The Project Gutenberg eBook of Beside the golden door
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Title: Beside the golden door
Author: Henry Slesar
Release date: December 15, 2023 [eBook #72420]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1963
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BESIDE THE GOLDEN DOOR ***
BESIDE THE GOLDEN DOOR
By HENRY SLESAR
Illustrated by SCHELLING
_Earth was dead, but Liberty still held her torch
aloft. Yet only Deez, the alien, could know whether
it was raised in welcome or in mockery._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Amazing Stories February 1964.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Devia's voice, like a sweetly tinkling bell in his ear, sounded in
Ky-Tann's headpiece, and he chuckled at the urgency of her tone. Wedded
less than two years, he still delighted in every nuance of her nature,
and this was one of them. She could sound equally urgent about an
impending hurricane or an imminent dinner party.
With a sigh, he switched off the electron microscope and touched his
Answer button lightly. "Yes, my darling? What is it?"
"Haven't you _heard_? It's been on every newsray for the past six
hours. I thought you'd have called me by now--"
"I never use the newsray during duty hours," he said patiently. "I
prefer not to be interrupted." Ky-Tann was a metals stress analyst at
the Roa-Pitin Spaceworks.
Devia missed or ignored the implied criticism. "I'm sure you would
have wanted to hear this. Your friend Deez just returned from that
exploration of his. He came back a hero, too."
"_Deez?_" Ky-Tann said; shouted in fact. "Deez back? Devia, are you
sure you heard it right?"
"Of course I did. And Deez himself called, not more than five minutes
ago. He said the Administrators had him and his crew quarantined for
the moment, but he plans to break loose tonight. If he can manage it,
he'll be here before the second sunset. Isn't it wonderful?"
"It's wonderful, all right. Only where was he? What did he do that made
him such a hero?"
"I couldn't gather too much from the newsray, except that he found
a world somewhere that has the Archeological Commission excited as
children--"
"You mean an _inhabited_ world?" Ky-Tann said skeptically.
"Once inhabited, anyway. Please don't ask me to explain it, Ky, ask
newsray or Deez himself, you know how stupid I am about such things."
* * * * *
He chuckled, and said something loving in their private code, and
switched off. His curiosity about Deez' discovery rivaled his
excitement about seeing his friend again; in a hundred years of
exploration, the space vessels of Illyri had merely confirmed the
ancient belief that Life was a rare and precious gift. They had found
slugs and lichen and moss on rocky, almost-airless worlds; they had
seen wild plant growth in steaming alien jungles; the sea creatures
of the Planet Vosa, despite their infinite variety, proved utterly
lacking in intelligence. Once, on an unnamed world in the Acheos
galaxy, the great space pioneer Val-Rion unearthed the artifacts of a
dead civilization and stunned the people of Illyri by his announcement.
He claimed to have found written language, works of art, implements
and weapons. Val-Rion was a brave man and a mighty adventurer, but a
poor scholar. In the time it took Illyri's double suns to rise and
set, the Archeological Commission completed a study of his findings
and declared it a not-too-clever hoax, perpetrated by students of
the University of Space Sciences. To the end of his days, even after
some of the students came forward to admit their deception, Val-Rion
persisted in his belief that the finding was authentic, and squandered
his fortune in an attempt to interpret the mysterious language. He
failed, of course; the "language" was nonsense. Some of the students
had been sensitive enough to regret their hoax; one of them, Deez-Cor,
named his ship after the late explorer.
But now the _Val-Rion_ and her crew were home, after an odyssey so
long overdue that the Space Commission had officially declared the
expedition lost.
Ky-Tann had never mourned for his missing friend. Sense told him that
the _Val-Rion_ was gone, atomized by its own engines, shriveled by some
alien sun or demolished on the terrain of some unfriendly world. But
he refused to make the admission, even after official hope was gone;
he continued to envision Deez at the controls of his ship, grinning
cockily into space, eyes challenging the void.
