Part 1

A MATTER OF TASTE

By JOSEPH WESLEY

_When a planet turns in an insurance claim, it could run to more than real money._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, January 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

CASE RL472 XYA 386. Oral report of Claims Adjuster Mark Atkinson (#384 762). Transcribed by Telepath Operator #842 765J (Tellus). First and Final Report. CASE CLOSING SYMBOL: AAA.

I arrived on the fourth planet of Sunder's Pride stark naked and stood comfortably in the snow, listening to the wind howl by, while waiting for the Expedition Manager to approach from the edge of the small clearing and welcome me. The Manager's name is Obadiah Jones. Like the rest of the expedition, he's from one of the minor Vegan colonies--Kinnison III--but he's undifferentiated Earth stock.

He bustled forward, wearing a full protective suit and helmet--the temperature is thirty degrees below zero centigrade at noon and the atmosphere is poisonous--but I could see the expression of relief on his face through his face plate.

"You're from Interstellar Insurance?" he panted under the one and a half G of Sunder's Pride.

I assented with a dignified nod.

He looked me up and down--my skin wasn't even showing goose pimples, of course--and then shrugged his shoulders. "The insurance company sent a first-class Mental Control Operator, I see, but it was a waste of talent. Maybe they didn't believe our reports. We've had our own operators here--good ones, too--and they haven't been able to find any solution. The Aliens are much better at all sorts of Mind Control than even our most talented men. I know our Policy says that you can keep us from calling in the military authorities for a week, but it's just a waste of time--and, more important, it's a waste of lives, too. I suggest that you give us authority to call in the Navy right away."

"How many lives have you lost so far?" I asked.

"Only a dozen, but at regular intervals."

"That hardly seems excessive for an exploratory expedition," I commented.

He shook his head impatiently. "I said _at regular intervals_. The Aliens treat us like we were cattle. Or sheep."

"Not exactly," I said, "or you would scarcely have called _me_ in. You must be operating at a profit, and that means you're trading with these Aliens."

He scowled, but did not deny it.

* * * * *

Of course I knew this already. As an independent Claims Adjuster, it goes without saying that I'd checked into the case before teleporting to the planet. Their profit was enormous, and our losses would be proportionately large if the military was invited to come in and spoil trade while saving lives.

Their charter called for exclusive trading rights on any planet they opened for ten years. And they had the usual clause in their Policy against loss by "government" action, meaning the military, even at their own invitation. The military is fast, but it's not neat. The cost could run to billions for us, so my job was to try to find another way.

"Well," he said, "can we send an emergency signal to the Navy?"

"When does the next regular interval expire?" I asked.

He checked the timepiece set into the sleeve of his suit, and then scratched some number in the clean wind-swept surface of snow. His watch kept local time, of course. "In about fourteen Earth hours," he translated at last.

"Then there's no hurry, is there?" I leaned against the gale that was blowing across the clearing. "Why don't we go to your office so you can brief me?"

He turned and stumped his way heavily to a gap at the edge of the clearing, and then along a narrow path that wound its way circuitously among tall, slender, tinkling, half-living ice trees. I strolled lightly beside him, but my bare feet left deep imprints in the crustless snow. In about fifteen minutes we reached the human settlement, with its airlock set modestly into a great mound of snow.

Here we had a little difficulty; the lock was designed to pass bulky protective suits. If I had gone through it bare, I'd have let in some of the poisonous atmosphere into the camp. We solved that, though. Mr. Jones passed a suit out to me through the lock and I put it on. I wore it all the way to his office, and then he rustled me up one of his spare kilts--an ugly purple thing.

"Now, Obadiah," I said, after I'd lighted one of his stogies and settled myself into his most comfortable chair, "why this urgent call for help? Our records show that you've never hollered copper in your life, and you've had two expeditions nearly wiped out around you. You've got the best profit record in your organization."

"It's those Aliens," said Mr. Jones. "They arrived here on Sunder's Pride just a few days behind us. I've always felt that someday we'd come up against some life-form that would be too much for us, and I'm afraid that we've done it at last. They trade us some of the most magnificent works of art that have ever been seen in the universe--you've undoubtedly admired some of them, and I'm sure you know the prices they bring--and they do it as if they were tossing glass beads to savages."

"And if we are such savages, what can we have to trade in return?" I asked.

"They don't seem to be any great shakes with mechanical things," he answered. "They call them 'gadgets,' but they buy them. The only trouble is, that's not all they buy." He was sweating, his face turning as green as the polka dots on his kilt. He mopped his face and chest with a large handkerchief, and then sat there holding it and looking at it as if he'd never seen a bandanna before.

* * * * *

I felt sorry for him. These provincial types have an automatic feeling of horror at the thought of meeting some superior creatures that will replace man in the Galaxy. So I let him sit there for a couple of minutes to recover before I prompted him.

