The Florians (8 page)

The first colony ships had arrived here a hundred and eighty years ago, and more had come over a period of forty years or so. Then they had stopped. Since then, Floria had never seen a starship. And now...recontact. From their point of view, recontact meant one thing above all others. More colonists. More. ships, delivering immigrants by the thousand into their world: the world they had sweated to build.

They saw us as the advance guard of an invasion.

And they didn't want that.

Maybe it was a threat that existed. only in their own minds. Maybe not, if this colony really was as successful as it seemed. Either way, it was a threat they would take very seriously indeed. And to prevent it happening—if they came to believe that it
might
prevent it happening—they might be only too ready to kill us all. I realized for the first time the depth of the trouble I was in.

CHAPTER SIX

What now?
I wondered.

I felt su
ddenly afraid, but I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. Should I try to escape—to get back to the ship and hole up? That was hardly what we'd come for. We had come to open communications—it was up to us to start communicating. If the Florians didn't want us, it was up to us to show them that they needed us. And it was up to us to show them what a terrible mistake it would be on their part to take hostile action against us.

I remembered the riders I had seen when Jason's coach had come to meet us. Perhaps they—someone—had already made a move against the ship. Maybe I wasn't the only prisoner, by now.

I knew they couldn't take the ship. That was impossible. At the first hint of trouble Rolving would seal it tight, and neither threat nor persuasion could make him open it up. It was impregnable to any means of force the colonists might care to try against it. If necessary, Pete Rolving could fly it home alone—and standing orders would ensure that at least one other person would be with him. Standing orders would also ensure that he
would
fly it back alone, abandoning the rest of us, if things got too hot.

The ship
had
to be invulnerable. And by the same logic, its personnel on the ground had to be totally vulnerable. We were, whether we liked it or not, at the mercy of the people of any world we contacted. We came to talk and to offer help. We brought no gifts and we carried no weapons. We, ourselves, were the whole message. We had to be vulnerable to make it clear that we came in good faith.

I continued to knead the back of my neck with my right hand, hoping that the pain would go away. I realized that it was no good flogging my brain. “What now?” wasn't my question at all. It was Vulgan's. The ball was in his court.

He was still standing a couple of yards away, waiting. I eyed him apprehensively.

“Do you want something to eat?” he asked. It was a friendly question. I think he was trying to patch things up. He didn't want me as an enemy...not yet.

I shook my head, with some difficulty. “I had a big breakfast,” I said dryly.

“That was some time ago,” he said.

“Yesterday?”

He grinned, showing a lot of teeth. “You weren't out that long.”

“I don't feel like eating right now,” I said.

“Are they all as small as you on Earth?” he asked, suddenly feeling free to indulge a little harmless curiosity. “Smaller,” I said. “I'm a tall man.”

He nodded, to show that I was confirming what he already knew.

“Everything here grows big,” he said. “Horses, pigs, pigeons.” He was testing out the assertion, waiting to see whether I'd agree with it. Horses I'd seen, and pigs, but pigeons were something I hadn't thought of. It made sense, of course, that they'd have imported Earthly birds—it's easy to carry eggs, but there was one aspect of that which hadn't occurred to me.

“Your pigeons,” I said pensively. “Can they fly?”

“No,” he said, genuinely surprised.

“Can
any
of your birds fly?”

He shook his head.

It made sense. A man grows an extra ten percent and becomes a strong man. But a bird grows ten percent and never gets off the ground again. Being big isn't all good. It didn't matter, of course, to the birds. There was nothing to fly away from, here. And then I remembered that it wasn't just carnivores that were missing from Floria's ecosystem. There was not a single flying creature. Not a bird, not a bee, not a tiny fly. Why? Because there was no incentive to fly? Or because if you're going to be a flyer you have to be able to stay slim? On Floria, said Vulgan, everything grew big.

“It's all very well,” I told him, “to say with pride that everything here grows big. But pride, as someone once said, goeth before destruction.”

He didn't get the message. I didn't expect him to. The little guy who walks around in a world of giants saying “Small is best” is never likely to get much of an audience. People tend to suspect his motives.

