“Do you feel ready to report?” Daimonax asked.

  “Yes, I ordered the data in my head on the way here.”

  Daimonax switched on a recorder, spoke a few cataloguing words and said, “Proceed.”

  Iason flattered himself that his statement was well arranged: clear, frank and full. But as he spoke, against his will experience came back to him, not in the brain but in the guts. He saw waves sparkle on that greatest of the Pentalimne; he walked the halls of Ernvik castle with eager and wondering young Leif; he faced an Ottar become beast; he stole from the keep and overpowered a guard and by-passed the controls of a car with shaking fingers; he fled down an empty road and stumbled through an empty forest; Bela spat and his triumph was suddenly ashen. At the end, he could not refrain:

  “Why wasn’t I informed? I’d have taken care. But they said this was a free and healthy folk, before marriage anyway. How could I know?”

  “An oversight,” Daimonax agreed. “But we haven’t been in this business so long that we don’t still tend to take too much for granted.”

  “Why are we here? What have we to learn from these barbarians? With infinity to explore, why are we wasting ourselves on the second most ghastly world we’ve found?”

  Daimonax turned off the recorder. For a time there was silence between the men. Wheels trundled outside, laughter and a snatch of song drifted through the window, the ocean blazed under a low sun.

  “You do not know?” Daimonax asked at last, softly.

  “Well…scientific interest, of course—” Iason swallowed. “I’m sorry. The Institute works for sound reasons. In the American history we’re observing ways that man can go wrong. I suppose here also.”

  Daimonax shook his head. “No.”

  “What?”

  “We are learning something far too precious to give up,” Daimonax said. “The lesson is humbling, but our smug Eutopia will be the better for some humility. You weren’t aware of it, because to date we haven’t sufficient hard facts to publish any conclusions. And then, you are new in the profession, and your first assignment was elsewhen. But you see, we have excellent reason to believe that Westfall is also the Good Land.”

  “Impossible,” Iason whispered.

  Daimonax smiled and took a sip of wine. “Think,” he said. “What does man require? First, the biological necessities, food, shelter, medicine, sex, a healthful and reasonably safe environment in which to raise his children. Second, the special human need to strive, learn, create. Well, don’t they have these things here?”

  “One could say the same for any Stone Age tribe. You can’t equate contentment with happiness.”

  “Of course not. And if anything, is not ordered, unified, planned Eutopia the country of the cows? We have ended every conflict, to the very conflict of man with his own soul; we have mastered the planets; the stars are too distant; were the God not so good as to make possible the parachronion, what would be left for us?”

  “Do you mean—” Iason groped after words. He reminded himself that it was not sane to take umbrage at any mere statement, however outrageous. “Without fighting, clannishness, superstition, ritual and taboo…man has nothing?”

  “More or less that. Society must have structure and meaning. But nature does not dictate what structure or what meaning. Our rationalism is a non-rational choice. Our leashing of the purely animal within us is simply another taboo. We may love as we please, but not hate as we please. So are we more free than men in Westfall?”

  “But surely some cultures are better than others!”

  “I do not deny that,” Daimonax said. “I only point out that each has its price. For what we enjoy at home, we pay dearly. We do not allow ourselves a single unthinking, merely felt impulse. By excluding danger and hardship, by eliminating distinctions between men, we leave no hopes of victory. Worst, perhaps, is this: that we have become pure individuals. We belong to no one. Our sole obligation is negative, not to compel any other individual. The state—an engineered organization, a faceless undemanding mechanism—takes care of each need and each hurt. Where is loyalty unto death? Where is the intimacy of an entire shared lifetime? We play at ceremonies, but because we know they are arbitrary gestures, what is their value? Because we have made our world one, where are color and contrast, where is pride in being peculiarly ourselves?

