Norton, Andre - Anthology (33 page)

Magnan nodded curtly.

"I'll be with you as soon as I
pack a few phone numbers, Retief," the pilot said. He moved off. Magnan
followed him with a disapproving eye. "An uncouth sort, I fancied. I trust
you're not consorting with his kind socially . . ."

"I wouldn't say that,
exactly," Retief said. "We just want to go over a few figures
together."

            
America
has one legend it has exported all over the
world: that of the invincible two-gun expert of the Old West and his various
adversaries—including the wily Indian. Just suppose that this legend, in time,
was to spread to the stars, to become {on at least one world) accepted by an
alien race as the proper form of civilization. The situation in which the
unfortunate space-wrecked traveler in this tale finds himself is enough to make
even Wyatt Earp resign from the footnotes of history.

            
It had been a very
near thing. Alexander Jones spent several minutes enjoying the simple pleasure
of still being alive.

            
Then he looked
around.

            
It could almost have
been Earth—almost, indeed, his own
North America
.
He stood on a great prairie whose dun grasses rolled away beneath a high windy
sky. A flock of birds, alarmed by his descent, clamored upward; they were not
so very different from the birds he knew. A line of trees marked the river, a
dying puff of steam the final berth of his scoutboat. In the hazy eastern
distance he saw dim blue hills. Beyond those, he knew, were the mountains, and
then the enormous dark forests, and finally the sea near which the Draco lay.
A hell of a long ways to travel.

 
          
 
Nevertheless, he was uninjured, and on a
planet almost the twin of his own. The air, gravity, biochemistry, the
late-afternoon sun, could only be told from those of home with sensitive
instruments. The rotational period was approximately 24 hours, the sidereal
year nearly 12
months,
the axial tilt a neat but not
gaudy 11 V2 degrees. The fact that two small moons were in the sky and a third
lurking somewhere else, that the continental outlines were an alien scrawl,
that a snake coiled on a nearby rock had wings, that he was about 500
light-years from the Solar System—all this was mere detail.
The
veriest bagatelle.
Alex laughed at it.

 
          
 
The noise jarred so loud in this emptiness
that he decided a decorous silence was more appropriate to his status as an
officer and, by Act of Parliament as ratified locally by the United States
Senate, a gentleman. Therefore he straightened his high-collared blue naval
tunic, ran a nervous hand down the creases of his white naval trousers, buffed
his shining naval boots on the spilled-out naval parachute, and reached for his
emergency kit.

 
          
 
He neglected to comb his rumpled brown hair,
and his lanky form did not exactly snap to attention. But he was, after all,
quite alone.

 
          
 
Not that he intended to remain in that
possibly estimable condition. He shrugged the heavy packsack off his shoulders.
It had been the only thing he grabbed besides the parachute when his boat
failed, and the only thing he really needed. His hands fumbled it open, and he
reached in for the small but powerful radio which would bring help.

 
          
 
He drew out a book.

 
          
 
It looked unfamiliar, somehow . . . had they
issued a new set of instructions since he was in boot camp? He opened it,
looking for the section on Radios, Emergency,
Use
of.
He read the first page he turned to:

 
          
 
"—apparently incredibly fortunate
historical development was, of course, quite logical. The relative decline in
politico-economic influence of the Northern Hemisphere during the later
twentieth century, the shift of civilized dominance to a Southeast Asia-Indian
Ocean region with more resources, did not, as alarmists at the time predicted,
spell the end of Western civilization. Rather did it spell an upsurge of
Anglo-Saxon democratic and libertarian influence, for the simple reason that
this area, which now held the purse strings of Earth, was in turn primarily led
by Australia and New Zealand, which nations retained their primordial loyalty
to the British
Crown.
The consequent renascence and
renewed growth of the British Commonwealth of Nations, the shaping of its
councils into a truly world—even interplanetary— government, climaxed as it was
by the American Accession, has naturally tended to fix Western culture, even in
small details of everyday life, in the mold of that particular time, a tendency
which was accentuated by the unexpectedly early invention of the
faster-than-light secondary drive and repeated contact with truly different
mentalities, and has produced in the Solar System a social stability which our
forefathers would have considered positively Utopian and which the Service,
working through the Interbeing League, has as its goal to bring to all sentient
races—"

 
          
 
"Guk!" said Alex.

 
          
 
He snapped the book shut. Its title leered up
at him:

           
 
employees
'
orientation manual by Adalbert Parr, Chief Cultural Commissioner

 
          
 
Cultural Development Service

 
          
 
Foreign Ministry of the United Commonwealths

 
          
 
League City
, N.Z., Sol 111

 
          
 
"Oh, no!" said Alex.

 
          
 
Frantically, he pawed through the pack. There
must be a radio ... a raythrower ... a compass . . . one little can of beans?

 
          
 
He extracted some 5000 tightly bundled copies
of CDS Form J-16-LKR, to be filled out in quadruplicate by applicant and
submitted with attached Forms G-776802 and W-2-ZGU.

 
          
 
Alex's snub-nosed face sagged open. His blue
eyes revolved incredulously. There followed a long, dreadful moment in which he
could only think how utterly useless the English language was when it came to
describing issue-room clerks.

