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THE AMBASSADOR
By Sam Merwin, Jr.
Illustrated by Kelly Freas
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of ScienceFiction March 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Sidenote: _All Earth needed was a good stiff dose of common sense, butits rulers preferred to depend on the highly fallible computers instead.As a consequence, interplanetary diplomatic relations were somewhatstrained--until a nimble-witted young man from Mars came up with theanswer to the "sixty-four dollar" question._]
Zalen Lindsay stood on the rostrum in the huge new United Worldsauditorium on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain and looked out at an oceanof eye-glasses. Individually they ranged in hue from the rose-tintedspectacles of the Americans to the dark brown of the Soviet bloc. Theirshapes and adornments were legion: round, harlequin, diamond, rhomboid,octagonal, square, oval; rimless, gem-studded, horn-rimmed,floral-rimmed, rimmed in the cases of some of the lady representativeswith immense artificial eyelashes.
The total effect, to Lindsay, was of looking at an immense page ofprinted matter composed entirely of punctuation marks. Unspectacled, hefelt like a man from Mars. He _was_ a man from Mars--first MartianAmbassador Plenipotentiary to the Second United Worlds Congress.
He wished he could see some of the eyes behind the protective goggles,for he knew he was making them blink.
He glanced down at the teleprompter in front of him--purely to addeffect to a pause, for he had memorized his speech and was delivering itwithout notes. On it was printed: HEY, BOSS--DON'T FORGET YOU GOT ADINNER DATE WITH THE SEC-GEN TONIGHT.
Lindsay suppressed a smile and said, "In conclusion, I am qualified bythe governors of Mars to promise that if we receive another shipment ofBritish hunting boots we shall destroy them immediately uponunloading--and refuse categorically to ship further beryllium to Earth.
"On Mars we raise animals for food, not for sport--we consider humanbeings as the only fit athletic competition for other humans--and we seesmall purpose in expending our resources mining beryllium or othermetals for payment that is worse than worthless. In short, we will notbe a dumping ground for Earth's surplus goods. I thank you."
The faint echo of his words came back to him as he stepped down from therostrum and walked slowly to his solitary seat in the otherwise emptysection allotted to representatives of alien planets. Otherwise therewas no sound in the huge assemblage.
He felt a tremendous lift of tension, the joyousness of a man who hassatisfied a lifelong yearning to toss a brick through a plate-glasswindow and knows he will be arrested for it and doesn't care.
There was going to be hell to pay--and Lindsay was honestly lookingforward to it. While Secretary General Carlo Bergozza, his dark-greenspectacles resembling parenthesis marks on either side of his thin eaglebeak, went through the motions of adjourning the Congress forforty-eight hours, Lindsay considered his mission and its purpose.
Earth--a planet whose age-old feuds had been largely vitiated by theincreasing rule of computer-judgment--and Mars, the one settled alienplanet on which no computer had ever been built, were driftingdangerously apart.
It was, Lindsay thought with a trace of grimness, the same ancient storyof the mother country and her overseas colonies, the same basic andseemingly inevitable trend, social and economic, that had led to therevolt of North America against England, three hundred years earlier.
On a far vaster and costlier scale, of course.
Lindsay had been sent to Earth, as his planet's first representative atthe new United Worlds Congress, to see that this trend was halted beforeit led to irrevocable division. And not by allowing Mars to become amere feeder and dumping ground for the parent planet.
Well, he had tossed a monkey wrench into the machinery of interplanetarysweetness and light, he thought. Making his way slowly out with the restof the Congress, he felt like the proverbial bull in the china shop. Theothers, eyeing him inscrutably through their eye-glasses and over theirharness humps, drew aside to let him walk through.
But all around him, in countless national tongues, he heard thewhispers, the mutterings--"sending a gladiator" ... "looks like a vidarstar" ... "too young for such grave responsibility" ... "nounderstanding of the basic sensitivities"....
Obviously, he had _not_ won a crushing vote of confidence.
* * * * *
To hell with them, all of them, he thought as someone tapped him on ashoulder. He turned to find du Fresne, the North American Minister ofComputation, peering up at him through spectacles that resembled twinscoops of strawberry ice-cream mounted in heavy white-metal rims.
"I'd like a word with you," he said, speaking English rather thanEsperanto. Lindsay nodded politely, thinking that du Fresne lookedrather like a Daumier judge with his fashionable humped back and longofficial robe of office.
Over a table in the twilight bar du Fresne leaned toward him, nearlyupsetting his colafizz with a sleeve of his robe.
"M-mind you," he said, "this is strictly unofficial, Lindsay, but I haveyour interests at heart. You're following trend X."
"Got me all nicely plotted out on your machine?" said Lindsay.
Du Fresne's sallow face went white at this pleasantry. As Minister ofComputation his entire being was wrapped up in the immensely intricatecalculators that forecast all decisions for the huge North Americanrepublic. Obviously battling anger, he said, "Don't laugh at Elsac,Lindsay. It has never been wrong--it can't be wrong."
"I'm not laughing," said Lindsay quietly. "But no one has ever fed me toa computer. So how can you know...?"
"We have fed it every possible combination of circumstances based uponall the facts of Terro-Martian interhistory," the Minister ofComputation stated firmly. His nose wrinkled and seemed to turn visiblypink at the nostril-edges. He said, "Damn! I'm allergic tocomputer-ridicule." He reached for an evapochief, blew his nose.
"Sorry," said Lindsay, feeling the mild amazement that seemed toaccompany all his dealings with Earthfolk. "I wasn't--"
"I doe you weren'd," du Fresne said thickly. "Bud de vurry zuggedgeshunof ridicule dudz id." He removed his strawberry spectacles, produced aneye-cup, removed and dried the contact lenses beneath. After he hadreplaced them his condition seemed improved.
Lindsay offered him a cigarette, which was refused, and selected one forhimself. He said, "What happens if I pursue trend X?"
"You'll be assassinated," du Fresne told him nervously. "And the resultsof such assassination will be disastrous for both planets. Earth willhave to go to war."
"Then why not ship us goods we can use?" Lindsay asked quietly.
Du Fresne looked at him as despairingly as his glasses would permit. Hesaid, "You just don't understand. Why didn't your people send someonebetter attuned to our problems?"
"Perhaps because they felt Mars would be better represented by someoneattuned to its own problems," Lindsay told him. "Don't tell me yourprecious computers recommend murder and war."
"They don't recommend anything," said du Fresne. "They merely advisewhat will happen under given sets of conditions."
"Perhaps if you used sensible judgment instead of machines to make yourdecisions you could prevent my assassination," said Lindsay, finishinghis scotch on the rocks. "Who knows?" he added. "You might even be ableto prevent an interplanetary war!"
When he left, du Fresne's nose was again growing red and the Minister ofComputation was fumbling for another evapochief.
* * * * *
&nbs
p; Riding the escaramp to his office on the one-twentieth floor of the UWbuilding, Lindsay pondered the strange people of the mother planet amongwhom his assignment was causing him to live. One inch over six feet, hewas not outstandingly tall--but he felt tall among them, with theirslump harnesses and disfiguring spectacles and the women so hiddenbeneath their shapeless coveralls and harmopan makeup.
He was not unprepared for the appearance of Earthfolk, of course, but hehad not yet adjusted to seeing them constantly around him in such largenumbers. To him their deliberate distortion was as shocking as, hesupposed wryly, his own unaltered naturalness was to them.
There was still something illogical about the cult of everyday uglinessthat had overtaken the mother planet in the last two generations, underthe guise