The Solarians seemed to have some difficulty in understanding a whole race of poets. When even the meanest and stupidest Cundaloan could stretch out in the sun and make lyrics — well, every race has its own peculiar talents. Who could equal the gadgeteering genius which the humans possessed?
The great soaring, singing lines thundered in his head. He turned them over, fashioning them, shaping every syllable, and fitting the pattern together with a dawning delight. This one would be — good! It would be remembered, it would be sung a century hence, and they wouldn’t forget Valka Vahino. He might even be remembered as a masterversemaker — Alia Amaui cau-ianriho, valana, valana, vro!
“Pardon, sir.” The flat metal voice shook in his brain, he felt the delicate fabric of the poem tear and go swirling off into darkness and forgetfulness. For a moment there was only the pang of his loss; he realized dully that the interruption had broken a sequence which he would never quite recapture.
“Pardon, sir, but Mr. Lombard wishes to see you.”
It was a sonic beam from the roboreceptionist which Lombard himself had given Vahino. The Cundaloan had felt the incongruity of installing its shining metal among the carved wood and old tapestries of his house, but he had not wanted to offend the donor — and the thing was useful.
Lombard, head of the Solarian reconstruction commission, the most important human in the Avaikian System. Just now Vabino appreciated the courtesy of the man’s coming to him rather than simply sending for him. Only — why did he have to come exactly at this moment?
“Tell Mr. Lombard I’ll be there in a minute.”
Vahino went in the back way and put on some clothes. Humans didn’t have the completely casual attitude toward nakedness of Cundaloa. Then he went into the forehall. He had installed some chairs there for the benefit of Earthlings, who didn’t like to squat on a woven mat-^-another incongruity. Lombard got up as Vahino entered.
The human was short and stocky, with a thick bush of gray hair above a seamed face. He had worked his way up from laborer through engineer to High Commissioner, and the marks of his struggle were still on him. He attacked work with what seemed almost a personal fury, and he could be harder than tool steel. But most of the time he was pleasant, he had an astonishing range of interests and knowledge, and, of course, he had done miracles for the Avaikian System.
“Peace on your house, brother,” said Vahino.
“How do you do,” clipped the Solarian. As his host began to signal for servants, he went on hastily: “Please, none of your ritual hospitality. I appreciate it, but there just isn’t time to sit and have a meal and talk cultural topics for three hours before getting down to business. I wish… well, you’re a native here and I’m not, so I wish you’d personally pass the word around — tactfully, of course — to discontinue this sort of thing.”
“But… they are among our oldest customs…”
“That’s just it! Old — backward — delaying progress. I don’t mean to be disparaging, Mr. Vahino. I wish we Solarians had some customs as charming as yours. But — not during working hours. Please.”
“Well… I dare say you’re right. It doesn’t fit into the pattern of a modern industrial civilization. And that is what we are trying to build, of course.” Vahino took a chair and offered his guest a cigarette. Smoking was one of Sol’s characteristic vices, perhaps the most easily transmitted and certainly the most easily defensible. Vahino lit up with the enjoyment of the neophyte. “Quite. Exactly. And that is really what I came here about, Mr. Vahino. I have no specific complaints, but there has accumulated a whole host of minor difficulties which only you Cundaloans can handle for yourselves. We Solarians can’t and won’t meddle in your internal affairs. But you must change some things, or we won’t be able to help yon at all.”
Vahino had a general idea of what was coming. He’d been expecting it for some time, he thought grayly, and there was really nothing to be done about it. But he took another puff of smoke, let it trickle slowly out, and raised his eyebrows in polite inquiry. Then he remembered that Solarians weren’t used to interpreting nuances of expression as part of a language, and said aloud, “Please say what you like. I realize no offense is meant, and none will be taken.”
“Good.” Lombard leaned forward, nervously clasping and unclasping his big work-scarred hands. “The plain fact is that your whole culture, your whole psychology, is unfitted to modern civilization. It can be changed, but the change will have to be drastic. You can do it — pass laws, put on propaganda campaigns, change the educational system, and so on. But it must be done.
“For instance, just this matter of the siesta. Right now, all through this time zone on the planet, hardly a wheel is turning, hardly a machine is tended, hardly a man is at his work. They’re all lying in the sun making poems or humming songs or just drowsing. There’s a whole civilization to be built, Vahino! There are plantations, mines, factories, cities abuilding — you just can’t do it on a four-hour working day.”
“No. But perhaps we haven’t the energy of your race. You are a hyperthyroid species, you know.”
“You’ll just have to learn. Work doesn’t have to be backbreaking. The whole aim of mechanizing your culture is to release you from physical labor and the uncertainty of dependence on the land. And a mechanical civilization can’t be cluttered with as many old beliefs and rituals and customs and traditions as yours is. There just isn’t time. Life is too short. And it’s too incongruous. You’re still like the Skontarans, lugging their silly spears around after they’ve lost all practical value.”
“Tradition makes life — the meaning of life…”
“The machine culture has its own tradition. You’ll learn. It has its own meaning, and I think that is the meaning of the future. If you insist on clinging to outworn habits, you’ll never catch up with history. Why, your currency system…”
“It’s practical.”
In its own field. But how can you trade with Sol if you base your credits on silver and Sol’s are an abstract actuarial quantity? You’ll have to convert to our system for purpose of trade — so you might as well change over at home, too. Similarly, you’ll have to learn the metric system if you expect to use our machines or make sense to our scientists. You’ll have to adopt… oh, everything!
“Why, your very society — No wonder you haven’t exploited even the planets of your own system when every man insists on being buried at his birthplace. It’s a pretty sentiment, but it’s no more than that, and you’ll have to get rid of it if you’re to reach the stars.
“Even your religion.. excuse me… but you must realize that it has many elements which modern science has flatly disproved.”
“I’m an agnostic,” said Vahino quietly. “But the religion of Mauiroa means a lot to many people.”
“If the Great House will let us bring in some missionaries, we can convert them to, say, Neopantheism. Which, I, for one, think has a lot more personal comfort and certainly more scientific truth than your mythology. If your people are to have faith at all, it must not conflict with jfacts which experience in a modern technology will soon make self-evident.”
“Perhaps. And I suppose the system of familial — bonds is too complex and rigid for modern industrial society… Yes, yes — there is more than a simple conversion of equipment involved.”
“To be sure. There’s a complete conversion of minds,” said Lombard. And then, gently, “After all, you’ll do it eventually. You were building spaceships and atomic-power plants right after Allan left. I’m simply suggesting that you speed up the process a little.”