"Plain enough, I would think. Wherever you are, you've got to be the Boss. You've never been in any kind of a party for fifteen minutes without taking it over. When you snap the whip everybody jumps--or else--and you swing a wicked knife. For your information I don't jump, I am familiar with knives, and you will never run this project or any part of it."
Belle's face set; her eyes hardened. "While we're putting out information, take note that I'm just as good with actual knives as with figurative ones. If you're still thinking of blistering my fanny, don't try it. You'll find a rawhide haft sticking up out of one of those muscles you're so proud of--clear enough Mr. Garlock."
"Why don't you talk sense, instead of such yak-yak?" "Huh?"
"I know you're a Prime, too, but don't let it go to your head. I've got more stuff than you have, so you can't Gunther me. You weigh one thirty-five to my two seventeen. I'm harder, stronger, and faster than you are. You're probably a bit limberer--not too much-- but I've forgotten more judo than you ever will know. So what's the answer?"
16
Belle was breathing hard. "Then why don't you do it right now?"
"Several reasons. I couldn't brag much about licking anybody I outweigh by eighty-two pounds. I can't figure out your logic--if any--but I'm pretty sure now it wouldn't do either of us any good. Just the opposite."
"From your standpoint, would that be bad?"
"What a hell of a logic! You have got the finest brain of any woman living. You're stronger than Jim is by a lot more than the Prime-to-Operator ratio--you've got more initiative, more drive, more guts. You know as well as I do what your brain may mean before we get back. Why in all hell don't you start using it?"
"You are complimenting me?" "No. It's the truth, isn't it?"
"What difference does that make? Clee Garlock, I simply can't understand you at all."
"That makes it mutual. I can't understand a geometry in which the crookedest line between any two given points is the best line. Let's get to work, shall we?"
"Uh-huh, let's. One more bit of information, though, first. Any such idea as taking the Project away from you simply never entered my mind!" She gave him a warm and friendly smile as she walked over to the file-cabinets.
For hours, then, they worked; each scanning tape after tape. At mid-day they ate a light lunch. Shortly thereafter, Garlock put away his reader and all his loose tapes. "Are you getting anywhere, Belle? I'm not making any progress."
"Yes, but of course planets are probably pretty much the same everywhere--Tellus-type ones, I mean, of course. Is all the Xenology as cockeyed as I'm afraid it must be?"
"Check. The one basic assumption was that there are no human beings other than Tellurians. From that they derive the secondary assumption that humanoid types will be scarce. From there they scatter out in all directions. So I'll have to roll my own. I've got to see Atterlin, anyway. I'll be back for supper. So long."
At the Port Office, Grand Lady Neldine met him even more enthusiastically than before; taking both his hands and pressing them against her firm, almost-bare breasts. She tried to hold back as Garlock led her along the corridor.
"I have an explanation, and in a sense an apology, for you, Grand Lady Neldine, and for you, Governor Atterlin," he thought carefully. "I would have explained yesterday, but I had no understanding of the situation here until our anthropologist, Lola Montandon, elucidated it very laboriously to me. She herself, a scientist highly trained in that specialty, could grasp it only by referring back to somewhat similar situations which may have existed in the remote past--so remote a past that the concept is known only to specialists and is more than half mythical, even to them."
He went on to give in detail the sexual customs, obligations, and limitations of Lola's purely imaginary civilization.
"Then it isn't that you don't want to, but you can't?" the lady asked, incredulously. "Mentally, I can have no desire. Physically, the act is impossible," he assured her.
"What a shame!" Her thought was a peculiar mixture of disappointment and relief: disappointment in that she was not to bear this man's super-child; relief in that, after all, she had not personally failed--if she couldn't have this perfectly wonderful man herself, no other woman except his wife could ever have him, either. But what a shame to waste such a man as that on any one woman! It was really too bad.
"I see ... I see--wonderful!" Atterlin's thought was not at all incredulous, but vastly awed. "It is of course logical that as the power of mind increases, physical matters become less and less important. But you will have much to give us; we may perhaps have some small things to give you. If we could visit your Tellus, perhaps...?"
"That also is impossible. We four in the Pleiades are lost in space. This is the first planet we have visited on our first trial of a new
17
method--new to us, at least--of interstellar travel. We missed our objective, probably by many millions of parsecs, and it is quite possible that we four will never be able to find our way back. We are trying now, by charting the galaxies throughout billions of cubic parsecs of space, to find merely the direction in which our own galaxy lies."
"What a concept! What stupendous minds! But such immense distances, sir ... what can you possibly be using for a space-drive?" "None, as you understand the term. We travel by instantaneous translation, by means of something we call 'Gunther'.... I am not at
all sure that I can explain it to you satisfactorily, but I will try to do so, if you wish."
"Please do so, sir, by all means."
Garlock opened the highest Gunther cells of his mind. There was nothing as elementary as telepathy, teleportation, telekinesis, or the like; it was the pure, raw Gunther of the Gunther Drive, which even he himself made no pretense of understanding fully. He opened those cells and pushed that knowledge at the two Hodellian minds.
The result was just as instantaneous and just as catastrophic as Garlock had expected. Both blocks went up almost instantly. "Oh, no!" Atterlin exclaimed, his face turning white.
The girl shrieked once, covered her face with her hands, and collapsed on the floor.
"Oh, I'm so sorry ... excuse my ignorance, please!" Garlock implored, as he picked the girl up, carried her across the room to a sofa, and assured himself that she had not been really hurt. She recovered quickly. "I'm very sorry, Grand Lady Neldine and Governor Atterlin, but I didn't know ... that is, I didn't realize...."
"You are trying to break it gently." Atterlin was both shocked and despondent. "This being the first planet you have visited, you simply did not realize how feeble our minds really are."
"Oh, not at all, really, sir and lady." Garlock began deftly to repair the morale he had shattered. "Merely younger. With your system of genetics, so much more logical and efficient than our strict monogamy, your race will undoubtedly make more progress in a few centuries than we made in many millennia. And in a few centuries more you will pass us--will master this only partially-known Gunther Drive.
"Esthetically, Lady Neldine, I would like very much to father you a child." He allowed his coldly unmoved gaze to survey her charms. "I am sorry indeed that it cannot be. I trust that you, Governor Atterlin, will be kind enough to spread word of our physical shortcomings, and so spare us further embarrassment?"
"Not shortcomings, sir, and, I truly hope, no embarrassment," Atterlin protested. "We are immensely glad to have seen you, since your very existence gives us so much hope for the future. I will spread word, and every Hodellian will do whatever he can to help you in your quest."
"Thank you, sir and lady," and Garlock took his leave.
"What an act, my male-looking but impotent darling!" came Belle's clear, incisive thought, bubbling with unrestrained merriment. "For our Doctor Garlock, the Prime Exponent and First Disciple of Truth, what an act! Esthetically, he'd like to father her a child, it says here in fine print--Boy, if she only knew! One tiny grain of truth and she'd chase you from here to Andromeda! Clee, I swear this thing is going to kill me yet!"