The Star Beast (26 page)

“Try these little puffs. Did Mr. Greenberg make you comfortable?”

“What? Oh, yes, a nice suite, overlooking the Gardens of Heaven. But Mr. Kiku…”

“I was sorry to ask you to come to me. But I am the prisoner of my job. You understand?” He spread his hands helplessly. “I can’t leave Capital at certain times.”

“That’s understandable, I suppose. Now…”

“Your kindness is appreciated. You must remain, as an official guest, as long as you see fit. Capital is worth seeing, even if one has seen it often…which no doubt you have. I understand that the shopping is excellent, too.”

“Well, as a matter of fact I haven’t seen it before. Some of the shops do look intriguing.”

“Then enjoy it, dear lady. No reason not to mix pleasure with business. Which brings us to business, I suppose. I have been talking with your son.”

“Mr. Kiku…”

“Indulge me, I will be brief. We are sending an extensive cultural and scientific mission to the home planet of the Hroshii. I want to send your son as a special aide. He has agreed to go.” He waited for the explosion.

“Utterly unthinkable! Out of the question!”

“Why, Mrs. Stuart?”

“Mr. Kiku, what sort of inhuman beast are you? I know what you mean…you plan to turn my son, my only son, over to those monstrosities as a hostage. Unspeakable!”

He shook his head. “Ma’am, you have been misled by a wild newspaper story. Have you seen the later story? The Secretary’s speech before the Council?”

“No, but…”

“I will supply a copy. It explains how that nonsense got into print. It also affirms the ancient policy of the Federation, ‘All for One’…against the Galaxy if necessary. In this case your son is that ‘one’; he has many planets behind him. But no such issues arises; your son will join a peaceful mission to a friendly people. He will help build a cultural bridge between two civilized but very different races.”

“Hmmph! The paper said that these Hroshii demanded that you turn my son over to them. Explain
that
if you can!”

“Difficulties of translation. They asked for your son by name, but on behalf of that Hroshia which was for years part of your own household, Lummox. Because Lummox is deeply attached to your son. This friendship between these two, transcending form and kind and source and mind, is one of the greatest fortunes which has happened to our race since our people first discovered that we were not sole heirs of the Almighty. This unlikely circumstance will let us bridge in one leap a chasm of misunderstanding ordinarily spanned by years of trial and tragic error.” He paused. “One is tempted to think of them as children of destiny.”

Mrs. Stuart snorted. “‘Destiny’! Fiddlesticks!”

“Can you be sure, ma’am?”

“I can be sure of this: my son is
not
going to the other side of nowhere. In another week he is entering college, which is where he belongs.”

“Is it his education which worries you, ma’am?”

“What? Why, of course. I want him to get a good education. His father set up a trust fund for it; I intend to carry out his wishes.”

“I can put your mind at rest. In addition to an embassy, we will send a cultural mission, a scientific mission, an economics and trade mission, and many specialists, all topflight minds. No single college could hire such an aggregation of talent; even the largest institutions of learning would be hard put to match it. Your son will be taught, not casually but systematically. If he earns a degree, it will be awarded by, uh…by the Institute of Outer Sciences.” He smiled. “Does that suit you?”

“Why, I never heard of such a silly arrangement. Anyway, the Institute isn’t a college.”

“It can bestow a degree. Or, if not, we will have its charter amended. But degrees are unimportant, ma’am, the point his that your son will have an unparalleled higher education. I understand that he wishes to study xenic science. Well, not only will his teachers be the finest possible, but also he will live in a new field laboratory of xenology and take part in the research. We know little of the Hroshii; he will labor on the frontiers of science.”

“He’s not going to study xenology.”

“Eh? He told Mr. Greenberg that he meant to.”

“Oh, he has that silly idea but I have no intention of indulging him. He will study some sound profession—the law, probably.”

Mr. Kiku’s brows went up. “Please, Mrs. Stuart,” he said plaintively. “Not that. I am a lawyer—he might wind up where I am.”

She looked at him sharply. He went on, “Will you tell me why you plan to thwart him?”

“But I won’t be… No, I see no reason why I should. Mr. Kiku, this discussion is useless.”