He left the spaceworks early and flew his Sked home at just above the
legal airspeed. If he had expected to find his wife excited by the
prospect of Deez' visit, he was mistaken. Su-Tann had a new tooth,
and Devia was more elated by the sight of the little white stump in
the baby's mouth than she could be by all the extra-illyrian worlds in
the known galaxies. But when Deez arrived as promised, right after the
second sunset, she burst into tears at the sight of him.
Ky-Tann himself swallowed hard as he embraced his friend. Deez
was gaunt inside his spaceman's coveralls, the bones in his face
pronounced. The skin of his right cheek and neck had been burned, and
the hair whitened on that side, giving him a strangely off-balance
look. He grinned as Deez always grinned, but when he stopped grinning
his eyes were weary.
"You must rest, Deez," Devia said sorrowfully. "It must have been awful
for you."
"No," Deez answered. "I want to talk, Devia, I can't tell you how much
I've wanted to see you both, to tell you about it."
Ky-Tann said: "The Administrators must have given you a rough time."
"I've turned over all our film records to them, and the artifacts we
stored aboard. But I haven't really talked to anyone." He licked his
dry lips, and brushed a hand over the whitened side of his hair. "The
baby," he said softly. "Could I see the baby?"
"What?" Ky-Tann seemed surprised at the request.
Devia leaped to her feet. "Of course, Deez, I'll bring her." To
Ky-Tann, she said: "Ky, you idiot, get Deez a drink or something."
"I just want to see the baby. It's a girl, isn't it?"
"Her name is Su-Tann," Devia said.
* * * * *
When the baby was brought into the room, cooing softly and trying her
new tooth against a thumbnail, Deez took the infant into his lap and
studied its small, chubby face with an air of solemnity that troubled
Ky-Tann and his wife. After a moment, Deez smiled painfully. "What
luck," he said. "She looks like you, Devia. It would have been awful if
she had looked like Ky."
Devia laughed, but they could see that Deez had labored to make the
joke. She took the infant from him, and let Su-Tann crawl about the
heated floor. Deez watched her progress and then looked up, flashing
his old grin. "But I suppose you're waiting to hear about my great
Discovery? Think of it, Ky! A dead planet, a genuine lost civilization!
Not a hoax this time...." He spoke avidly, but his eyes were
bewildered, the eyes of a man injured in battle.
"It can wait," Ky-Tann said. "You're tired, Deez."
"I'll tell you now," Deez said.
* * * * *
"It was in the second quadrant of the galaxy as charted by Roa-Pitin,
the outer spiral arm we call Evarion; our hydrogen radiation equipment
had been receiving an exciting pattern of signals since our journey had
begun. Of course, we weren't the first exploration team to be lured by
those signals, countless others had dashed themselves to pieces for
that electronic siren song. We employed every navigational device we
knew to put us within range of the strongest beams, but the fact that
we succeeded can only be described as an accident--or the will of a
power greater than anything we know."
Ky-Tann looked narrow-eyed. "A Super-Being?"
"A Super-Memory," Deez said. "Let's call it that. At any rate, our
equipment fixed on a star of low magnitude with a nine-planet system.
Simple calculation of distances and spectroscopic readings eliminated
all but one of the worlds as suitable for exploration. It was the
third planet in relative distance from its sun. But we felt no unusual
expectation as we prepared for landfall; the closer we came, the more
we recognized the bleak, airless type of world that has become so
familiar to the exploration ships of Illyri that we call them nothing
more than cosmic debris.
"We made our landing on the ledge of a gigantic basin that might
once have been the container for a vast ocean. Gi-Linn, our ship's
scientist, was convinced by the configuration of its floor that the
planet had once been blessed with water, air, and in all probability,
some form of life. He speculated that the vanished ocean might have
once teemed with creatures as those we discovered on Vosa. He was
doubtful, however, that life forms had become more advanced than
Vosa's. Gi-Linn has a way of leaping to conclusions, a smug fellow. I
was pleased to see him proved wrong.
* * * * *
"We skedded across this dry ocean floor a distance of some two to
three thousand amfions, and found its peaks and valleys marvelous to
behold but utterly devoid of vegetation. Gi-Linn made some cursory
examinations of mineral specimens during our flight, and reported
that the planet's crust was an astonishing mixture of various layers,
ranging in geological age from millions of years to mere thousands.
