Part 1

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE THRID

BY MURRAY LEINSTER

The Thrid were the wisest creatures in space--they even said so themselves!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

I

The real trouble was that Jorgenson saw things as a business man does. But also, and contradictorily, he saw them as right and just, or as wrong and intolerable. As a business man, he should have kept his mind on business and never bothered about Ganti. As a believer in right and wrong, it would have been wiser for him to have stayed off the planet Thriddar altogether. Thriddar was no place for him, anyhow you look at it. On this particular morning it was especially the wrong place for him to be trying to live and do business.

He woke up thinking of Ganti, and in consequence he was in a bad mood right away. Most humans couldn't take the sort of thing that went on on Thriddar. Most of them wanted to use missile weapons--which the Thrid did not use--to change the local social system. Most humans got off Thriddar--fast! And boiling mad.

Jorgenson had stood it longer than most because in spite of their convictions he liked the Thrid. Their minds did do outside loops, and come up with intolerable convictions. But they were intelligent enough. They had steam-power and even steam-driven atmosphere fliers, but they didn't have missile weapons and they did have a social system that humans simply couldn't accept--even though it applied only to Thrid. The ordinary Thrid, with whom Jorgenson did business, weren't bad people. It was the officials who made him grind his teeth. And though it was his business only to run the trading post of the Rim Stars Trading Corporation, sometimes he got fed up.

This morning was especially beyond the limit. There was a new Grand Panjandrum--the term was Jorgenson's own for the supreme ruler over all the Thrid--and when Jorgenson finished his breakfast a high Thrid official waited in the trading-post compound. Around him clustered other Thrid, wearing the formal headgear that said they were Witnesses to an official act.

Jorgenson went out, scowling, and exchanged the customary ceremonial greetings. Then the high official beamed at him and extracted a scroll from his voluminous garments. Jorgenson saw the glint of gold and was suspicious at once. The words of a current Grand Panjandrum were always written in gold. If they didn't get written in gold they didn't get written at all; but it was too bad if anybody ignored any of them.

The high official unrolled the scroll. The Thrid around him, wearing Witness hats, became utterly silent. The high official made a sound equivalent to clearing his throat. The stillness became death-like.

"On this day," intoned the high official, while the Witnesses listened reverently, "on this day did Glen-U the Never-Mistaken, as have been his predecessors throughout the ages;--on this day did the Never-Mistaken Glen-U speak and say and observe a truth in the presence of the governors and the rulers of the universe."

Jorgenson reflected sourly that the governors and the rulers of the universe were whoever happened to be within hearing of the Grand Panjandrum. They were not imposing. They were scared. Everybody is always scared under an absolute ruler, but the Grand Panjandrum was worse than that. He couldn't make a mistake. Whatever he said had to be true, because he said it, and sometimes it had drastic results. But past Grand Panjandrums had spoken highly of the trading post. Jorgenson shouldn't have much to worry about. He waited. He thought of Ganti. He scowled.

"The great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U," intoned the official again, "in the presence of the governors and the rulers of the universe, did speak and say and observe that it is the desire of the Rim Star Trading Corporation to present to him, the great and never-mistaken Glen-U, all of the present possessions of the said Rim Stars Trading Corporation, and thereafter to remit to him all moneys, goods, and benefactions to and of the said Rim Stars Trading Corporation as they shall be received. The great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U did further speak and say and observe that anyone hindering this loyal and admirable gift must, by the operation of truth, vanish from sight and nevermore be seen face to face by any rational being."

The high official rolled up the scroll, while Jorgenson exploded inside.

* * * * *

A part of this was reaction as a business man. A part was recognition of all the intolerable things that the Thrid took as a matter of course. If Jorgenson had reacted solely as a business man he'd have swallowed it, departed on the next Rim Stars trading-ship--which would not have left any trade-goods behind--and left the Grand Panjandrum to realize what he had lost when no off-planet goods arrived on Thriddar. In time he'd speak and say and observe that he, out of his generosity, gave the loot back. Then the trading could resume. But Jorgenson didn't feel only like a business man this morning. He thought of Ganti, who was a particular case of everything he disliked on Thriddar.

