The Lani People Part 42

"Thanks," Alexander said glumly. "I've always considered myself civilized."

"I wouldn't go so far as to say that," Kennon said. "Honorable, yes--civilized, no. But none of us are really civilized."

"So?"

"We haven't changed much, despite our development. Perhaps we've varied a little physically--and we've learned to use new tools, but our minds are still the minds of barbarians--blood brothers against the enemy, and everything not of us is enemy. Savages--hiding under a thin veneer of superficial culture. Savages with s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps and the atom." Kennon looked down at Copper. Apparently her thoughts were miles away in an introspective world that was all her own. She had said her piece and having done that was content to let the two men develop it. Kennon looked at her with odd respect. Alexander eyed her with a mildly startled expression on his lean face. And both men smiled, but the smiles were not amused.

"Judging from Copper," Alexander said, "I don't think we'll have to worry about how the Lani will turn out." He looked at Kennon with mild sympathy. "You are going to have quite a time with her," he said.

"I suppose so. I'll probably never know whether I'm guided or whether I'm doing the guiding. I've changed a lot of my opinions about Copper since the day I met her."

Copper looked up and smiled at them. It was an odd smile, hinting at secrets neither of them would ever know. Alexander chuckled. "It serves you right." He crossed his legs and looked up at Kennon standing before him. By some uncanny legerdemain he had gotten control of himself and the situation at the same time. Being telepathic was an unfair advantage, Kennon thought.

"You were equally unfair with your accusation," Alexander said.

"Sure--humanity makes mistakes, and like this one they're sometimes brutal mistakes. But we are capable of atonement. Morally we have come a long way from the brutality of the Interregnum. I shouldn't have to use examples, but look at that"--he waved at the view wall at the panorama of gleaming fairy towers and greenery that made Beta City one of the most beautiful in the Brotherhood. "Don't tell me that five thousand years of peace and development haven't produced civilization. That's a concrete example out there."

"It isn't," Kennon said flatly. "Sure, it's pretty--clean--and beautifully designed for art and utility--but it isn't civilization.

You're confusing technology with culture. You look at this and say, 'What a great civilization man has built,' when you really mean, 'What a great technology mankind has developed.' There's all the difference in the world. Technology is of the mind and hands. Civilization is of the spirit--and spiritually we are still in the Dark Ages.

"We conquer, kill, loot, and enslave. We establish standards to keep humanity a closed corporation, a special club in which men can live but aliens can't. We've made the standards for admission so rigid that we even enslave our own kind and call them animals. That's not civilization--that's savagery!

"For nearly five hundred years your family has run a slave pen. Your fortune is based upon it. And you have perpetuated this traffic in flesh on the specious reasoning that a court judgment of half a millennium ago is as good today as when it was handed down. Never once did anyone have the moral courage to re-examine that old decision. Never once did any human question the rightness of that decision. None of us are immune.

We all based our conduct upon an antiquated law and searched no further.

Everyone was happy with the status quo--or at least not so unhappy that they wanted to change it. Even I would have been content had it not been for Copper."

"Yet I do not feel that it was bad that I hired you," Alexander said.

"Even though you have shown me that I am a slaver, and made me see faults I never knew I had." His face was drawn--harsh lines reached from nose to lips, from eyes to chin. Suddenly he looked old. "I can accept censure if censure is just. And this is just. No--I'm not sorry I hired you even though the thought of what I have helped do to the Lani makes me sick to my stomach."

"Well--" Kennon said. "What are you going to do about it?"

"I don't know," Alexander said. "At the first smell of trouble, the Family will turn tail and run. You can break the company, and I won't stand in your way. It's only just. You're the one who's carrying the ball. Now run with it."

"That d.a.m.ned blind spot," Kennon said. "You realize, of course, that you're not legally liable. It was a mistake. All you have to do is admit the error and start from there. Naturally--no reasonable intelligence would expect that you change the older Lani. They're too old for either agerone or change. It would be both cruel and inhuman to turn them loose. It's with the youngsters that you can work--those who are physically and physiologically young enough to derive benefit from agerone and education.

"As I remember, you bought a planet called Phoebe. Now why don't you--"

"Phase out! Of course! But that means that you can't press charges."

"Why should I? I'm not one of these starry-eyed reformers who expect to change things overnight. It's the future of the Lani race that's important, And Brainard agrees with me. A phase-out is the proper solution. Change the education, let males be born--teach the young to think instead of to obey. Give them Phoebe for a home--they never owned all of Kardon anyway. And within a century or two we will have a new group of the human race--and then we can tell the Brotherhood."

Kennon looked inquiringly at Copper. She smiled and nodded. "It would cause less trouble that way," she said. "It would be more sure--and there are never too many old ones."

Kennon shuddered, thinking of the euthanasia chambers on Otpen One.

"There will be more from now on," he said.

"Outworld can afford it. It'll bend us a little but we won't break--and besides, the Lani will need our help for some time to come." Alexander looked at Kennon. "Can we make an agreement that all parties will respect?" he asked.

"I think so--providing there are no sleeper clauses in it," Kennon said.

"There won't be," Alexander said.

And there weren't.

It was a private ceremony. The Family, sulky and unwilling, faced with a choice of drastically reduced income or outright confiscation and preferring a portion of a loaf to none. Alexander--grim but oddly peaceful of expression. Brainard--pink-cheeked and emotionless. Kennon and Copper--happily conscious that it was at last finished. It was an oddly a.s.sorted group of conspirators who planned to restore a segment of humanity to the human race.

Kennon signed last, and as he did, Alexander looked at him with a sly grin distorting the smooth pallor of his face.

"You forgot something," he said.

"What?" Kennon said--aware suddenly that something was wrong.

"What do you plan to do, now that this is over?"

"Join the Medical Center here and practice veterinary medicine."

"You wouldn't care to work for me--to help rebuild the wreckage you've helped create? I'll need a manager on Kardon to phase out the island while we phase in Phoebe."

"No, thank you. I've had enough of that."

"You just think you have," Alexander said gleefully. "That's what you have forgotten. You've gotten your agreement--now you will satisfy me.

As I see it you have breached your contract by leaving Flora without authorization."

"That is right," Kennon said. A small lump of lead began to grow rapidly larger in his stomach. Brainard was grinning and Copper's eyes were s.h.i.+ning. "You've been jobbed!" his mind told him. He sighed. He knew what was coming next.

"The punitive clause for breach of contract," Alexander went on inexorably, "is very broad. Discretion is vested in the entrepreneur. I can obtain judgment against you in any court on any planet."

"I know," Kennon said glumly.

"But I am going to be civilized," Alexander said. "I am going to be merciful. I am going to extend your contract until phase-out has been completed. You are going to have control of the entire Kardon phase of the operation. It's poetic justice--you made the mess--now you can clean it up."

"That's inhuman!"

"Humanity has nothing to do with it. It's justice," Alexander said. He smiled at Copper's radiant face. The thought of going home was good to her. "Good luck on your new job, Dr. Kennon," he said. "And welcome to the brotherhood of the ulcer."