Murray Leinster (23 page)

‘Fifty per cent,’ says Brooks.

I chime in, ‘But we ain’t lost much trade. Lots of Moklins still trade with us, out of friendship. Friendly folks, these Moklins.’

Just then Deeth comes in, looking just like Casey that used to be here on Moklin. He grins at me.

‘A girl just brought you a compliment,’ he lets me know.

‘Shucks!’ I says, embarrassed and pleased. ‘Send her in and get a present for her.’

Deeth goes out. Inspector Caldwell hasn’t noticed. She’s seething over that other trading company copying our trade goods and underselling us on a planet we’re supposed to have exclusive. Brooks looks at her grim.

‘I shall look over their post,’ she announces, fierce, ‘and if they want a trade war, they’ll get one! We can cut prices if we need to - we have all the resources of the Company behind us!’

Brooks seems to be steaming on his own, maybe because she hasn’t read his reports. But just then a Moklin girl comes in. Not bad-looking, either. You can see she is a Moklin - she ain’t as convincing human as Deeth is, say - but she looks pretty human, at that. She giggles at me.

‘Compliment,’ she says, and shows me what she’s carrying.

I look. It’s a Moklin kid, a boy, just about brand-new. And it has my shape ears, and its nose looks like somebody had stepped on it - my nose is that way - and it looks like a very small-sized working model of me. I chuck it under the chin and say, ‘Kitchy-coo!’ It gurgles at me.

‘What’s your name?’ I ask the girl.

She tells me. I don’t remember it, and I don’t remember ever seeing her before, but she’s paid me a compliment, all right -Moklin-style.

‘Mighty nice,’ I say. ‘Cute as all get-out. I hope he grows up to have more sense than I got, though.’ Then Deeth comes in with a armload of trade stuff like Old Man Bland gave to the first Moklin kid that was bom with long whiskers like his, and I say, ‘Thanks for the compliment. I am greatly honored.’

She takes the stuff and giggles again, and goes out. The kid beams at me over her shoulder and waves its fist. Mighty humanlike. A right cute kid, anyway you look at it.

Then I hear a noise. Inspector Caldwell is regarding me with loathing in her eyes.

‘Did you say they were friendly creatures?’ she asks, bitter. ‘I think affectionate would be a better word!’ Her voice shakes. ‘You are going to be transferred out of here the instant the
Palmyra
gets back!’

‘What’s the matter?’ I ask, surprised. ‘She paid me a compliment and I gave her a present. It’s a custom. She’s satisfied. I never see her before that I remember.’

‘You
don’t}’
she says. ‘The - the
callousness
! You’re revolting!’

Brooks begins to sputter, then he snickers, and all of a sudden he’s howling with laughter. He is laughing at Inspector Caldwell. Then I get it, and I snort. Then I hoot and holler. It gets funnier when she gets madder still. She near blows up from being mad!

We must look crazy, the two of us there in the post, just hollering with laughter while she gets furiouser and furiouser. Finally I have to lay down on the floor to laugh more comfortable. You see, she doesn’t get a bit of what I’ve told her about there being a special kind of evolution on Moklin. The more disgusted and furious she looks at me, the harder I have to laugh. I can’t help it.

When we set out for the other trading post next day, the atmosphere ain’t what you’d call exactly cordial. There is just the Inspector and me, with Deeth and a couple of other Moklins for the look of things. She has on a green forest suit, and with her red hair she sure looks good! But she looks at me cold when Brooks says I’ll take her over to the other post, and she doesn’t say a word the first mile or two.

We trudge on, and presently Deeth and the others get ahead so they can’t hear what she says. And she remarks indignant,
‘1
must say Mr. Brooks isn’t very cooperative. Why didn’t he come with me? Is he afraid of the men at the other post?’

‘Not him,’ I says. ‘He’s a good guy. But you got authority over him and you ain’t read his reports.’

‘If I have authority,’ she says, sharp, ‘I assure you it’s because I’m competent!’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ I says. ‘If you wasn’t cute, he wouldn’t care. But a man don’t want a good-looking girl giving him orders. He wants to give them to her. A homely woman, it don’t matter.’

