Manners and Customs of the Thrid
Date: 2020-02-17T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science fiction; Short stories; Prisoners -- Fiction; Manners and customs -- Fiction; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Escapes -- Fiction

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Title: Manners and Customs of the Thrid

Author: Murray Leinster

Illustrator: Norman Nodel

Release date: February 17, 2020 [eBook #61430]
Most recently updated: October 17, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE THRID ***

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE THRID

BY MURRAY LEINSTER

The Thrid were the wisest creatures in
space—they even said so themselves!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1963.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

I

The real trouble was that Jorgenson saw things as a business man does. But also, and contradictorily, he saw them as right and just, or as wrong and intolerable. As a business man, he should have kept his mind on business and never bothered about Ganti. As a believer in right and wrong, it would have been wiser for him to have stayed off the planet Thriddar altogether. Thriddar was no place for him, anyhow you look at it. On this particular morning it was especially the wrong place for him to be trying to live and do business.

He woke up thinking of Ganti, and in consequence he was in a bad mood right away. Most humans couldn't take the sort of thing that went on on Thriddar. Most of them wanted to use missile weapons—which the Thrid did not use—to change the local social system. Most humans got off Thriddar—fast! And boiling mad.

Jorgenson had stood it longer than most because in spite of their convictions he liked the Thrid. Their minds did do outside loops, and come up with intolerable convictions. But they were intelligent enough. They had steam-power and even steam-driven atmosphere fliers, but they didn't have missile weapons and they did have a social system that humans simply couldn't accept—even though it applied only to Thrid. The ordinary Thrid, with whom Jorgenson did business, weren't bad people. It was the officials who made him grind his teeth. And though it was his business only to run the trading post of the Rim Stars Trading Corporation, sometimes he got fed up.

This morning was especially beyond the limit. There was a new Grand Panjandrum—the term was Jorgenson's own for the supreme ruler over all the Thrid—and when Jorgenson finished his breakfast a high Thrid official waited in the trading-post compound. Around him clustered other Thrid, wearing the formal headgear that said they were Witnesses to an official act.

Jorgenson went out, scowling, and exchanged the customary ceremonial greetings. Then the high official beamed at him and extracted a scroll from his voluminous garments. Jorgenson saw the glint of gold and was suspicious at once. The words of a current Grand Panjandrum were always written in gold. If they didn't get written in gold they didn't get written at all; but it was too bad if anybody ignored any of them.

The high official unrolled the scroll. The Thrid around him, wearing Witness hats, became utterly silent. The high official made a sound equivalent to clearing his throat. The stillness became death-like.

"On this day," intoned the high official, while the Witnesses listened reverently, "on this day did Glen-U the Never-Mistaken, as have been his predecessors throughout the ages;—on this day did the Never-Mistaken Glen-U speak and say and observe a truth in the presence of the governors and the rulers of the universe."

Jorgenson reflected sourly that the governors and the rulers of the universe were whoever happened to be within hearing of the Grand Panjandrum. They were not imposing. They were scared. Everybody is always scared under an absolute ruler, but the Grand Panjandrum was worse than that. He couldn't make a mistake. Whatever he said had to be true, because he said it, and sometimes it had drastic results. But past Grand Panjandrums had spoken highly of the trading post. Jorgenson shouldn't have much to worry about. He waited. He thought of Ganti. He scowled.

"The great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U," intoned the official again, "in the presence of the governors and the rulers of the universe, did speak and say and observe that it is the desire of the Rim Star Trading Corporation to present to him, the great and never-mistaken Glen-U, all of the present possessions of the said Rim Stars Trading Corporation, and thereafter to remit to him all moneys, goods, and benefactions to and of the said Rim Stars Trading Corporation as they shall be received. The great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U did further speak and say and observe that anyone hindering this loyal and admirable gift must, by the operation of truth, vanish from sight and nevermore be seen face to face by any rational being."

The high official rolled up the scroll, while Jorgenson exploded inside.

