The Florians (7 page)

“And yet,” said Nathan, “the people have changed, and are changing, in response to some factor in the environment here.”

“True,” I said. “Puzzling, isn't it?”

He didn't seem to consider this an overwhelmingly successful reply. There are too many men who think that they can turn to an expert and say, “This is your area of concern, what's the answer?” Nobody's omniscient.

Lucas, who'd been content to keep his distance until now, came up to us and informed us that it was time to start back. He didn't say how he knew, but we were prepared to trust his judgment.

This time, instead of lagging behind, our so-called guide led the way. He didn't believe in dawdling, it seemed, and because of his size his stride perpetually attempted to carry him on ahead of us. Every few paces, he had to pause to let us catch up, and it began to seem as if he had made a mistake in thinking we had adequate time by assuming that we could cover the same distance he could in the same kind of time.

Nathan made some attempt to keep up with him, but I was a little less ready to hurry so ostentatiously. Thus, as we walked, we tended to be perpetually strung out, with me to the rear.

As there was no conversation, and we were retracing ground we had already covered, I allowed myself to lose myself slightly in my thoughts. Thus, when I glanced up and saw something terrible about to happen my brain was too far behind my senses to make any immediate sense out of it. I didn't get to shout a warning.

From the loft of a warehouse ahead of us there extended a heavy wooden beam, pivoted within and equipped with block hod tackle for lifting and shifting heavy goods from the cobblestones of the wharf. Leaning out from the loft was a man, holding by one hand the edge of a heavy net of rope, the rest of which was draped over the beam. He had only to flip his wrist to drop the net—and that was exactly what he did, just as Lucas was passing underneath. At that particular moment Nathan was trying to draw abreast of him, and he, too, was caught by the folds of the net and felled.

I stopped dead in my tracks, openmouthed. It seemed so obvious that it had been done on purpose—and so ridiculous that anyone should do such a thing. I stared helplessly while Lucas tried to rise, struggling fruitlessly with the tangled mass of the net.

Then something hit the back of my head like a sledgehammer, and my thoughts imploded.

CHAPTER FIVE

I drifted slowly into a dream of intolerable pain. I seemed to be shot through and through with bolts of agonizing force, confined and constrained as if my skull were
squeezing
my brain. I was dangling, helpless as a puppet, trapped in my body while the fire consumed me.

The dream slowly dissolved in returning consciousness.

The reality did not seem, at first, to be very much better. As the minutes ebbed by, however, I discovered that I was more or less intact. The pain in my head was fierce, but by no means intolerable. The sensations of confinement, of helpless dangling within the borderlands of self-awareness, slowly evaporated.

Long minutes passed while I could not find the energy to open my eyes or move my body.

I heard someone say, “He's awake,” before I was conscious of having given any evidence of the fact. I heard footfalls, and then felt fingers gripping my jaw lightly. My head was turned for me. I opened my eyes wider.

He balanced my head so that I was looking up into his face. It was a face I'd seen before—a hundred times or more. On the wharf, in the streets of the town, back in the village. Wherever I went for the rest of my life I would always know the swollen face of a Florian. The face had few characteristics to set it aside from others like it. It wasn't Jason.

I didn't say anything. I just bathed in the waves of my headache.

He turned away, briefly, and nodded to someone else. I heard a door close. Then he helped me sit up. There was a cup of water waiting on a small table beside the bed, and he put it to my lips. I took it off him—I wasn't
that
helpless. I took the water in small sips. I couldn't drain the cup because tilting my head back hurt too much.

I studied his face, carefully. He didn't quite have the same strong-man aura as the rest. His beard was trimmed into a neat triangle. It wasn't long since he'd last washed his face. He was paler than most, and smoother. An indoor man. Even Jason had had the look of a man who got about a lot. This was the first Florian I'd seen who was a desk man. I looked at his hands, and found that they were worn, but only slightly. Here, on a world where virtually every man might be expected to get through a fair amount of manual labor, was a teller instead of a doer. A man who gave orders.

He was smiling.

“Did you have to hit me so bloody
hard?
” I demanded.

“It wasn't me,” he answered, with a hint of irony. “And it wasn't hard. But he's used to hitting men with thicker skulls.”

“He makes a habit of it, then?” I commented dryly.

“In the course of his work,” he said. He was still smiling, I was getting tired of people who smiled when there was nothing to smile about.

