Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (19 page)

“You showed me that it wasn’t my killer nature that was shameful, but the refusal to think things out that landed me in Nam in the first place. You showed me that just because it took me a while to make the sort of decision Steve made didn’t mean that I didn’t have Steve’s kind of guts in me somewhere. I was sure I didn’t have that kind of guts, and so I never looked for them. When I did … I found them. Because you had faith in me.

“Jail is no picnic,” he told the rest of us, “but I want to do what I can to see that no one else gets caught in the meatgrinder like I did. But I don’t do it from guilt. I do it for its own sake.” He looked at Callahan. “I already got my absolution here.”

Callahan topped off his glass and slapped him on the back. “Well spoke, Tony,” he boomed, and we all raised our glasses and toasted him in unison. The fireplace exploded with glass when we were through.

“I knew it,” said the Doc, “as soon as I saw him dressed as a shepherd I knew he had to be a vet.” Groans arose, but the comic relief was timely.

“If you don’t pipe down some, Doc, he won’t be the only hoarse doctor around here,” Callahan attempted.

“Now, now,” said the Doc. “I’m a happily married man. I don’t fool around with hoarse in either of our professional capacities.”

I started to ask if the Doc’s capacities were truly professional, but before I could, .Mickey Finn grabbed Callahan’s shoulder so hard he winced-something nobody else could have managed.

“My friend Mike,” Finn said urgently, “That person there, in the green costume-it is not a costume. He is not human.”

Callahan blinked, and such jaws as were visible dropped like gallows trapdoors. If anyone but Finn had said that-anywhere but Callahan’s Place-we’d have thought he was crazy or drunk.

“I see further into the infrared range than you humans,” Finn went on hurriedly. “I was watching the currents of heat from the fireplace make patterns in the air while I listened to your words, enjoying their lazy beauty … but I just caught the green one watching them too. Close examination shows me that his fur and features are genuine. Friends, this is an alien.”

We all stared at the green fellow, waiting for him to take off his mask and say something. He looked human enough-the usual number of arms and legs I mean. His mouth was a trifle too wide, now that I noticed, and the fur sure looked awful real. If those pointed, oversized ears were glued on, I couldn’t see where.

He looked back at us, put down his glass and shrugged knobby, tufted shoulders. “There is no point in denying it, gentlemen. I am not human. In fact, I came here tonight specifically to tell you how unhuman I am. The words I have heard encouraged me to confess, but still I … hesitated. However, now that I have been identified by another non-human, I suppose I must speak. Will you listen?”

Callahan spoke for all of us. “Mister, if you’ve got troubles, you’re in the right place. Go ahead.”

The green alien nodded. His eyes were deeply troubled. “My name, gentlemen,” he said in a pleasing tenor, “is Broodseven-Sub-Two Raksha, as well as it can be translated into your tongue. I am … well, the profession does not really exist as such here, but my function combines elements of sociologist, psychologist, soldier and farmer. My people are the Krundai, and Krundar my home is located so far from here that your instruments have not yet detected its sun. There are several dozen Krundai on your planet, a team which has been here for over two thousand years … a team of which I am the least member.” He paused, looked embarrassed.

“What are you fellers doin’ here?” Callahan asked.

“That,” said the alien hesitantly, “is what I have come here to tell you. It is … it is not an easy thing to tell. I have spent almost thirty of your years formulating my opinions in words and seeking someone to whom to speak them. Fifteen of those years sufficed to eliminate as confidantes all of my fellow Krundai; for another ten I debated whether I could conceivably unburden myself to a human. Unable to resolve the question, I spent the last five years picking those humans in whom I might confide. I found on your planet a total of only two or three thousand humans who I felt might be able to understand and help, and thirty-five of those are now present in this room.

“All of you at this table are such.”

We looked around at each other, wondering whether we were all special or just crazy in the same way. I sure didn’t feel special.

“Even now,” Raksha went on, “I have not entirely resolved my debate. My decision is much like that of Mr. Telasco, but it is further complicated in that it could involve betraying my entire race. The presence of Mr. Finn, whom I find to be, as he says, as non-human as myself, complicates things considerably-although I suspect his origins may better enable him to empathize with me.”

