The Pirates of Ersatz (Sci-Fi Space Opera). Murray Leinster

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      II

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      In something under two hours Hoddan was ushered into the ambassador's office. He'd been refreshed, his torn clothing replaced by more respectable garments, and the places where stun-pistols had stung him soothed by ointments. But, more important, he'd worked out and firmly adopted a new point of view.

      He'd been a misfit at home on Zan because he was not contented with the humdrum and monotonous life of a member of a space-pirate community. Piracy was a matter of dangerous take-offs in cranky rocket-ships, to be followed by weeks or months of tedious and uncomfortable boredom in highly unhealthy re-breathed air. No voyage ever contained more than ten seconds of satisfactory action—and all space-fighting took place just out of the atmosphere of a possibly embattled planet, because you couldn't intercept a ship at cruising speed between the stars. Regardless of the result of the fighting, one had to get away fast when it was over, lest overwhelming force swarm up from the nearby world. It was intolerably devoid of anything an ambitious young man would want.

      Even when one had made a good prize—with the lifeboats darting frantically for ground—and after one got back to Zan with a captured ship, even then there was little satisfaction in a piratical career. Zan had not a large population. Piracy couldn't support a large number of people. Zan couldn't attempt to defend itself against even single heavily-armed ships that sometimes came in passionate resolve to avenge the disappearance of a rich freighter or a fast new liner. So the people of Zan, to avoid hanging, had to play innocent. They had to be convincingly simple, harmless folk who cultivated their fields and led quiet, blameless lives. They might loot, but they had to hide their booty where investigators would not find it. They couldn't really benefit by it. They had to build their own houses and make their own garments and grow their own food. So life on Zan was dull. Piracy was not profitable in the sense that one could live well by it. It simply wasn't a trade for a man like Hoddan.

      So he'd abandoned it. He'd studied electronics in books from looted passenger-ship libraries. Within months after arrival on a law-abiding planet, he was able to earn a living in electronics as an honest trade.

      And that was unsatisfactory. Law-abiding communities were no more thrilling or rewarding than piratical ones. A payday now and then didn't make up for the tedium of labor. Even when one had money there wasn't much to do with it. On Walden, to be sure, the level of civilization was so high that many people needed psychiatric treatment to stand it, and neurotics vastly outnumbered more normal folk. And on Walden electronics was only a trade like piracy, and no more fun.

      He should have known it would be this way. His grandfather had often discussed this frustration in human life.

      "Us humans," it was his grandfather's habit to say, "don't make sense! There's some of us that work so hard they're too tired to enjoy life. There's some that work so hard at enjoying it that they don't get no fun out of it. And the rest of us spend our lives complainin' that there ain't any fun in it anyhow. The man that over all has the best time of any is one that picks out something he hasn't got a chance to do, and spends his life raisin' hell because he's stopped from doing it. When"—and here Hoddan's grandfather tended to be emphatic—"he wouldn't think much of it if he could!"

      What Hoddan craved, of course, was a sense of achievement, of doing things worth doing, and doing them well. Technically there were opportunities all around him. He'd developed one, and it would save millions of credits a year if it were adopted. But nobody wanted it. He'd tried to force its use, he was in trouble, and now he could complain justly enough, but despite his grandfather he was not the happiest man he knew.

      * * * * *

      The ambassador received him with a cordial wave of the hand.

      "Things move fast," he said cheerfully. "You weren't here half an hour before there was a police captain at the gate. He explained that an excessively dangerous criminal had escaped jail and been seen to climb the Embassy wall. He offered very generously to bring some men in and capture you and take you away—with my permission, of course. He was shocked when I declined."

      "I can understand that," said Hoddan.

      "By the way," said the ambassador. "Young men like yourself— Is there a girl involved in this?"

      Hoddan considered.

      "A girl's father," he acknowledged, "is the real complainant against me."

      "Does he complain," asked the ambassador, "because you want to marry her, or because you don't?"

      "Neither," Hoddan told him. "She hasn't quite decided that I'm worth defying her rich father for."

      "Good!" said the ambassador. "It can't be too bad a mess while a woman is being really practical. I've checked your story. Allowing for differences of viewpoint, it agrees with the official version. I've ruled that you are a political refugee, and so entitled to sanctuary in the Embassy. And that's that."

      "Thank you, sir," said Hoddan.

      "There's no question about the crime," observed the ambassador, "or that it is primarily political. You proposed to improve a technical process in a society which considers itself beyond improvement. If you'd succeeded, the idea of change would have spread, people now poor would have gotten rich, people now rich would have gotten poor, and you'd have done what all governments are established to prevent. So you'll never be able to walk 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?"

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