The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets. Lloyd Biggle jr.
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THE STILL, SMALL VOICE OF TRUMPETS
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
Ebook Edited by Kenneth Lloyd Biggle
with thanks to David Datta for his computer skills
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This novel is based on a short story which appeared in Analog magazine. Copyright © 1961 the Conde Nast Publications, Inc.
Copyright © 1968 Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
All rights reserved.
CHAPTER 1
Behind him a door opened and closed. Jef Forzon kept his attention on the paintings that filled one wall of the room from floor to ceiling.
Magnificent paintings.
The first thing he would do, he thought, would be to put a chemist to work on that paint. He’d never seen anything like it. The colors were superb, the texture astonishing. In the hands of the better artists, and most of those represented in the display were better artists, it produced an effect of dimension that made his head spin.
Small wonder that the Interplanetary Relations Bureau had sent a distress call for a Cultural Survey officer! Personnel who botched the simple task of lettering door signs and selected office color schemes more suitable to a darkened mausoleum were ill-equipped to cope with works of art. They didn’t even know how to hang a painting!
The room’s communicator sputtered; the receptionist said coldly, “The coordinator will see you now, sir.”
Forzon got to his feet, paused for one last, searching look at the paintings, and followed her. He loved his work, but he hated the bureaucratic formalities that had to be negotiated en route to it. He also hated shapely young ladies who wore masculine uniforms and smiled superior smiles.
This particular young lady’s smile vanished abruptly, and Forzon realized, with a twinge of conscience, that he had been glaring at her. He owed her an apology. The superior smile could have been the only one she had, and the uniform probably was not of her own choosing, or at least he hoped that it wasn’t.
“Do the base personnel ever wear native costume?” he asked.
“Sir?”
The thought so startled her that a door slipped from her fingers and slammed in Forzon’s face. She opened it again, and he followed her along a corridor reading the signs on the doors that he passed: Team A Headquarters, Team B Headquarters, and then an unlabeled room that was perhaps destined to become his own Cultural Survey Headquarters, in which case he would paint the sign himself. He had never worked under the direct control of another governmental agency, and with each step that brought him closer to the coordinator he liked the idea less.
“There’s no rule against it, is there?” he asked the girl.
“Sir?”
“Wearing native costume,” Forzon persisted, regarding her near-masculine hair styling with sturdy masculine disapproval. “There’s no rule against it, is there?”
“No, sir. But the coordinator does not approve.”
Forzon’s resentment for this particular coordinator was rapidly changing to active dislike. He couldn’t blame the man for not getting up in the middle of the night to check him in when he arrived, but there was no excuse for his keeping Forzon waiting for more than an hour the following morning—not that he had minded, with the paintings to study, but he knew that it was unnecessary.
Deliberate rudeness on the part of a planet’s ranking officer was difficult enough to cope with; rudeness combined with a proclivity for petty tyranny would be intolerable. In most headquarters the personnel delighted in wearing native costume.
But it was no business of his. He would complete the formalities as quickly as possible and get out among the natives where he belonged.
The receptionist saw him through another door, gave him a pert nod, and left him. Another young lady, equally severe in appearance, passed him along to a private office. Forzon strolled calmly into the presence of Wern Rastadt, Interplanetary Relations Bureau coordinator of the planet Gurnil.
“Forzon reporting,” he said.
The words brought no discernible pleasure to the face of Coordinator Rastadt. Flabby, deeply wrinkled with a morosely drooping mouth, it was not a face capable of expressing pleasure. The eyes, for all their blazing aliveness, were sunken in unhealthy puffs of flesh. A tonsorist had valiantly attempted to impose a stiff military cut upon the sparse white hair and succeeded only in exposing a vast expanse of pink scalp. Only the coordinator’s chin had character: it jutted firmly, like an incongruous prominence in a dreary wasteland. His plump white hands were held palm down on the desk in front of him, as though he were tensing himself to spring at Forzon.
Obviously he had grown old and fat in the service, waived voluntary retirement, and entrenched himself in a soft assignment from which, barring a colossal blunder and a special competency investigation, only death would him part. Forzon turned his gaze to the framed motto attached to the wall behind the coordinator—
DEMOCRACY IMPOSED FROM WITHOUT IS THE SEVEREST FORM OF TYRANNY
—and suppressed a smile. It was the fifth time that morning that he had encountered it.
Abruptly Rastadt’s hands folded into fists, and his words lashed at Forzon. “I don’t suppose the Cultural Survey teaches its men how to report to a superior officer!”
Forzon said easily, “Superiority is a myth. The Cultural Survey proved that long ago.”
Rastadt’s fists hit the desk. He jerked erect, his chair overturned and crashed to the floor, and he leaned across the desk and shouted, “You are now a part of my command, and by God, you’re going to conduct yourself as if you knew it. Get outside and come back in here and report properly!”
Forzon reluctantly thrust aside the temptation to have some fun with this obnoxious martinet. The man’s age and position entitled him to a certain rudimentary respect, even if his conduct did not. Forzon tossed his credentials onto the desk. The coordinator studied them silently.
When finally he spoke his voice sounded curiously subdued. “You’re a—a sector supervisor—in the Cultural Survey?”
“So I’ve been told.”
The coordinator turned, carefully righted his chair, and sat down heavily. Forzon had never seen a man so quickly and so thoroughly deflated. He gazed unblinkingly at Forzon, his flabby face suddenly tense with incredulity.
Watching him, Forzon detachedly weighed the pictorial qualities of his bloated features and found them wanting. A portrait painter who had to wrest character from that bleak visage would be driven to distraction. On the other hand, a caricaturist could have had a delightful time with it.
“You’re young,” Rastadt observed suddenly.
“That happens once to everyone.”
“May I have your orders, please.”
“I was told that my orders would be waiting for me here.”
“Here?” Rastadt’s head jerked, and the puffy flesh contracted and made suspicious slits of his eyes. “I have no orders for you.” He paused. “Then you don’t know why you’re here?”
“Why am I anywhere? To set up a cultural survey.”
“No.” The coordinator shook his head emphatically. “No. Gurnil is still classified a hostile planet. Cultural surveys are not permitted on hostile planets, as you should know.”
“My headquarters ordered me to this planet,” Forzon said slowly. “The Interplanetary Relations Bureau cleared the orders, gave me a class one priority, and even arranged to have a cruiser go a number of light years out of its way to deposit me on your doorstep. Are you trying to tell