Well-trained, Koli reflected. Their master is a good one; they don’t flap about causing a disturbance. Clearly a high genetic breed. Undoubtedly costing their owner a fortune. Therefore this indubitably was Koli’s civilian replacement. “Mr. Mekkis?” Marshal Koli inquired.
The head whipped; the tongue protruded, licking the air with intensity as the wide-set eyes flamed, a dismal and perplexing glance, as if Mekkis did not quite see him, saw instead beyond—and yet not spacially. It was, he realized, as if this man possessed the capacity to imagine one’s entire life-track, one’s full destiny; perhaps, he decided, age had something to do with it. Wisdom, he thought. There is wisdom, not sheer knowledge as on the memory spools of a computer, lying behind these green, faceted eyes. He felt uncomfortable.
“Do you intend to take possession of the desk immediately?” Koli inquired. He thought once more of Percy X’s rich, thick, virgin-fur pelt; it had now faded to the dimensions of a dream.
“Frankly,” Mekkis said, “I’d like to get the transfer of authority over right now, so I can get some rest. I didn’t sleep well on the ship.”
“Come into my office,” Koli said, leading the way. “A dish of authentic Spanish sherry.” As one of his batmen poured the two saucers full he explained, “From Puerto Santa Maria, Spain. A nina—light golden and medium dry.” He added, between laps, “I consume it at room temperature, but it can also—”
“Your hospitality,” Mekkis said after a few polite laps at the dish of sherry, “is singular. Now, as to the transfer of authority.”
“There are the fighter planes.”
Mekkis, astonished, said, “My briefing didn’t mention any fighter planes.”
“Well, they’re not real fighter planes: they’re models, you see. World War One.”
“What is ‘World War One’?” Mekkis asked.
Slithering to a long low polished wood table, Marshal Koli said, “These are of a rare twentieth century plastic, injection productions which reproduced details so minutely as to be beyond compare.” As he bade an attendant to pick up a model he said, “Unfortunately, the knowledge of how to manufacture this plastic has died out. Allow me to trace the development of fighter aircraft during the First World War.” He flicked his tongue at the first model, held up to Mekkis for inspection by the assistant. “This was first true fighter, the Fokker Eindekker. One wing, you see?” He showed the wing, with its supporting struts.
“Hmm,” Mekkis said, in a neutral tone; he had been trying for a telepathic scan of the Marshal but a scramble pattern blocked the view. Nothing could be made out except a vague jumble of airplane images. Maybe, Mekkis thought, it’s not a scramble pattern; maybe that’s how he really thinks.
“The Allies had nothing to match the Fokker Eindekker I, II or III until December of 1915.”
“How,” Mekkis asked, “do they arrive at dates here?”
“It is based on the birth of Jesus Christ, the Sole Begotten Son of God.”
“The way you talk,” Mekkis said dryly, “one would think you’d gone native. Do you believe in this God business?”
Marshal Koli drew himself up to half-height, wove back and forth with dignity and said, “Sir, for the last two years living here on Terra I have been an Anglo-Catholic. I take communion once a month.”
Mekkis quickly turned the conversation back to the relatively safe topic of model airplanes. New converts to these native mystery cults could sometimes wax quite fanatical. “What’s this plane here?” he asked, closing his jaws over the tail-section of a biplane.
Marshal Koli shut his eyes and said, “Would you allow my trained assistant to handle the items of this rare, even unique, collection, sir? By wousling them you cause me great mental anguish.”
“My pardons, of course.” Mekkis set the biplane down carefully, and there was not a toothmark on it.
The Marshal launched out on the subject of World War One aircraft once again, and half an hour passed before Mekkis managed to break into the flow long enough to reintroduce the topic of transfer of authority.
“Enough Marshal; I would like to take command of this bale—”
“Wait,” Koli touched a wall-stud and a section of the wall rolled aside—revealing further rows of scale model planes. “This section of my collection is devoted to the famous planes between the First and Second War. Let us intially consider the Ford Tri-motor.”
The attendant, as he showed the Ford Tri-motor to Mekkis, said reverently, “He also has a complete collection of World War Two planes.”
“I—am overwhelmed,” Mekkis managed to say.
Matter-of-factly, Koli continued, “I cannot of course transfer these incredibly valuable models to Ganymede; they would be smashed beyond repair—you know the slipshod way in which our homeostatic unmanned cargo carries land.” He eyed Mekkis. “lam therefore leaving my collection, all of it, even that of the World War One fighters, to you.”
“But,” Mekkis protested, “suppose I break one of the planes?”
“You will not,” the Marshal said quietly. And that, evidently, was that. There the subject ended.
Telepathically, Mekkis all at once detected some sort of confusion outside. “The creeches have captured someone,” he said. “Better have them bring him in.”
Koli grew pale. The beautiful pelt was now so near, yet still out of reach. “Surely it would be better to wait until—”
“If this is how you habitually act I’ll take authority as of now. Officially I have been in charge here since my arrival.” He sensed that Koli did not wish him to know of the disturbance outside. And for that reason he insisted on knowing.
“Very well,” Koli muttered.
Mekkis had lifted out a model of a 1911 pusher-type biplane when Marshal Koli returned from his errand, breathing erratically. With him appeared a Terran, a dark one, almost black. A Neeg.
“Administrator,” Koli said sharply, “in an operation put into motion by myself before you arrived to relieve me of my desk as supreme authority in the bale of Tennessee I achieved this final, all-out coup, an ensnarement bordering on the divine. Do you know who this Terran is?”
Mekkis made an attempt to tear himself away from the scale models of antique aircraft. He found himself unable to. One—not strictly a model but a 2-D photograph, non-color—showed a flimsy, ancient plane landing on the deck of a ship; he read the Terran words beneath it and learned that this, on January 18, 1911, constituted the first landing—
Going to the far side of the office in a furious slithering of almost hoop-like rolling, Marshal Koli touched stud after stud in the cabinets there, cabinets which Mekkis had not even noticed, let alone investigated. “Ancient automobiles,” Koli said savagely. “From the 1898 Peugeot on. Hours, days; and once you finished with these there’s my scale model steam locomotive collection in office 4-A.” He turned, slithered ragingly back; Mekkis had rarely seen a fellow worm so in the grip of his thalamus. “I insist that you make official note of my capture of the leader of the Neeg-parts, Percy X, and that you certify that I am therefore the sole and unqualified owner of this quatropodia Terran entity, to do with as I want!”
Mekkis caught a thought that smacked of treason flashing through Koli’s otherwise carefully scrambled mind; Koli had wondered who, in the case of a showdown, the troops would obey, Mekkis or himself. He said aloud, “You may take full credit, Marshal. It’s clear to me that you are what is known as acollector a definite sub-variety of individual typology. Even your adoption of this obscure Terran religion could be regarded as a manifestation of the collector instinct. Let me guess, sir. You want the pelt of Percy X. For a wall-hanging. He would indeed make an attractive decoration, teeth and all—right, Marshal? There is, on many highly masculine, fully-ripened, sexually-endowed Terran males, a vestigial covering of fur, especially on the chest region and—in other areas.”