THE PACIFIST WAS ingenious enough as an inventor.
But he was hopelessly naive when it came to the reactions of intelligent beings.
He — strange of a Pacifist — wanted an enemy. His error!
Mr. Whitlow hits on a new scheme for ending war
— and as usual rushes off without exploring the consequences.
The bright stars of Mars made a glittering roof for a fantastic tableau. A being equipped with retinal vision would have seen an Earthman dressed in the familiar coat and trousers of the twentieth century standing on a boulder that put him a few feet above the rusty sand. His face was bony and puritanic. His eyes gleamed wildly from deep sockets. Occasionally his long hair flopped across them. His lips worked vociferously, showing big yellowed teeth, and there was a cloud of blown spittle in front of them, for he was making a speech — in the English language. He so closely resembled an old-style soapbox orator that one looked around for the lamp-post, the dull-faced listeners overflowing the curb, and the strolling cop.
But the puzzling globe of soft radiance surrounding Mr. Whitlow struck highlights from enamel-black shells and jointed legs a little resembling those of an ant under a microscope. Each individual in the crowd consisted of a yard-long oval body lacking a separate head or any sensory or other orifices in its gleaming black surface except for a small mouth that worked like a sliding door and kept opening and closing at regular intervals. To this body were attached eight of the jointed legs, the inner pairs showing highly manipulative end-organs.
These creatures were ranged in a circle around Mr. Whitlow’s boulder. Facing him was one who crouched a little apart from the rest, on a smaller boulder. Flanking this one, were two whose faintly silvered shells suggested weathering and, therefore, age.
Beyond them — black desert to a horizon defined only by the blotting out of the star fields.
Low in the heavens gleamed sky-blue Earth, now Mars’ evening star, riding close to the meager crescent of Phobos.
To the Martian coleopteroids this scene presented itself in a very different fashion, since they depended on perception rather than any elaborate sensory set-up. Their internal brains were directly conscious of everything within a radius of about fifty yards. For them the blue earthshine was a diffuse photonic cloud just above the threshold of perception, similar to but distinct from the photonic clouds of the starlight and faint moonshine; they could perceive no image of Earth unless they used lenses to create such an image within their perceptive range. They were conscious of the ground beneath them as a sandy hemisphere tunneled through by various wrigglers and the centipedelike burrowers. They were conscious of each other’s armored, neatly-compartmented bodies, and each other’s thoughts. But chiefly their attention was focused on that squidgy, uninsulated, wasteful jumble of organs that thought of itself as Mr. Whitlow — an astounding moist suppet of life on dry, miserly Mars.
The physiology of the coleopteroids was typical of a depleted-planet economy. Their shells were double; the space between could be evacuated at night to conserve heat, and flooded by day to absorb it. Their lungs were really oxygen accumulators. They inhaled the rarefied atmosphere about one hundred times for every exhalation, the double-valve mouth permitting the building up of high internal pressure. They had one hundred percent utilization of inhaled oxygen, and exhaled pure carbon dioxide freighted with other respiratory excretions. Occasional whiffs of this exceedingly bad breath made Mr. Whitlow wrinkle his flaring nostrils.
Just what permitted Mr. Whitlow to go on functioning, even speechifying, in the chill oxygen-dearth was by no means so obvious. It constituted as puzzling a question as the source of the soft glow that bathed him.
Communication between him and his audience was purely telepathic. He was speaking vocally at the request of the coleopteroids, because like most nontelepaths he could best organize and clarify his thoughts while talking. His voice died out abruptly in the thin air. It sounded like a phonograph needle scratching along without amplification, and intensified the eerie ludicrousness of his violent gestures and facial contortions.
“And so,” Whitlow concluded wheezily, brushing the long hair from his forehead, “I come back to my original proposal: Will you attack Earth?”
“And we, Mr. Whitlow,” thought the Chief Coleopteroid, “come back to our original question, which you still have not answered: Why should we?”
Mr. Whitlow made a grimace of frayed patience. “As I have told you several times, I cannot make a fuller explanation. But I assure you of my good faith. I will do my best to provide transportation for you, and facilitate the thing in every way. Understand, it need only be a token invasion. After a short time you can retire to Mars with your spoils. Surely you cannot afford to pass up this opportunity.”