A part of this was reaction as a business man. A part was recognition of all the intolerable things that the Thrid took as a matter of course. If Jorgenson had reacted solely as a business man he'd have swallowed it, departed on the next Rim Stars trading-ship—which would not have left any trade-goods behind—and left the Grand Panjandrum to realize what he had lost when no off-planet goods arrived on Thriddar. In time he'd speak and say and observe that he, out of his generosity, gave the loot back. Then the trading could resume. But Jorgenson didn't feel only like a business man this morning. He thought of Ganti, who was a particular case of everything he disliked on Thriddar.

It was not wise to be moved by such sympathetic feelings. The Grand Panjandrum could not be mistaken. It was definitely unwise to contradict him. It could even be dangerous. Jorgenson was in a nasty spot.

The Witnesses murmured reverently:

"We hear the words of the Never-Mistaken Glen-U."

The high official tucked away the scroll and said blandly:

"I will receive the moneys, goods, and benefactions it is the desire of the Rim Stars Trading Corporation to present to the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U."

Jorgenson, boiling inside, nevertheless knew what he was doing. He said succinctly:

"Like hell you will!"

There was an idiom in Thrid speech that had exactly the meaning of the human phrase. Jorgenson used it.

The high official looked at him in utter stupefaction. Nobody contradicted the Grand Panjandrum! Nobody! The Thrid had noticed long ago that they were the most intelligent race in the universe. Since that was so, obviously they must have the most perfect government. But no government could be perfect if its officials made mistakes. So no Thrid official ever made a mistake. In particular the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U could not conceivably blunder! When he said a thing, it was true! It had to be! He'd said it! And this was the fundamental fact in the culture of the Thrid.

"Like hell you'll receive moneys and goods and such!" snapped Jorgenson. "Like hell you will!"

The high official literally couldn't believe his ears.

"But—but the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U—"

"Is mistaken!" said Jorgenson bitingly. "He's wrong! The Rim Stars Trading Corporation does not want to give him anything! What he has said is not true!" This was the equivalent of treason, blasphemy and the ultimate of indecorous behavior toward a virgin Pelean princess. "I won't give him anything! I'm not even vanishing from sight! Glen-U is wrong about that, too! Now—git!"

He jerked out his blaster and pulled the trigger.

There was an explosive burst of flame from the ground between the official and himself. The official fled. With him fled all the Witnesses, some even losing their headgear in their haste to get away.

Jorgenson stamped into the trading-post building. His eyes were stormy and his jaw was set.

He snapped orders. The hired Thrid of the trading-post staff had not quite grasped the situation. They couldn't believe it. Automatically, as he commanded the iron doors and shutters of the trading post closed, they obeyed. They saw him turn on the shocker-field so that nobody could cross the compound without getting an electric shock that would discourage him. They began to believe.

Then he sent for the trading-post Thrid consultant. On Earth he'd have called for a lawyer. On a hostile world there'd have been a soldier to advise him. On Thrid the specialist to be consulted wasn't exactly a theologian, but he was nearer that than anything else.

Jorgenson laid the matter indignantly before him, repeating the exact phrases that said the trading company wanted—wanted!—practically to give itself to the Never-Mistaken Glen-U, who was the Grand Panjandrum of Thriddar. He waited to be told that it couldn't have happened; that anyhow it couldn't be intended. But the theologian's Thriddish ears went limp, which amounted to the same thing as a man's face turning pale. He stammered agitatedly that if the Grand Panjandrum said it, it was true. It couldn't be otherwise! If the trading company wanted to give itself to him, there was nothing to be done. It wanted to! The Grand Panjandrum had said so!

"He also said," said Jorgenson irritably, "that I'm to vanish and nevermore be seen face to face by any rational being. How does that happen? Do I get speared?"

The trading-post theologian quivered. Jorgenson made things much worse.

"This," he raged, "this is crazy! The Grand Panjandrum's an ordinary Thrid just like you are! Of course he can make a mistake! There's nobody who can't be wrong!"

The theologian put up feebly protesting, human-like hands. He begged hysterically to be allowed to go home before Jorgenson vanished, with unknown consequences for any Thrid who might be nearby.

When Jorgenson opened a door to kick him out of it, the whole staff of the trading-post plunged after him. They'd been eavesdropping and they fled in pure horror.

