The Best of Sci-Fi-5

“Fifteen hundred,” he bid. “Not a penny more.”

“Not at any price. Good day, Mr. Hest.”

He looked at me sharply, as if he couldn’t believe I’d refuse such a profit, as if it were a new experience for him to find a man without a price. He started to say something, then shut his mouth with a snap. He turned abruptly and strode back to his rickshaw. Before he reached it, he was shouting angrily to his goonie to get up out of that dirt and look alive.

I took an angry step toward them and changed my mind. Whatever I did, Hest would later take it out on the goonie. He was that kind of man. I was stopped, too, by the old Liboan custom of never meddling in another man’s affairs. There weren’t any laws about handling goonies. We hadn’t needed them. Disapproval had been enough to bring tenderfeet into line, before. And I hated to see laws like that come to Libo, morals-meddling laws—because it was men like Hest who had the compulsion to get in control of making and enforcing them, who hid behind the badge so they could get their kicks without fear of reprisal.

I didn’t know what to do. I went back to planting the orchard and worked until the first sun had set and the second was close behind. Then I knocked off, sent the goonies to their pal groves, and went on up to the house.

Ruth’s first question, when I came through the kitchen door, flared my rage up again.

“Jim,” she said curiously, and a little angry, “why did you sell that clerk to a man like Hest?”

“But I didn’t,” I said.

“Here’s the thousand, cash, he left with me,” she said and pointed to the corner of the kitchen table. “He said it was the price you agreed on. He had me make out a bill of sale. I thought it peculiar because you always take care of business, but he said you wanted to go on working.”

“He pulled a fast one, Ruth,” I said, my anger rising.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Right after supper I’m going into Libo City. Bill of sale, or not, I’m going to get that goonie back.”

“Jim,” she said, “be careful.” There was worry in her eyes. “You’re not a violent man—and you’re not as young as you used to be.”

That was something a man would rather not be reminded of, not even by his wife—especially not by his wife.

Inquiry in Libo City led me to Hest’s private cottage, but it was dark. I couldn’t arouse any response, not even a goonie. I tried the men’s dormitories to get a line on him. Most of the young Earthers seemed to think it was a lark, and their idea of good sportsmanship kept them from telling me where to find him. From some of them I sensed a deeper, more turgid undercurrent where good, clean fun might not be either so good or so clean.

In one of the crowded saloons there was a booth of older men, men who’d been here longer, and kept a disdainful distance away from the new Earthers.

“There’s something going on, Jim,” one of them said. “I don’t know just what. Try that hell-raisin’, snortin’ female. Hest’s always hanging around her.”

I looked around the booth. They were all grinning a little. So the story of how Hest had outfoxed me had spread, and they could enjoy that part of it. I didn’t blame them. But I could tell they didn’t sense there was anything more to it than that. They told me where to locate Miriam Wellman’s cottage, and added as I started to leave, “You need any help, Jim, you know where to look.” Part of it was to say that in a showdown against the Earthers they were on my side, but most of it was a bid to get in on a little fun, break the monotony.

I found the woman’s cottage without trouble, and she answered the door in person. I told her who I was, and she invited me in without any coy implications about what the neighbors might think. The cottage was standard, furnished with goonie-made furniture of native materials.

“I’ll come right to the point, Miss Wellman,” I said.

“Good,” she answered crisply. “The boys will be gathering for their meeting, and I like to be prompt.”

I started to tell her what I thought of her meetings, how much damage she was doing, how far she was setting Libo back. I decided there wouldn’t be any use. People who do that kind of thing, her kind of thing, get their kicks out of the ego-bloating effect of their power over audiences and don’t give a good goddamn about how much damage they do.

“I’m looking for Carl Hest,” I said. “I understand he’s one of your apple-polishers.”

She was wearing standard coverall fatigues, but she made a gesture as if she were gathering up folds of a voluminous skirt to show me there was nothing behind them. “I am not hiding Carl Hest,” she said scornfully.

“Then you know he is hiding.” I paused, and added, “And you probably know he conned my wife out of a valuable goonie. You probably know what he’s got in mind to do.”

“I do, Mr. MacPherson,” she said crisply. “I know very well.”

I looked at her, and felt a deep discouragement. I couldn’t see any way to get past that shell of hers, that armor of self-righteousness— No, that wasn’t it. She wasn’t quoting fanatic, meaningless phrases at me, clouding the issue with junk. She was a crisp business woman who had a situation well in hand.

“Then you know more than I do,” I said. “But I can guess some things. I don’t like what I can guess. I trained that goonie, I’m responsible. I’m not going to have it— well, whatever they plan to do with it—just because I trained it to a work that Hest and his toadies don’t approve.”

‘“Very commendable sentiments, Mr. MacPherson,” she said dryly. “But suppose you keep out of an affair that’s none of your business. I understood that was Liboan custom, not to meddle in other people’s doings.”

“That was the custom,” I said.

She stood up suddenly and walked with quick, short strides across the room to a closet door. She turned around and looked at me, as if she had made up her mind to something.

“It’s still a good custom,” she said. “Believe it or not, I’m trying to preserve it.”

I looked at her dumfounded.

“By letting things happen, whatever’s going to happen to that goonie?” I asked incredulously. “By coming out here and whipping up the emotions of these boys, stirring up who knows what in them?”

She opened the door of the closet and I could see she was taking out a robe, an iridescent, shimmering thing.

“I know precisely what I’m stirring up,” she said. “That’s my business. That’s what I’m here for.”

I couldn’t believe it. To whip up the emotions of a mob just for the kicks of being able to do it was one thing. But to do it deliberately, knowing the effect of arousing primitive savagery…

She turned around and began slipping into the garment. She zipped up the front of it with a crisp motion, and it transformed her. In darkness, under the proper spotlights, the ethereal softness completely masked her calculating efficiency.

“Why?” I demanded. “If you know, if you really do know, why?”

“My work here is about finished,” she said, as she came over to her chair and sat down again. “It will do no harm to tell you why. You’re not a Company man, and your reputation is one of discretion…The point is, in mass hiring for jobs in such places as Libo, we make mistakes in Personnel. Our tests are not perfect.”

“We?” I asked.

“I’m a trouble-shooter for Company Personnel,” she said.

“All this mumbo-jumbo,” I said. “Getting out there and whipping these boys up into frenzies …”

“You know about medical inoculation, vaccination,” she said. “Under proper controls, it can be psychologically applied. A little virus, a little fever, and from there on, most people are immune. Some aren’t. With some, it goes into a full-stage disease. We don’t know which is which without test. We have to test. Those who can’t pass the test, Mr. MacPherson, are shipped back to Earth. This way we find out quickly, instead of letting some Typhoid Marys gradually infect a whole colony.”