It was not wise to be moved by such sympathetic feelings. The Grand Panjandrum could not be mistaken. It was definitely unwise to contradict him. It could even be dangerous. Jorgenson was in a nasty spot.

The Witnesses murmured reverently:

"We hear the words of the Never-Mistaken Glen-U."

The high official tucked away the scroll and said blandly:

"I will receive the moneys, goods, and benefactions it is the desire of the Rim Stars Trading Corporation to present to the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U."

Jorgenson, boiling inside, nevertheless knew what he was doing. He said succinctly:

"Like hell you will!"

There was an idiom in Thrid speech that had exactly the meaning of the human phrase. Jorgenson used it.

The high official looked at him in utter stupefaction. Nobody contradicted the Grand Panjandrum! Nobody! The Thrid had noticed long ago that they were the most intelligent race in the universe. Since that was so, obviously they must have the most perfect government. But no government could be perfect if its officials made mistakes. So no Thrid official ever made a mistake. In particular the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U could not conceivably blunder! When he said a thing, it was true! It had to be! He'd said it! And this was the fundamental fact in the culture of the Thrid.

"Like hell you'll receive moneys and goods and such!" snapped Jorgenson. "Like hell you will!"

The high official literally couldn't believe his ears.

"But--but the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U--"

"Is mistaken!" said Jorgenson bitingly. "He's wrong! The Rim Stars Trading Corporation does _not_ want to give him anything! What he has said is not true!" This was the equivalent of treason, blasphemy and the ultimate of indecorous behavior toward a virgin Pelean princess. "I won't give him anything! I'm not even vanishing from sight! Glen-U is wrong about that, too! Now--git!"

He jerked out his blaster and pulled the trigger.

There was an explosive burst of flame from the ground between the official and himself. The official fled. With him fled all the Witnesses, some even losing their headgear in their haste to get away.

* * * * *

Jorgenson stamped into the trading-post building. His eyes were stormy and his jaw was set.

He snapped orders. The hired Thrid of the trading-post staff had not quite grasped the situation. They couldn't believe it. Automatically, as he commanded the iron doors and shutters of the trading post closed, they obeyed. They saw him turn on the shocker-field so that nobody could cross the compound without getting an electric shock that would discourage him. They began to believe.

Then he sent for the trading-post Thrid consultant. On Earth he'd have called for a lawyer. On a hostile world there'd have been a soldier to advise him. On Thrid the specialist to be consulted wasn't exactly a theologian, but he was nearer that than anything else.

Jorgenson laid the matter indignantly before him, repeating the exact phrases that said the trading company wanted--wanted!--practically to give itself to the Never-Mistaken Glen-U, who was the Grand Panjandrum of Thriddar. He waited to be told that it couldn't have happened; that anyhow it couldn't be intended. But the theologian's Thriddish ears went limp, which amounted to the same thing as a man's face turning pale. He stammered agitatedly that if the Grand Panjandrum said it, it was true. It couldn't be otherwise! If the trading company wanted to give itself to him, there was nothing to be done. It wanted to! The Grand Panjandrum had said so!

"He also said," said Jorgenson irritably, "that I'm to vanish and nevermore be seen face to face by any rational being. How does that happen? Do I get speared?"

The trading-post theologian quivered. Jorgenson made things much worse.

"This," he raged, "this is crazy! The Grand Panjandrum's an ordinary Thrid just like you are! Of course he can make a mistake! There's nobody who can't be wrong!"

The theologian put up feebly protesting, human-like hands. He begged hysterically to be allowed to go home before Jorgenson vanished, with unknown consequences for any Thrid who might be nearby.

When Jorgenson opened a door to kick him out of it, the whole staff of the trading-post plunged after him. They'd been eavesdropping and they fled in pure horror.

