Collected Short Fiction, page 315
A single loud crack! resounded over the gaming-grounds.
Pickering released Ahruntinok’s suddenly limp arm and stood back as the giant writhed in pain, knotting his huge legs as if wishing he had Pickering’s neck imprisoned between his tightening thighs. Pickering grasped Ahruntinok’s other arm and glanced questioningly at Norden.
Norden shook his head.
“No,” he said in English. “Enough’s enough. Don’t break the other one.”
Pickering looked disappointed but he let Ahruntinok’s arm drop, and stepped back. The giant lay huddled face down on the hard snow, still conscious but not moving. His great body was racked by three loud, bitter, bewildered sobs. He made no attempt to rise.
. . . The harder they fall, Norden thought.
Pickering was coming off the battlefield now. He was gasping hard for breath, and his skin was blue and goose-pimpled from the cold, but he was traveling under his own steam without trouble. He crossed the field, drew near the Overman and the Grand Judge, and sank to the ground at their feet.
Kneeling, he looked up at the Overman and repeated the words Norden had taught him.
“My lord, I ask forgiveness for what I’ve done. The guilt of blasphemy lies on me still. Will you deign to punish me?”
If Pickering had struck him in the face, the Overman could not have looked more astonished. Mouth open, he stared from the huddled figure of Ahruntinok lying alone in the center of the gaming-ground to the kneeling figure of Pickering. In a hesitant, surprisingly small voice he said, “Punish you? The trial is over, and you have won. How can we punish you now?”
“I insist, my lord. I blasphemed at your temple.”
Norden forced back a grin at the Overman’s discomfiture. The priest-king was looking at the Grand Judge as if expecting some answer, some way out of this dilemma: how could Pickering have committed blasphemy if the result of the trial-by-combat showed clearly he was innocent? There had been a hundred witnesses to his act. How—?
The Grand Judge, of course, had no answer.
Norden stepped forward. It was not part of his plan to humiliate the Overman before all his village.
He said, “The man is clearly innocent by your law. I ask your permission to take him back, to settle his case among ourselves. May we have him? Will you release him from your custody?”
Something similar to horror passed over the Overman’s face. “Yes,” he said, much too quickly. “The man’s yours. The matter’s ended, so far as we’re concerned. Take him! Take him!”
But the matter, of course, was far from ended so far as the Leeminorrans were concerned. Their troubles, Norden thought, were just beginning.
He stared at the solidophoned figure of Director Thornton and said, “I did the same thing Devall did, sir. One of my men committed a crime against their laws, they came to me to demand him for trial, and I handed him over to them. You have to admit I was perfectly fair-minded about it.”
“You were,” Thornton chuckled. “Clean and aboveboard in the dirtiest way possible.”
“I object! Just because I handpicked my criminal, and just because he deliberately committed blasphemy in the most open and casual manner, and just because I knew that Leeminorran law provided recourse to trial by combat if the accused man requested it—”
“. . . And just because your man Pickering just happened to be one of Earth’s most murderous professional boxers,” Thornton added—
“Well? The job got done, didn’t it?” Norden demanded.
“It did indeed. And very well, too, according to your report. There’ll be a commendation for you, Norden. And when you’re through with Leeminorr, I’ll try to find a less wintry world for your next stop. Seems to me you’ve had a succession of rough assignments.”
“I like it that way, sir,” Norden said quietly.
“But—”
“Sir?”
That was all he needed to say.
Later, as he sat alone in his room filling out the routine report on the weather for that day, he paused to think over what he had done.
He felt pretty good about it. He had come to Leeminorr with a purpose, and he had fulfilled that purpose.
He scribbled busily away. Fifth September 2709. Colonel Lorne Norden reporting. Eighteenth day of our stay on Leeminorr, World 3 of System 2279-sub-c. Morning temperature 23 at 0700—
The Corps, he thought, had been saddled by the Devall Precedent. When an Earthman commits a crime on an alien world where he’s part of a study team, he’s responsible to the inhabitants of that world.
