Happiness: A Planet (34 page)

Belid laughed at only a few of his misconceptions, for the rest she was as glad of an audience to whom she could justify her minority preference for planetary life as he was grateful to have explained to him those aspects of planetary life which had been a mystery to him. He was, however, no easy convert to a planetary life.

“Look about you,” Belid said as their beasts plodded slowly up the sides of Copper Hill. “Tell me of anything more wonderful in the entire universe.”

Below the red slopes of the hill were her father’s ordered orchards, beyond them the ragged edge of a large area of wilderness. Two dark birds, their wings outstretched, were soaring in silent circles about the summit of the hill. Drin had to admit that the scene did cause a certain elation, but his main preoccupation was in not falling off his swaying beast. And the backs of his hands had been stung by an insect. And the uncomfortable heat of the sun was making him sweat. And the dust roused by their passage stuck to his sweaty skin. And the beast stank.

Belid’s mother had packed a lunch for them. Below the round summit of the hill they dismounted and Drin stretched his sore and aching legs. As they began eating Drin recalled the reason for his being there and questioned Belid about the two ships that she had seen explode.

“I’m not trying to prove anything. I just want to know exactly what you saw.”

Belid told the whole story, without tears this time, from her takeoff to her landing in the lumber yard. Drin questioned her closely about what she had seen, and what she had not seen, in the seconds prior to the ships exploding. But, believing now that he understood her way of thinking, he didn’t press her about why she hadn’t followed the flight path the Senate had given her.

The interview closed they remounted and he returned to talking generally of life on the planet, of the other animals of which Belid claimed to be fond. Belid confessed to him how inconsolably lonely she had been on XE2. So they continued on their ride back to the farm.

When the house was in sight Belid, warning Drin not to copy her, kicked her beast into a run.

Drin was not in the least tempted to emulate her. His beast was. The entire length of that last long green road he had to hold it in check. By the time he reached the farmhouse not only his legs but his arms, his hands, his back and his head were hurting.

Belid’s father, chuckling over Drin’s stiffness, helped him dismount and suggested that he take a shower. Drin concurred, returned his breeches to him. The shower did not remove the cloying stink of the animal.

He then ate with the family, and afterwards, while awaiting the return of the police plane, he was introduced to Belid’s other pet animals. Most, he was told, had been found injured or abandoned and she had reared them herself. Drin’s fear of the sharp-toothed cold-eyed creatures amused Belid. She was familiar with their harmless habits.

When the police plane landed the family all earnestly invited him to come again and to stay longer, stood on the apron to wave goodbye to him. The two police officers, aware of the stink of his tunic, were impressed by his having ridden. Their praise of such a primitive accomplishment profoundly puzzled Drin.

Back at headquarters Drin divested himself of his tunic, had another shower and composed his report. He included in that report his estimate of the exact part homesickness had played in all of Belid Keal’s actions and perceptions. His report filed, he phoned the bar to inform Alger of his return, told him that he was going to bed early. As he laid his aching body upon his bunk he wondered at the strange euphoria glowing within him — a euphoria at odds with the discomforts of the day.

The following morning the Director called Alger, told him that he had better leave or those on XE2 would be getting worried by the absence of news from Happiness. Nothing had happened on or near the Nautili road. With Alger grumbling that they had become little more than a mailship, they unconcernedly left Happiness’s atmosphere.

The day after Jorge Arbatov and Tulla Yorke had left for Happiness, the first of the news-sleuths had arrived on XE2. Clue by clue they had picked up the signposts to a possible story, and all those signposts had pointed towards XE2.

Several shipping companies had been voicing their concern at freighters being overdue. Each of those overdue freighters’ last port of call had been at a planet within the Department of XE2. The news-sleuths, independently, had discovered that that particular planet was being held incommunicado. On top of that it had been learnt that Hambro Harrap had left the city for XE2; and that one company, a mysteriously owned subsidiary of a subsidiary, had copyrighted all news from the planet in that Department. For a story to be copyrighted meant that there had to be a story. News-sleuths compete for scoops. They are also adept at infringing copyrights without appearing so to do.

