Lone Star Planet Page 4

  CHAPTER IV

  The Statehouse appeared to cover about a square mile of ground and itwas an insane jumble of buildings piled beside and on top of oneanother, as though it had been in continuous construction ever since theplanet was colonized, eighty-odd years before.

  At what looked like one of the main entrances, the car stopped. I toldour Marine driver and auto-rifleman to park the car and take in thebarbecue, but to leave word with the doorman where they could be found.Hoddy, Thrombley and I then went in, to be met by a couple of New TexasRangers, one of them the officer who had called at the Embassy. Theyguided us to the office of the Secretary of State.

  "We're dreadfully late," Thrombley was fretting. "I do hope we haven'tkept the Secretary waiting too long."

  From the looks of him, I was afraid we had. He jumped up from his deskand hurried across the room as soon as the receptionist opened the doorfor us, his hand extended.

  "Good afternoon, Mr. Thrombley," he burbled nervously. "And this is thenew Ambassador, I suppose. And this--" He caught sight of Hoddy Ringo,bringing up the rear and stopped short, hand flying to open mouth. "Oh,dear me!"

  So far, I had been building myself a New Texas stereotype from HoddyRingo and the Ranger officer who had chased us to the Embassy. But thisfrightened little rabbit of a fellow simply didn't fit it. An alienwould be justified in assigning him to an entirely different species.

  Thrombley introduced me. I introduced Hoddy as my confidential secretaryand advisor. We all shook hands, and Thrombley dug my credentials out ofhis briefcase and handed them to me, and I handed them to the Secretaryof State, Mr. William A. Palme. He barely glanced at them, then shook myhand again fervently and mumbled something about "inexpressiblepleasure" and "entirely acceptable to my government."

  That made me the accredited and accepted Ambassador to New Texas.

  Mr. Palme hoped, or said he hoped, that my stay in New Texas would belong and pleasant. He seemed rather less than convinced that it wouldbe. His eyes kept returning in horrified fascination to my belt. Eachtime they would focus on the butts of my Krupp-Tattas, he would pullthem resolutely away again.

  "And now, we must take you to President Hutchinson; he is most anxiousto meet you, Mr. Silk. If you will please come with me ..."

  Four or five Rangers who had been loitering the hall outside moved tofollow us as we went toward the elevator. Although we had come into thebuilding onto a floor only a few feet above street-level, we went downthree floors from the hallway outside the Secretary of State's office,into a huge room, the concrete floor of which was oil-stained, asthough vehicles were continually being driven in and out. It was about ahundred feet wide, and two or three hundred in length. Daylight wasvisible through open doors at the end. As we approached them, theRangers fanning out on either side and in front of us, I could hear aperfect bedlam of noise outside--shouting, singing, dance-band music,interspersed with the banging of shots.

  When we reached the doors at the end, we emerged into one end of a bigrectangular plaza, at least five hundred yards in length. Most of theuproar was centered at the opposite end, where several thousand people,in costumes colored through the whole spectrum, were milling about.There seemed to be at least two square-dances going on, to the music ofcompeting bands. At the distant end of the plaza, over the heads of thecrowd, I could see the piles and tracks of an overhead crane, toweringabove what looked like an open-hearth furnace. Between us and the bulkof the crowd, in a cleared space, two medium tanks, heavily padded withmats, were ramming and trying to overturn each other, the mob ofspectators crowding as close to them as they dared. The din waspositively deafening, though we were at least two hundred yards from thecenter of the crowd.

  "Oh, dear, I always dread these things!" Palme was saying.

  "Yes, absolutely anything could happen," Thrombley twittered.

  "Man, this is a real barbecue!" Hoddy gloated. "Now I really feel athome!"

  "Over this way, Mr. Silk," Palme said, guiding me toward the short endof the plaza, on our left. "We will see the President and then ..."

  He gulped.

  "... then we will all go to the barbecue."

  In the center of the short end of the plaza, dwarfed by the monsterbulks of steel and concrete and glass around it, stood a little oldbuilding of warm-tinted adobe. I had never seen it before, but somehowit was familiar-looking. And then I remembered. Although I had neverseen it before, I had seen it pictured many times; pictured underattack, with gunsmoke spouting from windows and parapets.

