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Title: Manners and Customs of the Thrid
Author: Murray Leinster
Release Date: February 17, 2020 [EBook #61430]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE THRID ***
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MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE THRID
BY MURRAY LEINSTER
The Thrid were the wisest creatures in
space--they even said so themselves!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1963.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The real trouble was that Jorgenson saw things as a business man does.
But also, and contradictorily, he saw them as right and just, or as
wrong and intolerable. As a business man, he should have kept his mind
on business and never bothered about Ganti. As a believer in right and
wrong, it would have been wiser for him to have stayed off the planet
Thriddar altogether. Thriddar was no place for him, anyhow you look at
it. On this particular morning it was especially the wrong place for
him to be trying to live and do business.
He woke up thinking of Ganti, and in consequence he was in a bad mood
right away. Most humans couldn't take the sort of thing that went on on
Thriddar. Most of them wanted to use missile weapons--which the Thrid
did not use--to change the local social system. Most humans got off
Thriddar--fast! And boiling mad.
Jorgenson had stood it longer than most because in spite of their
convictions he liked the Thrid. Their minds did do outside loops, and
come up with intolerable convictions. But they were intelligent enough.
They had steam-power and even steam-driven atmosphere fliers, but they
didn't have missile weapons and they did have a social system that
humans simply couldn't accept--even though it applied only to Thrid.
The ordinary Thrid, with whom Jorgenson did business, weren't bad
people. It was the officials who made him grind his teeth. And though
it was his business only to run the trading post of the Rim Stars
Trading Corporation, sometimes he got fed up.
This morning was especially beyond the limit. There was a new Grand
Panjandrum--the term was Jorgenson's own for the supreme ruler over
all the Thrid--and when Jorgenson finished his breakfast a high Thrid
official waited in the trading-post compound. Around him clustered
other Thrid, wearing the formal headgear that said they were Witnesses
to an official act.
Jorgenson went out, scowling, and exchanged the customary ceremonial
greetings. Then the high official beamed at him and extracted a scroll
from his voluminous garments. Jorgenson saw the glint of gold and was
suspicious at once. The words of a current Grand Panjandrum were always
written in gold. If they didn't get written in gold they didn't get
written at all; but it was too bad if anybody ignored any of them.
The high official unrolled the scroll. The Thrid around him, wearing
Witness hats, became utterly silent. The high official made a sound
equivalent to clearing his throat. The stillness became death-like.
"On this day," intoned the high official, while the Witnesses
listened reverently, "on this day did Glen-U the Never-Mistaken, as
have been his predecessors throughout the ages;--on this day did the
Never-Mistaken Glen-U speak and say and observe a truth in the presence
of the governors and the rulers of the universe."
Jorgenson reflected sourly that the governors and the rulers of the
universe were whoever happened to be within hearing of the Grand
Panjandrum. They were not imposing. They were scared. Everybody is
always scared under an absolute ruler, but the Grand Panjandrum was
worse than that. He couldn't make a mistake. Whatever he said had to
be true, because he said it, and sometimes it had drastic results. But
past Grand Panjandrums had spoken highly of the trading post. Jorgenson
shouldn't have much to worry about. He waited. He thought of Ganti. He
scowled.
"The great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U," intoned the official again,
"in the presence of the governors and the rulers of the universe, did
speak and say and observe that it is the desire of the Rim Star Trading
Corporation to present to him, the great and never-mistaken Glen-U, all
of the present possessions of the said Rim Stars Trading Corporation,
and thereafter to remit to him all moneys, goods, and benefactions
to and of the said Rim Stars Trading Corporation as they shall be
received. The great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U did further speak and say
and observe that anyone hindering this loyal and admirable gift must,
by the operation of truth, vanish from sight and nevermore be seen face
to face by any rational being."
The high official rolled up the scroll, while Jorgenson exploded inside.
* * * * *
A part of this was reaction as a business man. A part was recognition
of all the intolerable things that the Thrid took as a matter of
course. If Jorgenson had reacted solely as a business man he'd have
swallowed it, departed on the next Rim Stars trading-ship--which would
not have left any trade-goods behind--and left the Grand Panjandrum to
realize what he had lost when no off-planet goods arrived on Thriddar.