"Well?" I said at last. "The additional stuff they buy--what is it?" This hadn't been part of the reports.

"Oh. Yes. Once every five days they take one man. I may have given you the idea that they killed them. They don't. They ship them off. They say we are very popular, and when there are enough of us on the market to bring the price down, we should make ideal pets. And we can't do a thing to stop them."

I flicked the ash of my cigar delicately onto his carpet. "You can't? What have you tried?"

He leaped to his feet and balled his fists belligerently. "I'm trying to call in the military, but first I've got to get through the red tape of calling in you insurance people. Now will you give me authority to call in a fleet before it's too late?"

I smiled in a superior manner and straightened a pleat on the hideous kilt. "If you feel this way, then why do you worry about money? Why didn't you just call the fleet directly and forfeit your insurance?"

He glared at me through red-rimmed eyes. "I tried that," he said. "If only we had some central government to turn to--but that's impossible in space, of course. So I went to the only centralized force there is. And they said that they have to count on voluntary contributions from the member planets, and they couldn't afford to answer every call for help. They told me to contact my insurance company."

"Which," I commented mildly, "is another centralized force in space, in spite of what you say. It's widespread, it's profit-making, and it gets the job done. Nobody has to try to beg for voluntary appropriations from penurious planetary governments."

"This isn't a crackpot fear of aliens," he said, as soon as I stopped talking. "I've seen aliens before, in all parts of the Galaxy. I don't panic."

"Then you must have tried something else before hollering Uncle," I said. "Like, perhaps, keeping all of your men inside the dome here when the time for another abduction approaches?"

* * * * *

He waved a hand impatiently. "We've tried everything a large group of top-flight minds can think of," he said. "My own organization has an exceptional research staff, as I'm sure you know. The Aliens work by mental control. We've had everyone brought into this building, have double-checked them, and have sealed the doors with a time lock. It turned out that one of the men was missing--we'd only imagined he was among us when we assembled.

"We scoured the planet before we landed and saw no signs of the Aliens. We've seen no Alien ships land since we arrived. We have no idea where they are, except that there's one sizable area not far from here that we can't seem to penetrate. The only evidence we have that the Aliens arrived after we did is that they told us so. Whatever that's worth.

"We've brought in some of mankind's best Mental Control Operators. People like you, who are able to walk around in a poisonous atmosphere in sub-zero weather without any protection or any clothes at all. Every one of them is now among the victims. The Aliens apparently thought it would be a good joke to take them."

He paused. "So you see, we don't expect you to be around very long. Just so you call in the military before the Aliens call _you_ in, we'll try to control our grief when you go."

"That's courteous of you," I said. "But you are suffering under an understandable misapprehension. You seem to believe--probably because of my somewhat unorthodox costume when I arrived--that I am a Master Controller. In point of fact, nothing could be farther from the case. I have no such powers. Or almost none, anyway.

"I arrived naked because of the enormous expense of teleportation. Those machines require gigantic amounts of power and skilled technicians. At ten thousand a pound, I saved the company five thousand by leaving my kilt behind, and even more when you consider my shoes. As for a protective suit--why, such an unnecessary cost would have been thrown out by our accountants in a minute."

Obadiah Jones sneered at me in disbelief, but I tolerantly ignored his attitude. "Let's admit, for the time being, that these Aliens are better at Mental Control than we are," I said. "Then does it make sense for us to fight them with their own weapons, giving them cards and spades before the start of the game? Now take me to the edge of this place where you say we can't go."

In spite of Mr. Jones' urgent pleas, I refused to wear a protective suit, except to go out through the lock. I knew he was worried about the Mind Control he still was convinced I was using to survive unprotected on the surface. He was afraid that when I came up against the Aliens and what he called their "superior powers," it would mean my death, if I didn't have a suit. Since I had equally valid reasons for not wearing the suit, and since I didn't want to explain them, I refused to argue. I just took the thing off as soon as we were outside. I left the kilt on, though. I thought its ugliness might irritate the Aliens.

* * * * *

Obadiah Jones kept up a running patter of conversation as he led me toward the forbidden area. "We haven't been idle," he said. "We've learned a lot about the Aliens' Mind Control. For one thing, they work on our emotions. Several of us who are still alive have been exposed to that. There were eight or nine of us in a group, the first time one of us was Chosen. He said an overwhelming feeling of love was drawing him in one direction; right after that, the rest of us felt a strong sensation of revulsion and fear. We ran away, leaving him behind. We never saw him again.

"They also control our senses. We see and hear what they want us to. It's perfect hallucination. But you'll know that for yourself in a few minutes."

I knew it already, of course. It had been in Jones' reports--all except the bit about their capturing his men. And I had come prepared. I must admit to feeling a distinct sensation of excitement as we approached the area. But it was not induced, I am sure, by the Aliens, and in any event it was not sufficiently intense to trigger my defense mechanisms.