  I plucked Thrombley's sleeve.

  "Isn't that a replica of the Alamo?"

  He was shocked. "Oh, dear, Mr. Ambassador, don't let anybody hear youask that. That's no replica. It _is_ the Alamo. _The_ Alamo."

  I stood there a moment, looking at it. I was remembering, and finallyunderstanding, what my psycho-history lessons about the "RomanticFreeze" had meant.

  _They had taken this little mission-fort down, brick by adobe brick,loaded it carefully into a spaceship, brought it here, forty twolight-years away from Terra, and reverently set it up again. Then theyhad built a whole world and a whole social philosophy around it_.

  It had been the dissatisfied, of course, the discontented, the dreamers,who had led the vanguard of man's explosion into space following thediscovery of the hyperspace-drive. They had gone from Terra cherishingdreams of things that had been dumped into the dust bin of history,carrying with them pictures of ways of life that had passed away, orthat had never really been. Then, in their new life, on new planets,they had set to work making those dreams and those pictures live.

  And, many times, they had come close to succeeding.

  These Texans, now: they had left behind the cold fact that it had beentheir state's great industrial complex that had made their migrationpossible. They ignored the fact that their life here on Capella IV waspossible only by application of modern industrial technology. That rodeodown the plaza--tank-tilting instead of bronco-busting. Here they were,living frozen in a romantic dream, a world of roving cowboys and ranchkingdoms.

  No wonder Hoddy hadn't liked the books I had been reading on the ship.They shook the fabric of that dream.

  There were people moving about, at this relatively quiet end of theplaza, mostly in the direction of the barbecue. Ten or twelve Rangersloitered at the front of the Alamo, and with them I saw the dress bluesof my two Marines. There was a little three-wheeled motorcart amongthem, from which they were helping themselves to food and drink. Whenthey saw us coming, the two Marines shoved their sandwiches into thehands of a couple of Rangers and tried to come to attention.

  "At ease, at ease," I told them. "Have a good time, boys. Hoddy, youbetter get in on some of this grub; I may be inside for quite a while."

  As soon as the Rangers saw Hoddy, they hastily got things out of theirright hands. Hoddy grinned at them.

  "Take it easy, boys," he said. "I'm protected by the game laws. I'm adiplomat, I am."

  There were a couple of Rangers lounging outside the door of thePresident's office and both of them carried autorifles, implying thingsI didn't like.

  I had seen the President of the Solar League wandering around thedome-city of Artemis unattended, looking for all the world like aprofessor in his academic halls. Since then, maybe before then, I hadalways had a healthy suspicion of governments whose chiefs had tosurround themselves with bodyguards.

  But the President of New Texas, John Hutchinson, was alone in his officewhen we were shown in. He got up and came around his desk to greet us, aslender, stoop-shouldered man in a black-and-gold laced jacket. He had anarrow compressed mouth and eyes that seemed to be watching every cornerof the room at once. He wore a pair of small pistols in cross-bodyholsters under his coat, and he always kept one hand or the other closeto his abdomen.

  He was like, and yet unlike, the Secretary of State. Both had the lookof hunted animals; but where Palme was a rabbit, twitching to takeflight at the first whiff of danger, Hutchinson was a cat who hearshounds bayin
g--ready to run if he could, or claw if he must.

  "Good day, Mr. Silk," he said, shaking hands with me after theintroductions. "I see you're heeled; you're smart. You wouldn't be heretoday if poor Silas Cumshaw'd been as smart as you are. Great man,though; a wise and farseeing statesman. He and I were real friends."

  "You know who Mr. Silk brought with him as bodyguard?" Palme asked."Hoddy Ringo!"

  "Oh, my God! I thought this planet was rid of him!" The President turnedto me. "You got a good trigger-man, though, Mr. Ambassador. Good man towatch your back for you. But lot of folks here won't thank you forbringing him back to New Texas."

  He looked at his watch. "We have time for a little drink, before we gooutside, Mr. Silk," he said. "Care to join me?"

  I assented and he got a bottle of superbourbon out of his desk, withfour glasses. Palme got some water tumblers and brought the pitcher ofice-water from the cooler.

