The Lani People, by J. F. Bone
CHAPTER I
The boxed ad in the opportunities section of the Kardon Journal of Allied Medical Sciences stood out like a cut diamond in a handful of gravel. âWanted,â it read, âVeterinarianâfor residency in active livestock operation. Single recent graduate preferred. Quarters and service furnished. Well-equipped hospital. Five-year contract, renewal option, starting salary 15,000 cr./annum with periodic increases. State age, school, marital status, and enclose recent tri-di with application. Address Box V-9, this journal.â
Jac Kennon read the box a second time. There must be a catch to it. Nothing that paid a salary that large could possibly be on the level. Fifteen thousand a year was top pay even on Beta, and an offer like this for a new graduate was unheard ofâunless Kardon was in the middle of an inflation. But Kardon wasnât. The planetâs financial status was A-1. He knew. Heâd checked that immediately after landing. Whatever might be wrong with Kardon, it wasnât her currency. The rate of exchange was 1.2-1 Betan.
A five-year contractâhmmâthat would be seventy-five thousand. Figure three thousand a year for living expenses, that would leave sixty-plenty of capital to start a clinic. The banks couldnât turn him down if he had that much cash collateral.
Kennon chuckled wryly. Heâd better get the job before he started spending the money he didnât have. He had 231 credits plus a few halves, tenths, and hundredths, a diploma in veterinary medicine, some textbooks, a few instruments, and a first-class spacemanâs ticket. By watching his expenses he had enough money to live here for a month and if nothing came of his efforts to find a job on this planet, there was always his spacemanâs ticket and another world.
Another world! There were over six thousand planets in the Brotherhood of Man. At two months per planet, not figuring transit time, it would take more than a thousand Galactic Standard years to visit them all, and a man could look forward to scarcely more than five hundred at best. The habitat of Man had become too large. There wasnât time to explore every possibility.
But a man could have certain standards, and look until he found a position that fitted. The trouble wasâif the standards were too high the jobs were too scarce. Despite the chronic shortage of veterinarians throughout the Brotherhood, there was a peculiar reluctance on the part of established practitioners to welcome recent graduates. Most of the ads in the professional journals read âState salary desired,â which was nothing more than economic blackmailâa bald-faced attempt to get as much for as little as possible. Kennon grimaced wryly. Heâd be damned if heâd sell his training for six thousand a year. Slave labor, thatâs what it was. There were a dozen ads like that in the Journal. Well, heâd give them a trial, but heâd ask eight thousand and full GEA benefits. Eight years of school and two more as an intern were worth at least that.
He pulled the portable voicewrite to a comfortable position in front of the view wall and began composing another of the series of letters that had begun months ago in time and parsecs away in space. His voice was a fluid counterpoint to the soft hum of the machine.
And as he dictated, his eyes took in the vista through the view wall. Albertsville was a nice town, too young for slums, too new for overpopulation. The white buildings were the color of winter butter in the warm yellow sunlight as the city drowsed in the noonday heat. It nestled snugly in the center of a bowl-shaped valley whose surrounding forest clad hills gave mute confirmation to the fact that Kardon was still primitive, an unsettled world that had not yet reached the explosive stage of population growth that presaged maturity. But that was no disadvantage. In fact, Kennon liked it. Living could be fun on a planet like this.
It was abysmally crude compared to Beta, but the Brotherhood had opened Kardon less than five hundred years ago, and in such a short time one couldnât expect all the comforts of civilization.
It required a high population density to supply them, and while Kardon was integrated its population was scarcely more than two hundred million. It would be some time yet before this world would achieve a Class I status. However, a Class II planet had some advantages. What it lacked in conveniences it made up in opportunities and elbow room.
A normal Betan would have despised this world, but Kennon wasnât normal, although to the casual eye he was a typical representative of the Medico-Technological Civilization, long legged, fair haired, and short bodied with the typical Betan squint that left his eyes mere slits behind thick lashes and heavy brows. The difference was internal rather than external.
Possibly it was due to the fact that his father was the commander of a Shortliner and most of his formative years had been spent in space. To Kennon, accustomed to the timeless horror of hyper space, all planets were good, broad open places where a man could breathe unfiltered air and look for miles across distances unbroken by dually bulk heads and safety shields. On a planet there were spaciousness and freedom and after the claustrophobic confinement of a hyper ship any world was paradise. Kennon sighed, finished his letters, and placed them in the mail chute. Perhaps, this time, there would be a favorable reply.
CHAPTER II
Kennon was startled by the speed with which his letters were answered. Accustomed to the slower pace of Beta he had expected a week would elapse before the first reply, but within twenty-four hours nine of his twelve inquiries were returned. Five expressed the expected âThank you but I feel that your asking salary is a bit high in view of your lack of experience.â Three were frankly interested and requested a personal interview. And the last was the letter, outstanding in its quietly ostentatious folder-the reply from Box V-9.
âWould Dr. Kennon call at 10 A.M. tomorrow at the offices of Outworld Enterprises Incorporated and bring this letter and suitable identifications?â Kennon chuckled. Would he? There was no question about it. The address, 200 Central Avenue, was only a few blocks away. In fact, he could see the building from his window, a tall functional block of durilium and plastic, soaring above the others on the street, the sunlight gleaming off its clean square lines. He eyed it curiously, wondering what he would find inside.
