“I’m sorry, Councilman Luthguster,” the captain said, “but you’ll have to eject them.”
“Humph,” said Luthguster.
Malya found Achum in the roofless temple, frowning at the statue of Juju-Kuxtil. She said, “What’s wrong, Father?”
“I’m still not sure about that crowd,” Achum told her. “No more human sacrifices. Would the real Juju-Kuxtil talk like that?”
Luthguster’s souvenirs crashed to the altar beside him. Achum froze, then his eyes swiveled to look at the fresh rocks on the altar. Still moving nothing but his eyes, he looked up at the statue. “Ahem,” he said. “I guess maybe he would.”
“Come along, Father,” Malya said. “Dilbump for lunch.”
Don’t You Know, There’s a War Going On?
There are two kinds of people — those who think there are two kinds of people and those who don’t.
From the beginning of Time, Man has been on the move, ever outward. First he spread over his own planet, then cross the Solar System, then outward to the Galaxies, all of them dotted, speckled, measled with the colonies of Man.
Then, one day in the year eleven thousand four hundred and six (11,406), an incredible discovery was made in the Master Imperial Computer back on Earth. Nearly 500 years before, a clerical error had erased from the computer’s memory more than 1000 colonies, all in Sector F.U.B.A.R.3.
For half a millennium, those colonies, young and struggling when last heard from, had had no contact with the rest of Humanity. The Galactic Patrol Interstellar Ship Hopeful, Captain Gregory Standforth commanding, was at once dispatched to reestablish contact with the Thousand Lost Colonies and return them to the bosom of Mankind.
The two armies were massed in terrible array, banners flying, the hosts facing each other across the verdant valley. The tents of the generals were magnificently bedecked, pennons whipping in the breeze. Down below, clergymen in white and black blessed the day and the pounded grass and the generals and the banners and the archers and the horses and those who sweep up behind the horses. Filled with a good breakfast, the soldiers on the slopes stood comfortably, happy to be a part of this historic moment, while the supreme commanders of both forces marched with their aides and their scribes down through their respective armies and out across the green sweep of neutral territory toward the table and the altar set up in the very center of the valley under a yellow flag of truce.
This was the first time these two supreme commanders had met, and they studied each other with a pardonable curiosity while the various aides exchanged documents and provided signatures. Is he fiercer-looking than me? the supreme commanders wondered as they eyed each other. Is his jaw firmer and leaner? Do his eyes flash more coldly and cruelly? Is his backbone more ramrod-stiff?
The ministers sprinkled holy water over the papers. The supreme commanders firmly shook hands — very firmly shook hands — and a great cheer went up from the multitudes on the slopes. The ceremony was complete. The name had been changed. The 300 Years’ War was now officially the 400 Years’ War.
“Look out!” someone shouted.
Soldiers gaped. Horses neighed and pawed the ground. Clergy and aides fled with cassocks and tunics flapping, Supreme commanders took to their heels and the great long silver bullet of the spaceship settled slowly, delicately, almost lazily into the very center of the valley, the massive base of the thing gently mashing the main altar into a dinner mat.
“Remember, Councilman,” Ensign Kybee Benson said, pacing the councilman’s cabin, “these are intelligent and subtle people, the descendants of philosophers.”
“Hardly a problem,” Councilman Morton Luthguster responded. “I’m something of a philosopher myself.”
Ensign Benson and Councilman Luthguster meshed imperfectly. Ensign Benson was almost painfully aware that the reason the councilman had been chosen to represent the Galactic Council on this endless, trivial, boring mission to the universal boondocks was simply that nobody at the Galactic Council could stand the man’s porposities anymore. Luthguster didn’t realize that; nor did he realize that it was Ensign Benson’s sharp-nosed personality that had won him a berth on the Hopeful (neither did Ensign Benson); but he’d certainly noticed that all his conversations with Ensign Benson left him with the sense that his fur had been rubbed the wrong way.
Ensign Benson’s face now wore the expression of a man eating a lemon. “Councilman, would you like to know which particular philosophy these philosophers philosophized about?”
“You’re the social engineer,” Luthguster pointed out, getting a bit prickly himself. “It’s your job to background me on these colonies.”
“Dualists,” Ensign Benson said. “They were dualists.”
“You mean they fought each other.
Lieutenant Billy Shelby, the Hopeful’s young second in command, knocked on the open door and entered the cabin, saying, “Sir, the ship has landed.”
“Just a second, Billy.” Taking a deep breath, displaying his patience, Ensign Benson said, “Not duelists, Councilman, dualists. They believed in the philosophy of dualism. Simply stated, the idea that there are two sides to every story.”
“At the very least,” Luthguster said. “Back in the Galactic Coun—”
“Gemini,” Ensign Benson interrupted. “That’s what they named their colony, after the twins of the zodiac. They’d originally considered Janus, after the two-faced god, but that suggested a duplicity they didn’t intend. Discussion and debate; that’s the core of their approach to life.”
“A civilized and cultured people, obviously.” Luthguster preened himself, patting his big round belly. “We shall get along famously.”
“No doubt,” Ensign Benson said. “Shall we begin?”
They followed Billy Shelby down to the main hatch, where the ladder had already been extruded, but the door was not yet open. Waiting beside’ it was Captain Standforth, tall and thin and vague, his stun gun ready in his hand. Pointing to the weapon, Luthguster said, “We won’t be needing that, Captain. These are peaceful scholars.”
“I thought I might shoot some birds,” said the captain. “For stuffing.” Bird taxidermy was the only thing in life the captain really cared about. Seven generations of Standforths had, unfortunately, made such magnificent careers in the Galactic Patrol that this Standforth had had no choice but to sign up when he’d attained the proper age, but the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake, which everybody now knew — and which was why he had been assigned to the Hopeful.
“Shoot birds later,” Luthguster said, somewhat stiffly. “Let us begin peacably. Open the door, Billy.”
Billy pushed the button, the door opened and Luthguster stepped out onto the platform at the head of the ladder. ‘Fellow thinkers,” he cried out and fell back into the ship with seven arrows stuck in him.
“Rotten aim,” Chief Engineer Hester Hanshaw said, wiping her hands on a greasy rag, then dropping it onto the cluster of pulled arrows. “You’ll live.”
“At least you could sound happier about it,” Luthguster told her. Lying here on the engine-room table, he was so enswathed in bandages that he looked like a gift-wrapped beach ball.
“It’s mostly all that blubber protected you,” Hester said unsympathetically. “You’re a very inefficient design.”
“Well, thank you very much.”
There was no doctor on the Hopeful, there being room for only five crew members and the councilman. Hester Hanshaw, 40ish, blunt of feature and speech and hand and mind, had taken a few first-aid courses before departure, with the attitude that the human body was merely a messier-than-usual kind of machine and that most of its ills could be repaired with a few turns of a screwdriver or taps of a hammer. (Pliers had been useful in the current case, plucking the arrows out of the councilman.) Hester never gave her engines sympathy while banging away at them, so why should she give sympathy to Luthguster? “I’ll give you some coffee,” she offered grudgingly.