“And so?”
“Ragusnik has threatened to cease operations.”
“Go on strike, in other words.”
“Yes.”
“Would that be serious?”
“We have enough food and water to last quite a while; reclamation is not essential in that sense. But the wastes would accumulate; they would infect the planetoid. After generations of careful disease control, we have low natural resistance to germ diseases. Once an epidemic started--and one would--we would drop by the hundred.”
“Is Ragusnik aware of this?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Do you think he is likely to go through with his threat, then?”
“He is mad. He has already stopped working; there has been no waste reclamation since the day before you landed.” Blei’s bulbous nose sniffed at the air as though it already caught the whiff of excrement.
Lamorak sniffed mechanically at that, but smelled nothing.
Blei said, “So you see why it might be wise for you to leave. We are humiliated, of course, to have to suggest it.”
But Lamorak said, “Wait; not just yet. Good Lord, this is a matter of great interest to me professionally. May I speak to the Ragusnik?”
“On no account,” said Blei, alarmed.
“But I would like to understand the situation. The sociological conditions here are unique and not to be duplicated elsewhere. In the name of science--”
“How do you mean, speak? Would image-reception do?”
“Yes.”
“I will ask the Council,” muttered Blei.
They sat about Lamorak uneasily, their austere and dignified expressions badly marred with anxiety. Blei, seated in the midst of them, studiously avoided the Earthman’s eyes.
The Chief Councillor, gray-haired, his face harshly wrinkled, his neck scrawny, said in a soft voice, “If in any way you can persuade him, sir, out of your own convictions, we will welcome that. In no case, however, are you to imply that we will, in any way, yield.”
A gauzy curtain fell between the Council and Lamorak. He could make out the individual councillors still, but now he turned sharply toward the receiver before him. It glowed to life.
A head appeared in it, in natural color and with great realism. A strong dark head, with massive chin faintly stubbled, and thick, red lips set into a firm horizontal line.
The image said, suspiciously, “Who are you?”
Lamorak said, “My name is Steven Lamorak; I am an Earthman.”
“An Outworlder?”
“That’s right. I am visiting Elsevere. You are Ragusnik?”
“Igor Ragusnik, at your service,” said the image, mockingly. “Except that there is no service and will be none until my family and I are treated like human beings.”
Lamorak said, “Do you realize the danger that Elsevere is in? The possibility of epidemic disease?”
“In twenty-four hours, the situation can be made normal, if they allow me humanity. The situation is theirs to correct.”
“You sound like an educated man, Ragusnik.”
“So?”
“I am told you’re denied of no material comforts. You are housed and clothed and fed better than anyone on Elsevere. Your children are the best educated.”
“Granted. But all by servo-mechanism. And motherless girl-babies are sent us to care for until they grow to be our wives. And they die young for loneliness. Why?” There was sudden passion in his voice. “Why must we live in isolation as if we were all monsters, unfit for human beings to be near? Aren’t we human beings like others, with the same needs and desires and feelings. Don’t we perform an honorable and useful function--?”
There was a rustling of sighs from behind Lamorak. Ragusnik heard it, and raised his voice. “I see you of the Council behind there. Answer me: Isn’t it an honorable and useful function? It is your waste made into food for you. Is the man who purifies corruption worse than the man who produces it?--Listen, Councillors, I will not give in. Let all of Elsevere die of disease --including myself and my son, if necessary--but I will not give in. My family will be better dead of disease, than living as now.”
Lamorak interrupted. “You’ve led this life since birth, haven’t you?”
“And if I have?”
“Surely you’re used to it.”
“Never. Resigned, perhaps. My father was resigned, and I was resigned for a while; but I have watched my son, my only son, with no other little boy to play with. My brother and I had each other, but my son will never have anyone, and I am no longer resigned. I am through with Elsevere and through with talking.”
The receiver went dead.
The Chief Councillor’s face had paled to an aged yellow. He and Blei were the only ones of the group left with Lamorak. The Chief Councillor said, “The man is deranged; I do not know how to force him.”
He had a glass of wine at his side; as he lifted it to his lips, he spilled a few drops that stained his white trousers with purple splotches.
Lamorak said, “Are his demands so unreasonable? Why can’t he be accepted into society?”
There was momentary rage in Blei’s eyes. “A dealer in excrement.” Then he shrugged. “You are from Earth.”
Incongruously, Lamorak thought of another unacceptable, one of the numerous classic creations of the medieval cartoonist, Al Capp. The variously-named “inside man at the skonk works.”
He said, “Does Ragusnik really deal with excrement? I mean, is there physical contact? Surely, it is all handled by automatic machinery.”
“Of course,” said the Chief Councillor.
“Then exactly what is Ragusnik’s function?”
“He manually adjusts the various controls that assure the proper functioning of the machinery. He shifts units to allow repairs to be made; he alters functional rates with the time of day; he varies end production with demand.” He added sadly, “If we had the space to make the machinery ten times as complex, all this could be done automatically; but that would be such needless waste.”
