The Judas Rose Page 5

  He had been wrong. The ego jolt never lasted even through the short flight up to the asteroid’s well-camouflaged dock. It might happen that you’d take your seat thinking serenely, I AM ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL MEN IN THE ENTIRE SOLAR SYSTEM, I HAVE EXTY MILLION MEGACREDITS IN MY SECRET ACCOUNT, I OWN A PRIVATE ASTEROID WHERE I AM KING AND POPE AND SULTAN AND MAGUS AND THERE IS NO OTHER POWER BEFORE ME. That could happen. But it leaked out fast. You sat in the cramped passenger compartment of the tiny automatic Air Force flyer and watched the digits on the left-to-go spot get smaller and smaller; and while you watched, your ego got smaller and smaller, too. Long before the tone sounded to tell you that the flyer had docked and that you could enter the corridor in the conference room where the Aliens were waiting, the last of it had evaporated and you were wishing they had chosen you for something else. Anything else. Never mind the exty million megacredits and all the rest; you would rather have been a servomechanism supervisor on a tourist asteroid than a member of the elite corps of seven handpicked men to which you actually belonged. It was only an elite corps while you had your feet firmly on the surface of the Earth, or some colony of Earth, and could revel in the idea that nobody around you knew the wondrous secrets you knew or had all the wondrous goodies you had or had seen all the wondrous sights you’d seen. You were a man who could call up the President of the United States and give him orders, for example; that was a tremendous consolation while you were on Earth and made up for many disadvantages. But it was no use to you when you actually set out, twice a year, to do the job for which you had been so painstakingly selected. Kony would have given up making the sillyass list, it was so useless, except then how would he have spent the nights before the sessions?

  He was always afraid to go to sleep. Even with drugs to make sure the sleep was dreamless, he was afraid. And if you were awake, the seconds crawled toward eternity. So. He kept on making the list called “List.” Maybe the shrink had known a little bit more than they gave him credit for? Naah . . . the poor simple bastard. How could he possibly not have realized that once he’d done his task he could not be allowed to keep walking around the world, carrying the information he carried? Heart attack, my sweet ass, Kony thought. Anybody who cared to take a look at the statistics about mental illness, nervous collapse, drug addiction, alcoholism, and general status tapioca-brain and free-flowing mouth among shrinks would have known that a heart attack was the next thing on the poor guy’s schedule after he was handed his generous fee for services rendered. Poor simple bastard.

  Special Ambassadors, on the other hand, were safe. Like the bottoms of chasms. Minds of solid aluminum, plated with platinum, studded with emeralds and rubies and priceless pearls. If Kony hadn’t been absolutely sure of that, he would have taken the quitpill he always carried, instantly, without a second’s hesitation. If he ever so much as noticed himself getting nervous, he would take that quitpill. Except during the night before a session, when it would have been a hell of a lot more demented to be calm than to be a mass of flinching nerves that had to be soothed with the mindless construction of the List.

  The S.A.’s could have handled being hated. That would have been easy. Powerful men had always been hated; they fed on it the way infants fed on mothers’ milk. The satisfaction of being surrounded by people who hated you but would have to wait till you were dead to express that hatred was like the satisfaction of sex . . . it was wonderful to watch such people squirm, in all the infinite variety of ways that such squirming could take place, while the slow pleasure spread through your loins. Hatred was an index of your power; the more truly powerful you were, the more intense the hatred. Only women wanted to be “liked.”

  But the Aliens didn’t hate them. Not at all. The Aliens thought they were cute.

  That was not easy to bear. Cute! It was a word you used for females, and children below a certain age, and small animals with the huge round eyes that human beings are hardwired to find appealing. Knowing that you, an adult human male, were considered “cute” . . . it was impossible to bear. But you didn’t have any choice, you had to bear it anyway.

