Common Denominator
Galaxy Science Fiction July 1951.
Advanced races generally are eager to share their knowledge with
primitive ones. In this case...with Earthmen!
When Scout Group Forty flickered
back across half the Galaxy with a complete culture study of a Class Seven
civilization on three planets of Argus Ten, the Bureau of Stellar Defense had,
of course, a priority claim on all data. Class Sevens were rare and of high
potential danger, so all personnel of Group Forty were placed in tight
quarantine during the thirty days required for a detailed analysis of the
thousands of film spools.
News of the contact leaked out
and professional alarmists predicted dire things on the news screens of the
three home planets of Sol. A retired admiral of the Space Navy published an
article in which he stated bitterly that the fleet had been weakened by twenty
years of softness in high places.
On the thirty-first day, B.S.D.
reported to System President Mize that the inhabitants of the three planets of
Argus 10 constituted no threat, that there was no military necessity for alarm,
that approval of a commerce treaty was recommended, that all data was being
turned over to the Bureau of Stellar Trade and Economy for analysis, that
personnel of Scout Group Forty was being given sixty days’ leave before
reassignment.
B.S.T.E. released film to all
commercial networks at once, and visions of slavering oily monsters disappeared
from the imagination of mankind. The Argonauts, as they came to be called, were
pleasantly similar to mankind. It was additional proof that only in the rarest instance
was the life-apex on any planet in the home Galaxy an abrupt divergence from
the “human” form. The homogeneousness of planet elements throughout the Galaxy
made homogeneousness of life-apex almost a truism. The bipedal,
oxygen-breathing vertebrate with opposing thumb seems best suited for survival.
If was evident that, with
training, the average Argonaut could pass almost unnoticed in the Solar System.
The flesh tones were brightly pink, like that of a sunburned human. Cranial
hair was uniformly taffy-yellow. They were heavier and more fleshy than humans.
Their women had a pronounced Rubens look, a warm, moist, rosy, comfortable look.
***
Everyone remarked on the
placidity and contentment of facial expressions, by human standards. The
inevitable comparison was made. The Argonauts looked like a race of inn and
beer-garden proprietors in the Bavarian Alps. With leather pants to slap, stein
lids to click, feathers in Tyrolean hats and peasant skirts on their women,
they would represent a culture and a way of life that had been missing from
Earth for far too many generations.
Eight months after matters had been
turned over to B.S.T.E., the First Trade Group returned to Earth with a
bewildering variety of artifacts and devices, plus a round dozen Argonauts. The
Argonauts had learned to speak Solian with an amusing guttural accent. They
beamed on everything and everybody. They were great pets until the novelty wore
off. Profitable trade was inaugurated, because the Argonaut devices all seemed
designed to make life more pleasant. The scent-thesizer became very popular
once it was adjusted to meet human tastes. Worn as a lapel button, it could
create the odor of pine, broiled steak, spring flowers, Scotch whisky, musk—even
skunk for the practical jokers who exist in all ages and eras.
Any home equipped with an
Argonaut static-clean never became dusty. It used no power and had to be
emptied only once a year.
Technicians altered the Argonaut
mechanical game animal so that it looked like an Earth rabbit. The weapons
which shot a harmless beam were altered to look like rifles. After one
experience with the new game, hunters were almost breathless with excitement.
The incredible agility of the mechanical animal, its ability to take cover, the
fact that, once the beam felled it, you could use it over and over again—all
this made for the promulgation of new non-lethal hunting.
***
Lambert, chief of the Bureau of
Racial Maturity, waited patiently for his chance at the Argonaut data. The
cramped offices in the temporary wing of the old System Security Building, the
meager appropriation, the obsolete office equipment, the inadequate staff all
testified not only to the Bureau’s lack of priority, but also to a lack of
knowledge of its existence on the part of many System officials. Lambert, crag-faced,
sandy, slow-moving, was a historian, anthropologist and sociologist. He was
realist enough to understand that if the Bureau of Racial Maturity happened to
be more important in System Government, it would probably be headed by a man
with fewer academic and more political qualifications.
And Lambert knew, beyond any
doubt at all, that the B.R.M. was more important to the race and the future of
the race than any other branch of System Government.
