The World Swappers Page 6

  “Will I feel differently then?” Enni sounded genuinely puzzled.

  “Yes, quite differently. But – maybe I shouldn’t say this; still, I’m going to – you damned well ought to feel glad. I heard what you were screaming about while you were delirious. How old are you, Enni? fifteen?”

  “Nearly eighteen,” said Enni with slight indignation. The doctor ignored the indignation, and went on.

  “Just as bad. What a hell of a place Ymir must be, if all poor kids like you get their heads stuffed with the sort of evil nonsense you were spewing up while you were feverish. The galaxy would be a cleaner place if people like that were disinfected out of existence. They’re as bad as germs!”

  “I don’t understand,” frowned Enni. Surely the doctor couldn’t be talking about Ymirans with such loathing?

  The doctor laughed, and patted Enni’s fair hair. “You just relax, little one. I’ll go get you something to set you up.”

  Little one. Enni had never thought of herself that way; indeed, she was regarded as tall for her age. But now that she considered the matter, she realized that the doctor would be taller than herself by at least fifteen inches. And the spacemen who called on Jaroslav – they were inches taller than he was, too.

  It affected her more profoundly than anything had before, to learn from the doctor when she returned that the Ymirans, the self-appointed, self-righteous Ymirans, owing to malnutrition and the rigors of climate, were in actual fact the runts of the whole human race.

  CHAPTER IX

  The sensation as the tranquilizer shots wore off was the most extraordinary Enni could remember. Like water leaking into a tank, apprehension began to flood gradually through her mind. They brought her food–strange to her, and hard for her to adjust to–and then offered her clothes to put on. In the matter of dress, Ymiran custom made modesty a necessity and nothing that she was shown really fulfilled the function of concealing the body, which subconsciously she still regarded as of prime importance. True, she had worn that dress from Earth in the privacy of Jaroslav’s home–but that had had something of childish make-believe and “dressing up” about it; this was reality, a reality that grew more frightening as the minutes ticked away.

  Shyly, she rejected the short-skirted frocks, the saris which Video India’s influence had made so popular on Earth, the virtually translucent chitons from Zeus, and screwed up her courage enough to put on a suit of silky pajama-like garments from K’ung-fu-tse, which were the closest of all to the demanding standards of Ymiran modesty.

  Timidly, feeling like a new arrival in a naturist colony, knowing that she was not conspicuous and yet unable to rid herself of self-consciousness, she ventured to follow the doctor from the sick quarters.

  “That’s a good girl,” the doctor approved. “I’ll take you up to the bridge. Captain Leeuwenhoek has been asking after you.”

  “Where are we going?” Enni inquired after a moment trying desperately to keep up with the doctor’s long strides.

  “Going? Well, we aren’t going anywhere any longer–we already went, as you might say. You’ve been out for four days, you know. We broached air just about the time you woke up.”

  The impact of what it meant to lose four days from one’s life started to hammer at Enni’s mind. They were going through a pipelike corridor, metal-walled; three or four members of the crew passed them, nodded to the doctor, gave Enni curious, searching glances.

  “We weren’t scheduled to come so far on this trip,” the doctor was saying. “But we had to get you out of the reach of those elders of yours, and Jaroslav’s a friend of ours–all of us in the space trade know him pretty well. That’s a good man, you know! So we cut through straight to Earth.”

  Earth! The doctor was saying something explanatory about cargo costs and the reason why the extra long trip would not be a loss to the crew, but Enni could not hear for the thunder of blood in her ears.

  It was one thing to dream about a pleasant world where people could live freely and enjoy their lives; quite another suddenly to find herself there. Earth, the wellspring of evil, the fountainhead of sin, the worst, most ill-famed planet in the galaxy–to an Ymiran, at least. The world from which the founding fathers had departed in scorn and hatred–that was a tale every Ymiran schoolchild learned as soon as he or she could talk.

  Blindly, she kept up with the doctor, not noticing the complex equipment lining the walls they now were passing, hardly noticing as they passed through a vacuum bulkhead into a place full of light and busy people.