The news has to compete for media time. In order therefore to present the news as drama news-sleuths seek out controversy and conflict, scandal and calamity. On XE2, however, the news-sleuths met with the obduracy of Nero Porsnin’s ‘decline to comment’. To whatever question he was asked, be it as to why the Departmental Director should have gone to Happiness, or even what Nero’s own last posting was, Nero declined to comment.

Nor did a covert examination of XE2’s Service records enlighten the news-sleuths. Indeed it says much of the mentality of news-sleuths that they chose to crack only the ‘Most Confidential’ Service codes, none of which concerned events on Happiness, those events all being kept on open record. Not one of the news-sleuths examined the open Service records; although it has to be said that quantity alone may have deterred them.

Be that as it may, all that they were able to discover was that a State of Emergency had been instituted on Happiness, that its moon had gone missing, and that Hambro Harrap was down there.

When, after three days, Nero Porsnin, Acting Director, made himself unavailable for comment the news-sleuths took themselves off to adjacent Departments in the hope that someone there would know what was happening on Happiness. So two of those news-sleuths arrived on Torc and, discovering that Eldon Boone was the Inspector of Police on XE2, they sought to interview him. After finding out what they knew Inspector Eldon Boone, too, declined to comment.

But Inspector Eldon Boone did find this sudden media interest disquieting. With so many amateur detectives about, many of them illicitly offering cash for information, his prosecution of the fraud could be accidentally uncovered before he had made one single arrest. Consequently, although he had not yet acquired sufficent incriminating evidence to be able to charge every suspect, Inspector Eldon Boone set into motion a prearranged plan for the apprehension of all those known to be involved in the fraud.

On receipt of his signal undercover police on processing plants, on platforms, in factories, and on freighters when they docked, revealed their true identity and arrested the suspects. Other detectives called on businessmen in their offices, off-duty freighter crews in their apartments in the city, on Torc, on Ben, on XE2 and other stations, and escorted the suspects to police cells. With the result that, five days after Inspector Eldon Boone had dispatched the password ‘Open Lid’, 583 people found themselves under arrest. A large enough number one would have thought, especially when the confessions of some of those detained led to another 133 arrests, yet Inspector Eldon Boone was later to claim that having been forced to act prematurely had cost him at least a further 200 arrests.

The people arrested ranged from platform technicians and freighter skippers to company directors, to two celebrated cavalier businessmen, three Service Directors of Communication, one of Supply, a Chief Superintendent of Police, and two City Senate Members. And with those arrests the media lost all interest in a possible story on Happiness; indeed the general impression was that events there had somehow been connected with the fraud.

For this was no petty fraud, of the kind known in police jargon as ‘thumbweight’, where a load may be rounded up or down to suit the nefarious profits of small time embezzlers. No, in this widespread and long-standing fraud, whole consignments had been going ‘missing’. Consequently, among the news-sleuths, the matter of a few freighters reported missing at this time didn’t raise any suspicions. Added to which the workings of the fraud were so complex that it took all the cognitive powers of the news-sleuths to condense it to a publicly comprehensible form. Any residual suspicions of doubtful happenings on Happiness were, therefore, pushed swiftly to one side. Indeed the only tenuous connection with Happiness was that the ex-Director of Communications on Torc, whose post Jorge Arbatov had temporarily filled, was one of those arrested. And to that end it must be stated clearly here, lest it be misunderstood, that neither Hambro Harrap nor Anton Singh were in any way associated with the fraud, although media pundits at the time did link Hambro Harrap’s name with the fraud.

On his second return to XE2 Sergeant Alger Deaver was not at all pleased to learn of the arrests connected with the fraud; arrests about which the station police on XE2 were insufferably jubilant.

“In the meantime,” Alger said to Drin, “while they’re doing real police work, we’ve become a couple of errand boys for a bunch of dirt diggers.” Such a sentiment, however, didn’t prevent Alger purchasing, during his hurried day on XE2, the long list of goods requested by Happiness’s dirt diggers.

