Balance of Power (11 page)
Authors: Brian Stableford
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Space Opera, #sci-fi, #space travel, #arthur c. clarke
“But why?” asked Nieland, helplessly.
“We have plenty of time to find out,” I said. “But if I had three guesses I know what number one would be. Jan’s father, having been cast away here, decided to make the best of things. He had a lot to offer the aliens, if only he could persuade them that he was worth listening to. He’s been empire-building. He’s been playing fairy godmother. For thirty-seven years he’s been stage-managing a technological revolution here. And now he’s dead his children have taken over. Don’t you see what an opportunity was presented to him here? An emergent civilization in the north—a whole continent in which to expand. It’s Lambda in reverse. All the problems that Lambda has are meaningless here. There’s no problem of co-adaptation, no manpower shortage. The only thing the aliens lack is the only thing that Lambda has—know-how. The knowledge to exploit the resources they must have already found. After a life of frustration in the colony, think what potential the alien culture must have offered to him!”
Nieland shook his head. “I can understand that,” he said. “He was stranded here. He must have known there’d be no new ship for a long time—he probably believed that it would be never. So he helped the aliens to develop their resources. There’s nothing wrong in that. But why, when it was possible to come home, did he decide to stay? And why this suspicion and hostility on the part of his son?”
“Guilt,” said Mariel. “Just guilt. Bernhard Verheyden probably felt that in doing as he did he was in some way turning traitor. Perhaps he felt resentment against the colony—that would be easy enough, as you must know. Half the people on Lambda thought that you were mad and dangerous. They resented your appropriation of resources to build the New Hope. It was probably no different in his day. When he cast his lot with the aliens he must have seen it as a total break. The guilt and the resentment fed one another, building in his mind to an ironclad determination. And that’s what he’s passed on to his children. There’s hatred in Jan—simple hatred. For the colony, for humankind. He didn’t get that from the aliens. He can only have got it from his parents. He doesn’t want to have anything to do with the colony. Most of all, he doesn’t want the colony to know what he’s doing—he and his brothers and sister. He’s closed his mind so that all it contains is Delta, and everything outside it is...well, simply outside. He’s not quite sane, you know. Not by our standards.”
Nieland digested all this. He didn’t challenge it, though he plainly doubted it. I didn’t—I trusted Mariel well enough to know that she didn’t make wild guesses. It was all conjectural, but it had to make sense in terms of what she’d read through Jan’s words. Her talent was as powerful as ever. Nieland couldn’t know that, but the very sureness of her words pressed him back into a corner. He had nothing to put in place of the story she’d constructed.
“In that case,” he said, in an anxious voice, “what happens now?”
“That depends on Jan. He’s taking us back to wherever-it-was...the capital city of the nation. Presumably it’s not entirely his decision. I don’t know whether his elder brother is in charge or whether the five function as a mini-democracy, but either way it isn’t all down to Jan. We’ll have a chance to make them see our kind of reason. And if not....”
“Well?”
I shrugged, “How should I know? We join the gang, maybe. We hijack a ship. We hijack the empire. We get cast into a dark dungeon for the rest of our natural lives. There’s only one thing certain, as far as I can see.”
“And what’s that?”
“If we’re right,” I said, “and Papa Verheyden really has given the aliens the benefit of everything he knew—which must have been quite a lot—then this alien empire has a very bright future. And if, in the fullness of time they do decide, for reasons of their own, to pay a visit to Lambda... they’ll go as conquerors.”
In the morning, I got the first real opportunity to judge the extent of the carnage.
It was a pretty sickening sight. The attackers had cleaned up a little during the night. They’d collected the bodies and thrown them all into one of the huts before setting it aflame. The hut had gone up like a torch, but the mass of dead flesh inside hadn’t gone up with it—the dry grass and wood and leaves had just burned on top of them. The corpses were charred, but still recognizably corpses. Mostly adults, but some children as well. Maybe thirty in all. About a third of the total population of what had been a village. I didn’t bother to ask how many “civilized” aliens had been lost. Maybe one or two...maybe none at all. I watched the victors moving about the ruins the next day. They seemed quite oblivious to what was around them.
Forest savages, in their estimation, were less than nothing. In themselves, they were probably as friendly as the forest people. They probably thought of themselves as good and reasonable people. But their ideas ran in fixed channels and pre-set categories. Had I told them that in my eyes all of their species were alike they wouldn’t have been able to understand.
We marched to the camp in a long, trailing crocodile. Jan was at the head, and he showed no particular interest in having us nearby. We joined the train in the middle, with aliens who couldn’t speak English before and behind.
“Tell me about Bernhard Verheyden,” I asked of Nieland.
He looked at me dubiously. “I was in my early twenties when the
Floreat
was launched,” he said.
“You weren’t exactly a babe in arms,” I said. “And it is a small world. You must have known about him, even if you never actually exchanged two words. You must have formed an opinion.”
“He was a man of determination,” said Nieland cautiously. “I admired him. So did my friends. Yes, others hated him. There were those who saw his ideas as a danger to the colony. They didn’t think we could afford to build big ships for sailing round the world...they always said that: sailing round the world...he was sometimes an angry man. I heard him speak once or twice. He cursed the farmers for their narrow-mindedness, resented the control they had over the decisions of the councils. If only he had been granted more power...I always thought that perhaps he might have dragged us up out of the mud into which we were slowly sinking. He had other projects in mind—not just the ship. In fact, the ship was something of a last resort....”
“And the reason that they yielded to him,” I said, taking up the thread, “was—at least in part—to get him out of the way. To get the thorn out of their side.”
“A few,” he said, defensively. “There were some who said that.”
“Did they say it about you, too?”
