I’m A Stranger Here Myself
Thrilling Wonder Stories, Apr. 1951
One can’t be too cautious about the people one meets in Tangier. They’re
all
weirdies of one kind or another. Me? Oh,
The Place de France is the town’s
hub. It marks the end of Boulevard Pasteur, the main drag of the westernized
part of the city, and the beginning of Rue de la Liberté, which leads down to
the Grand Socco and the medina. In a three-minute walk from the Place de France
you can go from an ultra-modern, California-like resort to the Baghdad of Harun
al-Rashid.
It’s quite a town, Tangier.
King-size sidewalk cafes occupy
three of the strategic corners on the Place de France. The Cafe de Paris serves
the best draft beer in town, gets all the better custom, and has three
shoeshine boys attached to the establishment. You can sit of a sunny morning
and read the Paris edition of the New York Herald
Tribune while getting your shoes done up like mirrors for thirty Moroccan
francs which comes to about five cents at current exchange.
You can sit there, after the
paper’s read, sip your expresso and watch the people go by.
Tangier is possibly the most
cosmopolitan city in the world. In native costume you’ll see Berber and Rif,
Arab and Blue Man, and occasionally a Senegalese from further south. In
European dress you’ll see Japs and Chinese, Hindus and Turks,
Levantines and Filipinos, North Americans and South Americans, and, of course,
even Europeans--from both sides of the Curtain.
In Tangier you’ll find some of
the world’s poorest and some of the richest. The poorest will try to sell you
anything from a shoeshine to their not very lily-white bodies, and the richest
will avoid your eyes, afraid you
might try to sell them something.
In spite of recent changes, the
town still has its unique qualities. As a result of them the permanent
population includes smugglers and black-marketeers, fugitives from justice and
international con men, espionage and counter-espionage agents, homosexuals,
nymphomaniacs, alcoholics, drug addicts, displaced persons, ex-royalty, and
subversives of every flavor. Local law limits the activities of few of these.
Like I said, it’s quite a town.
***
I looked up from my Herald Tribune and said, “Hello, Paul.
Anything new cooking?”
He sank into the chair opposite
me and looked around for the waiter. The tables were all crowded and since mine
was a face he recognized, he assumed he was welcome to intrude. It was more or
less standard procedure at the Cafe de Paris. It wasn’t a place to go if you
wanted to be alone.
Paul said, “How are you, Rupert?
Haven’t seen you for donkey’s years.”
The waiter came along and Paul
ordered a glass of beer. Paul was an easy-going, sallow-faced little man. I vaguely
remembered somebody saying he was from Liverpool and in exports.
“What’s in the newspaper?” he
said, disinterestedly.
“Pogo and Albert are going to
fight a duel,” I told him. “And Lil Abner is becoming a rock’n’roll singer.”
He grunted.
“Oh,” I said, “the intellectual
type.” I scanned the front page. “The Russkies have put up another manned
satellite.”
“They have, eh? How big?”
“Several times bigger than
anything we Americans have.”
The beer came and looked good, so
I ordered a glass too.
Paul said, “What ever happened to
those poxy flying saucers?”
“What flying saucers?”
A French girl went by with a
poodle so finely clipped as to look as though it’d been shaven. The girl was in
the latest from Paris. Every pore in place.
We both looked after her.
“You know, what everybody was
seeing a few years ago. It’s too bad one of these bloody manned satellites wasn’t
up then. Maybe they would’ve seen one.”
“That’s an idea,” I said.
We didn’t say anything else for a
while and I began to wonder if I could go back to my paper without rubbing him
the wrong way. I didn’t know Paul very well, but, for that matter, it’s
comparatively seldom you ever get to know anybody very well in Tangier.
Largely, cards are played close to the chest.
***
My beer came and a plate of tapas
for us both. Tapas at the Cafe de Paris are apt to be potato salad, a few
anchovies, olives, and possibly some cheese.
Free lunch, they used to call it
in the States.
Just to say something, I said, “Where
do you think they came from?” And when he looked blank, I added, “The Flying
Saucers.”
He grinned. “From Mars or Venus,
or someplace.”
“Ummmm,” I said. “Too bad none of
them ever crashed, or landed on the Yale football field and said Take me to your cheerleader, or something.”
Paul yawned and said, “That was
always the trouble with those crackpot blokes’ explanations of them. If they
were aliens from space, then why not show themselves?”
I ate one of the potato chips. It’d
been cooked in rancid olive oil.
I said, “Oh, there are various
answers to that one. We could probably sit around here and think of two or
three that made sense.”
Paul was mildly interested. “Like
what?”
“Well, hell, suppose for instance
there’s this big Galactic League of civilized planets. But it’s restricted,
see. You’re not eligible for membership until you, well, say until you’ve
developed space flight. Then you’re invited into the club. Meanwhile, they send
secret missions down from time to time to keep an eye on your progress.”
