Aliens for Neighbors Page 5

  And if it was negotiation, Earth was across the barrel. For there was nothing he could do but negotiate. Earth's fleet was crippled and the Flyers had the weapon and a renewal of the war was unthinkable. Earth needed five years at the minimum and ten years would be still better.

  And if it was attack, if this planet was a trap, there was only one thing he could do—stand and fight as best he could, thoroughly suicidal course.

  Either way, Earth lost, the general realized.

  The Flyers put down their glasses and he filled them up again.

  "You do well," one of the Flyers said. "You got the paper and the marker?"

  "Marker?" the general asked.

  "He means a pencil," said the captain.

  "Oh, yes. Right here." The general reached for a pad of paper and a pencil and laid them on the desk.

  One of the Flyers set down his glass and, picking up the pencil, started to make a laborious drawing. He looked for all the world like a five-year-old printing his first alphabet.

  They waited while the Flyer drew. Finally he was finished. He laid the pencil down and pointed to the wiggly lines. "Us," he said. He pointed to the sawtooth lines. "You," he told the general.

  The general bent above the paper, trying to make out what the Flyer had put down.

  "Sir," the captain said, "it looks like a baffle diagram."

  "Is," said the Flyer proudly.

  He picked the pencil up. "Look," he said. He drew directional lines and made a funny kind of symbol for the points of contact and made crosses for the sections where the battle lines were broken. When he was done, the Earth fleet had been shattered and sliced into three segments and was in headlong flight.

  "That," the general said, with the husk of anger rising in his throat, "was the engagement in Sector 17. Half of our Fifth Squadron was wiped out that day."

  "Small error," said the Flyer and made a deprecatory gesture. He ripped the sheet of paper off the pad and tossed it on the floor. He laboriously drew the diagram again. "Attend," he said.

  The Flyer drew the directional lines again, but this time he changed them slightly. Now the Earth line pivoted and broke and became two parallel lines that flanked the Flyer drive and turned and blunted it and scattered it in space. The Flyer laid the pencil down. "Small matter," he informed the general and the captain. "You good. You make one thin mistake."

  Holding himself sternly in hand, the general filled the glasses once again. What are they getting at, he thought. Why don't they come flat out and say it?

  "So best," one of the Flyers said, lifting his glass to let them know that he meant the drink.

  "More?" asked the Flyer tactician, picking up the pencil.

  "Please," said the general, seething.

  He walked to the tent flap and looked outside. The men were at the guns. Thin wisps of vapour curled from the ship's launching tubes; in just a little while, it would be set to go, should the need arise. The camp was quiet and tense.

  He went back to the desk and watched as the Flyer went on with tactics. "Interesting?" he piped enthusiastically.

  "I find it so," the general said. "There is just one question."

  "Ask," the Flyer invited.

  "If we should go to war again, how can you be sure we won't use all of this against you?"

  "But fine," the Flyer enthused warmly. "Exactly as we want."

  "You fight fine," another Flyer said. "But just too slightly hard. Next time, you able to do much better."

  "Hard!" the general raged.

  "Too roughly, sir. No need to make the ship go poof."

  Outside the tent, a gun cut loose and then another one and above the hammering of the guns came the full-throated, ground-shaking roar of many ship motors.

  The general leaped for the entrance, went through it at a run, not bothering with the flap. His cap fell off and he staggered out, thrown slightly off his balance. He jerked up his head and saw them coming in, squadron after squadron, painting the darkness with the flare of tubes.

  "Stop firing!" he shouted. "You crazy fools, stop firing!"

  But there was no need of shouting, for the guns had fallen silent.

  The ships came down toward the camp in perfect flight formation. They swept across it and the thunder of their motors seemed to lift it for a moment and give it a mighty shake. Then they were climbing, rank on serried rank, still with drill precision—climbing and jockeying into position for regulation landing.

  The general stood like a frozen man, with the wind ruffling his iron-grey hair, with a lump, half pride, half thankfulness, rising in his throat.

  Something touched his elbow.

  "Prisoners," said the Flyer. "I told you by and by."

  The general tried to speak, but the lump was there to stop him. He swallowed it and tried once again. "We didn't understand," he said.

  "You did not have a taker," said the Flyer. "That why fight so rough."

  "We couldn't help it," the general told him. "We didn't know. We never fought this way before."

  "We give you takers," said the Flyer. "Next time, we play it right. You do much better with the takers. It easier for us."

  No wonder, the general thought, they didn't know about an armistice. No wonder they were confused about the negotiations and the prisoner exchange. Negotiations are not customarily needed to hand back the pieces one had won in a game.

  And no wonder those other races had viewed with scorn and loathing Earth's proposal to gang up on the Flyers.

  "An unsporting thing to do," the general said aloud. "They could have told us. Or maybe they were so used to it."

  And now he understood why the Flyers had picked this planet. There had to be a place where all the ships could land.

  He stood and watched the landing ships mushing down upon the rock in clouds of pinkish flame. He tried to count them, but he became confused, although he knew every ship Earth had lost would be accounted for.

  "We give you takers," said the Flyer. "We teach you how to use. They easy operate. They never hurt people or ships."