Jorgenson swore impartially at all of them and turned the shocker-field back on. He plugged in a capacity circuit which would turn on warning sirens if anything like a steam-driven copter passed or hovered over the trading-post. He put blasters in handy positions. The Thrid used only spears, knives and scimitars. Blasters would defend the post against a multitude.

As a business man, he'd acted very foolishly. But he'd acted even less sensibly as a human being. He'd gotten fed up with a social system and a—call it—theology it wasn't his business to change. True, the Thrid way of life was appalling, and what had happened to Ganti was probably typical. But it wasn't Jorgenson's affair. He'd been unwise to let it disturb him. If the Thrid wanted things this way, it was their privilege.

In theory, no Thrid should ever make a mistake, because he belonged to the most intelligent race in the universe. But a local governor was even more intelligent. If an ordinary Thrid challenged a local governor's least and lightest remark—why—he must be either a criminal or insane. The local governor decided—correctly, of course—which he was. If he was a criminal, he spent the rest of his life in a gang of criminals chained together and doing the most exhausting labor the Thrid could contrive. If he was mad, he was confined for life.

There'd been Ganti, a Thrid of whom Jorgenson had had much hope. He believed that Ganti could learn to run the trading post without human supervision. If he could, the trading company could simply bring trade goods to Thriddar and take away other trade goods. The cost of doing business would be decreased. There could be no human-Thrid friction. Jorgenson had been training Ganti for this work.

But the local Thrid governor had spoken and said and observed that Ganti's wife wanted to enter his household. He added that Ganti wanted to yield her to him.

Jorgenson had fumed—but not as a business man—when the transfer took place. But Ganti had been conditioned to believe that when a governor said he wanted to do something, he did. He couldn't quite grasp the contrary idea. But he moped horribly, and Jorgenson talked sardonically to him, and he almost doubted that an official was necessarily right. When his former wife died of grief, his disbelief became positive. And immediately afterward he disappeared.

Jorgenson couldn't find out what had become of him. Dour reflection on the happening had put him in the bad mood which had started things, this morning.

Time passed. He had the trading-post in a position of defense. He prepared his lunch, and glowered. More time passed. He cooked his dinner, and ate. Afterward he went up on the trading-post roof to smoke and to coddle his anger. He observed the sunset. There was always some haze in the air on Thriddar, and the colorings were very beautiful. He could see the towers of the capital city of the Thrid. He could see a cumbersome but still graceful steam-driven aircraft descend heavily to the field at the city's edge. Later he saw another steam-plane rise slowly but reliably and head away somewhere else. He saw the steam helicopters go skittering above the city's buildings.

He fumed because creatures intelligent enough to build steam fliers weren't intelligent enough to see what a racket their government was. Now that the new Grand Panjandrum had moved against him, Jorgenson made an angry, dogged resolution to do something permanent to make matters better. For the Thrid themselves. Here he thought not as a business man only, but as a humanitarian. As both. When a whim of the Grand Panjandrum could ruin a business, something should be done. And when Ganti and countless others had been victims of capricious tyranny.... And Jorgenson was slated to vanish from sight and never again be seen.... It definitely called for strong measures!

He reflected with grim pleasure that the Grand Panjandrum would soon be in the position of a Thrid whom everybody knew was mistaken. With the trading-post denied him and Jorgenson still visible, he'd be notoriously wrong. And he couldn't be, and still be Grand Panjandrum!

It would be a nice situation for Glen-U. He'd have to do something about it, and there was nothing he could do. He'd blundered, and it would soon be public knowledge.

Jorgenson dozed lightly. Then more heavily. Then more heavily still. The night was not two hours old when the warning sirens made a terrific uproar. The Thrid for miles around heard the wailing, ullulating sound of the sirens that should have awakened Jorgenson.

But they didn't wake him. He slept on.

When he woke, he knew that he was cold. His muscles were cramped. Half awake, he tried to move and could not.

Then he tried to waken fully, and he couldn't do that either. He stayed in a dream-like, frustrated state which was partly like a nightmare, while very gradually new sensations came to him. He felt a cushioned throbbing against his chest, in the very hard surface on which he lay face down. That surface swayed and rocked slightly. He tried again to move, and realized that his hands and feet were bound. He found that he shivered, and realized that his clothing had been taken from him.

