Eric Frank Russell - The Ultimate ...

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THE ULTIMATE INVADER
by Eric Frank Russell
CHAPTER I
THE little ship, scarred and battered, sat on the plain and cooled its tubes and
ignored the armed guard that had sur-rounded it at a safe distance. A large, bluish
sun burned over-head, lit the edges of flat, waferlike clouds in brilliant purple. There
were two tiny moons shining like pale specters low in the east, and a third was diving
into the westward horizon.
To the north lay the great walled city whence the guard had erupted in irate haste.
It was a squat, stark conglomeration of buildings in gray granite, devoid of tall
towers, sitting four-square to the earth. An unbeautiful, strictly utilitarian place
suitable for masses of the bumble living in subservience to the harsh.
At considerable altitude above the granite mass roamed its aerial patrol, a number
of tiny, almost invisible dots weaving a tangle of vapor-trails. The dots displayed the
irritated rest-lessness of a swarm of disturbed gnats, for their pilots were
uncomfortably aware of the strange invader now sitting on the plain. Indeed, they
would have intercepted it had that been possible, which it wasn't. How can one
block the path of an unexpected object moving with such stupendous rapidity that
its trace registers as a mere flick on a screen some seconds after the source has
passed?
Upon the ground the troops kept careful watch and awaited the arrival of someone
who was permitted the in-itiative that they were denied. All of them had either four
legs and two arms or four arms and two legs, according to the need of the moment.
That is to say: the front pair of under-body limbs could be employed as feet or
hands, like those of a baboon. Superior life does not establish itself by benefit of
brains alone; manual dexterity is equally essential. The quasi-quadrupeds of this
world had a barely adequate supply of the former compensated by more than
enough of the latter.
Although it was not for them to decide what action to take against this
sorry-looking object from the unknown, they had plenty of curiosity concerning it,
and no little apprehen-sion. Much of their noseyness was stimulated by the fact that
the vessel was of no identifiable type despite that they could recognize all the seventy
patterns common to the entire galaxy. The apprehension was created by the sheer
nonchalance of the
visitor's arrival. It had burst like a superswift bullet throng] the detector-screen that
enveloped the entire planet, treate+ the sub-stratosphere patrols with disdain and sat
itself dowi in clear view of the city.
Something drastic would have to be done about it, on tha point one and all were
agreed. But the correct tactics woudc be defined by authority, not by underlings. To
make up hi; own mind one way or the other was a presumptuous task no one of
them dared undertake. So they hung around in dip; and behind rocks, and scratched
and held their guns ant hankered for high brass in the city to wake up and come run•
p
ing.
In much the same way that planetary defenses had been brought to nought by
 bland presentation of an accomplished fact, so were the guards now disturbed by
being confronted with an event when none were present who were qualified to cope.
Giving distant sluggards no time to make up their minds and spring into action, the
ship's lock opened and a thing came out.
As a sample of unfamiliar life he was neither big nor fear-some. A biped with two
arms, a pinkish face and close-fitting clothes, he was no taller than any of the
onlookers and not more than one-third the weight. A peculiar creature in no way
redoubtable. In fact he looked soft. One could jump on him with all four feet and
squash him.
Nevertheless one could not hold
him
entirely in contempt. There were aspects that
gave one to pause and think. In the first place, he was carrying no visible weapons
and, more-over, doing it with the subtle assurance of one who has reason to view
guns as so much useless lumber. In the second place, he was mooching airily around
the ship, hands in pockets, inspecting the scarred shell for all the world as if this
landing marked a boring call on tiresome relatives. Most of the time he had
his
back
to the ring of troops, magnificently indifferent to whether or not anyone chose to
blow him apart.
Apparently satisfied with his survey of the vessel, he sud-denly turned and walked
straight toward the hidden watchers. The ship's lock remained wide open in a
manner suggesting either criminal carelessness or supreme confidence, more
prob-ably the latter. Completely at peace with a world in the midst of war, he ambled
directly toward a section of guards, bring-ing the need for initiative nearer and nearer,
making themsweat with anxiety and creating such a panic that they forgot to itch.
Rounding a rock, he came face to face with Yadiz, a com-mon trooper
momentarily paralyzed by sheer lack of an order to go forward, go backward, shoot
the alien, shoot himself, or do something. He looked casually at Yadiz as if different
life-forms in radically different shapes were more common than pebbles. Yadiz
became so embarrassed by his own futility that he swapped his gun from hand to
hand and back again.
