our oomphel teaches us. We know this secret, and with it we makeweapons of great destruction." He looked over the seated shoonoon,picking out those who wore the flame-colored cloaks of the fire-dance."You--and you--and you," he said. "You have been making this dreadfulmagic, and leading your people in it. And which among the rest of youhave not been guilty?"
"We did not know," one of them said. "Mailsh Heelbare, have we yet timeto keep this from happening?"
"Yes. There is only a little time, but there is time. You have untilthe Always-Same passes across the face of the Sky-Fire." That would beseven hundred and fifty hours. "If this happens, all is safe. If the SkyFire blots Out the Always Same, we are all lost together. You must goamong your people and tell them what madness they are doing, and commandthem to stop. You must command them to lay down their arms and ceasefighting. And you must tell them of the awful curse that was put uponthe Terrans in the long-ago time, for a lesser sin than they are nowcommitting."
"If we say that Mailsh Heelbare told us this, the people may not believeus. He is not known to all, and some would take no Terran's word, noteven his."
"Would anybody tell a secret of this sort, about his own people, if itwere not real?"
"We had better say nothing about Mailsh Heelbare. We will say that theGone Ones told us in dreams."
"Let us say that the Great Spirit sent a dream of warning to each ofus," another shoonoo said. "There has been too much talk about dreamsfrom the Gone Ones already."
"But the Great Spirit has never sent a dream--"
"Nothing like this has ever happened before, either."
He rose, and they were silent. "Go to your living-place, now," he toldthem. "Talk of how best you may warn your people." He pointed to theclock. "You have an oomphel like that in your living-place; when theshorter spear has moved three places, I will speak with you again, andthen you will be sent in air cars to your people to speak to them."
They went up the escalator and down the hall to Miles' office on thethird floor without talking. Foxx Travis was singing softly, almostinaudibly:
_"You will eeeeat ... in the sweeeet ... bye-and-bye, You'll get oooom ... phel in the sky ... when you die!"_
Inside, Edith Shaw slumped dispiritedly in a chair. Foxx Travis went tothe coffee-maker and started it. Miles snapped on the communicationscreen and punched the combination of General Maith's headquarters. Assoon as the uniformed girl who appeared in it saw him, her hands movedquickly; the screen flickered, and the general appeared in it.
"We have it made, general. They're sold; we're ready to start them outin three hours."
Maith's thin, weary face suddenly lighted. "You mean they are going toco-operate?"
He shook his head. "They think they're saving the world; they thinkwe're co-operating with them."
The general laughed. "That's even better! How do you want them sentout?"
"The ones in the Bluelake area first. Better have some picked K.N.I. innative costume, with pistols, to go with them. They'll need protection,till they're able to get a hearing for themselves. After they're allout, the ones from Gonzales' area can be started." He thought for amoment. "I'll want four or five of them left here to help me when youstart bringing more shoonoon in from other areas. How soon do you thinkyou'll have another class for me?"
"Two or three days, if everything goes all right. We have the villagesand plantations in the south under pretty tight control now; we canstart gathering them up right away. As soon as we get things stabilizedhere, we can send reinforcements to the north. We'll have transport foryou in three hours."
The general blanked out. He turned from the screen. Travis was laughinghappily.
"Miles, did anybody ever tell you you were a genius?" he asked. "Thatlast jolt you gave them was perfect. Why didn't you tell us about it inadvance?"
"I didn't know about it in advance; I didn't think of it till I'dstarted talking to them. No cream or sugar for me."
"Cream," Edith said, lifelessly. "Why did you do it? Why didn't you justtell them the truth?"
Travis asked her to define the term. She started to say something bitterabout Jesting Pilate. Miles interrupted.
"In spite of Lord Beacon, Pilate wasn't jesting," he said. "And hedidn't stay for an answer because he knew he'd die of old age waitingfor one. What kind of truth should I have told them?"
"Why, what you started to tell them. That Beta moves in a fixed orbitand can't get any closer to Alpha--"
"There's been some work done on the question since Pilate's time,"Travis said. "My semantics prof at Command College had the start of ananswer. He defined truth as a statement having a practicalcorrespondence with reality on the physical levels of structure andobservation and the verbal order of abstraction under consideration."
"He defined truth as a statement. A statement exists only in the mind ofthe person making it, and the mind of the person to whom it is made. Ifthe person to whom it is made can't understand or accept it, it isn'tthe truth."
"They understood when you showed them that the planet is round, and theyunderstood that tri-dimensional model of the system. Why didn't you letit go at that?"
"They accepted it intellectually. But when I told them that there wasn'tany chance of Kwannon getting any closer to Alpha, they rebelledemotionally. It doesn't matter how conclusively you prove anything, ifthe person to whom you prove it can't accept your proof emotionally,it's still false. Not-real."
"They had all their emotional capital invested in this Always-CoolTime," Travis told her. "They couldn't let Miles wipe that out for them.So he shifted it from this world to the next, and convinced them thatthey were getting a better deal that way. You saw how quickly theypicked it up. And he didn't have the sin of telling children there is noEaster Bunny on his conscience, either."
"But why did you tell them that story about the Oomphel Mother?" sheinsisted. "Now they'll go out and tell all the other natives, andthey'll believe it."
"Would they have believed it if I'd told them about Terran scientifictechnology? Your people have been doing that for close to half acentury. You see what impression it's made."
"But you told them--You told them that Terrans have no souls!"
"Can you prove that was a lie?" Travis asked. "Let's see yours.Draw--_soul_! Inspection--_soul_!"
Naturally. Foxx Travis would expect a soul to be carried in a holster.
"But they'll look down on us, now. They'll say we're just like animals,"Edith almost wailed.
"Now it comes out," Travis said. "We won't be the lordly Terrans, anymore, helping the poor benighted Kwanns out of the goodness of ourhearts, scattering largess, bearing the Terran's Burden--new model, agive-away instead of a gun. Now _they'll_ pity _us_; they'll think_we're_ inferior beings."
"I don't think the natives are inferior beings!" She was almost intears.
"If you don't, why did you come all the way to Kwannon to try to makethem more like Terrans?"
"Knock it off, Foxx; stop heckling her." Travis looked faintlysurprised. Maybe he hadn't realized, before, that a boss newsman learnsto talk like a commanding officer. "You remember what Ramon Gonzales wassaying, out at Sanders', about the inferior's hatred for the superior assuperior? It's no wonder these Kwanns resent us. They have a right to;we've done them all an unforgivable injury. We've let them see us doingthings they can't do. Of course they resent us. But now I've given themsomething to feel superior about. When they die, they'll go to the Placeof the Gone Ones, and have oomphel in the sky, and they will liveforever in new bodies, but when we die, we just die, period. So they'llpity us and politely try to hide their condescension toward us.
"And because they feel superior to us, they'll want to help us. They'llwork hard on the plantations, so that we can have plenty of biocrystals,and their shoonoon will work magic for us, to help us poor benightedTerrans to grow souls for ourselves, so that we can almost be like them.Of course, they'll have a chance to exploit us, and get oomphel from us,too, but the important thing will be to help the poor
Terrans. Maybethey'll even organize a Spiritual and Magical Assistance Agency."
THE END
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