Part 2

Trying to cover up his confusion, he went on rapidly, hoping Jerwyn would not notice. "Anyway, whatever his reasons were, he's played me a dirty trick, and if there's ever any way I can pay him back for it, I'll do it. I'll have five years to think about it. Me! The fair-haired boy of the Institute! On my way to the top!" His face flushed with resentment. "Sent to sweat out five years in this Godforsaken place with a bunch of savages hardly evolved out of the jungle!" He passed his hand over his forehead, wiping off sweat, feeling the full force of his pent-up anguish and rage flood through him.

Jerwyn spoke very quickly. "I felt pretty much the same way when I was sent here. But I feel differently now. I could try to explain. But I don't think it's a good idea. I don't think anyone could have explained to me. This is a place you've got to live in; you can't be told about it." He shifted in his seat as a small group of buildings came into view. "As for Ross--well, he was responsible for my being sent here, too, and I spent some time when I first came, thinking of ways to cut his body in little pieces and throw them in a garbage pulverizer--but I wouldn't waste my time if I were you. I know now he had his reasons." As he spoke the car pulled to a stop. "Well, here we are. This is where you'll be living and working."

Jerwyn stayed with Kirk while he was shown through various buildings. He found most of the office buildings full of bright murals and little watered patios, but lacking the simplest devices for working efficiency. He was introduced to various officials, Terran and Nemarian. Some of the latter, to his surprise, were women--a rare phenomenon for a primitive planet, he remembered from his classes.

By the time the touring was over and he had said goodbye to Jerwyn, he was too tired to do more than glance briefly at the quarters to which he was shown. Left alone in his rooms, he took a quick, awkward bath, too weary to feel more than a brief annoyance at the lack of automatic buttons for temperature controls, soaping, and drying, and fell exhausted on the low bed.

* * * * *

For a moment, as he woke, Kirk could not remember where he was. Drowsiness mingled with a sense of eeriness at the sound of long bird-calls unlike any on Terra and the unfamiliar rustling of leaves; the rays from the late afternoon sun seemed too crimson.

Then, as sleep fell from his eyes, he remembered. He glanced at the window above his bed from which the orange light filtered into the room and saw it was completely open to the outside air. Something would have to done about that, he thought grimly, or he'd never be able to sleep with an easy mind. There were always people, sooner or later, who hated you if you had power; or if they didn't hate you, they at least wanted you out of commission for one reason or another.

He sat up to take a better look at the room he had been too tired to investigate before. There were mats of woven reeds, and low carved chests, and flowers; the walls were clean and glimmering, and bare except for a single picture of two young native children. He got up and walked over to look at it more closely. A boy of about seven was holding his arm out to a girl, slightly younger, to help her on to the low, swaying branch on which he was sitting. The picture was full of sunshine and green leaves and happiness, and you could feel the trusting softness of her arms reaching up to him. An odd picture, Kirk thought. The children looked childlike enough, but the emotions looked adult.

As he looked at it, he heard a soft, swishing sound in the next room, and stiffened. There was no lock on the door, he noticed. Well, it was time to get up, anyway. He dressed hurriedly, trying to remember the layout of his rooms. Except for the bathroom, he recalled only one other room, a sort of arbored porch, one side completely open to the air, with a low table and some cooking equipment at one end.

As he opened the door, a faint whisk of something made of reeds went out of sight. A primitive broom, he thought, with a faint sense of relief. Some servant was tidying the house. He opened the door further--and stared.

A native girl was standing before him. She was extraordinarily lovely. The gold-green hair of her race rippled and flowed in waves over her bare back and shoulders down to the circlet of vermilion cloth girdling her thighs. The band of small shells that circled her throat was netted with wide orange and red flowers that half-hid, half-disclosed the firm naked breasts. The light brown, gold-flecked eyes beneath the gold-green eyebrows were soft; so was the tender mouth, rose-colored against the flawless skin, with its undertones of faint green. Her body, too, looked soft and yielding, but was borne with imperious grace that somehow dignified even the broom held loosely now in one delicate hand.

