The Greks Bring Gifts

7

It seems to be true that all the intelligent races in the galaxy think more or less in the same manner. That is, everyone will act stupidly if allowed, and hell hath no fury like a population expecting impossibilities, when they aren't produced. The public expected paradise to turn up immediately, when it would have been impossible for months—if it were possible at all. So there was trouble.

The unemployment rate went up to thirty per cent. The number of people on relief more than doubled. There were crowds demonstrating and rioting in the streets. They did not demand employment, because that would soon be unimportant. They rioted for more speed in producing the perfect state of things for which the Greks had prepared the way.

Here there is still some dispute. Some students of the matter consider that the Greks read human psychology with a fine precision, and used their knowledge of us to plan their actions. Other students say that any intelligent race would have been as foolish as we were, under the circumstances. The odds are that the latter view is correct.

Some factories were shut down in order to be retooled for service in a Grek-oriented future society. Then they found it difficult to get men to work on the retooling. Most people decided to draw unemployment pay and wait until the factories were ready to hire them at a week's wages for a day's work, and frienge benefits besides. So most factories did not get retooled.

Some occupations and industries appeared certain to be wiped out. Filling stations were obviously on the way to extinction, with cars due to run on broadcast power. These cars were already present in considerable numbers. The entire oil industry faltered. The coal industry stopped. The building industry suspended operations, because new materials were going to make future building infinitely easier and cheaper. People waited for the new materials. Textiles we'd known how to make didn't compare with the new textiles the Greks had shown us how to produce, so the textile industry collapsed. And absenteeism went up unbelievably. There came a time when sixty per cent of the population was either without work, or else was staying home to wait for the working conditions that ought to be on the way.

Food was still needed, to be sure. But the return for producing and distributing it was not satisfying. Workers in the food industries felt that they should work only one day a week, as other workers were waiting to do, and they should be at least as prosperous now as the rest of the world expected to be later. Food processing and distribution began to suffer from an excessive loss of manpower.

Then people, happily engaged in waiting, demanded home relief to prevent starvation in the meantime. They were so many in number that they got it. The gigantic government-surplus food warehouses began to ship out food in bulk to nonpaying customers. Unemployment insurance funds began to dwindle. There was indignation that the benefits the Greks had brought us were not making their appearance in the life of the average man. There was suspicion of dirty work at the crossroads.

Really determined rioting began when a government ruling denied food to families of whom no member would accept employment of any sort. An infinite number of formerly tractable citizens found this outrageous. They demanded indignantly that what the Greks had made possible, the government should make fact, and ignored suggestions that somebody had to do a considerable amount of work to bring that about.

The business of government became simply that of trying to satisfy popular demands for the impossible. The government of the United States had been established two centuries earlier to protect its citizens against the unreasonable demands of a former government. Now it was forced to pretend to be struggling to meet the preposterous demands of its own citizens. Its really basic function of guarding its people against those disasters a government can prevent—that function had to be performed in secret. It had, in effect, to go underground to do what it was made for.

Obviously, with the world in such a state, the discoveries in the garbage pit could not be told, because mankind was drunk; drunk on dreams it would defend by revolt, if necessary. And if by any feat of reason the truth were driven into the public consciousness, the result would have been a mass panic a hundred times worse than the one produced by the arrival of the Grek ship in the first place.

But Hackett got an opportunity to work on the problem of the gadget from the injured Aldarian. It wasn't the kind of opportunity he might have imagined. Twelve hours after the ship's lift-off he saw an ambassador depart from the place of its departure. The ambassador was a very much shaken man. He had to convince his superiors that in attempting to sell out the rest of the world, it had sold itself out too. If he put the fact across, there would be a subtle change of policy. It would be a return to apprehensive cooperation, which was highly desirable. But his country might only pretend to change. And if it didn't—or even if it did—it might still think it politic to get two people murdered, just in case the Greks came back.