He faced Finn. “Space holds many viewpoints, Finn. You seem to be a traveler, of broader experience than these ephemerals. Will you try to understand me?”

Finn looked him square in the eye. “I will listen.”

Raksha didn’t seem to care much for that answer, but he nodded. He turned to us. “Will you … all of you … swear that no word of what I tell you will reach my fellow Krundai? I must warn you that confiding in other humans would accomplish this thing.”

This time there was no more need for us to look around than there was for all of us to speak. “Every man at this table can keep his lip buttoned,” Callahan said simply. “Speak your piece.”

The green furry alien looked us all over one last time, one after the other, beginning and ending with Callahan. As his eyes met mine, I noticed for the first time that the surfaces of them rippled with faintly glistening semicircular lines, just like the one you look for when you’re pouring coffee into a dark cup. They shifted position in a different way than the specks on a human eyeball do, independent of the motion of the eyes themselves. They scared the hell out of me somehow, more than the fur and the oars did.

He reached his decision.

“Yes, gentlemen, you are right. Come what may, I must speak. If I can be helped by any one, of any race, it is you. Brood help me if you cannot.”

I grabbed a pitcher and got half of it down before Bill and Sam snatched it away.

“I must begin,” the alien went on, “by explaining to you some central facts about my people.

“First, we live much, much longer than humans. An average Krundai sees his three-thousandth birthday before returning to the Great Pouch, and some have lived as much as five or six centuries longer. I myself am well over eight hundred years old, and I am the youngest Krundai on your world, having been born here.”

“That explains how you know our language and idiom so well,” I interrupted.

“My four immediate ancestors had a hand in its creation,” Raksha said drily.

I shut up.

“Second, as you may well imagine, we are a very patient people, by your standards. Even allowing for the difference in our respective lifespans, we move in much less haste than you, and plan projects in terms of how many of our generations they will require to complete. Our concern is for the continuing life of the race, rather than our individual lives, as the Broodmaster has decreed.

“Third, we have an ingrained loathing for killing or violence.”

That cheered me quite a bit, although I don’t think I was really scared with Finn around. That guy could maybe use this Earth to light a cigar with if he had a mind to. Besides, if the Krundai had intended us harm, it seemed to me they’d have done so centuries ago.

“We realize,” Raksha went on, “that such things must be: the prime datum of the Universe is that life survives by eating life, and no other way. The expense of eating is, in great part, the resistance the second life offers to being eaten. For instance, the roast-beef sandwiches you have provided for your friends, Mr. Callahan (and by the way they are easily the thickest I have ever seen in a tavern) are currently quite expensive, because of the size and unwieldiness of the system required to supply them to us.

“Suppose you could induce the cow to come here and drop obligingly dead next to your chopping block?

“Still, there are always some who prefer not to do their own butchering. No Krundai will do so voluntarily if it can be avoided. A surprising percentage of your own society, with all your heritage of murder, would like to believe that Life survives by going to the supermarket. So the ideal would be to train cattle to make butcher knives and take turns cutting each other up at a convenient location.”

I didn’t like the turn this story was taking.

“Which brings me to the fourth significant fact about my people. We have made an exact science of sociopsychology, both Krundai and animal, and refined it beyond your imagining. The closest things you have to it, I suppose, are what you call mob psychology and the actuarial tables your insurance companies use, and you do not even know why they work. The principles behind them, however, are universal, and part of a grand picture which your race will probably never perceive. One of your great writers invented something akin to it called `psychohistory,’ but even that unfulfilled daydream pales beside our knowledge-for psychohistory worked only for humans, and could not predict the appearance of genius or mutation. We can manipulate any sentient race that lives, produce geniuses to order by manipulating society’s laboratory conditions; and the nature and causation of mutation are fundamentals of Krundai psychology.

“Of course, like psychohistory, our science works best in the mass, imperfectly with regard to individuals. You humans are at least aware of that supreme paradox-that free will exists to an extent for the individual, but disappears in the group-although you can’t work with it. Brood!-you haven’t even learned how to measure emotion yet. But we can predict the effects of even one man’s actions on the society as a whole … and we know how to bring about the effects we desire, large scale or small, long run or short.