Kirk stared at this vision of beauty, taken by surprise, and found himself caught up in sudden desire. She was like something out of a dream. He tried to get hold of himself.

You're just not used to half-nude women, he told himself. You're used to girls in uniforms, crisp, businesslike uniforms. A wild suspicion caught at the edge of his mind. He didn't know anything about this planet, really--except that there was something he didn't know. Maybe they made a practice of diverting their rulers with beautiful women. She certainly didn't look like a servant. He smiled at the thought that came to him: this servant was the first indication of the luxury befitting a Planetary Administrator. The thought enabled him to gain control of himself again. He regained a semblance of his customary reserved look.

"Good afternoon," he said, in the native language.

She smiled and held out her hand.

He hesitated, then held out his own awkwardly. Did one shake hands with one's servants here? He wished he'd asked Jerwyn for more advice about protocol.

She took his hand and pressed it lightly for a moment. "I am Nanae." Her voice was low and musical. "I am going to clean and take care of your house."

She turned and with exquisite precision gestured toward the low table and cooking equipment at the end of the room. "I thought you would be waking soon. I have prepared some _jen_ for you."

_Jen?_ he thought. Oh, yes, a very light stimulant--the local variety of tea. He walked over to the low table and sat down, fighting the impulse to enter into conversation with her. He watched her as she poured the hot liquid into wide cups of polished gourd, her hair radiant about her shoulders. A stab of longing shot through him. The long years of training in the Institute paraded through his mind, the years of strict routine, hard work, ascetic, bare rooms, with women considered playthings that took too much time from needed study; the only beauty was the dream of power among the glittering stars.

Well, he wasn't going to give up and forget the dream, he told himself--and he wasn't going to be led astray by any pretty girls, particularly a maid. Hell, he thought suddenly, maybe Ross is testing me. Maybe he picked the worst planet in the whole damn galaxy to find out if I could do something with it. It's obvious if I can get this place on the trademaps, I can handle anything.

He looked speculatively at the girl as she pushed the cup toward him. He wondered how she came by her job. Did they hold beauty contests here for the honor of being cleaning woman in the PA's household? He realized he was feeling more cheerful. The _jen_ and the soothing quietness of the girl's presence were doing him good. He felt a resurgence of his old energy and ambition that the interview with Ross had quelled for so long.

"Did you work for Jerwyn, too?" he asked. Yes, his voice was just right, courteous, but not too friendly, he thought.

"No, but I knew him." She looked at him with an odd smile. "He became one of our best dancers."

"Dancers!" Kirk stared at her in amazement. He started to open his mouth, then stopped. He'd better not ask any more questions till he'd had a chance to talk to some Terrans. Apparently, Jerwyn had gone native. Maybe it was his way of rebelling against being sent here in the first place--and he'd let himself go so far that he'd skipped his chance of reassignment at the end of the first five years, afraid of the problems of a new post after being a beachcomber for so long. That would account for the curious lack of deference he'd found in all these people. They were friendly enough, but they lacked proper respect for his position. You weren't supposed to be friendly to a PA; you were supposed to be humbly polite. He recalled the respect and awe he'd received on the ship.

As he finished his cup, he realized he was very hungry. He looked around instinctively for food. He had enough synthetics in his bags to do him for awhile, but he might as well make the plunge and start eating the native foods right away. No use coddling himself.

The girl noticed the look. "I didn't prepare food for you because dinner will be served in just a little while. We eat all together, down by the river. You will hear drums to announce when the meal is ready, and you get there by walking to the end of that path." She pointed a delicate finger at a small foot-path winding by a few yards from where he sat.

* * * * *

Coming out of the little forest at the end of the path, Kirk paused to take in the scene. Between him and the river was a wild jumble of men and women, laughing and talking, children running and stumbling over small pet animals, piles of nuts and fruits and hot foods heaped together beside small fires. Some of the people sat on straw mats, but most, simply on the ground. There were neither tables nor chairs. To Kirk it looked like utter confusion.