Jorgenson swore impartially at all of them and turned the shocker-field back on. He plugged in a capacity circuit which would turn on warning sirens if anything like a steam-driven copter passed or hovered over the trading-post. He put blasters in handy positions. The Thrid used only spears, knives and scimitars. Blasters would defend the post against a multitude.

As a business man, he'd acted very foolishly. But he'd acted even less sensibly as a human being. He'd gotten fed up with a social system and a--call it--theology it wasn't his business to change. True, the Thrid way of life was appalling, and what had happened to Ganti was probably typical. But it wasn't Jorgenson's affair. He'd been unwise to let it disturb him. If the Thrid wanted things this way, it was their privilege.

In theory, no Thrid should ever make a mistake, because he belonged to the most intelligent race in the universe. But a local governor was even more intelligent. If an ordinary Thrid challenged a local governor's least and lightest remark--why--he must be either a criminal or insane. The local governor decided--correctly, of course--which he was. If he was a criminal, he spent the rest of his life in a gang of criminals chained together and doing the most exhausting labor the Thrid could contrive. If he was mad, he was confined for life.

* * * * *

There'd been Ganti, a Thrid of whom Jorgenson had had much hope. He believed that Ganti could learn to run the trading post without human supervision. If he could, the trading company could simply bring trade goods to Thriddar and take away other trade goods. The cost of doing business would be decreased. There could be no human-Thrid friction. Jorgenson had been training Ganti for this work.

But the local Thrid governor had spoken and said and observed that Ganti's wife wanted to enter his household. He added that Ganti wanted to yield her to him.

Jorgenson had fumed--but not as a business man--when the transfer took place. But Ganti had been conditioned to believe that when a governor said he wanted to do something, he did. He couldn't quite grasp the contrary idea. But he moped horribly, and Jorgenson talked sardonically to him, and he almost doubted that an official was necessarily right. When his former wife died of grief, his disbelief became positive. And immediately afterward he disappeared.

Jorgenson couldn't find out what had become of him. Dour reflection on the happening had put him in the bad mood which had started things, this morning.

Time passed. He had the trading-post in a position of defense. He prepared his lunch, and glowered. More time passed. He cooked his dinner, and ate. Afterward he went up on the trading-post roof to smoke and to coddle his anger. He observed the sunset. There was always some haze in the air on Thriddar, and the colorings were very beautiful. He could see the towers of the capital city of the Thrid. He could see a cumbersome but still graceful steam-driven aircraft descend heavily to the field at the city's edge. Later he saw another steam-plane rise slowly but reliably and head away somewhere else. He saw the steam helicopters go skittering above the city's buildings.

He fumed because creatures intelligent enough to build steam fliers weren't intelligent enough to see what a racket their government was. Now that the new Grand Panjandrum had moved against him, Jorgenson made an angry, dogged resolution to do something permanent to make matters better. For the Thrid themselves. Here he thought not as a business man only, but as a humanitarian. As both. When a whim of the Grand Panjandrum could ruin a business, something should be done. And when Ganti and countless others had been victims of capricious tyranny.... And Jorgenson was slated to vanish from sight and never again be seen.... It definitely called for strong measures!

He reflected with grim pleasure that the Grand Panjandrum would soon be in the position of a Thrid whom everybody knew was mistaken. With the trading-post denied him and Jorgenson still visible, he'd be notoriously wrong. And he couldn't be, and still be Grand Panjandrum!

It would be a nice situation for Glen-U. He'd have to do something about it, and there was nothing he could do. He'd blundered, and it would soon be public knowledge.

Jorgenson dozed lightly. Then more heavily. Then more heavily still. The night was not two hours old when the warning sirens made a terrific uproar. The Thrid for miles around heard the wailing, ullulating sound of the sirens that should have awakened Jorgenson.

But they didn't wake him. He slept on.

