Zach Hughes - Tiger in the Stars

to be the best ship captain, the best trader, the best navigator. He tried to make his ship the best one of its type.» «I see, in your activities, something that reminds me of…» the ear-twisting name…'s games. And his games were for nothing. Is money a way of keeping score in your game?» «We also seek security and comforts,» Hara said. «Money buys us security and comforts.» «And the search for money is a game to be won by the most able,» the woman said. «I suggest that you are a grossly competitive creature, competing with your fellows since you have no one else with whom to compete. I suggest that your entire life is a game and that your one object is to win.» «Why do you have weapons on your ships?» Plank asked. «Ah, that is a good question,» she said laughing, showing her pink tongue. «Perhaps this will not be so boring after all. You show an animal shrewdness. First, the ships were primitive toys of a retarded child. However, the toys, in their time, did come equipped with weapons, for we went through a period of competition. We had our wars among ourselves.» «That sounds very human to me,» Plank said. He lifted a hand to stop her reply. «Yes, we are competitive. We are competitive with our fellow men and with ourselves. We compete with nature, and with the universe. Although we take care of our own retarded children, those less able to compete, we still reward the ablest with the most riches, the most comforts, the most security. In the jungles of the young Earth, the fittest survived to sire more survivors. This continuing process of evolution goes on still. We can document a change in our race in a short period of time. We are taller, stronger, more resistant to disease. Our life span has increased from approximately 70 years to three times 70.» «Let me ask you this,» said the beautiful woman. «If you could, if you had it within your power to provide the ideal existence for your Earth, what would that existence be?» «Freedom of choice,» Hara said. «A meaningful life for each man,» Heath said. «Health, wealth, love and time to enjoy it,» Plank said. «Three answers.» «If there were three million men here you'd get three million answers,» Plank said, «all leading toward the same thing, perhaps, but expressed in different ways. One man would think the ideal existence would be to have a plot of ground on Earth and the time to till it. Another would want a ship like the Pride to rove the stars. Another would want a dozen women at his command.» «You are stating a concept we have been studying,» the woman said. «Each of you is individual.» «And your race operates with one mind?» Plank asked. «Many minds attuned.» «Can you make the water in that brook reverse its flow and run uphill?» Plank asked. «Easily.» She demonstrated. «But you can't read my thoughts,» Plank said. «Another good point, but not conclusive. Neither can I enter the mind of the small birds that you saw outside.» «You mentioned games,» Plank said. «Let me tell you about Earth games. On Sundays, during the colder months, young men don armor and

do battle in an arena. The object is to take a small object, called a football, from one end of the arena to the other. Men devote their lives to this game and those who excel at it are heroes to our people. A man begins to prepare himself for football when he is very young and works to develop

his abilities and his body until he is too old for the game and his reflexes slow. Other men and women spend their lives developing skills. A girl will begin to skate on ice on two thin blades when she is six years old. She may spend many hours every day of her life in an effort to win a gold medal in a series of games that has the attention of our entire world. This is what Hara called the search for perfection. Each individual wants to be the best

at what he or she does and is willing to make great sacrifices. Many strive, but there can be only one winner. We exalt that winner and so we create the desire, in other young people, to emulate the winner. You may call this a useless game, but we on Earth feel that man is at his most magnificent when he is forcing his body to do something it was not designed by nature to do; when he is stretching his abilities to the ultimate to achieve that one moment of triumph which has been attained by no man before him. If you gave a man the garden of Eden…» He paused. «I understand the concept. I've acquainted myself with your culture.» «Give a man everything. Put him into an idyllic situation where he does not have to work for food, where he has eternal shelter and wants for

nothing, and he'll start counting the fruit on the trees or trying to arrange the garden in a way that comes closer to pleasing his own senses. Man is a doer, a striver. Give him the universe, and he'll want to find out where it ends and why it began.» «By your information, how long has man been on Earth?» she asked. «It depends on when you begin to think of our primitive forgoers as man,» Plank said. «We can, although I don't think it worthwhile to do the calculations, tell you exactly when we first fashioned your original primitive ancestor,» the woman said testily. «We return to a basic difference in opinion,» Plank said. «My point is this. You've been on Earth a few million of your years.

While this is not, by our standards, a long period of time, in our history we showed faster development. Our period of warfare was very brief. We began to develop beyond aggressiveness. You have killed your fellows from the beginning.» «Our last war was 75 years ago,» Heath said. The woman laughed. «That is but a moment.» «Without meaning too much more malice than the question implies,» Plank asked, «who gives you the right to judge us?» Another laugh. «Who is there to deny us that right?» «A good point,» Plank said wryly. «But let's get back for a moment to what you think of as man's games. It comes to my mind that there may be a very good reason for man's competition with himself and with his fellow man. You say your life span is unlimited. Even your retarded child has enjoyed what is to us a tremendous and almost immortal life and still has time to live. I assume, then, that you've never been faced with death, guaranteed death, death that comes in a certain span of time regardless of what you do.» «That is true.» «How would your race have developed if, in its youth, each individual had a life span of, say, 30 years? When our people began making technical advances, looking upward to the stars through primitive instruments, we were faced with that problem.» «I see,» she said, nodding. «You show an interest in what we think to be the ideal existence,» Plank said. «Perhaps we could learn by asking you the same question.» «You would not understand,» she said. «Try us,» Hara said. «You lack the capacity.» «It seems to me that you, as we do, like comforts and luxuries,» Plank

said. «This place. It is beautiful, but different only in degree from the same sort of home on our planet.» «A moment,» she said. Each of them felt a slight alteration; suddenly they were standing atop a wooded hill. Around them the woodland was dense, heavily brushed, the ground littered with the debris of fallen limbs. «Do you think I needed a building? A home?» The woman was looking at them with a tiny smile. «Did you think the flowers were for me?» «What are you then?» Plank asked. «Even that you would not understand,» she said. «Can you show us?» Plank asked. «No.» «The Eater's basic form was functional,» Plank said. The woman-form began to fade. In its place was something, a

disturbance, not visible so much as felt, a twisting, a distortion of an area of space in front of them. And then they were seated again in the luxurious room, the beautiful woman before them. «I have one question,» Plank said. «It's been demonstrated that you have control over physical things, but how much is real and how much is in our minds?» «I could, if I chose, leave the area, here, as it was. In time the natural growth would creep back, but the other, the flowers from a far planet, the building itself, they would remain.» «What do you do?» Plank said. «What is your purpose?» «I told you that you lacked the ability to understand. Greatly simplified, we blend.» «With what?» Plank persisted. «With ourselves, with the universe.» «Is the universe limited?» Plank asked. «You would not understand.» Plank snorted. «Let me say, then, that it is not my function to educate you beyond your abilities,» the woman said. «And now I think we have reached the conclusion of our discussion.» «No,» Plank said, standing quickly. «You have merely talked with three humans. You can't possibly have an overall view of the race from such limited contact. You should, before making your decision, talk to our philosophers, our men of science and religion, our artists and writers, our physicians.» «That will not be necessary,» she said. «You deserve your chance.» Plank sat down, sighing. «And now you have a choice,» the beautiful woman continued. «I will return you either to your planet or your base on the satellite of your planet.» «As we are?» Plank asked. «I told you that you were most fortunate that your missiles did not destroy the data banks when you fired upon…» She said the name that could not be pronounced, the name of the Eater. «…'s planet. He was well trained in scientific methods, even if he did not have the patience or the