whooliollicky—I think—

  DOROTHY: Hey—maybe it’s not just the wine. Paul—Doc—it must be almost thirteen hours—

  PAUL: Yes—yes, almost. Maybe you’d better—

  SALLY: No, let’s have one more toast. At least one more, Pakriaa?

  WRIGHT: I’ll drink with you, Pakriaa.

  PAKRIAA: Oh—let us be happy. Friends, I give you the wine itself and the earth that made it. I give you birth and death and the journey of our days and nights between them, the shining of green fields, the patience of the forest, the little stars, the great stars, the love and the thought, the labor and the laughter, the good morning sky.

  THE GOOD NEIGHBORS

  Originally published in Galaxy magazine, June 1960.

  The ship was sighted a few times, briefly and without a good fix. It was spherical, the estimated diameter about twenty-seven miles, and was in an orbit approximately 3400 miles from the surface of the Earth. No one observed the escape from it.

  The ship itself occasioned some excitement, but back there at the tattered end of the 20th century, what was one visiting spaceship more or less? Others had appeared before, and gone away discouraged—or just not bothering. 3-dimensional TV was coming out of the experimental stage. Soon anyone could have Dora the Doll or the Grandson of Tarzan smack in his own living-room. Besides, it was a hot summer.

  The first knowledge of the escape came when the region of Seattle suffered an eclipse of the sun, which was not an eclipse but a near shadow, which was not a shadow but a thing. The darkness drifted out of the northern Pacific. It generated thunder without lightning and without rain. When it had moved eastward and the hot sun reappeared, wind followed, a moderate gale. The coast was battered by sudden high waves, then hushed in a bewilderment of fog.

  Before that appearance, radar had gone crazy for an hour.

  The atmosphere buzzed with aircraft. They went up in readiness to shoot, but after the first sighting reports only a few miles offshore, that order was ve
hemently canceled—someone in charge must have had a grain of sense. The thing was not a plane, rocket or missile. It was an animal.

  If you shoot an animal that resembles an inflated gas-bag with wings, and the wingspread happens to be something over four miles tip to tip, and the carcass drops on a city—it’s not nice for the city.

  The Office of Continental Defense deplored the lack of precedent. But actually none was needed. You just don’t drop four miles of dead or dying alien flesh on Seattle or any other part of a swarming homeland. You wait till it flies out over the ocean, if it will—the most commodious ocean in reach.

  It, or rather she, didn’t go back over the Pacific, perhaps because of the prevailing westerlies. After the Seattle incident she climbed to a great altitude above the Rockies, apparently using an updraft with very little wing-motion. There was no means of calculating her weight, or mass, or buoyancy. Dead or injured, drift might have carried her anywhere within one or two hundred miles. Then she seemed to be following the line of the Platte and the Missouri. By the end of the day she was circling interminably over the huge complex of St. Louis, hopelessly crying.

  She had a head, drawn back most of the time into the bloated mass of the body but thrusting forward now and then on a short neck not more than three hundred feet in length. When she did that the blunt turtle-like head could be observed, the gaping, toothless, suffering mouth from which the thunder came, and the soft-shining purple eyes that searched the ground but found nothing answering her need. The skin-color was mud-brown with some dull iridescence and many peculiar marks resembling weals or blisters. Along the belly some observers saw half a mile of paired protuberances that looked like teats.

  She was unquestionably the equivalent of a vertebrate. Two web-footed legs were drawn up close against the cigar-shaped body. The vast, rather narrow, inflated wings could not have been held or moved in flight without a strong internal skeleton and musculature. Theorists later argued that she must have come from a planet with a high proportion of water surface, a planet possibly larger than Earth though of about the same mass and with a similar atmosphere. She could rise in Earth’s air. And before each thunderous lament she was seen to breathe.