He looked down at the ground where he walked. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so. I was never a thorn. Not as he was. I was...single-minded, I suppose. I believed in the
New Hope
—largely, I think, because it was what he had finally succeeded in doing. It seemed to symbolize his enthusiasm, his determination...his passion.”
These words came slowly, as if wrung from him against his will. Perhaps he hadn’t thought about it before, and was only just realizing that his motives were mixed in that particular way.
“Good,” I murmured. “Couldn’t be better.”
“What?”
“Someone has to talk to the Verheydens,” I said. “To Jan—to all of them. It can’t be me, or Mariel. We’re from Earth—we’re the unknown factor in the problem. But you could make them see reason, if you try. You can talk to them about their father. You can win their confidence. You can make them see that they have to make contact with the colony again. Now. An amicable contact, beneficial to both sides.”
He looked at me, uncertainly. “I’m not sure...,” he began.
“You have to,” I reiterated. “Somebody has to make them see sense...and there’s only us to do it. You can get close to them. I can’t.”
All he would say—unhappily—was “I’ll try.”
With the best will in the world, I couldn’t muster a lot of confidence in him. His diplomatic record wasn’t good. One adventure, one mutiny.
I wasn’t surprised to find when we reached the stockade that nothing could be salvaged from within. They had packed up and taken everything, including all the equipment that had actually come ashore. But the little treasure-trove that Mariel had stashed away was undisturbed. Most of it consisted of packs of food concentrate, but among the spare equipment that had been in storage were some medical supplies, nearly a hundred fuel cells, a small optical microscope and attendant micro-instruments, and some photographic equipment. Not exactly a survival kit supreme, but all well worth having.
Jan Verheyden looked the stuff over with some interest, but showed no disposition to appropriate any of it. He even lent us a couple of his crewmen to help us carry it all.
We didn’t waste much time resting before we began the long cross-country trek back to Jan’s ship. He was impatient to get back home—not so much because he was worrying about his perishable cargo but because he wanted to share his problems with his kindred. His curiosity, though, made him relent his earlier determination to stay away from us, and he invited us to join him at the head of the column.
“You say that you came here in a ship whose purpose is to support the colonies,” he said to me, initiating the line of inquiry which he most wanted to pursue.
“That’s right,” I confirmed.
“My father said that there would never be support from Earth. He said that one of the reasons the colonists were so determined to defend what they had rather than trying to improve matters was that most of them half believed that help would come from Earth and that they only had to wait. But he said that Earth could not afford to send ships to help established colonies.”
“It took a long time,” I said. “But now we are contacting the colonies again. With the help that we can provide I’m confident that we can solve most of the colony’s problems and set it on the road to progress once again.”
All that was, of course, true. I didn’t feel compelled to add that the
Daedalus
mission might be one of a kind. Let him assume whatever he wanted to about the kind of contact we had made, and the kind of help we might supply.
“Why did you come to Delta?” he asked.
“Another part of our purpose is to discover what contact has been made—or might be made—with alien races on the three colonized worlds which have intelligent indigenes. One of the things we have to report back is the progress that has been made in alien/human relationships on the various worlds. We thought that there would be little to report back about Attica, but sailed on the
New Hope
thinking that we might be able to help with an initial contact ourselves. It seems that we were mistaken.”
“Report back?” he queried.
“To the UN,” I explained. “They have to decide on the nature of the future space program. They have to plan carefully. What they decide depends very much on the kinds of situations we find.”
I let him draw his own inferences from that, too—knowing that they would be all the wrong ones. Let him think that this world had come under the eagle eye of Earth, and that he might have to answer for anything that happened here to a higher authority. I knew that Nieland was listening carefully to what I was saying, and hoped that he wouldn’t confuse the situation by adding more information—though even he knew little enough about the true situation.
“It is a long journey back to Ak’lehr,” said Jan. “It will take eight or nine days. That is perhaps as well—there are some things you must know about the kingdom and its people. It is essential that you should put yourselves under our guidance. We know how to deal with the Ore’l and you do not. In the capital there are political situations which need very careful handling. Piet will explain them fully, but I will do my best to prepare you.”
Now
I
had to play the game of drawing inferences. It wasn’t an even game, because I could always consult Mariel about the thoughts that lay behind his words, but even without that help I could see what he was getting at now. When in Rome, we had to do as the Romans did—we had to place ourselves under the “guidance” of the Verheyden family. If it should prove that they had to treat us with kindness and respect, and if circumstances were eventually to force them to send us home, then we must report back what they wanted us to report back. Jan obviously thought that he and his brethren could control the situation, even if their affairs couldn’t be kept secret any more.
And since he and his brothers and sister were the only ones who could speak the alien language, and could thus control our negotiations with the natives, he was probably right.
“We’re entirely in your hands,” I assured him. “It makes our job much easier if contact has already been made—and productively made. I’d say that you seem to have made a very good start here in putting human/alien relationships on a friendly basis. I see no reason why we shouldn’t be able to submit a very favorable report on the Attican situation in general.”
That was laying it on a bit thick, but it had the desired effect. He stopped himself looking startled, and looked gratified instead.
“I think your father and yourselves have worked wonders,” I said. “I look forward to seeing what you’ve achieved in the capital city.”
I could have gone on to talk about the foundations of a mutually beneficial relationship between Ak’lehr and the colony, but I thought it best to introduce him to that possibility slowly.
With luck, I could talk the whole family into realizing that they could be hailed as heroes if they’d only accept that their mission in life was what we wanted to see rather than the way they saw it. With a lot of help from Nieland, I thought, we might even persuade them to
believe
that what they’d been doing all along was what we wanted them to do. If only we could overcome the attitudes that Bernhard Verheyden had planted in their minds....