“Then she could have been made to love anyone,” Simon said slowly.
“Could have been brought to love anyone,” Mr. Tate corrected.
“Oh, lord, how did she get into this horrible work?” Simon asked.
“She came in and signed a contract in the usual way,” Tate said. “It pays very well. And at the termination of the lease, we return her original personality—untouched! But why do you call the work horrible? There’s nothing reprehensible about love.”
“It wasn’t love!” Simon cried.
“But it was! The genuine article! Unbiased scientific firms have made qualitative tests of it, in comparison with the natural thing. In every case, our love tested out to more depth, passion, fervor, and scope.”
Simon shut his eyes tightly, opened them and said, “Listen to me. I don’t care about your scientific tests. I love her, she loves me, that’s all that counts. Let me speak to her! I want to marry her!”
Mr. Tate wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Come, come, man! You wouldn’t want to marry a girl like that! But if it’s marriage you’re after, we deal in that too. I can arrange an idyllic and nearly spontaneous love-match for you with a guaranteed government-inspected virgin—”
“No! I love Penny! At least let me speak to her!”
“That will be quite impossible,” Mr. Tate said.
“Why?”
Mr. Tate pushed a button on his desk. “Why do you think? We’ve wiped out the previous indoctrination. Penny is now in love with someone else.”
And then Simon understood. He had realized that even now Penny was looking at another man with that passion he had known, feeling for another man that complete and bottomless love that unbiased scientific firms had shown to be so much greater than the old-fashioned, commercially unfeasible natural selection, and that upon that same dark sea-beach mentioned in the advertising brochure—
He lunged for Tate’s throat. Two attendants, who had entered the office a few moments earlier, caught him and led him to the door.
“Remember!” Tate called. “This in no way invalidates your own experience.”
Hellishly enough, Simon knew that what Tate said was true.
And then he found himself on the street.
At first, all he desired was to escape from Earth, where the commercial impracticalities were more than a normal man could afford. He walked very quickly, and his Penny walked beside him, her face glorified with love for him, and him, and him, and you, and you.
And of course he came to the shooting gallery.
“Try your luck?” the manager asked.
“Set ’em up,” said Alfred Simon.
ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE
There are regulations to govern the conduct of First Contact spaceships, rules drawn up in desperation and followed in despair, for what rule can predict the effect of any action upon the mentality of an alien people?
Jan Maarten was gloomily pondering this as he came into the atmosphere of Durell IV. He was a big, middle-aged man with thin ash-blond hair and a round worried face. Long ago, he had concluded that almost any rule was better than none. Therefore he followed his meticulously, but with an ever-present sense of uncertainty and human fallibility.
He circled the planet, low enough for observation, but not too low, since he didn’t want to frighten the inhabitants. He noted the signs of a primitive-pastoral civilization and tried to remember everything he had learned in Volume 4, Projected Techniques for First Contact on So-called Primitive-pastoral Worlds, published by the Department of Alien Psychology. Then he brought the ship down on a rocky, grass-covered plain, near a typical medium-sized village, but not too near, using the Silent Sam landing technique.
“Prettily done,” commented Croswell, his assistant, who was too young to be bothered by uncertainties.
Chedka, the Eborian linguist, said nothing. He was sleeping, as usual.
Maarten grunted something and went to the rear of the ship to run his tests. Croswell took up his post at the viewport.
“Here they come,” Croswell reported half an hour later. “About a dozen of them, definitely humanoidal.” Upon closer inspection, he saw that the natives of Durell were flabby, dead-white in coloration, and deadpan in expression. Croswell hesitated, then added, “They’re not too handsome.”
“What are they doing?” Maarten asked.
“Just looking us over,” Croswell said. He was a slender young man with an unusually large and lustrous mustache which he had grown on the long journey out from Terra. He stroked it with the pride of a man who has been able to raise a really good mustache.
“They’re about twenty yards from the ship now,” Croswell reported. He leaned forward, flattening his nose ludicrously against the port, which was constructed of one-way glass.
Croswell could look out, but no one could look in. The Department of Alien Psychology had ordered the change last year, after a Department ship had botched a first contact on Carella II. The Carellans had stared into the ship, become alarmed at something within, and fled. The Department still didn’t know what had alarmed them, for a second contact had never been successfully established.
That mistake would never happen again.
“What now?” Maarten called.
“One of them’s coming forward alone. Chief, perhaps. Or sacrificial offering.”
“What is he wearing?”
“He has on a—a sort of—will you kindly come here and look for yourself?”
Maarten, at his instrument bank, had been assembling a sketchy picture of Durell. The planet had a breathable atmosphere, an equitable climate, and gravity comparable to that of Earth. It had valuable deposits of radioactives and rare metals. Best of all, it tested free of the virulent microorganisms and poisonous vapors which tended to make a Contacter’s life feverishly short.
Durell was going to be a valuable neighbor to Earth, provided the natives were friendly—and the Contacters skillful.
Maarten walked to the viewport and studied the natives. “They are wearing pastel clothing. We shall wear pastel clothing.”
“Check,” said Croswell.
“They are unarmed. We shall go unarmed.”
“Roger.”
“They are wearing sandals. We shall wear sandals as well.”
“To hear is to obey.”
“I notice they have no facial hair,” Maarten said, with the barest hint of a smile. “I’m sorry, Ed, but that mustache—”
“Not my mustache!” Croswell yelped, quickly putting a protective hand over it.
“I’m afraid so.”
“But, Jan, I’ve been six months raising it!”
“It has to go. That should be obvious.”
“I don’t see why,” Croswell said indignantly.
“Because first impressions are vital. When an unfavorable first impression has been made, subsequent contacts become difficult, sometimes impossible. Since we know nothing about these people, conformity is our safest course. We try to look like them, dress in colors that are pleasing, or at least acceptable to them, copy their gestures, interact within their framework of acceptance in every way—”
“All right, all right,” Croswell said. “I suppose I can grow another on the way back.”
They looked at each other; then both began laughing. Croswell had lost three mustaches in this manner.
While Croswell shaved, Maarten stirred their linguist into wakefulness. Chedka was a lemur-like humanoid from Eboria IV, one of the few planets where Earth maintained successful relations. The Eborians were natural linguists, aided by the kind of associative ability found in nuisances who supply words in conversation—only the Eborians were always right. They had wandered over a considerable portion of the Galaxy in their time and might have attained quite a place in it were it not that they needed twenty hours sleep out of twenty-four.