PAGE 7
Impact
by
“You go to great pains to welcome a shipload of strangers.”
“Naturally. Consideration for others is the first law of humanity.” After a pause, she added very slowly, with her eyes fixed on his, “Mr. Lord, do you plan to make a colony here?”
“Eventually. After we repair the ship, I hope to negotiate a trade treaty with your government.”
“But you don’t intend to stay here yourself?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Have we failed in our welcome? Is there something more–“
“No, Niaga, nothing like that. I find your world very–very beautiful.” The word very inadequately expressed what he really felt. “But I’m not free to make the choice.”
She drew in her breath sharply. “Your people, then, hold you enslaved?”
He laughed–uneasily. “I’m going home to manage Hamilton Lord; it’s the largest trading company in the Federation. We have exclusive franchises to develop almost five hundred planets. It’s my duty, Niaga; my responsibility; I can’t shirk it.”
“Why not–if you wanted to?”
“Because I’m Martin Lord; because I’ve been trained–No, it’s something I can’t explain. You’ll just have to take my word for it. Now tell me: how should I go about negotiating a treaty with your people?”
“You spoke of the government, Martin Lord; I suppose you used the word in a symbolic sense?”
“Your chieftain; your tribal leader–whatever name you have for them.”
* * * * *
Her big, dark eyes widened in surprise. “Then you meant actual men? It’s a rather unusual use of the word, isn’t it? For us, government is a synonym for law.”
“Of course, but you must have leaders to interpret it and enforce it.”
“Enforce a law?” This seemed to amuse her. “How? A law is a statement of a truth in human relationship; it doesn’t have to be enforced. What sane person would violate a truth? What would you do, Martin Lord, if I told you we had no government, in your sense of the word?”
“You can’t be that primitive, Niaga!”
“Would it be so terribly wrong?”
“That’s anarchy. There’d be no question, then, of granting us a trade franchise; we’d have to set up a trusteeship and let the teachers run your planet until you had learned the basic processes of social organization.”
Niaga turned away from him, her hands twisted together. She said, in a soft whisper that was flat and emotionless, “We have a council of elders, Martin Lord. You can make your treaty with them.” Then, imperceptibly, her voice brightened. “It will take a week or more to bring the council together. And that is all to the good; it will give your people time to visit in our villages and to get better acquainted with us.”
* * * * *
Niaga left him, then; she said she would go to the village and send out the summons for the council. By a roundabout path, Lord returned to the clearing around the Ceres. The forest fascinated him. It was obviously cultivated like a park, and he was puzzled that a primitive society should practice such full scale conservation. Normally savages took nature for granted or warred against it.
He came upon a brown gash torn in a hillside above the stream, a place where natives were apparently working to build up the bank against erosion. In contrast to the beauty that surrounded it, the bare earth was indescribably ugly, like a livid scar in a woman’s face. In his mind Lord saw this scar multiplied a thousand times–no, a million times–when the machines of the galaxy came to rip out resources for the trade cities. He envisioned the trade cities that would rise against the horizon, the clutter of suburban subdivisions choking out the forests; he saw the pall of industrial smoke that would soil the clean air, the great machines clattering over asphalt streets.