Fagin’s foliage rustled.
“I had the intention of inviting you to a small and amicable meeting with some worthy beings of diverse species, to discuss an important problem of a purely intellectual nature. The meeting will be held this Thursday, at the Visitors Center in Ensenada at eleven o’clock. You will be committed to nothing if you attend.”
Jacob chewed on the idea for a moment.
“E.T.’s, you say? Who are they? What’s this meeting about?”
“Alas, Jacob, I am not at liberty to say, at least not by teli. The details will have to wait until you come, if you come, on Thursday.”
Jacob immediately became suspicious. “Say, this ‘problem’ isn’t political, is it? You’re being awfully close.”
The image of the alien was very still. It’s verdant mass rippled slowly, as if in contemplation.
“I have never understood, Jacob,” the fluting voice finally resumed, “why a man of your background takes so little interest in the interplay of emotions and needs which you call ‘politics.’ Were the metaphor appropriate, I would say that politics is ‘in my blood.’ It certainly is in yours.”
“You leave my family out of this! I only want to know why it’s necessary to wait until Thursday to find out what all of this is about!”
Again, the Kanten hesitated.
“There are… aspects of this matter which would best not be spoken over the ether. Several of the more thalamic of the contesting factions in your culture might misuse the knowledge if they… overheard. However, let me assure you that your part would be purely technical. It is your knowledge we wish to tap, and the skills you have been using at the Center.”
Bull! Jacob thought. You want more than that.
He knew Fagin. If he attended this meeting the Kanten undoubtedly would try to use it as a wedge to get him involved in some ridiculously complicated and dangerous adventure. The alien had already done it to him on three occasions in the past.
The first two times Jacob hadn’t minded. But he’d been a different sort of person then, the kind who loved that sort of thing.
Then came the Needle. The trauma in Ecuador had changed his life completely. He had no desire to go through anything like it again.
And yet, Jacob felt a powerful reluctance to disappoint the old Kanten. Fagin had never actually lied to him, and he was the only E.T. he’d met who was unabashedly an admirer of human culture and history. Physically the most alien creature he knew, Fagin was also the one extraterrestrial who tried hardest to understand Earthmen.
I should be safe if I simply tell Fagin the truth, Jacob thought If he starts applying too much pressure I’ll let him know about my mental state — the experiments with self-hypnosis and the weird results I’ve been getting. He won’t push too hard if I appeal to his sense of fair play.
“All right,” he sighed. “You win, Fagin. I’ll be there. Just don’t expect me to be the star of the show.”
Fagin’s laughter whistled with a flavor of woodwinds. “Do not be concerned about that, Friend-Jacob! In this particular show no one will mistake you for the star!”
The Sun was still above the horizon as he walked along the upper deck toward Makakai’s quarters. It loomed, dim and orange among the sparse clouds in the west — a benign, featureless orb. He stopped at the rail for a moment to appreciate the colors of the sunset and the smell of the sea.
He closed his eyes and allowed the sunlight to warm his face, the rays penetrating his skin with gentle, browning insistence. Finally, he swung both legs over the rail and dropped to the lower deck. A taut, energized feeling had almost replaced the day’s exhaustion. He began to hum a fragment of a tune — out of key, of course.
A tired dolphin drifted to the edge of the pool when he arrived. Makakai greeted him with a trinary poem too quick to catch, but it sounded amiably nasty. Something about his sex life. Dolphins had been telling humans dirty jokes for thousands of years before men finally started breeding them for brains and for speech, and began to understand. Makakai might be a lot smarter than her ancestors, Jacob thought, but her sense of humor was strictly dolphin.
“Well,” he said. “Guess who’s had a busy day.”
She splashed at him, more weakly than usual, and said something that sounded a lot like “Br-r-a-a-a-p you!”
But she moved in closer when he hunkered down to put his hand into the water and say hello.
2. SHIRTS AND SKINS
The old North American governments had razed the Border Strip years ago, to control movements to and from Mexico. A desert was made where two cities once touched.
Since the Overturn, and the destruction of the oppressive “Bureaucracy” of the old syndical governments, Confederacy authorities had maintained the area as parklands. The border zone between San Diego and Tijuana was now one of the largest forested areas south of Pendleton Park.
But that was changing. As he drove his rented car southward on the elevated highway, Jacob saw signs that the belt was returning to its old purpose. Crews worked on both sides of the road, cutting down trees and erecting slender, candy-striped poles at hundred-yard intervals to the west and east. The poles were shameful. He looked away.
A large green and white sign loomed where the line of poles crossed the highway.
Jacob shook his head and grunted, “Oderint Dum Metuant.” Let them hate, so long as they fear. So what if a person has lived in a town his entire life. If he hasn’t got the vote, he’s got to move out of the way when progress comes along.
Tijuana, Honolulu, Oslo, and half a dozen other cities were to be included when the E.T. Reserves expanded again. Fifty or sixty thousand Probationers, both permanent and temporary, would have to move to make those cities “safe” for perhaps a thousand aliens. The actual hardship would be small, of course. Most of Earth was still barred to E.T.’s, and non-Citizens still had plenty of room. The government offered large reparations as well.
But once again there were refugees on Earth.
The city suddenly resumed at the southern edge of the Strip. Many of the structures followed a Spanish or Spanish-Revival style, but overall the city showed the architectural experimentation typical of a modern Mexican town. Here the buildings ran in whites and blues. Traffic on both sides of the highway filled the air with a faint electric whine.
All over the town, green and white metallic signs, like the one at the border, heralded the coming change. But one, near the highway, had been defaced with black spray paint. Before it passed out of sight, Jacob caught a glimpse of the raggedly written words “Occupation” and “Invasion.”
A Permanent Probationer did that, he thought. A Citizen wasn’t likely to do anything so kinky, with hundreds of legal ways to express his opinion. And a Temporary Probie, sentenced to probation for a crime, wouldn’t want his sentence lengthened. A Temporary would recognize the certainty of being caught.
No doubt some poor Permanent facing eviction, had vented his feelings, not caring about the consequences. Jacob sympathized. The P.P. was probably in custody by now.
Although he was not particularly interested in politics, Jacob came from a political family. Two of his grandparents had been heroes in the Overturn, when a small group of technocrats had succeeded in bringing the Bureaucracy tumbling down. The family policy toward the Probation Laws was one of vehement opposition.