Hal Clement - Cold Front

Master salesman Alf Vickers walked slowly along the beach behind his companion, and pondered. He was never quite sure how to begin his talks. If it had been a question of selling, alone, he would have had no worries, even though it was necessary to employ careful reasoning rather than emotional high pressure when one was not too well acquainted with the emotional build up of an alien race; but when the selling had to be done to an entire people, and there was a moral certainty of reprimand and perhaps of disrating if the Federation Government caught him, he began to think of the consequences of his errors, before he made them.

The people, at least, were a peaceful seeming lot for such a rugged planet; that was some relief. The frowning, almost sheer six thousand feet of Observatory Hill, at whose foot he now stood, had made him think uncomfortably of the wilder mountain tribes of history and legend on Earth. Big as they were, he reflected, gazing at the specimen walking ahead of him, the few he had met were almost painfully polite. It had made easy the task of revealing nothing of himself or his mission until he had acquired a good control of their language; but courteous or not, Vickers felt that the explanation could not be put off much longer.

Serrnak Deg, who had devoted so much time to teaching his speech to the Earthman, was plainly curious; and there was only one plausible reason for his insisting that morning that they drive alone to the beach at the foot of the mountain. Plainly, he was willing to keep Vickers’ secrets from his compatriots if Vickers so wished; but he had definite intentions of learning them himself.

Vickers braced himself as Deg stopped walking and turned to face him. As the man stopped beside him, the Heklan began to talk.

“I have asked you no questions since you first intimated a desire not to answer them. I have taken you on trust, on what seemed to me a thin excuse — that you feared the results of possible misunderstanding caused by your ignorance of our language. I think my expenditure of time and effort merits some reward in the shape of satisfied curiosity.”

“The excuse was not thin,” replied Vickers in the Heklan language. “More than one man in my position has suffered injury or death as a result of just such misunderstandings. It is important that you get no false ideas from me about my people, the world from which I come, and the other races and worlds which are depending on my success. It is my intention to tell not only you, but eventually all your people, my full story; but I am depending on you for assurance that I can make myself clear, and I also want to hear your impression of what I say before it is transmitted to the rest of the planet or to that part of it with which you are on friendly terms.”

He stopped to gather his thoughts. The surroundings were not quite what he would have chosen — a rocky beach at the foot of a nearly perpendicular cliff, pounded by breakers from an ocean that was tinted a curiously disconcerting pink. The sky was a slightly deeper shade, and suspended in it was the hardly visible disk of a giant red sun.

The audience would have been more disconcerting than the environment, to one less accustomed than Vickers to nonhuman beings. Serrnak Deg had no need of the heavy jacket with which Vickers warded off the stiff breeze. He was protected by a layer of fat which must have accounted for half of his weight; and the fur that covered his body was thick enough to hide the straps supporting his only garment — a pair of trunks whose primary function was to contain pockets. His face, with its enormous eyeballs and almost nonexistent nose, reminded Vickers of a spectral tarsier; but the well-developed skull behind the grotesque features had already shown itself to contain a keen brain.

“One of our mapping vessels noted some time ago that this planet was inhabited by intelligent creatures,” Vickers went on. “There is a standard procedure in such cases. We learned long ago not to make immediate, open contact with the bulk of the world’s population. It is a mathematical certainty that there will be enough objection to contact with aliens to result in violence.”

“I find that hard to believe,” interjected Serrnak. “Why should there be objection?”

The Earthman creased his brows and tried to remember Deg’s word for “superstition,” but the concept had never arisen in their conversation. “There have been many reasons,” he finally answered. “The one that leaps to my mind I am still unable to express in your language. I am afraid you will have to be content with my assurance that it is so. For that reason, a single agent is always sent to contact the smallest practicable group of individuals, to become acquainted with them and through them with their people, and with their help to accustom the race gradually to the existence, appearance, and company of natives of other worlds. Make no mistake; it is a delicate task, and an error can have really ghastly results. I hope you don’t find that out first hand.”

“I don’t know about your business, but errors can be pretty serious in mine,” said Deg. “What consequence, other than this planet’s failure to join the organization you refer to as ‘We,’ can arise from mistakes of yours? I take it that you are the agent responsible for us.”

“I am; I’m sorry if I am not giving my explanations in proper order. It is my business to convince you and your fellows at this place that the Federation can do your people untold good, and to enlist your help in persuading your race, or at least your nation, to the same effect.”

“Why should persuasion be necessary?” asked Serrnak. “It seems obvious that good would result from such an action. Contact between groups living on different parts of this one world has always produced beneficial exchanges of ideas and natural products, and I should imagine that this would be even more true of interplanetary commerce. Some planets, I suppose, would have more than enough metals, for example — that occurred to me because that is one of our most serious lacks; and certainly, if you have solved the secret of interstellar travel, there is much we can learn from you. Do you really mean to imply that some races have actually refused to benefit by such a chance?”

Vickers nodded solemnly.

“Too many,” he said. “A certain suspicion of strangers, a doubt as to our intentions, is natural of course. We expect and allow for it; our work is to allay it, and prove that we have no intention of dealing unfairly with anybody. Your attitude is encouraging; I hope a majority of your people share it. Do you suppose they will, Deg?”

The answer was slow and hesitant.

“I can’t be sure — naturally. I have already given you my feelings on the matter, but I cannot answer for everyone. I will test my coworkers here, as I suppose you want me to, bearing your warnings carefully in mind. Will that be satisfactory?”

“That will be excellent. I can’t find the words to thank you, but I’ll try to give any help in my power if you have undesirable reactions. I admit I have worried a good deal about the outcome of this meeting; one can never be sure of having chosen the right person for the first advances.”

Deg nodded.

“I understand why you wanted privacy as much as possible for our conversations. You chose a good place to land on this world; we are about as isolated a group as you could have found, except perhaps for the stations in the far interior of this continent. The cities are mostly located in the larger islands of the equatorial zone — I suppose you observed that, before landing. If I may ask, how did you find this station? It is not particularly easy to mark from the air, according to my experience.”