  You knew what they were thinking, even when all you faced were their robot extensions and you didn’t know where the real Aliens were or what they might look like; among their technological tricks was that of making robot simulacra with magnificently authentic body language. Kony had stopped caring whether the amused tolerance he faced came from one of the Alien species able to function on its own in the asteroid’s canned environment or from a simulack—it was the very same amused tolerance, in either case.

  And you knew how you were being spoken to, nice little native that you were. “Good fella chop chop him talkee fine fine.” That kind of thing. No doubt the Alien went home at night to his spouse, or whatever Aliens had, and said, “Darling, I saw the cutest little Terran today! You wouldn’t believe how hard he was trying, poor little fellow . . . I had to really fight not to pick him up and cuddle him, just to let him know it was okay.” Or maybe, “Terrans are so damn cute when they’re mad!” That was also possible.

  You couldn’t speak the Alien languages, of course. You had to search desperately for the words you needed on your ring of phrase-chips, and then you had to key them into the portable speech synthesizer, which pronounced them in a flawless imitation of your own voice. (The idea behind that had been that you would hide the synthy on your person someplace and mouth the words along with it, fooling the Aliens into thinking your mouth was the source of the noises.) This had worked very well in the lab, and had seemed entirely convincing to the staff for whom it was demonstrated; the Aliens had thought it cuter than anything else the Terrans did, and Kony had abandoned it instantly when he saw that gleam in their eyes that meant, “Well, will you look at that dear little creature trying to play like it speaks Alien!” The experts told the men they were “anthropomorphizing” when they interpreted the Aliens’ reactions in that way; the experts had never been there.

  If the technique with the speech synthesizer failed you, you fell back on PanSig, semaphoring and posturing and flashing color cards and spraying odors . . . . Chop chop. Good fella not likee likee, too damn bad for good fella.

  Some of the Aliens you dealt with were polite; they would condescend to speak Standard Panglish at you. Flawlessly. Others were arrogant, and would not stoop to such an inadequate excuse for a language. The polite ones obviously found the behavior of the arrogant ones distasteful. But it was equally obvious that even to those whose courtesy was impeccable you were no more than a posturing child whose little feelings must never be hurt, lest it lose its little temper, and whose little sensibilities must never be startled, lest its little personality be damaged in some way. One must be kind to the natives, old boy—beneath one to behave otherwise, donchaknow.

  Sometimes, when Kony was sitting around, shaking a little, trying to recover some of his self-respect so he’d be able to go out again the next time, the grotesque hilarity of it would strike him. All those years in the past spent dreading the marauders from outer space, the monsters that would subjugate Terra and make her peoples their slaves! It was funny. Because the Aliens, no matter which part of the Interstellar Consortium they had been sent from in their mysterious rotation of duty, had no more interest in taking over Earth and its colonies than the United States government would have had in subjugating an Appalachian pig farm and persimmon grove. Earth was a reservation planet, a place where dear little primitives lived in quaint but deplorable squalor. Earth was not to subjugate; Earth was to help, to the very limited extent that Terrans could be trusted not to hurt themselves or others with the Alien knowledge and the Alien gadgets.

  Here we come! Kony thought giddily, as they stopped to let the conference room door recognize them, announce them, and iris open to let them in. Kony B. Flagg and Antony Quentin Fordle, Special Ambassadors, Department of Analysis & Translation, Top Secret Section, Foreign Service Division, State Department, Government of the United States of America, Planet Earth. Here w
e come! Little naked heathen ignorant savages, strutting our stuff, rattling our beads . . . . He swallowed bile, as always, and that meant that he entered the conference room with foul breath, as always. With Antony Fordle it was sweat; something about the repulsion and degradation he felt would activate in his metabolism a chemical that turned his otherwise ordinary human perspiration to a musky reek—which would gradually permeate the room in spite of the air exchange system’s most valiant efforts. Here we come, Kony thought, with our different but equally appalling primitive stinks! Chop chop. He put on his most icily contemptuous facial expression, for his own benefit—it certainly would not impress the Aliens—and stepped into the room, ready to do his duty.

