Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 (31 page)

They all went then into one of the big ship's public rooms. Soft-footed
stewardesses served drinks. Lessing tried to hurry matters, told Korring
vis Korring of the crowds of people who were waiting ashore for some word
of what was happening. "Let them wait," said the spaceman. "Our cargo
consists of only luxury goods."

"Life without luxury is drab, my son," said the priest.

Lessing looked at him with a fresh interest. His figure was lean, but his
face was not the face of an ascetic. It was the face of a man who has
enjoyed, and who is still enjoying, all the good things of life.
Perhaps,
he thought,
their religion has its points—

"We shall require accommodation," said Korring. "We shall be staying here
after the ship leaves. I take it that you will make the necessary
arrangements."

"I will. But I should like to find out now what cargo you have brought and
what goods you want in exchange. We have a warehouse full of cargo—whisky,
gin, all sorts of wines, all sorts of cigarettes and tobacco. There are
representatives of other nations waiting ashore, and all of them have
brought samples of wares in which you may be interested. Then there's the
problem of how you're going to get the cargo from out of your ship onto
the lighters and from the lighters into your ship. I'd like to get our
stevedore out here to talk it over with whoever has relieved you as chief
officer."

"All in good time, Lessing," laughed Korring. "Try to remember that you're
no longer a seaman, just as I'm no longer a spaceman. We're persons of
importance on this planet now. The world waits upon our decisions—and
while the world is waiting, we have another drink."

They had another drink. It was some strong, oversweet and overscented
spirit. Lessing would have preferred beer. But he had another drink, and
then another, and the next morning, when he awoke in a strange bunk in a
strange cabin with a splitting headache, he had vague memories of trying
to teach the spacemen some of the bawdier drinking songs in his repertoire
and had more vague memories of their having reciprocated in kind.

A stewardess brought him in a cup of steaming fluid and a white capsule.
Lessing assumed that the capsule would be good for his headache. It was.
He was standing in front of the mirror when Korring came in and told him
that the jar of white cream on the shelf was a depilatory. Lessing shaved—if
the smearing on and off of cream can be called shaving—and dressed,
and felt a lot better. He found Kennedy in the adjoining cabin and was
told that Garwood had prevailed upon the launch skipper to take him ashore
when the party started getting rough. Garwood was married and was a little
afraid of his wife. There would be, said Kennedy, a launch on hail by the
air lock until required.

The sun was high in the sky when at last Lessing and the party from the
ship boarded the waiting launch and made their way shoreward. The crowds
still packed the road inshore from the beach, and the Station Pier was
alive with people. Of the aliens, only Korring was unperturbed. He stood
in the bows of the launch, letting the wind play with the black cloak that
he was wearing over his finery. He looked, thought Lessing, like a
character out of a comic strip.

The launch pulled up alongside the stage to a great coruscation of
flashbulbs. Korring stepped down from the bows to allow Lessing to lead
the way up the steps. The party from the ship, after a minute or so, stood
facing the civil and military dignitaries. Lessing performed the
introductions, explained what the arrangement was. Then, at Korring's
insistence, a visit was paid immediately to the warehouse in which the
goods were stocked. He smiled his approval. He said, "We can take perhaps
half of this, and we will discharge an equivalent volume of cargo. The
cargo from the ship will have to be discharged first, of course—"

"I've discharged and loaded ships before," said Lessing dryly. "In any
case, you still haven't told me what arrangements you want for handling
cargo. We'll send lighters and waterside workers out to your ship. What
happens then?"

"We discharge our cargo into them," said Korring.

"Yes. But how?"

"You'll see. Come out with me in the first lighter."

Lessing did so. The dozen or so waterside workers who were in the craft
were not awed by the civil and military dignitaries who rode with them and
were even less awed by Korring. Lessing smiled as he heard him referred to
as Superman and Mandrake the Magician. Korring ignored them, told Lessing
to tell the tug to pull around to the other side of the ship. There was a
larger air lock there, and obviously one used for cargo rather than for
personnel.

