Moral Equivalent, Kris Neville [leveled readers txt] 📗

have I done?"

"Not a thing, as far as we know," said a Storm Trooper. "Not a single solitary thing. That's why we're arresting you."

"Arbitrary police powers," the Secret Policeman explained. "Suspension of search warrants and habeas corpus. Invasion of privacy. War, you know. Come along quietly, sir. You have a special and very important part to play in the war effort."

"What's that?"

"You have been arbitrarily selected as Martyr," said the Secret Policeman.

Head held high, Thrang marched proudly to his destiny.

The whole of Mala took to war with a will. Soon books began to appear on the stalls: War and You for the masses, The Erotic Release of War for the elite, The Inherent Will to Destroy for philosophers, and War and Civilization for scholars. Volumes of personal experiences sold well. Among them was an account of daring sabotage by a former zipper salesman, and the dramatic story of the Martyrdom of Thrang.

War eliminated a thousand old institutions and unburdened the people of the heavy hand of tradition. War demonstrated clearly that everything was as temporary as a match-flash except Art and Man, because cities, buildings, parks, vehicles, hills, museums, monuments were as whispers of dust after the bombers had gone.

Among the proletariat, the prevailing opinion was voiced by Zun, who was quoted as saying at a war plant party, "Well, there ain't nothin' in the stores I can buy. But I never made so much money in my life!"

In the universities, professors boned up on the subject in order to fit themselves for Chairs of War that were sure to be endowed. All they had to do was wait until the recent crop of war profiteers were taxed into becoming philanthropists, or driven to it by the sense of guilt that the books assured them they would feel.

Armies grew. Soldiers learned to paint, salute, curse, appreciate home cooking, play poker, and fit themselves in every way for the post-war civilian life. They broadened themselves with travel and got a welcome vacation from home and hearth.

War, the Malans agreed, was certainly one of the cleverest of Earth institutions and as educational as it was entertaining.

"Nope," Beliakoff was saying, "you wouldn't like Ran-hachi Prison, not one little bit. It's on Mercury, you know, in the twilight zone. You blister by day and you freeze by night. Only two men have escaped from Ran-hachi in the last hundred years, and one of them figured his curve wrong and flipped into Sol."

"What about the other one?" Kelly asked, perspiring lightly.

"His gyros fused. He was bound straight for the Coal Sack. Take him a couple of thousand years to get there, at his speed," Beliakoff finished dreamily. "No, Johnny, you wouldn't like Ran-hachi."

"Okay, okay," Kelly said. "The death penalty would be better."

"They give that only as a measure of extreme clemency," Beliakoff said with gloomy Slavic satisfaction.

"Enough! We'll straighten out Mala." There was more hope than conviction in Kelly's voice. "Thar she lies, off to starboard."

Mala was a tiny blue and brown sphere, suddenly growing larger in their screens.

Their radio blared on the emergency channel.

Kelly swore. "That's the Galactic patrol boat from Azolith. What's he doing here?"

"Blockade," said Beliakoff. "Standard practice to quarantine a planet at war. We can't touch down legally until the war's declared over."

"Nuts. We're going down." Kelly touched the controls and the freighter began to descend into the interdicted area.

"Attention, freighter!" the radio blasted. "This is the interdictory ship Moth. Heave to and identify yourself."

Beliakoff answered promptly in the Propendium language. "Let's see 'em unscramble that," he said to Kelly. They continued their descent.

After a while, a voice from the patrol boat said in Propendium, "Attention, freighter! You are entering an interdicted area. Heave to at once and prepare to be boarded."

"I can't understand your vile North Propendium accent," Beliakoff bellowed, in a broad South Propendium dialect. "If you people can't speak a man's language, don't clutter up the ether with your ridiculous chatter. I know you long-haul trampers and I'll be damned if I'll give you any air, water, food, or anything else. If you can't stock that stuff like any normal, decent—"

"This area is interdicted," the patrol boat broke in, speaking now with a broad South Propendium accent.

"Hell," Beliakoff grumbled. "They've got themselves a robot linguist."

