Читать книгу Alien Planet - Fletcher Pratt - Страница 6
II
ОглавлениеIn the morning came fresh airs that shook the rain from the sky and presently cleared it for the languid warmth of an August day. We were early afoot, and as I busied myself about the kitchen, Friday emerged from the bunk room to which he had evidently retired after we went to bed. His helmet was off, and I thought I saw a new light in his face as he advanced across the room.
When he was a few feet away, he suddenly bent his knees in a gesture of greeting, and without the slightest hesitation, began to speak:
“Though even yet I know not your strange tongue,
(I pray you pardon my indigencies);
I wish you well and would hold nomination
Upon him matters. Speak your noble friend.”
I fear I did him the discourtesy of staring, open-mouthed. Both grammar and accent left something to be desired—he rolled his r’s furiously and his s’s were slurred into the indescribable French j—but that a man who had been unable to speak or understand English one day before should suddenly burst into Shakespearean blank verse—well, it seemed impossible. As I stared, he was off again:
“Have I not made you read my tongue aright?
Oh, hell! What costly post—”
But I had recovered the use of my voice. “Oh, Merrick, come here quickly!” I called.
As my friend entered, Friday again bent his knees in a little curtsy, and flinging out his arms to include both of us in a gesture, began once more:
“Kingomi, friends! Ashembe is my name.
Before the stormy shipwreck of my fortunes
Upon your most inhospitable shore
(I was a little taken aback by this—but remembered that it was his maiden effort in the English language.)
I left a ruddy moon deeper in space
Than all your candles. I would gabo.
Tell me, do you possess it in this deed?”
It was all so grotesquely intelligible-unintelligible that both of us laughed. “What is he trying to say?” asked Merrick. “And what is gabo?”
“Haven’t the slightest idea,” I answered, thinking of the last question first. “But I think he’s trying to tell us that he came from another planet.”
“Another planet!” cried Merrick. “Why . . . still, that would explain . . . there’s that heat-ray—”
I turned to the man who had described himself as Ashembe. “Am I not right?” I asked.
He stared for a moment, his brows wrinkling with concentration. Then:
“Ah, who will now unriddle me this tongue?
Right? Planet? What are these? I only know
I left a deed—”
It was as bad as the first effort, but at all events communication of a kind had been established. Ashembe continued to speak in blank verse; you could see him winding up for the effort as it were, before each speech, his lips moving silently, his brows wearing an expression of intense concentration. He used his newly acquired English with a terrible accent and with so many misplaced words that we only understood a third of what he was saying; but with patience and interest to aid us we managed to make out the general drift.
As I recall that first day’s conversation, it turned upon quite unimportant matters. The Shakespearean vocabulary is no doubt extensive, but so much of it is given to the expression of the abstract passions of love, grief and hate that there is little left with which to carry on an ordinary conversation. And in this technical age one would find amazing gaps if he were to try to discuss things, using only the words found in “The Merchant of Venice.”
Even worse than his paucity of English words was the wealth of metaphor with which Ashembe found it necessary to clothe the most simple statements, and the archaic character of Elizabethan English as a medium for expressing just what he wanted. “Leaden casket” was the best phrase he could find to describe his vehicle (whatever it was) and he kept referring to the place from which he had come as a “moon” or a “deed,” doubtless remembering the “so shines a good deed in a naughty world” line in the play.
Unraveling these difficulties consumed the greater part of the day. What we finally made out of it all was that he had come from another planet; and that he wished to exchange valuable formulae for “gabo.” What “gabo” was, neither of us had any idea, except that it was apparently some metal, judging from Ashembe’s description of it as “glittering more than gold.”
He confirmed that his radio helmet in some mysterious way enabled him to learn things while asleep, helping him appraise ideas as well as words, and thus enabling him to learn a new language in remarkably quick time. He was particularly anxious to have us read more to him on scientific and technical subjects.
Fortunately, there was, among the few books we maintained at Joyous Gard, an old set of the International Encyclopedia that Merrick had once purchased in a moment of aberration, and had brought up here to help us identify various plants and insects. When we managed to communicate to Ashembe that we had a compendium of worldly knowledge, he was off on the instant for his helmet, explaining in a good many splurges of oratorical blank verse that he wanted to begin absorbing it at once.
That evening Merrick took up the task of reading to him, while I set about the obtruding necessity of food, and from then far into the night we kept at it ceaselessly, skipping all the articles that were historical, literary or merely of interest to the curious, and confining ourselves to technical and scientific matters—which, it must be admitted, we understood very badly ourselves. In the morning Ashembe put us at it again, this time discarding his helmet and trying to learn to read by the ordinary method.