In time he'd speak and say and observe that he, out of his generosity,
gave the loot back. Then the trading could resume. But Jorgenson didn't
feel only like a business man this morning. He thought of Ganti, who
was a particular case of everything he disliked on Thriddar.
It was not wise to be moved by such sympathetic feelings. The Grand
Panjandrum could not be mistaken. It was definitely unwise to
contradict him. It could even be dangerous. Jorgenson was in a nasty
spot.
The Witnesses murmured reverently:
"We hear the words of the Never-Mistaken Glen-U."
The high official tucked away the scroll and said blandly:
"I will receive the moneys, goods, and benefactions it is the desire
of the Rim Stars Trading Corporation to present to the great and
Never-Mistaken Glen-U."
Jorgenson, boiling inside, nevertheless knew what he was doing. He said
succinctly:
"Like hell you will!"
There was an idiom in Thrid speech that had exactly the meaning of the
human phrase. Jorgenson used it.
The high official looked at him in utter stupefaction. Nobody
contradicted the Grand Panjandrum! Nobody! The Thrid had noticed long
ago that they were the most intelligent race in the universe. Since
that was so, obviously they must have the most perfect government.
But no government could be perfect if its officials made mistakes. So
no Thrid official ever made a mistake. In particular the great and
Never-Mistaken Glen-U could not conceivably blunder! When he said a
thing, it was true! It had to be! He'd said it! And this was the
fundamental fact in the culture of the Thrid.
"Like hell you'll receive moneys and goods and such!" snapped
Jorgenson. "Like hell you will!"
The high official literally couldn't believe his ears.
"But--but the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U--"
"Is mistaken!" said Jorgenson bitingly. "He's wrong! The Rim Stars
Trading Corporation does _not_ want to give him anything! What he has
said is not true!" This was the equivalent of treason, blasphemy and
the ultimate of indecorous behavior toward a virgin Pelean princess. "I
won't give him anything! I'm not even vanishing from sight! Glen-U is
wrong about that, too! Now--git!"
He jerked out his blaster and pulled the trigger.
There was an explosive burst of flame from the ground between the
official and himself. The official fled. With him fled all the
Witnesses, some even losing their headgear in their haste to get away.
* * * * *
Jorgenson stamped into the trading-post building. His eyes were stormy
and his jaw was set.
He snapped orders. The hired Thrid of the trading-post staff had not
quite grasped the situation. They couldn't believe it. Automatically,
as he commanded the iron doors and shutters of the trading post closed,
they obeyed. They saw him turn on the shocker-field so that nobody
could cross the compound without getting an electric shock that would
discourage him. They began to believe.
Then he sent for the trading-post Thrid consultant. On Earth he'd have
called for a lawyer. On a hostile world there'd have been a soldier to
advise him. On Thrid the specialist to be consulted wasn't exactly a
theologian, but he was nearer that than anything else.
Jorgenson laid the matter indignantly before him, repeating the exact
phrases that said the trading company wanted--wanted!--practically to
give itself to the Never-Mistaken Glen-U, who was the Grand Panjandrum
of Thriddar. He waited to be told that it couldn't have happened; that
anyhow it couldn't be intended. But the theologian's Thriddish ears
went limp, which amounted to the same thing as a man's face turning
pale. He stammered agitatedly that if the Grand Panjandrum said it, it
was true. It couldn't be otherwise! If the trading company wanted to
give itself to him, there was nothing to be done. It wanted to! The
Grand Panjandrum had said so!
"He also said," said Jorgenson irritably, "that I'm to vanish and
nevermore be seen face to face by any rational being. How does that
happen? Do I get speared?"
The trading-post theologian quivered. Jorgenson made things much worse.
"This," he raged, "this is crazy! The Grand Panjandrum's an ordinary
Thrid just like you are! Of course he can make a mistake! There's
nobody who can't be wrong!"
The theologian put up feebly protesting, human-like hands. He begged
hysterically to be allowed to go home before Jorgenson vanished, with
unknown consequences for any Thrid who might be nearby.
When Jorgenson opened a door to kick him out of it, the whole staff of
the trading-post plunged after him. They'd been eavesdropping and they
fled in pure horror.
Jorgenson swore impartially at all of them and turned the shocker-field
back on. He plugged in a capacity circuit which would turn on warning
sirens if anything like a steam-driven copter passed or hovered over
the trading-post. He put blasters in handy positions. The Thrid used
only spears, knives and scimitars. Blasters would defend the post
against a multitude.