"—under direct orders from the patrol boat Moth. Heave to at once, freighter, and prepare to be boarded and inspected."

Beliakoff glanced at the planet looming large beneath them. He gestured at the power control to Kelly and said, "Hello! Hello! Do you read me? Your message is not coming across. Do you read me?"

"Stop or we'll fire!"

Beliakoff nodded. Kelly kicked in all the jets and they plummeted toward the surface. With his pilot's sixth sense, Kelly changed course abruptly. A blast seared past them, sealing a starboard tube for good. Then they were in the atmosphere, traveling too fast, the hull glowing red with friction. The heavy cruiser, built only for spatial maneuvering, broke off its pursuit curve.

"All right, freighter. This means your license. You gotta leave sometime."

Beliakoff shut off the radio. Kelly fired the braking jets and began to spiral in for a landing.

As they circled, Beliakoff saw the shattered rubble and ruin where cities had been. He saw highways filled with military columns, and, at the distant edge of the horizon, a fleet of military planes winging their way to a fresh target.

"What a mess!" he said. Kelly nodded glumly.

They touched down and opened the hatches. Already a crowd of Malans had gathered. A few artists had set up their easels and were busy painting the freighter, not because it was lovely, but because it was Terran, which was better.

A Malan stepped forward, grinning. "Well," he asked, "what do you think of it?"

"Of what?"

"Our war, of course. You must have noticed!"

"Oh, yes, we noticed," Beliakoff said.

"A real intercontinental war complete with ideological differences," the man stated proudly. "Just like the civilized planets have. You must admit it's Earthlike."

"Exceedingly Earthlike," Kelly said. "Now take us to whoever's in charge—quick!"

The conference with Nob at the Imperial Palace began well. The Prime Minister was overjoyed that real Earthmen had come to witness their war. He knew very well that, by Earth standards, it was a pretty small war. A beginner's war, really. But they were trying. Some day, with more know-how, with better equipment, they would be able to produce a war that would match anyone's.

"We were hampered from the start," Nob apologized, "by not knowing how to produce atomic fission."

"That must have been confining," Kelly said, and Beliakoff winced.

"It was. Dynamite and nitroglycerin just don't have the same grandeur and finality. The scale of demolition seems insignificant. But if you will come with me, gentlemen, I have something here which may interest you."

Nob ushered the Earthmen ahead of him so he could copy their loose-jointed, rolling walk.

"Here!" he said, darting ahead and opening a door. "Behold!"

The Earthmen saw, upon an ivory pedestal, a small model of an atomic bomb.

"We worked until we mastered it at last," Nob said proudly. "With any luck, we'll be in production within the month and using them within the year. Now I think I can safely say that Mala has come of age!"

Beliakoff said, "No."

"No, what?"

"No atom bombs."

"But it's Earthlike to use atomic bombs. Why—"

"This war has to end at once," Kelly said.

"You're joking!" protested Nob, looking intently at the Earthmen. But he saw at once that they were deadly serious. He groaned and sat down.

Nob was faced with a moral dilemma of fearful proportions. On the one hand, war was a typical Terran institution, an extremely important one, an institution clearly worthy of emulation by the people of Mala. But on the other hand, this Terran institution was being refuted, denied, in fact, by two typical Terrans.

The problem was insoluble for him. And Nob remembered that, when an ultimate crisis is at hand, that is the moment for the supreme authority to step in.

"We must discuss this with the Empress," he said.

He led them to Jusa's chambers, knocked and opened the door. Half a dozen vases shattered around them.

"On your knees, pigs!" Jusa shrilled. "You, Nob, have you brought the diamonds?"

"I knew I forgot something."

"Forgot them! Then how dare you show your face?" Jusa stamped her small foot. "And these peasants—who are they? I've a good mind to lock them up, especially that grinning red-headed ape."

Kelly's grin became a trifle strained.

"These are Earthmen, Your Majesty," Nob said. "Genuine Earthmen!"

"Really?" breathed Jusa.