“Never mind,” I said. “What happens next?”

By now, he'd made up his mind.

“I'm going to take you to the capital,” he said. “I can't keep it from Jason's ears that I've got you, so I'll have to make use of you. We're going to see Ellerich.”

“Who's he?”

“The Colony Manager. In name only.”

“But he has ambitions?”

Vulgan didn't reply to that one.

“How do you propose to get me there?” I asked.

“By train.”

“Won't Jason try to get me back?”

He shook his head. “We aren't afraid of that. If he'd known for certain where you were after we removed you from Lucas's care, he might have come to get you...if he thought he could get away with it. But he'll be on the island by now. By the time word gets back to him that you're on the train with a police escort everybody will know who and where you are. We'll be in the open—committed, if you like—but you'll be safe with us.”

“A police escort?” I queried.

He grinned again. “The man who hit you was one of my men,” he said. “I'm the chief of police here in South Bay.”

By this time, I didn't find that news altogether surprising.

“Wouldn't it have been easier to arrest us all? Jason, Lucas, Nathan, me...and all so much tidier? If you're the law why do you need the cloak and dagger?”

“Jason is above the law,” he said simply. “That's the whole problem. That's one of the reasons we want things changed.”

“I see,” I said. Florian politics sounded depressingly like politics back home. I recalled again the adage about people who lack respect for history.

I went with him out of the cell and upstairs into the main hall of the police station. He asked me again whether I wanted any food, and again I refused. He left me sitting to one side while he talked to a group of men in dark brown uniforms. I eyed the door speculatively while this was going on, calculating my chances in a sudden sprint. I figured I would win, but staging a bold escape is only a good idea when you have somewhere to run to. Once outside, I had no chance of mingling with the crowds, and there was no one who was likely to help me get back to the ship in spite of police, Planners, and all other interested parties. I shelved the idea of taking melodramatic action, though I still felt that I ought to be looking for something constructive to do instead of surrendering meekly to the dictates of other people.

It proved to be only a short walk from the police station to the railway station. My police escort consisted of Vulgan and two uniformed men. They gave me a heavy coat which added considerably to my bulk, but they didn't explain whether it was an attempt to make me less conspicuous or a gesture of goodwill in case the night was exceptionally cold. To them, I suppose, my light clothing must seem inapt for a temperate climate, although it was, in fact, quite warm.

They hustled me along through ill-lit streets, but made no real attempt to hide me. The last vestiges of twilight were dying, but not all the street lamps had been lit. They appeared to be oil lamps, and I assumed that this must be the standard mode of illumination throughout the colony until I reached the station, which was more brightly lit by a mixture of lamps and electric light bulbs. Obviously the Planners did not mean to restrict technology too strictly, although they seemed to be rather cautious in letting it out.

I caught barely a glance of the locomotive as I was bundled into a passenger coach at the rear of the train, but it seemed by far and away the most impressive machine I had so far seen on Floria. It was a great black monster of a steam locomotive, seething noisily as it prepared to begin its journey, making itself heard even above a constant clatter of goods being moved in and out of the station. The platform itself was clear—the train was all set to go.

The carriage was divided into separate compartments, but these contained only seats—the total length of the track was probably not more than a few hundred miles and sleeping accommodation was likely to be a luxury for which there was little enough demand.

I took a window seat, but one of the policemen reached across me to pull down a blind. When I put out a hand to stop him he turned to check with Vulgan. The chief of police shrugged, and the blind stayed up. It was only a matter of moments, though, before the train began to pull out of the station and into the gathering night, where there was nothing to be seen except reflections of the carriage's interior.

I made myself more comfortable in the seat, taking off the large coat and putting it beside me. Vulgan sat opposite, and the two men in uniform flanked the door.

“How long will it take?” I asked automatically—realizing as I said it that I might only get yet another vague answer. But railways have timetables, and so do policemen.

“A hundred and eighty minutes,” he said.