"There's no way to know," the FBI man in charge told Hackett, "whether you're as safe as you were in your mother's arms, or whether you've got a hell of a problem. But you'd better not go home. We can lock you up if you like, and keep you pretty safe that way. How about it?"

"I don't think I'd like it," admitted Hackett. "And there's Doctor Thale to consider. If I'm in danger, so is she."

"I don't think Rogers University would be a good place, either," the FBI man observed. "We could have somebody look out for your safety there, but—"

"I was fired from there," said Hackett drily, "for being incapable of understanding theoretic physics as the Greks teach it to human students. There'd have to be much explanation to the faculty, and I don't think I'd care for it."

"If you can take it," suggested the FBI man, "the best place would be one nobody could guess. Somewhere you've never been and nobody would think of, and where a stranger looking for you would stick out like a sore thumb. That'd be the last kind of place we'd send anybody, ordinarily, but usually the kind of man we'd want to hide would rather be in jail."

Hackett shrugged. "Suppose I ask Doctor Thale? After all, if the Greks want me killed, they want her killed too. And if the ambassador's government wants to please them, it'll try for both of us."

He went to consult Lucy. When he brought her back to the FBI man, she looked uncertain, but not depressed.

"She knows a place," said Hackett. "A tiny town, no more than a village. She visited there once when she was a child. Not since then. She has a woman cousin living there."

Lucy said, "She's older than I am. Her one claim to distinction is that she went to school one year with the President of the United States. She always says it that way."

"Give me the name and the place, and I'll check it," said the FBI man briskly. "Ill only take a minute."

It was longer than a minute. It was nearly an hour. But he came back looking pleased.

"We've got a man who was born there," he said in deep satisfaction. "He knows your cousin. Old maid, eh?" When Lucy nodded, he said, "Everything's set. No loyalty check needed. The President's going to call her on the phone. Somebody'll come there to keep his eyes open for you. He'll get in touch with you. He'll arrange about money, get things you want from somewhere else, and so on. We'll fix it so you can get through fast with a phone message if you think of something."

Hackett said with some dryness, "I'm supposed to think? About what?"

The FBI man said cordially, "How do I know? Would anybody have told you to think about garbage pits? We've got a ve-e-ery tough job on our hands. How long do you think it'll be before they come back? Not ten years, like they said!"

"No-o-o," said Hackett. "Not nearly. In that time we could get over their first appearance. We might have developed some sense."

The FBI man shook his head. "That's bad! We've got to get a lot of people thinking. Like you. We've got to have research teams working. They're good, aren't they? Research teams? You hear a lot about 'em."

"They're good for developing something commonplace," said Hackett. "Not for concocting new stuff. They're really research committees. And somebody once said that a camel is a horse designed by a committee."

The FBI man grinned. "I like that! I'll get you a car and somebody to drive you. Had to give the car you just used back to its owner, with its gas tank refilled. You ought to get to this place where you're going about nine o'clock in the morning." He paused. "I'd like to say something."

"What?" asked Hackett.

"No flag-waving," said the FBI man. "Just this— we're pretty good in our line, but this isn't it. We're going to do everything we can, but the really important stuff is going to be done by somebody else. Maybe you. It's important, I'd say."

"So would I," agreed Hackett drily.

"If you and the others like you do your stuff as well as we do ours, maybe we'll come out on top. There's a chance."

Hackett didn't see that chance. In the back of the car, soon afterwards, driving furiously through the night, matters looked no brighter than they had hours earlier. We humans had incredibly little real information about the Greks, when one thought of it. They said they lived on one of innumerable inhabited planets in the Nurmi star cluster. That there were many different races on different planets there. That the Aldarians were among those races. That there was a well-developed interstellar commercial system, carried on by ships like their own, some larger and some smaller. There was no interstellar empire or equivalent organization. The Greks were teaching a class of Aldarian aspirants the arts of astrogation and interstellar commerce. There were forty or so such student-spacemen on the ship. There were a dozen Greks, as officers and instructors.