"Really," said Nob.

"Oh, golly," Jusa said, losing all her painfully acquired imperial pose and becoming a frightened, albeit lovely, young girl.

"Your Majesty—" Beliakoff began.

"Just call me Jusa. My gosh! Real Earthmen! I never met a real Earthman before. I wish you had let me know in advance. My hair—"

"Is beautiful, just like yourself," Kelly said.

"I'm so glad. I think your hair is beautiful, too."

Kelly turned brick-red. "You're not supposed to say that, you know."

"I didn't know," Jusa said. "But I'm willing to learn. What should I have—"

"Excuse me," Beliakoff broke in sourly. "Your Majesty, we've come to ask you to stop the war."

"You don't mean it!" Jusa turned bewilderedly to Kelly.

"Have to do it, honey," Kelly said softly. "You folks just aren't ready for a war yet."

Jusa's eyes flashed and she began to regain a little of her imperial pose. "But of course we are! Look at what we've done. Go over our battlefields, look at our cities, interrogate our refugees. You'll find that everything has been done in strict accordance with the rules. We're as ready for war as anyone!"

"I'm sorry, you'll have to stop it," Beliakoff said, and Kelly nodded his agreement.

Jusa gave Nob a beseeching look, but the Prime Minister averted his eyes. The dilemma was there again, enormous, insurmountable, and squarely on Jusa's shoulders. To stop the war now would be Unearthlike; to refuse the Earthmen was unthinkable.

"I just don't know," Jusa said. She looked at Kelly, who wore the guilty expression of a man caught murdering a fawn. Then she burst into tears and collapsed on a couch.

Nob and the Earthmen looked at each other, made several helpless gestures, and left.

"What now?" Beliakoff asked, in the corridor. "Do you think she'll stop the war?"

Nob shrugged his shoulders. "Who knows? It's a problem without a solution."

"But she has to make up her mind," Kelly said. "That's one of the duties of authority."

"The Empress is aware of that. And she will make up her mind, though it could take a year or more. Unless she fails completely under the strain."

"Poor kid," Kelly said. "She needs a man to help her out."

"Indeed she does," Nob agreed hastily. "A strong man, a wise man, a man who could guide her and be as adviser and husband to her."

Kelly blinked, then laughed nervously. "Don't look at me! I mean she's a cute kid, nice girl, make some man a wonderful wife, but I'm not the marrying kind, you know what I mean?"

"Johnny," said Beliakoff, "I'd like to have a serious talk with you."

Nob led them to a vacant room and left discreetly.

"I won't do it!" Kelly declared bluntly.

"You have to," Beliakoff said. "You got us into this mess. Now you can marry us out."

"No!"

"She'd make a wonderful wife," Beliakoff quoted Kelly's words back at him. "Docile, pretty, but spirited. What more could you ask?"

"Freedom of choice," Kelly said grimly.

"That's for adolescents."

"Speaking."

"She'll never be able to make up her mind to stop the war unless you marry her. Until the war ends, that interdictory ship is going to sit in orbit, waiting for us. You haven't anything to lose," Beliakoff added.

"I haven't?"

"Not a thing. It's a big galaxy and our freighter is always waiting."

"That's true...." Kelly admitted.

Ten minutes later, Beliakoff dragged him into the corridor. They were joined by Nob, who ushered them back to the Empress's chambers.

"It's okay by me if it's okay by you, kid," Kelly blurted out, in a tone that made Beliakoff shudder and made Nob smile in outright hero-worship.

"What is all right?" Jusa asked.

"Marriage," Kelly said. "What d'ya say?"

Jusa studied his face for several seconds. "But do you love me?"

"Give it time, kid! Give it time!"

Jusa must have seen something in his expression, something behind the embarrassment and anger. Very softly she said, "I will be most happy to marry you."

It was a double-ring ceremony and authentically Terran. Beliakoff produced a Bible from the freighter and the ancient words of the Earth ceremony were read. When it was over, Kelly, grinning, perspiring, nervously rubbing his hands together, turned to his bride.