Devall had been an intelligent man, but a fuzzy thinker. His line of reasoning was down in his report: 7 believed I should treat the aliens as equals, and the best way to prove this equality to them was to subject ourselves to their legal code.
That was all well and good, thought Norden, as he continued working. There was only one minor hitch: the aliens were not equal. It was sloppy-minded to insist that they were.
The Markins had used trial by ordeal; the Leeminorrans, trial by combat. Both good systems, in their day—but not the best. Their results had little to do with actual justice, much as their proponents thought they did.
Norden had fought a double battle, and had won both. He had effectively smashed the Devall Precedent, and he had taught the Leeminorrans a few things about justice.
Simple. Just see to it that your man commits a flagrant abuse of the law in the presence of a few hundred witnesses—and then, when they take him away for trial, have him prove his undeniable innocence by their laws. Then let them square the problem of how a man can so obviously commit blasphemy and still get away with it at trial.
That ought to shake a couple of their concepts, Norden thought. It ought to show them a thing or two about the effectiveness of trial by combat. And they’ll think twice before they hail an Earthman up before their courts again.
He finished writing, closed up, and filed away the log. He walked to the window. Night had fallen; the splinter of moon was overhead, and a light snow was dropping through the cold darkness.
Devall’s mistake had been to treat his bunch of aliens as if they were equals, when they really weren’t . . . not yet. Norden had shown the Leeminorrans the flaw in the Devall Precedent: if you want to be treated like equals, you have to face the consequences. And the consequences, in this case, proved pretty ugly for poor Ahruntinok.
But he’d recover, and the Leeminorrans would learn something from the incident. Norden smiled.
He liked the sound of it: Norden’s Precedent. If aliens demand equality with Earthmen, give ’em all the equality they can stand, and then some more! Give it to ’em till it hurts!
That would hold as a good rule of thumb, Norden thought. Until the race came along that really deserved equality, and that was a different matter.
He snapped off the light and headed out into the snow, trotting across the compound to the medical building. The docs were fixing up Pickering, taking the bruises out of him and removing the dent a wild swipe had put in his nose. Pickering had gone through a lot lately, Norden thought. The colonel wanted to congratulate him for a good job, well done.
THE END
The Happy Unfortunate
Dekker, back from space, found great physical changes in the people of Earth; changes that would have horrified him five years before. But now, he wanted to be like the rest—even if he had to lose an eye and both ears to do it.
ROLF DEKKER stared incredulously at the slim, handsome young Earther who was approaching the steps of Rolf’s tumbling-down Spacertown shack. He’s got no ears, Rolf noted in unbelief. After five years in space, Rolf had come home to a strangely-altered world, and he found it hard to accept.
Another Earther appeared. This one was about the same size, and gave the same impression of fragility. This one had ears, all right—and a pair of gleaming, two-inch horns on his forehead as well. I’ll be eternally roasted, Rolf thought. Now I’ve seen everything.
Both Earthers were dressed in neat, gold-inlaid green tunics, costumes which looked terribly out of place amid the filth of Spacertown, and their hair was dyed a light green to match.
He had been scrutinizing them for several moments before they became aware of him. They both spotted him at once and the one with no ears turned to his companion and whispered something. Rolf, leaning forward, strained to hear.
“. . . beautiful, isn’t he? That’s the biggest one I’ve seen!”
“Come over here, won’t you?” the horned one called, in a soft, gentle voice which contrasted oddly with the raucous bellowing Rolf had been accustomed to hearing in space. “We’d like to talk to you.”
Just then Kanaday emerged from the door of the shack and limped down to the stair.
“Hey, Rolf!” he called. “Leave those things alone!”
“Let me find out what they want first, huh?”
“Can’t be any good, whatever it is,” Kanaday growled. “Tell them to get out of here before I throw them back to wherever they came from. And make it fast.”
The two Earthers looked at each other uneasily. Rolf walked toward them.
“He doesn’t like Earthers, that’s all,” Rolf explained. “But he won’t do anything but yell.”
