Birds of a Feather
by Robert Silverberg
It was our first day of recruiting on the planet, and the alien life forms had lined up for hundreds of feet back from my rented office. As I came down the block from the hotel, I could hear and see and smell them with ease.
My three staff men, Auchinleck, Stebbins and Ludlow, walked shieldwise in front of me. I peered between them to size up the crop. The aliens came in every shape and form, in all colors and textures—and all of them eager for a Corrigan contract. The Galaxy is full of bizarre beings, but there’s barely a species anywhere that can resist the old exhibitionist urge.
“Send them in one at a time,” I told Stebbins. I ducked into the office, took my place back of the desk and waited for the procession to begin.
The name of the planet was MacTavish IV (if you went by the official Terran listing) or Ghryne (if you called it by what its people were accustomed to calling it). I thought of it privately as MacTavis IV and referred to it publicly as Ghryne. I believe in keeping the locals happy wherever I go.
Through the front window of the office, I could see our big gay tridim sign plastered to a facing walclass="underline"
WANTED—EXTRATERRESTRIALS!
We had saturated MacTavish IV with our promotional poop for a month preceding arrival. Stuff like this:
Want to visit Earth—see the Galaxy’s most glittering and exclusive world? Want to draw good pay, work short hours, experience the thrills of show business on romantic Terra? If you are a nonterrestrial, there may be a place for you in the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science. No freaks wanted—normal beings only. J. F. Corrigan will hold interviews in person on Ghryne from Thirdday to Fifthday of Ten-month. His last visit to the Caledonia Cluster until 2937, so don’t miss your chance! Hurry! A life of wonder and riches can be yours!
Broadsides like that, distributed wholesale in half a thousand languages, always bring them running. And the Corrigan Institute really packs in the crowds back on Earth. Why not? It’s the best of its kind, the only really decent place where Earthmen can get a gander at the other species of the universe.
The office buzzer sounded. Auchinleck said unctuously, “The first applicant is ready to see you, sir.”
“Send him, her or it in.”
The door opened and a timid-looking life form advanced toward me on nervous little legs. He was a globular creature about the size of a big basketball, yellowish green, with two spindly double-kneed legs and five double-elbowed arms, the latter spaced regularly around his body. There was a lidless eye at the top of his head and five lidded ones, one above each arm. Plus a big, gaping, toothless mouth.
His voice was a surprisingly resounding basso. “You are Mr. Corrigan?”
“That’s right.” I reached for a data blank. “Before we begin, I’ll need certain information about—”
“I am a being of Regulus II,” came the grave, booming reply, even before I had picked up the blank. “I need no special care and I am not a fugitive from the law of any world.”
“Your name?”
“Lawrence R. Fitzgerald.”
I throttled my exclamation of surprise, concealing it behind a quick cough. “Let me have that again, please?”
“Certainly. My name is Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. The ‘R’ stands for Raymond.”
“Of course, that’s not the name you were born with.”
The being closed his eyes and toddled around in a 360-degree rotation, remaining in place. On his world, that gesture is the equivalent of an apologetic smile. “My Regulan name no longer matters. I am now and shall evermore be Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. I am a Terraphile, you see.”
The little Regulan was as good as hired. Only the formalities remained. “You understand our terms, Mr. Fitzgerald?”
“I’ll be placed on exhibition at your institute on Earth. You’ll pay for my services, transportation and expenses. I’ll be required to remain on exhibit no more than one-third of each Terran sidereal day.”
“And the pay will be—ah—$50 Galactic a week, plus expenses and transportation.”
The spherical creature clapped his hands in joy, three hands clapping on one side, two on the other. “Wonderful! I will see Earth at last! I accept the terms!”
I buzzed for Ludlow and gave him the fast signal that meant we were signing this alien up at half the usual pay, and Ludlow took him into the other office to sign him up.
I grinned, pleased with myself. We needed a green Regulan in our show; the last one had quit four years ago. But just because we needed him didn’t mean we had to be extravagant in hiring him. A Terraphile alien who goes to the extent of rechristening himself with a Terran monicker would work for nothing, or even pay us, just so long as we let him get to Earth. My conscience won’t let me really exploit a being, but I don’t believe in throwing money away, either.
The next applicant was a beefy ursinoid from Aldebaran IX. Our outfit has all the ursinoids it needs or is likely to need in the next few decades, and so I got rid of him in a couple of minutes. He was followed by a roly-poly blue-skinned humanoid from Donovan’s Planet, four feet high and five hundred pounds heavy. We already had a couple of his species in the show, but they made good crowd-pleasers, being so plump and cheerful. I passed him along to Auchinleck to sign at anything short of top rate.
Next came a bedraggled Sirian spider who was more interested in a handout than a job. If there’s any species we have a real oversupply of, it’s those silver-colored spiders, but this seedy specimen gave it a try anyway. He got the gate in half a minute, and he didn’t even get the handout he was angling for. I don’t approve of begging.
The flow of applicants was steady. Ghryne is in the heart of the Caledonia Cluster, where the interstellar crossroads meet. We had figured to pick up plenty of new exhibits here and we were right.
It was the isolationism of the late 29th century that turned me into the successful proprietor of Corrigan’s Institute, after some years as an impoverished carnival man in the Betelgeuse system. Back in 2903, the World Congress declared Terra off bounds for nonterrestrial beings, as an offshoot of the Terra for Terrans movement.
Before then, anyone could visit Earth. After the gate clanged down, a nonterrestrial could only get onto Sol III as a specimen in a scientific collection—in short, as an exhibit in a zoo.
That’s what the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science really is, of course. A zoo. But we don’t go out and hunt for our specimens; we advertise and they come flocking to us. Every alien wants to see Earth once in his lifetime, and there’s only one way he can do it.
We don’t keep too big an inventory. At last count, we had 690 specimens before this trip, representing 298 different intelligent life forms. My goal is at least one member of at least 500 different races. When I reach that, I’ll sit back and let the competition catch up—if it can.
After an hour of steady work that morning, we had signed eleven new specimens. At the same time, we had turned away a dozen ursinoids, fifty of the reptilian natives of Ghryne, seven Sirian spiders, and no less than nineteen chlorine-breathing Procyonites wearing gas masks.
It was also my sad duty to nix a Vegan who was negotiating through a Ghrynian agent. A Vegan would be a top-flight attraction, being some 400 feet long and appropriately fearsome to the eye, but I didn’t see how we could take one on. They’re gentle and likable beings, but their upkeep runs into literally tons of fresh meat a day, and not just any old kind of meat either. So we had to do without the Vegan.
“One more specimen before lunch,” I told Stebbins, “to make it an even dozen.”
He looked at me queerly and nodded. A being entered. I took a long close look at the life form when it came in, and after that I took another one. I wondered what kind of stunt was being pulled. So far as I could tell, the being was quite plainly nothing but an Earthman.