Collected Short Fiction, page 409
And D.F. Collins also happened to be a director of Long Island Spaceport. That made him one of O’Reilly’s employers. O’Reilly felt a sudden sense of foreboding, as he made his way through the rain to hand in Melva Collins’ pilot’s license to the authorities.
HE WAITED for the call most of the rest of the afternoon, and when it came it hardly surprised him. The office phone rang, and he picked it up with slightly quivering fingers.
“Sergeant O’Reilly.”
“Sergeant, this is Mr. Collins’ secretary. Mr. Collins is in his office in the Administration Building and he’d like to see you right away.”
“Okay,” O’Reilly said tonelessly. “I’ll be right there. Soon as I can get my raincoat on.”
He hung up. He waited a second or two, then rang up to Lieutenant Alden, and said he was going off-duty for about fifteen minutes. Then he climbed into his raincoat again and legged it across the spaceport to the towering Administration Building.
COLLINS’ office was on the seventeenth floor. It was a good job while it lasted, he thought as he gave his name to the secretary. Collins would fire him so far he’d take up an independent ninety-minute orbit. He began to wish he hadn’t spoken quite so ruggedly to the girl. She had probably repeated every bit of blasphemy that had left O’Reilly’s lips.
“Mr. Collins will see you now,” he was told. “Through that door.”
O’Reilly went through the sumptuous doer into a sumptuous office. D.F. Collins of Collins Spacecraft sat behind a broad mahogany desk. He was a tall, sturdy-looking man in his fifties. He seemed to be scowling.
He said, “Are you Sergeant O’Reilly?”
“T-thats right.”
“Sit down, Sergeant. I understand you and my daughter had some difficulty earlier today.”
O’Reilly nodded.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Collins said. His voice was an authoritative and commanding one. “She’s always been a headstrong girl, you know. She took private lessons in space-piloting—cost me a fortune—and then demanded her own ship. It had to be a high-acceleration sports model, too. Nothing else would satisfy her.”
“I saw the ship,” O’Reilly said. “It’s really a beauty.”
“You took her ticket away, I understand?”
O’Reilly nodded. “You’ll get the full explanation tomorrow, I think. I filed a charge downstairs. Seven major violations and four minor ones, including resisting arrest. But . . .”
“But what, Sergeant?”
O’REILLY felt driblets of sweat pouring down his beefy face. “Look here, Mr. Collins. I used to be a space pilot, and it isn’t my fault I’m a traffic cop now. I’m too old for space, according to the medics. But I know what my job is and my job was to bring your daughter down from space fast before she did some serious damage. So I did it. Okay, I know you can pull strings to get her ticket cleared, and I know you can get me booted out of here for arresting her. Why don’t you just say it, then, instead of letting me squirm? Why . . .”
He stopped. Collins was smiling.
“There seems to be some mistake, Sergeant. I’m not going to pull any strings. You don’t know how happy I am that Melva’s going to be suspended; I only hope it’s a life suspension and not merely a few years. I called you over to congratulate you, that’s all. And to thank you. It’s the first time in twenty-three years that anybody has been able to discipline that girl. And . . .”
The door flew open.
O’Reilly turned and saw Melva Collins stalk in. She was still dripping wet, and her clothes and hair were soggy. Her long eyelashes were plastered together by water. She looked angry.
“Father!”
Collins looked at her. “You’re supposed to knock before entering, my dear.”
“To the deuce with that. I’ve lost my license! They say they won’t let me space again! And it’s all because of this—this . . .”
“I was just doing my job, Miss,” O’Reilly said.
“You should have heard the things he said to me! And then he refused to let me land my ship, and—oh, I wish I could scratch his eyes out! You’ll have him fired for me, won’t you?”
“No,” Collins said. “I won’t.”
O’REILLY began to grin.
Somehow, seeing the magnate bearded by his daughter was worth all the boredom of nine months as a traffic cop. He watched the frustrated rage animate the girl’s face as she worked herself up into a tantrum which Collins seemed powerless to control.
