Gordon Dickson - Wolfling

“…Did you at any time have doubts about the wisdom of this Project?” he asked Jim.

“No,” said Jim.

“But at some time between your selection as the man to go and when you arrived at the Throne World, you seemed to have developed such doubts.” Heinman plowed among the notes before him on the table and finally located what it was he sought. “Mr. Holland reports you as saying on Alpha Centauri Ill—and I quote—’…Max, it’s too late for you to interfere now. I’ve been invited. From now on I make my own decisions.’ Is that correct?”

“No,” said Jim.

“No?” Heinman frowned at him over the notes he still held in his hand.

“The wording isn’t correct,” said Jim. “What I actually said was, ‘I’m sorry, Max. But it was bound to come to this sooner or later. From here on out the Project can’t guide me any longer. From now on I have to follow my own judgment.’ ”

Heinman’s frown deepened.

“I don’t see any essential difference,” he said.

“Neither did Max Holland, evidently,” said Jim. “But I did—or else I wouldn’t have phrased it that way.”

Jim felt his left sleeve below the tabletop being plucked frantically.

“Easy!” hissed the whispering voice of Wylcoxin in his ear. “For God’s sake, take it easy!”

“You didn’t?” said Heinman with a faint note of triumph in his voice. He sat back and looked right and left along the table at the other members of the Committee. “And do you deny taking a knife and a revolver in your luggage to the Throne World, over Mr. Holland’s objections?”

“No,” said Jim.

Heinman coughed dryly, took out a white handkerchief and patted his lips, then tucked the handkerchief away again and sat back in his chair.

“Well,” he said. “That seems to cover that.”

He reached for a fresh sheet of paper and wrote something on it in pencil.

“Now”—he began leaning forward over the table once more—“you’ve heard the account of your actions from the time you left Alpha Centauri III until you returned to Earth that’s been given us by Miss—the High-born Ro. Have you any exception to take with that account?”

“No,” said Jim.

Once more he was aware of Wylcoxin’s fingers plucking at his sleeve. But he paid no attention.

“No exception,” said Heinman, leaning back once more. “Then I take it you’ve no explanation at all for these extraordinary actions of yours, completely at odds with your original purpose in being sent to the Throne World?”

“I didn’t say that,” said Jim. “The account you got is correct. The interpretation of it you’ve made is wrong. Just as wrong as your assumption that my intentions or actions were at variance with the reason for which I was originally sent to the Throne World from Earth.”

“Then you’d better explain those intentions, don’t you think, Mr. Keil?” said Heinman.

“I intend to,” said Jim.

The response brought a little color to Heinman’s somewhat gray cheeks. But the chairman of the Committee evidently decided in favor of letting the implied challenge pass. He waved to Jim to continue.

“The explanation’s simple enough,” said Jim. “The High-born of the Empire’s Throne World”—he glanced at the Governor—“I’m sure the Governor of Alpha Centauri III will agree with me—are quite literally superior beings, not only to what they call the lesser races on their own Colony Worlds, men like the Governor himself”—Jim glanced at the Governor, but this time the small man avoided his eye—“but to our kind of human on Earth, as well. Accordingly, any preplanning of my actions, no matter how thoroughly or capably done here on Earth, could not guide me in an unfamiliar culture of a race whose least member was more capable than our best here on Earth. So I had to face the fact early in my training that I’d have to react to situations as I found them on the Throne World, following my own best judgment and paying no attention to how I knew people back on Earth would have decided.”

“You didn’t tell your superiors during the training period about this decision, I take it,” asked Heinman, still leaning back in his chair.

“No,” answered Jim. “If I’d told them early enough in my training to be replaced, undoubtedly I’d have been replaced.”

Jim heard a little explosion of breath to his left, a gusty exhalation of despair from Wylcoxin.

“Of course, of course,” said Heinman pleasantly. “Go on, Mr. Keil.”

“Accordingly,” said Jim evenly, “when I got to the Throne World, I discovered that the best interests of Earth would be served there by involving myself in the situation about the Emperor rather than just staying an observer. The Emperor was mad, and his cousin Galyan had been conspiring for a long time to gain control over the Emperor, by eliminating the man who really ran the Empire, Vhotan—the Emperor’s uncle and Galyan’s also. Galyan’s plan called for him to eliminate Vhotan and the Starkiens, who were unswervingly loyal to the Emperor. Then Galyan would assume Vhotan’s place, take over control of the Throne World and the Empire, and develop a new corps of Starkiens, loyal not to the Emperor but to himself. The Starkiens were literally a special breed of men, created originally by gene control and controlled breeding over several generations. But Galyan knew he could produce a new breed within two or three generations, given the means and the raw material. And the raw material was to come from us—from Earth.”

He stopped and looked at the Committee members behind their long table.

It was a second or two after Jim had stopped talking before his last few quiet words exploded with their proper implication upon the minds of his Earth-born audience. Then the effect was, in a small way, dramatic. Heinman sat straight up. The other members of the Committee, all up and down the table, reacted with an equal and sudden alertness.

“What was that, Mr. Keil?” demanded Heinman. “You’re accusing this Prince Galyan—he was one of the ones killed, wasn’t he—of wanting to alter us genetically to some sort of single-minded bodyguards for his own purposes?”

“I’m not accusing him,” said Jim evenly. “I’m stating a fact—the acknowledged fact of Galyan’s intentions. The fact he acknowledged to me. He planned to do exactly what I say. I don’t think you understand”—for the first time a little touch of irony swept into Jim’s voice—“that his doing that, by itself, wouldn’t have seemed so terrible to the rest of the High-born on the Throne World. After all, the lesser breeds of humans on their Colony Worlds were available material for the High-borns’ using. And we weren’t even that important. We were Wolflings—wild men and women living out beyond the fringe of the civilized Empire.”

Heinman leaned back and turned to whisper to the Governor of Alpha Centauri beside him. Jim sat without speaking until the whispered conversation came to an end. Heinman turned back to Jim and leaned forward. His face was slightly flushed.

“A little while earlier,” Heinman said, “you told us that the High-born on the Throne World were superior beings. How can you reconcile the fact they were superior beings with such inhuman plans on the part of this Prince Galyan? Let alone the fact that, according to you, he planned to murder his uncle and dominate his Emperor? If the High-born are what you say they are—and the Governor of Alpha Centaun III, here, agrees with you, at least in that—the Prince Galyan would’ve been far too civilized to entertain such savage and murderous intentions.”

Jim laughed.

“I still don’t think you, or the other members of this Committee, understand the cultural situation between the High-born and the humans on the Colony Worlds—or us,” he said. “Galyan’s plan against the Emperor was an ultimate in crimes, from the viewpoint of any decent High-born, like Slothiel. But his plans about us weren’t inhuman at all, as any High-born would see it. In fact, most High-born would consider us lucky to have the benefit of Galyan’s attention. In making us into Starkiens, they’d have pointed out, he’d have rid us of disease and made us a much more healthy, happy, and uniform race. Just as the Emperor’s Starkiens are disease-free, happy, and uniform.”