That was all they had told us. Most of it was plain lies. There were more than a dozen Greks, and many more than forty or fifty Aldarians. There were female Aldarians, and children. They were treated as animals, or perhaps as slaves. There was a time when human slaves were mutilated for their masters' convenience, and when dead slaves were dumped like dead animals, anywhere no one would object. Slave owners were not, on the whole, notorious for fine sensibilities or altruism. It wasn't likely the Greks had spent six terrestrial months instructing humans—and much of their instruction was deliberate nonsense—only to go away and reflect pleasurably upon the benefits they'd given to the human race.

And they knew more than men did. They had space ships larger than men could imagine building. They traveled faster than the speed of light. If they said they'd be back in ten years, it was probable that they'd be back sooner. They wouldn't wait for humans to reorganize themselves enough to use the new knowledge they had. The Greks would plan to come back when the old systems of production and distribution had been abandoned, and before practical new systems had been devised. They'd come back when they were most needed—

Hackett stiffened. One part of his brain surveyed the meaning of what had just passed through it. Another part said savagely, "Think of something, eh? Well, that makes it better than a guess that they haven't gone far!"

He found himself raging because of an opinion he'd reached without conscious logic. But he believed it. The Greks had gone away, not to let the human race benefit from their instructions, but to let mankind shatter its own civilization to bits because they'd shown it a possible more desirable one. They'd carefully and deftly made the wreckage of the existing culture certain, and they'd left without making the development of a new culture possible.

Given time—and not too much time, at that—the people who starved because they'd abandoned what they'd had for what the Greks only promised would need the Greks to organize and control them. They'd demand hysterically that the Greks return and give them the benefits that only Greks could give, and that now they couldn't live without.

There'd be no need for the Greks to conquer Earth. They'd only to wait, and men would conquer themselves and enslave themselves to the Greks, because otherwise they'd die.

Hackett may have been the first man to realize all this. The Greks weren't yet eighteen hours gone. It may be that no other man was before him in feeling the numbing despair the facts produced. When other men saw it—

Most men would never see it. Nothing could make them. Even if you proved it, they wouldn't believe it. Show it and they'd refuse to look.

For a few moments Hackett understood how a man could entertain the idea of suicide. Black despair filled him. It amounted to utter loss of belief in the essential goodness of existence. Because this was wrong! This was evil! It was not bearable!

Beside him, Lucy stirred. The car in which they rode ran swiftly down the road. Its headlights glared ahead. Fences, woodland, the edges of open fields flowed toward them and flashed past them to right and left. The car purred. The wind of its own making made thuttering noises, where a window was partly open.

Lucy said tentatively, "Jim?"

His throat did not want to make sounds. He said thickly, "What?"

"I've got an idea," said Lucy. "There are some Aldarians left behind. You know, the volunteers who are supposed to help us apply all the teachings of the Greks and make this world a sort of paradise."

Hackett made a mumbling noise.

"They know Grek science," said Lucy carefully. "The real Grek science, that actually works. They're the technicians. The Greks don't make things. The Aldarians do. The Greks are rulers. You might say they're the politicians who know how to rule other nations, like the Aldarians, and make them slaves. Earth may not be the first planet they've used this system on. What I'm driving at is that the Greks may know all about ruling, like the Romans used to. But they may not know much of anything else. The Romans used Greek slaves as schoolmasters and painters and sculptors. They had other slaves for manufacturing and agriculture and commerce. They specialized in ruling!' But they overspecialized, which is a weakness. Maybe—just possibly—the Greks have the same weakness."

Hackett found himself listening with fierce attention. "Go on!"

"That's all," said Lucy unhappily. "I can't go on from there. But it seems as if it might—have a bearing on things. For instance, the Aldarian in the hospital. He had a secret from the Greks. It—it could be that the other Aldarians knew it, and tried desperately to get that gadget away from him so it wouldn't be discovered. And they were caught and tortured to make them tell what they were about. . . . You see?"

Hackett said thickly, "Yes. That could be."

