Fantastic Stories Present the Galaxy Science Fiction Super Pack #1. Edgar Pangborn
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Cyril seemed well in command of the situation. “Come now, Raoul,” he laughed, clapping his young colleague on the shoulder, “don’t fall into the Rousseau trap—noble savage and all that sort of rot!”
“But that beggar!” Raoul insisted. “Trite, certainly, but incredible nonetheless! Before, one only read of such things—”
A glazed look came into two of Bbulas’ eyes, while the third closed despairingly. “What beggar? What beggar? Tell me—I must know ... as if I didn’t really,” he muttered in Snaddrath.
“The only beggar we’ve seen on this planet so far. That one.”
*
With a wave of his hand, Cyril indicated the modest form of Skkiru, attempting to conceal himself behind Luccar’s portly person.
“I realize it was only illusion, but, as my associate says, a remarkably good one. And,” Cyril added, “an even more remarkable example of cultural diffusion.”
“What do you mean? Please, gracious and lovable Terrans, deign to tell me what you mean. What did that insufferable beggar do?”
In spite of himself, Skkiru’s knees flickered. Fool, he told himself, you knew it was bound to come out sooner or later. Take courage in your own convictions; be convinced by your own courage. All he really can do is yell.
“He did the Indian rope trick for us,” Raoul explained. “And very well, too. Very well indeed.”
“The—Indian rope trick!” Bbulas spluttered. “Why, the—” And then he recollected his religious vocation, as well as his supposed ignorance. “Would you be so kind as to tell me what the Indian rope trick is, good sirs?”
“Well, he did it with a chain, actually.”
“We have no ropes on this planet,” Larhgan contributed. “We are backward.”
“And a small boy went up and disappeared,” Raoul finished.
Suddenly forgetting the stiff-upper-lip training for which the planet had gone to such great expense, Bbulas spun around and around in a fit of bad temper, to Skkiru’s great glee. Fortunately, the Dilettante retained enough self-control to keep his feet on the ground—perhaps remembering that to fail to do so would compound Skkiru’s crime.
“Dervishism!” Raoul exclaimed, his eyes incandescent with interest. He pulled out his notebook. After biting his lip thoughtfully, Cyril did the same.
“Just like Skkiru!” Bbulas gasped as he spun slowly to a stop. “He is a disruptive cultural mechanism. Leading children astray!”
“But not at all,” Raoul pointed out politely. “The boy came back unharmed and in the best of spirits.”
“So far as we could see,” Cyril amended. “Of course there may have been psychic damage.”
“Which boy was it?” Bbulas demanded.
*
Cyril pointed to the urchin in question—a rather well-known juvenile delinquent, though the Terrestrials, of course, couldn’t know that.
“He is a member of my own clan,” Bbulas said. “He will be thrashed soundly.”
“But why punish him?” Raoul asked. “What harm has he done?”
“Shhh,” Cyril warned him. “You may be touching on a tabu. What’s the matter with you, anyway? One would think you had forgotten every lesson you ever learned.”
“Oh, I am truly sorry!” Raoul’s face became a pleasing shade of pink, which made him look much more human. Maybe it was the wrong color, but at least it was a color. “Please to accept my apologies, reverend sir.”
“It’s quite all right.” Bbulas reverted to graciousness. “The boy should not have associated with a beggar—especially that one. If he did not hold his post by time-hallowed tradition, we would—dispose of him. He has always been a trouble-maker.”
“But I do not understand,” Raoul persisted. Skkiru could not understand why Cyril did not stop him again. “The beggar did the trick very effectively. I know it was all illusion, but I should like to know just how he created such an illusion, and, moreover, how the Indian rope trick got all the way to—”
“It was all done by magic,” Bbulas said firmly. “Magic outside the temple is not encouraged, because it is black magic, and so it is wrong. The magic of the priests is white magic, and so it is right. Put that down in your little book.”
Raoul obediently wrote it down. “Still, I should like to know—”
“Let us speak of pleasanter things,” Bbulas interrupted again. “Tomorrow night, we are holding a potlatch and we should be honored to have the pleasure of your company.”
“Delighted,” Raoul bowed.
“I was wrong,” Cyril said. “This is not a remarkable example of cultural diffusion. It is a remarkable example of a diffuse culture.”
*
“But I cannot understand,” Raoul said to Cyril later, in the imagined privacy of their hut. “Why are you suspicious of this charming, friendly people, so like the natives that the textbooks lead one to expect?”
Naturally, Skkiru—having made his way in through a secret passage known only to the entire population of the city and explicitly designed for espionage, and was spying outside the door—thought, we are textbook natives. Not only because we were patterned on literary prototypes, but because Bbulas never really left school—in spirit, anyway. He is the perpetual undergraduate and his whole scheme is nothing more than a grandiose Class Night.
“Precisely what I’ve been thinking,” Cyril said. “So like the textbooks—all the textbooks put together.”
“What do you mean? Surely it is possible for analogous cultural features to develop independently in different cultures?”
“Oh, it’s possible, all right. Probability—particularly when it comes to such a great number of features packed into one small culture—is another matter entirely.”
“I cannot understand you,” Raoul objected. “What do you want of these poor natives? To me, it seems everything has been of the most idyllic. Rapport was established almost immediately.”
“A little too immediately, perhaps, don’t you think? You haven’t had much experience, Raoul, so you might not be aware it usually isn’t as easy as this.”
Cyril flung himself down on one of the cots that had been especially hardened for Terrestrial use and blew smoke rings at the ceiling. Skkiru was dying for a cigarette himself, but that was another cultural feature the Snaddrath had to dispense with now—not that smoking was insufficiently primitive, but that tobacco was not indigenous to the planet.
“That is because they are not a hostile people,” Raoul insisted. “Apparently they have no enemies. Nonetheless, they are of the utmost interest. I hardly expected to land a society like this on my very first field trip,” he added joyfully. “Never have I heard of so dynamic a culture! Never!”
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