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elapt1c
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ElapticAI-512

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casual statement: "In our gardens, there are no weeds," and it applied
to the garden of human culture almost as well as it applied to the fauna
and flora of the planet.
This "weedlessness" had not been the goal of any planned project, but
rather, the inevitable result of age-old struggles between Man and
Nature on a small plot of land. When Man despoiled Nature, and
slaughtered her children, Nature could respond in two ways: she could
raise up organisms to survive in spite of Man, and she could raise up
organisms to survive in the service and custody of Man. She had done
both, but the gardener with his weed-hoe and his insect spray and his
vermin exterminators had proved that he could invent new weapons faster
than Nature could evolve tenacious pests, and eventually the life forms
of Earth had been emasculated of the tendency to mutate into disobedient
species. Nature had won many bloody battles; but Man had won the war.
Now he lived in a green world that seemed to offer up its fruits to him
with only a minimum of attention from Man. Nature had learned to survive
in the presence of Man. Yet the natives seemed unaware of the wonder of
their Eden. There was peace, there was plenty.
This, he thought, could be the answer to their lack of resistance in
the face of what seemed to Meikl to be sheer seizure and arrogant
exploitation by Baron ven Klaeden and his high command. In a bounteous
world, there were no concepts of "exploitation" or "property seizure" or
"authoritarianism". The behaviour of the starmen appeared as strange, or
fascinating, or laughable, or shocking to such as the girl who stood
beside him on the hill but not as aggressive nor imperious. When a
foreman issued an order, the workman accepted it as a polite request for
a favor, and did it as if for a friend. Fortunately, ven Klaeden had
possessed at least the good sense to see to it that the individual
natives were well treated by the individual officers in charge of tasks.
There had been few cases of inter-personal hostility between natives and
starmen. The careful semantics of the invented sign-language
accomplished much in the way of avoiding conflicts, and the natives
enthusiastically strived to please.
He glanced at the girl again, her dark hair whipping in the breeze.
Lovely, he thought, and glanced around to see that no one was near.
"You belong to another, Letha?" he asked.
She tossed him a quick look with pale eyes, hesitated. "There is a boy
named Evon...."
He nodded, lips tightening. Stop it, you fool, he told himself. You
can't make love to her. You've got to leave with the rest of them.
"But I don't really belong to him," she said, and reddened.
"Letha, I...."
"Yes, Meikl."
"Nothing. I'm lonely, I guess."
Her eyes wandered thoughtfully toward the ships. "Meikl, why will you
tell us nothing of space how you've lived since the Exodus?"
"We are an evil people."
"Not so."
She touched his arm, and looked up at him searchingly.
"What is it you wish to know?"
"Why will you never return to your home?"
"To space but we shall."
"To the worlds of your birth, I mean."
He stiffened slightly, stared at her. "What makes you think we won't?"
he asked, a little sharply.
"Will you?"
So there were leaks after all, he thought. After six months, many things
would be communicated to the natives, even under strictest security.
"No," he admitted, "we can't go back to the worlds of our birth."
"But why? Where are your women and children?"
He wanted to tell her, to see her turn and flee from him, to see the
natives desert the project and keep to their forests until the ships
departed. There had been a translator set up between the Anglo-Germanic
and the present native tongue, and he had fed it the word "war". The
single word had brought five minutes of incomprehensible gibberish from
the native tongue's output. There was no concept to equate it to.
"There is blood on our hands," he grunted, and knew immediately he had
said too much.
She continued to stare at the ships. "What are the metal tubes that
point from the front and the sides of the ships, Meikl?"
There was no word for "guns" or "weapons".
"They hurl death, Letha."