It was further evidence that this world hadn't always been a barren
rock, that a cataclysmic volcanic upheaval had altered its terrain,
sifted and blended its strata, had dried its oceans and swallowed its
continents. For the first time, we began to look upon this particular
planet with more than routine interest.
"And then we saw it.
"At first, Totin, our navigator, swore it was only an optical trick,
an illusion of the sort we had encountered on other worlds. Once, on a
planet in the Casserian system, we had each of us seen a herd of cattle
grazing peacefully in a green field--this on a planet of interminable
yellow dust. But there was nothing dreamlike about the great metallic
ruin that came into our sight, this giant who seemed to lift its
shattered arm to us in greeting.
"I have seen terrors, and beasts, and horrors of the flesh, but I tell
you now that never before have I experienced such a pounding of the
heart as when that alien monument came into view. For not only was it
plainly a remnant of a forgotten civilization, the first we had ever
found, but it was also apparent that the ancients who had lived--and
died--on this world had been cut from the same evolutionary cloth as we
of Illyri.
"The figure was that of a woman."
Devia, who had been listening open-mouthed, said:
"A woman! Deez, how thrilling! It's like some marvelous old fable--"
"She stood some ninety amfs high," Deez said, "buried to the shoulder
in the arid soil of the planet. Her right arm was extended towards the
heavens, and clutched within her hand was a torch plainly meant to
symbolize the shedding of light. Her headpiece was a crown of spikes,
her features noble and filled with sadness. She was blackened with
the grime of centuries, battered by time, and yet still wonderfully
preserved in the airless atmosphere.
"We were thrilled by the sight of this ancient wonder, and speculated
about its builders. Had they been giants her size, or had they erected
her as a Colossus to celebrate some great deed or personage or ruler?
What did she mean to her builders, what did her uplifted torch signify?
What aspirations, hopes, dreams? Could we find the answer beneath that
dry soil?"
"Did you dig?" Ky-Tann said, his eyes shining with excitement. "You
weren't equipped for any major excavation work, were you?"
"No; the most we could have done was scratch the surface of the planet,
perhaps enough to free the entire figure of the Colossus. But that
wasn't enough; we burned with curiosity to know what lay under our
feet, what buried cities, people, histories.... Totin set up a signal
station, and beamed our message to the space station on Briaticus.
After a few days, we made contact, and relayed our story. There was
skepticism at first, but they finally agreed to dispatch all available
manpower and excavation equipment to the planet Earth."
"The planet what?" Devia said.
"Earth," Deez said, with a wan smile. "That was its name, eons ago,
and the builders, who were called Earthmen, lived within natural and
artificial boundaries called nations, empires, states, dominions,
protectorates, satellites, and commonwealths. That empty globe had
once housed as many as three _billion_ of these Earthmen, and their
works were prodigious. Their science was advanced, and they had already
thrust their ships into the space of their own solar system...."
Ky-Tann was plainly startled.
"Deez, you're really serious about this? It's not another hoax?"
"I've seen the ruins of their cities, I've touched their dry bones,
I've turned the pages of their books...." Deez' eyes glowed, pulsating
eerily. "We found libraries, Ky, great volumes of writing, in languages
astonishingly varied and yet many that were swiftly encodable.... We've
seen their machines and their houses, their working tools and their
play-things. We found their histories, records of their bodies and
voices, their manners and morals and sometimes mad behavior ... Ky!"
Deez said, his voice choked. "It'll take a hundred years to understand
all we've found!"
Devia rose quickly at the sound of his agitated voice, and went to his
side. "Try not to overexcite yourself," she said. "I know how you must
feel...."
"You can't. You can't possibly," Deez muttered. "To know the
overwhelming--_greediness_ I felt--turned loose in an archeological
treasure house--I began waking up at night, sweating at the thought
that I might die before I had seen all there was to see on that planet,
read all its books, learned all its secrets--"
"And what _did_ you learn?" Ky-Tann said.