As a business man, he'd acted very foolishly. But he'd acted even less
sensibly as a human being. He'd gotten fed up with a social system
and a--call it--theology it wasn't his business to change. True, the
Thrid way of life was appalling, and what had happened to Ganti was
probably typical. But it wasn't Jorgenson's affair. He'd been unwise to
let it disturb him. If the Thrid wanted things this way, it was their
privilege.
In theory, no Thrid should ever make a mistake, because he belonged
to the most intelligent race in the universe. But a local governor
was even more intelligent. If an ordinary Thrid challenged a local
governor's least and lightest remark--why--he must be either a criminal
or insane. The local governor decided--correctly, of course--which
he was. If he was a criminal, he spent the rest of his life in a gang
of criminals chained together and doing the most exhausting labor the
Thrid could contrive. If he was mad, he was confined for life.
* * * * *
There'd been Ganti, a Thrid of whom Jorgenson had had much hope. He
believed that Ganti could learn to run the trading post without human
supervision. If he could, the trading company could simply bring trade
goods to Thriddar and take away other trade goods. The cost of doing
business would be decreased. There could be no human-Thrid friction.
Jorgenson had been training Ganti for this work.
But the local Thrid governor had spoken and said and observed that
Ganti's wife wanted to enter his household. He added that Ganti wanted
to yield her to him.
Jorgenson had fumed--but not as a business man--when the transfer took
place. But Ganti had been conditioned to believe that when a governor
said he wanted to do something, he did. He couldn't quite grasp the
contrary idea. But he moped horribly, and Jorgenson talked sardonically
to him, and he almost doubted that an official was necessarily right.
When his former wife died of grief, his disbelief became positive. And
immediately afterward he disappeared.
Jorgenson couldn't find out what had become of him. Dour reflection on
the happening had put him in the bad mood which had started things,
this morning.
Time passed. He had the trading-post in a position of defense. He
prepared his lunch, and glowered. More time passed. He cooked his
dinner, and ate. Afterward he went up on the trading-post roof to smoke
and to coddle his anger. He observed the sunset. There was always some
haze in the air on Thriddar, and the colorings were very beautiful. He
could see the towers of the capital city of the Thrid. He could see a
cumbersome but still graceful steam-driven aircraft descend heavily to
the field at the city's edge. Later he saw another steam-plane rise
slowly but reliably and head away somewhere else. He saw the steam
helicopters go skittering above the city's buildings.
He fumed because creatures intelligent enough to build steam fliers
weren't intelligent enough to see what a racket their government was.
Now that the new Grand Panjandrum had moved against him, Jorgenson made
an angry, dogged resolution to do something permanent to make matters
better. For the Thrid themselves. Here he thought not as a business
man only, but as a humanitarian. As both. When a whim of the Grand
Panjandrum could ruin a business, something should be done. And when
Ganti and countless others had been victims of capricious tyranny....
And Jorgenson was slated to vanish from sight and never again be
seen.... It definitely called for strong measures!
He reflected with grim pleasure that the Grand Panjandrum would soon
be in the position of a Thrid whom everybody knew was mistaken. With
the trading-post denied him and Jorgenson still visible, he'd be
notoriously wrong. And he couldn't be, and still be Grand Panjandrum!
It would be a nice situation for Glen-U. He'd have to do something
about it, and there was nothing he could do. He'd blundered, and it
would soon be public knowledge.
Jorgenson dozed lightly. Then more heavily. Then more heavily still.
The night was not two hours old when the warning sirens made a terrific
uproar. The Thrid for miles around heard the wailing, ullulating sound
of the sirens that should have awakened Jorgenson.
But they didn't wake him. He slept on.
* * * * *
When he woke, he knew that he was cold. His muscles were cramped. Half
awake, he tried to move and could not.
Then he tried to waken fully, and he couldn't do that either. He stayed
in a dream-like, frustrated state which was partly like a nightmare,
while very gradually new sensations came to him. He felt a cushioned
throbbing against his chest, in the very hard surface on which he lay
face down. That surface swayed and rocked slightly. He tried again to
move, and realized that his hands and feet were bound. He found that he
shivered, and realized that his clothing had been taken from him.