  This time, if the briefing had not been flawed, there’d be one Alien that was the real thing and one that was a robot simulacrum. No way to tell which was which probably, though D.A.T. folklore was that if you were good enough you could spot the simulack by the pupils of its eyes. Kony had never spotted one yet; he waited until he was told. The Aliens were scrupulous about telling you things like that. “I am X, Robot Simulacrum of Y, who speaks for Planet Z.” And then you knew where you were, and it didn’t matter one diddly anyway.

  The real thing turned out to be in the seat on the left, the simulack on the right. And they were both polite versions, able and willing to speak Panglish, which would make this easier. Both nodded genteel appreciation of the ritual greetings and salutations in their respective native languages offered by the speech synthesizers, which had been programmed by the Lingoes. (Who Kony hated more than he hated the Aliens; because the Lingoes were family in this context, and when your family turns on you, it’s much worse than when strangers do it.) Refreshments emerged from a slot in the wall and floated over the small conference table on a gravytrain; it waited while Kony and Antony made their selections, playing a folktune while it hovered near them. Then national anthems were piped in, and holos of the relevant flags were made to wave at the center of the table; opening speeches, taped for convenience, were played. Every possible effort was made to help the Earthlings feel comfortable, and it was all torture. And when at long last the end of the introductory ceremonies was reached, and the session formally began, it was as abrupt as the preliminaries had been prolonged; the Aliens waved their magic wands, and the new figures appeared on the comscreen.

  Kony looked at the data; they weren’t interesting. The Soviet Union and its allies had added one new Alien language to their inventory since the last session, and had acquired three new colony planets. The United States and its allies had added three Alien languages but had acquired only two new colony planets. The end result was essentially a draw, give or take a planet, give or take a language. It always was. It was something else the Aliens were scrupulous about. They maintained absolute neutrality toward Earth politics; they saw to it that neither East nor West ever gained any scrap of their knowledge that was not immediately transmitted to the other side. They were simply there to provide information based upon their superior resources for gathering that information.

  And of course to announce the new quotas for the Interfaces, where the human infants of the linguist dynasties learned the Alien languages that made all the rest of it possible.

  “We want fifty new pairs of Aliens for Interfacing,” Director Clete had told them at the briefing, the veins of his neck pulsing with urgency. “Fifty!” And when they’d stared blankly at him, he’d narrowed his eyes and told them not to tell him it couldn’t be done, and they had gone along with that. Neither of them had said it couldn’t be done. Heykus Joshua Clete wanted them to ask for fifty pairs of Aliens, they’d ask for fifty pairs of Aliens. They could ask for fifty, or five thousand, or for any other number he fancied. It would make no difference.

  The quota this time, the simulack was saying, would be four pairs for the Soviet Union and two pairs for the United States. The simulack was pleased to be able to tell them that all six would be pairs—no singlets. It was always easier when the AIRY’s were in pairs, because two Aliens-in-Residence could carry on ordinary natural conversation in the Alien tongue in a way that greatly increased the data from which the human infants acquired the language; a single AIRY was less satisfactory. (Was a single AIRY also lonely? Miserable in its isolation from its own kind? Kony didn’t allow himself to think about that.) The simulack was sure that the men from D.A.T. would be equally pleased, and it hastened to assure them that the Soviet Union had been entirely satisfied.

  Four for the Soviets. Two for us. If there were no failures, the number of Alien tongues acquired on each side would continue to be equal. For some reason not well understood, the USSR did sometimes have failures in its Interfaces, while the US almost never did; on the other hand, the US had more failures in its attempts at settling planets and establishing colonies than the Soviets did. Also for reasons not well understood. On an interplanetary scale, it was near enough equal, over time, to satisfy almost anyone. It did not satisfy Heykus Clete, who took each and every new Soviet colony, each and every new Soviet exploratory base, as a personal insult. It was an article of faith in D.A.T. that what kept Heykus not just alive but as vigorous as a man half his age was his insatiable drive to beat the USSR to each and every planet, moon, and asteroid in each and every galaxy, till the end of time. It might be enough to make him immortal, space being theoretically supplied with infinite real estate for him to lust after.