“Which leaves only one more basic attribute of my people: we are very, very hungry.”

I had a ghastly feeling I knew what was coming next, and I didn’t like it. The horrible suspicion that Raksha’s words were building in my brain answered far too many questions I’d never been satisfactorily able to explain to myself before.

“So that’s how that guy got elected,” Callahan breathed, and I winced.

“Precisely,” Raksha agreed. “You begin to understand why I am here.”

“Lay it out, brother,” Tony said grimly. “I think I get it, but I hope I’m wrong.”

Raksha spread his hands. “Very simply, gentlemen, for nearly two thousand years your planet has been a Krundai game preserve.”

“God bless my soul,” said Doc Webster. I looked at Callahan: his face was expressionless, but his eyes were like coals. Tomorrow that table would have inch-deep fingerprints where Finn was holding it.

“For most of that time,” Raksha continued, “the Krundai stationed here made no attempt to do more than control your population, inhibit your social evolution and enforce your ignorance. A war here, a philosophical revolution there, discredit a few thinkers and discourage a line of inquiry or two: elementary maintenance. Rome, for instance, got entirely too civilized-even assassinating Caesar didn’t help enough. Before long it began to look like they were developing a rudimentary medical science and cutting down the mortality rate.

“So we induced cultural decay, and added some hungry barbarians we found conveniently at hand. An earlier stroke of genius, supplying them with the notion of leadbased waterpipes and wine-vats, paid off handsomely, and the threat was ended.

“We went on in this manner for hundreds of years, allowing just enough growth to preserve vigor and letting you graze freely. We had quite a bit of trouble with plagues-frankly, you’re not very clean animals-and finally we decided to let you play with medicine as a simpler solution than running around stamping out an epidemic every few years. There was always war to use as a control and culling device, and anyway, there was plenty of pasture.

“About three hundred years ago, we were notified by Krundar to go into active status and step up production. A food shortage had been predicted, and we were told to expect at any time the order to begin harvesting the herd we had bred and tended so long. We began incubating North America.

“We tripled the usual propaganda to reproduce, filled the continent in an absurdly short time, and encouraged immigration with a massive word-of-mouth advertising campaign about the golden land across the sea, where freedom rang and the streets were paved with gold. It took a bit of finagling to keep Britain from flattening you at the start, but we were in-for us-a hurry. After the requisite wars, we lowered the death-rate considerably to compensate, and began to intensify our efforts.

“A hundred years ago, we received the last command. We have been preparing you to slaughter yourselves ever since.”

“Holy Jesus, it figures,” Bill Gerrity cried.

“You bet your sweet life it figures,” I snarled. “After thousands of years of recorded history, in seventy-five years we go from the Model T Ford to the cobalt bomb and the energy crisis. From corn liquor to Quaaludes. From young giant of a nation to tired old fraud. From …”

“Knock it off, Jake,” Callahan rapped.

I shut my face. Callahan turned back to Raksha, put his huge meaty hands palm down on the table. “Go on,” he said darkly.

The Krundai’s fur bristled, and his eyes rolled in his head. Somehow through my rage I understood that this denoted extreme shame in one of his race, and began to cool off, remembering where I was. The air of calm he had worn was shattered now; he was clearly agitated.

“Humans, hear me!” he intoned. “Hear my sins, hear the full catalog of my infamy before you judge. This is not easy to tell, and I must.”

“Let him speak,” Finn said dispassionately.

“We … I and others, I mean … instituted an explosive increase of knowledge in the physical sciences, smothered or subverted all the social and spiritual sciences. We cranked your technology to a fever pitch of frenzied production, led you to build yourselves a suicidal ethic and culture, gave you toys like the atom bomb and lysergic acid to play with: we gave a loaded gun to an infant. We manipulated elections and revolutions, staged assassinations, encouraged government to calcify beyond the ability of its people to endure, touched off riots, provided you with news media that would carry the news of growing cancer among you, and did all we could to bring into the minds of men a frustration and a terror that would lead inevitably to chaos. You, the steers, are nearly ready to butcher yourselves for our tables.”