  I noticed that the New Texas Secretary of State filled his three-ounceliquor glass to the top and gulped it down at once. He might act asthough he were descended from a long line of maiden aunts, but he tookhis liquor in blasts that would have floored a spaceport labor-boss.

  We had another drink, a little slower, and chatted for a while, and thenHutchinson said, regretfully that we'd have to go outside and meet thefolks. Outside, our guards--Hoddy, the two Marines, the Rangers who hadescorted us from Palme's office, and Hutchinson's retinue--surroundedus, and we made our way down the plaza, through the crowd. Thedin--ear-piercing yells, whistles, cowbells, pistol shots, the cacophonyof the two dance-bands, and the chorus-singing, of which I caught onlythe words: _The skies of freedom are above you!_--was as bad as NewYear's Eve in Manhattan or Nairobi or New Moscow, on Terra.

  "Don't take all this as a personal tribute, Mr. Silk!" Hutchinsonscreamed into my ear. "On this planet, to paraphrase Nietzsche, a goodbarbecue halloweth any cause!"

  That surprised me, at the moment. Later I found out that John Hutchinsonwas one of the leading scholars on New Texas and had once been presidentof one of their universities. New Texas Christian, I believe.

  As we got up onto the platform, close enough to the barbecue pits tofeel the heat from them, somebody let off what sounded like a fifty-mmanti-tank gun five or six times. Hutchinson grabbed a microphone andbellowed into it: "Ladies and gentlemen! Your attention, please!"

  The noise began to diminish, slowly, until I could hear one voice, inthe crowd below:

  "Shut up, you damn fools! We can't eat till this is over!"

  Hutchinson introduced me, in very few words. I gathered that lengthyspeeches at barbecues were not popular on New Texas.

  "Ladies and gentlemen!" I yelled into the microphone. "Appreciative as Iam of this honor, there is one here who is more deserving of your noticethan I; one to whom I, also, pay homage. He's over there on the fire,and I want a slice of him as soon as possible!"

  That got a big ovation. There was, beside the water pitcher, a bottle ofsuperbourbon. I ostentatiously threw the water out of the glass, poureda big shot of the corrosive stuff, and downed it.

  "For God's sake, let's eat!" I finished. Then I turned to Thrombley, whowas looking like a priest who has just seen the bishop spit in theholy-water font. "Stick close to me," I whispered. "Cue me in on thelocal notables, and the other members of the Diplomatic Corps." Then weall got down off the platform, and a band climbed up and began playingone of those raucous "cowboy ballads" which had originated in Manhattanabout the middle of the Twentieth Century.

  "The sandwiches'll be here in a moment, Mr. Ambassador," Hutchinsonscreamed--in effect, whispered--in my ear. "Don't feel any reluctanceabout shaking hands with a sandwich in your other hand; that's standardpractice, here. You struck just the right note, up there. That businesswith the liquor was positively inspired!"

  The sandwiches--huge masses of meat and hot relish, wrapped in tortillasof some sort--arrived and I bit into one.

  I'd been eating supercow all my life, frozen or electron-beamed fortransportation, and now I was discovering that I had never really eatensupercow before. I finished the first sandwich in surprisingly shortorder and was starting on my second when the crowd began coming.

  First, the Diplomatic Corps, the usual collection of weirdies, human andotherwise....

  There was the Ambassador from Tara, in a suit of what his planetproduced as a substitute for Irish homespuns. His Embassy, if it waslike the others I had seen elsewhere, would be an outsize cottage withwhitewashed walls and a thatched roof, with a bowl of milk outside thedoor for the Little People ...

  The Ambassador from Alpheratz II, the South African Nationalist planet,with a full beard, and old fashioned plug hat and tail-coat. They were afrustrated lot. They had gone into space to practice _apartheid_ and hadsettled on a planet where there was no other intelligent race to besuperior to....

  The Mormon Ambassador from Deseret--Delta Camelopardalis V....

  The Ambassador from Spica VII, a short jolly-looking little fellow, witha head like a seal's, long arms, short legs and a tail like akangaroo's....

  The Ambassador from Beta Cephus VI, who could have passed for human ifhe hadn't had blood with a copper base instead of iron. His skin was adark green and his hair was a bright blue....