Paul grinned at me. “I see you
read the same poxy stuff I do.”
A Moorish girl went by dressed in
a neatly tailored gray jellaba, European style high-heeled shoes, and a pinkish
silk veil so transparent that you could see she wore lipstick. Very
provocative, dark eyes can be over a veil.
We both looked after her.
I said, “Or, here’s another one.
Suppose you have a very advanced civilization on, say, Mars.”
“Not Mars. No air, and too bloody
dry to support life.”
“Don’t interrupt, please,” I said
with mock severity. “This is a very old civilization and as the planet began to
lose its water and air, it withdrew underground. Uses hydroponics and so forth,
husbands its water and air. Isn’t that what we’d do, in a few million years, if
Earth lost its water and air?”
“I suppose so,” he said. “Anyway,
what about them?”
“Well, they observe how man is
going through a scientific boom, an industrial boom, a population boom. A boom,
period. Any day now he’s going to have practical space ships. Meanwhile, he’s
also got the H-Bomb and the way he beats the drums on both sides of the
Curtain, he’s not against using it, if he could get away with it.”
Paul said, “I got it. So they’re
scared and are keeping an eye on us. That’s an old one. I’ve read that a dozen
times, dished up different.”
I shifted my shoulders. “Well, it’s
one possibility.”
“I got a better one. How’s this.
There’s this alien life form that’s way ahead of us. Their civilization is so
old that they don’t have any records of when it began and how it was in the
early days. They’ve gone beyond things like wars and depressions and
revolutions, and greed for power or any of these things giving us a bad time
here on Earth. They’re all like scholars, get it? And some of them are pretty
jolly well taken by Earth, especially the way we are right now, with all the
problems, get it? Things developing so fast we don’t know where we’re going or
how we’re going to get there.”
***
I finished my beer and clapped my
hands for Mouley. “How do you mean, where
we’re going?”
“Well, take half the countries in
the world today. They’re trying to industrialize, modernize, catch up with the
advanced countries. Look at Egypt, and Israel, and India and China, and
Yugoslavia and Brazil, and all the rest. Trying to drag themselves up to the
level of the advanced countries, and all using different methods of doing it.
But look at the so-called advanced countries. Up to their bottoms in problems.
Juvenile delinquents, climbing crime and suicide rates, the loony-bins full of the
balmy, unemployed, threat of war, spending all their money on armaments instead
of things like schools. All the bloody mess of it. Why, a man from Mars would
be fascinated, like.”
Mouley came shuffling up in his
babouche slippers and we both ordered another schooner of beer.
Paul said seriously, “You know,
there’s only one big snag in this sort of talk. I’ve sorted the whole thing out
before, and you always come up against this brick wall. Where are they, these
observers, or scholars, or spies or whatever they are? Sooner or later we’d nab
one of them. You know, Scotland Yard, or the F.B.I., or Russia’s secret police,
or the French Sûreté, or Interpol. This world is so deep in police, counter-espionage
outfits and security agents that an alien would slip up in time, no matter how
much he’d been trained. Sooner or later, he’d slip up, and they’d nab him.”
I shook my head. “Not
necessarily. The first time I ever considered this possibility, it seemed to me
that such an alien would base himself in London or New York. Somewhere where he
could use the libraries for research, get the daily newspapers and the
magazines. Be right in the center of things. But now I don’t think so. I think
he’d be right here in Tangier.”
“Why Tangier?”
“It’s the one town in the world
where anything goes. Nobody gives a damn about you or your affairs. For
instance, I’ve known you a year or more now, and I haven’t the slightest idea
of how you make your living.”
“That’s right,” Paul admitted. “In
this town you seldom even ask a man where’s he’s from. He can be British, a
White Russian, a Basque or a Sikh and nobody could care less. Where are you from, Rupert?”
“California,” I told him.
“No, you’re not,” he grinned.
I was taken aback. “What do you
mean?”
“I felt your mind probe back a
few minutes ago when I was talking about Scotland Yard or the F.B.I. possibly
flushing an alien. Telepathy is a
sense not trained by the
humanoids. If they had it, your job—and mine—would be considerably more
difficult. Let’s face it, in spite of these human bodies we’re disguised in,
neither of us is humanoid. Where are you really from, Rupert?”
“Aldebaran,” I said. “How about
you?”
“Deneb,” he told me, shaking.
We had a laugh and ordered
another beer.
“What’re you doing here on Earth?”
I asked him.
“Researching for one of our meat
trusts. We’re protein eaters. Humanoid flesh is considered quite a delicacy.
How about you?”
“Scouting the place for thrill
tourists. My job is to go around to these backward cultures and help stir up
inter-tribal, or international, conflicts--all according to how advanced they
are. Then our tourists come in—well shielded, of course—and get their kicks
watching it.”
Paul frowned. “That sort of
practice could spoil an awful lot of good meat.”
End
Three aliens walk into a bar. The bartender says, “So. Why the long faces?”
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