The yelling went on for about sixty seconds, at the end of which time O’Reilly turned to Collins and said, “Mr. Collins? May I make an impertinent suggestion?”
“What is it, Sergeant?”
“I think I know what your daughter needs. And it isn’t a pilot’s license.”
“It’s a good sound spanking,” Collins said. “I’ve known that for years.”
“Father! How could you! I . . .”
“Quiet, Melva.” Collins smiled. “Sergeant, I know it isn’t quite in the realm of a traffic officer’s duties—but perhaps you’d be willing to oblige me? I think she needs it.”
O’Reilly grinned and gave a spaceman’s salute. “Call it corrective discipline, sir. It’s part of a traffic officer’s duties, and I’m willing to oblige.”
“Keep your hands off me, O’Reilly. Don’t cone near me! Don’t . . .”
O’Reilly advanced relentlessly, cornered the kicking girl without much trouble, and bent her over I. knee. He paused and looked doubtfully at Collins. The old man was beaming in unremarkable approval.
It’s been a long, tough day, O’Reilly thought! But here’s where I even the score. His arm rose and fell rhythmically.
For once, duty was pleasure for O’Reilly.
Heir Reluctant
Some are born great, some achieve greatness—and some, it seems, have to have greatness shoved down their throats with a force pump!
I
“. . . Perhaps the knottiest problem that confronts one whose task it is to provide for the development of a young and newly-independent world is the question of transfer of power. The stresses of a planet’s initial colonial years give way to the very different stresses of early self-government, and the man who leads the government in its first stages must be an extraordinary one. Paradoxically, however, the potential leader is not always anxious to assume the burden of rule, and frequently may be obstinately reluctant to do so . . .”
Dynamics of the Colonial Process
DAWSON
A DRY, dusty wind was blowing across Dannon City from the east, kicking up fallen leaves in the broad plaza before the imposing dwelling of the Terran Resident Protector on Dannon’s World. It was a stormcarrying wind, David Kilross thought, looking out into the plaza.
Well, he expected a storm. Pie had been Resident Protector here long enough to know when a storm was on its way.
He turned, away from the window, conscious of the slightly-higher-than-Earthnorm pull of gravity. The dark gray-purple clouds scudding overhead had put him into a somber mood. He clenched and unclenched his fists. He wanted to talk to somebody; anybody, it seemed, as long as he could communicate some of the thoughts and plans that spun in his head.
Kilross walked to his desk, opened a communicator channel, and spoke quickly and crisply. A few moments went by; then the area on the far wall where the solido-projector was glowed a soft yellow, deepening to green as the figure of a man appeared.
The image facing Kilross was that of an Earthman, short and thickset like himself. He was Merrill Stoneham, Protector of Lannimar, fourteen light-years away. Stoneham and Kilross had entered Colonial Service together, a decade earlier. They were old friends.
Without preamble Stoneham said, “Dave, I read your report in Extracts. I was going to call you about it. You’re taking a big chance, you know.”
Quietly Kilross said, “I know. I was always a pretty fair gambler.”
“But you’re gambling with a world, now! Are you sure you’re right?”
An enigmatic expression entered Kilross’ eyes as he said, “Can we ever be sure? We manipulate gigantic forces, Merrill. How do we know we won’t crush ourselves?” He knotted his hands together. Behind him, he heard the first downward lashing sweep of the storm, the heavy thudding of the rain against the dry streets of Dannon City. Kilross said, “This planet is right on the edge of independence. I’m going to give it to them.”
Stoneham shrugged. “I suppose you know what you’re doing. My planet’s at least a century in the future, so far as the question of independence goes. But I won’t question your statement. Except that your Extracts article said that Dannon’s World faces a possible dictatorship if Earth grants independence now. And yet, in the teeth of that statement, you go right ahead. How come?”
