We were halfway across when the sentry cried: "Halte-là!" and then: "Mon dieu!" He fired his musket.
We swept across the field without caring for the vegetables. The shot brought out the Activists, rubbing the sleep out of their eyes. At the sight of us they gave back with cries of horror.
As soon as we got inside the village, each of us that had a bag slashed it open with his knife. Out came a big battered vespoid-nest and a swarm of furious insects. As the Activists boiled out with weapons, the vespoids set upon them. They attacked us, too, but our clothes kept out all but a few stings, whereas with the Activists they had a clear field.
In a few seconds the Activists and their captives were a screaming mob running for the woods and the sea, jumping and slapping.
Half an hour later we had gathered up their weapons and fished Henri Vaud out of Taylor Sea. The vespoids had scattered. The Activists, seeing that we had won this throw, straggled back. Adrienne had one eye nearly shut from a sting on the cheek but was still the loveliest thing I'd ever seen. She looked at our masked faces.
"Is one of you Monsieur Fay?" she asked.
"I am," I said, taking off my disguise.
She grabbed me again as she had done in the Cimbrian camp. "I knew you'd come," she said at last.
"Ahem," said Vaud. "What do you do now, miscreant?"
"Me?" said I, looking innocent. "Why, nothing. Your people have a perfect democracy; let them settle their differences in a civilized manner. My party will use the guns only to keep order. Let's go for a walk, Adrienne."
On the beach I said: "I must go back to the mainland at once, my little."
"Go? But you can't — I mean to say, why?"
"The tender takes off this afternoon, and I must be there if I don't want to spend the next ten or fifteen years — terran years, that is — on Turania."
"Couldn't we persuade you to stay? The Cimbrians still menace us."
"No, my dear. I have my own business. But I shall certainly miss you." I gave a histrionic sigh. "If I had a girl like you on Earth — but of course there aren't any."
"What's so difficult about that?"
For a couple of seconds I dared not breathe for fear of spoiling something. "Why — uh — hey, you don't mean you'd marry me and go too, do you?"
"Certainly, stupid, if properly demanded. But didn't you tell me that in your civilization, the man offers the hand?"
Let us be drawing a veil over the next minute. Some things are sacred even to newspaper correspondents. Then I said:
"Are you sure you want to leave? This has been your home since you were a small child; your parents are here ..."
She frowned. "Gerald my adored, first, is it well heard that I have accepted you for love and not for material advantages? Otherwise I'll take it back."
"D'accord."
"Well then, to tell the truth, this rustic paradise bores me to distraction. Our chiefs always tell us how ideal it is to live simply in a little village. Me, I think I prefer the big wicked cities, where something happens. I even want to learn to wear clothes. Perhaps I am one of those lascivious degenerates of whom Vaud has warned us."
"Well, let's degenerate together, then. I too had my fill of the simple life as a kid of Arizona." I kissed her and led her back to Elysée.
Politics raged in the village. At least five people were making speeches. One demanded Vaud's impeachment; another called for a new constitutional convention; a third urged that they make him dictator.
Adrienne went to bid her parents farewell while I gathered the borrowed ship's stores, which I loaded into a canoe. Without asking permission, we shoved off and paddled eastward. A violent storm caught up with us, but we hardly noticed.
Turania's surprises weren't over. The rain stopped before we reached the mainland. When it lifted, a swarm of figures appeared coming down to the beach. As I got closer, I saw both men and Cimbrians. A couple of the latter carried modern-looking guns, but the rest seemed unarmed.
I wondered what had happened now: if the Cimbrians had come back despite their beating, or what. The village had lain undefended save for a few wounded men. I swung the canoe around to be ready to flee.
Czeslaw Kubala bellowed: "Gerry Fay! Come on in! It's all right!"
We came in. These Cimbrians looked more civilized" than the others. Although, like the others, they grew their own fur coats, they wore broad belts with shiny gadgets on them.
Kubala wrung my hand and said: "Is this young lady going with us?"
"Yes. Do you remember Mademoiselle Herz, once the mail-girl of Liberté but now my fiancée?"
"Enchanted! Congratulations and felicitations. I expect a few more fugitives from paradise before we lift." Kubala indicated the shiniest Cimbrian. "Gerry, this is Captain — uh — Kiatiksu Satsitu, or that's how it comes out in Intermundos. He's skipper of the other ship whose tender you see."
"What other tender?" I said.
Kubala jerked his thumb. I saw a second steel nose above the trees. Kubala said: "Good lord, didn't you hear it come down?"
"My mind was on other things. But what about the Cimbrians?"
"They've got a ship in orbit too. It seems they stopped by for the same reason we did, to see how their colony was coming."
Captain what's-his-name said in Intermundos: "We must apologize to you and to the terran colony, sir, for the harm you have sustained from our colonists. An indemnity shall be paid when this imbroglio is adjusted. We may remove our colony to the other side of the planet, where they will not soon again come in contact with you."
"Thanks," I said. "But why did they attack us?"
"We are a civilized folk, sir. Nothing like this has been allowed on Cimbria for thousands of years.
"Some, however, find our peaceful and orderly life uncongenial. A group of these restless persons gained permission to settle here, where they could live a life the opposite of ours: irregular, carefree, adventurous, even quarrelsome. We did not know they would come into conflict with your colony."
I asked: "Why are they armed with flintlocks? Modern guns I could understand, or being unarmed like our colonists I could understand, but why these archaic, obsolete weapons?"
'That was the doing of the Interplanetary Conservation Commission. The colonists wanted modern weapons; the Committee wanted to deny them all firearms lest they deplete the fauna. So this was a compromise." The Cimbrian paused. "Our people's aim was to set up a — what is that word which earthmen use for an ideal society?"
"A Utopia?"
"Thank you, sir; that is it. A Utopia."
The End
Book information
A GUN FOR
DINOSAUR
AND
OTHER
IMAGINATIVE
TALES
by L. Sprague de Camp
CURTIS BOOKS
MODERN LITERARY EDITIONS PUBLISHING COMPANY
NEW YORK, N.Y.
Copyright © 1963 by L. Sprague de Camp
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-7693
Published by arrangement with Doubleday & Company, Inc.
All of the characters in this book (except for figures from ancient history) are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Dedication: To Conway and Helen Zirkle