“Uncle Harlow!” Talitha exclaimed. “You’re wasting your time trying to build a reputation with drainage ditches. Give the natives a medical center!”
Wembling shook his head. “That’d only give me a reputation for being rich—which I already have. Anyway, it’d cost more than the publicity would be worth.”
“What’s so expensive about a small clinic?”
“The staff. No medic is going to leave a comfortable situation to work on a primitive world unless he’s offered an enormous salary. He’ll also want lavish support in the way of assistants and laboratory and research facilities. It’d cost a fortune annually to finance that kind of operation. Hirus?”
Ayns had been listening. He always was listening. He said, “Depends on what you want to accomplish. The kind of medical center found on civilized worlds would be impossibly expensive to duplicate here. On the other hand, a small clinic, bring in an unsuccessful doctor who’d jump at a steady salary—”
Wembling was shaking his head. “No good. That kind of setup wouldn’t accomplish a thing except find alternate ways of killing the natives. To do the job adequately would cost a fortune. It’d certainly cost a lot more than I’d be willing to spend.”
“Then get governmental support,” Talitha said.
“Can’t be done. Langri is an independent world, which means that its health problems are its own business. If it were dependent, the government might be coaxed into putting a medical station here.”
“Then change its classification.”
“Perhaps the natives think their independence worth more than a medical station,” Hort remarked.
Talitha ignored him. “Why not offer those doctors and technicians a free vacation if they’ll work part time in the medical center? ‘Vacation in Paradise’—that ought to fetch a few doctors.”
Wembling found that amusing. “A long trip with a part-time job at the end is no vacation. No, there won’t be a medical station on Langri until the government can support one, and I can’t imagine where it would get the money. A world can’t amass exchange credits unless it has something someone else wants, and Langri—”
For a suspenseful moment Wembling stared at Talitha. Then he scrambled to his feet and dashed for the door. Talitha hesitated, exchanged glances with Aric Hort, and then she followed her uncle. Hort hurried after her. The staff had left off eating for a moment when Wembling got to his feet, but none of them moved to follow him. When Wembling wanted his staff, he let them know it.
Talitha and Hort caught up with Wembling on the beach. He was standing where the gentle surf lapped at his sandals, waving his arms excitedly. “That’s the answer, Tal!” he exclaimed. “The people of Langri can operate a vacation resort, and the profits will finance a medical center and anything else they want. And setting it up for them will make my reputation.”
“I don’t think the natives would want their world cluttered up with tourists,” Hort said.
Wembling grinned at him. “Hort, you’re fired.” He turned toward the sea and raised his arms, a man with a vision. “Langri —even the name sounds like a vacation paradise. There are plenty of barren worlds in this sector where life is either difficult or monotonous, and their peoples would pay a soul’s ransom for a vacation on a world like this. Look at the ocean. The forests. The natural beauties of every kind. The word ‘paradise’ is an understatement. How could I have been so blind?”
Now Hort was genuinely concerned. “I don’t think the natives—”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” Wembling told him. “Giving up a stretch of the beach to a tourist resort won’t affect the natives at all. Unless they want to work in the resort and get rich. If they don’t want to, we’ll import labor and they’ll get rich anyway.” He paced back and forth excitedly. “How could I have been so blind? This will make my reputation, Tal, and you’ll be able to play hostess in the Binoris Embassy.” He turned to Hort. “Get Fornri.”
Hort hesitated a moment, shrugged, and trotted off along the beach.
Wembling resumed his pacing. He said over his shoulder, “What do you think?”
“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” Talitha said. “Anything that gets these people the medical help they need—”
Wembling wasn’t listening. “We can leave the landing field where it is. Lay out a village on the embassy site for employees. What a resort it’ll be!” He waved his hands rapturously. “Fleets of pleasure craft at the wharves!”
“Undersea craft, too,” Talitha suggested.
“All kinds of water recreation. Fishing—those weird things in the ocean ought to provide plenty of excitement. Never know what you’ll catch when you fish on Langri. A native festival every night. Gourmet feasts of native-prepared food. I’ve been blind. You kept saying this was like a vacation world, and I never saw it that way. This is the kind of thing Binoris will understand— developing a resource a world never knew it had. It’ll make my reputation. The Binoris appointment—”
He broke off and muttered, “Now that was a fast trip.”
Hort and Fornri were approaching along the beach. Wembling and Talitha walked to meet them.
“He was on his way to see you,” Hort told Wembling. “He wants to invite us to attend Dabbi’s death rites.”
“Yes, yes, of course we’ll come. Thank you. Fornri, I have a wonderful idea. All of Langri’s problems are solved. We’ll build a World Medical Center, and the Hot Sickness will never come again. We’ll build schools for the children, and there’ll be plenty of food and everything else Langri needs.”
Fornri smiled politely. “This is welcome news. Where do the things come from?”
“We’ll get them with money. I don’t know how much you know about that—money’s the one thing without which very little can be done. Medical centers and things like that require huge amounts of money, and we’ll get it for the world of Langri by establishing a vacation resort.”
Fornri’s polite smile did not waver, but his tone of voice was firm beyond any possibility of appeal. “No, thank you. We would not care for that. We will expect you at darkness for the death rites.” He took a backward step, delivered the native salute, and strode away.
Wembling stood looking after him. “You were right,” he told Talitha. “They’re laughing at me.”
He marched back to the embassy.
Hort said to Talitha, “Now that’s a puzzle. From the way Fornri turned it down he might have been expecting it. Whenever anything strange is offered, the natives ask highly astute questions and then they retire to think it over. He didn’t take time to flick an eyelash—and how would he know what a vacation resort is?”
Hort wanted to observe the preparations for the death rites, so he followed Fornri back to the village. Talitha returned to the embassy and found her uncle and Hirus Ayns talking in the office.
Ayns said, “If the natives are that stupid, I don’t suppose there’s anything we can do.”
“Why do you have to have their permission?” Talitha asked. “You’re doing it for them, aren’t you? You’re offering something that will save lives, and what possible harm can come from that?”
“It’s their world,” Wembling said. “It’s their decision to make, and they’ve made it.”
“Maybe they don’t understand what you’re trying to do. We know ‘medical center’ means good health and lives saved, but it may be gibberish to them. When a primitive people can’t understand, then the decisions should be made by someone who does.”
“I think Fornri understood,” Wembling said.
“He couldn’t watch that child die and immediately afterward turn down something that would save children’s lives. A vacation resort means the medical center, and schools, and a proper diet for his people with no risk of famine when those whatever-they-are can’t be caught, and decent housing, and all the rest. How could he reject that if he understood what you were talking about?”