He was completely helpless and lying on his stomach in the cargo-space of a steam helicopter: now he could hear the sound of its machinery.

Then he knew what had happened. He'd committed The unthinkable crime—or lunacy—of declaring the Grand Panjandrum mistaken. So by the operation of truth, which was really an anesthetic gas cloud drifted over the trading post, he had vanished from sight.

Now it was evidently to be arranged that he would never again be seen face to face by a rational being. The Grand Panjandrum had won the argument. Within a few months a Rim Stars trading ship would land, and Jorgenson would be gone and the trading post confiscated. It would be hopeless to ask questions, and worse than hopeless to try to trade. So the ship would lift off and there'd be no more ships for at least a generation. Then there might—there might!—be another.

Jorgenson swore fluently and with passion.

"It will not be long," said a tranquil voice.

Jorgenson changed from human-speech profanity to Thrid. He directed his words to the unseen creature who'd spoken. That Thrid listened, apparently without emotion. When Jorgenson ran out of breath, the voice said severely:

"You declared the great and Never-Mistaken Glen-U mistaken. This could not be. It proved you either a criminal or insane, because no rational creature could believe him mistaken. He declared you insane, and he cannot be wrong. So soon you will arrive where you are to be confined and no rational being will ever see you face to face."

Jorgenson switched back to human swearing. Then he blended both languages, using all the applicable words he knew both in human speech and Thrid. He knew a great many. The soft throbbing of the steam-driven rotors went on, and Jorgenson swore both as a business man and a humanitarian. Both were frustrated.

Presently the motion of the copter changed. He knew the ship was descending. There were more violent swayings, as if from wind gusts deflected by something large and solid. Jorgenson even heard deep-bass rumblings like sea upon a rocky coast. Then there were movements near him, a rope went around his waist, a loading-bay opened and he found himself lifted and lowered through it.

He dangled in midair, a couple of hundred feet above an utterly barren island on which huge ocean swells beat. The downdraft from the copter made him sway wildly, and once it had him spinning dizzily. The horizon was empty. He was being lowered swiftly to the island. And his hands and feet were still securely tied.

Then he saw a figure on the island. It was a Thrid stripped of all clothing like Jorgenson and darkened by the sun. That figure came agilely toward where he was let down. It caught him. It checked his wild swingings, which could have broken bones. The rope slackened. The Thrid laid Jorgenson down.

He did not cast off the rope. He seemed to essay to climb it.

It was cut at the steam-copter and came tumbling down all over both of them. The Thrid waved his arms wildly and seemed to screech gibberish at the sky. There was an impact nearby, of something dropped. Jorgenson heard the throbbing sound of the copter as it lifted and swept away.

Then he felt the bounds about his arms and legs being removed. Then a Thrid voice—amazingly, a familiar Thrid voice—said:

"This is not good, Jorgenson. Who did you contradict?"

The Thrid was Ganti, of whom Jorgenson had once had hopes as a business man, and for whose disaster he had felt indignation as something else. He loosened the last of Jorgenson's bonds and helped him sit up.

Jorgenson glared around. The island was roughly one hundred feet by two. It was twisted, curdled yellow stone from one end to the other. There were stone hillocks and a miniature stony peak, and a narrow valley between two patches of higher rock. Huge seas boomed against the windward shore, throwing spray higher than the island's topmost point. There were some places where sand had gathered. There was one spot—perhaps a square yard of it—where sand had been made fertile by the droppings of flying things and where two or three starveling plants showed foliage of sorts. That was all. Jorgenson ground his teeth.

"Go ahead," said Ganti grimly, "but it may be even worse than you think."

He scrambled over the twisted stone of the island. He came back, carrying something.

"It isn't worse," he said. "It's only as bad. They did drop food and water for both of us. I wasn't sure they would."

His calmness sobered Jorgenson. As a business man, he was moved to make his situation clear. He told Ganti of the Grand Panjandrum's move to take over the Rim Stars trading post, which was bad business. He told of his own reaction, which was not a business-like one at all. Then he said dourly:

"But he's still wrong. No rational being is supposed ever to see me face to face. But you do."

