Anthropol, p.17
Anthropol, page 17
“And of the threat imposed by Captain Lori?” I murmured.
“The Federation’s military forces are obviously stronger than mine,” the Kalauz agreed.
The more she spoke, the more convinced I was that the hunch I had when Rosid was still alive and when the Igaz outside headquarters ignored us — the more convinced I was that the hunch was right.
“How do you propose to fight the aliens?” I asked.
“With Gal-Mil troops.”
“Wouldn’t it be simpler just to call off your Ngignans?” I stepped in front of Tiska. “How many of you are programmed to take over the leadership when something happens — as it happened to Rosid?”
There was a silence, long, heavy, deadly. Then the Kalauz said, “Are you mad, Vernay?”
“You made three mistakes. The first was lighting the room this way. It made me wonder why you wanted to avoid being seen too clearly. The second was in knowing about the aliens. You showed no surprise at all when Tiska used the term. Yet the Kalauz I spoke to before was deathly afraid of an alien invasion. And the third was your knowing about Lori and me. You couldn’t have learned that from the Anthropol team that came here before — and was destroyed. But Rosid knew about Anthropol and Gal-Mil and the Federation. And through him, the other Ngignans knew.”
I saw her hand move. I dove forward and reached for the lamp. I caught it with my fingertips and jerked it from the table. A stunner beam slapped at the air where I had been. I rolled behind a chair and lifted the lamp, focusing the light on the Kalauz’ face.
And there it was — the stiff expression, the staring eyes not contracting under the glare of the light. Somehow Rosid had managed the greatest coup of all — he had prepared a body for the Kalauz and had managed to make the transfer. No wonder he knew that his plan would work. And no wonder we had not been stopped on the way here. This Kalauz wanted us alive. I doubted if her stunner held more than a knock-out charge. We were still useful. We were still transferable.
Lori swore in clear Intragal. The Kalauz swung her stunner. But Lori and Tiska had both disappeared behind high chair backs. The Kalauz cried, “First Officer Elna, at once!”
The doors came open. Elna stepped into the room, her stunner held high. “Vernay has gone insane!” the Kalauz cried. “Stun him. But do not kill him. Not yet!”
I didn’t waste time trying to tell Elna that her Kalauz was not even human; she had no experience, no basis for accepting my belief. Besides, there wasn’t time. Both she and the Kalauz were moving now, seeking to get a bead on me from two different angles.
I turned off the light. Then I threw the lamp where Elna had been standing. I heard it strike her, heard her curse, and heard her stunner strike the floor.
I came up from behind the chair and followed the lamp. Elna and I collided. We went down together. I had a hand on the stunner and then it was jerked away from me. I clamped my fingers on Elna’s wrist. We lay that way fighting silently.
There was a scuffle, a cry, and then the ripe sound of a melon splitting open. I said, “Wait. It’s all over.”
A light came on. Elna was facing toward the Kalauz. I turned my head. I felt Elna stiffen. Her scream rose, choked in her throat, and then burst out wildly. I didn’t blame her. Seeing a body split in half, seeing a tiny creature crawl out, and seeing it die was unnerving no matter how often it was witnessed.
Elna kept on screaming until I slapped her back to sanity. I looked once more at the scene as other lights came on. Tiska stood behind the body, a heavy vase in her hand. Lori was still halfway across the room. She said dryly, “It looks as if Tiska earned the job of Kalauz.”
Tiska dropped the vase and drew her small body up in that regal way she had. “I thank you all for your help. But I am no longer to be addressed as Tiska. I have now taken the name of Kontara.”
• • •
The revolution was over quickly enough after Tiska declared herself Kalauz. Once Elna was able to comprehend the truth, she moved with the efficiency that had made her second in command to the former Kalauz. Operating under Tiska’s direction, she sent her trained Igaz rendor troops out against the aliens. Since Tiska knew where most of them were, and whom they were impersonating, and since there were a good many more Igaz rendor than three hundred, within two days there wasn’t a Ngignan left on Ujvila.
Only after a semblance of order was restored did Tiska permit Lori and me to go to the communication center; she further frustrated Lori by sending along a guard to insure that I got my Anthropol team down to the planet and into action before any Gal-Mil troops landed.
To make sure that Lori didn’t try any Gal-Mil tricks, I put a priority call through the By-pass to Anthropol headquarters and reported directly to the Chief. He got the message without my having to spell it out; so did the Council. Gal-Mil was ordered to cooperate with the new government, to use its strength only if matters got out of hand.