Set up by President Tolles, an
adult and enlightened administrator, the Bureau was now slowly being strangled
by a constantly decreasing appropriation.
Lambert knew that mankind had
come too far, too fast. Mankind had dropped out of a tree with all the
primordial instincts to rend and tear and claw. Twenty thousand years later,
and with only a few thousand years of dubiously recorded history, he had
reached the stars.
It was too quick.
Lambert knew that mankind must
become mature in order to survive. The domination of instinct had to be watered
down, and rapidly. Selective breeding might do it, but it was an answer
impossible to enforce. He hoped that one day the records of an alien
civilization would give him the answer. After a year of bureaucratic wriggling,
feints and counter-feints, he had acquired the right of access to Scout Group
Data.
As his patience dwindled he wrote
increasingly firm letters to Central Files and Routing. In the end, when he
finally located the data improperly stored in the closed files of the B.S.T.E.,
he took no more chances. He went in person with an assistant named Cooper and a
commandeered electric hand-truck, and bullied a B.S.T.E. storage clerk into
accepting a receipt for the Argonaut data. The clerk’s cooperation was lessened
by never having heard of the Bureau of Racial Maturity.
***
The file contained the dictionary
and grammar compiled by the Scout Group, plus all the films taken on the three
planets of Argus 10, plus micro-films of twelve thousand books written in the
language of the Argonauts. Their written language was ideographic, and thus
presented more than usual difficulties. Lambert knew that translations had been
made, but somewhere along the line they had disappeared.
Lambert set his whole staff to
work on the language. He hired additional linguists out of his own thin enough
pocket. He gave up all outside activities in order to hasten the progress of
his own knowledge. His wife, respecting Lambert’s high order of devotion to his
work, kept their two half-grown children from interfering during those long
evenings when he studied and translated at home.
Two evenings a week Lambert
called on Vonk Poogla, the Argonaut assigned to Trade Coordination, and
improved his conversational Argonian to the point where he could obtain
additional historical information from the pink wide “man.”
Of the twelve thousand books, the
number of special interest to Lambert were only one hundred and ten. On those
he based his master chart. An animated film of the chart was prepared at
Lambert’s own expense, and, when it was done, he requested an appointment with Simpkin,
Secretary for Stellar Affairs, going through all the normal channels to obtain
the interview. He asked an hour of Simpkin’s time.
It took two weeks.
Simpkin was a big florid man with
iron-gray hair, skeptical eyes and that indefinable look of political
opportunism.
He came around his big desk to shake
Lambert’s hand. “Ah...Lambert! Glad to see you, fella. I ought to get around to
my Bureau Chiefs more often, but you know how hectic things are up here.”
“I know, Mr. Secretary. I have
something here of the utmost importance and—”
“Bureau of Racial Maturity, isn’t
it? I never did know exactly what you people do. Sort of progress records or
something?”
“Of the utmost importance,”
Lambert repeated doggedly.
Simpkin smiled. “I hear that all
day, but go ahead.”
“I want to show you a chart. A
historical chart of the Argonaut civilization.” Lambert put the projector in
position and plugged it in. He focused it on the wall screen.
“It was decided,” Simpkin said
firmly. “That the Argonauts are not a menace to us in any—”
“I know that, sir. Please look at
the chart first and then, when you’ve seen it, I think you’ll know what I mean.”
“Go ahead,” Simpkin agreed
resignedly.
“I can be accused of adding
apples and lemons in this presentation, sir. Note the blank chart. The base
line is in years, adjusted to our calendar so as to give a comparison. Their
recorded history covers twelve thousand of our years. That’s better than four
times ours. Now note the red line. That shows the percentage of their total
population involved in wars. It peaked eight thousand years ago. Note how
suddenly it drops after that. In five hundred years it sinks to the base line and
does not appear again.
“Here comes the second line.
Crimes of violence. It also peaks eight thousand years ago. It drops less
quickly than the war line, and never does actually cut the base line. Some
crime still exists there. But a very, very tiny percentage compared to ours on
a population basis, or to their own past. The third line, the yellow line
climbing abruptly, is the index of insanity. Again a peak during the same
approximate period in their history. Again a drop almost to the base line.”
***
Simpkin pursed his heavy lips. “Odd,
isn’t it?”
