"Now, wait! Wait!" cried Coley. "You can't judge us by your standards. We're Human!"
"You say that as if it entitled you to special privileges," said the magistrate, almost dreamily. "The proof of the fact that the Game encompasses even you is the fact that you are here caught up in it." He reached below the table and came up with a sort of hour-glass, filled not with sand but with some heavy liquid. He turned it over. "This will run out in a few moments," he said. "If before it has run out you come up with a good reason why you should, within the rules of the Game, be allowed on into the Human Compound, I will let you and the female go. Otherwise, I will have you both destroyed."
The liquid from the little transparent pyramid at the top of the timing device began to run, drop by drop, down into the pyramid below. The liquid was clear, with no reddish tint, but to Coley it looked like the blood he could feel similarly draining out of his heart. His mind flung itself suddenly open, as if under the influence of some powerfully stimulating drug, and thoughts flashed through it like small bursts of light. His gutter-bred brain was crying out that there was a gimmick somewhere, that there was a loophole in any law, or something new to get around it—The liquid in the top of the timer had almost run out.
And then he had it.
"How can you be sure," said Coley, "that you're not interrupting a process that greater minds than your own have put in motion?"
The magistrate reached slowly out, took the timer from the top of the desk and put it out of sight behind the desk top.
"I'll have you escorted to the gates of the Human Compound by one of our police persons," he said.
Coley was furious—and that fury of his, according to his way of doing things, hid not a little fear.
"Calm down," said his jailer, one of a squad of star-marines attached to the embassy, unlocking the cell door. "I'll have you out in a minute."
"You'd better, lint-picker," said Coley.
"Let's watch the names," said the star-marine. He was almost as big as Coley. He came inside and stood a few inches from Coley, facing him. "They want you upstairs in the Consul's office. But we got a couple of minutes to spare, if you insist." Coley opened his mouth—then shut it again.
"Forget it," growled Coley. "Shoved into jail—locked up all night with no explanation—you'd be hot, too. I want to see that Consul."
"This way," said the jailer, standing aside. Coley allowed himself to be escorted out of the cell, down a corridor, and up a fall-tube. They went a little way down another corridor and through a light-door into the same office Coley had been in before. Some two weeks before, to be precise. The Consul, Ivor Ben was standing with his back to the hunched, smoke tube in his fingers, and a not pleasant look on his aristocratic face.
"Stand over there," he said; and crossing to his desk, pushed a button on it. "Bring in the girl," he said. He pushed another button. "Let Ansash in now."
He straightened up behind the desk. A door opened behind Coley; and he turned to see the girl he had escorted from Tannakil. She looked at him with her usual look, advanced a few steps into the office, as the door closed behind her, and then halted—as if the machinery that operated her had just run down.
Only a couple of seconds later, a door at the other end of the room opened, and Ansash came in. He walked slowly into the room, taking in Coley and the girl with his eyes.
"Well, hello there," said Coley. Ansash considered him flatly.
"Hello," he said in Basic, with no inflection whatsoever. He turned to the Consul. "May I have an explanation?"
The Consul swiveled about to look at Coley.
"How about it?"
"How about what?" said Coley.
The Consul stalked out from behind his desk and up to Coley, looking like some small rooster ruffling up to a turkey. He pointed past Coley at the girl.
"This is not the woman I sent you to get!" he said tightly.
"Oh, I know that," said Coley.
The Consul stared at him.
"You
know
it?" he echoed.
"He could hardly avoid knowing," put in the smooth voice of Ansash. "He was left alone with this female briefly, when I went to fetch his beloved. When I returned, he had vanished with this one."
The Consul, who had looked aside at Ansash when the other started speaking, looked back at Coley, bleakly and bitterly.
"That," went on Ansash, "is the first cause of the complaint I brought you this morning. In addition to stealing this real person, the Human, Coley Yunce, has committed other crimes upon the earth of Yara, up to and including murder."
"Yes," breathed the Consul, still staring at Coley. Coley looked bewildered.
"You mean she's no good?" he asked the Consul.
"No good? She isn't Sara Illoy, is she?" exploded the Consul.