  Carefully, grateful that this was one of the times when Standard Panglish would be all he needed, Kony switched to his most neutral expression and spoke up. He had seniority; that meant he got to be the first to make a fool of himself.

  “There is a problem,” he observed, with dignity. Maintaining in his mind’s eye his own perception of his own speech, as dignified; the linguists claimed that even if the Aliens did consider Panglish a pidgin, it was ignorant to feel degraded by the speaking of a pidgin. He didn’t believe it, but he clung to it.

  “Ah?”

  Kony noted the twinkle in the eyes of the simulack making the polite noise of query; how that was accomplished, he had no idea. If he asked, they might very well be willing to tell him. The Aliens had been generous with their technologies, including their FTL travel and their miraculous medicines and their anti-gravity techniques and any number of other goodies. You asked; they asked you why; you told them; they thought a minute or two; much of the time they said “Yes, of course.” And in a few days along would come the official communication stating how much it would cost and how long it would take, when and where the negotiations should be scheduled, what Alien languages would be involved, and so on. Whereupon, D.A.T. called in the linguists of the Lines, to settle the details. Once in a while you asked and were refused, and then you knew that whatever it was you’d asked for, however innocuous it might have seemed to you, was something that children could not be allowed to play with, so sorry. But usually they were indulgent.

  “Please state the problem, Special Ambassador Kony,” it said.

  “The United States regrets that the number of subjects for Interfacing is not adequate,” Kony told it.

  “Is that true?” Up went the eyebrows, over the twinkle. “How many subjects does the United States consider necessary?”

  “One hundred pairs are needed at this time,” said Kony, calm as a puddle.

  Silence. Then: “One hundred pairs.” The lips twitched.

  “The United States has a huge population, spread over vast territories. This requires an acceleration of the Interfacing program.”

  “And of course,” put in Antony smoothly, lending a hand, “the more extraterrestrial cultures we are privileged to interact with, the more strongly we forge the ties between your peoples and ours.”

  “There will be six pairs,” said the simulack courteously; at its side, the Alien nodded.

  “The United States will be delighted to cut its request by fifty percent!” Kony declared. Flourish of trumpets, stage left.

  Gently, the simulack repeated itself
. “There will be six pairs.”

  “It is not satisfactory,” said Kony. “Let that be noted, for the record.”

  They smiled at him, and then looked down at the conference table. More politeness . . . wouldn’t do to let the Earthlings see their amusement, donchaknow. And the Terrans shrugged. They were used to this; they knew the orchestration and the choreography, and they had given up trying to do variations.

  There had been a time when D.A.T.’s Special Ambassador had genuinely tried to negotiate. Not any more. They all knew now that it made no difference whether they recited nursery rhymes or burst into tears or broke into word salad. The communication of the Consortium’s representatives was not a feedback system except in the absolute formal sense in which an utterance by one speaker is followed by an utterance from another speaker. There was no rule demanding a semantic connection among those utterances. The Aliens came in pairs to announce the current statistics for the two major Terran power blocks and the current quota for Interfacing; those predetermined announcements would be made, no matter what was said. That they didn’t just send a memo instead of meeting with the Terrans was no doubt just one more example of their determination to be well-bred at all costs.

  Kony had explained it to Heykus Clete himself, once. A command performance.

  “Say they tell me there’ll be ten pairs for the Interfaces this time,” he’d told the Director. “And I say we need twenty. The Alien will say, ‘There will be ten pairs.’ And if I then say, ‘Mary had a little lamb,’ the same thing will happen. The Alien will say, ‘There will be ten pairs.’ Politely.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Clete had objected.

  “Why should it make sense? They are Aliens. That’s what ‘Alien’ means.”