  “Hullo, Enni!” exclaimed Captain Leeuwenhoek from his post by the main control panels. Enni took no notice. A blinding, wonderful truth had burst in on her, and she was dazzled.

  The bridge had been opened to the air. The screens had been rolled back, and through them came the gentle plopping sound of waves breaking against the hull of the ship. They had of course settled on water; it would have been suicide to attempt a landing on Ymir’s gnaw-toothed, storm-racked oceans, but Earth’s wide stretches of calm sea served better than land-built bases or the operating of spacecraft. Ahead was a city of splendid whiteness, set against a montage of green hills. Nearer, tugs were coming out to meet the Amsterdam and gentle her through the last few miles to the main docks.

  Enni had never seen a city like Rio, nor such vessels as the powerful, shining-clean tugs. But she was not looking at either. She was looking at the sky, blue, warm, with a powdering of high white clouds, and at the sea, which rolled lazily in long undulations: gentle, green, inviting.

  And to this, eyes bright, Enni was saying under her breath, “Why, it’s true! It’s really true!”

  Behind her, Leeuwenhoek gave the doctor a significant glance; the doctor nodded and smiled.

  Enni stayed on the bridge, not daring to miss a moment of what was going on, hardly speaking even when spoken to, until the tugs had urged the Amsterdam into dock, and the sight of the sea and sky had almost been obscured by the piled crates, the cranes and conveyors, the hulls of other docked vessels, and the sheer-sided warehouses fronting on the wharf. Everywhere there were people going about their business; everywhere there was noise and shouting.

  And now Enni’s delight gave way again to apprehension. It was so different, so vastly different from anything she had ever known. What would she do here on Earth? What could she do? How would people treat her? True, the men and women she could see on the dockside appeared friendly enough, and spoke in cheerful tones to each other; true, Jaroslav had told her that when he rebelled against the rules imposed on the staff of the Ymiran Embassy and went to meet Earthmen on their own ground, the reaction he got when he admitted his origin was something like, “Ymiran, huh? Thought you guys weren’t allowed out on the streets, or something–we never see your people around. Have another drink.”

  But …

  An official-looking person in a smart white uniform came to the dockside and shouted for the skipper; Leeuwenhoek went to lean out of the bridge port and discuss his cargo manifest and unloading arrangements. There was something about buyers coming around in an hour or two. Enni did not follow all that was said.

  Leeuwenhoek finished his discussion and turned inboard with a tired but satisfied expression. “Well, we might as well step ashore for a few hours,” he said. “Enni, you’d best come along and we’ll fit you out with some things you need. Like the idea?”

  Enni nodded.

  Petr Tomlin had been a buyer for Bassett’s for more than ten years. His beat included the Rio docks; sometimes off-world cargoes included miscellanea that could be resold at a ridiculously large profit after a suitable advertising campaign to drive home the glamorous aspect of their colonial origin.

  When the Amsterdam’s details went up on the main arrivals board, he scanned them with an expert eye. Ymir, last port of call. A God-forsaken, one-propulsor world, that. In all his experience, he’d never seen a decent cargo come off Ymir. Still, for some reason, during the past few days, interest had been growing in the firm; and, afte
r all, the previous ports of call included two reliable worlds with occasional respectable exports.

  Better drop by and take a look, he decided.

  The cargo-master was a stranger to him, but he was expert at making friends quickly, and within the half-hour they were chatting amiably together. None of the competing buyers had yet made up their minds to inspect the Amsterdam; Tomlin allowed the cargo-master to expand a little before they settled down to serious business.

  “We don’t see you often in Rio,” he suggested. “Does your beat usually include Earth?”

  The cargo-master shook his head. “We work the outworlds most of the time. Nothing fancy–seeds, cattle stock in embryo, processed reactor fuels, that sort of thing. Only we had a special reason for calling on Earth this trip–last-minute change of plan, in fact.”

  Some instinct made Tomlin prick up his ears. “You don’t say!” he prompted. The cargo-master decided to elucidate.

