“And it’s not racial antagonism as many outsiders might think.” Again, the sidelong glance at Junior. “The fact that the Vanek are partially alien has nothing to do with it. That’s a minor difference. It’s other differences that cause problems.”
“Like what?” Junior asked on cue.
“For one thing, there’s no first person singular pronoun in the Vanek language. Some of the early anthropologists at one time thought this was a sign of group consciousness, but that was disproved. It’s just that they don’t think of themselves as individuals. They’re all one on the Great Wheel. It makes it hard for Terrans to relate to them as individuals and thus it’s hard to respect them as individuals.
“And there’s more. The people around here are hard workers. They sweat their guts out trying to get a living out of the ground, and here are these skinny Vanek sitting around all day whittling wood and making a fortune. The local Terrans don’t consider that an honest day’s work.”
“So it comes right back to lack of respect again,” Junior said.
“Right! But try to convince the legislators in the capital about that! They’re getting together some sort of a bill to combat the so-called discrimination against the Vanek and it looks like it’ll pass, too. But no law’s going to make a Terran respect a Vanek and that’s where the problem lies.”
He kicked a stone out into the middle of the street. It was a gesture of disgust. “Damn fools in the capital probably don’t even know what a Vanek looks like! Just trying to make political names for themselves.”
“Well,” Junior began, “equality–”
“Lip-service equality!” came the angry reply. “A forced equality that might well cause resentment on the part of the Terran locals. I don’t want to see that. No, Mr. … Finch, wasn’t it?” Junior nodded. “No, Mr. Finch. If equality’s going to come to Danzer and other places like it, it’s gotta come from the locals, not from the capital!”
Junior made no comment. The man had a good point – an obvious one to Junior – but Junior couldn’t decide whether it was sincerely meant or just an excuse to oppose some legislation that happened to interfere with his racial prejudices. He noted that Heber made no alternative proposals.
Heber glanced at the sun. “Well, time for me to get back to work,” he said.
“And just what is it you do, if I may ask?”
“I’m the government in town, you might say – mayor, sheriff, judge, notary, and so on.” He smiled. “Nice to have met you, Mr. Finch. Hope you enjoy your stay around here.”
“Nice to have met you, Mr. Heber,” Junior replied.
And he meant it… with only a few reservations. Heber was an outwardly pleasant and garrulous type but Junior wondered why he had taken so much time to explain the Terran-Vanek situation to him. Politics, maybe. If enough outsiders could be turned against the pending antidiscrimination bill, maybe it wouldn’t pass. Whatever his reasons, Heber had been highly informative.
Junior forced himself to his feet and walked across the street to the general store. A land-rover passed close behind him as he crossed. Ground transportation was the rule here, probably because flitters were too expensive to buy, run, and service. Heber was right about the hard work involved in living off the land on Jebinose, and the rewards were minimal. The farmlands, for all intents and purposes, were economically depressed. That would help explain a part of the poor Terran-Vanek relations: the local Terrans were in control as far as numbers and technology were concerned, and they owned all the businesses; but the Vanek held a superior economic position solely through the sale of their carvings. The situation was tailor-made to generate resentment.
Junior found himself indifferent to the conflict. It was unfortunate, no doubt, that there had to be friction between the two races, but if these Vanek were as fatalistic as Heber said, then why bother with them?
He approached the general store building. The foodstuffs and supplies piled out front in their shiny, colorful plastic or alloy containers struck an odd contrast to the weather-beaten wood of the store. All the buildings in Danzer were handmade of local wood. Prefab probably cost too much.
A hand-lettered sign proclaiming that Bill Jeffers was the proprietor hung over the doorway and Junior’s nostrils were assailed by a barrage of odors as he passed under it. Everything from frying food to fertilizer vied for the attention of his olfactory nerve.
His pupils were still adjusting to the diminished light of the store interior when Junior bumped into someone just inside the door. Straining his eyes and blinking, he saw that it was a young Vanek.
“Sorry,” he muttered to the robed figure. “Can’t see too well in here just yet.” He continued on his way to the main counter in the rear, unaware of the intense gaze he was receiving from the Vanek.
“Yes, sir!” said the burly bear of a man behind the counter. His two huge hands were resting palms down on the countertop and his teeth showed white as he smiled through an unruly black beard. “What can I do for you?”
“I’d like something to eat. What’s on the menu?”
The big man winked. “You must be new around here. You don’t get a meal here, you get the meal: local beef, local potatoes, and local greens.”
“All right then,” Junior said with a shrug. “Serve me up an order of the meal.”
“Fine. I’m Bill Jeffers, by the way,” he said, wiping his right hand on the plaid of his shirt and then jabbing it in Junior’s direction.
Junior shook hands and introduced himself.
“Staying around here long, Mr. Finch?”
Junior shook his head. “I doubt it. Just wandering around the area.”
These rurals, he thought. Nosy. Always the unabashed questions about who you were and how long you were staying. Junior was used to people obtaining this sort of information in a more indirect way.
Jeffers nodded at Junior, then looked past him. “What’ll it be?”