"Surely it's not that heavy,
"
remarked the alien with com-plete and surprising
fluency. He eyed the gun and sniffed.
Yadiz dropped the gun which promptly went off with an ear-splitting crash and a
piece of rock flew into shards and something whined shrilly into the sky. The alien
turned and followed the whine with his eyes until finally it died out.
Then he said to Yadiz, "Wasn't that rather silly?"
There was no need to answer. It was a conclusion Yadiz already had reached
about one second before the bang. He picked up the gun with a foot-hand,
transferred it to a real hand, found it upside-down, turned it right way up, got the
strap tangled around his fist, had to reverse it to get the limb free, turned it right way
up again.
Some sort of answer seemed to be necessary but for the life of him Yadiz could
not conceive one that was wholly satis-factory. Struck dumb, he posed there holding
his weapon by the muzzle and at arm's length, like one who has recklessly grabbed a
mamba and dare not let go. In all his years as a trooper, of which there were more
than several, he couldn't recall a time when possession of a firearm had proved such
a handicap. He was still searching in vain for a verbal means of salvaging his
 self-respect when another trooper arrived to break the spell.
A little breathless with haste, the newcomer looked askance at the biped, said to
Yadiz, "Who gave you orders to shoot?"
"What business is it of yours?" asked the biped, coldly dis-approving. "It's his
own gun, isn't it?"
This interjection took the arrival' aback. He had not ex-pected another life-form to
speak with the fluency of a native, much less treat this matter of wasting ammunition
from the angle of personal ownership. The thought that a trooper might have
proprietary rights in his weapon had never occurred to him. And now that he had
captured the thought he did not know what to do with it. He stared at his own gun as
if it had just miraculously appeared in his hand, changed it to
another hand by way
of
ensuring its realness and solidity. "Be carefuI," advised
the biped. He nodded toward Yadiz "That's the way
he
started."
. Turning to Yadiz, the alien said in calm, matter-of-face tones, "Take me to
Markhamwit."
Yadiz couldn't be sure whether he actually dropped the gun again or whether it
leaped clean out of his hands. Anyway, it did not go off.
CHAPTER II
THEY met the high brass one-third of the way to the city. There was an assorted
truckload ranging from two to five-comet rank. Bowling along the road on flexible
tracks, the vehicle stopped almost level with them and two dozen faces peered at the
alien. A paunchy individual struggled out from his seat beside the driver and
confronted the ill-assorted pair. He had a red metal sun and four silver comets
shining on his harness.
To Yadiz he snapped,
"Who
told you to desert the guard-ring and come this
way?"
"Me," informed the alien, airily.
The officer jerked as if stuck with a pin, shrewdly eyed him up and down and
said, "I did not expect that you
could
speak our language."
"I'm fully capable of speech," assured the biped. "I can read, too. In fact, without
wishing to appear boastful,
I'd
like to mention that I can also write."
"That may be," agreed the officer, willing to concede a couple of petty aptitudes
to the manifestly outlandish. He had another careful look. "Can't say that I'm familiar
with your kind of life."
"Which doesn't surprise me," said the alien. "Lots of folk never get the chance to
become familiar with us."
The other's color heightened.
With a show of
annoyance, he informed, "I don't
know who you are or what you are, but you're under arrest."
"Sire," put in the aghast Yadiz, "he wishes to—"
"Did any one tell you to speak?" demanded the officer, burning him down with his
eyes.
"No, sire. It was just that—"
"Shut up!"
Yadiz swallowed hard, took on the apprehensive expression of one unreasonably
denied the right to point out that the bar-rel is full of powder and someone has lit the
fuse.
 "Why am I under arrest?" inquired the alien, not in the least disturbed.
"Because I say so," the officer retorted.
"Really? Do you treat all arrivals that way?"
"At present, yes. You may know it or you may not, but right now this system is at
war with the system of Nilea. We're taking no chances.
"
"Neither are we," remarked the biped, enigmatically. "What do you mean by that?"
"
The same as you meant. We're playing safe.
"
"Ah!" The other licked satisfied lips. "So you are what I suspected from the first,
namely, an ally the Nileans have dug up from some very minor system that we've
overlooked."
