Randall Garrett - The Best Policy

As with all other specimens, it was Zandoplith’s job to discover the Basic Reaction Pattern. Any given organism could react only in a certain very large, but finite number of ways, and these ways could be reduced to a Basic Pattern. All that was necessary to destroy a race of creatures was to get their Basic Pattern and then give them a problem that couldn’t be solved by using that pattern. It was all very simple, and it was all down in the Handbook.

Thagobar turned his head from the operating table to look at Zandoplith. “Do you think it really will be possible to teach it our language?”

“The rudiments, Your Splendor,” said the psychologist. “Ours is, after all, a very complex language. We’ll give him all of it, of course, but it is doubtful whether he can assimilate more than a small portion of it. Our language is built upon logic, just as thought is built upon logic. Some of the lower animals are capable of the rudiments of logic, but most are unable to grasp it.”

“Very well; we’ll do the best we can. I, myself, will question it.”

Zandoplith looked a little startled. “But, Your Splendor! The questions are all detailed in the Handbook!”

Thagobar Verf scowled. “I can read as well as you, Zandoplith. Since this is the first semi-intelligent life discovered in the past thousand years or so, I think the commander should be the one to do the questioning.”

“As you say, Your Splendor,” the psychologist agreed.

Ed Magruder was placed in the Language Tank when the biologists got through with him. Projectors of light were fastened over his eyes so that they focused directly on his retinas; sound units were inserted into his ears; various electrodes were fastened here and there; a tiny network of wires was attached to his skull. Then a special serum which the biologists had produced was injected into his bloodstream. It was all very efficient and very smoothly done. Then the Tank was closed, and a switch was thrown.

Magruder felt himself swim dizzily up out of the blackness. He saw odd-looking, lobster-colored things moving around while noises whispered and gurgled into his ears.

Gradually, he began to orient himself. He was being taught to associate sounds with actions and things.

Ed Magruder sat in a little four-by-six room, naked as a jaybird, looking through a transparent wall at a sextette of the aliens he had seen so much of lately.

Of course, it wasn’t these particular bogeys he’d been watching, but they looked so familiar that it was hard to believe they were here in the flesh. He had no idea how long he’d been learning the language; with no exterior references, he was lost.

Well, he thought, I’ve picked up a good many specimens, and here I am, a specimen myself. He thought of the treatment he’d given his own specimens and shuddered a little.

Oh, well. Here he was; might as well put on a good show—stiff upper lip, chin up, and all that sort.

One of the creatures walked up to an array of buttons and pressed one. Immediately, Magruder could hear sounds from the room on the Other side of the transparent wall.

Thagobar Verf looked at the specimen and then at the question sheet in his hand. “Our psychologists have taught you our language, have they not?” he asked coldly.

The specimen bobbled his head up and down. “Yup. And that’s what I call real force-feeding, too.”

“Very well; I have some questions to ask; you will answer them truthfully.”

“Why, sure,” Magruder said agreeably. “Fire away.”

“We can tell if you are lying,” Thagobar continued. “It will do you no good to tell us untruths. Now—what is your name?”

“Theophilus Q. Hassenpfeffer,” Magruder said blandly.

Zandoplith looked at a quivering needle and then shook his head slowly as he looked up at Thagobar.

“That is a lie,” said Thagobar.

The specimen nodded. “It sure is. That’s quite a machine you’ve got there.”

“It is good that you appreciate the superiority of our instruments,” Thagobar said grimly. “Now—your name.”

“Edwin Peter St. John Magruder.”

Psychologist Zandoplith watched the needle and nodded.

“Excellent,” said Thagobar. “Now, Edwin—”

“Ed is good enough,” said Magruder.

Thagobar blinked. “Good enough for what?”

“For calling me.”

Thagobar turned to the psychologist and mumbled something. Zandoplith mumbled back. Thagobar spoke to the specimen.

“Is your name Ed?”

“Strictly speaking, no,” said Magruder.

“Then why should I call you that?”

“Why not? Everyone else does,” Magruder informed him.

Thagobar consulted further with Zandoplith and finally said: “We will come back to that point later. Now… uh… Ed, what do you call your home planet?”

“Earth.”

“Good. And what does your race call itself?”

“Homo sapiens.”

“And the significance of that, if any?”

Magruder considered. “It’s just a name,” he said, after a moment.

The needle waggled.

“Another lie,” said Thagobar.

Magruder grinned. “Just testing. That really is a whizzer of a machine.”

Thagobar’s throat and face darkened a little as his copper-bearing blue blood surged to the surface in suppressed anger. “You said that once,” he reminded blackly.

“I know. Well, if you really want to know, Homo sapiens means ‘wise man.’ ”

Actually, he hadn’t said “wise man”; the language of the Dal didn’t quite have that exact concept, so Magruder had to do the best he could. Translated back into English, it would have come out something like “beings with vast powers of mind.”

When Thagobar heard this, his eyes opened a little wider, and he turned his head to look at Zandoplith. The psychologist spread his horny hands; the needle hadn’t moved.

“You seem to have high opinions of yourselves,” said Thagobar, looking back at Magruder.

“That’s possible,” agreed the Earthman.

Thagobar shrugged, looked back at his list, and the questioning went on. Some of the questions didn’t make too much sense to Magruder; others were obviously psychological testing.

But one thing was quite clear, the lie detector was indeed quite a whizzer. If Magruder told the exact truth, it didn’t indicate. But if he lied just the least tiny bit, the needle on the machine hit the ceiling—and, eventually, so did Thagobar.

Magruder had gotten away with his first few lies—they were unimportant, anyway—but finally, Thagobar said: “You have lied enough, Ed.”

He pressed a button, and a nerve-shattering wave of pain swept over the Earthman. When it finally faded, Magruder found his belly muscles tied in knots, his fists and teeth clenched, and tears running down his cheeks. Then nausea overtook him, and he lost the contents of his stomach.

Thagobar Verf turned distastefully away. “Put him back in his cell and clean up the interrogation chamber. Is he badly hurt?”

Zandoplith had already checked his instruments. “I think not, Your Splendor; it is probably only slight shock and nothing more. However, we will have to retest him in the next session anyhow. We’ll know then.”

Magruder sat on the edge of a shelflike thing that doubled as a low table and a high bed. It wasn’t the most comfortable seat in the world, but it was all he had in the room; the floor was even harder.

It had been several hours since he had been brought here, and he still didn’t feel good. That stinking machine had hurt ! He clenched his fists; he could still feel the knot in his stomach and—

And then he realized that the knot in his stomach hadn’t been caused by the machine; he had thrown that off a long time back.