ready, Mike,” I called.
“That’s right, Aedo,” Mike said. “You’ll show your people the way to equality.”
“Make all fellow like this fellow?” Aedo asked.
“Shall I call in Lee?” I asked Mike.
“Yes, that’s right, Aedo. Just right.”
“No,” Aedo said.
The alien stomped the tape camera and the communicator to bits before I could get a hammerlock on him.
Ellik just stared at the complete wreck of our only means of communication with the spaceship.
“I be much man now. I much smart. Much smart than Azure hicks and Indigo slobs. I much smart all. I much man! Not to be all same now. No.” The snarl hung on in Aedo’s throat.
Ellik lifted his head and sort of smiled. But not quite.
“Well,” he said slowly and sadly, “what could you expect in the way of gratitude from a dirty alien?”
*
The Azures did accept Aedo all right. They seem to think he must have come from some other tribe. They don’t associate him with the Indigo that disappeared. No Indigo ever became an Azure before.
Of course, Azures sometimes become Indigos, we found out.
It seems there’s a virus of what Ellik called pseudo-cyanosis in the air. The Azures have become a pretty resistant breed to it, while the Indigos are all easy victims. But once in a while an Azure will come down with it and turn Indigo.
Mike Ellik caught it too.
It happened pretty fast. By the time we realized what it was, he was already too stupid to finish the operation he started on himself. I had to sew him up, not very neatly.
Ellik is treated pretty much like the rest of the Indigos. So am I. He takes it all pretty calm. He can still talk a little Earth. Whenever anybody kicks him, Ellik just mutters something about, “What can fellow expect bunch lousy creeps like those fellow?”
I guess I’ll get it too. I think I am getting it.
It won’t be so bad for me. Just like maybe going around drunk all the time, not being able to think or coordinate very well.
It will be kind of bad being a member of an inferior race, but the thing I’ll hate about it the most isn’t that, or even leaving old Lee up there, circling around and waiting for our call forever.
No, the thing I hate is having it happen now, just when I’m beginning to learn something.
I’m not dead sure I know just exactly what I learned, but I think maybe I do:
You get just what you damned well expected all along from a bunch of blue-blooded mongrels!
Bad Memory
By Patrick Fahy
Channing wanted a planet. Had they sold him a pup?
*
Ex-vector Commander Jim Channing strode purposefully to the reception desk of Planet Enterprises, Inc.
“I want,” he told the well-built blonde who was making an interested survey of his lean features, “to buy a planet.”
“Yes, sir.” Her interest evaporated. She took a card from a filing cabinet and handed it to him. “If you will just fill this out.”
It was a simple questionnaire—type, location, size—and Channing’s stylo moved rapidly over it. He hesitated only at the last, stark question, “How much are you prepared to pay?” Then he wrote neatly in the space provided “One hundred thousand credits.” That was exactly the amount of his signing-off bonus. It also represented his total finances. The unimaginative minds that calculated the pay of a red-blooded space officer didn’t take into account all the attractive ways of spending it that a rumbustious pioneer Vector provided.
He gave the blonde the card and she wrote a name on it. The smile she gave him was altogether impersonal. She liked the look of the big, gangling fellow with “Space” written all over his bronzed face and crinkled blue eyes, but....
She said, “Will you come this way, please?”
The name on the desk identified him as “Mr. Folan” and he was a tall, affable man.
“I think we can suit you, Commander—er—Mr. Channing,” he said, “though what we have in mind mightn’t be quite as large as you wish. Earth-type planets come rather high, you know. Now if you were to choose a Sirius- or a Vega-type—”
“Thank you, no,” Jim said firmly. He had heard too much about the hazards of alien-type planets.
“In that case,” Mr. Folan said busily, “let’s see what we have available.”
*
A month later the doors of the automatic shuttle slid across and admitted Jim Channing to the third planet of Phylox Beta. It also disgorged one spaceboat, a clutter of machinery, a thousand tons of strawberry plants and a fully equipped house. While he was still taking in the first glimpse of his future home, the massive doors slammed shut and the giant ship took off smoothly and silently. A moment later it winked into sub-space. He was in business.
The planet possessed only one sizable island—it could hardly be dignified by the name of continent.
The rest was covered by a vast ocean. Still, as Folan had explained, he couldn’t really expect anything more—not in the line of an Earth-type, anyway—for the money.
He spent a week figuring out the remote controls that operated the planting machinery. Once it clanked into operation, it worked entirely on its own. He had only to push a few buttons to send it lumbering in new directions and the big island steadily took on a resemblance to a huge strawberry patch while Channing fished and lounged in the sun.
When the galactic trade agent came, the strawberries were waiting for him, neatly piled into a mountain of gleaming cans. He was a friendly, talkative little man, glad to exercise his tongue again after the lonely months in space.
“What are you growing here?” he asked Channing.
“Strawberries.”
The friendly smile disappeared. “Every planet in the Galaxy seems to be growing strawberries this year. I can’t even give them away.”
“But I thought the Ursa Major colonies—”
The little man shook his head. “So does everyone else. There’s a million tons of strawberries the colonies can’t use headed there already. Now if it was upklin seeds—”
“Upklin seeds?”
The agent looked at him in surprise. “You mean you haven’t heard about upklin seeds?”
“No. Not a thing.”
“Well, of course, you are a newcomer. It’s this new race that’s been discovered somewhere in The Sack. They are as rich as all get-out and they have a passion for upklin seeds. Trouble is they can’t grow them on local planets and they are offering fancy prices to anybody that can supply them. I paid a thousand credits a bushel for them to your next-door neighbor on the fourth planet last week. Got a hundred bushels.”
Channing did a bit of mental arithmetic. A hundred thousand credits for one crop. Whew!
“Could I grow them here?”
The agent shook his head. “You need plenty of soft marsh and a Jupiter-type atmosphere.”
Then he had a sudden idea and he spoke long and seriously to Channing, explaining quite a few things that were new to him. Channing was still considering them, staring thoughtfully at the ground, after the little man left.