Judith Merril - The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 6

“They didn’t grow up to be slaves,” Hitchcock retorted.

The man looked at him queerly. “You must be this Hitchcock we heard about,” he said. “Listen, mister—somewhere you’ve got the idea these floppers are people. They’re not. They’re just smart animals.”

“No creature in the universe was ever born to be a slave,” Hitchcock intoned.

The man made an exasperated noise. “Just take my word for it. If you walk, you’ll wish you hadn’t. Now climb aboard. We’re ready to move.”

He jerked an imperative thumb at the sled. Hitchcock eyed him for a long, stubborn moment.

Then the cold and the wind persuaded him. He went to the rear of the sled and put his baggage in the rack, all the time stamping his feet to put warmth in them. His hands were numb and blue. Shivering, he told himself the creatures could endure the climate better than himself, and that they would drag the sled whether he rode it or not. He would not add much to their burden.

But he hadn’t forgotten his mission. He raised his camera and taped the scene—first the sled and its load of huddled, windlashed passengers—then swung the lens forward to the Floppers waiting mutely in their harnesses. They had a sad, downtrodden look. Hitchcock let his camera dwell on them.

Unfortunately, they were ugly as sin.

He demanded quarters of his own, and got them. Coldly, he rejected the suggestion that a flopper could carry his luggage. Lordly, austere, he strode along the corridor to his room.

When he got there, a flopper was inside. With single-minded concentration, it went on sweeping while Hitchcock laid his bags on the bed. For all the sign it gave, it might not have noticed his entrance.

It would have been as tall as Hitchcock, but its legs were too short. Its pelt was silvery gray. Its head was revolting— a slab-shaped, almost neckless thing set on top of a shoulderless body. The big, goggling eyes were placed far apart, leaving space for the big, lipless mandible-jaws in. between them. On top, the single ear stood up like the peak of a much-too-small cowl.

The rest of the creature was equally hideous—the flexible arms as seemingly boneless as a fire hose, and the flat, big, floppy feet. It was marsupial, with a pendulous pouch that pulsed spasmodically, as if something alive was inside. But the creature was also unquestionably—almost indecently— masculine. It had a musky smell. Hitchcock stared at it with sick distaste.

It continued to work the broom with brainless absorption. It swept around Hitchcock’s feet as if he was a piece of furniture.

“Stop that!” Hitchcock commanded offendedly.

The flopper stopped. Looking up at him dumbly, it rolled its bulbous brown eyes.

“Get out of here!” Hitchcock told it.

The flopper just looked at him, dumb and trembling. Tentatively, it started sweeping again.

“No! Get out!” Hitchcock yelled.

Frantically, the flopper went on sweeping. It tried to work too fast. The broom flew out of its flipperlike hands and whacked Hitchcock’s knee. Hitchcock yowled with pain and rage.

The creature fled, bounding out the door on all fours. Hitchcock grabbed the broom and chased it as far as the hall, until it disappeared around a comer.

Slamming the door, Hitchcock went back and sat on the bed. He rolled down his hose to inspect his whacked knee. It was an angry red, but not damaged.

The stupid brute!

Someone knocked on the door. Hitchcock pulled up the hose and refastened the top to his undershorts. Smoothing down his tunic skirt, he said, “You may enter.”

A slovenly dressed man came in—ankle socks, ill-fitting kilt, and turtleneck. He had a full, untrimmed, black beard. “What’s the ruckus in here?” he asked.

“Ruckus?” Hitchcock repeated incredulously. “Here?”

“Yeah. Here,” the man insisted. “One of my cleaning boys skedaddled out of this hallway and dove in his hutch like a carload of hell was looking for him. He’d cleaned up this far, so he must’ve been here.” He glanced down at his feet. “That’s his broom.” He picked it up.

“I told it to leave,” Hitchcock said. “I refuse to be a party to its slavery.”

“Exactly how did you say it?” the man asked intently.

“I asked it please to get out of here,” Hitchcock stated primly. “I must say the creature was unpardonably stupid. I had to repeat it twice.”

The bearded man looked skeptical, but didn’t challenge the assertion. “That’s not in his vocabulary,” he told Hitchcock. “You’re new here, so I guess it isn’t your fault. But after this, if you want a Flopper to scram, say, ‘That’s all,’ and he’ll get right out. They’re real obedient if you’re proper with ‘em. But you got to give ‘em the right commands.”

“I’ll keep my own room clean,” Hitchcock announced frigidly. “Keep your slaves out of here.”

“If you want ‘em to stay out, bolt the door,” the bearded man advised. “It’ll worry the boy to have his routine monkeyed with, but it’s better than to scuttle his training.”

“Keep them away from me,” Hitchcock repeated.

The man looked him up and down. His eyes were steady; “Don’t expect ‘em to understand everything you say,” he said finally. “They don’t.”

He backed out of the room and shut the door.

Mindful of his banged knee, still seething, Hitchcock rummaged in his bags for the liniment tube he always carried. He most certainly would keep his door locked. The mere thought of that mindless creature pawing his possessions made him tremble with rage.

It was terrible, the indignities a man of good will was forced to endure!

“I hope your room is satisfactory,” Ben Reese said as they began Hitchcock’s tour of the outpost. He was a plump man, Ben Reese—almost forty, with a round face and an almost bald scalp. Hitchcock worried him.

“Adequate,” Hitchcock replied. He had a nerve-rattling way of walking—never looking where they went. Constantly, he twisted his head in one direction, then another. “Spartan, but adequate.”

“We don’t have many luxuries here,” Reese admitted. “Everything we have has to come in the supply ship.”

“Um-m-m,” Hitchcock muttered. “Tell me, Mr. Reese— what is it like to be the undisputed monarch of an entire solar system?”

Shocked speechless, Reese stopped in his tracks and. stared at the man. “I don’t think you understand,” he said finally. Hitchcock walked loftily on. Reese had to run to catch up. “All I do is... is co-ordinate our research work here,” he explained, breathless. “And ... and I estimate our supply needs. The ship only comes once a year—someone has to do it.”

But Hitchcock’s attention was on something else. Maybe he was deaf—he didn’t seem to have heard.

They followed the dome’s main hall. Their buskinned feet whispered softly on the tiles. Only a few people passed them. In the dim light, the near silence, it was like the cellars under a castle. Floppers intent on their tasks scurried past like industrious gnomes.

At the hall’s end, where it split into two out-curving corridors, Reese paused. “Would you rather see the anatomy lab first?” he asked. “Or the biochemical department?”

Hitchcock didn’t reply. Not far up one of the corridors, a flopper was belaboring the floor with a mop. A sloppy bucket sloshed by its feet. With an almost expressionless look of glee, Hitchcock turned his camera on it.

The flopper worked on, oblivious of them. After a long moment, Hitchcock stopped his camera and turned. “You said something?” he inquired.

“I asked what you wanted to see first,” Reese said.

Hitchcock glanced down at him as if he were a bug. “It makes absolutely no difference,” he assured Reese. “Before I am done here, I will expect to have seen everything.”