He was completely helpless and lying on his stomach in the cargo-space
of a steam helicopter: now he could hear the sound of its machinery.
Then he knew what had happened. He'd committed The unthinkable
crime--or lunacy--of declaring the Grand Panjandrum mistaken. So by the
operation of truth, which was really an anesthetic gas cloud drifted
over the trading post, he had vanished from sight.
Now it was evidently to be arranged that he would never again be seen
face to face by a rational being. The Grand Panjandrum had won the
argument. Within a few months a Rim Stars trading ship would land, and
Jorgenson would be gone and the trading post confiscated. It would be
hopeless to ask questions, and worse than hopeless to try to trade. So
the ship would lift off and there'd be no more ships for at least a
generation. Then there might--there might!--be another.
Jorgenson swore fluently and with passion.
"It will not be long," said a tranquil voice.
Jorgenson changed from human-speech profanity to Thrid. He directed
his words to the unseen creature who'd spoken. That Thrid listened,
apparently without emotion. When Jorgenson ran out of breath, the voice
said severely:
"You declared the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U mistaken. This could
not be. It proved you either a criminal or insane, because no rational
creature could believe him mistaken. He declared you insane, and he
cannot be wrong. So soon you will arrive where you are to be confined
and no rational being will ever see you face to face."
Jorgenson switched back to human swearing. Then he blended both
languages, using all the applicable words he knew both in human speech
and Thrid. He knew a great many. The soft throbbing of the steam-driven
rotors went on, and Jorgenson swore both as a business man and a
humanitarian. Both were frustrated.
Presently the motion of the copter changed. He knew the ship was
descending. There were more violent swayings, as if from wind gusts
deflected by something large and solid. Jorgenson even heard deep-bass
rumblings like sea upon a rocky coast. Then there were movements near
him, a rope went around his waist, a loading-bay opened and he found
himself lifted and lowered through it.
* * * * *
He dangled in midair, a couple of hundred feet above an utterly barren
island on which huge ocean swells beat. The downdraft from the copter
made him sway wildly, and once it had him spinning dizzily. The horizon
was empty. He was being lowered swiftly to the island. And his hands
and feet were still securely tied.
Then he saw a figure on the island. It was a Thrid stripped of all
clothing like Jorgenson and darkened by the sun. That figure came
agilely toward where he was let down. It caught him. It checked his
wild swingings, which could have broken bones. The rope slackened. The
Thrid laid Jorgenson down.
He did not cast off the rope. He seemed to essay to climb it.
It was cut at the steam-copter and came tumbling down all over both of
them. The Thrid waved his arms wildly and seemed to screech gibberish
at the sky. There was an impact nearby, of something dropped. Jorgenson
heard the throbbing sound of the copter as it lifted and swept away.
Then he felt the bounds about his arms and legs being removed. Then a
Thrid voice--amazingly, a familiar Thrid voice--said:
"This is not good, Jorgenson. Who did you contradict?"
The Thrid was Ganti, of whom Jorgenson had once had hopes as a business
man, and for whose disaster he had felt indignation as something else.
He loosened the last of Jorgenson's bonds and helped him sit up.
Jorgenson glared around. The island was roughly one hundred feet by
two. It was twisted, curdled yellow stone from one end to the other.
There were stone hillocks and a miniature stony peak, and a narrow
valley between two patches of higher rock. Huge seas boomed against
the windward shore, throwing spray higher than the island's topmost
point. There were some places where sand had gathered. There was one
spot--perhaps a square yard of it--where sand had been made fertile by
the droppings of flying things and where two or three starveling plants
showed foliage of sorts. That was all. Jorgenson ground his teeth.
"Go ahead," said Ganti grimly, "but it may be even worse than you
think."
He scrambled over the twisted stone of the island. He came back,
carrying something.
"It isn't worse," he said. "It's only as bad. They did drop food and
water for both of us. I wasn't sure they would."
* * * * *
His calmness sobered Jorgenson. As a business man, he was moved to make
his situation clear. He told Ganti of the Grand Panjandrum's move to
take over the Rim Stars trading post, which was bad business. He told
of his own reaction, which was not a business-like one at all. Then he
said dourly:
"But he's still wrong. No rational being is supposed ever to see me
face to face. But you do."
