The Pirates of Zan. Murray Leinster
the streets of this planet again in safety. You’ve scared people.”
“Yes, sir,” said Hoddan. It’s been an unpleasant surprise to them, to be scared.”
The ambassador put the tips of his fingers together.
“Do you realize,” he asked, “that the whole purpose of civilization is to take the surprises out of life, so one can be bored to death? That a culture in which nothing unexpected ever happens is in what is called its ‘golden age?’ That when nobody can even imagine anything happening unexpectedly, that they later fondly refer to that period as the ‘good old days?’”
“I hadn’t thought of it in just those words, sir.”
“It is one of the most-avoided facts of life,” said the ambassador. “Government, in the local or planetary sense of the word, is an organization for the suppression of adventure. Taxes are, in part, the insurance premiums one pays for protection against the unpredictable. And your act has been an offense against everything that is the foundation of a stable, orderly and damnably tedious way of life—against civilization, in fact.”
Hoddan frowned.
“Yet, you’ve granted me asylum.”
“Naturally!” said the ambassador. “The Diplomatic Service works for the welfare of humanity. That doesn’t mean stuffiness. A golden age in any civilization is always followed by collapse. In ancient days savages came and camped outside the walls of super-civilized towns. They were unwashed, unmannerly, and unsanitary. Super-civilized people refused even to think about them! So presently the savages stormed the city walls and another civilization went up in flames.”
“But now,” objected Hoddan, “there are no savages.”
“They invent themselves,” the ambassador told him. “My point is that the Diplomatic Service cherishes individuals and causes which battle stuffiness and complacency and golden ages and monstrous things like that. Not thieves, of course. They’re degradation, like body-lice. But rebels and crackpots and revolutionaries who prevent hardening of the arteries of commerce and furnish wholesome exercise to the body politic—they’re worth cherishing!”
“I think I see, sir,” said Hoddan.
“I hope you do,” said the ambassador. “My action on your behalf is pure diplomatic policy. To encourage the dissatisfied is to insure against the menace of universal satisfaction. Walden is in a bad way. You are the most encouraging thing that has happened here in a long time. And you’re not a native.”
“No-o-o,” agreed Hoddan. “I come from Zan.”
“Never mind.” The ambassador turned to a stellar atlas. “Consider yourself a good symptom, and valued as such. If you could start a contagion, you’d be doing a service to your fellow citizens. Savages can always invent themselves. But enough…let us set about your affairs.” He consulted the atlas. “Where would you like to go, since you must leave Walden?”
“Not too far, sir.”
“The girl, eh?” The ambassador did not smile. He ran his finger down a page. “The nearest inhabited worlds are Krim and Darth. Krim is a place of lively commercial activity, where an electronics engineer should easily find employment. It is said to be progressive and there is much organized research.”
“I wouldn’t want to be a kept engineer, sir,” said Hoddan apologetically. “I’d rather—well—putter on my own.”
“Impractical, but sensible,” commented the ambassador. He turned a page. “There’s Darth. Its social system is practically feudal. It’s technically backward. There’s a landing-grid, but space-exports are skins and metal ingots and practically nothing else. There is no broadcast power. Strangers find the local customs difficult. There is no town larger than twenty thousand people, and few approach that size. Most settled places are mere villages near some feudal castle, and roads are so few and bad that wheeled transport is rare.”
He leaned back and said in a detached voice:
“I had a letter from there a couple of months ago. It was rather arrogant. The writer was one Don Loris, and he explained that his dignity would not let him make a commercial offer, but an electronic engineer who put himself under his protection would not be the loser. Are you interested? No kings on Darth, just feudal chiefs.”
Hoddan thought it over.
“I’ll go to Darth,” he decided. “It’s bound to be better than Zan, and it can’t be worse than Walden.”
The ambassador looked impassive. An embassy servant came in and offered an indoor communicator. The ambassador put it to his ear. After a moment he said:
“Show him in.” He turned to Hoddan. “You did kick up a storm! The Minister of State, no less, is here to demand your surrender. I’ll counter with a formal request for an exit permit. I’ll talk to you again when he leaves.”
Hoddan went out. He paced up and down the other room into which he was shown. Darth wouldn’t be in a golden age! He was wiser now than he’d been just this morning He recognized that he’d made mistakes. Now he could see rather ruefully how completely improbable it was that anybody could put across a technical device merely by proving its value, without first making anybody want it. He shook his head regretfully at the blunder.
The ambassador sent for him.
“I’ve had a pleasant time,” he told Hoddan genially. “There was a beautiful row. You’ve really scared people, Hoddan. You deserve well of the republic. Every government and every person needs to be thoroughly terrified occasionally. It limbers up the brain.”
“Yes, sir,” said Hoddan. “I’ve—”
“The planetary government,” said the ambassador with relish, “insists that you have to be locked up with the key thrown away. It seems you know how to make death rays. I said it was nonsense, and you were a political refugee in sanctuary. The Minister of State said the Cabinet would consider removing you forcibly from the embassy if you weren’t surrendered. I said that if the embassy were violated, no ship would clear for Walden from any other civilized planet. They wouldn’t like losing their off-planet trade! Then he said that the government would not give you an exit permit, and that he would hold me personally responsible if you killed everybody on Walden, including himself and me. I said he insulted me by suggesting that I’d permit such shenanigans. He said the government would take an extremely grave view of my attitude, and I said they would be silly if they did. Then he went off with great dignity—but shaking with panic—to think up more nonsense.”
“Evidently,” said Hoddan in relief, “you believe me when I say that my gadget doesn’t make death rays.”
The ambassador looked slightly embarrassed.
“To be honest,” he admitted, “I’ve no doubt that you invented it independently, but they’ve been using such a device for half a century in the Cetis cluster. They’ve had no trouble.”
Hoddan winced.
“Did you tell the minister that?”
“Hardly,” said the ambassador. “It would have done you no good. You’re in open revolt and have performed overt acts of violence against the police. It was impolite enough for me to suggest that the local government was stupid. It would have been most undiplomatic to prove it.”
Hoddan did not feel very proud, just then.
“I’m thinking that the cops—quite unofficially—might try to kidnap me from the embassy. They’ll deny that they tried, especially if they manage it. But I think they’ll try.”
“Very likely,” said the ambassador. “We’ll take precautions.”
“I’d like to make something—not lethal—just in case,” said Hoddan. “If you can trust me not to make death rays, I’d like to make a generator of odd-shaped microwaves. They’re described in textbooks. They ionize