  “Some girl from Ymir got herself in trouble with the local authorities. The agent there is a friend of the skipper’s. He agreed to ship the girl out of the elders’ reach as a favor to him.”

  “Pretty expensive sort of favor!” Tomlin commented.

  “Not really. We figured it out before we started, and I think when you look at what we’ve got you’ll see it would have been worth our while to make the trip anyway.”

  That was the signal for the start of serious business; all the time that Tomlin was haggling and making his offers, though, the question of why a single Ymiran girl should have been brought to Earth as a favor irked him. He mentioned it to his chief, Lecoq, when he reported in that night, and the reaction which the news provoked startled him.

  “An Ymiran girl? Here in Rio? What’s she like? How old is she? Where is she right now?”

  Tomlin stammered feebly that he hadn’t bothered to ask. Lecoq slammed his fist down on his desk and ordered him harshly to get out and find her. Then he countermanded the order and rang Bassett.

  Bassett had been poring over yet another file of information on Ymir. It seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing else these days. And the more he studied the question, the more he suspected Lecoq had been right all along. Ymir was a ridiculous planet to try and reopen to immigration! It would take more than the impending crisis in living standards to drive Earthborn to Ymir; it would take a disaster.

  Therefore, if they weren’t completely off-beam, they were still asking the wrong questions.

  It was a job for a social psychologist. He had recruited the best available to his staff, but they had nothing to work on. None of them had been to Ymir; there was no opportunity to meet and talk with members of the embassy staff in Rio, except on the most formal footing; Ymirans had no spacefleet and seldom visited other planets; and most certainly, they would refuse to cooperate if Bassett or anyone went direct to Ymir to study the problem at first hand.

  Dead end.

  They were making do with what they had–analysis of the semantic distortions in Ymiran official publications, for example, provided useful clues to their basic psychology. But what they really needed as Bassett was fully aware, was a complete understanding of the human situation on Ymir, as directly experienced by an individual citizen. Until they had that, they were fumbling in the dark.

  Did Counce’s boast about being able to handle the problem imply that his group had that kind of information? If the range of their matter transmitter was interstellar, that could be the case. Their agents could move among Ymirans while posing as natives; they would generate none of the hostility inspired by visiting spacemen.

  That was why, when Lecoq rang him with the news of an Ymiran girl’s arrival in Rio, he felt like getting up and doing a small dance of joy.

  “Excellent!” he said crisply. “That’s exactly the sort of opportunity we’ve been looking for. How soon can we track this girl down?”

  “I’m intending to start at once,” Lecoq answered. “I thought you’d want to know immediately.”

  “Right. But we’ll have to handle this delicately. Here we’ve got a girl practically alone on a strange world, and if there’s any truth in the survey reports I’ve read, she’ll be scared to death of the sinfulness and wicked ways of Earthborn people. Uh–what was the name of that Ymiran who deserted the staff of the embassy a few years ago?”

  “Jaroslav Dubin.”

  “Fine. We’re friends of Jaroslav’s, then, so far as she’s concerned. Brief half a dozen sober, respectable-looking young female secretaries and make sure it’s one of them who actually contacts her. Girls from these backward planets are usually scared blind of the opposite sex. Order them to gain her confidence gently, and then lure her here somehow. After that, we can let the psychologists take over. Better make sure nobody is supposed to meet her or look after her here.”

  “That’s unlikely. It seems this was strictly a spur-of-the-moment arrangement. But I’ll cover it, just in case.”

  “Good. Keep me in touch. And find the girl fast.”

  Bassett smiled in satisfaction as he leaned back in his chair. He would have been a good deal less pleased if he had known that Counce was also smiling, elsewhere in Rio, at precisely the same moment and over precisely the same events.

  CHAPTER X

  For an adult, Enni decided there was something surprisingly childlike about Leeuwenhoek. His naïve delight in showing her about Rio was patent wherever they went. Enni fastened on it because it afforded her a sort of shield against the real problem facing her.