“My father’s people have for long and long unable been to extract attainments (knowledge?) by images of the glittering eye. So thoroughly have we become imbued with the use of the Tensal (his helmet, apparently) that the method of the printed page to us is lost. But in reading from your book, the children of your thought creep feebly on their hands and knees, and I would even follow the book myself, gramercy.”
“The children of your thought?” repeated Merrick.
“The image of the mind whereof you speak,” said Ashembe. “You read to me, ‘the brontosaurus is a sauropod’ but in my mind I see you have in yours no picture of the brontosaurus, nor of sauropods. All, all is words, beyond the ken of vacant heads.”
“I like that,” murmured Merrick. “Vacant heads!”
“Have I unwitting wrought your senses harm?” queried Ashembe, with anxious courtesy. “I crave forgiveness. Read me further.” And that evening, like the previous one, saw us alternating at the International Encyclopedia while our guest from another planet slumbered before the fireplace.
“Your information-book is faithless,” Ashembe told us the next morning. “It halteth always at the verge—I would dig deeper in your mines of knowledge. Do you sense more?”
“Not much more than the encyclopedia, I’m afraid,” I said. “Neither of us is well posted on science, except for a little corner of knowledge. I have looked into the fungi some, and Merrick understands birds.”
A light seemed to dawn on our visitor. “My friends, I have not asked you of your argosies,” he said. “What they are? It is improbable that you are to sciences of me unknown?”
“Argosies?” I asked, not quite comprehending. “An argosy is a ship—something that moves on water.”
“Forgive the halting utterance of my tongue,” said Ashembe. “Argosies—I would inquire your arts, your merchandise.” He moved his hands, helplessly.
“Oh, he means what do we do,” Merrick broke in. “I am a lawyer”—there was no comprehension on Ashembe’s face—“that is, I . . . well, see here. The relations between men are governed by rules. I am one of those who interpret the rules. Suppose there are two men. Each of them says, ‘This is mine.’ One of them comes to me and I try to find out if it really belongs to him. If it does, I present proof and they give it to him.”
“Oh, hell,” said Ashembe (for some reason he had acquired the idea that this was a particularly fine way to begin a sentence) “you are an arbiter of destiny. I comprehend. May you be happy.” He touched his forehead and bent his knees in the formal gesture of congratulation we had seen him use but once or twice before. “In my world such are high art men and are held in great honor. To you they bring their arguments; you say to one ‘You are right. It is yours.’ Like Portia. Tell me, is this the meaning in your tongue?”
“No, not quite.” said Merrick patiently. “The man who decides is the judge. In this country he is assisted by twelve other men who are called the jury. All I do is bring the truth out for the judge and jury. I represent only one side of the argument.”
“The other man of the argument, he does also have a lawyer?” queried Ashembe, in some astonishment. “Improbable! Twelve—fifteen men for one dispute. But you are great in art to thus give your time to others. By what art do all these earn their gold and good? They are workers with hands?”
“No,” Merrick went on, patiently. “The man I am representing pays me, and the man on the other side pays his lawyer. The judge is paid by the State, but the costs of the action are supposed to be paid by whoever loses the case. Judges don’t have anything else to do.”
“Important!” declared our guest. “You gain gold by coming to judgment. But how do you decide aright? The man you represent might be wrongdoing, but have great lawyer. In my world it would be crime to give any man of justice money. It would make man with best brains always serve those with most gold. Your men in argument why not tell stories immediately to the judge and the jury? Else judge and jury make mistakes.”
“They do that all right,” said Merrick, “but how do you make sure that a man knows all the law in your courts?”
“We have the arbiter of destiny, like a judge,” said Ashembe. “The men of the argument tell their ownership to him. If they disagree he names a—a pollave, who around him gathers all the facts. All men are made to leave their arts and come at the pollave’s call. But only high art men are made arbiters of destinies. The laws, the rules, we teach them to children. So many they are in this country you need interpreters and representatives?”
Merrick nodded.
“Important! Such would be crime in my world. Like crime of giving money to justice men. . . . But hold! I recollection. Long many years ago we decided arguments like you, save for one word. The lawyer on the wrong side from him they took gold equal in direct proportion to that gained by the right side of the argument. Thus all lawyer was sure to be on the right side. But that was long many years ago. Your judge and jury is very behind.” He dismissed the subject, and, turning to where I stood grinning at Merrick’s discomfiture, asked me, “Your art, what is he?”