“But even so,” insisted Lamorak, “all Ragusnik does he does simply by pressing buttons or closing contacts or things like that.”
“Yes.”
“Then his work is no different from any Elseverian’s.”
Blei said, stiffly, “You don’t understand.”
“And for that you will risk the death of your children?”
“We have no other choice,” said Blei. There was enough agony in his voice to assure Lamorak that the situation was torture for him, but that he had no other choice indeed.
Lamorak shrugged in disgust. “Then break the strike. Force him.”
“How?” said the Chief Councillor. “Who would touch him or go near him? And if we kill him by blasting from a distance, how will that help us?”
Lamorak said, thoughtfully, “Would you know how to run his machinery?”
The Chief Councillor came to his feet. “I?” he howled.
“I don’t mean you,” cried Lamorak at once. “I used the pronoun in its indefinite sense. Could someone learn how to handle Ragusnik’s machinery?”
Slowly, the passion drained out of the Chief Councillor. “It is in the handbooks, I am certain--though I assure you I have never concerned myself with it.”
“Then couldn’t someone learn the procedure and substitute for Ragusnik until the man gives in?”
Blei said, “Who would agree to do such a thing? Not I, under any circumstances.”
Lamorak thought fleetingly of Earthly taboos that might be almost as strong. He thought of cannibalism, incest, a pious man cursing God. He said, “But you must have made provision for vacancy in the Ragusnik job. Suppose he died.”
“Then his son would automatically succeed to his job, or his nearest other relative,” said Blei.
“What if he had no adult relatives? What if all his family died at once?”
“That has never happened; it will
never happen.”
The Chief Councillor added, “If there were danger of it, we might, perhaps, place a baby or two with the Ragusniks and have it raised to the profession.”
“Ah. And how would you choose that baby?”
“From among children of mothers who died in childbirth, as we choose the future Ragusnik bride.”
“Then choose a substitute Ragusnik now, by lot,” said Lamorak.
The Chief Councillor said, “No! Impossible! How can you suggest that? If we select a baby, that baby is brought up to the life; it knows no other. At this point, it would be necessary to choose an adult and subject him to Ragusnik-hood. No, Dr. Lamorak, we are neither monsters nor abandoned brutes.”
No use, thought Lamorak helplessly. No use, unless--
He couldn’t bring himself to face that unless just yet.
That night, Lamorak slept scarcely at all. Ragusnik asked for only the basic elements of humanity. But opposing that were thirty thousand Elseverians who faced death.
The welfare of thirty thousand on one side; the just demands of one family on the other. Could one say that thirty thousand who would support such injustice deserved to die? Injustice by what standards? Earth’s? Elsevere’s? And who was Lamorak that he should judge?
And Ragusnik? He was willing to let thirty thousand die, including men and women who merely accepted a situation they had been taught to accept and could not change if they wished to. And children who had nothing at all to do with it.
Thirty thousand on one side; a single family on the other.
Lamorak made his decision in something that was almost despair; in the morning he called the Chief Councillor.
He said, “Sir, if you can find a substitute, Ragusnik will see that he has lost all chance to force a decision in his favor and will return to work.”
“There can be no substitute,” sighed the Chief Councillor; “I have explained that.”
“No substitute among the Elseverians, but I am not an Elseverian; it doesn’t matter to me. I will substitute.”
They were excited, much more excited than Lamorak himself. A dozen times they asked him if he was serious.
Lamorak had not shaved, and he felt sick, “Certainly, I’m serious. And any time Ragusnik acts like this, you can always import a substitute. No other world has the taboo and there will always be plenty of temporary substitutes available if you pay enough.”
(He was betraying a brutally exploited man, and he knew it. But he told himself desperately: Except for ostracism, he’s very well treated. Very well.)
They gave him the handbooks and he spent six hours, reading and rereading. There was no use asking questions. None of the Elseverians knew anything about the job, except for what was in the handbook; and all seemed uncomfortable if the details were as much as mentioned.
“Maintain zero reading of galvanometer A-2 at all times during red signal of the Lunge-howler,” read Lamorak. “Now what’s a Lunge-howler?”
“There will be a sign,” muttered Blei, and the Elseverians looked at each other hang-dog and bent their heads to stare at their finger-ends.
They left him long before he reached the small rooms that were the central headquarters of generations of working Ragusniks, serving their world. He had specific instructions concerning which turnings to take and what level to reach, but they hung back and let him proceed alone.
He went through the rooms painstakingly, identifying the instruments and controls, following the schematic diagrams in the handbook.
There’s a Lunge-howler, he thought, with gloomy satisfaction. The sign did indeed say so. It had a semi-circular face bitten into holes that were obviously designed to glow in separate colors. Why a “howler” then?
He didn’t know.
Somewhere, thought Lamorak, somewhere wastes are accumulating, pushing against gears and exits, pipelines and stills, waiting to be handled in half a hundred ways. Now they just accumulate.
Not without a tremor, he pulled the first switch as indicated by the handbook in its directions for “Initiation.” A gentle murmur of life made itself felt through the floors and walls. He turned a knob and lights went on.