“The meal, bendreth,” said a high-pitched, sibilant voice behind him.
He turned and found himself facing the Vanek he had accidentally jostled on his way in.
“Hello,” he said with a nod.
“Good day, bendreth,” replied the Vanek.
He had a slight frame, smooth grayish skin with a hint of blue in it, and piercing black eyes. There was an indigo birthmark to the left of midline on his forehead.
“How are you today?” Junior asked in a lame effort to make conversation.
Despite his years with IBA and its myriad contacts throughout Occupied Space, he had never been face to face with an alien. Although most of the Vanek were thought to carry traces of human genetic material, they were, in every other sense, true aliens. And here was one now, standing next to him, ordering lunch. He wanted desperately to strike up a conversation, but finding a common ground for discussion was no easy matter.
“We are mostly well,” came the reply.
Junior noted the plural pronoun and remembered what Heber had told him. It was gauche to bring it up, but it might help to open a conversation.
“I’ve heard that the Vanek always use the word ‘we’ in the place of ‘I’,” he said, cringing and feeling like an obnoxious tourist. “Why’s that?”
“It is the way we are,” came the impassive reply. “Our teachers tell us that we are all one on the Great Wheel. Maybe that is so. We do not know. All we know is that we have always spoken thus and no doubt we always shall. There is no Vanek word for the single man.”
“That’s too bad,” Junior said with obvious sincerity, and then instantly regretted it.
“And why do you say that, bendreth?” The Vanek was showing some interest now and Junior realized that he would have to come up with a tactful yet honest answer.
“Well, I was always raised to believe that a race progresses through the actions of individuals. The progress of the Vanek, in my estimation, has been terribly slow. I mean, from what I can gather, you’ve gone nowhere in the past few centuries. Maybe that’s the resul
t of having the word ‘I’ absent from your functional vocabulary. I hope I haven’t offended you by what I’ve just said.”
The Vanek eyed him narrowly. “You needn’t apologize for speaking what you think. You may–” His words were cut short by the arrival of the meals: steaming mounds of food on wooden slabs. Each paid for his portion in Jebinose script and Junior expected the Vanek to follow him to one of the small tables situated in the corner to their left. Instead, the alien turned and walked toward the door.
“Where’re you going?”
“Outside. To eat.”
“It’s too hot out there. We’ll sit at one of these tables.”
The Vanek hesitated and glanced around. The store was empty and Jeffers had disappeared into the back. Wordlessly, he followed Junior to a table.
Both were hungry and, once seated, began to eat. After rapidly swallowing two mouthfuls, Junior spoke around a third. “Now, what were you about to say?”
The Vanek looked across the table at him and chewed thoughtfully. “You may be right. Once we might have said that we have progressed as far as we desire. But that doesn’t hold true any more. We Vanek have shown ourselves quite willing to accept and utilize the benefits of a civilization technologically far superior to our own. So perhaps it has not been by desire that our culture has been stagnated. Still, there is more to culture than technology. There is–”
“Hey!” came a shout from the rear of the store. “What’s he doing over there?”
Junior looked past the Vanek and saw Jeffers standing behind the counter, glaring in his direction.
Without looking around, the Vanek picked up his slab and walked out the door. Junior watched in stunned silence.
“What was that all about?” he asked. “I was talking to him!”
“We don’t allow any Vaneks to eat in here,” Jeffers told him in a more subdued tone.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because we don’t, that’s why!”
Junior could feel himself getting angry. He put a lid on it but it wasn’t easy. “That’s a damn humiliating thing to do to somebody, you know.”
“Maybe so. But we still don’t allow any Vaneks to eat in this store.”
“And just who are the ‘we’ you’re referring to?”
“Me!” said Jeffers as he came around from behind the counter and approached Junior’s table. He moved with surprising grace for a man of his size. “It’s my place and I’ve got a right to call the shots in my own place!”
“Nobody’s saying you don’t, only you could show a little respect for his dignity. Just a little.”
“He’s a half-breed!”
“Then how about half the respect you ’d accord a Terran? How’s that sound?”
Jeffers’s eyes narrowed. “Are you one of those meddlers from the capital?”
“No,” Junior said, dropping his fork into his mashed potatoes and lifting his slab. “I only arrived on the planet a few weeks ago.”
“Then you’re not even from Jebinose!” Jeffers laughed. “You’re a foreigner!”
“Aren’t we all,” Junior said over his shoulder as he walked out the door.
The Vanek was seated on the boardwalk outside the store, calmly finishing his meal. Junior sat down beside him and put his own slab aside. He was choked with what he recognized as self-righteous anger and couldn’t eat. It was a strange sensation, rage. He had never experienced it before. He’d had his angry moments in the past, of course, but he’d never run across anything like this in the three odd decades of his tranquil and relatively sheltered life. This was pure, self-righteous, frustrated rage. And he knew it could be dangerous. He breathed deeply and tried to cool himself back to rationality.
“Is it always that way?” he asked finally.