"But I'm crazy," said Ganti calmly. "I tried to kill the governor who'd taken my wife. So he said I was crazy and that made it true. So I wasn't put in a chained group of laborers. Somebody might have seen me and thought about it. But, sent here, it's worse for me and I'm probably forgotten by now."

He was calm about it. Only a Thrid would have been so calm. But they've had at least hundreds of generations in which to get used to injustice. He accepted it. But Jorgenson frowned.

"You've got brains, Ganti. What's the chance of escape?"

"None," said Ganti unemotionally. "You'd better get out of the sun. It'll burn you badly. Come along."

He led the way over the bare, scorching rocky surface. He turned past a small pinnacle. There was shadow. Jorgenson crawled into it, and found himself in a cave. It was not a natural one. It had been hacked out, morsel by morsel. It was cool inside. It was astonishingly roomy.

"How'd this happen?" demanded Jorgenson the business man.

"This is a prison," Ganti explained matter-of-factly. "They let me down here and dropped food and water for a week. They went away. I found there'd been another prisoner here before me. His skeleton was in this cave. I reasoned it out. There must have been others before him. When there is a prisoner here, every so often a copter drops food and water. When the prisoner doesn't pick it up, they stop coming. When, presently, they have another prisoner they drop him off, like me, and he finds the skeleton of the previous prisoner, like me, and he dumps it overboard as I did. They'll drop food and water for me until I stop picking it up. And presently they'll do the same thing all over again."

Jorgenson glowered. That was his reaction as a person. Then he gestured to the cave around him. There was a pile of dried-out seaweed for sleeping purposes.

"And this?"

"Somebody dug it out," said Ganti without resentment. "To keep busy. Maybe one prisoner only began it. A later one saw it started and worked on it to keep busy. Then others in their turn. It took a good many lives to make this cave."

Jorgenson ground his teeth a second time.

"And just because they'd contradicted somebody who couldn't be wrong! Or because they had a business an official wanted!"

"Or a wife," agreed Ganti. "Here!"

He offered food. Jorgenson ate, scowling. Afterward, near sundown, he went over the island.

It was rock, nothing else. There was a pile of small broken stones from the excavation of the cave. There were the few starveling plants. There was the cordage with which Jorgenson had been lowered. There was the parcel containing food and water. Ganti observed that the plastic went to pieces in a week or so, so it couldn't be used for anything. There was nothing to escape with. Nothing to make anything to escape with.

Even the dried seaweed bed was not comfortable. Jorgenson slept badly and waked with aching muscles. Ganti assured him unemotionally that he'd get used to it.

He did. By the time the copter came to drop food and water again, Jorgenson was physically adjusted to the island. But neither as a business man or as a person could he adjust to hopelessness.

He racked his brains for the most preposterous or faintest hope of deliverance. There were times when as a business man he reproached himself for staying on Thriddar after he became indignant with the way the planet was governed. It was very foolish. But much more often he felt such hatred of the manners and customs of the Thrid—which had put him here—that it seemed that something must somehow be possible if only so he could take revenge.

III

The copter came, it dropped food and water, and it went away. It came, dropped food and water, and went away. Once a water-bag burst when dropped. They lost nearly half a week's water supply. Before the copter came again they'd gone two days without drinking.

There were other incidents, of course. The dried seaweed they slept on turned to powdery trash. They got more seaweed hauling long kelp-like strands of it ashore from where it clung to the island's submerged rocks. Ganti mentioned that they must do it right after the copter came, so there would be no sign of enterprise to be seen from aloft. The seaweed had long, flexible stems of which no use whatever could be made. When it dried, it became stiff and brittle but without strength.

Once Ganti abruptly began to talk of his youth. As if he were examining something he'd never noticed before, he told of the incredible conditioning-education of the young members of his race. They learned that they must never make a mistake. Never! It did not matter if they were unskilled or inefficient. It did not matter if they accomplished nothing. There was no penalty for anything but making mistakes or differing from officials who could not make mistakes.

So Thrid younglings were trained not to think; not to have any opinion about anything; only to repeat what nobody questioned; only to do what they were told by authority. It occurred to Jorgenson that on a planet with such a population, a skeptic could make a great deal of confusion.

