Blessed Are the Meek
Produced by Greg Weeks and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's Note: This e-text was produced from Astounding, September,1955. Extensive research did not reveal any evidence that the U.S.copyright on this publication was renewed.
Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
BLESSED ARE THE MEEK
_Every strength is a weakness, and every weakness is a strength. And when the Strong start smashing each other's strength ... the Weak may turn out to be, instead, the Wise._
BY G. C. EDMONDSON
Illustrated by Freas
The strangers landed just before dawn, incinerating a good li of bottomland in the process. Their machines were already busily digging up thetopsoil. The Old One watched, squinting into the morning sun. Hesighed, hitched up his saffron robes and started walking down towardthe strangers.
Griffin turned, not trying to conceal his excitement. "You're thelinguist, see what you can get out of him."
"I might," Kung Su ventured sourly, "if you'd go weed the air machineor something. This is going to be hard enough without a lot ofkibitzers cramping my style and scaring Old Pruneface here half todeath."
"I see your point," Griffin answered. He turned and started back towardthe diggings. "Let me know it you make any progress with the locallanguage." He stopped whistling and strove to control the jauntiness ofhis gait. _Must be the lower gravity and extra oxygen_, he thought. _Ihaven't bounced along like this for thirty years. Nice place to settledown if some promoter doesn't turn it into an old folks home._ He sighedand glanced over the diggings. The rammed earth walls were nearlyobliterated by now. _Nothing lost_, he reflected. _It's all on tapeand they're no different from a thousand others at any rate._
* * * * *
Griffin opened a door in the transparent bubble from which Albanez wasoperating the diggers. "Anything?" he inquired.
"Nothing so far," Albanez reported. "What's the score on this job? Imissed the briefing."
"How'd you make out on III, by the way?"
"Same old stuff, pottery shards and the usual junk. See it once andyou've seen it all."
"Well," Griffin began, "it looks like the same thing here again. We'vepretty well covered this system and you know how it is. Rammed earthwalls here and there, pottery shards, flint, bronze and iron artifactsand that's it. They got to the iron age on every planet and thenblooey."
"Artifacts all made for humanoid hands I suppose. I wonder if they wereclose enough to have crossbred with humans."
"I couldn't say," Griffin observed dryly. "From the looks of OldPruneface I doubt if we'll ever find a human female with sufficientlydetached attitude to find out."
"Who's Pruneface?"
"He came ambling down out of the hills this morning and walked intocamp."
"You mean you've actually found a live humanoid?"
"There's got to be a first time for everything." Griffin opened thedoor and started climbing the hill toward Kung Su and Pruneface.
* * * * *
"Well, have you gotten beyond the 'me, Charlie' stage yet?" Griffininquired at breakfast two days later.
Kung Su gave an inscrutable East Los Angeles smile. "As a matter offact, I'm a little farther along. Joe is amazingly cooeperative."
"Joe?"
"Spell it Chou if you want to be exotic. It's still pronounced Joe andthat's his name. The language is monosyllabic and tonal. I happen toknow a similar language."
"You mean this humanoid speaks Chinese?" Griffin was never sure whetherKung was ribbing him or not.
"Not Chinese. The vocabulary is different but the syntax and phonemesare nearly identical. I'll speak it perfectly in a week. It's just aquestion of memorizing two or three thousand new words. Incidentally,Joe wants to know why you're digging up his bottom land. He was all setto flood it today."
"Don't tell me he plants rice!" Griffin exclaimed.
"I don't imagine it's rice, but it needs flooding whatever it is."
"Ask him how many humanoids there are on this planet."
"I'm way ahead of you, Griffin. He says there are only a few thousandleft. The rest were all destroyed in a war with the barbarians."
"Barbarians?"
"They're extinct."
"How many races were there?"
"I'll get to that if you'll stop interrupting," Kung rejoined testily."Joe says there are only two kinds of people, his own dark,straight-haired kind and the barbarians. They have curly hair, whiteskin and round eyes. You'd pass for a barbarian, according to Joe, onlyyou don't have a faceful of hair. He wants to know how things are goingon the other planets."
"I suppose that's my cue to break into a cold sweat and feel apremonition of disaster." Griffin tried to smile and almost made it.
"Not necessarily, but it seems our iron-age man is fairly well informedin extraplanetary affairs."
"I guess I'd better start learning the language."