The Vanek nodded. “Yes, but it is his store.”
“I know it’s his store,” Junior said, “and I certainly appreciate his right to run it as he wishes – more than you know – but what he did to you is wrong.”
“It is the prevailing attitude.”
“It’s a humiliating attitude, a total lack of respect for whatever personal dignity you might possess.”
There was that word again: respect. Heber had said that the local Terrans had none of it for the Vanek. And maybe they had no reason to respect these introspective, timid creatures, but…
Thought patterns developed after years at IBA whirled, then clicked into place, and Junior suddenly realized that of all the Terrans in Danzer, Bill Jeffers owed the Vanek the most consideration.
“But we’re going to change that attitude, at least in one mind.”
The Vanek threw him a questioning glance – the similarity in facial expressions between the two races struck Junior at that moment. Either they had always responded alike or the Vanek had learned to mimic the Terrans. Interesting… but he let the thought go. He had other things on his mind.
“You’re going to take me to your tribe or camp or whatever it is,” Junior said, “and we’re going to figure out a way to put some pressure on Mr. Jeffers.”
The pressure of which he was speaking was the economic kind, of course. Economic pressure was a household word as far as the Finch family was concerned.
The Vanek sighed. “Whatever your plan is, it won’t work. The elders will never agree to do anything that might influence the course of the Great Wheel. They’ll reject whatever you suggest without even hearing you out.”
“I have a feeling they’ll agree. Besides, I have no intention of asking them to do anything; I’m going to ask them not to do something.”
The Vanek gave him another puzzled look, then shrugged. “Follow me, then. I’ll take you to the elders. But you have been warned: it’s futile.”
Junior didn’t think so. He had found something unexpected in the attitude of the young Vanek – whose name, he learned as they walked, was pronounced something like Rmrl. He’d read it in the flick of his gaze, the twist of his mouth, and realized that for all his detached air, for all his outward indifference, this particular Vanek was keenly aware of the discrimination he faced daily in the Terran town. Junior had seen through the carefully woven façade and knew that something could be done, must be done, and that he could do it.
Jo
Dark brown skin and eyes against a casual white jump and short white hair: Old Pete was a gaunt study in contrasts, moving with such ease and familiarity through the upper-level corridors of IBA that the receptionist in the hall hesitated to accost him. But when he passed her desk on his way to the inner executive offices, she felt compelled to speak.
May I help you, sir?”
“Yes.” He turned toward her and smiled. “Is The Lady in at the moment?”
She answered his question with another. “Do you have an appointment?” Her desktop was lit with the electronic equivalent of a daybook and an ornate marker was poised to check off his name.
“No, I’m afraid not. You see–”
“I’m very sorry.” The finality in her tone was underscored by the abrupt dimming of her desktop. “Miss Finch can see no one without an appointment.” The daybook read-out was her ultimate weapon aid she was skilled at using it to control the flow of traffic in and out of the executive suites.
The old man rested a gnarled hand on the desktop and leaned toward her. “Listen, dearie,” he said in a low but forceful tone, “you just tell her Old Pete is here. We’ll worry about appointments later.”
The receptionist hesitated. The name “Old Pete” sounded vaguely familiar. She tapped her marker once, twice, then shrugged and touched a stud on the desktop.
A feminine voice said, “Yes, Marge,” from out of the air.
“Someone named Old Pete demands to see you, Miss Finch.”
“Is this some sort of joke?”
“I really couldn’t say.”
“Send him in.”
She rose to show him the way but the old man waved her back to her seat and strode toward an ornate door made of solid Mar
atek firewood that rippled with shifting waves of color. The name Josephine Finch was carved in the wood at eye level, its color shifts out of sync with the rest of the door.
Old Pete? thought the woman within. What was he doing at IBA? He was supposed to be in the Kel Sea, out of her sight and out of her mind. She dropped a spool of memos onto the cluttered desk before her. After taking an all-too-rare long weekend, work had accumulated to the point where she’d have to go non-stop for two days to make up for the extra day off. Project reports, financial reports, feasibility studies, new proposals – a half-meter stack had awaited her return. The interstellar business community, at least that portion of it connected with IBA, had apparently waited until she’d left the office three days ago before unloading all its backed-up paperwork.
At times like this she idly wished she had an accelerated clone to share the work load. But as it stood now with the Clone Laws, she’d go to jail and the clone would be destroyed if anyone ever caught on.
A clone would be especially nice right now, just to deal with Old Pete. But he was here and there was no avoiding a meeting with him. It wasn’t going to be pleasant, but she’d have to do it herself.
The door opened without a knock and there he stood. He’d changed. His skin was darker and his hair was whiter than she’d ever seen it. Over all, his appearance was more wizened, but the changes went deeper than that. Jo had always thought of Old Pete as the perfect example of a high-pressure executive – his movements had always been abrupt, rapid, decisive, his speech terse and interruptive. He appeared much more at ease now. There was a new flow to his movements and speech.
He had changed, but the feelings he engendered in her had not. The old distrust and hostility rekindled within her at the sight of him.