* * *
The receptionist took his I.D. and the letter, scanned them briefly, and slipped them into one of the message tubes beside her desk. âIt will only be a moment, Doctor,â she said impersonally. âWould you care to sit down? ââ
âThank you,â he said. The minute, reflected, could easily be an hour. But she was right. It was only a minute until the message tube clicked and popped a capsule onto the girlâs desk. She opened it, and removed Kennonâs I.D. and a small yellow plastic rectangle. Her eyes widened at the sight of the plastic card.
âHere you are, Doctor. Take shaft number one. Slip the card into the scanner slot and youâll be taken to the correct floor. The offices you want will be at the end of the corridor to the left. Youâll find any other data you may need on the card in case you get lost.â She looked at him with a curious mixture of surprise and respect as she handed him the contents of the message tube.
Kennon murmured an acknowledgment, took the card and his I.D., and entered the grav-shaft. There was the usual moment of heaviness as the shaft whisked him upward and deposited him in front of a thickly carpeted corridor.
Executive level, Kennon thought as he followed the receptionistâs directions. No wonder she had looked respectful. But what was he doing here? The employment of a veterinarian wasnât important enough to demand the attention of a senior executive. The personnel section could handle the details of his application as well as not. He shrugged. Perhaps veterinarians were more important on Kardon. He didnât know a thing about this worldâs customs.
He opened the unmarked door at the end of the corridor, entered a small reception room, smiled uncertainly at the woman behind the desk, and received an answering smile in return.
Come right in, Dr. Kennon. Mr. Alexander is waiting for you.
Alexander! The entrepreneur himself! Why? Numb with surprise Kennon watched the woman open the intercom on her desk.
âSir, Dr. Kennon is here,â she said.
âBring him in,â a smooth voice replied from the speaker. Alexander X. M. Alexander, President of Outworld Enterprisesâa lean, dark, wolfish man in his early sixtiesâeyed Kennon with a flat predatory intentness that was oddly disquieting. His stare combined the analytical inspection of the pathologist, the probing curiosity of the psychiatrist, and the weighing appraisal of the butcher. Kennonâs thoughts about Alexanderâs youth vanished that instant. Those eyes belonged to a leader on the battlefield of galactic business.
Kennon felt the conditioned respect for authority surge through him in a smothering wave. Grimly he fought it down, knowing it was a sign of weakness that would do him no good in the interview which lay ahead.
âSo youâre Kennon,â Alexander said. His lingua franca was clean and accentless. âI expected someone older.â
âFrankly, sir, so did I,â Kennon replied.
Alexander smiled, an oddly pleasant smile that transformed the hard straight lines in his face into friendly curves. âBusiness, Dr. Kennon, is not the sole property of age.â
âNor is a veterinary degree,â Kennon replied.
âTrue. But one thinks of a Betan as someone ancient and sedate.â
âOurs is an old planetâbut we still have new generations.â
âA fact most of us outsiders find hard to believe,â Alexander said. âI picture your world as an ironclad society crystallized by age and custom into something rigid and in flexible.â
âYou would be wrong to do so,â Kennon said. âEven though we are cultural introverts there is plenty of dynamism within our society.â
âHow is it that you happen to be out here on the edge of civilization?â
âI never said I was like my society,â Kennon grinned. âActually I suppose Iâm one of the proverbial bad apples.â
âThereâs more to it than that,â Alexander said. âYour early years probably influenced you.â
Kennon looked sharply at the entrepreneur. How much did the man really know about him? âI suppose so,â he said indifferently.
Alexander looked pleased. âBut even with your childhood experiences there must be an atavistic streak in youâa throwback to your adventurous Earth forebears who settled your world?â
Kennon shrugged. âPerhaps youâre right. I really donât know. Actually, Iâve never thought about it. It merely seemed to me that an undeveloped world offered more opportunity.â
âIt does,â Alexander said. âBut it also offers more work. If youâre figuring that you can get along on the minimum physical effort required on the Central Worlds, you have a shock coming.â
âIâm not that innocent,â Kennon said. âBut I am not so stupid that I canât apply modifications of Betan techniques to worlds as new as this.â
Alexander chuckled. âI like you,â he said suddenly. âHere read this and see if youâd care to work for me.â He picked a contract form from one of the piles of paper on his desk and handed it to Kennon. âThis is one of our standard work contracts. Take it back to your hotel and check it over. Iâll expect to see you at this time tomorrow.â
âWhy waste time?â Kennon said. âThe rapid-reading technique originated on Beta. I can tell you in fifteen minutes.â
âHmm. Certainly. Read it here if you wish. I like to get things settledâthe sooner the better. Sit down, young man and read. You can rouse me when youâre finished.â He turned his attention to the papers on his desk and within seconds was completely oblivious of Kennon, his face set in the rapt trancelike expression of a trained rapid reader.
Kennon watched for a moment as sheets of paper passed through Alexanderâs hands to be added to the pile at the opposite end of the desk. The man would do better, he thought, if he would have his staff transcribe the papers to microfilm that could be read through an interval-timed scanner. He might suggest that later. As for now, he shrugged and seated himself in the chair beside the desk. The quiet was broken only by the rustle of paper as the two rapt-faced men turned page after page with mechanical regularity.
Finally Kennon turned the last page, paused, blinked, and performed the necessary mental gymnastics to orient his time sense. Alexander, he noticed, was still...