Zarathustra's wake. He had a speechalready prepared, and when Judith met him at the gate with wide andwondering eyes, he delivered it without preamble. "Judith," he said, "Iam contemptuous of the notion that some things are meant to be andothers aren't, and I firmly believe in my own free will; but when yourdog stows away in the back seat of my car two times running and makesit impossible for me not to see you again, then there must be somethingafoot which neither you nor I can do a thing about. Whatever it is, Ihave given in to it and have transferred your real estate to an agentmore trustworthy than myself. I know you haven't known me long, and Iknow I'm not an accepted member of your group, but maybe somebody willgive me a job raking lawns or washing windows or hoeing corn long enoughfor me to prove that I am not in the least antisocial; and maybe, intime, you yourself will get to know me well enough to realize that whileI have a weakness for blondes who look like Grecian goddesses, I have notaste whatever for redheads, brunettes, or Cutty Sark. In any event, Ihave burned my bridges behind me, and whether I ever become a residentof Pfleugersville or not, I have already become a resident of SiriusXXI."
Judith Darrow was silent for some time. Then, "This morning," she said,"I wanted to ask you to join us, but I couldn't for two reasons. Thefirst was your commitment to sell our houses, the second was mybitterness toward men. You have eliminated the first, and the secondseems suddenly inane." She raised her eyes. "Philip, please join us. Iwant you to."
Zarathustra, whose real name was Siddenon Phenphonderill, left themstanding there in each other's arms and trotted down the street and outof town. He covered the ground in easy lopes that belied his threehundred and twenty-five years, and soon he arrived at the Meeting Place.The mayors of the other villages had been awaiting him since earlymorning and were shifting impatiently on their haunches. When heclambered up on the rostrum they extended their audio-appendages andretractile fingers and accorded him a round of applause. He extended hisown "hands" and held them up for silence, then, retracting them again,he seated himself before the little lectern and began his report, theidiomatic translation of which follows forthwith:
"Gentlemen, my apologies for my late arrival. I will touch upon thecircumstances that were responsible for it presently.
"To get down to the matter uppermost in your minds: Yes, the experimentwas a success, and if you will use your psycho-transmutative powers toremodel your villages along the lines my constituents and I remodeledours and to build enough factories to give your 'masters' that sense ofself-sufficiency so essential to their well-being, and if you will'plant' your disassembled Multiple Moebius-Knot Dynamos in such a waythat the resultant fields will be ascribed to accidental causes, youwill have no more trouble attracting personnel than we did. Just makesure that your 'masters' quarters are superior to your own, and thatyou behave like dogs in their presence. And when you fabricate yourrecords concerning your mythical departed masters, see to it that theydo not conflict with the records we fabricated concerning ours. It wouldbe desirable indeed if our Sirian-human society could be based on lessdeceitful grounds than these, but the very human attitude we areexploiting renders this impossible at the moment. I hate to think of theresentment we would incur were we to reveal that, far from being themere dogs we seem to be, we are capable of mentally transmuting naturalresources into virtually anything from a key to a concert hall, and Ihate even more to think of the resentment we would incur were we toreveal that, for all our ability in the inanimate field, we have neverbeen able to materialize so much as a single blade of grass in theanimate field, and that our reason for coincidentalizing the planetEarth and creating our irresistible little utopias stems not from a needfor companionship but from a need for gardeners. However, you will findthat all of this can be ironed out eventually through the humanchildren, with whom you will be thrown into daily contact and whom youwill find to possess all of their parents' abiding love for us and noneof their parents' superior attitude toward us. To a little child, a dogis a companion, not a pet; an equal, not an inferior--and the littlechildren of today will be the grown-ups of tomorrow.
"To return to the circumstances that occasioned my late arrival: I ... Imust confess, gentlemen, that I became quite attached to the 'mistress'into whose house I sought entry when we first established our field andwho subsequently adopted me when I convinced her real dog that he wouldfind greener pastures elsewhere. So greatly attached did I become, infact, that when the opportunity of ostracizing her loneliness presenteditself, I could not refrain from taking advantage of it. The person towhom she was most suited and who was most suited to her appearedvirtually upon her very doorstep; but in her stubbornness and in herpride she aggravated rather than encouraged him, causing him to rebelagainst the natural attraction he felt toward her. I am happy to reportthat, by means of a number of subterfuges--the final one of whichnecessitated the use of our original doorway--I was able to set thismatter right, and that these two once-lonely people are about to embarkupon a relationship which in their folklore is oftentimes quaintlyalluded to by the words, 'They lived happily ever after.'
"And now, gentlemen, the best of luck to you and your constituents, andmay you end up with servants as excellent as ours. I hereby declare thismeeting adjourned."
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
This etext was produced from "Analog Science Fact Science Fiction"November 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
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