“Nonsense,” said Strull. “Nonsense.”
The bearded native shook his head. “Not at all,” he insisted. “We beat your Empire by a good two hundred years.”
“This planet,” said Strull desperately, “is part of the Protectorate of the Empire of Earth, as of this moment, and that’s all there is to it! No questions!”
“I’ve got a question anyway,” said a rather attractive young woman toward the front of the hall. “What if we don’t want to be part of your silly Empire?”
“That,” Strull told her happily, on familiar ground again, “would be tantamount to revolution. And we would be regrettably forced to put down any revolution.”
“We certainly wouldn’t want that,” said the young woman. A number of the other natives nodded in agreement, but they all seemed to have faint smiles drifting about their lips, as though they thought the whole discussion rather funny.
The native who had first met them got to his feet and said, “We’ll have to talk this over some, and decide what to do about you people. You can go on back to your tin can now. Tell your boss we’ll let him know our decision in a day or two.”
Strull was just as pleased. He’d come, seen that the natives were anything but dangerous, had said his piece, and now he was more than ready to return to the ship. “Come along,” he said to Cahann and the enlisted man.
“These two can stay here,” said the native. “We may have some questions to ask them.”
“Definitely not!” cried Strull. There was no telling what a seditionist like Cahann might say if left alone with these people.
“They’ll be perfectly safe here,” said the native unnecessarily. “Go on back to the ship.”
Well, in that case — “I will come back with his Excellency in an hour,” said Strull.
He was halfway back to the ship before he began to wonder just what the dickens had happened there. He hadn’t intended to leave Cahann and the enlisted man, not under any circumstances. But the native had said something — he couldn’t precisely remember what any more — and for some reason that had seemed to change things.
Why? He was somehow confused, he couldn’t for the life of him figure out exactly what had happened toward the end there.
It was all that had happened to him today, that’s what it was. Glorring being such a nasty martinet about his weight, and Cahann baiting him, and the native being so insolent, and all the rest of it. No wonder he was a little confused.
But his face was still puckered in a bewildered frown as he continued back to the ship.
Cahann, baffled, watched the natives, who had burst into laughter the minute Strull left the hall. It was his job, as psysociohistorian, to understand and categorize human societies, from the most complex industrial world to the smallest family group. Human social groupings, that was his subject matter, seen in historical context, the sociologist’s what? complemented by the psychologist’s why?
In essence, his job was even simpler than that. Every human grouping, from the smallest family to the largest industrial complex, had some sort of loophole in it, some spot for the Empire to insert itself and thus make the grouping at last only another part of the Empire. It was his job to find the loophole. He did the job well, because he enjoyed it in the abstract. He understood that he was making quite a large contribution to the Empire’s subjugation of more and more human beings, but he didn’t suppose he had any choice in the matter. His work fascinated him, and he could only perform that work in the service of the Empire. His refusal to work would not have changed the course of events one iota. Another psysociohistorian would simply have taken his place, leaping at the opportunity to get away for even a little while from the rigid anti-intellectualism of the college campus.
Since he enjoyed his work, and since he had the curious facility to separate it from its end product, and since he was additionally a highly intelligent man, he was one of the best psysociohistorians in the business. He had progressed to the point where his understanding of new societies and new cultures was so rapid as to be almost intuitive.
This was the first time he had ever been baffled.
All right, these people were not the descendants of Old Empire colonists, they were the descendants of even earlier colonists than that. But they were people, nevertheless. They were an aggregate group. They should certainly have reacted in one of a limited number of predictable ways.
They hadn’t.
Throughout his contact with them so far, they had behaved in no known manner whatsoever. Making fun of Strull — he liked to do that himself, but that was because he knew the little blimp, and he hadn’t done it on first meeting him anyway — and acting as though the threat of the ship and its complement of Marines were no threat at all. And then all at once bursting into laughter for no reason that Cahann could see.
The laughter having finally subsided, Harvey came over to Cahann and said, “You have a lot of questions to ask. That’s only natural. Where do you want to begin?”
“I’m not sure,” admitted Cahann. He looked at them, and they were all attentive now, more serious than they had been up to now. “I think I’d better begin with basics,” he said. “Government, for instance.”
“Democratic anarchy,” said Harvey promptly. “The will of the minority.” He laughed at the expression on Cahann’s face. “Not what you’re thinking,” he said. “Not a ruling minority in your Empire sense.” He motioned at the others in the hall. “We’re a minority,” he said, “of the people on Cockaigne. Every settlement is a minority. If you disagree with us, you can go find a settlement where people agree with you. If there is no such place, you can either change your thinking or be a hermit, it’s up to you.”
“What about criminals?” Cahann asked him. “What do you do with them?”
“Hermits,” said Harvey succinctly.
“All right, what about money?”
Harvey shook his head. “I know what you mean,” he said, “but we don’t use it. A society has to be more complex and sophisticated than ours to need money. Value symbols — and that’s what money is, after all — are usually the result of expanding travel, trade over larger and larger areas. We rarely travel, and we neither import nor export, so simple barter is good enough for us.”
“What about war between the settlements?” Cahann asked him.
“None,” said Harvey. “Controlled population growth is a better answer. We don’t need more land than we have.”
“You’ve never had a war?”
“Never.”
“So you don’t have much by way of military armaments.”
“Nothing at all.”
“Then why,” Cahann demanded, “are you so sure you won’t be conquered by that shipload of Marines out there?”
That set them all laughing again, though Cahann couldn’t see that he’d said anything particularly funny. He glanced at the marine, and saw only the normal blank expression. The Marine was staring straight ahead, at nothing.
The laughter stopped abruptly, and Harvey said, “I’m sorry, Cahann. You don’t understand the situation here yet.”
“I’m well aware of that,” said Cahann stiffly.
“You aren’t going to understand by asking questions,” Harvey told him. He got to his feet and said, “I can show you more easily than I can explain to you. Do you want to come along with me?”
Cahann hesitated, then stood. The Marine did likewise, but Harvey said, “You stay here, Elan, if you please. Harriet there wants to talk to you while we’re gone.” He gestured at the young woman who had spoken to Strull, and who was now coming forward, smiling pleasantly.