Kanaday spat in disgust, turned, and limped back inside the shack.
“I didn’t know you were wearing horns,” Rolf said.
The Earther flushed. “New style,” he said. “Very expensive.”
“Oh,” Rolf said. “I’m new here; I just got back. Five years in space. When I left you people looked all alike. Now you wear horns.”
“It’s the new trend,” said the earless one. “We’re Individs. When you left the Conforms were in power, style-wise. But the new surgeons can do almost anything, you see.”
The shadow of a frown crossed Rolf’s face. “Anything?”
“Almost. They can’t transform an Earther into a Spacer, and they don’t think they ever will.”
“Or vice versa?” Rolf asked.
They sniggered. “What Spacer would want to become an Earther? Who would give up that life, out in the stars?”
Rolf said nothing. He kicked at the heap of litter in the filthy street. What spacer indeed? he thought. He suddenly realized that the two little Earthers were staring up at him as if he were some sort of beast. He probably weighed as much as both of them, he knew, and at six-four he was better than a foot taller. They looked like children next to him, like toys. The savage blast of acceleration would snap their flimsy bodies like toothpicks.
“What places have you been to?” the earless one asked.
“Two years on Mars, one on Venus, one in the Belt, one on Neptune,” Rolf recited. “I didn’t like Neptune. It was best in the Belt; just our one ship, prospecting. We made a pile on Ceres—enough to buy out. I shot half of it on Neptune. Still have plenty left, but I don’t know what I can do with it.” He didn’t add that he had come home puzzled, wondering why he was a Spacer instead of an Earther, condemned to live in filthy Spacertown when Yawk was just across the river.
They were looking at his shabby clothes, at the dirty brownstone hovel he lived in—an antique of a house four or five centuries old.
“You mean you’re rich?” the Earther said.
“Sure,” Rolf said. “Every Spacer is. So what? What can I spend it on? My money’s banked on Mars and Venus. Thanks to the law I can’t legally get it to Earth. So I live in Spacertown.”
“Have you ever seen an Earther city?” the earless one asked, looking around at the quiet streets of Spacertown with big powerful men sitting idly in front of every house.
“I used to live in Yawk,” Rolf said. “My grandmother was an Earther; she brought me up there. I haven’t been back there since I left for space.” They forced me out of Yawk, he thought. I’m not part of their species. Not one of them.
The two Earthers exchanged glances.
“Can we interest you in a suggestion?” They drew in their breath as if they expected to be knocked sprawling.
Kanaday appeared at the door of the shack again.
“Rolf. Hey! You turning into an Earther? Get rid of them two cuties before there’s trouble.”
Rolf turned and saw a little knot of Spacers standing on the other side of the street, watching him with curiosity. He glared at them.
“I’ll do whatever I damn well please,” he shouted across.
He turned back to the two Earthers. “Now, what is it you want?”
“I’m giving a party next week,” the earless one said. “I’d like you to come. We’d like to get the Spacer slant on life.”
“Party?” Rolf repeated. “You mean, dancing, and games, and stuff like that?”
“You’ll enjoy it,” the Earther said coaxingly. “And we’d all love to have a real Spacer there.”
“When is it?”
“A week.”
“I have ten days left of my leave. All right,” he said. “I’ll come.”
He accepted the Earther’s card, looked at it mechanically, saw the name—Kal Quinton—and pocketed it. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll be there.”
The Earthers moved toward their little jetcar, smiling gratefully. As Rolf crossed the street, the other Spacers greeted him with cold, puzzled stares.
Kanaday was almost as tall as Rolf, and even uglier. Rolf’s eyebrows were bold and heavy; Kanaday’s, thick, contorted, bushy clumps of hair. Kanaday’s nose had been broken long before in some barroom brawl; his cheekbones bulged; his face was strong and hard. More important, his left foot was twisted and gnarled beyond hope of redemption by the most skillful surgeon. He had been crippled in a jet explosion three years before, and was of no use to the Spacelines any more. They had pensioned him off. Part of the deal was the dilapidated old house in Spacertown which he operated as a boarding-house for transient Spacers.