Deez stood up slowly. He crossed the room to the view-glass, but they
knew his eyes looked out at nothing.
"I learned," he said bitterly, "that it was a world which deserved to
die."
* * * * *
On a balmy June evening, in the Spring of 1973, Dr. Carl Woodward
opened his front door on a new era. The man who stood on his
doorstep--Woodward never thought of Borsu as anything but a "man"--wore
a sleeveless tunic that glistened like snake-skin. He was holding
something in his hands, as if proferring it, a foot-square metallic box
with rounded corners and a diamond-shaped screen that showed a moving
tracery of spidery-thin lines.
Woodward was sixty-one. He had been a naval surgeon in two wars, and
had lost a leg during the Inchon landing. He had survived the loss, but
a treacherous heart condition forced his retirement. He chose a small
village in Eastern Pennsylvania. He lived with a dog and a thousand
books. Borsu, the alien, could not have chanced on a better host that
night.
"Yes, what is it?" Woodward said. When no answer came, the doctor
realized that his visitor expected him to watch the screen. He did.
The lines wavered, shifted, blurred in their excitation, but conveyed
nothing. Panacea, Woodward's aging beagle, finally came out of his warm
bed near the furnace and set up a furious barking.
"Pan!" Woodward snapped. "Shut up, you mutt! Look, mister, perhaps if
you came inside--"
Then his eyes became adjusted to the diamond-shaped screen; he saw
a picture. The scene was a forest; there was the gleam of crumpled
metal, and a prostrate figure lying on the leaf-strewn floor. It was
the portrait of an accident, and Woodward was intuitive enough to know
that the man in the doorway had come for help.
"You want me to come with you, is that it?" he said. "Is your friend
hurt? How did it happen?"
* * * * *
The screen refocused. Now Woodward saw the injured "man" more closely,
saw the face blue in the moonlight, saw the lacerations on his cheek
and forehead. Then the "camera" traveled downwards, towards the ribs,
almost as if it were exploring the extent of the injuries for diagnosis
(later, he learned this was true).
"Well, come on," he said gruffly. He took his coat and instrument bag
from the hall closet, and shut the door on Panacea's hysteria. When
he was outside with his visitor, he saw his face for the first time.
Then he knew that the face he had seen in the tiny screen hadn't merely
looked blue in the moonlight. It was blue. A smoky, almost lavender
blue. Those who came to hate the aliens described it as purple, but
Borsu, his dying companion, and all the aliens who followed were
blue-skinned.
Woodward was in a fever of excitement by the time he reached the scene
of the crash, in the woods some five hundred yards from his home. He
understood its significance by now, knew that the fallen vessel had
been some kind of space craft, that its dual occupants were visitors
from another world. The fact that he had been first on the scene
thrilled him; the fact that he was a doctor, and could help, gratified
him.
But there was nothing in his black bag which could aid the crash
victim. His black-pupiled eyes rolled in the handsome blue head, and
his fine-boned blue hand reached for the touch of his companion's
fingers in a gesture of farewell. Then he was dead.
"I'm sorry," Woodward said. "Your friend is gone."
There was no grief evident in the placid blue face that looked down at
the body. Once again, the alien lifted the metal box and forced the
doctor's attention on the diamond-shaped screen.
The picture was that of Woodward's house.
"You want to come home with me?" Woodward said. Then he gasped as he
saw himself on the screen, entering the house, alone. Then he realized
that the scene typified a request--or a command. The man from space
wanted the doctor to return home.
"All right," he said reluctantly. "I'll go home, my friend. But I can
tell you right now--don't expect me to keep all this a secret."
He turned, and limped through the woods.
Woodward had just entered the house when the woods burst with light,
one incredible split-second of white fire that lit the world for miles.
It was the alien's funeral pyre.
Then the alien came back. When the doctor answered the door, he strode
into the room purposefully, and placed his strange visual aid on a
table top. He looked squarely at Woodward, and then placed a finger in
the center of his smooth blue forehead.