“Mr. Whitlow,” replied the Chief Coleopteroid with a humor as poisonously dry as his planet, “I cannot read your thoughts unless you vocalize them. They are too confused. But I can sense your biases. You are laboring under a serious misconception as to our psychology. Evidently it is customary in your world to think of alien intelligent beings as evil monsters, whose only desire is to ravage, destroy, tyrannize, and inflict unspeakable cruelties on creatures less advanced than themselves. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We are an ancient and unemotional race. We have outgrown the passions and vanities — even the ambitions — of our youth. We undertake no projects except for sound and sufficient reason.”
“But if that’s the case, surely you can see the practical advantages of my proposal. At little or no risk to yourselves, you will acquire valuable loot.”
The Chief Coleopteroid settled back on his boulder, and his thoughts did the same. “Mr. Whitlow, let me remind you that we have never gone to war lightly. During the whole course of our history, our only intelligent enemies have been the molluscoids of the tideless seas of Venus. In the springtide of their culture they came conquesting in their water-filled spaceships, and we fought several long and bitter wars. But eventually they attained racial maturity and a certain dispassionate wisdom, though not equivalent to our own. A perpetual truce was declared, on condition that each party stick to its own planet and attempt no more forays. For ages we have abided by that truce, living in mutual isolation. So you can see, Mr. Whitlow, that we would be anything but inclined to accept such a rash and mysterious proposal as yours.”
“May I make a suggestion?” interjected the Senior Coleopteroid on the Chief's right. His thoughts flicked out subtly toward Whitlow. “You seem, Earthling, to possess powers that are perhaps even in excess of our own. Your arrival on Mars without any perceptible means of transport and your ability to endure its rigors without any obvious insulation, are sufficient proofs. From what you tell us, the other inhabitants of your planet possess no such powers. Why don’t you attack them by yourself, like the solitary armored poison-worm? Why do you need our aid?”
“My friend,” said Mr. Whitlow solemnly, bending forward and fixing his gaze on the silvery-shelled elder. “I abhor war as the foulest evil, and active participation in it as the greatest crime. Nonetheless, I would sacrifice myself as you suggest, could I attain my ends that way. Unfortunately I cannot. It would not have the psychological effect I desire. Moreover” — he paused embarrassedly — “I might as well confess that I am not wholly master of my powers. I don’t understand them. The workings of an inscrutable providence have put into my hands a device that is probably the handiwork of creatures vastly more intelligent than any in this solar system, perhaps even this cosmos. It enables me to cross space and time. It protects me from danger. It provides me with warmth and illumination. It concentrates your Martian atmosphere in a sphere around me, so that I can breathe normally. But as for using it in any larger way — I’d be mortally afraid of its getting out of control. My one small experiment was disastrous. I wouldn’t dare.” The Senior Coleopteroid shot a guarded aside to the Chief. “Shall I try to hypnotize his disordered mind and get this device from him?”
“Do so.”
“Very well, though I’m afraid the device will protect his mind as well as his body. Still, it’s worth the chance.”
“Mr. Whitlow,” thought the Chief abruptly, “it is time we got down to cases. Every word you say makes your proposal sound more irrational, and your own motives more unintelligible. If you expect us to take any serious interest, you must give us a clear answer to one question: Why do you want us to attack Earth?”
Whitlow twisted. “But that’s the one question I don’t want to answer.”
“Well, put it this way then,” continued the Chief patiently. “What personal advantage do you expect to gain from our attack ?”
Whitlow drew himself up and tucked in his necktie. “None! None whatsoever! I seek nothing for myself!”
“Do you want to rule Earth?” the Chief persisted.
“No! No! I detest all tyranny.”
“Revenge, then? Has Earth hurt you and are you trying to hurt it back?”
“Absolutely no! I would never stoop to such barbaric behavior. I hate no one. The desire to see anyone injured is furthest from my thoughts.”
“Come, come, Mr. Whitlow! You’ve just begged us to attack Earth. How can you square that with your sentiments?”
Whitlow gnawed his lip baffledly. The Chief slipped in a quick question to the Senior Coleopteroid. “What progress?”
“None whatsoever. His mind is extraordinarily difficult to grasp. And as I anticipated, there is a shield.”
Whitlow rocked uneasily on his shoulder, his eyes fixed on the star-edged horizon.
