Murray Leinster: The Pirates of Zan

The ambassador received him with a cordial wave of the hand.

“Things move fast,” he said cheerfully. “You weren’t here half an hour before there was a police captain at the gate. He explained that an excessively dangerous criminal had escaped jail and been seen climbing the embassy wall. He very generously offered to bring some men in and capture you and take you away — with my permission, of course. He was shocked when I declined.”

“I can understand that,” said Hoddan.

“By the way,” said the ambassador. “Young men like yourself… Ah… is there a girl involved in this?”

Hoddan considered.

“A girl’s father,” he acknowledged, “is the real complainant against me.”

“Does he complain,” asked the ambassador, “because you want to marry her, or because you don’t?”

“Neither,” Hoddan told him. “She hasn’t quite decided that I’m worth defying her rich father for.”

“Good!” said the ambassador. “It can’t be too bad a mess while a woman is being really practical. I’ve checked your story. Allowing for differences of viewpoint, it agrees with the official version. I’ve ruled that you are a political refugee, and so entitled to sanctuary in the embassy. And that’s that.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Hoddan.

“There’s no question about the crime,” observed the ambassador, “or that it is primarily political. You proposed to improve a technical process in a society which considers itself beyond improvement. If you’d succeeded, the idea of change would have spread, people now poor would have gotten rich, people now rich would have gotten poor, and you’d have done what all governments are established to prevent. So you’ll never be able to walk the streets of this planet again in safety. You’ve scared people.”

“Yes, sir,” said Hoddan. “It’s been an unpleasant surprise to them, to be scared.”

The ambassador put the tips of his fingers together.

“Do you realize,” he asked, “that the whole purpose of civilization is to take the surprises out of life, so one can be bored to death? That a culture in which nothing unexpected ever happens is in what is called its ‘golden age’? That when nobody can even imagine anything happening unexpectedly, that they later fondly refer to that period as the ‘good old days’?”

“I hadn’t thought of it in just those words, sir.”

“It is one of the most-avoided facts of life,” said the ambassador. “Government, in the local or planetary sense of the word, is an organization for the suppression of adventure. Taxes are, in part, the insurance premiums one pays for protection against the unpredictable. And your act has been an offense against everything that is the foundation of a stable, orderly and damnably tedious way of life — against civilization, in fact”

Hoddan frowned.

“Yet, you’ve granted me asylum.”

“Naturally!” said the ambassador. “The Diplomatic Service works for the welfare of humanity. That doesn’t mean stuffiness. A golden age in any civilization is always followed by collapse. In ancient days savages came and camped outside the walls of super-civilized towns. They were unwashed, unmannerly, and unsanitary. Super-civilized people refused even to think about them! So presently the savages stormed the city walls and another civilization went up in flames.”

“But now,” objected Hoddan, “there are no savages.”

“They invent themselves,” the ambassador told him. “My point is that the Diplomatic Service cherishes individuals and causes which battle stuffiness and complacency and golden ages and monstrous things like that. Not thieves, of course. They’re degradation, like body-lice. But rebels and crackpots and revolutionaries who prevent hardening of the arteries of commerce and furnish wholesome exercise to the body politic — they’re worth cherishing!”

“I think I see, sir,” said Hoddan.

“I hope you do,” said the ambassador. “My action on your behalf is pure diplomatic policy. To encourage the dissatisfied is to insure against the menace of universal satisfaction. Walden is in a bad way. You are the most encouraging tiling that has happened here in a long time. And you’re not a native.”

“No-o-o,” agreed Hoddan. “I come from Zan.”

“Never mind.” The ambassador turned to a stellar atlas. “Consider yourself a good symptom, and valued as such. Ifyou could start a contagion, you’d be doing a service to your fellow citizens. Savages can always invent themselves. But enough… let us set about your affairs.” He consulted the atlas. “Where would you like to go, since you must leave Walden?”

“Not too far, sir.”

“The girl, eh?” The ambassador did not smile. He ran his finger down a page. “The nearest inhabited worlds are Krim and Darth. Krim is a place of lively commercial activity, where an electronics engineer should easily find employment. It is said to be progressive and there is much organized research.”

“I wouldn’t want to be a kept engineer, sir,” said Hoddan apologetically. “I’d rather — well — putter on my own.”

“Impractical, but sensible,” commented the ambassador. He turned a page. “There’s Darth. Its social system is practically feudal It’s technically backward. There’s a landing-grid, but space-exports are skins and metal ingots and practically nothing else. There is no broadcast power. Strangers find the local customs difficult. There is no town larger than twenty thousand people, and few approach that size. Most settled places are mere villages near some feudal castle, and roads are so few and bad that wheeled transport is rare.”

He leaned back and said in a detached voice:

“I had a letter from there a couple of months ago. It was rather arrogant. The writer was one Don Loris, and he explained that his dignity would not let him make a commercial offer, but an electronic engineer who put himself under his protection would not be the loser. Are you interested? No kings on Darth, just feudal chiefs.”

Hoddan thought it over.

“I’ll go to Darth,” he decided. “It’s bound to be better than Zan, and it can’t be worse than Walden.”

The ambassador looked impassive. An embassy servant came in and offered an indoor communicator. The ambassador put it to his ear. After a moment he said:

“Show him in.” He turned to Hoddan. “You did kick up a storm! The Minister of State, no less, is here to demand your surrender. I’ll counter with a formal request for an exit permit. I’ll talk to you again when he leaves.”

Hoddan went out. He paced up and down the other room into which he was shown. Darth wouldn’t be in a golden age! He was wiser now than he’d been just this morning. He recognized that he’d made mistakes. Now he could see rather ruefully how completely improbable it was that anybody could put across a technical device merely by proving its value, without first making anybody want it He shook his head regretfully at the blunder.

The ambassador sent for him.

“I’ve had a pleasant time,” he told Hoddan genially. “There was a beautiful row. You’ve really scared people, Hoddan. You deserve well of the republic. Every government and every person needs to be thoroughly terrified occasionally. It limbers up the brain.”

“Yes, sir,” said Hoddan. “I’ve—”

“The planetary government,” said the ambassador with relish, “insists that you have to be locked up with the key thrown away. It seems you know how to make death rays. I said it was nonsense, and you were a political refugee in sanctuary. The Minister of State said the Cabinet would consider removing you forcibly from the embassy if you weren’t surrendered. I said that if the embassy were violated, no ship would clear for Walden from any other civilized planet They wouldn’t like losing their off-planet trade! Then he said that the government would not give you an exit permit, and that he would hold me personally responsible if you killed everybody on Walden, including himself and me. I said he insulted me by suggesting that I’d permit such shenanigans. He said the government would take an extremely grave view of my attitude, and I said they would be silly if they did. Then he went off with great dignity — but shaking with panic — to think up more nonsense.”