Then, another time, Jorgenson decided to make use of the weathering cord which had been cut from the copter when he was landed. He cut off a part of it with a sharp-edged fragment of stone from the pile some former prisoner on the island had made. He unravelled the twisted fibers. Then he ground fishhooks from shells attached to the island's rocky walls just below water-line. After that they fished. Sometimes they even caught something to eat. But they never fished when the copter was due.

Jorgenson found that a fish-fillet, strongly squeezed and wrung like a wet cloth, would yield a drinkable liquid which was not salt and would substitute for water. And this was a reason to make a string bag in which caught fish could be let back into the sea so they were there when wanted but could not escape.

They had used it for weeks when he saw Ganti, carrying it to place it where they left it overboard, swinging it idly back and forth as he walked.

If Jorgenson had been only a businessman, it would have had no particular meaning. But he was also a person, filled with hatred of the Thrid who had condemned him for life to this small island. He saw the swinging of the fish. It gave him an idea.

He did not speak at all during all the rest of that day. He was thinking. The matter needed much thought. Ganti left him alone.

But by sunset he'd worked it out. While they watched Thrid's red sun sink below the horizon, Jorgenson said thoughtfully:

"There is a way to escape, Ganti."

"On what? In what?" demanded Ganti.

"In the helicopter that feeds us," said Jorgenson.

"It never lands," said Ganti practically.

"We can make it land," said Jorgenson. Thrid weren't allowed to make mistakes; he could make it a mistake not to land.

"The crew is armed," said Ganti. "There are three of them."

"They've only knives and scimitars," said Jorgenson. "They don't count. We can make better weapons than they have."

Ganti looked skeptical. Jorgenson explained. He had to demonstrate crudely. The whole idea was novel to Ganti, but the Thrid were smart. Presently he grasped it. He said:

"I see the theory. If we can make it work, all right. But how do we make the copter land?"

Jorgenson realized that they talked oddly. They spoke with leisurely lack of haste, with the lack of hope normal to prisoners to whom escape is impossible, even when they talk about escape. They could have been discussing a matter that would not affect either of them. But Jorgenson quivered inside. He hoped.

"We'll try it," said Ganti detachedly, when he'd explained again. "If it fails, they'll only stop giving us food and water."

That, of course, did not seem either to him or Jorgenson a reason to hesitate to try what Jorgenson had planned.

It was not at all a direct and forthright scheme. It began with the untwisting of more of the rope that had lowered Jorgenson. It went on with the making of string from that fiber. They made a great deal of string. Then, very clumsily and awkwardly, they wove strips of cloth, a couple of inches wide and five or six long. They made light strong cords extend from the ends of the cloth strips. Then they practiced with these bits of cloth and the broken stones a former prisoner had piled so neatly.

The copter came and dropped food and water. When it left, they practiced. When it came again they were not practicing, but when it went away they practiced. They were a naked man and a naked Thrid, left upon a morsel of rock in a boundless sea, rehearsing themselves in an art so long-forgotten that they had to reinvent the finer parts of the technique. They experimented. They tried this. They tried that. When the copter appeared, they showed themselves. They rushed upon the dropped bag containing food and water as if fiercely trying to deny each other a full share. Once they seemed to fight over the dropped bag. The copter hovered to watch. The fight seemed furious and deadly, but inconclusive.

When the copter went away Jorgenson and Ganti went briskly back to their practicing.

They were almost satisfied with their proficiency, now. They had lost some of the small stones, but there were many left. They began to work with seaweed, the kind with long central stems which dried to brittle stiffness. They determined exactly how long they should be allowed to dry. They studied the way in which the flat seaweed foliage must be dried on rounded stone spaces to form seemingly solid surfaces of almost any shape. But they were utterly brittle when they were dry. It was not possible to make them hold any form for more than a day or so, even if sprinkled with cold water to keep them from crumbling to dust.

And they practiced with the strip of cloth and the stones. Ganti became more skilful than Jorgenson, but even Jorgenson became an expert.

There came a day when the copter dropped the bag of food and Ganti danced with seeming rage and shook his fist at it. The crew-Thrid saw him, but paid no attention. They went away. And Ganti and Jorgenson went to work.