 
          
 
"Oh, hell," said Alexander Jones.

 
          
 
He got up and began to walk.

 
          
 
He woke slowly with the sunrise and lay there
for a while wishing he hadn't. A long hike on an empty stomach followed by an uneasy
attempt to sleep on the ground, plus the prospect of several thousand
kilometers of the same, is not conducive to joy. And those animals, whatever
they were, that had been yipping and howling all night sounded so damnably
hungry.

 
          
 
"He looks human."

 
          
 
"Yeah.
But he
ain't dressed like no human."

 
          
 
Alex opened his eyes with a wild surmise. The
drawling voices spoke ... English!

           
 
He closed his eyes again, immediately.
"No," he groaned.

 
          
 
"He's awake, Tex." The voices were
high-pitched, slightly unreal. Alex curled up into the embryonic position and
reflected on the peculiar horror of a squeaky drawl.

 
          
 
"Yeah.
Git up, stranger.
These hyar parts ain't healthy right now,
nohow."

 
          
 
"No," gibbered
Alex.
"Tell me it isn't so. Tell me I've gone crazy, but deliver me
from its being real!"

 
          
 
"I dunno." The voice was uncertain.
"He don't talk like
no
human."

 
          
 
Alex decided there was no point in wishing
them out of existence. They looked harmless, anyway—to everything except his
sanity. He crawled to his feet, his bones seeming to grate against each other,
and faced the natives.

 
          
 
The first expedition, he remembered, had
reported two intelligent races, Hokas and Slissii, on this planet. And these
must be Hokas. For small blessings, give praises! There were two of them,
almost identical to the untrained Terrestrial eye: about a meter tall, tubby
and golden-furred, with round blunt-muzzled heads and small black eyes. Except
for the stubby-fingered hands, they resembled nothing
so
much as giant teddy bears.

 
          
 
The first expedition had, however, said
nothing about their speaking English with a drawl.
Or about
their wearing the dress of Earth's 19th-century West.

 
          
 
All the American historical stereofilms he had
ever seen gabbled in Alex's mind as he assessed their costumes. They wore—let's
see, start at the top and work down and try to keep your reason in the
process—ten-gallon hats with brims wider than their own shoulders, tremendous
red bandanas, checked shirts of riotous hues, levis, enormously flaring chaps, and
high-heeled boots with outsize spurs. Two sagging cartridge belts on each plump
waist supported heavy Colt six-shooters, which almost dragged on the ground.

           
 
One of the natives was standing before the
Earthman,
the other was mounted nearby, holding the reins of
the first one's—well—his animal. The beasts were about the size of a pony, and
had four hoofed feet . . . also whiplike tails, long necks with beaked heads,
and scaly green hides. But of course, thought Alex wildly, of course they bore
Western saddles with lassos at the horns.
Of course.
Who ever heard of a cowboy without a lasso?

 
          
 
"Wa'l, I see yo're awake," said the
standing Hoka.
"Howdy, stranger, howdy."
He
extended his hand. "I'm Tex, and my pardner here is Monty."

 
          
 
"Pleased to meet you," mumbled Alex,
shaking hands in a dreamlike fashion. "I'm Alexander Jones."

 
          
 
"I dunno," said Monty dubiously.
"He ain't named like
no
human."

 
          
 
"Are yo' human, Alexanderjones?
".
asked
Tex.

 
          
 
The spaceman got a firm grip on
himself
and said, spacing his words with care: "I am
Ensign Alexander Jones of the Terrestrial Interstellar Survey Service, attached
to HMS Draco" Now it was the Hokas who looked lost. He added wearily:
"In other words, I'm from Earth. I'm human. Satisfied?"

 
          
 
"I s'pose," said Monty, still
doubtful. "But we'd better take yo' back to town with us an' let Slick
talk to yo'. He'll know more about it. Can't take
no
chances in these hyar times."

 
          
 
"Why not?" said Tex, with a
surprising bitterness. "What we got to lose, anyhow? But come on,
Alexanderjones, we'll go on to town. We shore don't want to be found by no
Injun war parties."

 
          
 
"Injuns?" asked Alex.

 
          
 
"Shore.
They're
comin', you know. We'd better sashay along.
My pony'11 carry
double."

 
          
 
Alex was not especially happily at riding a
nervous reptile in a saddle built for a Hoka. Fortunately, the race was
sufficiently broad in the beam for their seats to have spare room for a slim
Earthman. The "pony" trotted ahead at a surprisingly fast and steady
pace. Reptiles on Toka— so-called by the first expedition from the word for
"earth" in the language of the most advanced Hoka society— seemed to
be more highly evolved than in the Solar System. A fully developed
four-chambered heart and a better nervous system made them almost equivalent to
mammals.

 
          
 
Nevertheless, the creature stank.

 
          
 
Alex looked around. The prairie was just as
big and bare, his ship just as far away.

 
          
 
" 'Tain't
none
o' my business, I reckon," said Tex, "but how'd yo' happen to be
hyar?"