“I’ve got an ace in the hole,” Kilross said. “A natural leader, the sort of man you don’t come across often. His name’s White. Austin White.”
Frowning, the solido-projection of Stoneham said, “If he’s so good, why isn’t he ruling now? Your article said a man named Henderson was the local top man.”
Kilross leaned forward avidly. “Don’t worry about White. He’s busy now, with other things. But he’ll take over, when he’s needed. I’ll bet five years of my pension on it.”
Stoneham stared levelly at his fellow administrator for a long moment, smiling in a sort of grudging admiration. After a while he reached beyond the solido field with his left hand, and drew a half-full glass toward him. He waited while Kilross could pour a drink of his own.
Stoneham raised his glass. “Here’s to you,” he said.
Fourteen light-years away, on Dannon’s World, Resident Protector David Kilross shook his head and grinned. “Here’s to Austin White,” he responded. “The future premier of Dannon’s World. Only he doesn’t know it yet.”
At the moment the two Terrans drained their glasses, the object of their discussion was entertaining a member of the local planetary government in his downtown flat.
Austin White’s apartment in the heart of Dannon City had the sterile, barren appearance one would expect of the home of a bachelor with a predilection toward tidiness. Above everything else, White was tidy—whether in laboring over the mathematics that was his chief pleasure in life, or in keeping his few personal possessions in their proper places.
A few pieces of golden-hued driftwood were the only ornaments in his flat. He did not believe in cluttering up his home with bric-a-brac, any more than he believed in cluttering up his mind. He was a tall man, not yet forty, with dark close-cropped hair and a lean muscular frame. His face was particularly striking: thin fleshless lips, a triangular wedge of a nose, eyes that never seemed to be looking at, but always past and through. He was a fifth-generation settler on Dannon’s World.
His guest was Bernhard Klein, a third-generation man of Swiss-Terran extraction. Klein was Minister of the Arts in the cabinet of Premier Henderson. And for the past two months, Klein had had much the same thing to say to White each time he visited him.
“Dammit, Austin, if there’s a revolution on this planet next month it’ll be your fault!”
White frowned, sighed, stubbed out his cigarette. The rain was a tumultuous drumbeat outside, battering the windows and the rooftops of the city and washing the soil from the gaunt purple hills that ringed it in.
“You always lay the blame so directly at my door,” White said. “As if I could have altered the situation by sacrificing my private life to oppose Henderson—”
“Your father and your grandfather before him had no objections to sacrificing their private lives,” Klein reminded him a little icily. Klein was a small man, soft-spoken, with a dell termined glitter in his pale green eyes. “They were willing to run. They served Dannon’s World thirty-five years between them, as Premier.”
“Be reasonable, Bernhard.” People would never understand. “They wanted public life, and they got what they wanted. I want something else.”
And, he added silently, I watched them waste their lives in a futile attempt at governing. You can’t govern unless you can teach the people to rule themselves. Dad and Granddad knew what needed to be done. They just didn’t know how to go about doing it.
That was what White was trying to find out. He was searching for an equation, a mathematical formulation for human communication. For a decade, he had known that the end of his goal was in sight. Another five years, perhaps, another ten, another fifteen—
He worked at it, with single-minded intensity that made some people think he was strange. He didn’t care. In his eyes, his work came first, before all else. Before family, before friends, even before his planet. He had suffered for that, but he stuck to his purposes. There was time to explain later, after he had succeeded.
Coolly White lit another cigarette and dialed a drink. He leaned forward and snapped a musicdisk into the socket. It was Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto; it relaxed the somewhat overtense atmosphere of the room.
Klein drummed for a moment on the edge of his chair. He seemed to be weighing his words, measuring them for their maximal persuasive effect. At length he said, “I came here for a specific reason tonight, Austin. I came to ask a favor.”
“Ask it, then.”