  And there was more to it, the general told himself, than just a silly game—though maybe not so silly, once one understood the history and the cultural background and the philosophic concepts that were tied into it. And this much one could say for it: It was better than fighting actual wars.

  But with the takers, there would be an end of war. What little war was left would be ended once and for all. No longer would an enemy need to be defeated; he could be simply taken. No longer would there be years of guerrilla fighting on newly settled planets; the aborigines could be picked up and deposited in cultural reservations and the dangerous fauna shunted into zoos.

  "We fight again?" the Flyer asked with some anxiety.

  "Certainly," said the general. "Any time you say. Are we really as good as you claim?"

  "You not so hot," the Flyer admitted with disarming candour. "But you the best we ever find. Play plenty, you get better."

  The general grinned. Just like the sergeant and the captain and their eternal chess, he thought.

  He turned and tapped the Flyer on the shoulder.

  "Let's get back," he said. "There's still some drinking in that jug. We mustn't let it go to waste."

  Carbon Copy

  The man who came into Homer Jackson's office was wearing his left shoe on his right foot and his right shoe on his left.

  He gave Homer quite a start.

  The man was tall and had a gangling look about him, but he was smartly dressed—except for his shoes. And his shoes were all right, too; it was just the way he wore them.

  "Am I addressing Mr. Homer Jackson?" he asked with a formality to which Homer was entirely unaccustomed.

  "That's me," said Homer.

  He squirmed a bit uncomfortably in his chair. He hoped this wasn't one of Gabby Wilson's jokes.

  Gabby had an office just down the hall and loved to pester Homer plenty. When Gabby cooked up a joke, he did a massive job on it; he left out not a s
ingle detail. And some of Gabby's jokes got pretty rough.

  But the man seemed to be dead serious and perhaps a little anxious.

  "Mr. Homer Jackson, the suburban realtor?" he persisted.

  "That's right," said Homer.

  "Specializing in lake properties and country acreages?"

  "I'm your man." Homer began to feel uncomfortable. This man was spreading it on a trifle thick and Homer thought he could see Gabby's hand in it.

  "I'd like to talk with you. I have a matter of small business."

  "Fire away," said Homer, motioning toward a chair.

  The man sat down carefuUy, bolt upright in the chair. "My name is Oscar Steen," he said. "We're building a development on what is known as the Saunders place. We call it Happy Acres."

  Homer nodded. "I'm acquainted with the place. It's the only good holding on the lake. You were fortunate to get it."

  "Thank you, Mr. Jackson. We think that it is nice."

  "How are you getting on?"

  "We have just finished it. But now comes the most important part. We must get people onto the property."

  "Well," said Homer, "things are a little tough right now. Money has tightened up and the interest rates are higher. Washington is no help and besides that…"

  "We wondered if you'd be interested in handling it for us."

  Homer choked a little, but recovered quickly. "Well, now, I don't know. Those houses may be hard to sell. You'd have get a solid figure for them and the prices will run high. The stone wall you put around the place and those fancy gates all, I would suspect you have high-class houses. You have gone and made it into an exclusive section. There'll be only a certain class of buyer who might be interested."

  "Mr. Jackson," said Steen, "we have a new approach. We won't have to sell them. We're only leasing them."

  "Renting them, you mean."

  "No, sir, leasing them."

  "Well, it all comes out to the same thing in the end. You'll have to get a lot for them."

  "Five thousand."

  "Five thousand is an awful lot of money. At least, out here is. Five thousand a year comes to over four hundred a month and…"

  "Not for a year," corrected Steen. "For ninety-nine."

  "For what!"

  "Ninety-nine. We're leasing at five thousand dollars ninety-nine full years."

  "But, man, you can't do that! Why, that's absolutely crazy! Taxes would eat up…"

  "We're not so interested in making money on the houses as we are in creating business for our shopping centre."

  "You mean you have a shopping centre in there, too?"

  Steen allowed himself a smile. "Mr. Jackson, we obtain the property and then we build the wall to have some privacy so there can be no snoopers."

  "Yes, I know," said Homer. "It's smart to do it that way. Good publicity. Whets the public's interest. Gives you a chance to have a big unveiling. But that twelve-foot wall…"

  "Fourteen, Mr. Jackson."

  "All right, then, fourteen. And it's built of solid stone. I know—I watched them put it up. And no one builds walls of solid stone any more. They just use stone facing. The way you built that wall set you back a hunk…"

  "Mr. Jackson, please. We know what we are doing. In this shopping centre, we sell everything from peanuts to Cadillacs. But we need customers. So we build houses for our customers. We desire to create a good stable population of rather well-to-do families."

  Jumping to his feet in exasperation, Homer paced up and down the office. "But, Mr. Steen, you can't possibly build up enough business at your shopping centre by relying solely on the people in your development. For instance, how many houses have you?"

  "Fifty."

  "Fifty families are a mere drop in the bucket for a shopping centre. Even if every one of those fifty families bought all their needs from you—and you can't be sure they will—but if they did, you'd still have little volume. And you won't pick up any outside trade—not behind that wall, you won't."