The lighter was hardly fast when the first bale came floating out and
settled with a thud into the open hold. As it was followed by a second and
a third, the Earthmen gawked.

"Just a simple application of antigravity," smiled the spaceman.

"Could we have it?" asked the Air commodore who was one of those present.
His voice was pleading. "Could we have it?"

"
No,
" said Korring flatly. He said to Lessing, "We aren't
stevedores. I suggest that you call a boat and have us taken ashore again.
There is still the matter of the accommodation for myself and my people to
put in hand. Also, I would like to see your city and your shops."

"You stay in charge, Kennedy," said Lessing. He waved to one of the
official launches.

"I think I'll stay here too," said the Air commodore, still looking at the
stream of bales with fascination.

"As you please," said Korring. "But I must warn you that there are armed
guards throughout the ship who have orders to shoot any unauthorized
visitor."

"A taste of his own medicine," laughed one of the wharfies.

The airman did not hear him. When Lessing looked back from the launch he
saw him still standing there, still staring at the stream of merchandise
flowing from the ship as though on an invisible conveyor belt.

That, so far as Earth was concerned, was the beginning of interstellar
trade. At intervals of roughly a week, the big ships dropped down, each
landing in Port Phillip Bay, which had become the world's first spaceport.
All sorts of exotic drinks and foodstuffs they brought, and all sorts of
fascinating gadgets. There were cameras that took photographs in three
dimensions—the result, if a portrait, looking like a little
statuette mounted in a cube of clear plastic. There were all sorts of
devices that made direct use of solar power—for cooking, for the
warming of houses, for the motivation of light machinery. There were bales
of the marvelous synthetic cloth that represented the idea toward which
all of Earth's manufacturers of synthetic fabrics were striving.

They took away whisky and cigarettes, brandy and chocolate, wine and
honey, books and paintings. They took away things of value and things that
most Earthmen considered trash. They took away living animals of every
species to stock the interstellar zoos throughout the galaxy.

Malvar Korring vis Korring and the biologist, the slim brunette Edile
Kular var Kular, who was his wife, stayed. The other technicians and
experts came and went. The aliens were not unpopular guests in the hotel
that they had made their headquarters. The priest, Glandor, stayed also.
(Lessing was never able to work out the system of nomenclature used by the
aliens. It involved complex family relationships, and the priesthood was
held to be related by bonds of love to all men and women.)

The priest stayed, and he was joined after a while by more scarlet-robed
priests and priestesses; all of them young, all of them attractive. A
church was built to his specifications on the outskirts of the city.
Lessing was not particularly interested in religion and did not know, for
a long time, what went on in the building. He did not know, in fact, until
he accorded an interview to a delegation of representative churchmen in
his office.

"Mr. Lessing," said their leader, "these people are pagans. They preach
the gratification of every lust, every desire. They say,
What shall it
profit a man if he die before he has lived?
"

"Fair enough," said Lessing.

"But, Mr. Lessing, you don't understand. We, in this state, have always
prided ourselves upon our rectitude. In Victoria, if nowhere else in
Australia, the Sabbath is still the Sabbath. These aliens are desecrating
the Sabbath."

"How?" asked Lessing, interested.

"In that so-called temple of theirs they serve alcoholic liquor to all
comers. There is music—profane, not sacred music—and dancing.
There is at least tacit encouragement of immorality."

"Immorality?" asked Lessing. "What do you mean by the word? Usury was once
one of the seven deadly sins—but your churches are now among the
usurers themselves. Murder is an immoral act, and so is lying—"

"You know what I mean," said the churchman. "What we want to know is this—what
are you doing about it?"

"Nothing," said Lessing. "I am merely the trade commissioner. These people
have signed a treaty with the sovereign government of this country—this
country,
not this
state
—giving them, among other
things, freedom to make converts to their religion. It may be an odd one—but
there have been some odd ones on this planet. There still are, in all
probability."

That, as far as Lessing was concerned, was that.