"Borsu," he said.
The doctor hesitated. Was the alien identifying himself by name?
Indicating himself by the most vital organ, his brain?
The doctor pointed to his own forehead.
"Carl," he said.
Then he looked about, and his eyes fell on the book he had been
reading. He picked it up, and tapped its cover.
"Book," he said.
The stranger took it from his hand.
"Book," he said. "Borsu, Carl. Book."
And the alien smiled.
* * * * *
Woodward handled his request to see Ridgemont, Secretary of Science,
with extreme care. He understood the functions and fears of the
bureaucrat, the ever-present concern about wasting time on crackpots,
lobbyists, representatives of various useless or lunatic fringe groups.
He had arranged the meeting through the Secretary of the Navy, and made
certain that Ridgemont knew of his good service record, that he was
convinced that Woodward was a man of sound mind and character. Only
then did he make the appointment.
Yet despite his precautions, Ridgemont looked at Woodward exactly as
the doctor knew he would.
"A man from _where_?" he said.
"From outer space," Woodward said quietly. "Not from our own solar
system, but from another. Their world exists no longer. Borsu and the
others recall nothing about it, but that was a case of deliberate
Forgetting; I'll tell you about that later. The important thing is--"
"The important thing," Woodward said icily, "is for you to see
the right person. Frankly, this department isn't concerned
with--extra-terrestrial matters. Perhaps the Department of Defense--"
"I've thought about this for some time," Woodward persisted. "I believe
you're the one person most capable of both understanding and helping.
Please don't disappoint me."
Perhaps Ridgemont was flattered; at any rate, he calmed down and let
the doctor speak.
"Borsu and a companion came to Earth about a month ago, their descent
undetected except by the astronomical observatory at Clifton; if you
check with meteor landing. But it wasn't a meteor. It was a space
vessel, and its crash killed Borsu's friend. You won't find traces of
it, either, because Borsu followed his people's tradition of totally
annihilating the remains. No, it wasn't a secret weapon of any kind; he
merely triggered the ship's atomic reactor.
"Borsu came to me by chance. But when he discovered I was sympathetic,
he allowed me to become his mentor and teacher of language. I couldn't
have wanted a better student; he's already read and digested half the
books I own.
"I have had long conversation with Borsu, about his past and his future
hopes; indeed, the hopes of his entire race. When I learned his story,
and understood why he came to our world, I decided to act as his
emissary. Borsu has a mortal--and understandable--fear of being treated
like a freak or a guinea pig. I'm here to pave the way for him, and the
others."
* * * * *
Ridgemont must have been aware of Woodward's sincerity; he looked
astonished.
"You really mean this, don't you?" he said. "A man from another planet
is here, with you?"
"Yes," Woodward said firmly. "In my own home. But I cannot give you
the name of his world, and neither can Borsu. At the moment, their
way-station is an airless asteroid in our solar system, where they are
living in an artificial atmosphere and surviving on synthetic food.
There are fewer than ten thousand of them, refugees from a world which
suffered a fate so terrible that they have allowed themselves to forget
everything about it."
"Forget? What do you mean?"
"They have a belief, an ancient conviction, about Forgetting. I don't
know whether it's cultural, or religious, or scientific in origin; but
each generation conceals the past from the new generation, especially
those things in the past which have been unpleasant or hurtful. They
are future-minded; they believe their children are sounder mentally
if they know nothing of past evils. Whatever happened on the world of
their birth is a story only their dead ancestors knew. Their interest
is only in tomorrow."
"And just what kind of tomorrow do they have in mind?"
Woodward took a deep breath.
"They wish to migrate to Earth, Mr. Ridgemont. All of them. Their
evolutionary development was virtually identical to ours; when I
marveled at this, Borsu laughed heartily at me. It is the belief of
their science--or perhaps their theology--that the physical form both
races share is the only one possible to the intelligent beings of the
universe. So you see," Woodward said wryly, "perhaps the old prophets
were right, when they said that God made Man in his own image. Perhaps
it's the only possible image in the cosmos."