* * * * *
Thanks to the spade work Kung Su had done in preparing hypno-recordings,Griffin had a working knowledge of the Rational People's languageeleven days later when he sat down to drink herb infused hot water withJoe and other Old Ones in the low-roofed wooden building around whichclustered a village of two hundred humanoids. He fidgeted throughinterminable ritualistic cups of hot water. Eventually Joe hid hishands in the sleeves of his robe and turned with an air of politeinquiry. _Now we get down to business_, Griffin thought.
"Joe, you know by now why we're digging up your bottom land. We'llrecompense you in one way or another. Meanwhile, could you give me alittle local history?"
Joe smiled like a well nourished bodhisattva. "Approximately how farback would you like me to begin?"
"At the beginning."
"How long is a year on your planet?" Joe inquired.
"Your year is eight and a half days longer. Our day is three hundredheartbeats longer than yours."
Joe nodded his thanks. "More water?"
Griffin declined, suppressing a shudder.
"Five million years ago we were limited to one planet," Joe began. "Thecourt astronomer had a vision of our planet in flames. I imagine you'dsay our sun was about to nova. The empress was disturbed and ordered aconvocation of seers. One fasted overlong and saw an answer. As thedying seer predicted the Son of Heaven came with fire-breathingdragons. The fairest of maidens and the strongest of our young men weretaken to serve his warriors. We served them honestly and faithfully. Athousand years later their empire collapsed leaving us scattered acrossthe universe. Three thousand years later a new race of barbariansconquered our planets. We surrendered naturally and soon were servingour new masters. Five hundred years passed and they destroyedthemselves. This has been the pattern of our existence from that day tothis."
"You mean you've been slaves for five million years?" Griffin wasincredulous.
"Servitude has ever been a refuge for the scholar and the philosopher."
"But what point is there in such a life? Why do you continue livingthis way?"
"What is the point in any way of life? Continued existence. Personalimmortality is neither desirable nor possible. We settled forperpetuation of the race."
"But what about self-determination? You know enough astronomy tounderstand novae. Surely you realize it could happen again. What wouldyou do without a technology to build spaceships?"
"Many stars have gone nova during our history. Usually the barbarianscame in time. When they didn't--"
"You mean you don't really care?"
"All barbarians ask that sooner or later," Joe smiled. "Sometimestoward the end they even acc
use us of destroying them. We don't. Everytechnology bears the seeds of its own destruction. The stars are olderthan the machinery that explores them."
"You used technology to get from one system to another."
"We used it, but we were never part of it. When machines fail, theirpeople die. We have no machines."
"What would you do if this sun were to nova?"
"We can serve you. We are not unintelligent."
"Willing to work your way around the galaxy, eh? But what if we refusedto take you?"
"The race would go on. Kung Su tells me there is no life on planets ofthis system, but there are other systems."
"You're whistling in the dark," Griffin scoffed. "How do you know ifany of the Rational People survive?"
"How far back does your history go?" Joe inquired.
"It's hard to say exactly," Griffin replied. "Our earliest writtenrecords date back some seven thousand years."
"You are all of one race?"
"No, you may have noticed Kung Su is slightly different from the restof us."
"Yes, Griffin, I have noticed. When you return ask Kung Su for thelegend of creation. More hot water?" Joe stirred and Griffin guessedthe interview was over. He drank another ritual cup, made his farewellsand walked thoughtfully back to camp.
* * * * *
"Kung," Griffin asked over coffee next afternoon, "how well up are youon Chinese mythology?"
"Oh, fair, I guess. It isn't my field but I remember some of thestories my grandfather used to tell me."
"What is your legend of creation?" Griffin persisted.
"It's pretty well garbled but I remember something about the Son ofHeaven bringing the early settlers from a land of two moons on the backof his fire-breathing dragon. The dragon got sick and died so theycouldn't ever get back to heaven again. There's a lot of stuff aboutdevils, too."
"What about devils?"
"I don't remember too well, but they were supposed to do terriblethings to you and even to your unborn children if they ever caught you.They must have been pretty stupid though; they couldn't turn corners.My grandfather's store had devil screens at all the doors so you had toturn a corner to get in. The first time I saw the lead baffles at thepile chamber doors on this ship it reminded me of home sweet home. Bythe way, some young men from the village were around today. They wantto work passage to the next planet. What do you think?"
Griffin was silent for a long time.
"Well, what do you say? We can use some hand labor for the delicatedigging. Want to put them on?"
"Might as well." Griffin answered. "There's a streetcar everymillennium anyway."
"What do you mean by that?"
"You wouldn't understand. You sold your birthright to the barbarians."
THE END