* * * * *

When he woke, he knew that he was cold. His muscles were cramped. Half awake, he tried to move and could not.

Then he tried to waken fully, and he couldn't do that either. He stayed in a dream-like, frustrated state which was partly like a nightmare, while very gradually new sensations came to him. He felt a cushioned throbbing against his chest, in the very hard surface on which he lay face down. That surface swayed and rocked slightly. He tried again to move, and realized that his hands and feet were bound. He found that he shivered, and realized that his clothing had been taken from him.

He was completely helpless and lying on his stomach in the cargo-space of a steam helicopter: now he could hear the sound of its machinery.

Then he knew what had happened. He'd committed The unthinkable crime--or lunacy--of declaring the Grand Panjandrum mistaken. So by the operation of truth, which was really an anesthetic gas cloud drifted over the trading post, he had vanished from sight.

Now it was evidently to be arranged that he would never again be seen face to face by a rational being. The Grand Panjandrum had won the argument. Within a few months a Rim Stars trading ship would land, and Jorgenson would be gone and the trading post confiscated. It would be hopeless to ask questions, and worse than hopeless to try to trade. So the ship would lift off and there'd be no more ships for at least a generation. Then there might--there might!--be another.

Jorgenson swore fluently and with passion.

"It will not be long," said a tranquil voice.

Jorgenson changed from human-speech profanity to Thrid. He directed his words to the unseen creature who'd spoken. That Thrid listened, apparently without emotion. When Jorgenson ran out of breath, the voice said severely:

"You declared the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U mistaken. This could not be. It proved you either a criminal or insane, because no rational creature could believe him mistaken. He declared you insane, and he cannot be wrong. So soon you will arrive where you are to be confined and no rational being will ever see you face to face."

Jorgenson switched back to human swearing. Then he blended both languages, using all the applicable words he knew both in human speech and Thrid. He knew a great many. The soft throbbing of the steam-driven rotors went on, and Jorgenson swore both as a business man and a humanitarian. Both were frustrated.

Presently the motion of the copter changed. He knew the ship was descending. There were more violent swayings, as if from wind gusts deflected by something large and solid. Jorgenson even heard deep-bass rumblings like sea upon a rocky coast. Then there were movements near him, a rope went around his waist, a loading-bay opened and he found himself lifted and lowered through it.

* * * * *

He dangled in midair, a couple of hundred feet above an utterly barren island on which huge ocean swells beat. The downdraft from the copter made him sway wildly, and once it had him spinning dizzily. The horizon was empty. He was being lowered swiftly to the island. And his hands and feet were still securely tied.

Then he saw a figure on the island. It was a Thrid stripped of all clothing like Jorgenson and darkened by the sun. That figure came agilely toward where he was let down. It caught him. It checked his wild swingings, which could have broken bones. The rope slackened. The Thrid laid Jorgenson down.

He did not cast off the rope. He seemed to essay to climb it.

It was cut at the steam-copter and came tumbling down all over both of them. The Thrid waved his arms wildly and seemed to screech gibberish at the sky. There was an impact nearby, of something dropped. Jorgenson heard the throbbing sound of the copter as it lifted and swept away.

Then he felt the bounds about his arms and legs being removed. Then a Thrid voice--amazingly, a familiar Thrid voice--said:

"This is not good, Jorgenson. Who did you contradict?"

The Thrid was Ganti, of whom Jorgenson had once had hopes as a business man, and for whose disaster he had felt indignation as something else. He loosened the last of Jorgenson's bonds and helped him sit up.

Jorgenson glared around. The island was roughly one hundred feet by two. It was twisted, curdled yellow stone from one end to the other. There were stone hillocks and a miniature stony peak, and a narrow valley between two patches of higher rock. Huge seas boomed against the windward shore, throwing spray higher than the island's topmost point. There were some places where sand had gathered. There was one spot--perhaps a square yard of it--where sand had been made fertile by the droppings of flying things and where two or three starveling plants showed foliage of sorts. That was all. Jorgenson ground his teeth.