"Then they look like us? Exactly like us?"
"Not exactly, no. There are some--surface differences. I know nothing
of Borsu's interior construction, only X rays could tell us that."
Ridgemont said, suspiciously: "What surface differences?"
"They are somewhat more angular than we are, a bit taller. Their
craniums are larger, their shoulders narrower and bones finer. Borsu
told me that they have no tonsils or appendix. In a way, they might
be one lateral step higher on the evolutionary scale than the people
of Earth. Their science is slightly more advanced in some areas,
behind us in others. And of course, the number of their scientists and
technicians is greatly limited." Woodward paused. "And they are blue. A
soft, pleasant shade, but unmistakably--blue."
The Secretary's chair creaked.
"And they want to settle _here_? Among us?"
"They feel sure that our races will be compatible, sharing as we do our
evolutionary heritage, that--"
"One moment," Ridgemont said sharply. "When you say compatible--are you
implying that these creatures can interbreed with us?"
The doctor winced at the word "creatures." But his reply was soft.
"No," he said. "That coincidence would be too great. But they have
no such desires; they will be happy to produce their own future
generations of citizens. They have deliberately controlled their
birthrate until they could find a home. Earth can be that home, Mr.
Ridgemont, but they wish to be sure of a welcome."
* * * * *
The Secretary stood up, and came to the front of the desk to face the
doctor.
"Dr. Woodward," he said, "your story is an incredible one, but for the
moment I'll assume that everything you've said is true. Naturally,
visitors from another planet--who mean us no harm, and who can impart
knowledge to us--would be more than welcome on Earth. They would be
celebrated by every man of Science on this planet."
"Borsu understands that. But it's not the scientists whose welcome
they seek. It's the people of Earth."
"Doctor, I cannot speak for the people of Earth." Ridgemont frowned,
and rubbed his forehead. "Where would these aliens of yours want to
live? How would they live? Assimilated among the peoples of Earth? In
their own community, a nation reserved for them alone?"
"I can't say. These are questions to be decided by others--"
"Does this Borsu expect us to guarantee this welcome? To assure them
that they will be received with open arms? People are strange. Once the
initial excitement of their arrival is over, who can say how ordinary
citizens will react?"
"You must understand that they come in peace and friendship. They are
tired, weary of searching for a home. They need our help--"
"You say they're _blue_, doctor." Ridgemont's eyes were penetrating.
"Do you think the world can withstand still another race problem? Do
you?"
"I don't know," Woodward said miserably. "I'm only Borsu's friend, Mr.
Ridgemont, his emissary. I can't answer questions like this. I thought
that you, a man of science--"
"As a scientist, your Borsu fascinates me, of course. I'd like to
interrogate him for years. I'd like to dissect his mind and body until
I know everything about him and his people. But you're asking me a
different question. You're asking--do I want Borsu as a neighbor?"
Woodward stood up. His face was pale, and the leg that wasn't there
throbbed with pain. He was sweating, a gray sweat that coursed down his
seamed cheek and soiled the collar of his shirt.
"I don't feel well," he said. "If you'd excuse me--"
"Of course," Ridgemont said solicitously. "We can talk more about this
later, when you feel up to it...."
"Yes," Woodward said.
* * * * *
That night, in a hotel room in Washington, Dr. Carl Woodward died of a
coronary thrombosis.
Secretary of Science Ridgemont, however, was curious enough about the
doctor's story to send a deputation to his home in Pennsylvania. As a
simple precaution, one of the men in the party was an armed policeman
named Sergeant Kemmer. At the first sight of the blue-skinned man,
Kemmer became alarmed enough to draw his gun. Borsu recognized the
weapon, and its dangerous potential, from his reading. Frightened,
he tried to flee through the front door, and Kemmer misinterpreted
his movement as an attack. He fired three times. One of the bullets
penetrated Borsu's temple, and killed him instantly.
Three months passed before the next delegation from the aliens appeared
on Earth. This time, their arrival was detected, and the visitors were
brought safely to the local authorities in the Nebraska community where
their vessel landed. Their names were Cor, Basuc, and Stytin. Stytin
was a female, lovely in her blue-skinned shapeliness.
