“Welcome to Earth!” called Obie—in English.
Helen, in Hakh’hli, added sorrowfully, “Oh, Wimp, you’ve really screwed it up this time.”
Sandy blinked at her. “What are you talking about?” he asked.
“Speak Hakh’hli!” Polly commanded, leaping off the rock and waddling toward him. “Because of your folly and incompetence everything has to be changed now!”
“My folly?”
“Yes, and incompetence,” Obie put in, looking reproachful. “You failed to carry out your mission properly. They knew at once you were lying and not speaking truth.”
“Well,” Sandy said reasonably, “all right, but I certainly didn’t tell anybody about the big ship, did I?”
“Don’t argue!” Polly ordered. “We have to attend to these people now and without delay! I have been in contact with the ship. The Major Seniors are very displeased with you, Lysander. However, facts are facts, eggs cannot be unlaid, and so we have new orders. We are to speak openly to these people of our purpose here.”
“Speak openly?” asked Sandy, dazed.
“Oh, please behave in Hakh’hli fashion and not any more in that of a hoo’hik than you must, Lysander! Just follow my lead. Smile. Let them welcome you home. And listen attentively to what I say to them!”
Then she turned to the cameras and spoke in English, weeping apologetically. “Please forgive us. We were simply worried about our dear friend, Lysander. Now can we go on with the ‘interview’?”
Neither Sandy nor any of the Hakh’hli had ever been “interviewed” before. But they had seen it done often enough on the old Earth television shows, and Polly was behaving like a talk-show veteran. She pulled Sandy to her side, with her hand firmly and affectionately tucked into the belt at his waist, as she spoke into the cameras. If Sandy had not been so busy staring around at the human machines, the human people, the grass and wildflowers and very rocks of the human world, he would have admired her poise. She spoke clearly and persuasively.
“Yes, we are the Hakh’hli, a race of highly technologically advanced people with a recorded history that goes back some sixteen thousand eight hundred of your years. We have come here to share our wisdom with you. Also to return the human, John William Washington. (We call him Sandy.) He is the son of two of your astronauts, whom our ship rescued when they were stranded in space, due to a war you were having, fifty-six of your years ago. We have brought him up as one of our own. The little story he told your food-animal herders was a harmless little deception. We only wanted him to be able to move freely among you, so that the first shock of his return to his native planet could be as gentle as possible, before the inevitable ‘publicity’ that would accompany the news of his real identity. Also, to be sure, we felt it necessary to be cautious in our first approach, so that we could find out what conditions were like in order to decide how best to make ourselves known to you. We wanted to spare you the worst shocks of encountering a race of truly superior beings.” She blinked affably at the cameras for a moment, and then added, “And now, if you will excuse us, we have to go back in the ship for a while, because it is time for our midday meal. We apologize for this necessity, but because of the excessively long day of your world we can wait no longer. Are you coming, dear Lysander?”
Once the Earth humans had been made to understand that when a Hakh’hli wanted to eat his big meal he wanted it, they hospitably offered to feed them out of their own stocks. Of course, the Hakh’hli rejected that proposal out of hand. They were too hungry to prolong the discussion, and so the entire cohort climbed back up the ladder-stick into the landing craft and closed the door.
As soon as they were inside Sandy burst out in Hakh’hli, “What has happened? Why are plans now different and not the same?”
“Because you screwed up,” Obie chortled in English.
“Speak Hakh’hli and not Earth language!” Polly thundered. “Who knows what listening devices Earth creatures have? But Oberon is correct and not in error, Lysander-Wimp. You failed and did not succeed. Those Earth creatures penetrated your ruse at once. How could you have been so foolish and not at all wise, Lysander?”
And Tanya, hurriedly loading the food cart at the far end of the chamber, chimed in, “Your incompetence has endangered our entire plan, Lysander.”
And Helen added, “Major Seniors are displeased and not at all happy.”
And even Oberon opened his mouth for a denunciation of his own, and Sandy might have had a great deal more recrimination to endure, but Tanya was already pulling their midday meal out of the warmer. The Hakh’hli abandoned Sandy for more rewarding fare.
In the confined space of the lander there wasn’t room for all six of them to attack the food at once. As always, Sandy didn’t even try, but waited for the feeding frenzy to subside. Even Obie, the smallest, was pushed out of the way. He tried to squeeze past Polly, but ducked back as she reached to pinch him, bumping into Sandy.
He winced as Sandy glared at him. “I’m sorry about what I said,” he offered. “Only it’s all so very confusing here. They do stare at us so!”
Sandy snorted. “Now you know how I’ve been feeling for the last twenty years,” he said, pleased at the role reversal—mostly pleased, anyway, although it was not altogether pleasing to find that he was no longer the unique center of attention.
Polly, mouth full, turned to glare at them. “I told you to speak Hakh’hli and not Earth language!” she said thickly, chewing. “It is in any case natural that Earth creatures should stare. It is clear in Earth history that such things happen, when primitive savages are suddenly visited by their technological and intellectual superiors; no doubt they think we are ‘gods.’ ” And, godlike, she shoved Bottom out of the way for another go at the meal.
That made room for Obie to squeeze his way in, which he promptly did, leaving Sandy to wait outside the noisy, violent knot. Sandy didn’t mind waiting. Actually, he was mildly repelled by the sight of his Hakh’hli cohort at their food. In the kitchen of the human food-animal herders things had been quite different. No one had been chewing and tearing at the meal there. Why couldn’t the Hakh’hli be as—well—dignified about their eating?
There was another thought that was troubling him, and it was even more somber. How was it possible, he asked himself, that their elaborate first-contact plan had gone so wrong so rapidly? How had the Earth humans discovered the landing ship so fast?
After all, the whole plan had been devised by the Major Seniors themselves. It was their own decision that the landing ship should remain hidden while Lysander, as the human member of the party, reconnoitered with the human beings to make sure that everything was safe before the first Hakh’hli-human contact occurred. Certainly the Major Seniors couldn’t have made an unworkable plan—could they?
But the fact was that the plan had gone wrong from the very beginning; which meant that the Major Seniors had failed to take all the factors into account.
Which was impossible.
The Hakh’hli were beginning to go slack and empty-eyed. As one by one they staggered to their seats Sandy moved soberly to the food cart. He made a selection of what was left and descended the ladder to eat it in the glorious Earthly sunlight.
In just the few minutes he had been inside the lander a new and bigger helicopter had arrived. It was white and powerful-looking, and the side of it bore the cryptic legend InterSec. Its rotors were still turning as its door opened and half a dozen new human beings jumped out.
They approached Sandy as he climbed onto the sun-warmed flat rock to eat his midday meal. The people with the television cameras, and even the police officers who were still hanging around, watching everything, seemed to defer to them. “Hello, Mr. Washington,” one of them called. “I’m Hamilton Boyle.”
Sandy stood up, careful not to spill the tray with his meal. He extended his hand in the approved Earth fashion. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Boyle,” he said, in his well-rehearsed way.
“Glad to know you—” Boyle began, and then ended with a grunt of pain. He pulled his hand back, rubbing it. “You’ve got some grip,” he said, surprised.
“I’m sorry,” Sandy said at once, annoyed with himself. “I forgot how much stronger I am than you are. It’s because of the one point four gravity environment on the ship, you see. Would you—” He hesitated, trying to remember what was appropriate behavior; but surely offering food was a friendly gesture on Earth? “Would you like to try some of this?” He extended a handful of wafers.