  “Now these Westfall people, with all their faults, do know who they are, what they are, what they belong to and what belongs to them. Tradition is not buried in books but is part of life; and so their dead remain with them in loving memory. Their problems are real; hence their successes are real. They believe in their rites. The family, the kingdom, the race is something to live and die for. They use their brains less, perhaps—though even that I am not certain of—but they use nerves, glands, muscles more. So they know an aspect of being human which our careful world has denied itself.

  “If they have kept this while creating science and machine technology, should we not try to learn from them?”

  Iason had no answer.

  Eventually Daimonax said he might as well return to Eutopia. After a vacation, he could be reassigned to some history he might find more congenial. They parted in friendly wise.

  The parachronion hummed. Energies pulsed between the universes. The gate opened and Iason stepped through.

  He entered a glazed colonnade. White Neathenai swept in grace and serenity down to the water. The man who received him was a philosopher. Decent tunic and sandals hung ready to be donned. From somewhere resounded a lyre.

  Joy trembled in Iason. Leif Ottarsson fell out of memory. He had only been tempted in his loneliness by a chance resemblance to his beloved. Now he was home. And Niki waited for him, Nikias Demostheneou, most beautiful and enchanting of boys.

  AFTERWORD TO EUTOPIA

  Readers ought to know that writers are not responsible for the opinions and behavior of their characters. But many people don’t. In consequence, I, for instance, have been called a fascist to my face. Doubtless the present story will get me accused of worse. And I only wanted to spin a yarn!

  Well, perhaps a bit more. That can’t be helped. Everybody views the world from his particular philosophical platform. Hence any writer who tries to report what he sees is, inevitably, propagandizing. But as a rule, the propaganda lies below the surface. This is twice true of science fiction, which begins by transmuting reality to frank unreality.

  So what have I been advocating here? Not any particular form of society. On the contrary, humankind seems to me so splendidly and ironically variable that there can be no perfect social order. I do suspect that few people are biologically adapted to civilization; consider its repeated collapses. This idea could be wrong, of course. Even if true, it may just be another factor which our planning should take into account. But the mutability of man is hardly open to question.

  Thus each arrangement he makes will have its flaws, which in the end bring it to ruin; but each will also have its virtues. I myself don’t think here-and-now is such a bad place to live. But others might. In fact, others do. At the same time, we cannot deny that some ways of life are, on balance, evil. The worst and most dangerous are those which cannot tolerate anything different from themselves.

  So in an age of conflict we need a clear understanding of our own values—and the enemy’s. Likewise we have to see with equal clarity the drawbacks of both cultures. This is less a moral than a strategic imperative. Only on such a basis can we know what we ought to do and what is possible for us to do.

  For we are not caught in a meaningless nightmare. We are inhabiting a real world where events have understandable causes and causes have effects. We were never given any sacred mission, and it would be fatal to believe otherwise. We do, though, have the right of self-preservation. Let us know what it is we want to preserve. Then common sense and old-fashioned guts will probably get us through.

  This is rather a heavy sermon to load on a story which was, after all, meant as entertainment. The point was made far better by Robinson Jeffers:

  “Long live freedom and damn the ideologies.”

  (Editor’s note: Normally I prefer to let the stories speak for themselves. There are exceptions to this rule. I was going to comment on this story in my Editor’s Introduction but I think that Poul Anderson expressed my thoughts in a manner far superior to what I could do.)

  HORSE TRADER

  B. C. 250: The aeolipile of Hero spun in the temple at Alexandria, hissing softly to itself and blowing jets of steam into the fire-lit dimness. It was only for display, an embryonic turbine which would develop no further for lack of the knowledge that it could be put to work. Fifty light-years away, on the planet he called Ruhannoc, Zerwil the Wise had made an ingenious contraption which could have evolved into a pump or a locomotive engine; but it never did, because it had not occurred to anyone that there was any other source of energy than living muscles.

  A. D. 1495: Leonardo da Vinci regarded his airplane model wistfully, and then laid it aside. It could have flown; Man could have risen even as the birds, save that there was no power plant available. He did not know that there was a planet less than nine light-years away on which they were building efficient internal-combustion engines, and that for several reasons—among them the fact that aerial life had never evolved there—they did not think of using this power to give themselves wings.