The police ship also took back to Happiness the news, or rather the absence of it, confirming Hambro Harrap’s failure to arrive in the city. Jorge Arbatov, therefore, officially declared him missing. But, as the police ship remained in Happiness’s capital, the universe beyond Happiness remained unaware that Senator Hambro Harrap was deemed officially missing; nor, being preoccupied with the scandalous fraud, was Space in the least perturbed by Hambro Harrap’s continuing absence from the City Senate.

Because of the Safety Order diverting all ships from Happiness Jorge Arbatov knew that the planet was free from interference for several weeks yet. Therefore, having noted the other items of news that the police ship had brought back with it, Jorge continued with his preparation of the report he had begun on the completion of the road.

Apart from a daily visit to the road, flown there in their plane by the Spokesman or his wife, Jorge spent his days inside his converted freighter. The only other time of the day he emerged was to cross the apron to the farmhouse and take his evening meal with the Spokesman and his family.

The Spokesman’s children went in awe of Jorge’s age, his height, his thinness, his baldness, his wrinkled pallor and his preoccupied solemnity; though he did occasionally rouse himself to converse with their parents, interesting them in horticultural and agricultural methods he had seen employed on other planets.

The report, as was to be expected from Jorge Arbatov, was minutely detailed, closely argued, and lengthy. In it he traced events from the disappearance of the moon, the loss of radio communication and the disappearance of the first ship — Halk Fint’s — up to the building of the road. For every turn in the events he referred to a Service record, police record or Happiness Senate Record — see H/7/T4332 p4 IP5, etcetera. And having told the history he proceeded to state what the road hoped to achieve. He then appended his recommendations, which exceeded the length of the history.

First he recommended, in order not to put at risk any more lives, that every inhabited planet likely to be colonised by the Nautili — and he gave a list of all such planets within the next eighty year spread of the Nautili — be equipped with two unmanned mailships each to supplement their radio transmissions. Those unmanned mailships would keep up a continuous and direct shuttle service between the planet and its station, thereby curtailing the period of warning of any Nautili blockade.

In light of the expense of this recommendation, he suggested that those planets most at risk of Nautili colonisation should first be given the unmanned mailships; and he appended a list of those planets.

He also recommended the setting up of a Service Bureau to deal exclusively with the Nautili. He suggested that this Bureau should be given the means to recruit all authorities on Nautili, people such as Tevor Cade. With the assistance of those experts the Bureau would then assemble a body of information concerning Nautili, which would be dispatched to all Departments. He also suggested the creation of a team, or teams, who could be called on by any planet which suspected that it was being colonised by Nautili. So that, in Jorge Arbatov’s words, ‘we would not in future have to depend on the inspired guesswork of an itinerant astrophysicist.’

With regard to Happiness, Jorge suggested, having had the planet’s technicians take some meteorological measurements, that as an immediate measure certain badly affected farms have their boundaries temporarily changed. And, in light of Constable Drin Ligure’s interview with Belid Keal, for which he commended him, Jorge suggested an objective screening of planetary children to weed out the minority like Belid Keal who do not benefit from a Space education, to whom it is in fact harmful, occasionally fatal; and whom it unbalances to such an extent that their testimony is immediately viewed as being unreliable.

(Due to pressure from many planets this proposal of Jorge Arbatov’s is, at the time of writing, under serious consideration by the Legislature. Because, due to the size of our civilisation, and even though those children are a distinct minority, we are nevertheless every day inflicting needless pain on several thousand individuals. The difficulty lies in determining, before they are sent, which children will not benefit from a Space education. Which is why the proposal is still under consideration. Because all planetary children are initially homesick; that homesickness, however, is soon overtaken by the majority’s excitement in their new surroundings. To formulate an objective test to distinguish those few who remain homesick more research is required. The stumbling block so far in the formulation of any acceptable test is that it has to measure the emotional dependency of the children on their parents against their drive to achievement. Although there may yet prove to be other factors involved.)