“Certainly.” Dallman hesitated. “You understand—this means that you must return all of the weapons that you’ve confiscated, not only from the Rirga, but also from the survey ships.”
“We understand,” Fornri said with a smile. “We are a peaceful people. We have no need for weapons.”
For some reason Dallman had expected negotiations to collapse over that point. He paused for a deep breath and said, “Very well. I’ll have the treaty drawn up for signature.”
“May we have copy reproductions for our district archives?” Fornri asked.
Dallman blinked at him; the very word “archive” seemed incongruous on this lush, primitive world, but he resisted the temptation to inquire as to whether the archives were kept in woven-walled huts or hollow trees. “You can have as many copies as you like,” he said. “There is one more thing. In order to draw up the treaty, we’ll need an official name for your world. What do you call it?”
The natives gazed at him blankly. “Official—name? ” Fornri repeated.
“Until now your world has been a set of chart coordinates. It must have a name, and if you don’t name it someone else will and you probably won’t like his choice. The name can be a native word that means ‘world,’ or the name of a legendary hero, or a description—anything you like, really, but it’s wise to make it short and euphonious. What do you want to call it?”
Fornri hesitated. “Perhaps we should discuss this.”
“Certainly. It’s extremely important, not only for the treaty, but for your relations with other worlds. Worlds have names for much the same reason that men have names—to identify them, to describe them, and so on. We can’t even deposit the half million credits for you unless your world has a name with which to identify its account. But one word of caution. Once you choose a name, it will become a matter of record in all sorts of places and virtually impossible to change.”
“I understand.”
“As soon as you decide on the name, then, we’ll draw up the treaty.”
The natives withdrew. Dallman relaxed and poured himself a tumbler of the natives’ fermented drink. It was all that the nav had claimed, and the food Dallman had eaten when the natives invited him to a festival the night before—something called koluf —was a delicacy any member of the Galactic League of Culinary Artists would have been proud to assign his mark to.
All of this beauty, and gastronomical delights as well. “Perhaps Paradise would be the proper name for the place,” he mused aloud.
Protz raised his own tumbler, took a long draft, and sighed deeply. “Agreed, but we’d best leave the choice to them. Their idea of Paradise might be a very different sort of place. Anyway, all kinds of complications arise when worlds are named by outsiders.”
Dallman smiled, remembering the famous story of the survey ship calling for help from a swamp on a strange planet. “Where are you?” its base had asked. The survey ship gave its coordinates and then added, quite unnecessarily, “It’s a helluva place.” The people of that planet had been trying for centuries to have its name changed, but on all the official charts it was still Helluva-place.
Three hours later the Rirga was in space, and Protz and Dallman stood in the control room watching the receding disk of a planet they always would remember as Paradise.
“I’d feel a lot better about this if the ambassador was anyone but Wembling,” Protz said.
“That couldn’t be helped,” Dallman said, looking dreamily at the viewer. “What a lovely world it was, though. I wonder if well ever see it again.”
“And they call it ‘Langri,’ ” Protz mused. “What do you suppose that means?”
6
Young Mr. Yorlon was purring landing data into the courier ship’s intercom. Talitha Warr listened with a half-smile as she worked on an unruly lock of hair. The performance was exclusively for her benefit, since she was the only passenger aboard; but then, the purser had been purring for her ever since she took passage, and the only difference now was the desperate note of sadness in his voice.
“World of Langri in fifty seconds, Miss Warr. Surface temperature, twenty-six; humidity, fifty-one; gravity, ninety-four per cent normal; atmosphere, twenty-four per cent oxygen. World of Langri in thirty seconds—”
She said, “Drat it,” stepped around the pile of luggage in the center of her cramped passage quarters, and threw herself into the cushioned landing chair. The warning light was already on; at her elbow, her diffracto softly played music that matched Mr. Yorlon’s mood. She despised it, but she was too preoccupied with dressing to change the grating.
Mr. Yorlon’s voice purred on. “Landing in ten seconds; landing!”
The ship settled to ground with a gentle lurch that produced a squalk from the diffracto. The warning light faded. Talitha bounded back to her mirror and resumed the fussing with her hair. Finally she switched the mirror to full length and stepped back to inspect herself: immaculately gowned, tiara in place, coiffure elegantly sculpted except for the one dratted lock.
The gong sounded, and the intercom crackled again. This time it was the captain. “Clear for disembarking, Miss Warr.”
She moved closer to the mirror for a last try at that hair. “Thank you, Captain. I’ll be ready in a moment.”
Finally satisfied, she retracted the mirror, closed the diffracto and placed it with her other luggage, and picked up a wrap. The captain was waiting outside her door. His greeting was a wide-eyed stare, but she thought nothing of that. She was quite accustomed to being stared at.
“Ready to disembark?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you.”
She handed her wrap to him, and he helped her into it. Then she moved along the corridor toward the airlock. Up ahead, a door dropped open. Two eyes surmounted by a bald head peered out at her. The purring, lovesick Mr. Yorlon was memorizing her for his garden of regrets. She decided that the kindest thing she could do would be to ignore him. She said over her shoulder, “Is the limousine here? I told Mr. Yorlon to ask the embassy to send one.”
“Limousine?” the captain exclaimed. “There aren’t any ground vehicles on Langri. Anyway, the landing field is the embassy’s back yard.”
“No ground vehicles? How do they get about?”
“By boat, mostly.”
“You mean—it’s a water world?”
The captain did not answer. They had reached the airlock. He handed her through, and the two of them stood at the top of the ship’s ramp while she looked about her in consternation. “This—this is the world of Langri?”
A cluster of shoddy prefab buildings stood on a rise at the end of the landing field. They looked as though they’d been dumped wherever a machine tired of carrying them. They stood, or floated, in an undulating sea of flowers. The gigantic, vividly colored blooms, along with the fantastic colors of the surrounding forest, made the view breathtaking despite the blight imposed on the scene by the buildings.
She could not comprehend, let alone believe. She looked again at the shoddy prefabs the captain had called the embassy. “You mean—Uncle Harlow is ambassador—to that?”
The captain regarded her with amusement. “The citizens of Langri offered to build an embassy for him, but your uncle was afraid his status would suffer. Native buildings are made of woven grass.”
“But—” Again she looked about her bewilderedly. “But— where’s the capital city?”
“There aren’t any cities,” the captain said. “Just native villages with grass huts.”
Talitha burst into laughter. She still hadn’t grasped what had happened, but she knew that the joke was on her—and no wonder the captain had stared at her, attired in the latest soiree gown to land in a wilderness! “I came because I thought Uncle would need a hostess,” she gasped. “I brought a special wardrobe for the embassy receptions and soirees and dinners. I spent all my savings on it. And look!”