“I hope not, ma’am. May I tell a story?” He assumed consent and went on, “These Hroshii are most unlike us. What is commonplace to us is strange to them, and vice versa. All we seem to have in common is that both races are intelligent.

“To us they seem unfriendly, so remote that I would despair, were it not for one thing. Can you guess what that is?”

“What? No, I can’t”

“Your son and Lummox. They prove that the potential is there if we will only dig for it. But I digress. More than a hundred years ago a young Hroshia encountered a friendly stranger, went off with him. You know our half of that story. Let me tell you their side, as I have learned it with the help of an interpreter and our xenologists. This little Hroshia was important to them; they wanted her back very badly. Their patterns are not ours; they interweave six distinct sorts of a genetic scheme we will be a long time understanding.

“This little Hroshia had a role to play, a part planned more than two thousand years ago, around the time of Christ. And her part was a necessary link in a larger planning, a shaping of the race that has been going on, I am told, for thirty-eight thousand of our years. Can you grasp that, Mrs. Stuart? I find it difficult. A plan running back to when Cro-Magnon man was disputing with Neanderthals for the prize of a planet…but perhaps my trouble lies in the fact that we are ourselves the shortest-lived intelligent race we have yet found.

“What would we do if a child was missing for more than a century? No need to discuss it; it in no way resembles what the Hroshii did. They were not too worried about her welfare; they did not think of her as dead…but merely misplaced. They do not die easily. They do not even starve to death. Uh, perhaps you have heard of flatworms? Euplanaria?”

“I have never taken any interest in xenobiology, Mr. Kiku.”

“I made the same error, ma’am; I asked, ‘What planet is it from?’ Euplanaria are relatives of ours; there are many more flatworms on Earth than there are men. But they have a characteristic in common with Hroshii; both breeds grow when fed, shrink when starved…and seem to be immortal, barring accidents. I had wondered why Lummox was so much larger than the other Hroshii. No mystery…you fed Lummox too much.”

“I
told
John Thomas that repeatedly!”

“No harm done. They are already shrinking her down. The Hroshii were not angry, it seems, over the theft or kidnapping or luring away of their youngster. They knew her—a lively, adventuresome disposition was part of what had been bred into her. But they did want her back and they searched for her year after year, following the single clue that she must have gone off with a certain group of visitors from space; they knew what those visitors looked like but not from what part of the sky they came.

“It would have discouraged us…but not them. I have a misty impression that the century they spent chasing rumors, asking questions, and checking strange planets was—
to them
—about what a few months would be to us. In time they found her. Again, they were neither grateful nor angry; we simply did not count.

“That might have been our only contact with the noble Hroshii had not a hitch developed; the Hroshia, now grown big but still young, refused to leave without her monstrous friend—I speak from the Hroshian viewpoint This was terrible to them, but they had no way to force her. How bitter a disappointment it was I ask you to imagine…a mating planned when Caesar fought the Gauls all now in readiness, with the other strains matured and ready…and Lummox refuses to go home. She shows no interest in her destiny…remember, she is very young; our own children do not develop social responsibility very early. In any case she won’t budge without John Thomas Stuart.” He spread his hands. “You see the predicament they are in?”

Mrs. Stuart set her mouth. “I’m sorry but it is no business of mine.”

“True. I suppose that the simplest thing to do is to let Lummox go home…to your home, I mean…and…”

“What? Oh, no!”

“Ma’am?”

“You can’t send that beast back! I won’t stand for it.”

Mr. Kiku stroked his chin. “I don’t understand you, ma’am. It’s Lummox’s home; it has been the Hroshia’s home much longer than it has been yours, about five times as long I believe. If I remember correctly, it isn’t your property, but your son’s. Am I right?”

“That has nothing to do with sit! You
can’t
load me down with that beast.”

“A court might decide that it was up to your son. But why cross that bridge? I am trying to find out why you oppose something so clearly to your son’s advantage.”

She sat silent, breathing hard, and Mr. Kiku let her sit. At last she said, “Mr. Kiku, I lost my husband to space; I won’t let my son go the same way. I intend to see to it that he stays and lives on Earth.”

He shook his head sadly. “Mrs. Stuart, sons are lost from the beginning.”