  He stopped his pacing and went back to his chair. "I don't know why I'm upset about it," he told Steen. "It's no skin off my nose. Yes, I'll handle the development, but I can't handle leasing at my usual five per cent."

  "Oh, I forgot to tell you," said Steen. "You keep the entire five thousand."

  Homer gasped like a fish hauled suddenly from water.

  "On one condition," added Steen. "One has to be so careful. We have a bank, you see. Part of the shopping centre service."

  "A bank," Homer said feebly.

  "Chartered under the state banking regulations."

  "And what has a bank to do with me?"

  "You'll take ten per cent," said Steen. "The rest will be credited to your account in the Happy Acres Bank. Every time you lease a unit, you get five hundred cash; forty-five hundred goes into your bank account."

  "I don't quite see…"

  "There are advantages."

  "Yes, I know," Homer said. "It builds up your business. You're out to make that shopping centre go."

  "That might be one factor. Another is that we can't have you getting rich in front of all your friends and neighbours. There'd be too much talk about it and we don't want that kind of publicity. And there are tax advantages as well."

  "Tax advantages?"

  "Mr. Jackson, if you lease all fifty houses, you will have earned a quarter million dollars. Have you figured what the income tax might be on a quarter million dollars?"

  "It would be quite a lot."

  "It would be a crying shame," said Steen. "The bank could be a help."

  "I don't quite see how."

  "You leave that to us. Leave everything to us. You just lease the houses."

  "Mr. Steen, I've been an honest man for years in an occupation where there's opportunity…"

  "Honesty, Mr. Jackson. Of course we know you're honest. That's why we came to you. Have you got your car here?"

  "It's parked outside."

  "Fine. Mine is at the station getting serviced. Let's drive out and look the houses over."

  The houses were all that anyone could wish. They were planned with practical imagination and built with loving care.

  There was, Homer admitted to himself, more honest workmanship in them than he had seen for many years in this era of mass-production building. They had that quiet sense of quality material, of prideful craftsmanship, of solidity, of dignity and tradition that was seldom found any more.

  They were well located, all fifty of them, in the wooded hills that stretched back from the lake, and the contractor had not indulged in the ruthless slashing out of trees. Set in natural surroundings with decent amounts of space around them, they stood, each one of them, in comparative privacy.

  In the spring, there would be wildflowers, and in the autumn, the woods would flame with colour and there would be birds and squirrels and rabbits. And there was a stretch of white sand beach, the last left on the whole lake.

  Homer began mentally to write the ad he'd put in the Sunday paper and found that he looked forward with some anticipation to setting down the words. This was one he could pull out all the stops on, use all the purple prose he wanted.

  "I like it, Mr. Steen," he said. "I think they won't be too hard to move."

  "That is good," Steen replied. "We are prepared to give you an exclusive contract for a period of ten years. Renewable, of course."

  "But why ten years? I can get this tract handled in a year or two, if it goes at all."

  "You are mistaken. The business, I can assure you, will be continuing."

  They stood on the brick walk in front of one of the houses and looked toward the lake. There were two white sails on the water, far toward the other shore, and a rowboat bobbed in the middle distance, with the black smudge of a hunched fisherman squatted in the stern.

  Homer shook his head in some bewilderment. "I don't understand."

  "There'll be some subletting," Steen told him smoothly.

  "When fifty families are involved, there are always so
me who move."

  "But that's another story. Subletting…"

  Steen pulled a paper from his pocket and handed it to Homer. "Your contract. You'll want to look it over. Look it over closely. You're a cautious man and that's the kind we want."

  Homer drove along the winding, wooded road back to the shopping centre with Steen.

  The centre was a lovely place. It stretched along the entire south side of the property, backed by the fourteen-foot wall, and was a shining place of brand-new paint and gleaming glass and metal.

  Homer stopped the car to look at it.

  "You've got everything," he said.

  "I think we have," said Steen proudly. "We've even got our own telephone exchange."

  "Isn't that unusual?"

  "Not at all. What we have set up here amounts to a model village, a model living space. We have our own water system and our sewage plant. Why not a telephone exchange?"

  Homer let it pass. There was no sense arguing. It all was just this side of crazy, anyhow. No matter how fouled up it was, Steen seemed satisfied.

  Maybe, Homer told himself, he knows what he is doing.

  But Homer doubted it.

  "One thing more," said Steen. "It is just a minor matter, but you should know about it. We have a car agency, you see. Many agencies, in fact. We can supply almost any make of car…"

  "But how did you do…"

  "We know our way around. Any make of car a person would want. And anyone who leases must buy a car from us."

  "Mister," Homer said, "I've heard a lot of fast ones in the auto business, but this one beats them all. If you think I'll sell cars for you…"

  "There's nothing wrong with it," said Steen. "We have some good connections. Any car one wants at a fair and honest price. And we are prepared to give good value on their trade-ins, too. It would never do to have old rattle-traps in a high-class development like this."

  "And what else? I think you'd better tell me how many other tie-in deals you have."

  "Not a single one. The automobile is all."

  Homer put the car in gear and drove slowly toward the gate.

  The uniformed gateman saw them coming and swung the gates wide open. He waved to them cheerily as they went past his kiosk.