She tosses her head, but it don’t displease her. Then she says. ‘What’s in the reports that I should have read?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admit. ‘But he’s been sweating over them. It makes him mad that nobody bothered to read ’em.’

‘Maybe,’ she guesses, ‘it was what I need to know about this other trading post. What do you know about it, Mr. Brinkley?’

I tell her what Deeth has told Brooks. Brooks found out about it because one day some Moklins come in to trade and ask friendly why we charge so much for this and that. Deeth told them we’d always charged that, and they say the other trading post sells things cheaper, and Dcctli says whnt trading post? So they up and tell him there’s another post that sells the same kind of things we do, only cheaper. But that’s all they’ll say.

So Brooks tells Deeth to find out, and he scouts around and comes back. There is another trading post only fifteen miles away, and it is selling stuff just like ours. And it charges only half price. Deeth didn’t see the men - just the Moklin clerks. We ain’t been able to see the men either.

‘Why haven’t you seen the men?’

‘Every time Brooks or me go over,’ I explain, ‘the Moklins they got working for them say the other men are off somewhere. Maybe they’re starting some more posts. We wrote ’em a note, asking what the hell they mean, but they never answered it. Of course, we ain’t seen their books or their living quarters—’

‘You could find out plenty by a glimpse at their books!’ she snaps. ‘Why haven’t you just marched in and made the Moklins show you what you want to know, since the men were away?’ ‘Because,’ I says, patient, ‘Moklins imitate humans. If we start trouble, they’ll start it too. We can’t set a example of rough stuff like burglary, mayhem, breaking and entering, manslaughter, or bigamy, or those Moklins will do just like us.’ ‘Bigamy!’ She grabs on that sardonic. ‘If you’re trying to make me think you’ve got enough moral sense—’

I get a little mad. Brooks and me, we’ve explained to her, careful, how it is a
dmir
ation
and
the way evolution works on Moklin that makes Moklin kids get bom with long whiskers and that the compliment the Moklin girl has paid me is just exactly that. But she hasn’t listened to a word.

^f
Miss Caldwell,’I says, ‘Brooks and me told you the facts. We tried to tell them delicate, to spare your feelings. Now if you’ll try to spare mine, I’ll thank you.’

‘If you mean your finer feelings,’ she says, sarcastic, ‘I’ll spare them as soon as I find some!’

So I shut up. There’s no use trying to argue with a woman. We tramp on through the forest without a word. Presently we come on a nest-bush. It’s a pretty big one. There are a couple dozen nests on it, from the little-bitty bud ones no bigger than your fist, to the big ripe ones lined with soft stuff that have busted open and have got cacklebirds housekeeping in them now.

There are two cacklebirds sitting on a branch by the nest that is big enough to open up and have eggs laid in it, only it ain’t. The cacklebirds are making noises like they are cussing it and telling it to hurry up and open, because they are in a hurry.

‘That’s a nest-bush,’ I says. ‘It grows nests for the cacklebirds. The birds - uh - fertilize the ground around it. They’re sloppy feeders and drop a lot of stuff that rots and is fertilizer too. The nest-bush and the cacklebirds kind of cooperate. That’s the way evolution works on Moklin, like Brooks and me told you.’

She tosses that red head of hers and stamps on, not saying a word. So we get to the other trading post. And there she gets one of these slow-burning, long-lasting mads on that fill a guy like me with awe.

There’s only Moklins at the other trading post, as usual. They say the humans are off somewhere. They look at her admiring and polite. They show her their stock. It is practically identical with ours - only they admit that they’ve sold out of some items because their prices are low. They act most respectful and pleased to see her.

But she don’t learn a thing about where their stuff comes from or what company is homing in on Moklin trade. And she looks at their head clerk and she bums and bums.

When we get back, Brooks is sweating over memorandums he has made, getting another report ready for the next Company ship. Inspector Caldwell marches into the trade room and gives orders in a controlled, venomous voice. Then she marches right in on Brooks.

