Gordon Dickson - The Human Edge

There was no great difference between any of the space-going vessels of the Ruml; and one man could handle the large Expedition ship as well as the smallest scout. Kator set a course for the Ruml Homeworld and broke the ship free of the moon’s surface into space.

As soon as he was free of the solar system, he programmed his phase shift mechanism, and left the ship to take itself across immensity. He went back to his own quarters.

There, things were as they had been before he had gone down to the planet of the Muffled People. He opened a service compartment to take out food, and he lifted out also one of the alcohol-producing cultures. But when he had taken this last back with the food to the table that held his papers, badges, and the cube containing the worm, he felt disinclined to swallow the culture.

The situation was too solemn, too great, for drunkenness.

He laid the culture down and took up the cube containing the worm. He held it to the light above the table. In that light the worm seemed almost alive. It seemed to turn and bow to him. He laid the cube back down on the table and walked across to put his smashed recording device in a resolving machine that would project its story onto a life-size cube of the room’s atmosphere. Then, as the lights about him dimmed, and the morning he had seen as he emerged from his small ship the morning of that same day, he hunkered down on a seat with a sigh of satisfaction.

It is not every man who is privileged to review a few short hours in which he has gained a Kingdom.

The Expedition ship came back to the Ruml Homeworld, and its single surviving occupant was greeted with the sort of excitement that had not occurred in the lifetime of anyone then living. After several days of due formalities, the moment of real business arrived, and Kator Secondcousin Bruto gas was summoned to report to the heads of the fifty great families of the Homeworld. Now those families would number fifty-one, for The Brutogas would after this day—at which he was only an invited observer—be listed among their number. Fifty-one long-whiskered male Rumls, therefore, took their seats in a half-circle facing a small stage, and out onto that stage came Kator Secondcousin to salute them all with claws over the region of his heart.

“Keysman,” said the eldest family head present, “give us your report.”

Kator saluted again. His limp was almost gone now but his whiskers were barely grown a few inches. Also, he seemed to have lost weight and aged on the Expedition.

“My written report is before you, sirs,” he said. “As you know we set up a headquarters on the moon of the planet of the Muffled People. As you know, my Captain and men, thinking me dead, suicided. As you know, I have returned.”

He stopped talking and saluted again. The family heads waited in some surprise. Finally, the eldest broke the silence.

“Is that all you have to say, Keysman?”

“No, sirs,” said Kator. “But I’d like to show you the recording I made of the secret place of the Muffled People before I say anything further.”

“By all means,” said the eldest family head. “Go ahead.”

Kator saluted again, and put the smashed recorder into a resolving machine at one edge of the stage. He stood beside it while the heads of the great families watched the incidents from Kator’s landing to the moment of his fall in the factory building that had smashed the recorder.

“After I fell,” said Kator, as he switched the resolving machine off beside him, “I came to hear two natives discussing the fact they had been unable to find anyone prowling about. They left, and I got away, back to my small ship. From then on, it was simple. I waited until darkness ensured that it was safe for me to take off unnoticed. Then I armed the device I had rigged to simulate a small phase-shift explosion, and called Expedition Headquarters. As I’d planned, my voice-message and my imitation explosion with its indication that the ship’s keys were lost for good, left the rest of the Expedition no choice but polite suicide. I gave them ample time to do so before I re-entered the Expedition ship and headed her Home.”

Kator stopped talking. There was a remarkable silence from the fifty-one faces staring at him for a long moment—and then a rising mutter of question and incredulity. The strong voice of the eldest family head cut across this.

“Are you telling us you planned the suicides of your Captain and men?”

Kator’s face twisted in a sudden, apparently uncontrollable fashion. Almost as if he had been ready to laugh.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I planned it.”

There was another dead silence.

“In the name of… why? ” burst out the eldest. At one side of the half-circle of faces, the face of The Brutogas looked stricken with paralysis.

Kator’s face twisted again.

“Our ancestor, The Morahnpa,” he said, “once ensured the conquest of a world and a race by his own individual actions. Because of this, and to encourage others who might do likewise, the principle was laid down that whoever might match The Morahnpa’s action, might have, as The Morahnpa did, complete sovereignty over the natives of such a conquered world, after the conquest was accomplished. That is—other men might be entitled to take their advantages of the world and race itself. But its true conqueror, during his lifetime, would be the final authority on the planet.”

“What’s history got to do with this?” It was noticeable that the use of Kator’s title of Keysman had begun to be forgotten by the eldest of the family heads. “The Morahnpa not only earned his right to a world, he was in such a position that the world could not be taken without his assistance.”

“Or the Muffled People’s world without mine,” said Kator. “I had intended to return with a situation that was quite clear-cut. I left our base on the moon unhidden when I returned. It would be bound to be discovered within a limited time. During that limited time, I would offer my knowledge of where the place of strength of the Muffled People was—in turn for the planet of the Muffled People being granted to me as my kingdom—as his world was to The Morahnpa.”

“In that case,” said the eldest, “you made a mistake in showing us your recording.”

“No,” said Kator. “I’ve renounced my ambition.”

“Renounced?” The fifty-one faces watched Kator without moving as the eldest spoke. “Why?”

Kator’s face twitched again.

“Let me show you the rest of the recording.”

“The rest—” began the eldest. But Kator was already turning to the resolving machine. He turned it on.

For a second there was nothing to be seen—only the bright flicker of a destroyed recording. Then, this cleared magically and the fifty-one found themselves looking at a native of the Muffled People—the same who had spoken to Kator earlier on the recording.

He took the container of burning vegetation out of his mouth, knocked the vegetation out of it on a rock beside him, overhanging the creek, and put the pipe away. Then he addressed them in perfect Ruml.

“Greetings,” he said. “To all, and particularly to those heads of leading families who are viewing this. As you possibly already know, I am a member of that race you Ruml refer to as Muffled People, but which are correctly called humans”—he pronounced the native word carefully for them—“ Heh-eu-manz. With a little practice you’ll find it not hard at all to say.”

There was the beginning of a babble from the semicircle of seats.

“ Quiet! ” barked the eldest head of family.

“…We humans,” the native was saying, smiling at them, “have quite a warlike history, but we really don’t like wars. We prefer to be independent, but on good terms with our neighbors. Accordingly, let me show you some of the means we’ve developed to obtain our preference.”