I answered, “When a man wants to go into business and has not money enough, he borrows from others and agrees to pay their money back together with more out of the profits of his business. These promises he puts in writing, and the writings are called bonds. I sell them to people who wish to lend money.”
“How is it good to you?” asked Ashembe. “Gramercy for your courtesy, my friends,” he went on with a smile, “I do not well understand the meanings of your primitive institutions. They give you gold for sell these promises to pay back money lended?”
“That’s it,” I said. “You see, it’s not always easy to sell bonds. The men who have money may not want to lend it or they may not know anything about the man who is going into business. So I have to tell them how good a thing it would be for them to loan the money on these bonds.”
“No scientific board is yours? Improbable! You sell them something they do not want and they give you gold for doing it. Your world is strange. . . . I do not understand. On my world, when man would go into the business he must be permitted by scientific board, who look at his attainment of art of business and ask, ‘Is the business necessary?’ If he need articles, scientific board produces them, but not make him pay out his profits on work to parasites.”
It seemed about time to draw the conversation to a close.
We sat on a ledge of rock among green-black shadows from the pines. All about was the fluid splendor of late summer, hot and unquiet, with an indefinable feel of life and movement even in its silences. Ashembe, uncomfortably warm, dipped his hand in the water and drew it across his forehead.
“Yours is the hot nation,” he said.
Merrick grinned. “You ought to be in New York,” said he. “This is just cool enough to be pleasant.”
“In my world is colder,” our visitor went on, as though he had been interrupted while telling something. “Gabo is great necessity. We shall how otherwise keep ourselves warmed and lighted. Our sun burns small with resultant decrease in illumination and calories. Locked in all atoms are reservoirs of power and light, but only from the atom of gabo do we secure the means of release ec—ec—economically. Therefore of our little mine of gabo we expend much in sending scientific to other worlds for great quantity.”
“So that’s why you came,” I said. “I wondered, but it wasn’t quite polite to ask.”
“Which is polite?” inquired Ashembe innocently. “Is it the local moral code? In my country, if man wishes to know informatively he asks.”
“Not a moral code,” I attempted to explain (I was always being caught in something like this by our wide-awake and inquisitive visitor) “but a code of—well, manners. Politeness indicates that one is of good breeding, of good behavior, will not do things that offend other people. It’s a social code.”
“But you have those who offend others because they are not of the good breeding?” asked Ashembe, dabbing his hand in the water. “Astonish! In my country the social code is more simplicity. It is the rule always to be fair. Your polite code must be very complication.”
“It is,” Merrick chipped in with feeling. “It is not polite to ask people about their reasons for doing things because a good many people do things or have reasons for doing things that they do not care to admit. They might feel them a trifle discreditable.”
“Improbable!” said Ashembe. “In my country could not be. Attend—my entire name are Koumar Ashembe Bodrog Fotas. Koumar Ashembe are merely personal. Bodrog indicates I am of the hereditary exploring[3] or war-fight science. Fotas indicate my rank in identical class. All the people thus named in my country. But speak—actions of crime are they still so many that people conceal not only thoughts but also actions? You do not eliminate crime tendency children?”
“How can we?” asked Merrick. “A man may be perfectly all right till he gets to be thirty years old, and then blooey! He blows off and murders somebody or commits some other crime.”
“Not. Never.” Ashembe was positive. “Psychology is behind science with you. I tell you what we have found in many years. No man makes first crime at thirty years age. As the child he performs small things like purloining parents’ tickets or telling small non-truths. Nobody notices. But when the same child grows he becomes large crime. In my nation once every month, each child is examined with truth serum and inquired about all his actions. If he shows crime tendency, we examine very carefully by scientific board. All are treated in direct proportion to amount of crime tendency. Some we do cure with the Tensal and drugs. Some we do sterilize. The bad ones we dead.”
“You execute little children?”
“Certain. Wherefore not? Is cheaper, less harm to rest of people than spending great sum on education of these, allowing same to grow and commit crime before execution. Your system all weak. You take revenge on criminal. We prevent crime.”
“But don’t you think,” said Merrick, “that some of them would make useful citizens if they had the proper training? We find it so.”
“Not,” declared Ashembe. “Deep crime tendency is ineradicable. Your scientists know the laws in physics, also in chemics, also in optics. It is aberrant they do not know psychology governed by equally firm laws. No hope is for child with crime tendency so strong as those we dead. It is measured on scale with scientist instruments, following application of Tensal and truth-serum. You do not have the truth-serum?”
“Yes, we have something like that,” said Merrick, “but it was only recently discovered and its use is far from general. People distrust it. . . . How many children do you execute in a year?”
