"-all right, the war's over and we have to get along with them, but a man's home town-"
Whatever it was that was going on in the other room, it was going on loudly. Tempers were always short when Arcturans were around, because the smell, of course, put everybody on edge. People don't like bad smells. They're not nice. They remind us of sweat and excrement, which we have buttressed our lives against admitting as real, personal facts. Then there was a loud military yell for order-I recognized the colonel, Peyroles-and then a voice that sounded queerly not-quite-human, although it spoke in English. An Arcturan? What was his name, Knafti? But I had understood they couldn't make human sounds.
Whoever it was, he put an end to the meeting. The door opened.
Through it I could see a couple of dozen hostile backs, leaving through another door, and coming toward me the Space Force colonel, a very young man with a pale angel's face and a dragging limp, in civilian clothes. . . and, yes, the Arcturan. It was the first one I had ever been with at so close range, in so small a group. He wobbled toward me on four or six of his coat-hanger limbs, breathing-thorax encased in a golden shell, his mantis face and bright black eyes staring at me. Peyroles closed the door behind them.
He turned to me and said, "Mr. Gunnarsen . . . Knafti . Timmy Brown."
I hadn't the ghost of a clue whether to offer to shake, and if so, with what. Knafti, however, merely regarded me gravely. The boy nodded. I said: "I'm glad to meet you, gentlemen. As you perhaps know, I tried to set up an appointment before, but your people turned me down. I take it now the shoe is on the other foot."
Colonel Peyroles frowned toward the door he had just shut-there were still noises behind it-but said to me, "You're quite right. That was a meeting of a civic leaders' committee-"
The door interrupted him by opening, and a man leaned through and yelled: "Peyroles! Can that thing understand white man's talk? I hope so. I hope it hears me when I say that I'm going to make it my personal business to take it apart if it's still in Belport this time tomorrow. And if any human being, or so-called human being like you, gets in the way, I'll take him apart, too!" He slammed the door without waiting for an answer.
"You see?" said Peyroles gruffly, angrily. Things like that would never have happened with well-tempered troops. "That's what we want to talk to you about."
"I see," I said, and I did see, very clearly, because that fellow who had leaned through the door had been the Arcturan-property-sale standard bearer we had counted on, old-what had Connick called him?-old Slits-and-fits Schlitz, the man we were attempting to elect to get our proposition through.
Judging by the amount of noise I'd heard from the citizens' delegation, there was lynching in the atmosphere. I could understand why they would reverse themselves and ask for me, before things got totally out of control and wound up in murder, if you call killing an Arcturan murder-although, it occurred to me, lynching Knafti might not be the worst thing that could happen; public sentiment might bounce back- I shoved that thought out of my mind and got down to business.
"What, exactly?" I asked. "I gather you want me to do something about your image."
Knafti sat himself down, if that's what Arcturans do, on a twining-rack. The pale boy whispered something to him, then came to me. "Mr. Gunnarsen," he said, "I am Knafti." He spoke with a great precision of vowels and a stress at the end of each sentence, as though he had learned English out of a handbook. I had no trouble in understanding him. At least, not in understanding what it was he said. It did take me a moment to comprehend what he meant, and then Peyroles had to help.
"He means at this moment he's speaking for Knafti," said the colonel. "Interpreter. See?"
The boy moved his lips for a moment-shifting gears, it seemed- and said, "That is right, I am Timmy Brown. Knafti's translator and assistant."
"Then ask Knafti what he wants from me." I tried to say it the way he had-a sort of sneeze for the "K" and an indescribable whistle for the "f."
Timmy Brown moved his lips again and said, "I, Knafti, wish you to stop . . . to leave . . . to discontinue your operation in Belport."
From the twining-tree the Arcturan waved his ropy limbs and chittered like a squirrel. The boy chirped back and said: "I, Knafti, commend you on your effective work, but stop it."
"By which," rumbled Colonel Peyroles, "he means knock it off."
"Go fight a space war, Peyroles. Timmy-I mean, Knafti, this is the job I'm paid to do. The Arcturan Confederacy itself hired us. I take my orders from Arthur S. Bigelow, Jr., and I carry them out whether Knafti likes it or not."
Chirp and chitter between Knafti and the pale, limping boy. The Arcturan left his twining-tree and moved to the window, looking out into the sky and the copter traffic. Timmy Brown said: "It does not matter what your orders may be. I, Knafti, tell you that your work is harmful." He hesitated, mumbling to himself. "We do not wish to obtain our base here at the cost of what is true, and-" he turned imploringly to the Arcturan-"it is apparent you are attempting to change the truth."
He chirped at the Arcturan, who took his blind black eyes from the window and came toward us. Arcturans don't walk, exactly. They drag themselves on the lower part of the thorax. Their limbs are supple and thin, and what are not used for support are used for gestures. Knafti used a number of his now as he chirped one short series of sounds at the boy.
"Otherwise," Timmy Brown finished off, "I, Knafti, tell you we will have to fight this war over again."
As soon as I was back in my room, I messaged Chicago for orders and clarification and got back the answer I expected:
Hold everything. Referring matter to ASB-jr. Await instructions.
So I awaited. The way I awaited was to call Candace at the office and get the latest sitrep. I told her about the near-riot in the Truce Team's suite and asked her what it was all about.
She shook her head. "We have their appointments schedule, Gunner. It just says, 'Meeting with civic leaders.' But one of the leaders has a secretary who goes to lunch with a girl from Records and Accounting here, and-"
"And you'll find out. All right, do that, and now what's the current picture?"
She began reading off briefing digests and field reports. They were mixed, but not altogether bad. Opinion sampling showed a small rise in favor of the Arcturans, in fact. It wasn't much, but it was the first plus change I had seen, and doubly puzzling because of Knafti's attitude and the brawl with the civic leaders.
I asked, "Why, honey?"
Candace's face in the screen was as puzzled as mine. "We're still digging."
"All right. Go on."
There were more pluses. The flower show had yielded surprisingly big profits in attitudes-among those who attended. Of course, they were only a tiny fraction of the population of Belport. The Arcats were showing a plus for us, too. Where we were down was in PTA meeting resolutions, in resignations from Candace's ArcturanAmerican Friendship League, in poor attendance at neighborhood kaffeeklatsches.
Now that I knew what to look for, I could see what the Children had done to us. In every family-situation sampling, the attitudes were measurably worse than when the subjects were interviewed in a nonfamily environment-at work, stopped on the street, in a theater.
The importance of that was just what I had told Connick. No man is a simple entity. He behaves one way when his self-image is as head of a family, another when he is at a cocktail party, another at work, another still when a pretty girl sits down beside him on a commutercopter. Elementary truths. But it had taken the M/R boys half a century to learn how to use them.
In this case the use was clear: Play down family elements, play up play. I ordered more floats, torchlight parades, and a teen-age beauty contest. I canceled the 14 picnic rallies we had planned and ordered a hold on the kaffeeklatsches.