But when trouble came—and it was not long in coming—it came
not from the churches but from those who were, officially, their enemies.
The big breweries, who are also the hotel owners, hate competition. It was
never proved that they were the paymasters of the mob that destroyed the
aliens' temple, but the riot was too well organized to have been
spontaneous. The high priest was killed; two of the priestesses were
murdered. A dozen earthly converts lost their lives.

It was Korring vis Korring who brought the news to Lessing, bursting into
his hotel room and shaking him into wakefulness.

"Lessing," he said. "I like you. I'm telling you to get out and to take
any friends of yours with you."

Lessing was still drowsy. "Why?" he asked vaguely.

"Because, my friend, we're pulling out. All of us. We're pulling out
before the retaliation starts."

"Retaliation? What for?"

"What for, you ask! A mob of puritans or wowsers or whatever you call them
has just destroyed the temple. There has been bloodshed, murder. Our fleet
is already in orbit about your planet and will be opening fire in a matter
of minutes."

"What?" Lessing was fully awake now. He sat up in the bed and caught
Korring vis Korring's arm. "Korring," he said quietly, "tell me something.
Were you people as ignorant of Earth as you made out at our first
contact?"

"Let go of me!" snarled Korring.

"Not so fast. Tell me, did you pick a state notorious for its blue laws,
its restrictive legislation, in which to make your headquarters, in which
your missionaries could start preaching their gospel? Was it deliberate?"

"Let me go!" shouted the spaceman, breaking free. He was through the door
in a second. Lessing, following, tripped in his bedclothes and fell
heavily to the floor. When he got out into the corridor he found that the
rooms in which the aliens had lived were all empty. He had to wait a long
time for the elevator to come back up to his floor. Then, at the hotel
entrance, the night porter informed him that the "space ladies and
gentlemen" had just been picked up by some sort of aircraft.

All that Lessing could do was to use the telephone. But it is one thing
knowing whom to call and another thing to convince them of the truth of
what you are saying. From the politicians and service chiefs he got little
joy. When at last, in desperation, he thought of calling the city's
high-ranking police officers, it was too late. The telephone went dead
just as the first rumble of dreadful thunder deafened him, just as the
first glare of the aliens' lightning blinded his eyes.

He remembered little of what happened afterward. He was a seaman, and his
instinct was to make for the water. Kennedy was with him, and Garwood, and
Garwood's young wife. Somehow they passed unscathed through the fire and
the falling wreckage; somehow they found a car and in it joined the press
of refugees making for the bay. Something hit Lessing—he never found
out what it was—and he lost consciousness. He recovered when the
cold salt spray drove over his face, and realized that he was in an
overcrowded, open launch just clear of the Heads.

There were the lights of a ship toward which they were steering.

Lessing was not surprised when he found that for him the business had
ended where it started, felt a sense of the essential fittingness of
things when he dragged himself painfully up the pilot ladder and found
himself standing on the familiar deck of his old ship, the
Woollabra.

Somebody was supporting him. He saw, in the reflected glare from the
overside floodlights, that it was Tom, the big Polynesian bos'n.

"Captain," asked Tom, "is it true that Melbourne has been destroyed?"

"Yes. And other cities too, perhaps …"

"The familiar pattern," said the bos'n, as though to himself. "The chance
contact— The trader— The missionary— The incident—
And the gunboat—"

"And after the gunboat?" asked Lessing.

"We learned the answer to that question many years ago," said Tom. "Now
it's your turn."

The End

Rog Phillips

Dr. Cedric Elton slipped into his office by the back entrance, shucked off
his topcoat and hid it in the small, narrow-doored closet, then picked up
the neatly piled patient cards his receptionist, Helena Fitzroy, had
placed on the corner of his desk. There were only four, but there could
have been a hundred if he accepted everyone who asked to be his patient,
because his successes had more than once been spectacular and his
reputation as a psychiatrist had become so great because of this that his
name had become synonymous with psychiatry in the public mind.