  The Amsterdam would stay only a few days on Earth; time in port was costly in harbor dues and wasted voyage time. Somehow, between now and the ship’s departure, she would have to make friends, get on her feet. There would be opportunity enough after that for sight-seeing. The fundamental trouble, of course, was that never in her young life had Enni done anything on her own, aside from stealing away to visit Jaroslav. She had never had hours to herself, to do with as she liked; idleness, the Ymirans declared, was also a sin.

  Her heart sank steadily as the discovery of the complexity and unfamiliarity of life on Earth became more apparent with every step she took. Far from impressing and delighting her, Leeuwenhoek’s parade of wonders depressed her, made her more and more uncertain of herself.

  What had Jaroslav done to her, abandoning her like this on Earth?

  Belatedly, Leeuwenhoek discovered that he should have been back at the docks half an hour ago; he rushed her to the ship and abandoned her temporarily on the wharf while he went to talk with a customs official.

  Lonely, worried, trying to keep control of herself, Enni looked about her. Another ship was being pushed clear of an adjacent berth; beyond, the flaming trail of a ship blazing toward the sky struck across the ocean. It was so enormous, all of it, after the constriction and narrowness of Ymir, that her mind seemed unable to contain it.

  A young woman, plain, soberly dressed in brown, walked as though in doubt toward the wharf. She looked for a few moments at the Amsterdam; catching sight of Enni, she turned and approached her.

  “Excuse me. Do you know the name of this ship?” she asked.

  “The–the Amsterdam,” said Enni, rather faintly. The young woman thanked her, but hesitated before turning away.

  “You’re a stranger, aren’t you?” she suggested. “Have you just arrived?”

  Enni nodded. “I’m from Ymir,” she ventured, wondering what the reaction would be, but needing to prove for herself that Jaroslav had told her the truth.

  “Why, how interesting!” The plain woman gave a friendly smile, and Enni felt a surging of relief. “You must have come in on the Amsterdam, then. I heard there was a ship from Ymir in Rio, so I came round to ask if anyone had news of a friend of mine. An Ymiran. I met him years ago, and I’ve never forgotten him. You might even know him, I guess–his name is Jaroslav Dubin.”

  “Of course I know him!” exclaimed Enni. “Why, what a wonderful surprise to meet someone who actually is a friend of Jaroslav’s!”

/>   And she poured out the whole story of her panicky flight.

  “Well!” said the plain woman when she had finished. “I never would have thought Jaroslav would do such a thing. I think it’s awful, just sending you to Earth to save his own skin, and not doing anything to make sure you were all right. My name is Dolores Lourenço–call me Dolly. Where’s this captain of yours? I think he deserves a talking-to for letting this happen!”

  After that, things happened very rapidly. Enni’s head whirled. Somehow, though, she found herself being whisked into a cab with her new-found friend, who announced that she was going to organize Enni’s immediate future for her. Enni asked no questions about what was going on, for fear of appearing either stupid or ungrateful, and though she was puzzled to find herself being taken into a vast building in the center of the city, which certainly did not look like a place where people lived, she kept her thoughts to herself.

  Men and women glanced at her–glanced down at her, she realized–and she tried not to be conscious of their eyes. Her clothing was unusual, but not extraordinary, so that could hardly be the reason for their interest. Her youth? Her smallness? She could not guess.

  Her own eyes were otherwise occupied. The building they entered was gigantic beyond her dreams. Twenty or more floors reared up to the sky, paneled with glass and metal and plastics; strange carvings decorated the walls, sounds and smells that puzzled her filled the air. There was humming of machinery, barely noticeable.

  So spacious! So wastefully spacious! On Ymir men cramped themselves and huddled together, yet there were only ten million people in the whole world. Here there were ten million in a single city, and everyone had room.

  She was in a small compartment rather than a room, with Dolores; the compartment startled her by pressing its floor against her feet. An elevator; on Ymir, there were ladders and occasionally, if there was room, a flight of stairs.

  A light corridor with numbered doors. Dolores took her through one of the doors, and a man at a table looked up. He had sharp, bright eyes under vast bushy eyebrows; he wore white coveralls like the doctor aboard the Amsterdam.