“Why did you have to hit me at all?” I asked. “I'm a reasonable man. You could have tapped me on the shoulder and issued an invitation. Or were you upset because we didn't all walk under your net at once?”

“The essence of the maneuver,” he said, “was speed. We had to remove you from the scene quickly and quietly. Before anyone had time to realize what had happened.”

“Why?” I asked bluntly. I felt that it was time to get the heart of the matter. He hesitated, obviously wondering how much he ought to tell me. I looked around the room. There wasn't much to see. There were no windows, and there was no furniture except for the bed, the small table, and the stool that the big man was sitting on. There was an oil lamp on a bracket providing a wan yellow light. Nothing else.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said, finally settling for telling me nothing—yet.

“Who are you?” I said.

“My name's Carl Vulgan,” he said. “What's yours?”

“Alexis Alexander,” I said. “Late of planet Earth. I presume that's what you want to talk about?”

“I'd like to know why you came to Floria,” he agreed.

“And I'd like to know why you want to know,” I countered.

He stopped smiling, but he wasn't angry or impatient. He seemed to think he had lots of time. “You're the one who just dropped out of the sky,” he said. “You're the one without the invitation. This is my world. Aren't I entitled to an explanation of why you've come?”

I shrugged. “It's no secret,” I said. “Earth is recontacting the colonies. The
Daedalus
—that's the ship—is fitted out as a laboratory. The general idea is that we can help you sort out any problems you're having with the alien life-system.”

“And what do you want in return?” he asked bluntly.

“We haven't come to collect taxes,” I assured him, in a sarcastic tone. “We can't carry anything away with us. All we want to do is help you and reopen a channel of communication between Floria and Earth.
Now
will you tell me what you're playing at? And where's Nathan?”

“Your companion is still with Jason,” he said.

“I saw you drop the net on him.”

“The net was to tangle things up while we got you away. We couldn't snatch both of you or Jason would expend twice its much effort looking for you. While he has one of you still in his tender care he has other priorities. We have, so to speak, equalized the situation. Attained a fairer distribution of visitors from outer space, if you wish.”

It was difficult to think with my head still throbbing, but I tried hard. Jason was taking us to the Planners, who controlled the colony but without wielding any real executive power. Vulgan looked like a man with executive power. Possibly, then, he represented the civil authority...the metaphorical throne rather than the power behind it. He had taken me away from Jason, but had tried to make sure that Jason couldn't know who it was had taken me. Presumably, then, Jason and the Planners would not approve of Vulgan and whoever he represented making their own independent contact with us. There seemed to be a division of interests, perhaps a political conflict.

“Perhaps you don't realize,” he continued, when I didn't say anything, “that your arrival here is a momentous event. It may be a critical point in our history. You must forgive us if our actions are a little hasty—certainly unrehearsed. We had not anticipated such a thing. We are, of course, delighted to see you, and we regret the rough handling. It was, unfortunately, necessary.”

“Because you didn't want us to go straight to the Planners and negotiate with them,” I guessed. “You want us to negotiate with you. You want to use us to liberate you from the dictates of the Planners, whereas they would want to use us to help them maintain the status quo.”

“You seem to have grasped the basic situation,” he admitted—rather grudgingly. I think he was wondering how much Jason had told us while we were in the coach, and how much we might have learned from the villagers. It appeared that we had arrived at a bad moment, and set down squarely in the middle of a power struggle. Up to now, it had probably been conducted behind the scenes...but our arrival might well bring it out into the open. When it comes to kidnapping people like pawns in a chess game, trouble is just about to start boiling over.

“How did you know we'd landed?” I asked.

“A messenger from the village came to us last night,” he replied, no longer prevaricating. “We were all set to welcome you with open arms when you came in on a farm cart. But you didn't. Jason got to you first.”

I was surprised. I tried to sit up, and found that the pain was now so dull that I could manage it. I felt a slight twinge of nausea.

“But if the messenger came to you,” I said, “how did Jason know?”

“That,” said Vulgan, “is one of the things
I
want to know.”

I had assumed, naturally enough, that Jason had come to meet us because of the messenger. Apparently, he had not. That opened up a number of questions. I realized that I had been assuming, without any good reason, that Jason was the proper authority, and Vulgan was the one trying to get in on the game. Now, I discarded that assumption along with the notion that “proper authority” could mean anything at all. There were two sides playing, but who was right and who was wrong wasn't my business. I rubbed the back of my neck and wondered what the hell I was supposed to do in a situation like this. It hadn't been mentioned in the briefings—not, at any rate, the ones I'd been to. Nathan was the diplomat. I couldn't help thinking, rather ruefully, that the fools had snatched the wrong man. I wished that Nathan had my headache.

