“To return to your question about the whatness of these things,” said the Dog, “we do have a designation for them, but it does not translate into anything I can say to make you understand. Among many other things and in the context in which we here are concerned with them, they are realtors. Although you must realize the term is but approximate and has many qualifications I am helpless to express.”
“You mean they sell houses?”
“Oh no,” said the Dog, “they would not think to bother with a thing so trivial as a single building.”
“With a planet, perhaps?”
“Well, yes,” said the Dog, “although it would have to be a most unusual planet, of unusual value. They usually don’t concern themselves with anything much less than a solar system. And it has to be a good one or they won’t even touch it.”
“Now, let us get this straight,” I said. “You say they deal in solar systems.”
“Your understanding,” said the Dog, leaves nothing to be desired. That is the Simple fact alone, however. A complete Understanding of the situation would tend to become just a bit complex.”
“But who do they buy these solar systems for?”
“Now,” said the Dog, “we begin to enter into deepish water. No matter what I told you, you would attempt to equate it with your own economic system, and your economic system—pardon me if I hurt your feelings—is the most outlandish I have ever seen.”
“It just happens that I know,” I told him, “they’re buying up this planet.”
“Ah yes,” said the Dog, “and most dirty in their dealings, as they always are.”
I didn’t answer him, for I got to thinking how ridiculous it was that I should be talking to a thing that was a dead ringer for an outsize dog about another race of aliens that were buying up the Earth and doing it, according to my alien friend, in their usual dirty manner.
“You see,” the Dog went on, “they can be anything. They never are themselves. Their entire mode of operation is based upon deceit.”
“You said they were competitors of yours. Then you must be a realtor yourself.”
“Yes, thank you,” said the Dog, greatly pleased, “and of the highest class.”
“I suppose, then, if these bowling balls, or whatever they may be, had failed to buy the Earth, you’d bought it up yourself.”
“No, never,” the Dog protested. “It would have been unethical. That is why, you understand, I have interested myself. The present operation will give the entire galactic realty field an exceedingly black eye, and this cannot be allowed to happen. Realty is an ancient and an honorable profession and it must retain its pristine purity.”
“Well, that is fine,” I said. “I am glad to hear you say it. What do you intend to do?”
“I really do not know. For you work against me. There is no help in you.”
“Me?”
“No, not you. Not you alone. All of you, I mean. The silly rules you have.”
“But why do they want it? Once they get the Earth, what will they do with it?”
“I see you do not realize,” said the Dog, “exactly what you have. There are, I must inform you, few planets such as this one that you call the Earth. It is, you see, a regular dirt-type planet, and planets such as it are few and far between. It is a place where the weary may rest their aching bones and Solace their aching eyes with a gentle beauty such as one seldom comes across.
There have been built, in certain systems orbiting constructions which seek to simulate such conditions as occur here naturally. But the artificial can never quite approach the actual, and that is why this planet is s valuable as a playground and resort.
“You realize,” he said apologetically, “that I am simplifying and using rough approximations to fit your language and your concepts. It is not, really, as I have told it to you. In many of its facets, it is entirely different. But you gain the main idea, and that is the best that I can do.”
“You mean,” I asked, “that once these things have the Earth they will run it as a sort of galactic resort?”
“Oh no,” said the Dog, “that would be quite beyond them. But they will sell it to those who would. And they’ll get a good price for it. There are many pleasure palaces built in space and a lot of simulated Earth-type planets where beings may go for outings and vacations. But, actually, there is really nothing which can substitute for a genuine dirt-type planet. They can get, I may assure you, whatever they may ask.”
“And this price they’ll ask?”
“Smell. Scent. Odor,” said the Dog. “I do not grasp the word.”
“Perfume?”
“That is it—perfume. An odor for the pleasure. To them the odor is the thing of beauty. In their natural form it is their greate5t perhaps their only, treasure. For in their natural state they are not as you and I—”
“I have seen them,” I told him, “in what I would presume would be their natural state. The ones you have there in the sack.”
“Ah, then,” said the Dog, “perhaps you understand. They are as lumps of nothing.”
He joggled the sack he was holding savagely, bouncing the bowling balls together.
“They are lumps of nothing,” he declared, “and they lie there, soaked in their perfume, and that is the height of happiness, if things like this be happy.”
I sat there and thought about it and it was outrageous. I wondered for a moment if the Dog might not be kidding me, and then I knew he wasn’t. For he, himself, if this were no more than kidding, must then necessarily be a part of the joke. For he Was, in his own way, as grotesque and incongruous as the things imprisoned in the sack.
“I am sorry for you,” said the Dog, not Sounding very sad, “but you have yourself to blame. All these silly rules . . .”
“You said that once before,” I told him.
“What do you mean—all these Silly rules?”
“Why, the ones about each one having things.”
“You mean our property laws.”
“I suppose that is what you term them.”
“But you said the bowling balls would sell the Earth—”
“That’s different,” said the Dog. “I had to say it your way because there was no way of telling you except in your own way. But I can excellently assure you it is a different way.”
And, of course, it would be, I told myself. No two alien cultures, more than likely, ever would arrive at the same way of doing things. The motivations would be different and the methods would be different, because the cultures in themselves could never be parallel. Even as the language—not the words alone, but the concept of the language in itself—could not be parallel.
“This conveyance that you operate,” said the Dog, “has intrigued me from the first, and I have had no opportunity to acquaint myself with it. I have been very busy, as you may well imagine, gathering necessary information about many other things.”
He sighed. “You have no idea—of course, you haven’t; how could you have?—how much there is to learn when one is dropped without preliminary into another culture.”
I told him what I knew about the internal- combustion engine and about the drive mechanism which applied the power created by the engine, but I couldn’t tell him much. I made a bad job of it, but he seemed to catch the principle involved. I gathered from the way he acted that he had never run across such a thing before. But I gained the distinct impression that he was more impressed by the sheer stupidity of such engineering than by its brilliance.
“I thank you very much,” he said, with suavity, “for your lucid explanation. I should not have bothered you with it, but I have the large curiosity. It might have been much better, and somewhat more advantageous, if we had spent the time discussing the disposal of these things.”
He joggled the bag of plastic to let me know just what things he meant.
“I know what I am going to do with them,” I told him. “We’ll take them to a friend of mine by the name of Carleton Stirling. He is a biologist.”
“A biologist?” he asked.
“One who studies life,” I said. “He can take these things apart and tell US What they are.”