  A. D. 1942: The Allied nations were searching with an intensity approaching desperation for a means of detecting the enemy submarines whose wolf packs were harrowing their convoys and threatening to snap the thin Atlantic lifeline. Supersonics looked promising, but that was a little-known field in which researchers had to start from the very bottom. Not far away, as Galactic distances go, the people of Sumanor on the planet they called Urish could have told the Allied councilors everything about supersonics. It would have been a fair exchange, for on Urish they had never heard of submarines.

  A.D. 2275: The rangy blond man with the somewhat improbable name of Auchinleck Welcome stepped off the sidewalk and strode across the springy, semi-living warmth of the floor toward the arched gateway. Suitably dignified flame-letters danced above it to spell out:

  BUREAU OF INTERCULTURAL EXCHANGE

  Technical Division

  But some light-hearted soul had painted a horse on the door and Welcome, not one to stand on dignity, had allowed it to remain. His office was known from Mercury to Minerva as the Horse Traders. He was willing to agree that the description was apt.

  The door opened for him and he walked through the outer office, nodding to the clerks and secretaries at the computers, tapefiles, dictoscribes, and the rest of the complex office paraphernalia. A few bars of Waltzing Matilda whistled between his teeth as he entered the inner suite. The receptionist smiled at his greeting and he went by her and through the office of his private secretary, Christine Ernenek.

  “’Morning,” he said, pausing. Despite all the years he had spent in space, there was still a hint of Australian twang in his speech. “How’s life?”

  “Just fine, Auch,” the Greenlander answered. “I think you have a busy day lined up.”

  “Who’s first?”

  She glanced at her memotab.

  “The little duck from Arcturus. Robotics, you know. Have you seen him yet?”

  “No, too busy. He’ll have been going through the usual processing first, anyway.” Welcome sighed. “When will Health get it through their heads that Man hasn’t caught an extraterrestrial disease yet?”

  “There’s always the first time, Auch. And then the diplomats and so on have to see him. He is a sort of ambassador, after all.”

  “I know, I know.” Welcome nodded impatiently and fumbled out a battered corncob pipe and began stuffing it. Christine had been in the office longer than he; he’d only been given the job a month ago, because of his engineering work on Freyja. A flicker of eagerness kindled in him. “This robotics stuff may turn out to be one of our biggest hauls.”

  “Maybe so.” Christine giggled. “He’s cute, that duck.” Glancing at the tab again: “Then, of course, you’re still negotiating with Vega, Sirius and Procyon. Oh, yes, and a Centaurian.”

  “What?” Welcome almost dropped his pipe.

  “A Centaurian. Alpha A III, from the clan of Brogu, continent of Almerik, name of Helmung. He wants spaceships and atomic energy in exchange for witchcraft.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “The main office said for you to see him, anyway. He seems to have special abilities—Well, you’ll find out.” Christine grinned with friendly malice. “Good luck.”

  Welcome shrugged and went on into his own office. You had to take the bad with the good, he supposed. There had been the tentacled monster from Van Maanen’s Star who had grown very indignant on learning that Earth didn’t care to trade the null-null drive for a system of astrology which, taking Galactic drift into account, was guaranteed infallible. But against that you had to balance the Zarbadian selective-killing process; with a little more work, that device should be able to annihilate any disease germ just by putting the patient under a force generator. And at the present moment, the envoys from Procyon and Vega—possibly the one from Arcturus, too—were carrying portfolios which meant revolutionary technological advances for Earth.

  When it took more than four years objective time to reach even the nearest star—however short the interval was subjectively for those on board the spaceship—the traditional cargoes became valueless. No mineral, no material treasure whatever, was worth the cost of such hauling. Nor was there any special reason these days for humans to emigrate. But the intangibles of knowledge—that was another matter. You could well afford to spend a few megacredits and decades, if it meant learning a technology your race might not otherwise master for a thousand years.