“I’ll tell you this much,” he said. “It’s solely because I love Earth and mankind so much that I want you to attack her.”
“You choose a strange way of showing your affection,” the Chief observed.
“Yes,” continued Whitlow, warming a bit, his eyes still lost, “I want you to do it in order to end war.”
“This gets more and more mysterious. Start war to stop it? That is a paradox which demands explanation. Take care, Mr. Whitlow, or I will fall into your error of looking on alien beings as evil and demented monsters.”
Whitlow lowered his gaze until it was fixed on the Chief. He sighed windily. “I guess I’d better tell you,” he muttered. “You’d have probably found out in the end. Though it would have been simpler the other way—”
He pushed back the rebellious hair and massaged his forehead, a little wearily. When he spoke again it was in a less oratorical style.
“I am a pacifist. My life is dedicated to the task of preventing war. I love my fellow men. But they are steeped in error and sin. They are victims of their baser passions. Instead of marching on, hand in hand, trustingly, toward the glorious fulfillment of all their dreams, they insist on engaging in constant conflict, in vile war.”
“Perhaps there is a reason for that,” suggested the Chief mildly. '“Some inequalities that require leveling or—”
“Please.” said the pacifist reprovingly. “These wars have grown increasingly more violent and terrible. I and others, have sought to reason with the majority, but in vain. They persist in their delusions. I have racked my brain to find a solution. I have considered every conceivable remedy. Since I came into the possession of… er… the device, I have sought throughout the cosmos and even in other time-streams, for the secret of preventing war. With no success. Such intelligent races as I encountered were either engaged in war, which ruled them out, or had never known war — these were very obliging but obviously could volunteer no helpful information — or else had outgrown war by the painful and horrible process of fighting until there was nothing more to fight about.”
“As we have,” the Chief thought, in an undertone.
The pacifist spread his hands, palms toward the stars. “So, once more, I was thrown on my own resources. I studied mankind from every angle. Gradually I became convinced that its worst trait — and the one most responsible for war — was its overgrown sense of self-importance. On my planet man is the lord of creation. All the other animals are merely one among many — no species is pre-eminent. The fkesh-eaters have their flesh-eating rivals. Each browser or grazer competes with other types for the grass and herbage. Even the fish in the seas and the myriad parasites that swarm in bloodstreams are divided into species of roughly equal ability and competence. This makes for humility and a sense of perspective. No species is inclined to fight among itself when it realizes that by so doing it will merely clear the way for other species to take over. Man alone has no serious rivals. As a result, he has developed delusions of grandeur — and of persecution and hate. Lacking the restraint that rivalry would provide, he fouls his planetary nest with constant civil war.
“I mulled this idea for some time.
I thought wistfully of how different mankind’s development might have been had he been compelled to share his planet with some equally intelligent species, say a mechanically-minded sea dweller. I considered how, when great natural catastrophes occur, such as fires and floods and earthquakes and plagues, men temporarily quit squabbling and work hand in hand — rich and poor, friend and enemy alike. Unfortunately such co-operation only lasts until man once more asserts his mastery over his environment. It does not provide a constant sobering threat. And then… I had an inspiration.”
Mr. Whitlow’s gaze swept the black-shelled forms — a jumble of satiny crescent highlights ringing the sphere of light enveloping him. Similarly his mind swept their cryptically armored thoughts.
“I remembered an incident from my childhood. A radio broadcast— we make use of high velocity vibrations to transmit sound — had given an impishly realistic fictional report of an invasion of Earth by beings from Mars, beings of that evil and destructive nature which, as you say, we tend to attribute to alien life. Many believed the report. There were brief scares and panics. It occurred to me how, at the first breath of an actual invasion of that sort, warring peoples would forget their differences and join staunchly together to meet the invader. They would realize that the things they were fighting about were really trifling matters, phantoms of moodiness and fear. Their sense of perspective would be restored. They . would see that the all-important fact was that they were men alike, facing a common enemy, and they would rise magnificently to the challenge. Ah my friends, when that vision occurred to me, of warring mankind at one stroke united, and united forever, I stood trembling and speechless. I—”
Even on Mars, emotion choked him.
“Very interesting,” thought the Senior Coleopteroid blandly, “But wouldn’t the method you propose be a contradiction of that higher morality to which I can perceive you subscribe?”