“Now this fourth line needs some
explaining. I winnowed out death rates by age groups. Their life span is 1.3
times ours, so it had to be adjusted. I found a strange thing. I took the age
group conforming to our 18 to 24 year group. That green line. Note that by the
time we start getting decent figures, nine thousand years ago, it remains almost
constant, and at a level conforming to our own experience. Now note what
happens when the green line reaches a point eight thousand years ago. See how
it begins to climb? Now steeper, almost vertical. It remains at a high level
for almost a thousand years, way beyond the end of their history of war, and
then descends slowly toward the base line, leveling out about two thousand
years ago.”
Lambert clicked off the
projector.
“Is that all?” Simpkin asked.
“Isn’t it enough? I’m concerned
with the future of our own race. Somehow the Argonauts have found an answer to
war, insanity, violence. We need that answer if we are to survive.”
“Come now, Lambert,” Simpkin said
wearily.
“Don’t you see it? Their history
parallels ours. They had our same problems. They saw disaster ahead and did
something about it. What did they do? I have to know that.”
“How do you expect to?”
“I want travel orders to go
there.”
“I’m afraid that’s quite
impossible. There are no funds for that sort of jaunt, Lambert. And I think you
are worrying over nothing.”
“Shall I show you some of our own
trends? Shall I show you murder turning from the most horrid crime into a
relative commonplace? Shall I show you the slow inevitable increase in asylum
space?”
“I know all that, man. But look
at the Argonauts! Do you want that sort of stagnation? Do you want a race of
fat, pink, sleepy—”
“Maybe they had a choice. A
species of stagnation, or the end of their race. Faced with that choice, which
would you pick, Mr. Secretary?”
“There are no funds.”
“All I want is authority. I’ll
pay my own way.”
And he did.
***
Rean was the home planet of the
Argonauts, the third from their sun. When the trade ship flickered into
three-dimensional existence, ten thousand miles above Rean, Lambert stretched
the space-ache out of his long bones and muscles and smiled at Vonk Poogla.
“You could have saved me the
trip, you know,” Lambert said.
A grin creased the round pink
visage. “Nuddink ventured, nuddink gained. Besides, only my cousin can speak
aboud this thing you vunder aboud. My cousin is werry important person. He is
one picks me to go to your planet.”
Vonk Poogla was transported with
delight at being able to show the wonders of the ancient capital city to
Lambert. It had been sacked and burned over eight thousand Earth years before,
and now it was mellowed by eighty-three centuries of unbroken peace. It rested
in the pastel twilight, and there were laughter and soft singing in the broad streets.
Never had Lambert felt such a warm aura of security and...love. No other word
but that ultimate one seemed right.
In the morning they went to the
squat blue building where Vonk Soobuknoora, the important person, had his
administrative headquarters. Lambert, knowing enough of Argonaut governmental
structure to understand that Soobuknoora was titular head of the three-planet government,
could not help but compare the lack of protocol with what he could expect were
he to try to take Vonk Poogla for an interview with President Mize.
Soobuknoora was a smaller, older
edition of Poogla, his pink face wrinkled, his greening hair retaining only a
trace of the original yellow. Soobuknoora spoke no Solian and he was very
pleased to find that Lambert spoke Argonian.
Soobuknoora watched the animated
chart with considerable interest.
After it was over, he seemed lost
in thought.
“It is something so private with
us, Man Lambert, that we seldom speak of it to each other,” Soobuknoora said in
Argonian. “It is not written. Maybe we have shame—a guilt sense. That is hard
to say. I have decided to tell you what took place among us eight thousand
years ago.”
“I would be grateful.”
***
“We live in contentment. Maybe it
is good, maybe it is not so good. But we continue to live. Where did our
trouble come from in the old days, when we were like your race? Back when we
were brash and young and wickedly cruel? From the individuals, those driven
ones who were motivated to succeed despite all obstacles. They made our
paintings, wrote our music, killed each other, fomented our unrest, our wars.
We live off the bewildering richness of our past.”
He sighed. “It was a problem. To
understand our solution, you must think of an analogy, Man Lambert. Think of a
factory where machines are made. We will call the acceptable machines stable,
the unacceptable ones unstable. They are built with a flywheel which must turn
at a certain speed. If it exceeds that speed, it is no good. But a machine that
is stable can, at any time, become unstable. What is the solution?” He smiled
at Lambert.