"Here we are," said Obadiah Jones at last, pointing to a marker attached to one of the ice trees. "Beyond that sign the troubles begin."

"It doesn't look like an alien artifact to me," I said, examining the crudely made marker carefully.

"It isn't. I had it put up after one of our men was missing for two days, wandering around in that area that they claim for themselves."

"Well, I'll find out just how good their claim is," I said. "I'm going in there."

"Good luck," said Mr. Jones. "I'll wait for you here. But, just in case I never see you again, won't you please give me authorization to call in the Fleet? You can postdate it, and cancel it if you get back."

I nodded. "I'll give you an authorization dated tomorrow--if you'll give me your gun first. You might just accidentally happen to kill me after getting that paper from me, considering how important you think it is to get the Fleet here fast, and how sure you are that I'll be trapped."

Jones looked startled, and then sheepish, and gave me the gun without comment. I wrote out the paper he wanted, and then strolled up the path past the marker. It didn't look any different on the other side. It went straight into the forbidden area, and I do mean straight. It went on without the slightest sign of a turn, as far as the eye could see, and there were no cross trails anywhere along it.

I stepped out at a good swift pace, striding along it long after Jones disappeared from view behind me. I saw no signs of Aliens; I saw no signs of anything unusual at all, until, about two hours after I started, I saw a marker in the distance ahead of me. Jones was sitting on the snow, just on the other side of the tree with the marker on it. I strolled up toward him, crossed the invisible line, hiked up my kilt to keep it from getting damp, and sat down on the soft snow beside him.

* * * * *

"Hello," he said non-committally. "You made pretty good time. In fact, that's a new record for the course."

"Then I'm not the first man to take that walk?" I asked.

"Nope. Just the fastest. I'm glad you didn't try to turn around and come back along the path. That way, you'd have gotten lost. Well, shall we go back to the camp and call in the Navy?"

"No, I'm going back in," I said calmly.

He waved one gloved hand at me. "It's your funeral," he said. "Or what amounts to the same thing, anyway."

I stood up, dusted off the snow where some of it had stuck to me, and settled my kilt into as fashionable a manner as was possible. I crossed the line and started down the trail again, just as I had before, but this time I didn't follow my eyes. Soon after losing sight of Mr. Jones, I cut sharply off the clearly visible trail to the right and started to weave my way through a thicket of the ice trees.

Gradually a sensation of fear entirely foreign to my usual nature built up within me, but I ignored it and kept going. As the sensation increased to a nearly uncontrollable level, one of the automatic mechanisms I had had the foresight to have implanted in my body operated, and a few drops of a drug were shot into my veins and almost instantly took effect. I still felt the fear sensation, but it no longer had the power to bother me much. With that drug in my blood stream, no emotion could affect me strongly.

As I worked my way through the tinkling jungle of ice trees, there was an amazing change. Before my eyes, the trees suddenly seemed to clothe themselves in leaves and bark, and the sounds became those of birds and insects. I was working my way through a jungle of Earth. The heavy gravity of Sunder's Pride had not disturbed me before, but now it was replaced by the almost buoyant feeling resulting from the far lighter gravity of Earth. The harsh yellow glow of the sunlight striking on eternal ice was replaced by the vibrant blues and greens of tropical Earth.

My fear sensation, which had been generalized, suddenly sharpened. I was reminded of a time, on Earth, when I had nearly died in a tropical river teeming with piranha fish. I still have a couple of scars from that episode. Before me I could see the river flowing. Even under the calming influence of the drug, I could feel my heart pounding in my throat.

I must confess that it took a distinct effort of will for me to wade into the water. It was boiling with the flashing forms of angry fish. As I stepped forward I could feel their greedy jaws snapping into my flesh, feel the pointed rows of teeth on the bones of my ankles, then my legs, then my thighs.

* * * * *

Despite the agony I continued on, and the water level gradually rose until it closed over my head and my sight faded as the fish bit out my eyes. I think I might have screamed then, if I hadn't already felt the fish tear out my throat, so that I knew screaming was impossible. Besides, I didn't want to open my mouth and let them get to work on my tongue. I protected the soft spot under my chin with the hand that held Obadiah's gun.

If any of you homeside heroes ever wonder if we Claims Adjusters really earn our considerable salaries, let me clue you: We do.

When, stripped to a skeleton, I still kept moving stolidly ahead, the boiling of the water slowly died away, the pain ceased, and my sight gradually came back. The jungle was still there, but I found that I was climbing up out of the river onto a trail that somehow seemed familiar. The fear sensation was gone, too, to be replaced by a very different one.

I remembered why I had gone into the jungle on Earth, so many years before, and why the trail was familiar. And who had been at the end of it. And who _was_ at the end of it. She was soft and beautiful, and she had loved me for a while. She loved me still, I realized, and she was waiting for me. I hurried my steps and the automatic mechanism again put a few drops of the drug into my blood stream.