“What do you want to do that for?” Kanaday asked. “Haven’t those Earthers pushed you around enough, so you have to go dance at one of their wild parties?”
“Leave me alone,” Rolf muttered.
“You like this filth you live in? Spacertown is just a ghetto, that’s all. The Earthers have pushed you right into the muck. You’re not even a human being to them—just some sort of trained ape. And now you’re going to go and entertain them. I thought you had brains, Rolf!”
“Shut up!” He dashed his glass against the table; it bounced off and dropped to the floor, where it shattered.
Kanaday’s girl Laney entered the room at the sound of the crash. She was tall and powerful-looking, with straight black hair and the strong cheekbones that characterized the Spacers. Immediately she stooped and began shoveling up the broken glass.
“That wasn’t smart, Rolf,” she said. “That’ll cost you half a credit. Wasn’t worth it, was it?”
Rolf laid the coin on the edge of the table. “Tell your pal to shut up, then. If he doesn’t stop icing me I’ll fix his other foot for him and you can buy him a dolly.”
She looked from one to the other. “What’s bothering you two now?”
“A couple of Earthers were here this morning,” Kanaday said. “Slumming. They took a fancy to our young friend here and invited him to one of their parties. He accepted.”
“He what? Don’t go, Rolf. You’re crazy to go.”
“Why am I crazy?” He tried to control his voice.
“Why should we keep ourselves apart from the Earthers? Why shouldn’t the two races get together?”
She put down her tray and sat next to him. “They’re more than two races,” she said patiently. “Earther and Spacer are two different species, Rolf. Carefully, genetically separated. They’re small and weak, we’re big and powerful. You’ve been bred for going to space; they’re the castoffs, the ones who were too weak to go. The line between the two groups is too strong to break.”
“And they treat us like dirt—like animals,” Kanaday said. “But they’re the dirt. They were the ones who couldn’t make it.”
“Don’t go to the party,” Laney said. “They just want to make fun of you. Look at the big ape, they’ll say.”
Rolf stood up. “You don’t understand. Neither of you does. I’m part Earther,” Rolf said. “My grandmother on my mother’s side. She raised me as an Earther. She wanted me to be an Earther. But I kept getting bigger and uglier all the time. She took me to a plastic surgeon once, figuring he could make me look like an Earther. He was a little man; I don’t know what he looked like to start with but some other surgeon had made him clean-cut and straightnosed and thin-lipped like all the other Earthers. I was bigger than he was—twice as big, and I was only fifteen. He looked at me and felt my bones and measured me. ‘Healthy little ape’—those were the words he used. He told my grandmother I’d get bigger and bigger, that no amount of surgery could make me small and handsome, that I was fit only for space and didn’t belong in Yawk. So I left for space the next morning.”
“I see,” Laney said quietly.
“I didn’t say good-bye. I just left. There was no place for me in Yawk; I couldn’t pass myself off as an Earther any more. But I’d like to go back and see what the old life was like, now that I know what it’s like to be on the other side for a while.”
“It’ll hurt when you find out, Rolf.”
“I’ll take that chance. But I want to go. Maybe my grandmother’ll be there. The surgeons made her young and pretty again every few years; she looked like my sister when I left.”
Laney nodded her head. “There’s no point arguing with him, Kanaday. He has to go back there and find out, so let him alone.”
Rolf smiled. “Thanks for understanding.” He took out Quinton’s card and turned it over and over in his hand.
Rolf went to Yawk on foot, dressed in his best clothes, with his face as clean as it had been in some years. Spacertown was just across the river from Yawk, and the bridges spanning the river were bright and gleaming in the mid-afternoon sun.
The bombs had landed on Yawk during the long-forgotten war, but somehow they had spared the sprawling borough across the river. And so Yawk had been completely rebuilt, once the radioactivity had been purged from the land, while what was now Spacertown consisted mostly of buildings that dated back to the Twentieth Century.