The pacifist bowed his head. “My friend, you are quite right — in the large and ultimate sense. And let me assure you” — the fire crept back into, his hoarse voice — “that when that day comes, when the question of interplanetary relations arises, I will be in the vanguard of the inter-specieists, demanding full equality for coleopteroid and man alike. But” — his feverish eyes peered up again through the hair that had once more fallen across his forehead — “that is a matter for the future. The immediate question is: How to stop war on Earth. As I said before, your invasion need only be a token one, and of course the more bloodless, the better. It would only take one taste of an outside menace, one convincing proof that he has equals and even superiors in the cosmos, to restore man’s normalcy of outlook, to weld him into a mutually-protective brotherhood, to establish peace forever!”
He threw his hands wide and his head back. His hair flipped into its proper place, but his tie popped out again.
“Mr. Whitlow,” thought the Chief, with a cold sardonic merriment, “if you have any notion that we are going to invade another planet for the sake of improving the psychology of its inhabitants, disabuse yourself of it at once. Earthlings mean nothing to us. Their rise is such a recent matter that we hardly had taken note of it until you called it to our attention. Let them go on warring, if they want to. Let them kill themselves off. It is no concern of ours.”
Whitlow blinked. “Why—” he started angrily. Then he caught himself. “But I wasn’t asking you to do it for humanitarian reasons. I pointed out that there would be loot—”
“I very much doubt if your Earthlings have anything that would tempt us.”
Whitlow almost backed off his boulder. He started to splutter something, but again abruptly changed his tack. There was a flicker of shrewdness in his expression. “Is it possible you’re holding back because you’re afraid the Venusian molluscoids will attack you if you violate the perpetual truce by making a foray against an other planet?”
“By no means,” thought the Chief harshly, revealing for the first time a certain haughtiness and racial pride bred of dry eons of tradition. “As I told you before, the molluscoids are a distinctly inferior race. Mere waterlings. We have seen nothing of them for ages. For all we know they’ve died out. Certainly we wouldn’t be bound by any outworn agreements with them, it there were a sound and profitable reason for breaking them. And we are in no sense — no sense whatever — afraid of them.”
Whitlow's thoughts fumbled confusedly, his spatulate-fingered hands making unconsciously appropriate gestures. Driven back to his former argument, he faltered lamely. “But surely then there must be some loot that would make it worth your while to invade Earth. After all, Earth is a planet rich in oxygen and water and minerals and life forms, whereas Mars has to contend with a dearth of all these things.”
“Precisely,” thought the Chief. “And we have developed a style of life that fits in perfectly with that dearth. By harvesting the interplanetary dust in the neighborhood of Mars, and by a judicious use of transmutation and other techniques, we are assured of a sufficient supply of all necessary raw materials. Earth's bloated abundance would be an embarrassment to us, upsetting our system. An increased oxygen supply would force us to learn a new rhythm of breathing to avoid oxygen-drowning, besides making anv invasion of Earth uncomfortable and dangerous. Similar hazards might attend an oversupply of other elements and compounds. And as for Earth’s obnoxiously teeming life forms, none of them would be any use to us on Mars — except for the unlucky chance of one of them finding harborage in our bodies and starting an epidemic.”
Whitlow winced. Whether he knew it or not, his planetary vanity had been touched. “But you’re overlooking the most important things,” he argued, “the products of man’s industry and ingenuity. He has changed the face of his planet much more fully than you have yours. He has covered it with roads. He does not huddle savagely in the open as you do. He has built vast cities. He has constructed all manner of vehicles. Surely among such a wealth of things you would find many to covet.”
“Most unlikely,” retorted the Chief. “I cannot see envisaged in your mind any that would awaken even our passing interest. We are adapted to our environment. We have no need of garments and housing and all the other artificialities which your ill-adjusted Earthlings require. Our mastery of our planet is greater than yours, but we do not advertise it so obtrusively. From your picture I can see that your Earthlings are given to a worship of bigness and a crude type of exhibitionism.”
“But then there are our machines,” Whitlow insisted, seething inwardly, plucking at his collar. “Machines of tremendous complexity, for every purpose. Machines that would be as useful to another species as to us.”
“Yes, I can imagine them,” commented the Chief cuttingly. “Huge, clumsy, jumbles of wheels and levers, wires and grids. In any case, ours are better.”