With a sense of gratitude, he saw a tall, uniformed figure coming up to him, with a brisk, definite stride. The Terran's face was lined and firm, the kind of face Kirk was familiar with. The man with this face would be a man who stood for no nonsense, a man who was a little tough, but also fair and capable. He recognized him as he came closer.

"Hello, sir. I'm Matt Cortland, your second in command," he said brusquely. "I met you this afternoon, but you met so many people then it must have been just a blur of names and faces."

Kirk greeted him, feeling a sense of satisfaction that this man would be his chief assistant. He looked efficient; he should be able to help him learn the ropes and get a program of action started.

"No chairs," Cortland said laconically, as they walked toward the gathering. He chose a soft spot of lavender-tinted moss near a pile of hot food and sat down, cross-legged. Awkwardly, Kirk sat down beside him, folding his legs under him stiffly. "You can be served in your rooms, of course, if you like," Cortland went on, turning to him. "These people are very obliging. Very obliging." He reached for two of the leaf-wrapped, steaming objects, handing one to Kirk. "But you probably have a better chance of influencing them if you eat among them. If they can be influenced." He opened the leaf and bit into the yellow vegetable inside.

Kirk looked dubiously at the object in his hand. He hoped it wouldn't make him sick. Pushing back his sense of disgust, he bit into it carefully. The bland, sweetish flavor filled him with delightful surprise. It was rather like a mixture of sweet potato, carrot, and peach synthetics--but the texture and flavor were new and wonderful. Maybe civilization had lost something good when it gave up natural foods. Though, of course, their preparation was time-wasting and inefficient, he reminded himself; and swallowing synthetics required only a momentary break in your work when you were pressed for time. He looked up and found Cortland watching him.

"Pretty different from the food at home, eh?" He had slipped into the Terran language. "Good food and pretty girls." He gestured toward the graceful, half-nude women scattered along the mossy bank. "Everything for the lotus-eaters."

The phrase meant nothing to Kirk.

One of the girls came over to them with a large gourd full of fruit and nuts, and another on which she heaped hot foods from the piles on the ground as she passed. She placed them on the ground beside the two men.

"Yes, everything for the lotus-eaters," Cortland repeated. "Incidentally, I hope you're not under the impression that that girl is naked from the waist up."

Kirk looked at him questioningly.

"Oh, no. She's completely covered. They have taboos about naked breasts, just like we do." He laughed at Kirk's look of mystification. "You notice those strands of shells or woven reeds they wear around their necks?"

Kirk looked around. They all wore them.

"Well, that signifies they are dressed. If you ever see a native girl without one, she'll be terribly embarrassed." He stuck his hand out toward the bowl of hot food. "After you've been here long enough you'll think they're dressed, too."

He laughed, then looked more serious.

"I've been here a long time, getting nowhere," he said, in a different tone. "There are a lot of things that could be done here. I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. But Jerwyn--" He hesitated. "I hope _you_ intend to make the name of the Galactic Union mean something here."

Kirk nodded, and Cortland went on. "Jerwyn tried when he first came. But after awhile he seemed to just give up. I couldn't do anything without him backing me, I don't have enough authority." He looked grim as he spoke. "And besides that, it takes more than one good man. Oh, the other GU men here are capable enough--" He glanced toward a group of Terrans sitting nearby. "They'll be over in a little while to speak to you, incidentally; I asked them to hold off for a little, while I briefed you a bit--no sense deluging you with new people while you're trying to eat."

"But to get back," he went on, "they're capable enough, or they were once, anyway, but none of them has the drive and brains it takes to push through a project to develop this planet. They've pretty well given up. Some of them like it here and some of them don't, but they've all stopped trying." A look of contempt crossed his face. "They go through the motions of doing some work to earn their salaries, knock off at noon, and spend their time lying around on the beaches with Nemarian girls. I've done what I could to keep a semblance of discipline, but it's uphill work."