"But I'm crazy," said Ganti calmly. "I tried to kill the governor
who'd taken my wife. So he said I was crazy and that made it true. So
I wasn't put in a chained group of laborers. Somebody might have seen
me and thought about it. But, sent here, it's worse for me and I'm
probably forgotten by now."
He was calm about it. Only a Thrid would have been so calm. But they've
had at least hundreds of generations in which to get used to injustice.
He accepted it. But Jorgenson frowned.
"You've got brains, Ganti. What's the chance of escape?"
"None," said Ganti unemotionally. "You'd better get out of the sun.
It'll burn you badly. Come along."
He led the way over the bare, scorching rocky surface. He turned past a
small pinnacle. There was shadow. Jorgenson crawled into it, and found
himself in a cave. It was not a natural one. It had been hacked out,
morsel by morsel. It was cool inside. It was astonishingly roomy.
"How'd this happen?" demanded Jorgenson the business man.
"This is a prison," Ganti explained matter-of-factly. "They let me
down here and dropped food and water for a week. They went away. I
found there'd been another prisoner here before me. His skeleton was in
this cave. I reasoned it out. There must have been others before him.
When there is a prisoner here, every so often a copter drops food and
water. When the prisoner doesn't pick it up, they stop coming. When,
presently, they have another prisoner they drop him off, like me, and
he finds the skeleton of the previous prisoner, like me, and he dumps
it overboard as I did. They'll drop food and water for me until I stop
picking it up. And presently they'll do the same thing all over again."
Jorgenson glowered. That was his reaction as a person. Then he gestured
to the cave around him. There was a pile of dried-out seaweed for
sleeping purposes.
"And this?"
"Somebody dug it out," said Ganti without resentment. "To keep busy.
Maybe one prisoner only began it. A later one saw it started and worked
on it to keep busy. Then others in their turn. It took a good many
lives to make this cave."
Jorgenson ground his teeth a second time.
"And just because they'd contradicted somebody who couldn't be wrong!
Or because they had a business an official wanted!"
"Or a wife," agreed Ganti. "Here!"
He offered food. Jorgenson ate, scowling. Afterward, near sundown, he
went over the island.
It was rock, nothing else. There was a pile of small broken stones from
the excavation of the cave. There were the few starveling plants. There
was the cordage with which Jorgenson had been lowered. There was the
parcel containing food and water. Ganti observed that the plastic went
to pieces in a week or so, so it couldn't be used for anything. There
was nothing to escape with. Nothing to make anything to escape with.
Even the dried seaweed bed was not comfortable. Jorgenson slept badly
and waked with aching muscles. Ganti assured him unemotionally that
he'd get used to it.
He did. By the time the copter came to drop food and water again,
Jorgenson was physically adjusted to the island. But neither as a
business man or as a person could he adjust to hopelessness.
He racked his brains for the most preposterous or faintest hope of
deliverance. There were times when as a business man he reproached
himself for staying on Thriddar after he became indignant with the way
the planet was governed. It was very foolish. But much more often he
felt such hatred of the manners and customs of the Thrid--which had
put him here--that it seemed that something must somehow be possible if
only so he could take revenge.
III
The copter came, it dropped food and water, and it went away. It came,
dropped food and water, and went away. Once a water-bag burst when
dropped. They lost nearly half a week's water supply. Before the copter
came again they'd gone two days without drinking.
There were other incidents, of course. The dried seaweed they slept on
turned to powdery trash. They got more seaweed hauling long kelp-like
strands of it ashore from where it clung to the island's submerged
rocks. Ganti mentioned that they must do it right after the copter
came, so there would be no sign of enterprise to be seen from aloft.
The seaweed had long, flexible stems of which no use whatever could be
made. When it dried, it became stiff and brittle but without strength.
Once Ganti abruptly began to talk of his youth. As if he were examining
something he'd never noticed before, he told of the incredible
conditioning-education of the young members of his race. They learned
that they must never make a mistake. Never! It did not matter if they
were unskilled or inefficient. It did not matter if they accomplished
nothing. There was no penalty for anything but making mistakes or
differing from officials who could not make mistakes.
So Thrid younglings were trained not to think; not to have any opinion
about anything; only to repeat what nobody questioned; only to do what
they were told by authority. It occurred to Jorgenson that on a planet
with such a population, a skeptic could make a great deal of confusion.