I did a quick conversion in my head. Floria's day was about ten percent shorter than Earth's, and the colonists presumably used metric hours—ten to a day and a hundred minutes to the hour. A hundred and eighty Florian minutes would be about two hundred and thirty Earth minutes. Four hours.

“That's to Leander,” added Vulgan unhelpfully. “We won't get to the capital until tomorrow midday. There's a two-hour wait in Leander...you'll be able to get some sleep.”

And, I thought, if anyone
is
going to start trouble, that's when and where....

“And then?” I said. “You still haven't told me what you want me
for.
”

“If you're going to be making deals with anyone on this world,” he said, “you make them with us: With Ellerich and the civil authorities. Not with the Planners. That's
if
we can work out any kind of deal at all.”

“And if not?” I asked, feeling that it just wasn't worth trying to hammer it into his skull that we weren't looking for a deal, at least not in his sense of the word.

“We'll decide that when the time comes.”

“And what happens in the meantime?” I asked. “While you're talking to me and the Planners are talking to Nathan?”

“We'll sort out our own troubles for the time being,” he said.

He was being so dogmatically stupid that I just had to tell him. “You snatched the wrong man,” I said. “Nathan Parrick is the man with the power to negotiate. I'm just a biologist. It's my job to run the lab, to observe, to investigate. If anyone in our group can speak for the UN, it's Nathan. Not me. You picked the wrong midget, friend.”

He stared at me hard. He didn't seem at all upset by the revelation. “You're what we've got,” he said simply. “We'll tell you what we want—it's up to you to make the rest of your party see sense.”

“I don't think there's any way any of us can see the sense of your starting a civil war here, with us in the middle,” I told him. “What makes sense—at least as I see it—is for everyone to get together and talk. You and the Planners together. No cloak and dagger, no secrets.”

He glanced out of the window. We were on a long curve, traveling quite slowly. The train lurched slightly, and the click of the wheels as they passed the small gaps between the sections of rail were separate, measured like the ticking of an old clock. Slowly, though, they began to increase in frequency. It was as though time was speeding up as we came off the bend.

He turned back to me abruptly. “Can you read, Mr. Alexander?” he asked.

“Of course I can read.”

“Of
course
you can read,” he echoed. “As it happens, so can I. But
he
can't, and neither can
he
.” Here he pointed to each of the uniformed men in turn. They were both watching him, soberly, pretending disinterest. “Do you know why they can't read?” he finished.

“The Planners?” I said hesitantly.

“The Planners,” he echoed, in a firmer tone. “In the minds of the Planners, it is not only unnecessary for the mass of the population to be able to read, it is actually undesirable. Knowledge has to be under control, and you cannot control knowledge unless you can control the means of acquiring it. Every year, a handful of students go to the island to begin what the Planners consider to be an education. Nine out of every ten come back here, knowing just what the Planners think it good for them to know and just how the Planners think it ought to be applied. Those nine become civil servants, administrators, colony managers, chiefs of police. The tenth stays on the island to learn more—much more. To become, in fact, a Planner himself—or herself. To become the guardian of that which other men must not know, to learn the secrets which have to be kept. Do you know what a gun is, Mr. Alexander?”

“Yes,” I said warily.

“Tell me,” he said.

“It's a weapon,” I said uneasily.

“How does it work?”

I said nothing, but simply waited, unwilling to go on.

“Now there,” he said, “you have a perfect example of the logic of the Planner. It is good to know...but not to know too much. I know that a gun is a weapon, Mr. Alexander. But I don't know how one works. I've never seen one. If any exist, on Floria, they are on the island. The Planners, I think, would prefer it if the word itself did not exist. Perhaps, someday, they will make it a crime to utter it. It is illogical, you see, to have a law which says ‘guns are forbidden' when no one to whom the law applies is permitted to know the meaning of the word. Far more orderly to dispense with the concept altogether. At the moment, they withhold only objects, and information. But it is only logical that they should also try to withhold ideas. You cannot control knowledge without controlling discovery, and you cannot control discovery without controlling thought, and when you control thought...do you see what I'm getting at, Mr. Alexander?”