He shot a swift question to the Senior. “Is his anger making his mind any more vulnerable?”
“Not yet.”
Whitlow made one last effort, with great difficulty holding his indignation in check. “Besides all that, there’s our art. Cultural treasures of incalculable value. The work of a species more richly creative than your own. Books, music, paintings, sculpture. Surely—”
“Mr. Whitlow, you are becoming ridiculous,” said the Chief. “Art is meaningless apart from its cultural environment. What interest could we be expected to take in the fumbling self-expression of an immature species? Moreover, none of the art forms you mention would be adapted to our style of perception, save sculpture — and in that field our efforts are incomparably superior, since we have a direct consciousness of solidity. Your mind is only a shadow-mind, limited to flimsy two-dimensional patterns.”
Whitlow drew himself up and folded his arms across his chest. “Very well!” he grated out. “I see I cannot persuade you. “But” — he shook his finger at the Chief — “let me tell you something! You’re contemptuous of man. You call him crude and childish. You pour scorn on his industry, his science, his art. You refuse to help him in his need. You think you can afford to disregard him. All right. Go ahead. That's my advice to you. Go ahead - and see what happens!” A vindictive light grew in his eyes. “I know my fellow man. From years of study I know him. War has made him a tyrant and exploiter. He has enslaved the beasts of field and forest. He has enslaved his own kind, when he could, and when he couldn’t he has bound them with the subtler chains of economic necessity and the awe of prestige.
He's wrong-headed, brutal, a tool of his baser impulses — and also he’s clever, doggedly persistent, driven by a boundless ambition! He already has atomic power and rocket transport. In a few decades he’ll have spaceships and subatomic weapons. Go ahead and wait! Constant warfare will cause him to develop those weapons to undreamed of heights of efficient destructiveness. Wait for that too! Wait until he arrives on Mars in force. Wait until he makes your acquaintance and realizes what marvelous workers you’d be with your armored adaptability to all sorts of environments. Wait until he picks a quarrel with you and defeats you and enslaves you and ships you off, packed in evil-smelling hulls, to labor in Earth’s mines and on her ocean bottoms, in her stratosphere and on the planetoids that man will be desirous of exploiting. Yes. go ahead and wait!”
Whitlow broke off, his chest heaving. For a moment he was conscious only of his vicious satisfaction at having told off these exasperating beetle-creatures. Then he looked around.
The coleopteroids had drawn in. The forms of the foremost were defined with a hatefully spiderish distinctness, almost invading his sphere of light. Similarly their thoughts had drawn in, to form a menacing wall blacker than the encircling Martian night. Gone were the supercilious amusement and dispassionate withdrawal that had so irked him. Incredulously he realized that he had somehow broken through their armor and touched them on a vulnerable spot.
He caught one rapid thought, from the Senior to the Chief: “And if the rest of them are anything like this one, they’ll behave just as he says. It is an added confirmation.”
He looked slowly around, his hair-curtained forehead bent forward, searching for a clue to the coleopteroids’ sudden change in attitude. His baffled gaze ended on the Chief.
“We’ve changed our minds, Mr. Whitlow,” the Chief volunteered grimly. “I told you at the beginning that we never hesitate about undertaking projects when given a sound and sufficient reason. What your silly arguments about humanitarianism and loot failed to provide, your recent outburst has furnished us. It is as you say. The Earthlings will eventually attack us, and with some hope of success, if we wait. So, logically we must take preventive action, the sooner the better. We will reconnoiter Earth, and if conditions there are as you assert, we will invade her.”
From the depths of a confused despondency Whitlow was in an instant catapulted to the heights of feverish joy. His fanatical face beamed. His lanky frame seemed to expand. His hair flipped back.
“Marvelous!” he chortled, and then rattled on excitedly, “Of course, I’ll do everything I can to help. I’ll provide transport—”
“That will not be necessary,” the Chief interrupted flatly. “We have no more trust in your larger powers than you have yourself. We have our own spaceships, quite adequate to any undertaking. We do not make an ostentatious display of them, any more than we make a display of the other mechanical aspects of our culture. We do not use them, as your Earthlings would, to go purposely skittering about. Nevertheless, we have them, stored away in the event of need.”