Then, another time, Jorgenson decided to make use of the weathering
cord which had been cut from the copter when he was landed. He cut
off a part of it with a sharp-edged fragment of stone from the pile
some former prisoner on the island had made. He unravelled the twisted
fibers. Then he ground fishhooks from shells attached to the island's
rocky walls just below water-line. After that they fished. Sometimes
they even caught something to eat. But they never fished when the
copter was due.
Jorgenson found that a fish-fillet, strongly squeezed and wrung like a
wet cloth, would yield a drinkable liquid which was not salt and would
substitute for water. And this was a reason to make a string bag in
which caught fish could be let back into the sea so they were there
when wanted but could not escape.
They had used it for weeks when he saw Ganti, carrying it to place it
where they left it overboard, swinging it idly back and forth as he
walked.
* * * * *
If Jorgenson had been only a businessman, it would have had no
particular meaning. But he was also a person, filled with hatred of
the Thrid who had condemned him for life to this small island. He saw
the swinging of the fish. It gave him an idea.
He did not speak at all during all the rest of that day. He was
thinking. The matter needed much thought. Ganti left him alone.
But by sunset he'd worked it out. While they watched Thrid's red sun
sink below the horizon, Jorgenson said thoughtfully:
"There is a way to escape, Ganti."
"On what? In what?" demanded Ganti.
"In the helicopter that feeds us," said Jorgenson.
"It never lands," said Ganti practically.
"We can make it land," said Jorgenson. Thrid weren't allowed to make
mistakes; he could make it a mistake not to land.
"The crew is armed," said Ganti. "There are three of them."
"They've only knives and scimitars," said Jorgenson. "They don't count.
We can make better weapons than they have."
Ganti looked skeptical. Jorgenson explained. He had to demonstrate
crudely. The whole idea was novel to Ganti, but the Thrid were smart.
Presently he grasped it. He said:
"I see the theory. If we can make it work, all right. But how do we
make the copter land?"
Jorgenson realized that they talked oddly. They spoke with leisurely
lack of haste, with the lack of hope normal to prisoners to whom escape
is impossible, even when they talk about escape. They could have been
discussing a matter that would not affect either of them. But Jorgenson
quivered inside. He hoped.
"We'll try it," said Ganti detachedly, when he'd explained again. "If
it fails, they'll only stop giving us food and water."
That, of course, did not seem either to him or Jorgenson a reason to
hesitate to try what Jorgenson had planned.
It was not at all a direct and forthright scheme. It began with the
untwisting of more of the rope that had lowered Jorgenson. It went on
with the making of string from that fiber. They made a great deal of
string. Then, very clumsily and awkwardly, they wove strips of cloth,
a couple of inches wide and five or six long. They made light strong
cords extend from the ends of the cloth strips. Then they practiced
with these bits of cloth and the broken stones a former prisoner had
piled so neatly.
The copter came and dropped food and water. When it left, they
practiced. When it came again they were not practicing, but when it
went away they practiced. They were a naked man and a naked Thrid,
left upon a morsel of rock in a boundless sea, rehearsing themselves
in an art so long-forgotten that they had to reinvent the finer parts
of the technique. They experimented. They tried this. They tried that.
When the copter appeared, they showed themselves. They rushed upon the
dropped bag containing food and water as if fiercely trying to deny
each other a full share. Once they seemed to fight over the dropped
bag. The copter hovered to watch. The fight seemed furious and deadly,
but inconclusive.
When the copter went away Jorgenson and Ganti went briskly back to
their practicing.
* * * * *
They were almost satisfied with their proficiency, now. They had lost
some of the small stones, but there were many left. They began to work
with seaweed, the kind with long central stems which dried to brittle
stiffness. They determined exactly how long they should be allowed
to dry. They studied the way in which the flat seaweed foliage must
be dried on rounded stone spaces to form seemingly solid surfaces of
almost any shape. But they were utterly brittle when they were dry. It
was not possible to make them hold any form for more than a day or so,
even if sprinkled with cold water to keep them from crumbling to dust.
And they practiced with the strip of cloth and the stones. Ganti became
more skilful than Jorgenson, but even Jorgenson became an expert.
There came a day when the copter dropped the bag of food and Ganti
danced with seeming rage and shook his fist at it. The crew-Thrid saw
him, but paid no attention. They went away. And Ganti and Jorgenson
went to work.