Kirk looked at him steadily. "All that's going to be changed."

Cortland smiled. "Good." Their eyes met, with understanding.

"And I'm very happy to have a man of your caliber with me," Kirk said quietly.

Cortland gave him a long look. "Maybe you've got what it takes. Maybe you have." He nodded slowly. "I should have told you I don't entirely blame the men. This planet's a tough nut to crack." His voice was grim.

Kirk felt a vague uneasiness, but his look stayed determined. "We'll crack it."

"We've been here forty years, and we haven't made a dent. They're funny people, these Nemarians. They're really alien. I've been here fifteen years, and I don't understand them any better than when I came."

"That's quite a statement."

"They're very appealing. Naive. Childlike. The soul of courtesy--on the surface. But it's deceptive. And you could spend a lifetime trying to find out what's underneath."

A young boy of about twelve came up as he spoke, setting a large gourd full of steaming liquid down beside them with lithe grace, filling smaller cups from it as he did so. Cortland nodded at him, turning again to Kirk as the boy walked away. "Even their children aren't really childlike. Did you see his eyes--makes you damned uncomfortable."

As Kirk started to answer, drum-beats began to fill the air, first softly, then louder. Strange sounds from unfamiliar instruments began to mingle with them, and a clear, high instrument added a melody. The whole effect had an alien, discordant quality for Kirk, but as he listened further he grew intrigued and began to enjoy it; a mood--happy and romantic and energetic, all at once--came through to him from the music.

"The dancing's beginning," Cortland informed him.

Kirk saw young men and women rise by ones and two's and begin swaying and turning their bodies to the music. They all seemed to be doing different things, and yet somehow it made an integrated pattern. To his surprise older people and even young children gradually joined in, and managed not to look inappropriate, although the dance movements were rapid and strenuous.

He noticed a sweet, pungent odor filling his nostrils and realized it came from the steaming bowl beside them. He picked up one of the filled cups and tried it cautiously. It was delightful. He emptied it and poured another.

He felt Cortland's hand on his arm, and looked up to find him grinning at him. "Hey, take it easy with that stuff. That's fermented kara root--the local variety of booze. They can drink quarts of the stuff and be all right; I've never seen one of them really drunk. But you'd better not try it."

Kirk frowned. "Something different in our metabolism? I thought--"

"No, they're quite human," Cortland broke in. "And it's not a matter of immunity. I wondered about it for a long time--and got quite disgracefully drunk a couple of times, keeping up with them, before I figured it out." He sipped at his own cup. "No, the secret of their success is the dancing."

Kirk looked at the light, whirling figures, puzzled.

Cortland smiled at his bewilderment. "It's the exercise. It burns up the alcohol as fast as they drink it. When they're having a real feast, they dance and drink all night, till they collapse from pure exhaustion. They wake up feeling fine--not a sign of a hangover. Of course, tonight they'll only dance for a little while, so they'll only drink a little...."

* * * * *

"Sensible, aren't they?" The voice came out of the air behind them, sardonic, feminine. The language was Terran.

Kirk whirled and peered through the dusk, which was gathering rapidly. He saw a slightly amused pair of brown eyes, brunette hair, and a trim body dressed in chic good taste in expensive Terran clothes.

Cortland stood up. "Mrs. Sherrin ... our new Planetary Administrator, Cyril Kirk."

She lowered herself to the ground, spreading out a small mat under her as she did so. "Jeannette, if you don't mind." She folded her legs under her carefully. "I don't mean to be disrespectful. But there's such a small number of us here, we need to be friends and stick together."

Cortland, who had been looking away for a moment turned to them. "If you'll excuse me, someone wants to talk to me." Kirk nodded.

"Did I meet your husband this afternoon?" he inquired politely, as Cortland strode off.

"No; I'm a widow."

"Oh, I'm sorry," he murmured.