A team of scientists were dispatched from Washington, Tokyo, and London
to take charge of the alien trio. It was another two weeks before their
marvelous facility with language permitted them to talk intelligently
to their examiners.
On November 8, 1973, Stytin, the blue female, was found assaulted,
mutilated, and murdered in the woods near the town of Ponchi. The
brutal slaying shocked the scientists, who tried to assure Cor and
Basuc that the episode had not been typical of the behavior of the
people of Earth. But Cor and Basuc, who had no memory-record of
killing, became terrified, and fled. Cor was shot and killed by a
farmer, and Basuc was accidently drowned while forging a stream during
his escape.
The death of the four aliens, however, didn't prevent the migration
from beginning. Hunger--not for food alone, but for the blessed green
promise of the Earth--drove the blue aliens to make the journey before
receiving assurance of their welcome. Their tiny two, three, and
four-man craft began dotting the heavens, filling the world with fears
and panics that were only partially allayed by the repeated assurances
of the world's leaders. Despite explanations and pleas for order, the
blue people were frequently slain the moment their ships touched Earth.
There was never an official estimate of the deaths, but it was certain
that well over three thousand of the aliens lost their lives before
ever tasting a drop of cool Earth water, or knowing the shade of an
Earth tree, the peaceful blue of an Earth sky.
Finally, the killings were over. Less than seven thousand Blues
survived the perilous journey, protected upon their arrival by
contingents of armed soldiers, sped to the scene of the landings in
time to stop the citizens from their slaughter.
* * * * *
It was Mostyn Herbert, Secretary-General of the United Nations, who
made the first speech of welcome, before the general assembly.
"The world," he said, "has seen a new migration in these past months,
an event which has brought new hours of infamy to the human race.
The savagery of man to beast, the bestiality of man to man, has now
been exceeded by our shameful record of cruelty towards these homeless
wanderers from a forgotten world. We have slain almost a third of their
number wantonly and without cause. They proffered to us the wisdom and
knowledge of their own civilization, and asked for nothing in return
but sanctuary. We have answered them with murder, and rape, and a
bigotry that has exceeded all others in the long and reeking history
of human injustice. It is time for the human race to call a halt; not
merely for the sake of our alien visitors, but for the sake of the
almighty soul of Man. We must hold out our hand, and say 'Welcome.
Welcome to Earth!'"
Moved by the plea of the Secretary-General, the assembly voted to
form a 12-nation commission to study the problem. Many governments
made offers of hospitality to the aliens; the United States, Canada,
Australia, the Scandinavian and Low Countries, all expressed a
willingness to set aside land areas for the exclusive use of the
aliens. The U.S.S.R. made no offer of land, but suggested that the
Blues could be completely integrated into Russian society. The choice
was left to the Blues and their leader, an Elder named Trecor.
The wisdom of Trecor's decision became a subject of debate for
generations to come. He declined to isolate his people as a "nation,"
separate and apart from the human race. He declined to have them as
boarders within any one sovereign state. Instead, he asked that the
Blues be divided into small communities and dispersed over the world,
where each could work out their individual destiny. His purpose was a
noble one: he wished to make his people truly the neighbors, even the
partners, of the Earthmen.
And so it was.
In the United States, a Blue community began a collective farming
project on acreage deeded to them by the government in Kansas. Within
three years, the crops of winter wheat and corn produced on the
Blue farmlands were so superior in quality that they provoked the
admiration, and envy, of every farmer in the district. In '77, the year
of the Terrible Twisters, only the Blue farmlands were miraculously
spared the destruction of their fields. The ignorant claimed that
some spiritual agency had helped the Blues; the more enlightened
credited the sturdiness of their crops. But both became united in
a sullen resentment of the Blues, the strangers who had committed
the unpardonable sin of prospering in a season of want. From these
beginnings came the illicit organization of terrorists who called
themselves the Dom-Dom, a name originally meaning Defenders of Mankind.
