Clifford Simak - Dusty Zebra - And Other Stories

But something had happened to the Google villages on the planet Zan. There was no babu root waiting for the ship and the trader had raged up and down, calling forth upon all Googles dire malefactions combed from a score of languages and cultures.

High in his cubbyhole, one level down from the control room and the captain’s quarters, Steve Sheldon, the space ship’s assigned co-ordinator, went through reel after reel of records pertaining to the planet and studied once again the bible of his trade, Dennison’s Key to Sentient Races. He searched for a hidden clue, clawing through his close-packed memory for some forgotten fact which might apply.

But the records were not much help.

Zan, one of the planets by-passed on the first wave of exploration, had been discovered five centuries before. Since that time traders had made regular visits there to pick up babu root. In due time the traders had reported it to Culture. But Culture, being busy with more important things than a backwoods planet, had done no more than file the report for future action, and then, of course, had forgotten all about it.

No survey, therefore, had ever been made of Zan, and the record reels held little more than copies of trading contracts, trading licenses, applications for monopolies and hundreds of sales invoices covering the five hundred years of trade. Interspersed here and there were letters and reports on the culture of the Google s and descriptions of the planet, but since the reports were by obscure planet-hoppers and not by trained observers they were of little value.

Sheldon found one fairly learned dissertation upon the babu root. From that paper he learned that the plant grew nowhere else but on Zan and was valuable as the only known cure for a certain disease peculiar to a certain sector of the galaxy. At first the plant had grown wild and had been gathered by the Googles as an article of commerce, but in more recent years, the article said, some attempts had been made to cultivate it since the wild supply was waning.

Sheldon could pronounce neither the root’s drug derivative nor the disease it cured, but he shrugged that off as of no consequence.

Dennison devoted less than a dozen lines to Zan and from them Sheldon learned no more than he already knew: Googles were humanoid, after a fashion, and with Type 10 culture, varying from Type 10-A to Type 10-H; they were a peaceful race and led a pastoral existence; there were thirty-seven known tribal villages, one of which exercised benevolent dictatorship over the other thirty-six. The top-dog village, however, changed from time to time, apparently according to some peaceful rotational system based upon a weird brand of politics. Googles were gentle people and did not resort to war.

And that was all the information there was. It wasn’t much to go on.

But, for that matter, Sheldon comforted himself, no co-ordinator ever had much to go on when his ship ran into a snag. A co-ordinator did not actually begin to function constructively until everyone, including himself, was firmly behind the eight-ball.

Figuring the way out from behind the eight-ball was a co-ordinator’s job. Until he faced dilemma, a yard wide and of purest fleece, he was hardly needed. There was, of course, the matter of riding herd on traders to see that they didn’t cheat, beyond a reasonable limit, the aliens with whom they traded, of seeing that they violated no alien tabus and outranged no alien ethics, that they abided by certain restraints and observed minimum protocol, but that was routine policing—just ordinary chores.

Now, after an uneventful cruise, something had finally happened—there was no babu root and Master Dan Hart of the starship Emma was storming around and raising hell and getting nowhere fast.

Sheldon heard him now, charging up the stairs to the co-ordinator’s cubbyhole. Judging the man’s temper by the tumult of his progress, Sheldon swept the reels to one side of the desk and sat back in his chair, settling his mind into that unruffled calm which went with his calling.

“Good day to you, Master Hart,” said Sheldon when the irate skipper finally entered.

“Good day to you, Co-ordinator,” said Hart, although obviously, it pained him to be civil.

“I’ve been looking through the records,” Sheldon told him. “There’s not much to go on.”

“You mean,” said Hart, with rage seething near the surface, “that you’ve no idea of what is going on.”

“Not the slightest,” said Sheldon cheerfully.

“It’s got to be better than that,” Hart told him. “It’s got to be a good deal better than that, Mister Co-ordinator. This is one time you’re going to earn your pay. I carry you for years at a good stiff salary, not because I want to, but because Culture says I have to, and during all that time there’s nothing, or almost nothing, for you to do. But now there is something for you to do. Finally there is something to make you earn your pay. I’ve put up with you, had you in my hair, stumbled over you, and I’ve held my tongue and temper, but now that there’s a job to do, I’m going to see you do it.”

He thrust out his head like an angry turtle. “You understand that, don’t you, Mister Co-ordinator?”

“I understand,” said Sheldon.

“You’re going to get to work on it,” said Hart. “You’ll get on it right away.”

“I’m working on it now.”

“Indeed,” said Master Hart.

“I’ve satisfied myself,” said Sheldon, “that there’s nothing in the records.”

“And what do you do now?”

“Observe and think,” said Sheldon.

“Observe and think!” yelped Hart, stricken to the core.

“Maybe try a hunch or two,” said Sheldon. “Eventually we’ll find out what’s the trouble.”

“How long?” asked Hart. “How long will all this mummery take?”

“That’s something I can’t tell you.”

“So you can’t tell me that. I must remind you, Mister Co-ordinator, that time spells money in the trading business.”

“You’re ahead of schedule,” Sheldon told him calmly. “You’ve shaved everything on the entire cruise. You were brusque in your trading almost to the point of rudeness despite the standards of protocol that Culture has set up. I was forced time after time to impress upon you the importance of that protocol. There were other times when I let you get away with murder. You’ve driven the crew in violation of Labor’s program of fair employment. You’ve acted as if the devil were only a lap behind you. Your crew will get a needed rest while we untangle this affair. The loss of time won’t harm you.”

Hart took it because he didn’t know quite how far he could push the quiet man who sat behind the desk. He shifted his tactics.

“I have a contract for the babu,” he said, “and the license for this trade route. I don’t mind telling you I’d counted on the babu . If you don’t shake loose that babu, I’ll sue…”

“Don’t be silly,” Sheldon said.

“They were all right five years ago,” said Hart, “the last trip we were here. A culture just can’t go to pot in that length of time.”

“What we have here,” said Sheldon, “is something more complicated than mere going to pot. Here we have some scheme, some plan, something deliberate.

“The Type 10 culture village stands there to the west of us, just a mile or two away, deserted, with its houses carefully locked and boarded up. Everything all tidy, as if its inhabitants had moved away for a short time and meant to come back in the not too distant future. And a mile or two outside that Type 10 village we have instead another village and a people that average Type 14.”