"I mean, won't she do?" said Coley. "I mean—she looks pretty human. And she talks fine Basic—" He stepped over to the girl and put a friendly hand on her shoulder. "Recite for them, Honey. Come on, now—'Friends, Romans—'."
She looked up into his face and something that might almost have been a smile twitched at her expressionless mouth. She opened her lips and began to recite in an atrocious accent.
"Frendz, Rawmans, Cundzrememns, I cauzm nodt do burrey Shaayzar, budt do brayze ymn. Dee eefil dwadt memn dooo—"
"Never mind! Never mind!" cried the Consul, furiously; and the girl shut up. "You must have been out of your head!" he barked, and swung about on Ansash. "Very clever, my friend," he grated. "My compliments to Yara. I suppose you know the real Sara Illoy came back of her own accord, the day after this man left."
"I had heard some mention of it," said Ansash, without inflection.
"Very clever indeed," said the Consul. "So it's a choice between handing this man over to your justice to be strangled, or accepting a situation in which contact between our two races on this planet is permanently frozen in a state of Middle-Age restricted contact and chicanery."
"The choice is yours," said Ansash, as if he might have been remarking on the weather.
"I know. Well, don't worry," said the Consul, turning to fling the last three words at Coley. "You know as well as I do I have no choice. Human life must be preserved at all costs. I'll get you safely off-planet, Yunce; though I wouldn't advise you to go boasting about your part in this little adventure. Not that anyone would do anything but laugh at you, if you did." He turned to look at Ansash. "I'm the real loser as you all know," he added softly. "Yara'll never rate an Ambassador, and I'll never rate a promotion. I'll spend the rest of my professional life here as Consul."
"Or," put in Coley, "in jail."
Three heads jerked around to look at him.
"
What kind of a sucker do you take me for?
" snarled Coley, spinning around upon the girl. His long arm shot out, there was a very humanlike shriek, and the girl staggered backward, leaving her blonde locks in Coley's fist. Released, a mass of chestnut hair tumbled down to frame a face that was suddenly contorted with shock.
"I learned to look for the gimmick in something before I could walk." He threw the blonde wig in the direction of the Consul's desk. "This set-up of yours stunk to high heaven right from the beginning. So the girl's gone! How'd she get out of the Compound in the first place? How come you didn't call in regular help from the authorities back at Sol? You were all just sitting back waiting for a tough boy you could use, weren't you?"
He glared around at the three in the room. None of them answered; but they all had their eyes on him.
"I don't know what kind of racket you've got here," he said. "But whatever it is, you didn't want the Humans to win the Game, did you? You wanted things to stay just the way they are now. Why?"
"You're out of your head," said the Consul, though his face was a little pale.
"Out of my head!" Coley laughed. "I can
feel
the difference between Ansash and you, Consul. You think I wouldn't notice that the girl I was with was a Yaran, almost right off the bat? And who could suppose I would need a knife when I left Tannakil, but the man who knew I could use one? How come I never saw her eat anything but fruit? A native Yaran wouldn't have restricted her diet." He leaned forward. "Want
me
to tell
you
what the deal was?"
"I think," said the Consul, "We've listened to enough of your wild guessing."
"No you haven't. Not on your life," said Coley. "I'm back among Humans, now. You can't shut my mouth and get away with it; and either you listen to me, or I'll go tell it to the star-marines. I don't suppose you own them."
"Go ahead, then," said the Consul.
Coley grinned at him. He walked around the Consul's desk and sat down in the Consul's chair. He put his feet on the table.
"There's a world," he said, examining the rather scuffed toes of his boots with a critical eye. "It seems to be run on the basis of an idea about some sort of Game, which is practically a religion. However, when you look a little closer, you see that this Game thing isn't much more than a set of principles which only a few fanatics obey to the actual letter. Still, these principles are what hold the society together. In fact, it goes along fine until another race comes along and creates a situation where the essential conflict between what everybody professes to believe and what they actually believe will eventually be pushed into the open." Coley glanced over at the Consul. "How'm I doing?"
"Go on," said the Consul, wincing.