"Your suspicions are ill-founded," the alien told him. "How-ever, I would rather
explain myself higher up."
"You will do just that," promised the officer. "And the explanation had better be
satisfactory.
"
He did not care for the slow smile he got in reply. It ir-resistibly suggested that
someone was being dogmatic and someone else knew better. Neither had he any
difficulty in identifying the respective someones. The alien's apparently baseless
show of quiet confidence unsettled him far more than he cared to reveal, especially
with a dopey guard standing nearby and a truckload of brass looking on.
It would have been nice to attribute the two-legger
'
s sang-froid to the usual
imbecility of another life-form too dim-witted to know when its scalp was in danger.
There were plenty of creatures like that: seemingly brave because unable to realize a
predicament even when they were in it up to the neck. Many of the lower ranks of his
own forces had that kind of guts. Nevertheless he could not shake off the uneasy
feeling that this case was different. The alien looked too alert, too sharp-eyed to
make like a cow.
Another and smaller truck came along the road. Waving it to a stop, he picked
four two-comet officers to act as escort, shooed them into the new vehicle along
with the biped who entered without comment or protest.
Through the side window he said to the officers, "T hold you personally
responsible for his safe arrival at the interroga-tion center. Tell them I've gone on to
the ship to see whether there's any more where he came from."
He stood watching on the verge while the truck reversed its direction, saw it roll
rapidly toward the city. Then he ' clambered into his own vehicle which at once
departed for the source of all the trouble.
Devoid of instructions to proceed toward town, return to the ship, stand on his
head or do anything else, Yadiz leaned on his gun and patiently awaited the passing
of somebody qualified to tell him.
The interrogation center viewed the alien's advent as less sensational than the
arrival of a Joppelan five-eared munkster at the zoo. Data drawn from a galaxy was
at the disposal of its large staff and the said information included descriptions of
four hundred separate and distinct life-forms, a few of them so fantastic that the
cogent material was more deductive than demonstrative. So far as they were
concerned this sample brought the record up to four hundred and one. In another
century's time it might be four hundred twenty-one or fifty-one. Listing the lesser
lifes was so much routine.
 Interviews were equally a matter of established rigmarole. They had created a
standard technique involving questions to be answered, forms to be filled,
conclusions to be drawn. Their ways of dealing with recalcitrants were, however, a
good deal more flexible, demanding various alternative methods and a modicum of
imagination. Some life-forms responded with pleasing alacrity to means of
persuasion that other life-forms could not so much as sense. The only difficulty they
could have with this specimen was that of thinking up an entirely new way of making
him see reason.
So they directed him to a desk, giving him a chair with four arm-rests and six
inches too high, and a bored official took his place opposite. The latter accepted in
advance that the subject could already speak the local tongue or communi-cate in
some other understandable manner. Nobody was sent to this place until educated
sufficiently to give the required responses.
Switching his tiny desk-recorder, the interviewer started with, "What is your
number, name, code, cipher or other verbal identification?"
"James Lawson."
"Sex, if any?"
"Male."
"Age?"
"None."
"There now," said the interviewer, scenting coming awk-wardness. "You must
have an age.
"
"Must I?"
"Everyone has an age."
"Have they?"
"Look," insisted the interviewer, very patient, "nobody can be ageless."
"Can't they?"
He gave it up, murmuring, "It's unimportant anyway. His time-units are
meaningless until we get his planetary data.
"
Glancing down at his question sheet, he
carried on. "Purpose of visit?" His eyes came up as he waited for the usual boring
response such as, "Normal exploration." He repeated, "Pur-pose of visit?
"
"To see Markhamwit,
"
responded James Lawson.
The interviewer yelped,
"What?",
cut off the recorder and breathed heavily for a
while. When he found voice again it was to ask, "You really mean you've come
specially to see the Great Lord Markhamwit?"
"Yes."
He asked uncertainly, "By appointment?"
"No.
"
That did it. Recovering with great swiftness, the interviewer became aggressively
officious and growled, "The Great Lord Markhamwit sees nobody without an
appointment.
"
"Then kindly make one for me."
"I'll find out what can he done," promised the other, having no intention of doing
anything whatsoever. Turning the re-corder on again, he resumed with the next
question.
`"Rank?
"
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