They hauled seaweed ashore. It had to dry to some degree before it
could hold a form at all. While it dried, they practiced. The leaves
were ready before the stems. They spread them on rounded surfaces,
many leaves thick. They dried to dark-gray-greenish stuff looking
like the crudest possible cardboard without a fraction of cardboard's
strength or stiffness. Presently the stems were dry enough to be stiff
but not yet entirely brittle. They made a framework, uniting its
members with string from the dropped rope.
Two days before the copter was due again, they used the cardboard-like
but fragile curved sheet of seaweed-leaves to cover the frame.
Finished, they had what looked like the fuselage of a landed copter.
Thicker but brittle sections of the stems seemed rotor-blades when more
seaweed-cardboard was attached. From two hundred feet, the crudities of
the object would not show. It would look like a helicopter landed on
the island where Jorgenson and Ganti were confined.
It would look like a rescue.
When the copter arrived, it checked in midair as if it braked. It hung
in the air. Its crew stared down. They saw a strange aircraft there.
The helicopter whirled and went streaking away toward the horizon.
Jorgenson and Ganti immediately attacked their own creation. The
framework was brittle; barely able to sustain its own weight. They
furiously demolished the whole thing. They hauled its fragments into
the cave. They worked furiously to remove every trace of its former
presence.
Within two hours a fleet of six steam-copters came driving across the
sea. They swept over the island. They looked. They saw Jorgenson and
Ganti--naked man and naked Thrid--glaring up at them. They saw nothing
else. There was nothing else to see.
There was a Thrid official on one of the copters. The matter had been
reported to him. A helicopter could only have landed on this island
to rescue the prisoners. They were not rescued. There had been no
helicopter. The crew of the craft which made the report had made a
mistake!
Jorgenson and Ganti gloated together when darkness had fallen. The
copter-crew had made a false report. They would face an angry official.
Either they'd take back their original report, or stick to it. If
they took it back, they'd tried to deceive an official, who could not
be wrong. Jorgenson and Ganti gloated over what they'd done to their
jailers.
IV
When a copter came again a week later, it was not the same flier or
the same crew. The bag of food and water was dropped from a different
height. The copter hovered until it saw both Jorgenson and Ganti. Then
it went away.
They set to work again on seaweed hauled from the sea, and leaves
smoothed over each other on suitable surfaces of rock. Stems up to four
and five inches in diameter to be straightened out and almost dried to
seem rotor-shafts, and lesser stems to make a framework. The mockup
was tied together with string. They finished it the night before the
copter was due again, and they practiced with their bits of cloth and
the stones until the light ended. They practiced again at day-break,
but when the helicopter came across the sea they were nowhere visible.
But there was an aircraft aground upon the island. From the air it
looked remarkably convincing.
The prisoners listened eagerly from the hollowed-out cave. The mockup
on the ground was in a miniature valley between sections of taller
stone. It could be seen from above, but not well from the side. From
one end it could not be seen at all, but from the other it was a
remarkable job. It would deceive any eyes not very close indeed.
The flying helicopter hovered and hovered, sweeping back and forth.
Its crew-members saw no movement anywhere, which was not possible. If
there was an aircraft aground, there must be Thrid who had flown it
here. They were not to be seen. The prisoners were not to be seen. The
situation was impossible.
Jorgenson and Ganti waited.
The flying jailers could not report what they saw. A previous crew had
done that, and when they were proved mistaken or worse, they donned
chains to do hard labor so long as they lived. But the Thrid in the
copter over the island dared not not-report. Somebody else might sight
it, and they'd be condemned for not reporting. They couldn't report it
and they couldn't not-report it!
Jorgenson grinned when the throbbing of the rotors became louder and
louder as the steam-helicopter descended. He and Ganti made ready.
The flying vehicle landed. They heard it. Its crew got out, fearful but
alert and with weapons handy. One stayed close by the ship, his ears
shriveled with terror. The other two, weapons very much to the fore,
moved cautiously to examine the aircraft which could not possibly be
here.
Jorgenson and Ganti, together, scrambled from the hollowed-out cave.