She took out a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. “I can’t let him go off into the sky…he’s only a little boy!”

“He’s a man, Mrs. Stuart. Younger men have died in battle.”

“Is that what you think makes a man?”

“I know of no better gauge.”

He went on, “I call my assistants ‘boys’ because I am an old man. You think of your son as a boy because you are, by comparison, an old woman. Forgive me. But the notion that a boy becomes a man only on a certain birthday is a mere legal fiction. Your son is a man; you have no moral right to keep him an infant.”

“What a wicked thing to say! It’s not true; I am merely trying to help him and guide him.”

Mr. Kiku smiled grimly. “Madam, the commonest weakness of our race is our ability to rationalize our most selfish purposes. I repeat, you have no right to force him into your mold.”

“I have more right than you have! I’m his mother.”

“Is ‘parent’ the same as ‘owner’? No matter, we are poles apart; you are trying to thwart him, I am helping him to do what he wants to do.”

“From the basest motives!”

“My motives are not an issue and neither are yours.” He stood up. “As you have already said, it seems pointless to continue. I am sorry.”

“I won’t let him! He’s still a minor… I have rights.”

“Limited rights, ma’am. He could divorce you.”

She gasped. “He wouldn’t do that to me! His own mother!”

“Perhaps. Our children’s courts have long taken a dim view of the arbitrary use of parental authority; coercion in choice of career is usually open-and-shut. Mrs. Stuart, it is best to give into the inevitable gracefully. Don’t oppose him too far, or you will lose him completely. He is going.”

CHAPTER XV

Undiplomatic Relations

MR
.
KIKU
returned to his office with his stomach jumping but he did not stop to cater to it. Instead he leaned across his desk and said, “Sergei. Come in now.”

Greenberg entered and laid down two spools of sound tape. “I’m glad to get rid of these. Whoo!”

“Wipe them, please. Then forget you ever heard them.”

“Delighted.” Greenberg dipped them in a cavity. “Cripes, boss, couldn’t you have given him an anesthetic?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Wes Robbins was pretty rough on him. I felt like a window peeper. Why did you want me to hear them? I don’t have to deal with the mess. Or do I?”

“No. But someday you will need to know how it is done.”

“Mmmm… Boss…did you have any intention of letting it stick when he fired you?”

“Don’t ask silly questions.”

“Sorry. How did you make out with the hard case?”

“She won’t let him go.”

“So?”

“So he is going.”

“She’ll scream her head off to the papers.”

“So she will.” Mr. Kiku leaned toward his desk. “Wes?”

“Mr. Robbins is at the funeral of the Venerian foreign minister,” a female voice answered, “with the Secretary.”

“Oh, yes. Ask him to see me when he returns, please.”

“Yes, Mr. Kiku.”

“Thank you, Shizuko.” The Under Secretary turned to Greenberg. “Sergei, your acting appointment as diplomatic officer first class was made permanent when you were assigned to this affair.”

“Was it?”

“Yes. The papers will no doubt reach you. You are now being promoted to chief diplomatic officer, acting. I will hold up the permanent appointment for ninety days to let some noses get back in joint.”

Greenberg’s face showed no expression. “Nice,” he said. “But why? Because I brush my teeth regularly? Or the way I keep my brief case polished?”

“You are going to Hroshijud as deputy and chief of mission. Mr. MacClure will be ambassador, but I doubt that he will learn the tongue…which will of course place the burden of dealing with them on you. So you must acquire a working knowledge of their language at once. Follow me?”

Greenberg translated it to read: MacClure will have to talk to them through you, which keeps him in line. “Yes,” he answered thoughtfully, “but how about Dr. Ftaeml? The Ambassador will probably use him as interpreter rather than myself.” To himself he added: boss, you can’t do this to me. MacClure can short me out through Ftaeml…and there I am, nine hundred light-years from help.

“Sorry,” Kiku answered, “but I can’t spare Ftaeml. I shall retain him to interpret for the Hroshij mission they will leave behind. He accepted the job.”

Greenberg frowned. “I’ll start picking his brain in earnest, then, I’ve soaked up some Hroshija already…makes your throat raw. But when did they agree to all this? Have I slept through something? While I was in Westville?”