They didn’t. Elna was wise enough to know when she was beaten, and she took the lead in assuring the people that the new Kalauz had the full support of the hierarchy; that, in fact, the entire Igaz was behind the new Kalauz in initiating certain social and political reforms. The old Kalauz? Elna explained that she had been killed by the invading aliens and that, as custom had it, her nearest relative — since she had not yet born a female child — had become the Kalauz. Tiska then stepped before the video and was viewscreened throughout Ujvila as she outlined her program of reforms.
The reforms were neither complex in nature nor hurriedly concocted. Tiska had thought out the obvious ones long ago; Anthropol suggested others based on experience and also laid out a way of easing Ujvila into its new social and political status.
Inside of three Ujvilan months, Gal-Mil forces were able to withdraw, and shortly after, Anthropol went, leaving only the standard advising teams necessary to prepare Ujvila for probationary status in the Federation.
My last memory of Lori for some years was her getting into a car to be taken to the embarkation field. “I hope we meet again, Vernay,” she said too sweetly, too softly. “I hope we meet under circumstances that will give me the chance to have you sent to Pluto’s deepest mine!”
My cheerful goodbye didn’t help either.
XXII
EPILOGUE
FIVE YEARS to the month later I found myself remembering my parting with Lori, because we did meet again. I was leaving the Council chambers after giving a report; it was my last official act before starting a long-overdue vacation. Lori was going by in a ground taxi. She had it stop and stepped out to greet me.
“Vernay!” She sounded suspiciously pleased to see me. Also, she was out of uniform, in becoming civilian clothing. “Where in the galaxy have you been? Every time I get to Earth, I ask, but you’re always on some hush-hush mission.”
“I’ve been to Ngign, among other places,” I said.
She seemed to have forgotten her desire to consign me to one of Pluto’s mines. “Ngign! That I want to hear about. Look, I’m on leave. If you can draw a few days, I know a beautiful beach resort …”
And so we lay on the sand with the warm Mediterranean Sea lapping at our toes. I told Lori of my investigatory trip to Rosid’s planet.
“Rosid did a good job of lying,” I said. “That is, if you define a good liar as one who tells as much of the truth as he can without spoiling his lie.”
I explained that Rosid and his group hadn’t come from Ngign at all, but had grown up on a neighboring planet with a congenial environment, children of a group of exiles.
Nor had he told the truth about Ngign being a dying world. It was flourishing, a group of countries living in harmony and economic balance. It had not been the Ngignan people who wanted to change the calm way of life, but a group of hotheads led by Rosid’s grandfather who disagreed with the benevolently paternal type of political structure that seemed to suit most of the natives. Finally, the several governments on Ngign had to take action. They rounded up the revolutionaries and put them on a nearby planet — utilizing the space travel techniques they had got from the starship. They made sure that the exiles had the wherewith-all to survive — excluding space technology — and left them to their own devices. It was considered the most humane solution.
Unfortunately, I told Lori, the Ngignans weren’t much as psychologists. They failed to realize that the mind of any form of intelligent life is not only inventive; it is retentive. Among those exiled were scientists and, bit by bit, they put their knowledge together, experimented, failed, experimented again, tested, failed, tested again, and finally in Rosid’s youth they succeeded in not only duplicating the space flight of their home planet but developing sufficient speed to range beyond their solar system. They explored, found Ujvila, and ultimately, under Rosid’s leadership, concocted the plan that he had almost made successful. Behind their scheming was the desire to get enough Federation technology to go back and take over Ngign itself.
I said to Lori, “After my visit to Ngign, the government set aside their ‘humaneness’ long enough to go to the prison planet and remove the remaining malcontents. They’re in the process of being reeducated now.” I added, “Rosid might not appreciate it, but thanks to his speech machine and to an adaptation of his breathing apparatus, I was able to get around the planet comfortably and to communicate quite effectively.”
But Lori had scarcely heard my last words. She said in that familiar, aggressive Gal-Mil voice, “Reeducation! I would have killed the lot! But I suppose it was your mush-hearted Anthropol policy to advise reeducation. Give it a generation, and I’ll wager you’ll find trouble again.”
“By then, Ngign will be in the alien branch of the Federation,” I said. “The same thing couldn’t repeat itself.”
Lori’s answer was a snort. Then we argued about it. We argued over dinner, while sunbathing, swimming, cruising, dancing. We argued on glider flights and during an underwater diving tour. We were still arguing about it when the all too familiar signal came, telling me to contact the Chief at once.
I was dressing to take Lori to dinner. I started for her cabin and met her halfway. She had been recalled too.