"Don't be. Not for me, I mean. We'd been coming to a parting of the ways for a long time. But let's not talk about that. How do you like the dancing?"

He looked at the firelit figures, whirling in the growing dusk. "I don't know. I'm sort of overwhelmed by everything. It's all so new. I've heard so many confusing things--"

She nodded. "If you manage to make sense out of the Nemarians, you'll make history. It's better not to worry about it too much. Immerse yourself in their gay, happy life."

"What do you mean?"

She gave him a sharp look. "You'll find out what I mean. Didn't Cortland tell you?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, you might as well go in cold at that. Form your own conclusions as you go along. No use giving you prejudices before you start. Maybe you're the man who'll cut the Gordian knot. No use telling you it can't be done."

"What can't be done?"

"We'll all be rooting for you." She poured herself a drink and downed it quickly. "Great stuff, this. Makes you forget the petty annoyances of the garden-spot of the galaxy." She poured another. "To Nemar," she said, lifting it. "Now tell me about Terra. What's been happening back home?"

He could get nothing more out of her.

* * * * *

Kirk struggled to control his irritation as the last Nemarian on his list walked in, poised and self-confident, casually unconcerned about his lateness. Something would have to be done about their sloppiness and lack of discipline, but now wasn't the time. It wouldn't do to lose his temper at the first official meeting he called.

First he needed to stir some ambition in them, prod them out of their lethargy.

He looked around at the assembled members of his joint Terran-Nemarian staff. The Terran members were making an attempt to stand stiffly at attention, somewhat awkwardly as though they were out of practice. They threw rather disconcerted looks at his stern, impassive young face. The Nemarians stood casually erect or lounged against the wall.

Once more, he found himself troubled by a faint sense of incongruity. Something about these natives was not primitive. Without saying a word, just by standing and looking at him, they made him feel awkward and insecure.

He straightened his shoulders and tried to make his expression even more stern. He wished he looked older.

A sense of the power of his position overwhelmed him for a moment.

He glanced at the speech he'd prepared, then at the faces before him. Slowly he pushed it aside. Somehow he couldn't use those formal sentences with these people. Diplomatic phrases didn't sound right in Nemarian.

"Good morning," he said abruptly. "I won't waste time on preliminaries." He paused. "I've only been here a day, but so far I've seen very few signs of Terran influence--a more or less obsolete type of ground transportation, a few tools and household conveniences, some art objects. Very little else. I don't fully understand why conditions are so backward here on Nemar when it has been part of the Galactic Union for forty years."

The Terrans in the group stirred uneasily.

"The important thing, however, is that the situation be changed so that Nemar may be given the benefits of galactic culture."

He paused and looked around. The natives were listening courteously and looking slightly bored. The Terrans looked uneasy or embarrassed.

"What prevents this change," he went on, "is the fact that there is nothing of value to export." He leaned forward. "But I don't believe that this or any planet can possess nothing of value. It's simply a matter of finding it. It's a matter of looking into new places, with new techniques, or for new things. If a sufficiently thorough search is made, something will turn up." He tried to ignore the signs of restlessness in his audience.

"I'm going to organize research groups for this purpose immediately. Each of you will head a committee to investigate the possibilities in a particular field--fuels, plants, animal products, etc. You will bring the reports to me, and I will check them and indicate further directions of search."

He continued, outlining his plans in detail, stressing the great advantages to be gained, the wonderful things galactic culture had to offer them--the marvelous machines and labor-saving devices, the rich fabrics and jewels, the vidar entertainments, the whole fabulous technology of a great, advanced civilization. He spoke with enthusiasm, but as he continued, a growing sense of apprehension began to creep into his energetic, determined mood.

Something was wrong with their reactions.

He puzzled over it as he watched them file out of the room after he finished. The voice of one of his younger subordinates drifted back to him from the hall outside: "Made me homesick for good old Terra. I'd give a lot to see a good vidar-show right now...." Cortland pressed his arm lightly as he passed, nodding his approval of the proceedings.