Between the years 1977 and 1991, the Dom-Dom could take the blame for
the violent deaths of more than a thousand Blues.
* * * * *
In New Zealand, another farming community of Blues fared better than
their fellows in Kansas. But in the year 1982, they fell victim to the
still-unnamed plague which Earthmen merely called the Blue Disease.
It seemed to strike only the aliens, but it resembled typhoid in its
symptoms and deadly progress. The Blues themselves became unable to
cope with the disease; their pleas for outside medical help brought
only a handful of Earth physicians. When one of them, a Dr. Martin
Roebuck, died of a seizure that the Blues swore was unrelated to the
plague, the others fled in fear of contagion. Their statement to the
world press claimed that the biological differences between Earthmen
and Blues were too great for Earth medicine to be of value. And so the
Blues of New Zealand died. The white flash of their funeral pyres lit
the night again and again.
In Russia, a non-farming community of Blues, composed mainly of artists
and scientists, lived in a government-constructed "city" and were
carefully nurtured and pampered like talented, precocious children.
After five years of this treatment, the Blues sickened of it and
yearned for a freer life. With the eyes of the world upon them, the
Russians quickly agreed to the Blue demands. Yes, they could do as they
please, live as they please, work as they please. One by one, their
privileges were withdrawn. The Blues found that they had to provide
their own food, their own clothing, maintain their own shelters; the
Russians had given them independence with a vengeance. They found
themselves unable to care for their own elementary needs; they were
like helpless children; they began quarreling among themselves. For the
first time in the remembered history of the race, a Blue killed another
Blue; it was said that the shame of this episode was the cause of the
Elder Trecor's death. Eventually, the Blues surrendered; they preferred
the easy comforts of their prison, and begged their jailers to lower
the bars again.
In the thirty-six years of the Blues' residence on Earth, only four
thousand births were recorded; while ten thousand of the race perished.
It was in the year 2009, following the Kansas City Massacre by the
Dom-Dom, in which eight hundred Blues died under the flamethrowers of
the terrorists, that the Decision was reached. It was relayed to the
world by an Elder named Dasru, whose prepared statement was read to the
United Nations.
"We came to your world unbidden and unwelcome," the statement said. "We
came to your world asking no privilege, bearing no arms, wishing for no
more than forbearance for our differences, patience for our ignorance,
and sympathy for our homelessness. We offered love and received hatred.
We came in peace and died in war.
"We love the sweet green fields of your planet, its clear water and
skies, its generous soil. But you have never permitted Earth to become
our home, and so we leave you. We leave you, people of the cruel
planet. Rather than suffer your bigotry, and yes, your tolerance, we
leave you. We go to seek another homeland, and in the minds of our
future generations no memory of this hated visit shall remain. We shall
Forget you, Earth; but may you always remember, what drove us from your
world."
Then the exodus began. One by one, the small spacecraft of the Blues
began to rise towards the heavens. Before the next Spring came to
Earth, the Blues were gone.
Ky-Tann cleared his throat, and looked at his young wife. Devia stared
at Deez.
"How long ago?" Ky-Tann asked. "When did this happen?"
"Perhaps three, four thousand years ago," Deez said. "They left the
Earth to its fate, and eventually that fate was extinction. Some defect
in its sun caused an outburst of nuclear fire, and shriveled the
planet to what it has become. But still _she_ stands, their goddess of
welcome, lifting her torch to the empty skies.
"When we dug up that statue, do you know what we found? There was an
inscription on the base. When we learned the story of that planet's
past, the irony of those words was poignant."
"Do you remember them?"
"I could never forget them," Deez said, and his eyes were dark. "_Give
me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore; send these, the homeless,
tempest-tossed, to me; I lift my lamp beside the golden door._"
There was silence. Ky-Tann became aware of his wife's tears.
He went to her, and she wiped her eyes. "I'd better put Su-Tann to
bed," she said, trying to smile at Deez. "Did you see her tooth, Deez?
It's her very first."
Ky-Tann took his wife's blue hand, and kissed her blue cheek. "A
beautiful tooth," he said.
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