• • •
The Chief said, “That’s the picture, Vernay. I’m sorry I couldn’t do any better, but as usual Gal-Mil broke our code and reached the Council first. You’re nominally under Gal-Mil orders on this assignment. Your immediate superior will be a Captain Lori.”
I said, “Yes, sir.” What else was there to say? I left.
I landed in darkness, in deep woods a short distance from the capital of Ujvila. A car with a brown-clad driver in the front seat and a female in Igaz rendor uniform in the rear met me. I was handed a pair of coveralls with a familiar insignia on them. When I got into the car, I sat beside the male driver. Behind me, Lori said, “Remember, Vernay, I’m in charge of this operation.”
“Yes, Captain — ah, Hadnaj. And where do we go?”
“When the new underground movement was formed, your Anthropol people made contact with it and helped it develop. It’s called the Hivkormany. We’re on the way to see the leader.”
Hivkormany — which was an Ujvilan way of saying “true” or “faithful” government.
The ride had a déjà vu quality about it. So did the dark entryway where the car came to a stop, and the long stone steps leading down, and the walk along a dank corridor, and the stepping into a room complete with viewscreens. There was no one to watch the screens.
We waited, spending the time looking at the most interesting screen. It showed a jungle encampment. Buildings were better; I could see mechanical tools — saws and other cutting and peeling equipment — but it was still recognizable as Joy-labor Camp Two.
I said, “Tiska — Kontara, that is — disbanded all the camps the first year of her rule.”
A door opened and a woman came in. She was a lovely woman, tall and slender — and familiar. It was Elna. She said, “All of the camps were reactivated this past year, Vernay. They have better food, better quarters, better tools, but they’re still unhealthy.” She paused and added, “And they’re full of people like myself — the ones who want the old ways back.”
I stared at her. I said, “Anthropol is cooperating with you in returning to the old system?” I didn’t believe it.
“The old system,” she agreed. “The one we had the past four years. The system that allowed a man to take a woman out to dine, to dance; that allowed him to be her equal, if not more sometimes. But now …”
She turned on another viewscreen and we saw Igaz headquarters. It looked very familiar: the uniforms with markings for high ranks were worn by women; the males were in drab brown, scurrying about, doing the menial tasks. The old feeling came back to me as if I hadn’t been five years away.
“I found that I liked men,” Elna said. “As people, I mean. So did most of the women of my class.” She waved at the screen showing the joy-labor camp. “Many of my friends are in that camp or others, because this movement is made up of those of us who used to be close to the old Kalauz — and of the men who were our companions. In fact, the Hivkormany is run by a man.” She sounded proud. “My husband.”
Lori said, “When did all this start?”
Elna fed a videotape into a machine and projected it through one of the viewscreens. “This was made just over a year ago. It came gradually, of course, but until we heard this speech, none of us really thought …” She broke off as Tiska appeared on the screen. A still lovely Tiska, but not so elfin, not so soft-voiced. She had become wholly Kontara, wholly a Kalauz, direct descendant of the first to step from the Great Egg. I knew the moment I heard her voice.
“My people, as you know, we are facing attack from revolutionaries, perhaps again infiltrated with an alien culture. For the safety of our world, all mills and factories, all outlets for food, are under the protection of your Kalauz. Read the new rules when they are posted tomorrow. Respect the Igaz. When the crisis is ended, I assure you …”
Elna snapped the screen to darkness. “There was no crisis then, by the way. But we thought that if Tiska wanted revolutionaries, she should have them. So the Hivkormany was formed. We intend, with your help, to set up a new government, a better government.”
“With you as Kalauz?” I asked.
Elna smiled. “With my husband and I ruling together until the people can be educated to elect their own leaders.”
I looked at Lori and grinned at her bemused expression. I said, “In Anthropol, there’s a motto that all political advisers have to learn — and remember. It’s a very ancient saying: Plus ça change, plus c’est le même chose.”
She murmured, “You forgot it, didn’t you, when you told me there on the beach that the same thing couldn’t repeat itself?”
And with a sweet smile, she snapped, “All right, Vernay, let’s get to work. Elna, can you bring your husband for a conference?”
When Elna left the room, Lori said, “Remember, Vernay, this is Gal-Mil’s operation. And I’m in charge of it.”
I said, “Yes, Captain.” What else was there to say?
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Copyright © 1968 by Louis Trimble.
Published by arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency.
All rights reserved.
Published in association with Athans & Associates Creative Consulting
Cover image(s) © 123RF/elen
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-5326-2
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5326-4
Louis Trimble, Anthropol
