‘Decimals are not necessary, sir.”
‘Seven plus, then, weights of gold. One of gold to eleven of silver. One of silver to four of copper.’
‘Thank you. We’ll use platinum. I bring some bullion tomorrow morning and exchange it for your currency. Shall I bring it here, or to a bank in the city?’
‘Either. Or we can have an armored truck visit your ship.’ “That would be better yet Have them bring about five thousand tanes. Thank you very much, Governor Atterlin, and good afternoon to you, sir.’
‘And good afternoon to you, sir. Until tomorrow, then.’ ‘Oh, may I go with you to your ship, sir, to take just a little look at it?’ the girl asked, winningly.
‘Of course, Grand Lady Neldine. I’d like to have your company.’
She seized his elbow and hugged it quickly against her breast. Then, taking his hand, she walked – almost skipped -along beside him. ‘And I want to see Pilot James close up, too, sir—though he’s not nearly as wonderful as you are. And I
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wonder why Planetographer Bellamy’s hair is green? Very striking, of course, sir, but I don’t think I’d care for it much on me – unless you’d think I should?’ And so on.
Belle knew, of course, that they were coming; and Garlock knew that Belle’s hackles were very much on the rise. She could not read him, except very superficially, but she was reading the strange girl like a book and was not liking anything she read. Wherefore, when Garlock and his joyous companion reached the great space-ship —
‘How come you picked up that little man-eating shark?’ she sent, venemously, on a tight band.
‘It wasn’t a case of picking her up. I haven’t been able to find any urbane way of scraping her off. First Contact, you know.’
‘She wants altogether too much Contact for a First – 111 scrap her off even if she is Right the Honorable Grand Lady Claire Vere de Vere Cabot-Lodge …’ Belle changed her tactics even before Garlock began his reprimand. ‘I shouldn’t have stid that, Clee, of course.” A light mental laugh came. ‘It was just the shock; there wasn’t anything in any of my First Contact tapes covering what to do about beautiful and enticing girls who try to seduce our men. She doesn’t know, though, of course, that she’s supposed to be a bug-eyed monster and not human at all. Won’t Xenology be in for a rough ride when we check in? Wow!’ And for the rest of the day Belle played flawlessly the role of perfect hostess.
It was full dark before the Hodellians could be persuaded to leave the Pleiades and the locks were closed.
‘I’ve refused one hundred seventy-eight invitations,’ Lola reported then. ‘All of us, individually and collectively, have been invited to eat everything, everywhere in town. To see shows in a dozen different theaters and eighteen night spots. To dance all night in twenty-one different places, ranging from dives to strictly soup-and-fish. I was nice about it, of course -just begged off because we were dead from our belts both ways from our long, hard trip. My thought, of course, is that we’d better eat our own food and take it slowly at first. Check, Clee?’
‘On the beam, dead center. And you weren’t lying much, either. I feel as though I’d done a day’s work. After supper there’s a thing I’ve got to discuss with all three of you.’
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Supper was soon over. Then:
‘We’ve got to make a mighty important decision,’ Garlock began abruptly. ‘Grand Lady Neldine – that title isn’t exact, but close – wondered why I didn’t respond at all, either way. However, she didn’t make a point of it, and I let her wonder; but we’ll have to decide by tomorrow morning what to do, and it’ll have to be airtight. The Hodellians expect Jim and me to impregnate as many as possible of their highest-rated women before we leave. By then- Code it’s mandatory, since we can’t hide the fact that we rate much higher than they do – their highest rating is only Grade Two by our standards – and all the planets hereabouts upgrade themselves with the highest-grade new blood they can find. Ordinarily, they’d expect you two girls to become pregnant by your choices of the top men of the planet; but they know you wouldn’t breed down and don’t expect you to. But how in all hell can Jim and I refuse to breed them up without dealing out the deadliest insult they know?’
There was a minute of silence. ‘We can’t,’ James said then. A grin began to spread over his face. ‘It might not be too bad an idea, at that, come to think of it. That ball of fire they picked out for you would be a blue-ribbon dish in anybody’s cookbook. And Grand Lady Lemphi – wow!’
‘Is that nice, you back-alley tomcat?’ Belle asked plaintively. Then she paused in thought and went on slowly. ‘I won’t pretend to like it, but I won’t do any public screaming about it’
‘Any anthropologist would say you’ll have to,’ Lola declared without hesitation. ‘I don’t like it, either. I think it’s horrible; but it’s excellent genetics and we cannot and must not violate systems-wide mores.’
‘You’re all missing the point! Garlock snapped. He got up. jammed his hands into his pockets, and began to pace the floor. ‘I didn’t think any one of you was that stupid! If that was all there were to it we’d do it as a matter of course. But think, damn it! There’s nothing higher than Gunther Two in the humanity of this planet. Telepathy is the only ESP they have. High Gunther uses hitherto unused portions of the brain. It’s transmitted through genes, which are dominant, cumulative, and self-multiplying by interaction. Jim and I carry more, stronger, and higher Gunther genes than any other two
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men known to live. Can we take the chance of planting such genes where none have ever been known before?’
‘My God .”said Belle.
Then there were two full minutes of silence.
That one has really got a bone in it,’ James said, unhelpfully.
Three minutes more of silence.
‘It’s up to you, Lola,’ Garlock said then. ‘It’s your field.’
‘I was afraid of that. There’s a way. Personally, I like it less even than the other, but it’s the only one I’ve been able to think up. First, are you absolutely sure that our refusal – Belle’s and mine, I mean – to breed down will be valid with them?’
‘Positive.’
Then the whole society from which we come will have to be strictly monogamous, in the narrowest, most literal sense of the term. No exceptions whatever. Adultery, anything illicit, has always been not only unimaginable, but in fact impossible. We pair – or marry, or whatever they do here – once only. For life. Desire and potency can exist only within the pair; never outside it. Like eagles. If a man’s wife dies, even, he loses all desire and all potency. That would make it physically impossible for you two to follow the Hodellian Code. You’d both be completely impotent with any women whatever except your mates – Belle and me.’
‘That will work,’ Belle said. ‘How it will work!’ She paused. Then, suddenly, she laughed – the rich, full-throated laugh which so few women ever allow themselves. ‘But do you know what you’ve done, Lola?’
‘Nothing, except suggest a solution. What so funny about that?’
‘You’re wonderful, Lola – simply priceless! You’ve created something brand-new to science – an impotent tomcat! And the more I think about it —’ Belle was rocking back and forth with laughter. She could not possibly talk, but her thought flowed on: ‘An impotent tomcat, and he’ll have to stay true to me – oh, this is simply killing me!’
‘It does put us on the spot – especially Jim,’ came Oarlock’s thought.
He, too, began to laugh; and Lola, as soon as she stopped thinking about the thing only as a problem in anthropology, 26
joined in. James, however, did not think it was very funny.
‘And that’s less than half of it!’ Belle went on. ‘Think of Clee, Lola. Six two – over two hundred – hard as nails – a perfect hunk of man telling this whole damn cockeyed region of space that he’s impotent, too! And with a perfectly straight face! And it ties in so beautifully with his making no response, yes or no, when she propositioned him. The poor, innocent, impotent lamb just simply didn’t have even the faintest inkling of what she meant!’
‘Listen – listen – LISTEN!’ James managed finally to break in. ‘Not that I want to be promiscuous, but —’
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Belle soothed him, speaking aloud but with a still-unsteady voice as she held down her mirth. ‘Us Earthgirls will take care of you two, see if we don’t. You won’t need any nasty little…’ Belle could not hold the pose; she went off again into whoops of laughter.