“And if we are not asked, or refuse?”
“Nothing. You will be left alone; even our observers will be withdrawn. You will work out your own fate—either you will render your planet uninhabited and uninhabitable within the next century, or you will master social science yourselves and again be candidates for membership and again be offered membership. We will check from time to time and if and when it appears certain that you are not going to destroy yourselves, you will again be approached.”
“Why the hurry, now that you’re here? Why can’t you stay long enough for our leaders, as you call them, to talk to you in person?”
“Postponed. The reason is not important but it is complicated, and I simply do not wish to waste time explaining.”
“Assuming your decision is favorable, how will we get in touch with you to let you know our decision? You know enough about us, obviously, to know that I can’t make it.”
“We will know your decision through our observers. One condition of acceptance is full and uncensored publication in your newspapers of this interview, verbatim from the tape we are now using to record it. Also of all deliberations and decisions of your government.”
“And other governments? We can’t decide unilaterally for the world.”
“Your government has been chosen for a start. If you accept we shall furnish the techniques that will cause the others to fall in line quickly—and those techniques do not involve force or the threat of force.”
“They must be some techniques,” said the colonel wryly, “if they’ll make one certain country I don’t have to name fall into line quickly, without even a threat.”
“Sometimes the offer of reward is more significant than the use of threat. Do you think the country you do not wish to name would like your country colonizing planets of far stars before they even reach Mars? But that is a minor point, relatively. You may trust the techniques.”
“It sounds almost too good to be true. But you said that you are to decide, here and now, whether or not we are to be invited to join. May I ask on what factors you will base your decision?”
“One is that I am—was, since I already have—to check your degree of xenophobia. In the loose sense in which you use it, that means fear of strangers. We have a word that has no counterpart in your vocabulary: it means fear of and revulsion toward aliens. I—or at least a member of my race—was chosen to make the first overt contact with you. Because I am what you could call roughly humanoid—as you are what I would call roughly humanoid—I am probably more horrible, more repulsive to you than many completely different species would be. Because to you, I am a caricature of a human being, I am more horrible to you than a being who bears no remote resemblance to you.
“You may think you do feel horror at me, and revulsion, but believe me, you have passed that test. There are races in the galaxy who can never be members of the federation, no matter how they advance otherwise, because they are violently and incurably xenophobic; they could never face or talk to an alien of any species. They would either run screaming from him or try to kill him instantly. From watching you and these people”—he waved a long arm at the civilian population of Cherrybell not far outside the circle of the conference—“I know you feel revulsion at the sight of me, but believe me it is relatively slight and certainly curable. You have passed that test satisfactorily.”
“And are there other tests?”
“One other. But I think it is time that I—” Instead of finishing the sentence, the stick man lay back flat on the sand and closed his eyes.
The colonel started to his feet. ‘What in hell?” he said. He walked quickly around the mike’s tripod and bent over the recumbent extraterrestrial, put an ear to the bloody-appearing chest.
As he raised his head, Dade Grant, the grizzled prospector, chuckled. “No heartbeat, Colonel, because no heart. But I may leave him as a souvenir for you and you’ll find much more interesting things inside him than heart and guts. Yes, he is a puppet whom I have been operating—as your Edgar Bergen operates his—what’s his name?—oh yes. Charlie McCarthy. Now that he has served his purpose, he is deactivated. You can go back to your place, Colonel.”
Colonel Casey moved back slowly. “Why?” he asked.
Dade Grant was peeling off his beard and wig. He rubbed a cloth across his face to remove make-up and was revealed as a handsome young man. He said, ‘What he told you, or what you were told through him, was true as far as it went. He is only a simulacrum, yes, but he is an exact duplicate of a member of one of the intelligent races of the galaxy, the one toward whom you would be disposed—if you were violently and incurably xenophobic—to be most horrified by, according to our psychologists. But we did not bring a real member of his species to make first contact because they have a phobia of their own, agoraphobia—fear of space. They are highly civilized and members in good standing of the federation, but they never leave their own planet.
“Our observers assure us you don’t have that phobia. But they were unable to judge in advance the degree of your xenophobia and the only way to test it was to bring along something in lieu of someone to test it against, and presumably to let him make the initial contact.”
The colonel sighed audibly. “I can’t say this doesn’t relieve me in one way. We could get along with humanoids, yes, and will when we have to. But I’ll admit it’s a relief to learn that the master race of the galaxy is, after all, human instead of only humanoid. What is the second test?”
“You are undergoing it now. Call me—” He snapped his fingers. “What’s the name of Bergen’s second-string puppet, after Charlie McCarthy?”
The colonel hesitated, but the tech sergeant supplied the answer. “Mortimer Snerd.”
“Right. So call me Mortimer Snerd, and now I think it is time that I—” He lay back flat on the sand and closed his eyes just as the stick-man had done a few minutes before.
The burro raised its head and put it into the circle over the shoulder of the tech sergeant. “That takes care of the puppets, Colonel,” it said. “And now what’s this bit about it being important that the master race be human or at least humanoid? What is a master race?”
Nightmare in Yellow
HE AWOKE when the alarm clock rang, but lay in bed a while after he’d shut it off, going a final time over the plans he’d made for embezzlement that day and for murder that evening.
Every little detail had been worked out, but this was the final check. Tonight at forty-six minutes after eight he’d be free, in every way. He’d picked that moment because this was his fortieth birthday and that was the exact time of day, of the evening rather, when he had been born. His mother had been a bug on astrology, which was why the moment of his birth had been impressed on him so exactly. He wasn’t superstitious himself but it had struck his sense of humor to have his new life begin at forty, to the minute.
Time was running out on him, in any case. As a lawyer who specialized in handling estates, a lot of money passed through his hands—and some of it had passed into them. A year ago he’d “borrowed” five thousand dollars to put into something that looked like a sure-fire way to double or triple the money, but he’d lost it instead. Then he’d “borrowed” more to gamble with, in one way or another, to try to recoup the first loss. Now he was behind to the tune of over thirty thousand; the shortage couldn’t be hidden more than another few months and there wasn’t a hope that he could replace the missing money by that time. So he had been raising all the cash he could without arousing suspicion, by carefully liquidating assets, and by this afternoon he’d have running-away money to the tune of well over a hundred thousand dollars, enough to last him the rest of his life.