‘I have just ordered the Moklin sales force to cut the price on all items on sale by seventy-five per cent,’ she says, her voice trembling a little with fury. ‘I have also ordered the credit given for Moklin trade goods to be doubled. They want a trade war? They’ll get it!’

She is a lot madder than business would account for. Brooks says, tired, ‘I’d like to show you some facts. I’ve been over every inch of territory in thirty miles, looking for a place where a ship could land for that other post. There isn’t any: Does that mean anything to you?’

‘The post is there, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘And they have trade goods, haven’t they? And we have exclusive trading rights on Moklin, haven’t we? That’s enough for me. Our job is to drive them out of business!’

But she is a lot madder than business would account for. Brooks says, very weary, ‘There’s nearly a whole planet where they could have put another trading post. They could have set up shop on the other hemisphere and charged any price they pleased. But they set up shop right next to us? Does that make sense?’

‘Setting up close,’ she says, ‘would furnish them with customers already used to human trade goods. And it furnished them with Moklins trained to be interpreters and clerks! And— Then it come out, what she’s raging, boiling, steaming, burning up about. ‘And,’ she says, furious, it furnished them with a Moklin head-clerk who is a very handsome young man, Mr. Brooks! He not only resembles you in every feature, but he even has a good many of your mannerisms. You should be very proud!’

With this she slams out of the room. Brooks blinks.

‘She won’t believe anything,’ he says, sour, ‘except only that man is vile. Is that true about a Moklin who looks like me?’

I nod.

‘Funny his folks never showed him to me for a compliment-present!’ Then he stares at me, hard. ‘How good is the likeness?’

‘If he is wearing your clothes,’ I tell him, truthful, ‘I’d swear he is you.’

Then Brooks - slow, very slow - turns white. ‘Remember the time you went off with Deeth and his folks hunting? That was the time a Moklin got killed. You were wearing guest garments weren’t you?’

I feel queer inside, but I nod. Guest garments, for Moklins, are like the best bedroom and the drumstick of the chicken among humans. And a Moklin hunting party is something. They go hunting
garlikthos,
which you might as well call dragons, because they’ve got scales and they fly and they are tough babies.

The way to hunt them is you take along some cacklebirds that ain’t nesting - they are no good for anything while they’re honeymooning - and the cacklebirds go flapping around until a
garlikthos
comes after them, and then they go jet-streaking to where the hunters are, cackling a blue streak to say, ‘Here I come, boys! Hold everything until I get past!’ Then the
garlikthos
dives after them and the hunters get it as it dives.

You give the cacklebirds its innards, and they sit around and eat, cackling to each other, zestful, like they’re bragging about the other times they done the same thing, only better.

‘You were wearing guest garments?’ repeats Brooks, grim.

I feel very queer inside, but I nod again. Moklin guest garments are mighty easy on the skin and feel mighty good. They ain’t exactly practical hunting clothes, but the Moklins feel bad if a human that’s their guest don’t wear them. And of course he has to shed his human clothes to wear them.

‘What’s the idea?’ I want to know. But I feel pretty unhappy inside.

‘You didn’t come back for one day, in the middle of the hunt, after tobacco and a bath?’

‘No,’ I says, beginning to get ratded. ‘We were way over at the Thunlib Hills. We buried the dead Moklin over there and had a hell of a time building a tomb over him. Why?’

‘During that week,’ says Brooks, grim, ‘and while you were off wearing Moklin guest garments, somebody came back wearing your clothes - and got some tobacco and passed the time of day and went off again. Joe, just like there’s a Moklin you say could pass for me, there’s one that could pass for you. In fact, he did. Nobody suspected either.’

I get panicky. ‘But what’d he do that for?’ I want to know. ‘He didn’t steal anything! Would he have done it just to brag to the other Moklins that he fooled you?’

‘He might,’ says Brooks, ‘have been checking to see if he could fool me. Or Captain Haney of the
Palmyra.
Or—’

He looks at me. I feel myself going numb. This can mean one hell of a mess!