They hauled seaweed ashore. It had to dry to some degree before it could hold a form at all. While it dried, they practiced. The leaves were ready before the stems. They spread them on rounded surfaces, many leaves thick. They dried to dark-gray-greenish stuff looking like the crudest possible cardboard without a fraction of cardboard's strength or stiffness. Presently the stems were dry enough to be stiff but not yet entirely brittle. They made a framework, uniting its members with string from the dropped rope.

Two days before the copter was due again, they used the cardboard-like but fragile curved sheet of seaweed-leaves to cover the frame. Finished, they had what looked like the fuselage of a landed copter.

Thicker but brittle sections of the stems seemed rotor-blades when more seaweed-cardboard was attached. From two hundred feet, the crudities of the object would not show. It would look like a helicopter landed on the island where Jorgenson and Ganti were confined.

It would look like a rescue.

When the copter arrived, it checked in midair as if it braked. It hung in the air. Its crew stared down. They saw a strange aircraft there. The helicopter whirled and went streaking away toward the horizon.

Jorgenson and Ganti immediately attacked their own creation. The framework was brittle; barely able to sustain its own weight. They furiously demolished the whole thing. They hauled its fragments into the cave. They worked furiously to remove every trace of its former presence.

Within two hours a fleet of six steam-copters came driving across the sea. They swept over the island. They looked. They saw Jorgenson and Ganti—naked man and naked Thrid—glaring up at them. They saw nothing else. There was nothing else to see.

There was a Thrid official on one of the copters. The matter had been reported to him. A helicopter could only have landed on this island to rescue the prisoners. They were not rescued. There had been no helicopter. The crew of the craft which made the report had made a mistake!

Jorgenson and Ganti gloated together when darkness had fallen. The copter-crew had made a false report. They would face an angry official. Either they'd take back their original report, or stick to it. If they took it back, they'd tried to deceive an official, who could not be wrong. Jorgenson and Ganti gloated over what they'd done to their jailers.

IV

When a copter came again a week later, it was not the same flier or the same crew. The bag of food and water was dropped from a different height. The copter hovered until it saw both Jorgenson and Ganti. Then it went away.

They set to work again on seaweed hauled from the sea, and leaves smoothed over each other on suitable surfaces of rock. Stems up to four and five inches in diameter to be straightened out and almost dried to seem rotor-shafts, and lesser stems to make a framework. The mockup was tied together with string. They finished it the night before the copter was due again, and they practiced with their bits of cloth and the stones until the light ended. They practiced again at day-break, but when the helicopter came across the sea they were nowhere visible.

But there was an aircraft aground upon the island. From the air it looked remarkably convincing.

The prisoners listened eagerly from the hollowed-out cave. The mockup on the ground was in a miniature valley between sections of taller stone. It could be seen from above, but not well from the side. From one end it could not be seen at all, but from the other it was a remarkable job. It would deceive any eyes not very close indeed.

The flying helicopter hovered and hovered, sweeping back and forth. Its crew-members saw no movement anywhere, which was not possible. If there was an aircraft aground, there must be Thrid who had flown it here. They were not to be seen. The prisoners were not to be seen. The situation was impossible.

Jorgenson and Ganti waited.

The flying jailers could not report what they saw. A previous crew had done that, and when they were proved mistaken or worse, they donned chains to do hard labor so long as they lived. But the Thrid in the copter over the island dared not not-report. Somebody else might sight it, and they'd be condemned for not reporting. They couldn't report it and they couldn't not-report it!

Jorgenson grinned when the throbbing of the rotors became louder and louder as the steam-helicopter descended. He and Ganti made ready.

The flying vehicle landed. They heard it. Its crew got out, fearful but alert and with weapons handy. One stayed close by the ship, his ears shriveled with terror. The other two, weapons very much to the fore, moved cautiously to examine the aircraft which could not possibly be here.

Jorgenson and Ganti, together, scrambled from the hollowed-out cave.