"Go ahead," said Ganti grimly, "but it may be even worse than you think."

He scrambled over the twisted stone of the island. He came back, carrying something.

"It isn't worse," he said. "It's only as bad. They did drop food and water for both of us. I wasn't sure they would."

* * * * *

His calmness sobered Jorgenson. As a business man, he was moved to make his situation clear. He told Ganti of the Grand Panjandrum's move to take over the Rim Stars trading post, which was bad business. He told of his own reaction, which was not a business-like one at all. Then he said dourly:

"But he's still wrong. No rational being is supposed ever to see me face to face. But you do."

"But I'm crazy," said Ganti calmly. "I tried to kill the governor who'd taken my wife. So he said I was crazy and that made it true. So I wasn't put in a chained group of laborers. Somebody might have seen me and thought about it. But, sent here, it's worse for me and I'm probably forgotten by now."

He was calm about it. Only a Thrid would have been so calm. But they've had at least hundreds of generations in which to get used to injustice. He accepted it. But Jorgenson frowned.

"You've got brains, Ganti. What's the chance of escape?"

"None," said Ganti unemotionally. "You'd better get out of the sun. It'll burn you badly. Come along."

He led the way over the bare, scorching rocky surface. He turned past a small pinnacle. There was shadow. Jorgenson crawled into it, and found himself in a cave. It was not a natural one. It had been hacked out, morsel by morsel. It was cool inside. It was astonishingly roomy.

"How'd this happen?" demanded Jorgenson the business man.

"This is a prison," Ganti explained matter-of-factly. "They let me down here and dropped food and water for a week. They went away. I found there'd been another prisoner here before me. His skeleton was in this cave. I reasoned it out. There must have been others before him. When there is a prisoner here, every so often a copter drops food and water. When the prisoner doesn't pick it up, they stop coming. When, presently, they have another prisoner they drop him off, like me, and he finds the skeleton of the previous prisoner, like me, and he dumps it overboard as I did. They'll drop food and water for me until I stop picking it up. And presently they'll do the same thing all over again."

Jorgenson glowered. That was his reaction as a person. Then he gestured to the cave around him. There was a pile of dried-out seaweed for sleeping purposes.

"And this?"

"Somebody dug it out," said Ganti without resentment. "To keep busy. Maybe one prisoner only began it. A later one saw it started and worked on it to keep busy. Then others in their turn. It took a good many lives to make this cave."

Jorgenson ground his teeth a second time.

"And just because they'd contradicted somebody who couldn't be wrong! Or because they had a business an official wanted!"

"Or a wife," agreed Ganti. "Here!"

He offered food. Jorgenson ate, scowling. Afterward, near sundown, he went over the island.

It was rock, nothing else. There was a pile of small broken stones from the excavation of the cave. There were the few starveling plants. There was the cordage with which Jorgenson had been lowered. There was the parcel containing food and water. Ganti observed that the plastic went to pieces in a week or so, so it couldn't be used for anything. There was nothing to escape with. Nothing to make anything to escape with.

Even the dried seaweed bed was not comfortable. Jorgenson slept badly and waked with aching muscles. Ganti assured him unemotionally that he'd get used to it.

He did. By the time the copter came to drop food and water again, Jorgenson was physically adjusted to the island. But neither as a business man or as a person could he adjust to hopelessness.

He racked his brains for the most preposterous or faintest hope of deliverance. There were times when as a business man he reproached himself for staying on Thriddar after he became indignant with the way the planet was governed. It was very foolish. But much more often he felt such hatred of the manners and customs of the Thrid--which had put him here--that it seemed that something must somehow be possible if only so he could take revenge.

III

The copter came, it dropped food and water, and it went away. It came, dropped food and water, and went away. Once a water-bag burst when dropped. They lost nearly half a week's water supply. Before the copter came again they'd gone two days without drinking.