Half past Alligator, Donald Colvin [best books to read fiction TXT] 📗

"Economic value, the man wants. Okay, I'll talk economic value to you. Bet you fifty units I can make a better ball team out of these freaks than you can."

"Well, make it thirty."

"You're on, sucker. I've lined up the sweetest shortstop that ever spit in a glove ..."

"Here's your thirty," said Rudy Peters a week after. "How was I to know that shortstop wouldn't throw the ball to anyone except the center-fielder?"

"Team play's the stuff, lad," said Bill Bradley. "Stress team play. Twenty-five, twenty-seven, twenty-nine, thirty. Exactly right. Another lesson at the same price?"

He was refused, but never on an exploration had Bill Bradley had so much fun. And never, he reminded himself grimly, had he got so little work done. The Quxas were neglecting their skimpy food plots in their eagerness to play. They were getting lean. Finally, with reluctance, Bill called a temporary halt to baseball.

"Billbrad say no baseball until work done," said Moahlo sadly to Adlaa. "Sometimes Billbrad talk like southpaw pitcher."

Adlaa was trying to cultivate his food plot with the help of a thrag. The beast was of independent mind. It dragged Adlaa in eccentric ovals, in defiance of agricultural needs.

"Adlaa want finish work, play baseball," the Quxa commented. "Thrag no play baseball, say nuts to work. Adlaa be old like Old Hoss Radbourne before work done."

Moahlo contemplated. "Adlaa have trouble his thrag. Moahlo have trouble his. Moahlo help Adlaa his thrag and Adlaa help Moahlo his. Get work done more faster."

Adlaa dismissed the revolutionary thought. "Quxas not do."

"We play baseball run down play," argued Moahlo. "Play together. You throw ball me. I throw ball you. Yippee. Man out."

"Same team. Old pals. Want sing team song?"

"Want play team with thrag."

Adlaa considered the matter in this new light. "Like ball game," he said at last in amazement.

"Sure. You, me be us together. Make thrag look like busher."

They both took hold of the thrag. Unable to resist their combined strengths, the beast submitted docilely. They began to work.

Glancing out from his labor in the headquarters pneuma-hut, Bill saw the incident in happy surprise. Perhaps, after all, his stay here might produce something to help the culture that Montgomery would introduce upon his return. He had no doubt of Montgomery's success.

Neither, for that matter, had Montgomery. At the main camp, things were going swimmingly.

The camp lay on the very fringe of the Quxa territory, but, by an arduous hunt, Ratakka had captured eight wandering Quxas to whom he immediately set about teaching the duties of subjects. His method was simple—the Quxa followed his orders, which he obtained from Montgomery, or the Quxa was knocked down. If he still refused, he was knocked down again. Within three weeks, Ratakka had them doing things no Quxas ever had done before. They performed them reluctantly and sullenly, but they did them.

Seeing the result, but not the means, Candy was enthusiastic.

"They're working together!" she cried. "Oh, Monty, what will the Quxas do to reward you?"

"Oh, they'll probably make a culture god of me," said Montgomery, managing to look modest. "Like the Greeks did to that Martian, Proma Ss Thaa, who taught them the use of fire."

As time went on, though, the girl began to have doubts.

"But they're doing everything for Ratakka," she protested. "As far as they're concerned themselves, they're more wretched than before."

"That's the way feudal cultures are built, my dear," Montgomery assured her. "The king gives them law and a fighting leader. In return, the subjects take care of his bodily comfort."

"But they look so unhappy!"

"In saving an inferior race, we cannot be concerned too much about the happiness of a few miserable members. Perhaps in three hundred years or so, they can afford happiness."

And finally an incident happened to complete her disillusionment.

One of Ratakka's morose subjects managed to slip the shackles with which he was bound at night and make a bolt for freedom. The king pursued him relentlessly, brought him back and then beat him, coldly and cruelly, slugging and gouging and kicking.

Ashen-faced, Candy moved to interfere; Montgomery restrained her.

"We're saving a race," he said. "You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs."

Candy turned and ran sobbing to her quarters, unable to dispel the memory of the writhing body on the ground.

The next day was the day to move equipment. It was a policy of the expeditions to leave their wornout machines for the most friendly of the native races, who could dismantle them and use the parts. The equipment not worth toting back to Earth was to be taken to the advance camp, where the Quxa center was. Montgomery also planned that day to take Ratakka to his kingdom.

A few minutes ahead of the motorcade, Candy slipped out, got into a battered half-track and started driving the eighty miles to the advance camp. For the first twenty-five miles, she told herself that her eagerness was because it was a nice day and she wanted to get out of camp.

For the next twenty-five miles, she called herself a liar.

For the third twenty-five miles she gave herself up unashamedly to thinking about Bill Bradley: his smile, his gentleness, the awkward grace of his lean body. Not a man to set a planet on fire—but how pleasant and restful to have around!

She wondered if he would forgive the way she had acted. Somehow she was sure he would.

The narrow vehicular trail ran through a grove of fernlike trees. It's just over the rise, Candy thought, just over the rise and down into the saucer, where Bill is waiting....

The half-track struck a rock, lurched, threw a tread and went off the road, out of control.

That did not matter especially, for the Quxas could use the material very well where it was. Candy went forward briskly afoot. A fallen branch brushed her ankle. Unheedingly, she kicked it away. She began to reconstruct Bill, feature by feature: the way his hair swirled on his forehead; his eyebrows, arched and regular; his eyes, wide, deep-seated, with inner pools of merriment; his nose, straight and rather ...

