The World Menders. Lloyd Biggle jr.

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      “He’s Cultural Survey,” the pilot said. “He wouldn’t know a linguistic index from a classification ratio.”

      “Cultural Survey? Here? Does the coordinator know?”

      “If he reads his mail he knows. We transported thirty CS trainees, and all of them had priority orders.”

      “Sounds like one of those sick jokes that the Psych Board keeps dreaming up.”

      The pilot chuckled. “No. Definitely not. Thirty CS trainees are no joke. Every permanent base in this sector got one.”

      “Then Supreme has had another of its periodic attacks of imbecility. I’m almost afraid to ask, but—why?”

      “Why is a question you should learn not to ask. Invariably the answer is—why not?”

      “Here’s the manifest on your relays,” Graan’s assistant called. “They’ll be down with the next load.”

      Isa Graan returned, grinning broadly. “Strunk heard something about a CS man being assigned here, so I guess it’s all right.”

      “Does Strunk know why?” Jorrul demanded.

      Graan shrugged. “No, and he wouldn’t even try to guess. It’s none of our business anyway—thank God! I’ll sign for him. Welcome home again, fellow. Hope you like the place—you’ll probably be here for twenty years. At least.”

      “Twenty years!” Farrari exclaimed.

      “IPR assignments are permanent, except for command-rank officers and specialists. Didn’t they tell you? One year of leave for every ten years on station, and your travel time comes out of your year. If you make it as an agent you’ll probably save your leave time for retirement and then never retire. A lifetime just isn’t long enough to learn a world well. But what am I talking about? You’re CS, you’re probably a specialist. Sam—look after the trainee.”

      One of the workmen stepped forward and picked up Farrari’s space bags.

      “He’ll find you an unused room with a bed,” Graan said. “You won’t need more than that before morning. The coordinator will assign you to quarters when you present your orders and sign in. We operate on a twenty-seven-hour day. Is your watch adjustable? See me in the morning, and I’ll issue you one that is. Breakfast is at seven. Sam will show you the dining room. Breakfast is come as you like, lunch is a package of rations whenever duty permits, dinner is dress uniform if you feel like socializing or a tray in your quarters if you don’t. On this base you’re entitled to as much private life as you can manage as long as you get your work done. See you tomorrow.”

      Dazedly Farrari turned to follow Sam.

      Jorrul moved to intercept him. “I want you to understand one thing, fellow. I don’t know what your status is, or what you’re doing here, and as long as you stay on base I don’t care. Take one step away from here and you’ll be my responsibility—and I’m not having any of it. You’re under permanent restriction, and if you have a passion for sightseeing you’re to do it on a viewing screen. Is that clear?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      Sam led him along a wide, arching, plastic-lined corridor, pointing out the dining room as they passed it, and finally turned off into a smaller corridor that appeared to be unused. He looked into several empty rooms before he found one that contained a bed and nothing else. It was a cold, windowless cavity cut into the mountain’s blue-veined granite. Sam hurried away and returned with a billowing sleeping bag.

      “There’s no heat in this section,” he said, stating the obvious with engaging apology. “But it’s just for tonight. This should keep you warm enough.”

      “I’ll make out all right,” Farrari said. “Thank you.”

      Sam departed with a nod and a grin, and Farrari stepped to the wall to examine a framed motto that hung there. DEMOCRACY IMPOSED FROM WITHOUT IS THE SEVEREST FORM OF TYRANNY. He shrugged and looked doubtfully at the bare room. “Home?” he exclaimed. The word echoed.

      But he slept well—slept until the coordinator sent for him and missed breakfast.

      CHAPTER 2

      He was twenty years old on the Adjusted Galactic Time Scale—a pleasant, well-mannered young man with an eminently proper upbringing, better than average intelligence, and a rich diversity of small talents. He considered it his own personal misfortune that his father was assistant custodian of the Cultural Survey Archives and his older brother a promising young officer already storming the lower reaches of CS administration. His family took it for granted that he would attend the Cultural Survey Academy; he went without protest, but only because the possible alternatives pleased him even less.

      He quickly learned that in the Cultural Survey the man with many small talents possessed a marked advantage over the man with one or even several large ones. He ranked number two in his class, his family was pleased, and he began to think of the Cultural Survey as a career rather than a place to mark time while he cast about for something more important with which to occupy himself.

      Abruptly the academy’s entire fifth-year class was transferred, without warning, explanation, or apology, to the Interplanetary Relations Bureau, a mysterious governmental department that few of the trainees had known existed. Their AT/I shoulder patches crinkly new, their space bags bulging with 24.9 kilos of books and training manuals covering the subject matter of the two years of advanced training now forever lost to them, they were summarily transported far beyond the jagged frontier of the Federation of Independent Worlds and deposited on planets whose existence all the available reference books denied.

      The sudden transfer shattered Farrari’s inner complacency. He entered upon his new duties with numbing uncertainty, with bewilderment, with an apprehension of starkly revealed ineptitude and its accompanying throes of exquisite embarrassment. In a word, he was terrified.

      He discerned immediately that the base staff had its own strict orders concerning Cultural Survey AT/I Cedd Farrari. On the first morning he found himself the master of a centrally located, two-room suite just off one of the main corridors. The living quarters were comfortably furnished; the large workroom was bare, but Isa Graan, the base supply officer, lined its walls with shelves and teloid files, ceremoniously presented Farrari with the latest model teloid projector, and invited him to the storage rooms to pick out any other furnishings he wanted. Ganoff Strunk, the amiable, portly, bald-headed records chief, brought him an initial allotment of five hundred teloid cubes of cultural subjects that he had culled from his files and then returned to unload an astonishing collection of artifacts: carvings in stone and wood, exquisite examples of metalcraft, jewelry, embroidery, leather work, weaving, drawings and paintings on wood and cloth, ceramics—the room took on the aspect of moving day at a museum.

      When finally Farrari was left alone he slowly circled the pile of art objects, touching, scrutinizing. He was awed and delighted but also confounded. Here was a new world to explore, to study, to classify. Novice that he was, he hadn’t any idea how to begin.

      Someone strolled along the corridor, and Farrari frowned resentfully at the fading footsteps. Workrooms were connected with the corridors by wide, doorless arches. Though one was entitled to as much private life as he could manage, it was obvious that his work was everyone’s business.

      Thoughtfully Farrari made another circuit of the room. It would take him days just to impose СКАЧАТЬ