“No. Not yet. First let me say this: I want you to hear me out, and not answer me until I’m finished. And I want a simple answer, yes or no, you understand? Also I want it clear that I’m asking it in my official capacity as part of Premier Henderson’s cabinet, not simply as a friend of yours. I hope it won’t have any future effect on the relationship we—”
The lengthy prelude annoyed White. He smiled suddenly and said, “All right. What is it you want, Bernhard?”
“Simply this. Premier Henderson has drafted a fourth Home Rule petition. He requests Resident Protector Kilross to forward the petition to the Colonial Council on Earth for immediate consideration.”
“Henderson’s going to get the same reaction he did the last three times. Kilross will make polite noises and toss the petition in the disposal the minute Henderson turns his back. I don’t see—”
“I haven’t told you yet,” Klein said sharply. “Henderson feels that perhaps the wrong approach has been taken in petitioning Kilross, up to now. He thinks perhaps if some well-known citizen served the petition, somebody respected by all but not an actual member of the government, Kilross might take the petition more seriously.”
“No,” White said immediately. A stiff week of important calculations awaited him. “I’m not interested in taking a job as a process server, if that’s what you’re driving at.”
Klein shrugged. “I guess I should have expected it. Very well. But consider this—and what I say is strictly entre nous. Henderson anticipates a fourth rejection of the petition. He expects it. And he says that if Kilross turns it down again, he’s going to declare Dannon’s World independent of Earth anyway, and expel the Terran Resident Protector.”
“That’s revolution. The cabinet and the Assembly won’t let him do any such thing.”
“We can’t stop him,” Klein said. “Henderson happens to have full executive control over the military. He can touch off a one-man revolution if he feels like it. And I know he feels like it. Henderson’s utterly ruthless. Do you know him?”
“I met him once. I didn’t care to meet him a second time.”
“O.K.,” Klein said. “You saw who he is and what he’s like. Now, if you refuse to go to Kilross and give him the petition—dammit, Austin, you’ll be touching off that revolution as sure as if you fired the first shot!”
White was silent for a long time, scowling. Why did they never let him concentrate on his work? Why were they always claiming portions of his time? He had watched two earlier generations of Whites fritter away their lives in futile attempts to preserve the bonds of civilization, when they could have been working on—
He stared at his thick strong hands and wished Klein had never come this evening. He did not look up.
Klein said quietly, “If you had wanted the premiership seven years ago it would have been yours on a platter, and you know it, Austin. But you decided not to take it. You said your family had bossed Dannon’s World for two generations, and that was long enough. So you turned the job down and eventually Mark Henderson grabbed it. O.K. You have your own life to lead. But I’m asking you to grant half a day of your precious time to your planet and go to see Kilross. How about it?”
Without answering, White rose and walked to the window. It had stopped raining, and the streets were darkly wet. Neat, symmetrical streets; the founding fathers had planned well. A rainbow arched splendidly across the sky, dropping sharply behind the steely rim of the mountain wall. Golden shafts of sunlight broke against the pavement.
White turned and his eyes met Klein’s. The small man had been damnably persuasive. And he had no choice but to accept, anyway.
In a tired voice he said, “You win, Bernhard. I’ll go to Kilross if you think it’ll help.”
II
“. . . In choosing a native-born leader for a newly-independent colony world, the Terran Resident Protector must seek a man with the qualities of sound leadership. That is to say, the man of his choice must have deep-rooted inner ethics, toughness of mind and of purpose, and a certain ruthlessness, a willingness to undertake difficult tasks without reference to self or to public clamor, if he sees the overall result as beneficial. In short, the Resident Protector must seek a man who has essentially the same characteristics as himself, though these traits may manifest themselves in subtle and sometimes awkward manners . . .”
Dynamics of the Colonial Process
DAWSON
In the immediate pre-independence years of a colony world, the Terran Resident Protector is normally the most important single individual on the planet. He is chosen on Earth, by the Colonial Council, and his appointment is for life. It is his task to review any decisions of the local colonial government, give advice when necessary, intervene openly when affairs called for intervention.
