The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens (2 page)

A.D. 2054-2088

The Inspector’s Teeth

World-Manager Chagas sat waiting for the Osirian ambassador, mentally practicing the brisk handshake and the glassy smile. Across the conference table the First Assistant to the Manager, Wu, chain-smoked, while the Minister of External Affairs, Evans, filed his nails. Although the faint rasp annoyed Chagas, he gave no sign, imperturbability being one of the qualities for which he was paid. The indirect lighting threw soft highlights from the silver skullcaps covering the shaven crania of the three.

Chagas said: “I shall be glad when I can let my hair grow again like a civilized man.”

“My dear Chagas,” said Wu, “with the hair you have, I don’t see what difference it makes.”

Evans put away his nail-file and said: “Gentlemen, when I was a kid a century ago, I wondered what it would be like to be on the inside of a great historical moment. Now I’m in on one, I find it queer I’m the same old Jefferson Evans, and not Napoleon or Caesar.” He looked at his nails. “Wish we knew more Osirian psychology . . .”

Wu said: “Don’t start that Neo-Paretan nonsense again about Osirians being guided by sentiments, so we need only know which one to play on, like pressing a button. Osirians are rational people; would have to be to invent space travel independently of us. Therefore will be guided by their economic interests alone . . .”

“Neo-Marxist tapioca!” snapped Evans. “Sure they’re rational, but also sentimental and capricious like us. There’s no contradiction—”

“But there is!” said Wu excitedly. “Environment makes the man, and not the contrary . . .”

“Do not start that, I beg,” said Chagas. “This is too important to get your systems full of adrenalin over theory. Thank God I am a plain man who tries to do his duty and does not worry about sociological theories. If he takes our terms, the Althing will ratify the treaty and we shall have an Interplanetary Council to keep peace. If he insists on the terms we privately think he is entitled to, the Althing will not ratify. Then we shall have separate sovereignties, and it will be the history of our poor Earth all over again.”

“You borrow trouble, chief,” said Wu. “There are no serious disputes between our system and the Procyonic. Even if there were, there is no economic advantage to a war at such distance, even though Osirians have capitalistic economy like Evans’ country . . .”

“Who said wars are always fought for economic advantage?” said Evans. “Ever hear of the Crusades? Or the war that was fought over one pig?”

Wu said: “You mean the war some sentimental historian without grasp of social and economic factors
thought
was fought for pig—”

“Stop it!” said Chagas.

“Okay,” said Evans. “But I’ll bet you a drink, Wu, that the Osirian takes our offer as it stands.”

“You are on,” said Wu.

A bell chimed, bringing the men to their feet.

As the Osirian came in, they advanced with outstretched hands, uttering polite platitudes. The Osirian set down his bulging briefcase and shook their hands. He looked like a small dinosaur, a head taller than a man—one of the little ones that ran about on its hind legs with its tail stuck out behind to balance. A complex pattern of red-and-gold paint decorated his scales.

The Osirian took the backless chair that had been provided for him. “A kreat pleashure, chentlemen,” he said slowly in an accent they could barely understand. This was natural, considering the difference between his vocal organs and theirs. “I haff stuttiet the offer of the Work Fetteration and reached my tecishion.”

Chagas gave him a meaningless diplomatic smile. “Well, sir?”

The ambassador, whose face was not built for smiles, flicked his forked tongue out and back. With irritating deliberation he began ticking off points on his claws:

“On one hant, I know political conditions in the Solar System and on Earth in particular. Hence I know why you hat to ask me the things you dit. On the other, my people will not like some of these things. They will consitter many of your demants unchust. I could go ofer the grounts of opchection one py one. Howeffer, since you alretty know these opchections, I can make my point better py tellink you a little story.”

Wu and Evans exchanged a quick glance of impatience.

The forked tongue flicked out again. “This is a true story, of the old tays when the mesonic drive had first enapled you to fly to other stars and put your system in touch with ours. Pefore there was talk apout galactic government, and pefore you learnt to guart akainst our little hypnotic powers with those pretty silfer hats. When a younk Sha’akhfa, or as you say an Osirian, hat come to your Earth to seek wistom . . .”