“I’m a bit confused,” Lambert confessed.
“You would have to go around inspecting the machines constantly for stability.”
“And use a gauge? No. Too much
trouble. An unstable machine can do damage. So we do this--we put a little
governor on the machine. When the speed passes the safety mark, the machine
breaks.”
“But this is an analogy, Vonk
Soobuknoora!” Lambert protested. “You can’t put a governor on a man!”
“Man is born with a governor, Man
Lambert. Look back in both our histories, when we were not much above the
animal level. An unbalanced man would die. He could not compete for food. He
could not organize the simple things of his life for survival. Man Lambert, did
you ever have a fleeting impulse to kill yourself?”
Lambert smiled. “Of course. You
could almost call that impulse a norm for intelligent species.”
“Did it ever go far enough so
that you considered a method, a weapon?”
Lambert nodded slowly. “It’s hard
to remember, but I think I did. Yes, once I did.”
“And what would have happened,”
the Argonaut asked softly, “If there had been available to you in that moment a
weapon completely painless, completely final?”
***
Lambert’s mouth went dry. “I
would probably have used it. I was very young. Wait! I’m beginning to see what
you mean, but—”
“The governor had to be built into
the body,” Soobuknoora interrupted. “And yet so designed that there would be no
possibility of accidental activation. Suppose that on this day I start to think
of how great and powerful I am in this position I have. I get an enormous
desire to become even more powerful. I begin to reason emotionally. Soon I have
a setback. I am depressed. I am out of balance, you could say. I have become
dangerous to myself and to our culture.
“In a moment of depression, I
take these two smallest fingers of each hand. I reach behind me and I press the
two fingers, held firmly together, to a space in the middle of my back. A tiny
capsule buried at the base of my brain is activated and I am dead within a
thousandth part of a second. Vonk Poogla is the same. All of us are the same.
The passing urge for self-destruction happens to be the common denominator of
imbalance. We purged our race of the influence of the neurotic, the egocentric,
the hypersensitive, merely by making self-destruction very, very easy.”
“Then that death rate—?”
“At eighteen the operation is
performed. It is very quick and very simple. We saw destruction ahead. We had
to force it through. In the beginning the deaths were frightening, there were
so many of them. The stable ones survived, bred, reproduced. A lesser but still
great percentage of the next generation went—and so on, until now it is almost
static.”
In Argonian Lambert said hotly, “Oh,
it sounds fine! But what about children? What sort of heartless race can plant
the seed of death in its own children?”
***
Never before had he seen the
faintest trace of anger on any Argonaut face. The single nostril widened and
Soobuknoora might have raged if he had been from Earth.
“There are other choices, Man
Lambert. Our children have no expectation of being burned to cinder, blown to fragments.
They are free of that fear. Which is the better love, Man Lambert?”
“I have two children. I couldn’t
bear to--”
“Wait!” Soobuknoora said. “Think
one moment. Suppose you were to know that when they reached the age of
eighteen, both your children were to be operated on by our methods. How would
that affect your present relationship to them?”
Lambert was, above all, a
realist. He remembered the days of being ‘too busy’ for the children, of
passing off their serious questions with a joking or curt evasion, of playing
with them as though they were young, pleasing, furry animals.
“I would do a better job, as a
parent,” Lambert admitted. “I would try to give them enough emotional stability
so that they would never—have that urge to kill themselves. But Ann is
delicate, moody, unpredictable, artistic.”
Poogla and Soobuknoora nodded in
unison. “You would probably lose that one; maybe you would lose both,”
Soobuknoora agreed. “But it is better to lose more than half the children of a
few generations to save the race.”
Lambert thought some more. He
said, “I shall go back and I shall speak of this plan and what it did for you.
But I do not think my race will like it. I do not want to insult you or your
people, but you have stagnated. You stand still in time.”
Vonk Poogla laughed largely. “Not
by a damn sight,” he said gleefully.
“Next year we stop giving the
operation. We stop for good. It was just eight thousand years to permit us to
catch our breath before going on more safely. And what is eight thousand years
of marking time in the history of a race? Nothing, my friend. Nothing!”
When Lambert went back to Earth,
he naturally quit his job.
End
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