"There were women Aldarians in the pit, Jim. They'd been killed. There was a child. Murdered! And they deafened the Aldarians on purpose! There must be tension between the Greks and the Aldarians. I think I'm saying that maybe we aren't faced with one set of aliens who want to rule the Earth and all humanity. Maybe we're facing Greks who want to do that, and Aldarians who know what makes the Greks powerful, and, if they dared, would hate them. . . . That—might make a difference."

Hackett thought hard. For the second time in minutes one part of his brain thought of one thing and another regarded the meaning of that thing. The second knew a peculiar astonishment. Perhaps he was the first man to see Earth's situation clearly and to know the fullness of complete despair. But Lucy, who was a woman, had seen the situation still earlier and had gone past despair to find something that offered hope. It wasn't much hope. It wasn't a definite reason not to despair. But it did offer something that could be a starting point for resistance to fate and chance.

He drew a deep breath. "That," he said grimly, "is about the smallest grain of encouragement anybody has ever been able to think of, but at least it's something. It could be everything!" Then he said with a sort of mirthless amusement, "If this thing doesn't end with everybody dead, Lucy, I'm going to ask you to marry me. Not for your money, but for your brains."

Lucy did not smile. She settled back in the seat. "See what you can do with it," she said. "I'm glad you don't think it's foolish."

The car went on and on through the night.

At daybreak they passed through a small town.

Later, they found a roadside diner and stopped for something to eat. It was notable that throughout the tumult and upset of human affairs because of the Greks, it was the larger enterprises which became completely disorganized. Owners of small businesses— diners, service shops, country stores, little repair shops and the like—did not become unemployed. They had their businesses to protect. They continued to work even with the prospect of no need for labor in the near, though indefinite, future.

At eight in the morning they found a town of ten thousand people in which one or two stores were opening. At Hackett's suggestion, the FBI car stopped at a woman's shop, and Lucy bought things to wear, since her suitcase had been destroyed with Hackett's car. The FBI driver cashed her check instead of having the store do so. Hackett found a place to buy shirts and the like. Then they drove on.

Almost exactly at nine o'clock the car turned into the very small village of Traylor, which contained perhaps five hundred people. There was a state-maintained highway which ran down its principal street. Lucy looked absorbedly out a car window as they went along it.

"I remember that," she said when they passed a red-brick school. "And that's the town hall. Those stores are new, but that's the drugstore. I had sodas there when I was twelve. My cousin's house is around the corner. Turn right here."

The car stopped before a small and completely nondescript cottage with a yard full of shrubbery and flowers.

Her cousin was much older than Lucy. She greeted Lucy with dignity. "The President of the United States telephoned me last night," she observed with something of stateliness. "We had a very pleasant chat. I have a room ready for you, Lucy, but Mr. Hackett is a problem. So many people have come to visit relatives —things are dreadful in the cities, they say—that I couldn't find anybody with a spare room. So I've put up a cot for him in the woodshed. It wouldn't do for him to stay in the house, with both of us unmarried!"

"I'll try not to be a nuisance," said Hackett. "And it may not be for long."

"When the President of the United States asks an old friend a favor," said Lucy's cousin firmly, "it cannot be a nuisance. But oh, my dear Lucy! He asked me not to let anybody know there was anything unusual about your coming. I can't tell anybody he called me up. I can't even tell them he remembered the time when a naughty boy opened my school lunch as I stood up to recite, and I sat down on two slices of bread spread with strawberry jam!"

Miss Constance Thale, spinster, was one of the people who acted with sanity and integrity throughout the whole affair of the Greks. It is true that she was not employed by anyone, so she wasn't emotionally involved in the question of unemployment. She made no pretense of intellectuality, so she didn't feel it necessary to go out on a limb in ardent adulation of the Greks. She minded her own business. But when she received a request from the President of the United States, she wholeheartedly cooperated with the government of her country.

People like Lucy's cousin are very valuable. Those of us who made fools of ourselves remove our hats. We don't feel embarrassed about it, because they will never notice our tribute or know what it is for. They simply behaved as usual.

But we behaved like idiots!