At each step, he consulted the handbook, though he knew it by heart; and with each step, the rooms brightened and the dial-indicators sprang into motion and a humming grew louder.
Somewhere deep in the factories, the accumulated wastes were being drawn into the proper channels.
A high-pitched signal sounded and startled Lamorak out of his painful concentration. It was the communications signal and Lamorak fumbled his receiver into action.
Ragusnik’s head showed, startled; then slowly, the incredulity and outright shock faded from his eyes. “That’s how it is, then.”
“I’m not an Elseverian, Ragusnik; I don’t mind doing this.”
“But what business is it of yours? Why do you interfere?”
“I’m on your side, Ragusnik, but I must do this.”
“Why, if you’re on my side? Do they treat people on your world as they treat me here?”
“Not any longer. But even if you are right, there are thirty thousand people on Elsevere to be considered.”
“They would have given in; you’ve ruined my only chance.”
“They would not have given in. And in a way, you’ve won; they know now that you’re dissatisfied. Until now, they never dreamed a Ragusnik could be unhappy, that he could make trouble.”
“What if they know? Now all they need do is hire an Outworlder anytime.”
Lamorak shook his head violently. He had thought this through in these last bitter hours. “The fact that they know means that the Elseverians will begin to think about you; some will begin to wonder if it’s right to treat a human so. And if Outworlders are hired, they’ll spread the word that this goes on upon Elsevere and Galactic public opinion will be in your favor.”
“And?”
“Things will improve. In your son’s time, things will be much better.”
“In my son’s time,” said Ragusnik, his cheeks sagging. “I might have had it now. Well, I lose. I’ll go back to the job.”
Lamorak felt an overwhelming relief. “If you’ll come here now, sir, you may have your job and I’ll consider it an honor to shake your hand.”
Ragusnik’s head snapped up and filled with a gloomy pride. “You call me ‘sir’ and offer to shake my hand. Go about your business, Earthman, and leave me to my work, for I would not shake yours.”
Lamorak returned the way he had come, relieved that the crisis was over, and profoundly depressed, too.
He stopped in surprise when he found a section of corridor cordoned off, so he could not pass. He looked about for alternate routes, then startled at a magnified voice above his head. “Dr. Lamorak do you hear me? This is Councillor Blei.”
Lamorak looked up. The voice came over some sort of public address system, but he saw no sign of an outlet.
He called out, “Is anything wrong? Can you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
Instinctively, Lamorak was shouting. “Is anything wrong? There seems to be a block here. Are there complications with Ragusnik?”
“Ragusnik has gone to work,” came Blei’s voice. “The crisis is over, and you must make ready to leave.”
“Leave?”
“Leave Elsevere; a ship is being made ready for you now.”
“But wait a bit.” Lamorak was confused by this sudden leap of events. “I haven’t completed my gathering of data.”
Blei’s voice said, “This cannot be helped. You will be directed to the ship and your belongings will be sent after you by servo-mechanisms. We trust-- we trust--”
Something was becoming clear to Lamorak. “You trust what?”
“We trust you will make no attempt to see or speak directly to any Elseverian. And of course we hope you will avoid embarrassment by not attempting to return to Elsevere at any time in the futur
e. A colleague of yours would be welcome if further data concerning us is needed.”
“I understand,” said Lamorak, tonelessly. Obviously, he had himself become a Ragusnik. He had handled the controls that in turn had handled the wastes; he was ostracized. He was a corpse-handler, a swineherd, an inside man at the skonk works.
He said, “Good-bye.”
Blei’s voice said, “Before we direct you, Dr. Lamorak--. On behalf of the Council of Elsevere, I thank you for your help in this crisis.”
“You’re welcome,” said Lamorak, bitterly.
---
In some ways, this story has the strangest background of any I ever wrote. It is also the shortest story I ever wrote--only 350 words. The two go together.
It came about this way. On August 21, 1957, I took part in a panel discussion on means of communicating science on WGBH, Boston’s educational TV station. With me were John Hansen, a technical writer of directions for using machinery, and David O. Woodbury, the well-known science writer.
We all bemoaned the inadequacy of most science writing and technical writing and there was some comment on my own prolificity. With my usual modesty, I attributed my success entirely to an incredible fluency of ideas and a delightful facility in writing. I stated incautiously that I could write a story anywhere, any time, under any conditions within reason. I was instantly challenged to write one right then and there with the television cameras on me.
I accepted the challenge and began to write, taking for my theme the subject of discussion. The other two did not try to make life easier for me, either. They deliberately kept interrupting in order to drag me into their discussion and interrupt my line of thought, and I was just vain enough to try to answer sensibly while I continued scribbling.
Before the half-hour program was over I had finished and read the story (which is why it is so short, by the way) and it was the one you see here as “Insert Knob A in Hole B.” In his own introduction to the story, when it appeared in F & SF, Mr. Boucher said he was printing it just as it was (I had sent him the handwritten script, after typing a copy for myself) “even to the retention of its one grammatical error.” I have kept that error here, too. It’s yours for the finding.