###

When Herbert Lengyel, a junior, proposed that they bid Hithafea, the Osirian freshman, the Iota Gamma Omicron’s council was thrown into turmoil. Herb persisted, glasses flashing:

“He’s got everything! He’s got money, and he’s smart and good-natured, and good company, and full of college spirit. Look how he got elected yell-leader when he’d been here only a few weeks! Of course it would be easier if he looked less like a fugitive from the reptile house in the zoo, but we’re civilized people and should judge by the personality inside . . .”

“Just a minute!” John Fitzgerald, being a three-letter man and a senior, threw much weight in the council. “We got too many queer types in this fraternity already.”

He looked hard at Lengyel, though Herb, who would like to have punched his handsome face, was merely a sober and serious student instead of a rah-rah boy. Fitzgerald went on:

“Who wants the Iotas to be a haven for all the campus freaks? Next thing you’ll find a thing like a bug, a praying-mantis a couple of meters high, sitting in your chair, and you’ll be told that’s the new pledge from Mars . . .”

“Ridiculous!” interrupted Lengyel. “Martians can’t stand Earthly gravity and humidity for long—”

“That’s not the point. I was speaking generally, and for my money a young dinosaur’s not much improvement on a Martian . . .”

“Another thing,” said Lengyel. “We have an anti-discrimination clause in our charter. So we can’t bar this man—this student, I should say—”

“O yes we can,” said Fitzgerald, stifling a yawn. “That refers only to the races of mankind; it don’t apply to non-human beings. We’re still a club of gentlemen—get that, gentle-men—and Hithafea sure ain’t no man.”

“Principle’s the same,” said Lengyel. “Why d’you think Atlantic’s one of the few universities left with fraternities? Because the frats here have upheld the democratic tradition and avoided snobbery and discrimination. Now—”

“Nuts!” said Fitzgerald. “It isn’t discriminatory to pick folks you think will be congenial. It wouldn’t be so bad if Herb had merely proposed some guy from Krishna, where they look more or less human—”

“There aren’t any Krishnans at Atlantic this year,” muttered Lengyel.

“—but no, he has to foist a shuddery scaly reptile—”

“John’s got a phobia against snakes,” said Lengyel.

“So does every normal person—”

“Nuts to you, Brother Fitzgerald. It’s merely a neurosis, implanted by—”

“You’re both getting away from the subject,” said Brother Brown, president of the chapter.

They went on like that for some time until a vote was called for. Since Fitzgerald blackballed Hithafea, Lengyel blackballed Fitzgerald’s young brother.

“Hey!” cried Fitzgerald. “You can’t do that!”

“Says who?” said Lengyel. “I just don’t like the young lout.”

After further wrangling, each withdrew his veto against the other’s protégé.

On his way out, Fitzgerald punched Lengyel in the solar plexus with a thumb the size of a broomstick end and said: “You’re taking Alice to the game tomorrow for me, see? And be sure you give her back in the same condition as you got her!”

“Okay, Stinker,” said Lengyel, and went to his room to study. Although they did not like each other, they managed to get along. Lengyel secretly admired Fitzgerald for being the perfect movie idea of Joe College, while Fitzgerald secretly envied Lengyel’s brains. It amused Fitzgerald to turn over his co-ed to Lengyel because he regarded Herb as a harmless gloop who wouldn’t dare try to make time with her himself.

###

Next day, the last Saturday of the 2054 football season, Atlantic played Yale on the home field. Herb Lengyel led Alice Holm into the stands. As usual, when he got near her his tongue got glued to the roof of his mouth. So he studied the pink card he found thumb-tacked to the back of the bleacher seat in front of him. On this were listed, by number, the things he was supposed to do with a big square of cardboard, orange on one side and black on the other, when the cheerleader gave the command, in order to present a letter, number, or picture to the opposite side of the stadium.

He finally said: “D’I tell you we decided to bid Hithafea? Speak it not in Gath, though; it’s confidential.”

“I won’t,” said Alice, looking very blonde and lovely. “Does that mean that when John takes me to your dances, Hithafea will ask to dance with me?”

“Not if you don’t want him to. I don’t know if he dances.”

“I’ll try not to shudder. Are you sure he didn’t use his mysterious hypnotic powers to make you propose him?”

“Fooey! Professor Kantor in psych says all this talk about the hypnotic powers of the Osirians is bunk. If a man’s a naturally good hypnotic subject he’ll be hypnotizable, otherwise not. There aren’t any mysterious rays the Osirians shoot from their eyes.”