“In one annual revolution of planet about solar sphere, one or two entire planet, yes? Ten or fifteen we sterilized. Rest, one hundred in year, we cure with Tensal and drugs.”
I thought I detected an inconsistency. “Why do you execute some and only sterilize others?”
Ashembe smiled in his superior fashion. “Only very bad ones we execute,” he answered. “Those we sterilize the scientific board tests and finds in them that they have very good brains of high service. Psychological law that men of high brains—how do you say it, genius?—one of every three has crime tendency of one kind. They would make slaves of people, or acquire all wealth for selves, or bring the purple panoplies of war-fight. Also is psychological law that children of genius with crime tendency have crime tendency without genius. But it is great loss to world if we execute genius men who might make civilization advance very rapid. We sterilize them and put them by very close watch so they do not make the crime, and they do us great works. Solely when the child has deep crime tendency and very small brain we execute.”
“But if you can cure mild tendencies toward crime, why can’t you cure the rest?” asked Merrick.
“Our civilization is there point defective,” said Ashembe, frankly. “What use? We cure with the Tensal.” He indicated the helmet apparatus he had worn with a motion toward his head. “The Tensal makes the man to sleep and we cure crime with what your knowledge book says mesmerism, hypnotism. Very good for imparting knowledge when the man is willing, but to eradicate some things, like crime tendency, not easy. The man who wears Tensal while he is being eradicated of some thing makes psychological struggle against it. Some men must acquire dominance over their mind. This weakens the brain and makes it not so good. If crime tendency is small, weakening man is small, man is not hurt much, and will make useful manual labor. If the crime tendency is large the man can be dominated but the brain is stress too strong and he becomes the idiot. Viz., when we find the genius with crime tendency we only sterilize and not try to cure. We might cure, but we would have the idiot and not genius.”
“Sounds logical, but it must be unpleasant for the geniuses,” murmured Merrick. “But tell us about gabo. What is it? Is it a metal?”
“Affirmative,” said Ashembe, “what is your better affirmative word? . . . Gabo is the metal with bright metallic luster. We find in ore of ruddy color, chemically united with sulphur. Preparation is by roasting and distilling. Spectrum has bright yellow and green line and smaller red, blue and three violet lines. I am not remember numbers of these. Atomic structures is of tenth rank, third order, decahedral pattern. Is liquid at this hottitude and heavy. Close like cadmium. You do recognize?”
I looked at Merrick and Merrick looked at me. “Liquid, did you say,” I asked, “and a metal? Why, that must be mercury or something very like it. It’s the only liquid metal I know of.”
“Mer-cu-ry,” repeated Ashembe. “Pause.” And he trotted off for the shack to return with the M volume[4] of the encyclopedia and his Tensal helmet. “Read me,” he said, tossing me the book, and settling himself in the shade against a moss-covered log.
When I had finished the brief article, which is all the encyclopedia allots to the subject of the occurrence, properties and uses of mercury, our guest rose, fumbling with the keys of his Tensal helmet.
“Mercury!” he cried, “I have achieved! This is truthful gabo, and I am cursed of my world to find. You have it of common occurrence in this world. Your knowledge book declares thus. Where to get it is next problem.”
“It shouldn’t be difficult,” I remarked. “I fancy that plenty of it could be had in New York. How much do you need?”
“Five hundred kilograms last us for many century,” said Ashembe. “I give formula for Tensal or heat-gun in exchange. Is it worth?”
“Ye-es,” I said rather doubtfully. “I don’t know whether I can make it clear, but articles of that kind have to be patented, manufactured and marketed before you can get much money out of them. It would probably take you two or three years, at the very least.”
“Astonish!” said Ashembe. “Oh, hell, I forgot you use metal for exchange medium. Gold?”
“Yes. Silver too. And how are you going to get back with your mercury?”
“Great simplicity. Construct Shoraru like this I make arrival,” he swung his hand toward the spot where his vehicle lay in the water. “With mercury not difficulty. But you need the metal exchange medium for mercury” . . . he ruminated for a moment . . . “Oh, hell, I make gold for you. Silver, I know not. You obtain small quantity of mercury and I will erect all gold desirable.”
“You can make gold?” I asked.
“Certain. Other metals also from those of same system,” he assured us calmly. “Mercury not. Calcium not. Antimony can make. Gold can make—almost any metal out of another of similar system. Copper not rare, no?”
“No, copper isn’t rare and it’s fairly cheap,” I assured him.
“Easy to do. Will make multiple gold for your entire world, to end shortage thereof under which you suffer.”