Another branch caught her. She lifted her foot to free it. It did not come free. Another tentacle moved around her, pinioning her right arm to her side. She whirled in terror and found herself in the grip of the horals.

There were a dozen of the horrors, their antenna ears erect, mandibles open. They exuded an acid odor, a sign of hunger. Candy screamed. She fought to reach her pistol, strapped to her right hip. More tentacles stopped her. She screamed and screamed again, throwing her body to shake off the grip, trying to kick with her feet.

There was a movement in the road at the top of the rise. For a moment, elation surged in Candy, almost stifling her. Perhaps some expedition member had heard her, was hurrying to her rescue. Then she saw that the newcomers were Quxas. Hope vanished, leaving her limp and hollow. To be killed by these horrors was bad enough, but to be killed in the presence of a group of piebald morons, who would stand and watch and moan, but not lift a hand ...

In her agitation, she did not notice that the Quxas were nine in number and wore baseball caps. They drew short clubs, shaped like bats.

"Kill the umpire!" they shouted, hatred born of diamond conflicts in their cry. "Kill the umpire!" they yelled and charged.

In military formation, they clubbed their way through their enemies, battering and smashing until Candy was free, with a dozen dying horals on the ground, their tentacles contracting and writhing. The Quxa leader made his bobbing bow to her.

"How do," he said politely. "We dip them in calcimine vat, you bet. We hang them out like wash. Now we give team yell."

The Quxas put their arms around each other's shoulders. In unison, they chanted:

"Hoe tomata; hoe potata

Half past alligata,

Bum, bum, bulligata,

Chickala dah!

Pussycats! Pussycats!

Rah! Rah! Rah!"

"Pussycats," the leader explained to Candy, "are honored animal on planet where Billbrad is head cheese."

"I'll bet you play baseball nicely," Candy said.

Woe broke forth on nine broad faces.

"Misfortunately not," confessed the captain. "Thirty-three teams in Quxa town. Pussycats in thirty-third place." He brightened. "Go ivory hunt now. Catch nine new Quxas. Teach 'em baseball. Then maybe we beat 'em and not be in cellar any more."

Together, the team bobbed politely to Candy and trotted down the road.

Happily, Candy went up the rise, then stopped in astonishment, looking at Quxa town.

Gone was the straggling, haphazard settlement, with the flimsy huts and untended starvation patches where individual Quxas tried to raise their own food. Instead, building sites were laid out in straight, broad rows, and Quxas were working, three and four in a group, raising substantial homes of timber. Others were surrounding the settlement with a wall of brambles, impenetrable to horals. Teams of men, two to a thrag, were plowing, preparing large fields for tillage. And down the side of the settlement, affectionately tended, ran a line of baseball fields.

Just off the road, a Quxa squatted, baseball cap on his head, watching a crude sun dial.

"Nice day for game," he greeted Candy.

Speechless with surprise, the girl made a dazed questioning gesture toward the improvements.

"Billbrad do it," the Quxa informed her. "He tell us how. Work one by one, he say, work all time to fill belly, maybe fill horal belly instead. Work all by all, do more quick. Have time in afternoon. Batter up! Sock it, boy! Wing it home, he sliding!"

The sun's shadow touched a peg.

"Five minute!" bawled the Quxa.

The laborers quit work, put away their tools. The farmers herded their thrags into a strongly constructed corral. The natives gathered in knots at the settlement edge and looked longingly at the baseball fields.

"Yestday I fool Billbrad," confided the Quxa. "I hide ball, catch him off second. Billbrad get all red face and say—"

"Never mind what Bill said," Candy interjected hastily.

The shadow touched another peg.

"Play ball!" the Quxa yelled. "Play ball! Play ball! Play ball!"

He sprang up, produced a baseball glove and spat into it reverently.

"I go play now. You come see. Get scorecard, know players."

He looked at Candy hopefully.

"'Specially me," he added.

Out of the moil of Quxas came the lank form of Bill Bradley. He spied the girl, whooped and came running to her. For a few moments they talked at once, in an incoherent and ecstatic jumble. Then Candy, catching control of herself, cited in admiration the change in the Quxa village.

"And you've done all this!" she concluded.

"I didn't do anything!" Bill protested. "They like to play baseball and this sort of happened. We're getting representative government into action now. Each team elects a captain and the captains are the town council. Tonight they're going to vote on naming the settlement Brooklyn."

"You know," said Candy, "I'll bet they'll make you a culture god."

The tanned face of Bill Bradley took on the rose hue of a blush.

"Well, Moahlo carved a statue and they've put it in front of league headquarters—that's their city hall," he admitted uncomfortably. "It doesn't look much like me. I've got six arms because they wanted me batting, pitching and catching a ball all at the same time."

Candy slipped a hand into his.

"Is there a place around here," she asked in a small tone, "where a culture god can take a girl and—well, talk to her?"

"Is there!" said Bill. "You just come with me ..."

A heavy object bumped into him. He whirled at the touch.

"Oh! Hi, Ratakka," Bill said in a flat voice.

Montgomery's king had returned to his subjects. He was alone—his captives having escaped off the ride over—and he was in vile temper. Glaring evilly, he motioned at the baseball players. He was recalling an advice of Montgomery: "Whatever your subjects like to do most, do it better than they can. In that way, you will get their respect and find it