Fantastic Stories Present the Galaxy Science Fiction Super Pack #1. Edgar Pangborn
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on Gambrell, for, Skkiru thought, far too high a price. He could have designed them himself just as badly and much more cheaply.
It wasn’t that Skkiru didn’t understand well enough that Snaddra had been forced into making such a drastic change in its way of life. What resources it once possessed had been depleted and—aside from minerals—they had never been very extensive to begin with. All life-forms on the planet were on the point of extinction, save fish and rice—the only vegetable that would grow on Snaddra, and originally a Terran import at that. So food and fiber had to be brought from the other planets, at fabulous expense, for Snaddra was not on any of the direct trade routes and was too unattractive to lure the tourist business.
Something definitely had to be done, if it were not to decay altogether. And that was where the Planetary Dilettante came in.
*
The traditional office of Planetary Dilettante was a civil-service job, awarded by competitive examination whenever it fell vacant to the person who scored highest in intelligence, character and general gloonatz. However, the tests were inadequate when it came to measuring sense of proportion, adaptiveness and charm—and there, Skkiru felt, was where the essential flaw lay. After all, no really effective test would have let a person like Bbulas come out on top.
The winner was sent to Gambrell, the nearest planet with a Terran League University, to be given a thorough Terran-type education. No individual on Snaddra could afford such schooling, no matter how great his personal fortune, because the transportation costs were so immense that only a government could afford them. That was the reason why only one person in each generation could be chosen to go abroad at the planet’s expense and acquire enough finish to cover the rest of the population.
The Dilettante’s official function had always been, in theory, to serve the planet when an emergency came—and this, old Luccar, the former President, had decided, when he and the Parliament had awakened to the fact that Snaddra was falling into ruin, was an emergency. So he had, after considerable soul-searching, called upon Bbulas to plan a method of saving Snaddra—and Bbulas, happy to be in the limelight at last, had come up with this program.
It was not one Skkiru himself would have chosen. It was not one, he felt, that any reasonable person would have chosen. Nevertheless, the Bbulas Plan had been adopted by a majority vote of the Snaddrath, largely because no one had come up with a feasible alternative and, as a patriotic citizen, Skkiru would abide by it. He would accept the status of beggar; it was his duty to do so. Moreover, as in the case of the planet, there was no choice.
But all was not necessarily lost, he told himself. Had he not, in his anthropological viewings—though Bbulas might have been the only one privileged to go on ethnological field trips to other planets, he was not the only one who could use a library—seen accounts of societies where beggarhood could be a rewarding and even responsible station in life? There was no reason why, within the framework of the primitive society Bbulas had created to allure Terran anthropologists, Skkiru should not make something of himself and show that a beggar was worthy of the high priestess’s hand—which would be entirely in the Terran primitive tradition of romance.
“Skkiru!” Bbulas was screaming, as he spun, now that the Terrans were out of ear- and eye-shot “Skkiru, you idiot, listen to me! What are those ridiculous things you are wearing on your silly feet?”
Skkiru protruded all of his eyes in innocent surprise. “Just some old pontoons I took from a wrecked air-car once. I have a habit of collecting junk and I thought—”
Bbulas twirled madly in the air. “You are not supposed to think. Leave all the thinking to me!”
“Yes, Bbulas,” Skkiru said meekly.
*
He would have put up an argument, but he had bigger plans in mind and he didn’t want them impeded in any way.
“But they seem like an excellent idea,” Luccar suggested. “Primitive and yet convenient.”
Bbulas slowed down and gulped. After all, in spite of the fact that he was now only chief yam-stealer—being prevented from practicing his profession simply because there were no yams on the planet and no one was quite certain what they were—Luccar had once been elected President by a large popular majority. And a large popular majority is decidedly a force to be reckoned with anywhere in the Galaxy.
“Any deviations arouse comment,” Bbulas explained tightly.
“But if we all—”
“There would not be enough pontoons to go around, even if we stripped all the air-cars.”
“I see,” Luccar said thoughtfully. “We couldn’t make—?”
“No time!” Bbulas snapped. “All right, Skkiru—get those things off your feet!”
“Will do,” Skkiru agreed. It would be decidedly unwise to put up an argument now. So he’d get his feet muddy; it was all part of the higher good.
Later, as soon as the rain-dance rehearsals were under way, he slipped away. No part had been assigned to him anyhow, except that of onlooker, and he thought he could manage that without practice. He went down to the library, where, since all the attendants were aboveground, he could browse in the stacks to his hearts’ content, without having to fill out numerous forms and be shoved about like a plagiarist or something.
If the Earthmen were interested in really primitive institutions, he thought, they should have a look at the city library. The filing system was really medieval. However, the library would, of course, be tabu for them, along with the rest of the city, which was not supposed to exist.
As far as the Terrans were to know, the group of lumpy stone huts (they should, properly speaking, have been wood, but wood was too rare and expensive) was the capital of Snaddra. It would be the capital of Snaddra for the Snaddrath, too, except during the hours of rest, when they would be permitted to retire unobtrusively to their cozy well-drained quarters beneath the mud. Life was going to be hard from now on—unless the Bbulas Plan moved faster than Bbulas himself had anticipated. And that would never happen without implementation from without. From without Bbulas, that was.
Skkiru got to work on the tex-tapes and soon decided upon his area of operations. Bbulas had concentrated so much effort on the ethos of the planet that he had devoted insufficient detail to the mythos. That, therefore, was the field in which Skkiru felt he must concentrate. And concentrate he did.
*
The rain dance, which had been elaborately staged by the planet’s finest choreographers, came to a smashing climax, after which there was a handsome display of fireworks.
“But it is still raining,” Raoul protested.
“Did you expect the rain to stop?” Bbulas asked, his eyes bulging with involuntary surprise. “I mean—” he said, hastily retracting them—“well, it doesn’t always stop right away. The gods may not have been feeling sufficiently propitious.”
“Thought you had only one god, old boy,” Cyril observed, after giving his associate a searching glance. “Chap by the name of Whipsnade or some such.”
“Ipsnadd. He is our chief deity. But we have a whole pantheon. Major gods and minor gods. Heroes and demigods and nature spirits—”
“And do not forget the prophets,” Larhgan put in helpfully. As former Chief Beauty of the planet (an elective civil-service office), she was not accustomed to being left out of things. “We have many prophets. And saints. I myself am studying to be a—”
Bbulas glared at her. Though her antennae quivered sulkily, she stopped and said no more—for the moment, anyway.
“Sounds like quite a complex civilization,” Cyril commented.
“No, no!” Bbulas protested in alarm. “We are a simple primitive people without technological pretensions.”
“You don’t need any,” Cyril assured him. “Not when you have fireworks that function in the rain.”