But not even this contemptuous rebuff could spoil Whitlow’s exultation. His face was radiant. Half-formed tears made him blink his hectic eyes. His Adam’s apple bobbed chokingly.
“Ah my friends… my good, good friends! If only I could express to you… what this moment means to me! If I could only tell you how happy I am when I envisage the greater moment that is coming! When men will look up from their trenches and foxholes, from their bombers and fighters, from their observation posts and headquarters, from their factories and homes, to see this new menace in the skies. When all their petty differences of opinion will drop away from them like a soiled and tattered garment. When they will cut the barbed-wire entanglements of an illusory hate, and join together, hand in hand, true brothers at last, to meet the common foe. When, in the accomplishment of a common task, they will at last achieve perfect and enduring peace!”
He paused for breath. His glazed eyes were lovingly fixed on the blue star of Earth, now just topping the horizon.
“Yes,” faintly came the Chief’s dry thought. “To one of your emotional temperament, it will probably be a very satisfying and touching scene — for a little while.”
Whitlow glanced down blankly. It was as if the Chief’s last thought had lightly scratched him — a feathery flick from a huge poisoned claw. He did not understand it, but he was conscious of upwelling fear.
“What—” he faltered. “What… do you mean?”
“I mean,” thought the Chief, “that in our invasion of Earth it probably won’t be necessary for us to use the divide-and-rule tactics that would normally be indicated in such a case — you know, joining with one faction on Earth to help defeat the other—warring beings never care who their allies are — and then fomenting further disunities, and so on. No, with our superiority in armament, we can probably do a straight cleanup job and avoid bothersome machinations. So you'll probably have that glimpse of Earthlings united that you set so much store by.”
Whitlow stared at him from a face white with dawning horror. He licked his lips. “What did you mean by — ‘for a little while’?” he whispered huskily. “What did you mean by ‘glimpse’?”
“Surely that should be obvious to you. Mr. Whitlow,” replied the Chief with offensive good humor. “You don’t for one minute suppose we’d make some footling little invasion and, after overawing the Earthlings, retire? That would be the one way to absolutely assure their eventual counterinvasion of Mars. Indeed, it would probably hasten it — and they’d come as already hostile destroyers intent on wiping out a menace. No, Mr. Whitlow, when we invade Earth, it will be to protcct ourselves from a potential future danger. Our purpose will be total and complete extermination, accomplished as swiftly and efficiently as possible. Our present military superiority makes our success certain.”
Whitlow goggled at the Chief blankly, like a dirty and somewhat yellowed plaster statue of himself. He opened his mouth — and shut it without saying anything.
“You never believed, did you, Mr. Whitlow,” continued the Chief kindly, “that we’d ever do anything for your sake? Or for anyone’s — except us coleoptcroids?” Whitlow stared at the horrible, black, eight-legged eggs crowding ever closer—living embodiments of the poisonous blackness of their planet.
All he could think to mumble was: “But… but I thought you said… it was a misconception to think of alien beings as evil monsters intent only on ravaging… and destroying—”
“Perhaps I did, Mr. Whitlow. Perhaps I did,” was the Chief’s only reply.
In that instant Mr. Whitlow realized what an alien being really was.
As in a suffocating nightmare, he watched the coleopteroids edge closer. He heard the Chief’s contemptuously unguarded aside to the Senior, “Haven’t you got hold of his mind yet?” and the Senior’s “No,” and the Chief’s swift order to the others.
Black eggs invaded his light-sphere, cruel armored claws opening to grab — those were Mr. Whitlow’s last impressions of Mars.
Instants later — for the device provided him with instantaneous transportation across any spatial expanse — Mr. Whitlow found himself inside a bubble that miraculously maintained normal atmospheric pressuren - deep under the tideless Venusian seas. The reverse of a fish in a tank, he peered out at the gently waving luminescent vegetation and the huge mud-girt buildings it half masked. Gleaming ships and tentacled creatures darted about.
The Chief Molluscoid regarded the trespasser on his private gardens with a haughty disfavor that even surprise could not shake.
“What are you?” he thought coldly.
“I… I’ve come to inform you of a threatened breach in an agelong truce.”
Five eyes on longish stalks regarded him with a coldness equal to that of the repeated thought: “But what are you?”
A sudden surge of woeful honesty compelled Mr. Whitlow to reply, “I suppose… I suppose you’d call me a warmonger.”