The letters spoke of wages and salaries a hundred times the wage and salary that was paid on Earth, of magnificent business opportunities, of the Kimonian culture and the Kimonians themselves, but in no detail, of culture or of business or any other factor, were the letters too specific.
And perhaps the recipients of the letters did not mind too much the lack of specific information, for almost every letter carried with it a sheaf of notes, all crisp and new, and very very legal, backed by tons of uranium, bushels of diamonds, stacked bars of gold and other similar knickknacks deposited from time to time beside the desk of the World Bank's president.
It became, in time, the ambition of every family on the Earth to send at least one relative to Kimon, for a relative on Kimon virtually spelled an assured and sufficient income for the rest of the clan for life.
Naturally the legend of Kimon grew. Much that was said about it was untrue, of course. Kimon, the letters protested, did not have streets paved with solid gold, since there were no streets. Nor did Kimonian damsels wear gowns of diamond-dust - the damsels of Kimon wore not much of anything.
But to those whose understanding went beyond streets of gold and gowns of diamonds, it was well understood that in Kimon lay possibilities vastly greater than either gold or diamonds. For here was a planet with a culture far in advance of Earth, a people who had schooled themselves or had naturally developed parapsychic powers. On Kimon one could learn the techniques that would revolutionize galactic industry and communications; on Kimon one might discover philosophy that would set mankind overnight on a new and better - and more profitable? - path.
The legend grew, interpreted by each according to his intellect and his way of thought, and grew and grew and grew...
Earth's government was very helpful to those who wished to go to Kimon, for government as well as individuals, could appreciate the opportunities for the revolution of industry and the evolution of human thought. But since there had been no invitation to grant diplomatic recognition, Earth's government sat and waited, scheming, doing all it could to settle as many of its people on Kimon as was possible. But only the best, for even the densest bureaucrat recognized that on Kimon Earth must put its best foot forward.
Why the Kimonians allowed Earth to send its people was a mystery for which there was no answer. But apparently Earth was the only other planet in the galaxy which had been allowed to send its people. The Earthmen and the Kimonians, of course, both were humanoid, but this was not an adequate answer, either, for they were not the only humanoids in the galaxy. For its own comfort, Earth assumed that a certain common understanding, a similar outlook, a certain parallel evolutionary trend - with Earth a bit behind, of course - between Earth and Kimon might account for Kimon's qualified hospitality.
But be that as it may, Kimon was a galactic El Dorado, a never-never land, a planet to get ahead, the place to spend your life, the country at the rainbow's end.
Selden Bishop stood in the parklike area, where the gig had landed him, for Kimon had no spaceports, as it likewise failed in having many other things.
He stood, surrounded by his luggage, and watched the gig drive spaceward to rendezvous with the liner's orbit.
When he could see the gig no longer, he sat down on one of his bags and waited.
The park was faintly Earthlike, but the similarity was only in the abstract, for in each particular there was a subtle difference that said this was an alien planet. The trees were too slim and the flowers just a shade too loud and the grass was off a shade or two from the grass you saw on Earth. The birds, if they were birds, were more lizardlike than the birds of Earth and their feathers were put on wrong and weren't quite the color one associated with plumage. The breeze had a faint perfume upon it that was no perfume of Earth, but an alien odor that smelled like a color looked and Bishop tried to decide, but couldn't, which color it might be.
Sitting on his bag, in the middle of the park, he tried to drum up a little enthusiasm, tried to whistle up some triumph that he finally was on Kimon, but the best that he could achieve was a thankfulness that he'd made it with the twenty still intact.
He would need a little cash to get along on until he could find a job. But, he told himself, he shouldn't have to wait too long before he found a job. The thing, of course, was not to take the first one offered him, but to shop around a little and find the one for which he was best fitted. And that, he knew, might take a little time.
Thinking of it, he wished that he had more than a twenty. He should have allowed himself a bigger margin, but that would have meant something less than the best luggage he could buy and perhaps not enough of it, off-the-rack suits instead of tailored, and all other things accordingly.
It was, he told himself, important that he make the best impression, and sitting there and thinking it over, he couldn't bring himself to regret the money he had spent to make a good impression.
Maybe he should have asked Morley for a loan. Morley would have given him anything he asked and he could have paid it back as soon as he got a job. But he had hated to ask, for to ask, he now admitted, would have detracted from his newfound importance as a man who had been selected to make the trip to Kimon. Everyone, even Morley, looked up to a man who was set to blast for Kimon, and you couldn't go around asking for a loan or for other favors.
He remembered the last visit he had with Morley, and looking back at it now, he saw that while Morley was his friend, that last visit had a flavor, more or less, of a diplomatic job that Morley had to carry out.
Morley had gone far and was going farther in the diplomatic service. He looked like a diplomat and he talked like one and he had a better grasp, old heads at the department said, of Sector Nineteen politics and economics than any of the other younger men. He wore a clipped mustache that had a frankly cultivated look and his hair was always quite in place and his body, when he walked, was like a panther walking.
They had sat in Morley's digs and had been all comfortable and friendly and then Morley had gotten up and paced up and down the room with his panther walk.
"We've been friends for a long, long time," said Morley. "We've been in lots of scrapes together."
And the two of them had smiled, remembering some of the scrapes they had been in together.
"When I heard you were going out to Kimon," Morley said, "I was pleased about it naturally. I'd be pleased at anything that came your way. But I was pleased, as well, for another reason. I told myself here finally was a man who could do a job and find out what we want."
"What do you want?" Bishop had asked and, as he remembered it, he had asked it as if he might be asking whether Morley wanted Scotch or bourbon. Although, come to think of it, he never would have asked that particular question, for all the young men in the Alien Relations section religiously drank Scotch. But, anyhow, he asked it casually, although he sensed that there was nothing casual at all about the situation.
He could smell the scent of cloak and dagger and he caught a sudden glimpse of huge official worry and for an instant he was a little cold and scared.
"There must be some way to crack that planet," Morley had told him, "but we haven't found it yet. So far as the Kimonians are concerned, none of the rest of us, none of the other planets, officially exist. There's not a single planet accorded diplomatic status. On Kimon there is not a single official representative of any other people. They don't seem to trade with anyone, and yet they must trade with someone, for no planet, no culture, can exist in complete self-sufficiency. They must have diplomatic relations somewhere, with someone. There must be some reason, beyond the obvious one that we are an inferior culture, why they do not recognize Earth. For even in the more barbaric days of Earth there was official recognition of many governments and peoples who were cultural inferiors to the recognizing nation."