“Well,” said Alice, “Professor Peterson doesn’t agree. He thinks there’s something to it, even though nobody has been able to figure out how it works—oh, here they come. Hithafea makes a divine yell-leader, doesn’t he?”

Although the adjective was perhaps not well-chosen, the sight of Hithafea, flanked by three pretty co-eds on each side, and prancing and waving his megaphone, was certainly unforgettable. It was made even more so by the fact that he was wearing an orange sweater with a big black A on the chest, and a freshman beanie on his head. His locomotive-whistle voice rose above the general uproar:

“Atlantic! A-T-L-A-N . . .”

At the end of each yell, Hithafea flung out his arms with talons spread and leaped three meters into the air on his birdlike legs. He got much more kick out of the rooters’ reaction to his yell-leading than the players did, since they were busy playing football. Hithafea himself had had hopes of going out for intercollegiate athletics, preferably track, until the coach had broken it to him as gently as possible that nobody would compete against a being who could broad-jump twelve meters without drawing a deep breath.

As both teams were strong that year, the score at the end of the first quarter stood 0-0. Yale completed a pass and it looked as if the receiver were in the clear until John Fitzgerald, the biggest of the fourteen right tackles of the Atlantic varsity, nailed him. Hithafea screamed:

“Fitzcheralt! Rah, rah, rah, Fitzcheralt!”

A drunken Yale senior, returning to his seat after visiting the gentlemen’s room under the stands, got turned around and showed up on the grass strip in front of the Atlantic side of the stadium. There he tramped up and down and bumped into people and fell over the chairs of the Atlantic band and made a general nuisance of himself.

At last Hithafea, observing that everybody else was too much interested in the game to abate this nuisance, caught the man by the shoulder and turned him around. The man looked up at Hithafea and shrieked: “I got ’em! I got ’em!” and tried to break away.

He might as well have saved his trouble. The Sha’akhfi freshman held him firmly by both shoulders and hissed something at him. Then he let him go.

Instead of running away, the man threw off his hat with its little blue feather, his furry overcoat, his coat and vest and shirt and pants. Despite the cold he ran out on to the field in his underwear, hugging his bottle under one arm and pretending it was a football.

Before he was finally taken away, the man had caused Yale to be penalized for having twelve men on the field during a play. Luckily the Yale rooters were too far away on the other side of the stadium to understand what was happening, or there might have been a riot. As it was, they were pretty indignant when they found out later, feeling that somebody had pulled a fast one on them. Especially as the game ended 21-20 favor of Atlantic.

###

After the game Hithafea went to his mailbox in the Administration Building. All the other frosh were eagerly pushing around the pigeon-holes to get theirs, for this was the day when fraternity bids were distributed. When Hithafea softly hissed: “Excuse me, please,” they made plenty of room for him.

He took three little white envelopes from his box and scooted for his room in the freshman dorm. He burst in to find his roommate, Frank Hodiak, studying his one bid. Hithafea sat down on his bed with his tail curling up against the wall and opened his envelopes, slitting them neatly along the edge with his claws.

“Frank!” he cried. “They want me!”

“Hey,” said Hodiak, “what’s the matter with you? You’re drooling on the rug! Are you sick?”

“No, I am cryink.”

“What?”

“Sure. That is the way we Sha’akhfi cry.”

“And why are you crying?”

“Pecause I am so happy! I am ofercome with emotion!”

“Well for goodness sake,” said Hodiak unfeelingly, “go cry in the sink, then. I see you got three. Which you gonna take?”

“I think the Iota Gamma Omicrons.”

“Why? Some of the others got more prestige.”

“I do not care. I am takink them anyway, for sentimental reasons.”

“Don’t tell me a cold-blooded reptile like you is sentimental!”

“Sure. All we Sha’akhfi are. You think we are not pecause we do not show our feelinks in our faces.”

“Well,” persisted Hodiak, “what are these sentimental reasons, huh?”

“First,” (Hithafea counted on his claws) “pecause Herp Lengyel iss one. He was the first man on the campus to treat me like a fellow beink. Second, pecause the kreat de Câmara was an Iota when he attendet Atlantic many years ako.”

“Who’s this guy de Câmara?”

“Dit you neffer know? My, some of you echucated Earthmen are iknorant of your own history! He was one of the great space pioneers, the founter of the Viagens Interplanetarias, and the first Earthman to set foot on Osiris.”