I could still feel the sensation of longing, but the urgency was gone. I let the feeling continue to pull me forward without fighting it, and willingly followed the twists and turns of the still familiar trail.

As the trees thinned out until I could see the well-remembered cottage with its thatched roof, its single room, its wide veranda, I slowed. The house stood alone, with no trees around it, just the way she and I had wanted it.

I stopped at the last tree and looked at the house for several minutes. Nothing moved that I could see. Circling slowly from tree to tree, I continued watching the house until I was staring at it from a point nearly opposite the place where I had first seen it. Then I began to walk toward it. Even the sound of the birds had faded away, although I could still smell the heady fragrance of tropical flowers. She had always kept a large bouquet of them on the table beside the bed.

When I had reached a point about twenty paces from the house, I wheeled suddenly and leaped forward, aiming at a spot where nothing showed to the eye. There was a moment--the merest instant--of dizziness, and then a room suddenly materialized around me. The room looked alien, and there were two Aliens at the far end of it. The usual drag of one and a half Earth gravities had returned.

* * * * *

This, I felt, was the first undistorted view any man on Earth had had of these Aliens, except as a pet. They had not expected any human to be able to find his way here, to this room at the center of their base.

The room was not what I had expected. I had thought that I would find myself on the inside of a spaceship, and by no stretch of the imagination could this ever have traveled between the stars. It was unmistakably a prefab hut.

The two Aliens better fitted my preconceptions. They looked something like overgrown sea anemones, with three multi-jointed arms and three short legs. They were just over two meters tall. They were extremely sluggish in their movements, as might be expected from creatures that depended almost entirely on their mental abilities for control of their environment.

They looked at me for a few minutes--all of their eyes were startlingly humanlike in appearance--and I imagine that they had expressions of surprise, if I could have found any expression, or interpreted from their tendrils just where their faces were. Finally one of them moved slowly to the far wall, extended one of his arms and depressed a lever on a rather crude-looking panel attached to that wall. He then moved slowly back to his companion and both of them continued to stare at me.

I waved cheerily at them. "Hi, fellows," I said. I could detect no answer, but the room wavered a little before my eyes. I blinked and shook my head and my vision cleared.

"So you haven't been trained in the techniques of Mental Control of Earthmen," I commented. "That's interesting."

A feathery stalk slowly rose from among the coiling things that circled their tops, and at the same time I heard a gentle dragging noise approaching the door of the hut.

"It sounds as if we might be about to have company," I said. "That will be pleasant."

I examined my two hosts closely, because I had the feeling that I wouldn't be able to see them much longer as they really were.

"It's good of you to be so cautious," I said. "If you hadn't been so careful as to shield this hut, just in case we Earthmen turned out to have adequate Mind Control powers of our own, I wouldn't have had this chance to see you two in all your natural ugliness. Your friends out there would have kept me under control all this time.

"And what's more," I added, "I wouldn't even have known that you creatures had something that would shield your power. Our scientists will be very interested in examining this hut in great detail."

* * * * *

Just then the door of the hut swung open and two elflike creatures appeared to walk briskly in. I glanced at them and then back to where my two slow-moving acquaintances had been standing. They were no longer in sight.

"Perhaps we can make things a little more comfortable for you," said one of the brisk elves. "You have earned most special treatment from us." He gestured and the strangeness of the room strangely disappeared. The walls were suddenly paneled in mahogany and hung with rich drapes. Easy chairs were placed at intervals around a long, brilliantly polished table. A picture window showed a bucolic scene bathed in cool sunshine. A deep pile rug covered the floor.

I looked around appreciatively. "Very nice," I complimented them. "And in excellent taste. But you have forgotten one thing, haven't you?"

"What's that?" asked the second elf, in a piping voice.

"Why, you forgot about the gravity. It's still at Sunder's Pride normal."

"So it is," said the elf. "But then you can't expect us to think of everything. Besides, it doesn't seem to bother you the way it does most of the other creatures of your kind."

The gravity did not appear to change.

"No matter," I said politely. I strolled over to the table and stroked it with the hand that was not holding the gun. It seemed very real.

"Won't you sit down?" asked the first elf. "I'm sure you will find the chairs very comfortable."

"I'm sure I would," I said, "but no, thank you. I'm certain it would provide you with a lot of innocent merriment if I squatted in thin air under the impression that I was settled into a cosy chair, but I did not come here to amuse you."

The elf smiled. "You are very different from the others who lumbered to this planet in those clumsy artifacts. You are almost like a Person, in spite of your feverish rushing around. Several of our laboratories will bid very high for the right to examine you."

I bowed acknowledgment of his compliment. "I'm not in one of your laboratories yet," I said mildly.