He rattled on, but my thoughts had gone off at a tangent. “Come on, let’s have dinner,” I said, rising. “Where’d you put those rabbits, Merrick?”
The time we could spend at Joyous Gard was nearly up. Already a September chill had come to the nights, and the wintergreen berries were showing red warning of coming frost.
The problem of what to do with Ashembe when we left had formed a ground-swell to my conversations with Merrick for the past three weeks, and it was now becoming insistent. Our original intention had been to take him along, introduce him to the head of some chemical company (where his knowledge would doubtless make a tremendous fluttering in the dove-cotes) and leave him to his own devices.
But I, at least, was coming to doubt the wisdom of such a course. Ashembe’s ideas and ideals had brought about a disagreement that made a change of plans necessary. And it was something far more difficult to deal with. The thought had occurred to both Merrick and me that a man as guileless as this visitor from the depths of space, possessed of such secrets as the heat-ray flash and a means for making gold from copper—and God alone knew what else!—might very easily fall into unscrupulous hands. Murder has been done for information of far less value than either of these, and everyone can remember instances of stolen formulae too numerous to mention. One recalls Diesel.[5]
We tried to explain this to Ashembe, begging him to entrust us with his formulas in order that Merrick might have them patented. To our fears about his safety he retorted only with polite gibes on the moral standards of this imperfect Earth.
“Oh, hell, my friends,” quoth Ashembe. “You say if you have this thing patented, only I can use. But such an eventuality would be crime in my country. I am criminal if I detain information of benefit to all males and females for personal utility. How now, good sirs?”
“But who in your country is going to know anything about it?”
“I am obligated to fill out one report on all actions of scientific import since leaving Murashema,” was Ashembe’s reply. “What then if I insert in it statements of falsification? What then if I commit it worse falsification by suppression of the evidence? I could not accomplish this.”
“Why not give us your formulas, then?” said Merrick, “and let us operate them for you. If you give them out publicly, no chemical firm will agree to furnish your mercury. They will gain nothing from what everyone else knows. And besides, if you give a gold-making formula to the public, everyone will be making it, and it will be so worthless you will be unable to buy mercury with it, no matter how much you have.”
“That is due to terrestrial defective metallic coinage system,” said Ashembe solemnly. “Readily would I give the information to you, provided you obligated your personal selves to spread the said information to your entire world. But to give formulas to you for your own benefit would be causing you to commit the same crime as myself. I would thus be no less guilty. The only non-criminal process would be thusly—to give formulas to the scientists of the world and permit them to reward with mercury or other matters. Also there is other consideration. You declare it will take long to patent articles and build machines and purchase mercury. You refer to inferior morals of this orb of day which causes men to dispossess others of rights in processes. If I give the formulas to scientists, no one can steal because all will know.”
Merrick shook his head. “You don’t know this world,” said he. “About all the reward you’d get at once would be jealousy and hatred.”
“What we need,” Merrick went on in his best “gentlemen-of-the-jury” manner, “is a compromise by which we can adjust Ashembe’s standards of justice and the practical difficulties of the situation. He wants us to give his formulas to everyone. But as he has thus far given it out to no one, why not continue in that way? Would it be all right with you,” he turned to our guest, “to regard our world as simply not yet far enough advanced to make the proper use of your formulas? Frankly, I think it would be for the best. If you feel that you wish to reward us with something besides gold, you can write out some of your formulas and leave them in trust with a Board of Scientists, not to be opened or used until some future date. This form of trust is fairly common with us, and is never violated. And if you wish to give something of immediate value to the public, why not the means of taking your Tensal helmet? That would be of the highest value.”
Ashembe nodded thoughtfully. “Such would be the upright course,” he admitted with some reluctance, “but leave me feeling ingratitude. I could so much help you and not to do!”
“Still, there’s no use teaching us to fly till we have learned to walk,” said Merrick. “We find in this world that we cannot civilize a race from the outside. It must work out its own destiny.”
“But if you do that, how is Ashembe going to get his mercury?” I broke in. “He can have all I can buy for him and welcome, but I rather fancy it will take more than that for his needs.”
“Why, that’s simple,” said Merrick. “We’ll bring him a little mercury right here, and he can set up his gold-making plant to pay for it.”
“Finished,” said Ashembe, touching his fingers to his forehead. “Gratitude for your plan. It is scientific to me.”
And with that we left the thorny subject. Ashembe was to stay at Joyous Gard, with one of us to keep him company and take the deliveries of materials that would be sent from New York. We spun a coin to decide who should go, and for better or worse the lot fell on Merrick. I was to stay.