"The only thing is, this is a conflict which the race has not yet advanced far enough to take. If it came to the breaking point today, half the race would feel it their duty to go fanatic and start exterminating the other half of the race who felt that it was time to discard the old-fashioned Games Ethic." He paused.
"Go on," said the Consul, tonelessly.
"Now, let's suppose this world has a Consul on it, who sees what's happening. He reports back to Sol that the five stages or the Game consist of (1) trying to rid yourself of your enemy by refusing to acknowledge his existence, as a child ignores what it does not like. (2) By reacting against your enemy thoughtlessly and instinctively, as a youth might do. (3) By organized warfare—young manhood. (4) By trickery and subtlety—middle-age. (5) By teaching him your own superior philosophy of existence and bringing him by intellectual means to acknowledge your superiority—old age.
"The only trouble with this, the Consul reports, is that the Yaran philosophy is actually a more primitive one than the human; and any attempt to conquer by stage five would induce a sort of general Yaran psychosis, because they would at once be forced to admit a philosophical inferiority and be
unable
to admit same."
"All right, Mr. Yunce," said the Consul. "You needn't go on—"
"Let me finish. So Sol answers back that they sympathize, but that they cannot violate their own rigid rules of non-interference, sanctity of a single human life, etc., for any situation that does not directly threaten Humanity itself. And this Consul—a dedicated sort—resolves to do the job himself by rigging a situation with help from one of the more grown-up Yarans and a young lady—"
"My aide-de-camp," said the Consul, wearily. Coley bowed a little in the direction of the girl.
"—a situation where a tough but dumb Human sets out inside the Rules of the Game, but so tears them to shreds that the Game-with-Humans is abandoned and set aside—where it will rot quietly and disappear as the two races become more and more acquainted, until it gradually is forgotten altogether. Right?"
Coley looked at him. They looked back at him with peculiarly set faces. Even the Yaran's face had something of that quality of expression to it. They looked like people who, having risked everything on one throw or the dice and won, now find that by gambling they have incurred a sentence of death.
"Fanatics," said Coley, slowly, running his eyes over them. "Fanatics. Now me—I'm a business man." He hoisted himself up out of his chair. "No reason why I shouldn't get on down to the pad, now, and catch the first ship out of here. Is there?"
"No, Mr. Yunce," said the Consul, bleakly. The three of them watched him stalk around the desk and past them to the door. As he opened the door the Consul cleared his throat.
"Mr. Yunce—" he said.
Coley stopped and turned, the door half open.
"Yes?" he said.
"What's—" the Consul's voice stuck in his throat. "Wait a minute," he said. "I'll give you a ride to your ship."
He came around the desk and went out with Coley. They went down and out of the Consulate, but all during the short ride to the Compound's landing pad for the big interspace ships, the Consul said not another word.
He was silent until they reached the ramp leading up to the ship then in ready position.
"Anywhere near Arga IV?' Coley asked the officer at the ramphead.
"No, Sirius and back to Sol. Try the second ship down. Deneb, and you can get a double transfer out of Deneb Nine."
Coley and the Consul walked down onto the ramp leading up to the entrance port on the second ship, some twenty feet up the steel sides.
"Farewell," said Coley, grinning at the Consul and starting up the ramp.
"Yunce!" the word tore itself at last from the Consul's lips.
Coley stopped, turned around and looked a few feet down into the older man's pleading eyes.
"What can I do for you?' he said.
"Give me a price," said the Consul.
"A price?" Coley, grinning, spread his hands. "A price for what?
"For not reporting this back on Sol. If you do, they'll have to take action. They won't have any choice. They'll undo everything you did."
"Oh, they wouldn't do that," said Coley. He grinned happily, leaned down and slapped the smaller man on the shoulder. "Cheer up," he said. The Consul stared up at him. Slowly, the older man's eyebrows came together in a
searching frown.
"Yunce?" he said. "Who . . . ? Just who are you anyway?"
Coley grinned and winked at him. And then he burst into a loud laugh, swing about and went trotting up the airlock ramp and into the ship, still laughing. At the airlock, he stopped, turned, and threw something white that fluttered and side-slipped through the air until it fell on the concrete pad by the Consul's feet. The consul leaned over and picked it up.