  And Earth had the only intercultural clearing house in the Galaxy. They still have to come to us, even if we are the ones who haul them here and back. I just park myself and wait.

  Welcome sat down, feeling the sensuous flow of the chair as it modeled itself to his angular contours, and let his eyes rove the office. It was a big room, tastefully decorated in the Neoflamboyant style, a broad window opening on the jagged view of Luna beyond the dome. It was near dawn, there was a glare on the highest peaks shouldering above the horizon, but Earth still dominated a heaven full of stars. He glanced at the planet, thinking of his family in Sydney. They were visiting there. It wasn’t fair to children, keeping them on Luna all the time; they ought to have some sea and open sky.

  Well, work to do.

  Arcturus—Two planets with intelligent natives, of which only one group had more than a primitive technology, Welcome recalled. Those were a friendly race, anxious to please, and the three expeditions there had all returned quite excited about the cybernetic advances of the leading nation. So now the Arcturian ducks had come to swap horses. Welcome decided that he would get some rather low-pressure salesmanship; after all, the Arcturians couldn’t be sure how much humanity already knew, and they were not an aggressive breed.

  Still, when you met a people who weren’t human to begin with, and had a different cultural pattern to boot, you never knew what to expect. That was the reason for the informal basis on which the Horse Traders were allowed to operate, and their chief’s nearly absolute power to drive bargains. But God help him if he made a mistake!

  Christine’s voice came over the intercom, jarring him to full awareness: “The envoy Rappapa of Kwillitch, planet Arcturus V, to see you, Freeman Welcome.” There was a confused noise in the background, and he thought her voice held an uncontrollable laughter.

  “Send him in, please.” Welcome stood up as the door opened. Since notions of courtesy varied fantastically from world to world, he had decided to stick by Terrestrial conventions.

  “HUP-two-three-four! HUP-two-three-four! HUP-two-three-four!”

  Welcome thought briefly and wildly that he must be dreaming. A small regiment of dolls was entering his office.

  No, not dolls—robots, shiny humanoid robots five inches high. They goosestepped on perfect marching order, swinging their arms in unison, accompanied by tanks and helicopters built to scale. Behind them, quacking his shrill commands, was the Arcturian. He was of ostrichlike shape, some four feet tall, blue-feathered and crested; instead of wings, he had skinny four-fingered arms carrying a large box, and his head was big and round, pop-eyed, with a flexible bill.

  “HUP-two-three-four! HUP-two-three-four! Com-pan-ee—HALT! Ri-i-ight-FACE! Present—ARMS!”

  The toy soldiers halted, wheeled, and snapped to attention. A helicopter buzzed watchfully over Welcome’s head. It was about the size of a pigeon.

  “How do you do, how do you do, noble sir?” The Arcturian bowed, touching the floor with his beak. “I trust that you in splendid health find yourself?”

  “Yes,” said Welcome faintly. “Excuse me while I pick up my jaw.”

  “If I your excellency’s magnificent jaw have caused to fall, it is to be of the most apologetic,” said the Arcturian unhappily.

  “Never mind,” said Welcome. “Please sit down, Freeman Rappapa. If you wish to,” he added hastily; he couldn’t remember whether this particular species sat or not.

  “If you will it of indifference find, I will stand in the luminous presence of your excellency,” said Rappapa. “Among my greetings-to-you-conveying folk, only nesting females sit.”

  “I—well, do you smoke?” Welcome extended a box of cigars.

  “You are to be magnificently thanked,” said Rappapa, accepting one. “Whichuwaki!” One of the helicopters swooped down and shot out a flame to light it for him.

  Welcome seated himself. “I take it those are robots.”

  “Of a most humble sort, for demonstration purposes alone,” said Rappapa. “They are powered by radiation from this control box here, as your excellency is undoubtedly aware. The brain circuits are also herein contained. Each machine has its individual brain, controlling the external body, or any number of brains can be joined in series to produce higher effectiveness.”