FullReads

She reached for his hand, but Lord turned away from her quickly so that she could not again open the raw wound of shame in his soul. He followed Don Howard into the forest.

“You won’t get away with it, Lord,” Howard said grimly. “No trade agent can impose a treaty–“

“Would a trusteeship be any better?”

“Lord, no!”

“There are only two alternatives, and a Hamilton Lord trade city is by far the better.”

“Yes–for Hamilton Lord.”

“No, for these people. Don’t forget, I’ll be running Hamilton Lord. The exclusive franchise will keep out the other traders, and I can see to it that our trade city does no harm. We’ve a thousand planets in the Federation; who’s going to know if one of the cities doesn’t really function?”

“I get it. But why the hell did you have to bring me back?”

“To make a deal with–with your wife.”

After a long pause, Don Howard said wearily, “If Hamilton Lord can sacrifice the richest franchise in the galaxy, I suppose I can do my bit, too.”

At dawn the Ceres departed. Lord drove his men to work throughout the night stowing the prefabs and the trade goods aboard the ship. Just before the power tubes stabbed the launching fire into the earth, a delegation of villagers came into the clearing. Niaga led them and she spoke to Lord at the foot of the landing ladder.

“We still want you to stay among us, Martin Lord; we have come again to offer–“

“It is impossible!”

She put her arms around his neck and drew his lips against hers. The temptation washed over his mind, shattering his resolution and warping his reason. This was what he wanted: the golden dream of every man. But for Lord only one idea held fast. Niaga’s primitive, naive world had to be preserved exactly as it was. If he gave in to the dream, he would destroy it. Only in the central office of Hamilton Lord could he do anything to save what he had found here. He wrenched himself free of her arms.

“It’s no use, Niaga.”

She knew that she had lost, and she moved away from him. One of the other golden-skinned savages pushed a small, carved box into his hands.

“A parting gift,” Niaga said. “Open it when you are aboard your ship, Martin Lord.”

Long after the Ceres had blasted off, he sat alone in his cabin looking at the box–small, delicately carved from a strange material, like a soft plastic. It seemed somehow alive, throbbing with the memory of the dream he had left behind.

With a sigh he opened the box. A billow of white dust came from it. The box fell apart and the pieces, like disintegrating gelatine, began to melt away. A printed card, made of the same unstable material, lay in Lord’s hand.

“You have three minutes, Martin Lord,” he read. “The drug is painless, but before it wipes memory from the minds of you and your crew, I want you to understand why we felt it necessary to do this to you.

“When you first landed, we realized that you came from a relatively immature culture because you made no response to our telepathy of welcome. We did our best after that to simplify your adjustment to our way of life, because we knew you would have to stay among us. Of course, we never really learned your language; we simply gave you the illusion that we had. Nor is there any such thing as a council of elders; we had to invent that to satisfy you. We truly wanted you to stay among us. In time you could have grown up enough–most of you–to live with us as equals. We knew it would be disastrous for you to carry back to your world your idea of how we live. We are the tomorrow of your people; you must grow up to us. There is no other way to maturity. We could not, of course, keep you here against your will. Nor could we let you go back, like a poison, into your world. We could do nothing else but use this drug. The impact of civilization upon a primitive people like yours….”

The words hazed and faded as the note disintegrated. Lord felt a moment of desperate yearning, a terrible weight of grief. With an effort he pushed himself from his chair and pulled open the door into the corridor. He had to order the ship back while he could still remember; he had to find Niaga and tell her …

… tell her. Tell whom? Tell what? Lord stood in the corridor staring blankly at the metal wall. He was just a little puzzled as to why he was there, what he had meant to do. He saw Ann Howard coming toward him.

“Did you notice the lurch in the ship, Mr. Lord?” she asked.

“Yes, I suppose I did.” Was that why he had left his cabin?

“I thought we were having trouble with the time-power calibration, but I checked with Don and he says everything’s all right.” She glanced through the open door of his cabin at the electronic pattern on the scanning screen. “Well, we’ll be home in another twenty hours, Mr. Lord. It’s a pity we didn’t contact any new planets on this mission. It would have been a good experience for you.”

“Yes, I rather hoped so, too.”

He went back to his desk. Strange, he couldn’t remember what it was he had wanted to do. He shrugged his shoulders and laughed a little to himself. It definitely wouldn’t do–not at all–for a Lord to have lapses of memory.