Ganti swung his strip of cloth. It had a strong cord attached to each end, and he held the cords so the cloth formed a pocket in which a stone lay. The whole whirled furiously. Ganti released one cord. The stone flew. It struck the Thrid on guard by the machine squarely in the middle of his forehead. Jorgenson's stone arrived the fraction of a second later, before the Thrid started to fall. They moved out, Jorgenson grinning in a most un-businessman-like manner. They heard the startled exclamation of the other two newcomers as they realized that they saw only a mockup of a landed flier, a thing which crumbled as they touched it.

Jorgenson and Ganti swung their slings together. The jailer-Thrid turned just in time to see what was happening to them. It was final.

And the copter took off again with Ganti and Jorgenson clothed and with an adequate supply of stones in improvised pockets in their garments.

It was perfectly simple from that time on. They walked into a village of the Thrid, on the mainland. It was the village where Ganti had lived; whose governor had spoken and said and observed that Ganti's wife wished to enter his household and that Ganti wished her to. Ganti marched truculently down its wider street. Astonished eyes turned upon him. Ganti said arrogantly:

"I am the new governor. Call others to see."

The villagers could not question the statement of an official. Not even the statement that he was an official. So Ganti—with Jorgenson close behind—swaggered into the local governor's palace. It wasn't impressive, but merely a leafy, thatched, sprawling complex of small buildings. Ganti led the way into the inmost portion of the palace and found a fat, sleeping Thrid with four villager-Thrid fanning him with huge fans. Ganti shouted, and the fat Thrid sat up, starkly bewildered.

"I speak and say and observe," said Ganti coldly, "that I am the new governor and that you are about to die, with no one touching you."

The fat Thrid gaped at him. It was incredible. In fact, to a Thrid who had never heard of a missile weapon—it was impossible. Ganti swung his strip of cloth by the two cords attached to it. It whirled too swiftly to be seen clearly. A stone flew terribly straight. There was an impact.

The local governor who had spoken and said and observed that Ganti's wife wanted to enter his household was quite dead.

"I," said Ganti to his former fellow-villagers, "I am the governor. If any deny it, they will die with no one touching them."

And that was that.

Ganti grimaced at Jorgenson:

"I'll speak and say and observe something useful for you presently, Jorgenson. Right now I'm going to march on foot and talk to the provincial governor. I'll take a train of attendants, so he'll receive me. Then I'll tell him that he's about to die with nobody touching him. He's earned it!"

Unquestionably, Ganti was right.

Any Thrid official, to whom it was impossible to be mistaken, would develop eccentric notions.

Most humans couldn't stand by and watch. They got off Thriddar as soon as possible. At the moment, Jorgenson couldn't leave the planet, but he didn't want to see what Ganti could and would and by human standards probably ought to do. He camped in the steam-copter, in hiding, until Ganti sent him a message.

Then he started up the copter and flew back to the trading post. It was empty. Gutted. Looted. But there was a high official waiting for him in the courtyard. He held a scroll in his hand. It glinted golden. When Jorgenson regarded him grimly, the high official made a sound equivalent to clearing his throat, and the Witness-hatted Thrid around him became silent.

"On this day," intoned the high official, "on this day did Ganti, the Never-Mistaken, as have been his predecessors through the ages;—on this day did the Never-Mistaken Ganti speak and say and observe a truth in the presence of the governors and the rulers of the universe."

Jorgenson listened grimly. The new Grand Panjandrum had made him—Jorgenson—a provincial governor.

Ganti was grateful. The contents of the trading post would be returned. From this time on the Rim Stars Trading Corporation would prosper as never before.

But Jorgenson wasn't a Thrid. He saw things as a businessman does, but also and contradictorily he saw them as right and just or wrong and intolerable. As a businessman, he saw that everything had worked out admirably. As a believer in right and wrong, it seemed to him that nothing in particular had happened.

He'd have done better, he considered, to do what most humans did after understanding what went on on Thriddar, and what seemingly always must go on on Thriddar. Because the Thrid had noticed that they were the most intelligent race in the universe, and therefore must have the most perfect possible government whose officials must inevitably be incapable of making a mistake....

When the Rim Stars trading ship came to ground, a month later, Jorgenson went on board and stayed there. He remained on board when the ship left. Thriddar was no place for him.

[Transcriber's Note: No Section II in original text.]

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Table of Contents

- MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE THRID

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE