Lone Star Planet
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Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire >> Lone Star Planet
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8 LONE STAR PLANET
by
H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was prepared from a 1979 reprint of the 1958 original. There is
no evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.
Obvious typesetting errors in the source text have been corrected
Lone Star Planet
SF
ace books
A Division of Charter Communications Inc.
A GROSSET & DUNLAP COMPANY
360 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10010
LONE STAR PLANET
Copyright (C) 1958 by Ace Books, Inc.
Originally published as A PLANET FOR TEXANS
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
or by any means, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a
review, without permission in writing from the publisher.
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This Ace Printing: April 1979
Printed in U.S.A.
CHAPTER I
They started giving me the business as soon as I came through the door
into the Secretary's outer office.
There was Ethel K'wang-Li, the Secretary's receptionist, at her desk.
There was Courtlant Staynes, the assistant secretary to the
Undersecretary for Economic Penetration, and Norman Gazarin, from
Protocol, and Toby Lawder, from Humanoid Peoples' Affairs, and Raoul
Chavier, and Hans Mannteufel, and Olga Reznik.
It was a wonder there weren't more of them watching the condemned man's
march to the gibbet: the word that the Secretary had called me in must
have gotten all over the Department since the offices had opened.
"Ah, Mr. Machiavelli, I presume," Ethel kicked off.
"Machiavelli, Junior." Olga picked up the ball. "At least, that's the
way he signs it."
"God's gift to the Consular Service, and the Consular Service's gift to
Policy Planning," Gazarin added.
"Take it easy, folks. These Hooligan Diplomats would as soon shoot you
as look at you," Mannteufel warned.
"Be sure and tell the Secretary that your friends all want important
posts in the Galactic Empire." Olga again.
"Well, I'm glad some of you could read it," I fired back. "Maybe even a
few of you understood what it was all about."
"Don't worry, Silk," Gazarin told me. "Secretary Ghopal understands what
it was all about. All too well, you'll find."
A buzzer sounded gently on Ethel K'wang-Li's desk. She snatched up the
handphone and whispered into it. A deathly silence filled the room while
she listened, whispered some more, then hung it up.
They were all staring at me.
"Secretary Ghopal is ready to see Mr. Stephen Silk," she said. "This
way, please."
As I started across the room, Staynes began drumming on the top of the
desk with his fingers, the slow reiterated rhythm to which a man marches
to a military execution.
"A cigarette?" Lawder inquired tonelessly. "A glass of rum?"
There were three men in the Secretary of State's private office. Ghopal
Singh, the Secretary, dark-faced, gray-haired, slender and elegant,
meeting me halfway to his desk. Another slender man, in black, with a
silver-threaded, black neck-scarf: Rudolf Klueng, the Secretary of the
Department of Aggression.
And a huge, gross-bodied man with a fat baby-face and opaque black eyes.
When I saw him, I really began to get frightened.
The fat man was Natalenko, the Security Cooerdinator.
"Good morning, Mister Silk," Secretary Ghopal greeted me, his hand
extended. "Gentlemen, Mr. Stephen Silk, about whom we were speaking.
This way, Mr. Silk, if you please."
There was a low coffee-table at the rear of the office, and four easy
chairs around it. On the round brass table-top were cups and saucers, a
coffee urn, cigarettes--and a copy of the current issue of the _Galactic
Statesmen's Journal_, open at an article entitled _Probable Future
Courses of Solar League Diplomacy_, by somebody who had signed himself
Machiavelli, Jr.
I was beginning to wish that the pseudonymous Machiavelli, Jr. had never
been born, or, at least, had stayed on Theta Virgo IV and been a
wineberry planter as his father had wanted him to be.
As I sat down and accepted a cup of coffee, I avoided looking at the
periodical. They were probably going to hang it around my neck before
they shoved me out of the airlock.
"Mr. Silk is, as you know, in our Consular Service," Ghopal was saying
to the others. "Back on Luna on rotation, doing something in Mr.
Halvord's section. He is the gentleman who did such a splendid job for
us on Assha--Gamma Norma III.
"And, as he has just demonstrated," he added, gesturing toward the
_Statesman's Journal_ on the Benares-work table, "he is a student both
of the diplomacy of the past and the implications of our present
policies."
"A bit frank," Klueng commented dubiously.
"But judicious," Natalenko squeaked, in the high eunuchoid voice that
came so incongruously from his bulk. "He aired his singularly accurate
predictions in a periodical that doesn't have a circulation of more than
a thousand copies outside his own department. And I don't think the
public's semantic reactions to the terminology of imperialism is as bad
as you imagine. They seem quite satisfied, now, with the change in the
title of your department, from Defense to Aggression."
"Well, we've gone into that, gentlemen," Ghopal said. "If the article
really makes trouble for us, we can always disavow it. There's no
censorship of the _Journal_. And Mr. Silk won't be around to draw fire
on us."
_Here it comes_, I thought.
"That sounds pretty ominous, doesn't it, Mr. Silk?" Natalenko tittered
happily, like a ten-year-old who has just found a new beetle to pull the
legs out of.
"It's really not as bad as it sounds, Mr. Silk," Ghopal hastened to
reassure me. "We are going to have to banish you for a while, but I
daresay that won't be so bad. The social life here on Luna has probably
begun to pall, anyhow. So we're sending you to Capella IV."
"Capella IV," I repeated, trying to remember something about it. Capella
was a GO-type, like Sol; that wouldn't be so bad.
"New Texas," Klueng helped me out.
_Oh, God, no!_ I thought.
"It happens that we need somebody of your sort on that planet, Mr.
Silk," Ghopal said. "Some of the trouble is in my department and some of
it is in Mr. Klueng's; for that reason, perhaps it would be better if
Cooerdinator Natalenko explained it to you."
"You know, I assume, our chief interest in New Texas?" Natalenko asked.
"I had some of it for breakfast, sir," I replied. "Supercow."
Natalenko tittered again. "Yes, New Texas is the butcher shop of the
galaxy. In more ways than one, I'm afraid you'll find. They just
butchered one of our people there a short while ago. Our Ambassador, in
fact."
That would be Silas Cumshaw, and this was the first I'd heard about it.
I asked when it had happened.
"A couple of months ago. We just heard about it last evening, when the
news came in on a freighter from there. Which serves to point up
something you stressed in your article--the difficulties of trying to
run a centralized democratic government on a galactic scale. But we have
another interest, which may be even more urgent than our need for New
Texan meat. You've heard, of course, of the z'Srauff."
That was a statement, not a question; Natalenko wasn't trying to insult
me. I knew who the z'Srauff were; I'd run into them, here and there. One
of the extra-solar intelligent humanoid races, who seemed to have been
evolved from canine or canine-like ancestors, instead of primates. Most
of them could speak Basic English, but I never saw one who would admit
to understanding more of our language than the 850-word Basic
vocabulary. They occupied a half-dozen planets in a small star-cluster
about forty light-years beyond the Capella system. They had developed
normal-space reaction-drive ships before we came into contact with
them, and they had quickly picked up the hyperspace-drive from us back
in those days when the Solar League was still playing Missionaries of
Progress and trying to run a galaxy-wide Point-Four program.
In the past century, it had become almost impossible for anybody to get
into their star-group, although z'Srauff ships were orbiting in on every
planet that the League had settled or controlled. There were z'Srauff
traders and small merchants all over the galaxy, and you almost never
saw one of them without a camera. Their little meteor-mining boats were
everywhere, and all of them carried more of the most modern radar and
astrogational equipment than a meteor-miner's lifetime earnings would
pay for.
I also knew that they were one of the chief causes of ulcers and
premature gray hair at the League capital on Luna. I'd done a little
reading on pre-spaceflight Terran history; I had been impressed by the
parallel between the present situation and one which had culminated, two
and a half centuries before, on the morning of 7 December, 1941.
"What," Natalenko inquired, "do you think Machiavelli, Junior would do
about the z'Srauff?"
"We have a Department of Aggression," I replied. "Its mottoes are, 'Stop
trouble before it starts,' and, 'If we have to fight, let's do it on the
other fellow's real estate.' But this situation is just a little too
delicate for literal application of those principles. An unprovoked
attack on the z'Srauff would set every other non-human race in the
galaxy against us.... Would an attack by the z'Srauff on New Texas
constitute just provocation?"
"It might. New Texas is an independent planet. Its people are
descendants of emigrants from Terra who wanted to get away from the rule
of the Solar League. We've been trying for half a century to persuade
the New Texan government to join the League. We need their planet, for
both strategic and commercial reasons. With the z'Srauff for neighbors,
they need us as much at least as we need them. The problem is to make
them understand that."
I nodded again. "And an attack by the z'Srauff would do that, too, sir,"
I said.
Natalenko tittered again. "You see, gentlemen! Our Mr. Silk picks things
up very handily, doesn't he?" He turned to Secretary of State Ghopal.
"You take it from there," he invited.
Ghopal Singh smiled benignly. "Well, that's it, Stephen," he said. "We
need a man on New Texas who can get things done. Three things, to be
exact.
"First, find out why poor Mr. Cumshaw was murdered, and what can be done
about it to maintain our prestige without alienating the New Texans.
"Second, bring the government and people of New Texas to a realization
that they need the Solar League as much as we need them.
"And, third, forestall or expose the plans for the z'Srauff invasion of
New Texas."
_Is that all, now?_ I thought. _He doesn't want a diplomat; he wants a
magician._
"And what," I asked, "will my official position be on New Texas, sir? Or
will I have one, of any sort?"
"Oh, yes, indeed, Mr. Silk. Your official position will be that of
Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary. That, I believe, is
the only vacancy which exists in the Diplomatic Service on that planet."
At Dumbarton Oaks Diplomatic Academy, they haze the freshmen by making
them sit on a one-legged stool and balance a teacup and saucer on one
knee while the upper classmen pelt them with ping-pong balls. Whoever
invented that and the other similar forms of hazing was one of the great
geniuses of the Service. So I sipped my coffee, set down the cup, took a
puff from my cigarette, then said:
"I am indeed deeply honored, Mr. Secretary. I trust I needn't go into
any assurances that I will do everything possible to justify your trust
in me."
"I believe he will, Mr. Secretary," Natalenko piped, in a manner that
chilled my blood.
"Yes, I believe so," Ghopal Singh said. "Now, Mr. Ambassador, there's a
liner in orbit two thousand miles off Luna, which has been held from
blasting off for the last eight hours, waiting for you. Don't bother
packing more than a few things; you can get everything you'll need
aboard, or at New Austin, the planetary capital. We have a man whom
Cooerdinator Natalenko has secured for us, a native New Texan, Hoddy
Ringo by name. He'll act as your personal secretary. He's aboard the
ship now. You'll have to hurry, I'm afraid.... Well, _bon voyage_, Mr.
Ambassador."
CHAPTER II
The death-watch outside had grown to about fifteen or twenty. They were
all waiting in happy anticipation as I came out of the Secretary's
office.
"What did he do to you, Silk?" Courtlant Staynes asked, amusedly.
"Demoted me. Kicked me off the Hooligan Diplomats," I said glumly.
"Demoted you from the Consular Service?" Staynes asked scornfully.
"Impossible!"
"Yes. He demoted me to the Cookie Pushers. Clear down to Ambassador."
They got a terrific laugh. I went out, wondering what sort of noises
they'd make, the next morning, when the appointments sheet was posted.
I gathered a few things together, mostly small personal items, and all
the microfilms that I could find on New Texas, then got aboard the Space
Navy cutter that was waiting to take me to the ship. It was a four-hour
trip and I put in the time going over my hastily-assembled microfilm
library and using a stenophone to dictate a reading list for the
spacetrip.
As I rolled up the stenophone-tape, I wondered what sort of secretary
they had given me; and, in passing, why Natalenko's department had
furnished him.
Hoddy Ringo....
Queer name, but in a galactic civilization, you find all sorts of names
and all sorts of people bearing them, so I was prepared for anything.
And I found it.
I found him standing with the ship's captain, inside the airlock, when I
boarded the big, spherical space-liner. A tubby little man, with
shoulders and arms he had never developed doing secretarial work, and a
good-natured, not particularly intelligent face.
_See the happy moron, he doesn't give a damn_, I thought.
Then I took a second look at him. He might be happy, but he wasn't a
moron. He just looked like one. Natalenko's people often did, as one of
their professional assets.
I also noticed that he had a bulge under his left armpit the size of an
eleven-mm army automatic.
He was, I'd been told, a native of New Texas. I gathered, after talking
with him for a while, that he had been away from his home planet for
over five years, was glad to be going back, and especially glad that he
was going back under the protection of Solar League diplomatic immunity.
In fact, I rather got the impression that, without such protection, he
wouldn't have been going back at all.
I made another discovery. My personal secretary, it seemed, couldn't
read stenotype. I found that out when I gave him the tape I'd dictated
aboard the cutter, to transcribe for me.
"Gosh, boss. I can't make anything out of this stuff," he confessed,
looking at the combination shorthand-Braille that my voice had put onto
the tape.
"Well, then, put it in a player and transcribe it by ear," I told him.
He didn't seem to realize that that could be done.
"How did you come to be sent as my secretary, if you can't do
secretarial work?" I wanted to know.
He got out a bag of tobacco and a book of papers and began rolling a
cigarette, with one hand.
"Why, shucks, boss, nobody seemed to think I'd have to do this kinda
work," he said. "I was just sent along to show you the way around New
Texas, and see you don't get inta no trouble."
He got his handmade cigarette drawing, and hitched the strap that went
across his back and looped under his right arm. "A guy that don't know
the way around can get inta a lotta trouble on New Texas. If you call
gettin' killed trouble."
So he was a bodyguard ... and I wondered what else he was. One thing, it
would take him forty-two years to send a radio message back to Luna, and
I could keep track of any other messages he sent, in letters or on tape,
by ships. In the end, I transcribed my own tape, and settled down to
laying out my three weeks' study-course on my new post.
I found, however, that the whole thing could be learned in a few hours.
The rest of what I had was duplication, some of it contradictory, and it
all boiled down to this:
Capella IV had been settled during the first wave of extrasolar
colonization, after the Fourth World--or First Interplanetary--War.
Some time around 2100. The settlers had come from a place in North
America called Texas, one of the old United States. They had a lengthy
history--independent republic, admission to the United States, secession
from the United States, reconquest by the United States, and general
intransigence under the United States, the United Nations and the Solar
League. When the laws of non-Einsteinian physics were discovered and the
hyperspace-drive was developed, practically the entire population of
Texas had taken to space to find a new home and independence from
everybody.
They had found Capella IV, a Terra-type planet, with a slightly higher
mean temperature, a lower mass and lower gravitational field, about
one-quarter water and three-quarters land-surface, at a stage of
evolutionary development approximately that of Terra during the late
Pliocene. They also found supercow, a big mammal looking like the
unsuccessful attempt of a hippopotamus to impersonate a dachshund and
about the size of a nuclear-steam locomotive. On New Texas' plains,
there were billions of them; their meat was fit for the gods of Olympus.
So New Texas had become the meat-supplier to the galaxy.
There was very little in any of the microfilm-books about the politics
of New Texas and such as it was, it was very scornful. There were such
expressions as 'anarchy tempered by assassination,' and 'grotesque
parody of democracy.'
There would, I assumed, be more exact information in the material which
had been shoved into my hand just before boarding the cutter from Luna,
in a package labeled _TOP SECRET: TO BE OPENED ONLY IN SPACE, AFTER THE
FIRST HYPERJUMP._ There was also a big trunk that had been placed in my
suite, sealed and bearing the same instructions.
I got Hoddy out of the suite as soon as the ship had passed out of the
normal space-time continuum, locked the door of my cabin and opened the
parcel.
It contained only two loose-leaf notebooks, both labeled with the Solar
League and Department seals, both adorned with the customary
bloodthirsty threats against the unauthorized and the indiscreet. They
were numbered _ONE_ and _TWO_.
_ONE_ contained four pages. On the first, I read:
_FINAL MESSAGE
OF THE FIRST SOLAR LEAGUE AMBASSADOR
TO
NEW TEXAS
ANDREW JACKSON HICKOCK_
_I agree with none of the so-called information about this planet on
file with the State Department on Luna. The people of New Texas are
certainly not uncouth barbarians. Their manners and customs, while
lively and unconventional, are most charming. Their dress is graceful
and practical, not grotesque; their soft speech is pleasing to the ear.
Their flag is the original flag of the Republic of Texas; it is
definitely not a barbaric travesty of our own emblem. And the underlying
premises of their political system should, as far as possible, be
incorporated into the organization of the Solar League. Here politics is
an exciting and exacting game, in which only the true representative of
all the people can survive._
_DEPARTMENT ADDENDUM_
_After five years on New Texas, Andrew Jackson Hickock resigned, married
a daughter of a local rancher and became a naturalized citizen of that
planet. He is still active in politics there, often in opposition to
Solar League policies._
That didn't sound like too bad an advertisement for the planet. I was
even feeling cheerful when I turned to the next page, and:
_FINAL MESSAGE
OF THE SECOND SOLAR LEAGUE
AMBASSADOR TO
NEW TEXAS
CYRIL GODWINSON_
_Yes and no; perhaps and perhaps not; pardon me; I agree with everything
you say. Yes and no; perhaps and perhaps not; pardon me; I agree..._
_DEPARTMENT ADDENDUM_
_After seven years on New Texas, Ambassador Godwinson was recalled;
adjudged hopelessly insane._
And then:
_FINAL MESSAGE
OF THE THIRD SOLAR LEAGUE
AMBASSADOR TO NEW TEXAS
R. F. GULLIS_
_I find it very pleasant to inform you that when you are reading this, I
will be dead._
_DEPARTMENT ADDENDUM_
_Committed suicide after six months on New Texas._
I turned to the last page cautiously, found:
_FINAL MESSAGE
OF THE FOURTH SOLAR LEAGUE
AMBASSADOR TO NEW TEXAS
SILAS CUMSHAW_
_I came to this planet ten years ago as a man of pronounced and
outspoken convictions. I have managed to keep myself alive here by
becoming an inoffensive nonentity. If I continue in this course, it will
be only at the cost of my self-respect. Beginning tonight, I am going to
state and maintain positive opinions on the relation between this planet
and the Solar League._
_DEPARTMENT ADDENDUM_
_Murdered at the home of Andrew J. Hickcock. (see p. 1.)_
And that was the end of the first notebook. Nice, cheerful reading;
complete, solid briefing.
I was, frankly, almost afraid to open the second notebook. I hefted it
cautiously at first, saw that it contained only about as many pages as
the first and that those pages were sealed with a band around them.
I took a quick peek, read the words on the band:
_Before reading, open the sealed trunk which has been included with your
luggage._
So I laid aside the book and dragged out the sealed trunk, hesitated,
then opened it.
Nothing shocked me more than to find the trunk ... full of clothes.
There were four pairs of trousers, light blue, dark blue, gray and
black, with wide cuffs at the bottoms. There were six or eight shirts,
their colors running the entire spectrum in the most violent shades.
There were a couple of vests. There were two pairs of short boots with
high heels and fancy leather-working, and a couple of hats with
four-inch brims.
And there was a wide leather belt, practically a leather corset.
I stared at the belt, wondering if I was really seeing what was in front
of me.
Attached to the belt were a pair of pistols in right- and left-hand
holsters. The pistols were seven-mm Krupp-Tatta Ultraspeed automatics,
and the holsters were the spring-ejection, quick-draw holsters which
were the secret of the State Department Special Services.
_This must be a mistake_, I thought. _I'm an Ambassador now and
Ambassadors never carry weapons._
The sanctity of an Ambassador's person not only made the carrying of
weapons unnecessary, so that an armed Ambassador was a contradiction of
diplomatic terms, but it would be an outrageous insult to the nation to
which he had been accredited.
Like taking a poison-taster to a friendly dinner.
Maybe I was supposed to give the belt and the holsters to Hoddy
Ringo....
So I tore the sealed band off the second notebook and read through it.
I was to wear the local costume on New Texas. That was something
unusual; even in the Hooligan Diplomats, we leaned over backward in
wearing Terran costume to distinguish ourselves from the people among
whom we worked.
I was further advised to start wearing the high boots immediately, on
shipboard, to accustom myself to the heels. These, I was informed, were
traditional. They had served a useful purpose, in the early days on
Terran Texas, when all travel had been on horseback. On horseless and
mechanized New Texas, they were a useless but venerated part of the
cultural heritage.
There were bits of advice about the hat, and the trousers, which for
some obscure reason were known as Levis. And I was informed, as an
order, that I was to wear the belt and the pistols at all times outside
the Embassy itself.
That was all of the second notebook.
The two notebooks, plus my conversation with Ghopal, Klueng and
Natalenko, completed my briefing for my new post.
I slid off my shoes and pulled on a pair of boots. They fitted
perfectly. Evidently I had been tapped for this job as soon as word of
Silas Cumshaw's death had reached Luna and there must have been some
fantastic hurrying to get my outfit ready.
I didn't like that any too well, and I liked the order to carry the
pistols even less. Not that I had any objection to carrying weapons,
_per se_: I had been born and raised on Theta Virgo IV, where the
children aren't allowed outside the house unattended until they've
learned to shoot.
But I did have strenuous objections to being sent, virtually ignorant of
local customs, on a mission where I was ordered to commit deliberate
provocation of the local government, immediately on the heels of my
predecessor's violent death.
The author of _Probable Future Courses of Solar League Diplomacy_ had
recommended the use of provocation to justify conquest. If the New
Texans murdered two Solar League Ambassadors in a row, nobody would
blame the League for moving in with a space-fleet and an army....
I was beginning to understand how Doctor Guillotin must have felt while
his neck was being shoved into his own invention.
I looked again at the notebooks, each marked in red: _Familiarize
yourself with contents and burn or disintegrate._
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