William Tenn: Firewater

“You mean the assumption that we are necessarily inferior to the Aliens?”

“Right, Braganza. They can do a lot that we can’t do, but vice very much indeed versa. How many special racial talents we possess that they don’t is a matter of pure conjecture—and may continue to be for a good long time. Let the theoretical boys worry that one a century from now, just so they stay away from it at present.”

Braganza fingered a button on his green jerkin and stared over Hebster’s head. “No more scientific investigation of them, eh?”

“Well, we can’t right now and we have to face up to that mildly unpleasant situation. The consolation is that they have to do the same. Don’t you see? It’s not a basic inadequacy. We don’t have enough facts and can’t get enough at the moment through normal channels of scientific observation because of the implicit psychological dangers to both races. Science, my forward-looking friend, is a complex of interlocking theories, all derived from observation.

“Remember, long before you had any science of navigation you had coast-hug-ging and river-hopping traders who knew how the various currents affected their leaky little vessels, who had learned things about the relative dependability of the moon and the stars—without any interest at all in integrating these scraps of knowledge into broader theories. Not until you have a sufficiently large body of these scraps, and are able to distinguish the preconceptions from the actual observations, can you proceed to organize a science of navigation without running the grave risk of drowning while you conduct your definitive experiments.

“A trader isn’t interested in theories. He’s interested only in selling something that glitters for something that glitters even more. In the process, painlessly and imperceptibly, he picks up bits of knowledge which gradually reduce the area of unfamiliarity. Until one day there are enough bits of knowledge on which to base a sort of preliminary understanding, a working hypothesis. And then, some Kleimbocher of the future, operating in an area no longer subject to the sudden and unexplainable mental disaster, can construct meticulous and exact laws out of the more obviously valid hypotheses.”

“I might have known it would be something like this, if you came back with it, Hebster! So their theorists and our theorists had better move out and the traders move in. Only how do we contact their traders—if they have any such animals?”

The corporation president sprang out of bed and began dressing. “They have them. Not a Board of Director type perhaps—but a business-minded Alien. As soon as I realized that the dots-in-bottles were acting, relative to their balanced scientific colleagues, very like our own high IQ Primeys, I knew I needed help. I needed someone I could tell about it, someone on their side who had as great a stake in an operating solution as I did. There had to be an Alien in the picture somewhere who was concerned with profit and loss statements, with how much of a return you get out of a given investment of time, personnel, materiel and energy. I figured with him I could talk— business. The simple approach: What have you got that we want and how little of what we have will you take for it. No attempts to understand completely incompatible philosophies. There had to be that kind of character somewhere in the expedition. So I shut my eyes and let out what I fondly hoped was a telepathic yip channeled to him. I was successful.

“Of course, I might not have been successful if he hadn’t been searching desperately for just that sort of yip. He came buzzing up in a rousing United States Cavalry-routs-the-redskins type of rescue, stuffed my dripping psyche back into my subconscious and hauled me up into some sort of never-never-ship. I’ve been in this interstellar version of Mohammed’s coffin, suspended between Heaven and Earth, for three days, while he alternately bargained with me and consulted the home office about developments.

“We dickered the way I do with Primeys—by running down a list of what each of us could offer and comparing it with what we wanted; each of us trying to get a little more than we gave to the other guy, in our own terms, of course. Buying and selling are intrinsically simple processes; I don’t imagine our discussions were very much different from those between a couple of Phoenician sailors and the blue-painted Celtic inhabitants of early Britain.”

“And this… this business-Alien never suggested the possibility of taking what they wanted—”

“By force? No, Braganza, not once. Might be they’re too civilized for such she-nanigans. Personally, I think the big reason is that they don’t have any idea of what it is they do want from us. We represent a fantastic enigma to them—a species which uses matter to alter matter, producing objects which, while intended for similar functions, differ enormously from each other. You might say that we ask the question ‘how?’ about their activities; and they want to know the ‘why?’ about ours. Their investigators have compulsions even greater than ours. As I understand it, the intelligent races they’ve encountered up to this point are all comprehensible to them since they derive from parallel evolutionary paths. Every time one of their researchers gets close to the answer of why we wear various colored clothes even in climates where clothing is unnecessary, he slips over the edges and splashes.

“Of course, that’s why this opposite number of mine was so worried. I don’t know his exact status—he maybe anything from the bookkeeper to the business-manager of the expedition—but it’s his neck, or should I say bottleneck, if the outfit continues to be uneconomic. And I gathered that not only has his occupation kind of barred him from doing the investigation his unstable pals were limping back from into the asylums he’s constructed here in the deserts, but those of them who’ve managed to retain their sanity constantly exhibit a healthy contempt for him. They feel, you see, that their function is that of the expedition. He’s strictly supercargo. Do you think it bothers them one bit,” Hebster snorted, “that he has a report to prepare, to show how his expedition stood up in terms of a balance sheet—”

“Well, you did manage to communicate on that point, at least,” Braganza grinned. “Maybe traders using the simple, earnestly chiseling approach will be the answer. You’ve certainly supplied us with more basic data already than years of heavily subsidized research. Hebster, I want you to go on the air with this story you told me and show a couple of Primey Aliens to the video public.”

“Uh-uh. You tell ’em. You can use the prestige. I’ll think a message to my Alien buddy along the private channel he’s keeping open for me, and he’ll send you a couple of human-happy dots-in-bottles for the telecast. I’ve got to whip back to New York and get my entire outfit to work on a really encyclopedic job.”

“Encyclopedic?”

The executive pulled his belt tight and reached for a tie. “Well, what else would you call the first edition of the Hebster Interstellar Catalogue of All Human Activity and Available Artifacts, prices available upon request with the understanding that they are subject to change without notice?”