“Your political squabbles aren't our affair,” I said. “We didn't come here in order to be pawns in your attempts to swing the balance of power about. We came to help...to help all of you...with problems that are much more elementary.”

“Aren't you a little
late
for that?” he said quietly. “If we'd really found any serious problems in adapting to this world we'd all be dead by now. Our great-great-grandfathers would have perished in the attempt to make a living here.”

“We're late,” I agreed. “Earth has her problems—and they're the same problems she always had. The political climate has been wintry for a long time with regard to interstellar travel. It's expensive, and being under the aegis of various international organizations, its funding is affected by all kinds of factors. It only takes one major power to withdraw support, and then they all do...and it takes, one hell of a long time to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. But now, if all goes well, we can start again. We're late, but we've already arrived in time to help other colonies.”

I didn't mention that Kilner had arrived
too
late on one occasion. It didn't seem to be the right moment for total honesty, which is always the second best policy, if politicians are to be believed.

“But we have no problems,” said Vulgan.

“You think you don't,” I said. “But I'm not convinced.”

He got up from the stool and took a pace or two away into the room. Then he turned back. He appeared to be doing some hard thinking.

“Earth has her problems,” he said, echoing my words as he considered them. “International disputes...but now things are getting back together again....”

“That's right,” I said helpfully.

“You've done this before?” he asked. “Visited other colonies, that is.”

“Not personally,” I admitted. “But the ship has. Four colonies have already been recontacted.”

“And they needed help? They had basic problems affecting the viability of the colony, and your personnel helped put things right?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling that perhaps we were getting somewhere.

“How was the help received?” he asked. “Did
they
welcome you with open arms?”

“They thought we were late as well,” I admitted. “They were rather bitter.”

“But we're different,” he said. “We're successful. We've established ourselves here. We're building a new world. Left to ourselves, we can make a better world than Earth...perhaps.”

My optimism was evaporating. Mariel had assured me that the farmers were sincere in making us welcome. They harbored no resentment, like the men of Kilner's colonies. They had done well, and they didn't feel that they had been abandoned. All well and good.

But
....

From the viewpoint of the men on top in this society things looked different. They didn't hate us, either. They didn't feel abandoned. They were
glad
they'd been left alone to get on with it. They
wanted
to be left alone to get on with it. So far as they were concerned, renewed contact with Earth was something they reckoned they needed like a hole in the head. They wanted to look after their own garden, and grow it their way. OK, they were in dispute among themselves as to who was to plot a course through the stormy seas of history...one man's Utopia is another man's poison and no politician likes being a puppet, especially for an island colony of intellectuals. But Vulgan and the Planners could have at least one thing in common. They wouldn't want recontact, except—perhaps—on their own rigorous terms.

“We can help you,” I said, feeling that it was necessary to insist.

“And what do you want in return?” he demanded.

I just couldn't say “Nothing.” For one thing, it sounded too facile for a man like Vulgan to believe. For another, I wasn't sure in my own mind that it was true. There was a lot more to the politics that lay behind the reinstitution of the space program than I knew about. I was only a worker, hired for a job. I believed that space travel was vital to the future of mankind, but somehow I just couldn't see Nico Pietrasante thinking the same way. If he had persuaded the wayward members of the UN to start contributing to space travel again, said this small cynical voice, then he's promised them that they'll get something out of it.

“What we want is to restore communication,” I said. “Establish some kind of connection between the scattered human worlds.”

He wasn't overly impressed by this statement. He didn't seem to think that it was a real answer to his question.

It wasn't.

“We don't need communication,” he said. “We don't need help.”

“That's what everyone says,” I protested. “But you just don't realize...what you see as normal isn't necessarily inconsequential. The giantism which is universal here seems normal to you, but very strange to me. It sometimes takes an outsider's judgment to expose and analyze problems before they become acute. There are questions which need answers before we can tell whether you have problems or not. How many people are there in the colony...?”

I had been meaning to go on and pose more simple questions, but I stopped as I saw him react to that one. His face didn't change as much as Jason's had, but a definite look of suspicion came into his eyes. I realized suddenly—perhaps belatedly—why it seemed to them to be so significant.