  I was beginning to correct my first impression that Thrombley was acomplete dithering fool. He stood at my left elbow, whispering the namesand governments and home planets of the Ambassadors as they came up,handing me little slips of paper on which he had written phoneticallycorrect renditions of the greetings I would give them in their ownlanguage. I was still twittering a reply to the greeting ofNanadabadian, from Beta Cephus VI, when he whispered to me:

  "Here it comes, sir. The z'Srauff!"

  The z'Srauff were reasonably close to human stature and appearance,allowing for the fact that their ancestry had been canine instead ofsimian. They had, of course, longer and narrower jaws than we have, anddefinitely carnivorous teeth.

  There were stories floating around that they enjoyed barbecued Terraneven better than they did supercow and hot relish.

  This one advanced, extending his three-fingered hand.

  "I am most happy to make connection with Solar League representative,"he said. "I am named Gglafrr Ddespttann Vuvuvu."

  No wonder Thrombley let him introduce himself. I answered in the BasicEnglish that was all he'd admit to understanding:

  "The name of your great nation has gone before you to me. The stories wetell to our young of you are at the top of our books. I have hope tomake great pleasure in you and me to be friends."

  Gglafrr Vuvuvu's smile wavered a little at the oblique reference to thecouple of trouncings our Space Navy had administered to z'Srauff shipsin the past. "We will be in the same place again times with no number,"the alien replied. "I have hope for you that time you are in this placewill be long and will put pleasure in your heart."

  Then the pressure of the line behind him pushed him on. Cabinet Members;Senators and Representatives; prominent citizens, mostly Judgeso-and-so, or Colonel this-or-that. It was all a blur, so much so thatit was an instant before I recognized the gleaming golden hair and thestatuesque figure.

  "Thank you! I have met the Ambassador." The lovely voice was shakingwith restrained anger.

  "Gail!" I exclaimed.

  "Your father coming to the barbecue, Gail?" President Hutchinson wasasking.

  "He ought to be here any minute. He sent me on ahead from the hotel. Hewants to meet the Ambassador. That's why I joined the line."

  "Well, suppose I leave Mr. Silk in your hands for a while," Hutchinsonsaid. "I ought to circulate around a little."

  "Yes. Just leave him in my hands!" she said vindictively.

  "What's wrong, Gail?" I wanted to know. "I know, I was supposed to meetyou at the spaceport, but--"

  "You made a beautiful fool of me at the spaceport!"

  "Look, I can explain everything. My Embassy staff insisted on hurryingme off--"

  Somebody gave a high-pitched
whoop directly behind me and emptied theclip of a pistol. I couldn't even hear what else I said. I couldn't hearwhat she said, either, but it was something angry.

  "You have to listen to me!" I roared in her ear. "I can explaineverything!"

  "Any diplomat can explain anything!" she shouted back.

  "Look, Gail, you're hanging an innocent man!" I yelled back at her. "I'mentitled to a fair trial!"

  Somebody on the platform began firing his pistol within inches of theloud-speakers and it sounded like an H-bomb going off. She grabbed mywrist and dragged me toward a door under the platform.

  "Down here!" she yelled. "And this better be good, Mr. Silk!"

  We went down a spiral ramp, lighted by widely-scattered overhead lights.

  "Space-attack shelter," she explained. "And look: what goes on inspace-ships is one thing, but it's as much as a girl's reputation isworth to come down here during a barbecue."

  There seemed to be quite few girls at that barbecue who didn't care whathappened to their reputations. We discovered that after looking into acouple of passageways that branched off the entrance.

  "Over this way," Gail said, "Confederate Courts Building. There won't beanything going on over here, now."

  I told her, with as much humorous detail as possible, about howThrombley had shanghaied me to the Embassy, and about the chase by theRangers. Before I was half through, she was laughing heartily, alltraces of her anger gone. Finally, we came to a stairway, and at thehead of it to a small door.

  "It's been four years that I've been away from here," she said. "I thinkthere's a reading room of the Law Library up here. Let's go in and enjoythe quiet for a while."

  But when we opened the door, there was a Ranger standing inside.

  "Come to see a trial, Mr. Silk? Oh, hello, Gail. Just in time; they'regoing to prepare for the next trial."

  As he spoke, something clicked at the door. Gail looked at me inconsternation.

  "Now we're locked in," she said. "We can't get out till thetrial's over."