nose with his silver sleeve. “Listen to me, boy. The Damorlanti are a fine, creative, productive race. It isn’t generally known, but they developed the op fastener for evening wear, two of the new scents on the roster come from Damorlan, and the snettis is an adaptation of a Damorlant original. Would you want a species as artistic as that to be annihilated by an epidemic?”
“Do our germs work on them?” Clarey wanted to know.
“That hasn’t been established yet. But their germs certainly work on us.” The general sneezed again. “That’s where I got this sinus trouble, last voyage to Damorlan. But you’ll be inoculated, of course. Now we know what to watch out for, so you’ll be perfectly safe. That is, as far as disease is concerned.”
His face assumed a stern, noble aspect. “Naturally, if you’re discovered as a spy, we’ll have to repudiate you. You must know that from the tri-dis.”
“But I haven’t said I would go!” Clarey howled. “And I can’t see why you’d want me, anyway!”
“Modest,” the general said, lighting a smoke-stick. “An admirable trait in a young intelligence operative—or, indeed, anyone. Have a smoke-stick?”
Clarey hesitated. He had never tried one; he had always wanted to.
“Don’t, Clarey,” the girl advised. “You’ll be sick.”
She spoke with authority and reason. Clarey shook his head.
The general inhaled and exhaled a cloud of smoke in the shape of a bunnit. “The Damorlanti look like us, but because they look like us, that doesn’t mean they think like us. They may not have the least idea of developing space travel, simply be interested in developing thought, art, ideals, splendid cultural things like that. We don’t know enough about them; we may be making mountains out of molehills.”
“Martian molehills,” Clarey snickered.
“Precisely,” the general agreed. “Except that there are no moles on Mars either.”
“But I still can’t understand. Why me?”
The general leaned forward and said in a confidential tone, “We want to understand the true Damorlan. Our observations have been too superficial; couldn’t help being. There we come, blasting out of the skies with the devil of a noise, running all over the planet as if we owned it. You know how those skyboys throw their gravity around.”
Clarey nodded. Sentries of the Sky had kept him well informed on such matters.
“So what we want is a man who can go to Damorlan for five or ten years and become a Damorlant in everything but basic loyalties. A man who will absorb the very spirit of the culture, but in terms our machines can understand and interpret.” Spano stood erect. “You, Clarey, are that man!”
The girl applauded. “Well done, Steff! You finally got it right side up!”
“But I’ve lived twenty-eight years on this planet and I’m not a part of its culture,” Clarey protested. “I’m a lonely, friendless man—you must know that if you’ve deep-probed me—so why should I put up a front and be brave and proud about it?”
Then he gave a short, bitter laugh. “I see. That’s the reason you want me. I have no roots, no ties; I belong nowhere. Nobody loves me. Who else, you think, but a man like me would spend ten years on an alien planet as an alien?”
“A patriot, Sub-Archivist,” the general said sternly. “By God, sir, a patriot!”
“There’s nothing I’d like better than to see Terra and all its colonies go up in smoke. Mind you,” Clarey added quickly, for he was not as drunk as all that, “I’ve nothing against the government. It’s a purely personal grievance.”
The general unsteadily patted his arm. “You’re detached, m’boy. You can examine an alien planet objectively, without trying to project your own cultural identity upon it, because you have no cultural identity.”
“How about physical identity?” Clarey asked. “They can’t be ex-exactly like us. Against the laws of nature.”
“The laws of man are higher than the laws of nature,” the general said, waving his arm. A gout of smoke curled around his head and became a halo. “Very slight matter of plastic surgery. And we’ll change you back as soon as you return.” Then he sat down heavily. “How many young men in your position get an opportunity like this? Permanent U-E status, a hundred thousand credits a year and, of course, on Damorlan you’d be on an expense account; our money’s no good there. By the time you got back, there’d be about a million and a half waiting for you, with interest. You could buy all the instruments and tape all the music you wanted. And, if the Musicians’ Guild puts up a fuss, you could buy it, too. Don’t let anybody kid you about the wheel, son; money was mankind’s first significant invention.”
“But ten years. That’s a long time away from home.”
“Home is where the heart is, and you wanting to see your own planet go up in a puff of smoke—why, even an ilf wouldn’t say a thing like that!” Spano shook his head. “That’s too detached for me to understand. You’ll find the years will pass quickly on Damorlan. You’ll have stimulating work to do; every moment will be a challenge. When it’s all over, you’ll be only thirty-eight—the very prime of life. You won’t have aged even that much, because you’ll be entitled to longevity treatments at regular intervals.
“So think it over, m’boy.” He rose waveringly and clapped Clarey on the shoulder. “And take the rest of the afternoon off; I’ll fix it with Archives. We wouldn’t want you coming back from Classification intoxicated.” He winked. “Make a very bad impression on your co-workers.”
Han masked herself and escorted Clarey to the restaurant portway. “Don’t believe everything he says. But I think you’d better accept the offer.”
“I don’t have to,” Clarey said.
“No,” she agreed, “you don’t. But you’d better.”
Clarey took the cheap underground route home. His antiseptic little two-room apartment seemed even bleaker than usual. He dialed a dyspep pill from the auto-spensor; the lunch was beginning to tell on him. And that evening he couldn’t even take an interest in Sentries of the Sky, which, though he’d never have admitted it, was his favorite program. He had no friends; nobody would miss him if he left Earth or died or anything. The general’s right, he thought; I might as well be an alien on an alien planet. At least I’ll be paid better. And he wondered whether, in lighter gravity, his spirits might not get a lift.
He dragged himself to work the next day. He found someone did care after all. “Well, Sub-Archivist Clarey,” Chief Section Archivist MacFingal snarled, “I would have expected to see more sparkle in your eye, more pep in your step, after a whole day of nothing but sweet rest.”
“But—but General Spano said it would be all right if I didn’t report back in the afternoon.”
“Oh, it is all right, Sub-Archivist, no question of that. How could I dare to complain about a man who has such powerful friends? I suppose if I gave you the Sagittarius files to reorganize, you’d go running to your friend General Spano, sniveling about cruel and unfair treatment.”
So Clarey started reorganizing the Sagittarius files—a sickeningly dull task which should by rights have gone to a junior archivist. All morning he couldn’t help thinking about Damorlan—its invigorating atmosphere, its pleasant climate, its presumed absence of archives and archivists. During his lunchstop he looked up the planet in the files. There was only a small part of a tape on it. There might be more in the Classified Files. It was, of course, forbidden to view secretapes without a direct order from the Chief Archivist, but the tapes were locked by the same code as the rare editions. After all, he told himself, I have a legitimate need for the information.
So he punched for Damorlan in the secret files. He put the tape in the viewer.