Ganti swung his strip of cloth. It had a strong cord attached to each
end, and he held the cords so the cloth formed a pocket in which a
stone lay. The whole whirled furiously. Ganti released one cord. The
stone flew. It struck the Thrid on guard by the machine squarely in
the middle of his forehead. Jorgenson's stone arrived the fraction
of a second later, before the Thrid started to fall. They moved out,
Jorgenson grinning in a most un-businessman-like manner. They heard the
startled exclamation of the other two newcomers as they realized that
they saw only a mockup of a landed flier, a thing which crumbled as
they touched it.
Jorgenson and Ganti swung their slings together. The jailer-Thrid
turned just in time to see what was happening to them. It was final.
And the copter took off again with Ganti and Jorgenson clothed and with
an adequate supply of stones in improvised pockets in their garments.
* * * * *
It was perfectly simple from that time on. They walked into a village
of the Thrid, on the mainland. It was the village where Ganti had
lived; whose governor had spoken and said and observed that Ganti's
wife wished to enter his household and that Ganti wished her to. Ganti
marched truculently down its wider street. Astonished eyes turned upon
him. Ganti said arrogantly:
"I am the new governor. Call others to see."
The villagers could not question the statement of an official. Not
even the statement that he was an official. So Ganti--with Jorgenson
close behind--swaggered into the local governor's palace. It wasn't
impressive, but merely a leafy, thatched, sprawling complex of small
buildings. Ganti led the way into the inmost portion of the palace and
found a fat, sleeping Thrid with four villager-Thrid fanning him with
huge fans. Ganti shouted, and the fat Thrid sat up, starkly bewildered.
"I speak and say and observe," said Ganti coldly, "that I am the new
governor and that you are about to die, with no one touching you."
The fat Thrid gaped at him. It was incredible. In fact, to a Thrid who
had never heard of a missile weapon--it was impossible. Ganti swung his
strip of cloth by the two cords attached to it. It whirled too swiftly
to be seen clearly. A stone flew terribly straight. There was an impact.
The local governor who had spoken and said and observed that Ganti's
wife wanted to enter his household was quite dead.
"I," said Ganti to his former fellow-villagers, "I am the governor. If
any deny it, they will die with no one touching them."
And that was that.
Ganti grimaced at Jorgenson:
"I'll speak and say and observe something useful for you presently,
Jorgenson. Right now I'm going to march on foot and talk to the
provincial governor. I'll take a train of attendants, so he'll receive
me. Then I'll tell him that he's about to die with nobody touching him.
He's earned it!"
Unquestionably, Ganti was right.
* * * * *
Any Thrid official, to whom it was impossible to be mistaken, would
develop eccentric notions.
Most humans couldn't stand by and watch. They got off Thriddar as soon
as possible. At the moment, Jorgenson couldn't leave the planet, but he
didn't want to see what Ganti could and would and by human standards
probably ought to do. He camped in the steam-copter, in hiding, until
Ganti sent him a message.
Then he started up the copter and flew back to the trading post. It
was empty. Gutted. Looted. But there was a high official waiting for
him in the courtyard. He held a scroll in his hand. It glinted golden.
When Jorgenson regarded him grimly, the high official made a sound
equivalent to clearing his throat, and the Witness-hatted Thrid around
him became silent.
"On this day," intoned the high official, "on this day did Ganti, the
Never-Mistaken, as have been his predecessors through the ages;--on
this day did the Never-Mistaken Ganti speak and say and observe a truth
in the presence of the governors and the rulers of the universe."
Jorgenson listened grimly. The new Grand Panjandrum had made
him--Jorgenson--a provincial governor.
Ganti was grateful. The contents of the trading post would be returned.
From this time on the Rim Stars Trading Corporation would prosper as
never before.
But Jorgenson wasn't a Thrid. He saw things as a businessman does, but
also and contradictorily he saw them as right and just or wrong and
intolerable. As a businessman, he saw that everything had worked out
admirably. As a believer in right and wrong, it seemed to him that
nothing in particular had happened.
He'd have done better, he considered, to do what most humans did after
understanding what went on on Thriddar, and what seemingly always must
go on on Thriddar. Because the Thrid had noticed that they were the
most intelligent race in the universe, and therefore must have the
most perfect possible government whose officials must inevitably be
incapable of making a mistake....
When the Rim Stars trading ship came to ground, a month later,
Jorgenson went on board and stayed there. He remained on board when the
ship left. Thriddar was no place for him.
[Transcriber's Note: No Section II in original text.]
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