Chapter 9

Dalish ud Klavan, stooped and withered, sat hopelessly, opposite Marlowe, who sat behind his desk like a grizzled polar bear, his thinning mane of white hair unkempt and straggling.

“Marlowe, my people are strangling,” the old Dovenilid said.

Marlowe looked at him silently.

“The Holliday Republic has signed treaty after treaty with us, and still their citizens raid our mining planets, driving away our own people, stealing the resources we must have if we are to live.”

Marlowe sighed. “There’s nothing I can do.”

“We have gone to the Holliday government repeatedly,” ud Klavan pleaded. “They tell us the raiders are criminals, that they are doing their best to stop them. But they still buy the metal the raiders bring them.”

“They have to,” Marlowe said. “There are no available resources anywhere within practicable distances. If they’re to have any civilization at all, they’ve got to buy from the outlaws.”

“But they are members of the Union!” ud Klavan protested. “Why won’t you do anything to stop them?”

“We can’t,” Marlowe said again. “They’re members of the Union, yes, but they’re also a free republic. We have no administrative jurisdiction over them, and if we attempted to establish one our citizens would rise in protest all over our territory.”

“Then we’re finished. Dovenil is a dead world.”

Marlowe nodded slowly. “I am very sorry. If there is anything I can do, or that the Ministry can do, we will do it. But we cannot save the Dovenilid state.”

Ud Klavan looked at him bitterly. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for your generous offer of a gracious funeral.

“I don’t understand you!” he burst out suddenly. “I don’t understand you people! Diplomatic lies, yes. Expediency, yes! But this ... this madness, this fanatical, illogical devotion of the state in the cause of a people who will tolerate no state! This ... no, this I cannot understand.”

Marlowe looked at him, his eyes full of years.

“Ud Klavan,” he said, “you are quite right. We are a race of maniacs. And that is why Earthmen rule the galaxy. For our treaties are not binding, and our promises are worthless. Our government does not represent our people. It represents our people as they once were. The delay in the democratic process is such that the treaty signed today fulfills the promise of yesterday--but today the Body Politic has formed a new opinion, is following a new logic which is completely at variance with that of yesterday. An Earthman’s promise--expressed in words or deeds--is good only at the instant he makes it. A second later, new factors have entered into the total circumstances, and a new chain of logic has formed in his head--to be altered again, a few seconds later.”

He thought, suddenly, of that poor claustrophobic devil, Holliday, harried from planet to planet, never given a moment’s rest--and civilizing, civilizing, spreading the race of humankind wherever he was driven. Civilizing with a fervor no hired dummy could have accomplished, driven by his fear to sell with all the real estate agent’s talent that had been born in him, selling for the sake of money with which to buy that land he needed for his peace--and always being forced to sell a little too much.

Ud Klavan rose from his chair. “You are also right, Marlowe. You are a race of maniacs, gibbering across the stars. And know, Marlowe, that the other races of the universe hate you.”

Marlowe with a tremendous effort heaved himself out of his chair.

“Hate us?” He lumbered around the desk and advanced on the frightened Dovenilid, who was retreating backwards before his path.

“Can’t you see it? Don’t you understand that, if we are to pursue any course of action over a long time--if we are ever going to achieve a galaxy in which an Earthman can some day live at peace with himself--we must each day violate all the moral codes and creeds which we held inviolate the day before? That we must fight against every ideal, every principle which our fathers taught us, because they no longer apply to our new logic?

“You hate us!” He thrust his fat hand, its nails bitten down to the quick and beyond, in front of the cringing alien’s eyes.

“You poor, weak, single-minded, ineffectual thing! We hate ourselves!”