Fantastic Stories Present the Galaxy Science Fiction Super Pack #1. Edgar Pangborn

Mike?”

      “What could we expect? It’s the basic quality of treachery in the Oriental mind.”

      *

      When the shadows were at their longest and the alien sun was down the closest to the horizon without actually going under, Ellik marched up the path shoving a new Indigo. The Azures supplied Mike with all the flunkies he wanted to gather food and the like for him, as his natural right. But I thought we had enough of them hanging around our quarters. I couldn’t imagine what he would want with another one.

      The alien hovered at the door. Ellik kicked him in the calf to make him understand he was to go inside.

      “Look at him, Johnny,” Ellik said, pushing the fellow forward. “Not a mongoloid, would you say?”

      “No.”

      The alien looked stupid—blue and stupid. His face was hanging there, but it wasn’t pushed out of shape any more than the faces of the Azures. The Indigo blinked back at me. What he also looked was not friendly.

      Ellik took the Indigo’s cheeks in his hand and angled the face toward the light. “He’s a half-breed, Johnny, or otherwise the gene was recessive. He wasn’t damaged before birth, only after—when he started to breathe.”

      “What do you mean, Mike?”

      “You ever hear of cyanosis, Johnny?”

      “No.”

      “Well, these creatures have something like it. The Indigos don’t get enough oxygen in their blood cells. It makes them sluggish; it turns them blue like the pictures of ‘blue babies’ in the old books.”

      “I never saw a picture like that in an old book,” I said.

      “Did you ever see a book? Sorry, Johnny. Just kidding.” Ellik rubbed his hands together. “Well! I theorized that there is no basic difference in the Azures and the Indigos except improper aeration of their blood. So, you see, an Indigo is only a sick Azure, and I am going to make this Indigo well.”

      “How can you do that?”

      “It’s simple,” Mike said irritably. “The Indigos must have a malformation of the heart causing an abnormal communication between the venous and arterial side of the circulation system. A little surgery and I adjust a valve in the heart. No more communication. Proper aeration. Enough oxygen. The deep blue color goes, leaving only the lighter blue of the natural pigmentation. The patient feels better, acts better, thinks better, looks better. In short, he is no longer an Indigo but an Azure.”

      “Is—is this what you’re going to show Lee?” I ventured.

      “Of course! It proves the Indigos aren’t an inferior race. They are the same as the Azures except that they are sick. Their being sick can’t reflect unfavourably on any terrestrial colored race. There is no analogy. But I have to prove it to Chon. We’re going to tape the whole process and feed it to him.”

      “I think,” I said, “that that might get to him.”

      “Sure it will.” Ellik’s jaw muscles flexed. “I should ruin Lee with this thing, but I won’t. I’m not a vindictive man. Lee and I will probably be working together for years. But whenever he gets out of line—has some stubborn idea about doing something his way—don’t think I won’t remind him of this!”

      Suddenly, he was smiling again. He turned to the gawking Indigo. He pointed two fingers at him.

      “Mmr?” Ellik asked.

      The alien tapped himself on his chest cavity twice. “Mhaw,” he gave his name.

      “Mhaw M’i uh M’i m M’m’-uh?” Ellik asked him, without even using the translators.

      “M-m-M-m-M,” the alien went, slapping himself on the chest with his opened palms.

      Ellik turned to me, grinning. “I asked him if he wanted to stop being an Indigo and become an Azure. He thinks I can do anything and he’s all for it.”

      *

      After we fed Mhaw a dose of null-shock from our packs, Doc Ellik started to slice him open with a ceramic knife he had borrowed from the Azures.

      But Ellik had forgotten that the alien might get frightened seeing himself cut open, even if he couldn’t feel any pain. It had never happened to him before.

      The alien lumbered to his feet, his chest hanging open, showing his heart beating like some animal caught inside a blueberry pudding.

      I drove a right cross into his jaw, and felt the jar all the way up to my shoulder.

      He melted back down onto the pallet.

      “Good work, Johnny,” Ellik said, stooping and starting his work.

      Right away, Mhaw started to lose that Indigo color and get real light—lighter than the Azures, in fact. None of the blue of the race was actually in the pigmentation, Mike found out. Even the Azures suffered some degree of improper aeration of the blood.

      “You going to call Lee Chon now?” I asked Mike. “You going to show him the tape we had running during the operation and all?”

      “Not quite yet, Johnny,” he said. “First I want to educate Mhaw a bit, up to the Azure level or better. That should convince Lee.”

      Mhaw learned fast, probably faster than the Azures, even. Almost the first thing he wanted was for us to stop calling him Mhaw and start using an Azure name, Aedo.

      Once a day, Ellik left our hut to take some exercise—a walk along the alien esplanade, he called it. I used to stay with the doctored alien, now Aedo, but we finally learned we could trust him to follow our orders—which were to stay inside, away from the others, since we didn’t know how they would take him. So I got to walking along with Ellik.

      As dusk lengthened, we could see the spark that was our ship in its orbit along the retreating horizon.

      Ellik twisted back his head and the side of his mouth. “Look at him up there—look!”

      The spark burned brighter and danced in another direction.

      “He’s gone! He left us!” Ellik said.

      “It’s okay. He’s still there. Just corrected the orbit a little, I guess.”

      “No, no, no,” Ellik said. “He started to make another try. But he got afraid to try to go into hyperspace alone.”

      “He was just correcting for orbital decay.”

      “You don’t understand, Johnny. He’s a coward. That makes him dangerous. He’s getting desperate. That desperation will burst the dam of his own weakness and wash away our hope, our lives.”

      His voice hushed. He stood staring starkly ahead, his palms outstretched at his sides.

      “Maybe he isn’t that cowardly,” I said hopefully.

      *

      “Finished,” Ellik announced. He meant he had finished editing the tape showing the operation on the alien and his recovery from his blue disease, from being an Indigo to better than an Azure.

      “The transmitter is finished too,” I said.

      Ellik had suggested a way of switching the tape camera to a video converter for one of the audio communicators, and I had been able to do it easy. It took parts from both our communicators and translators too.

      Ellik fitted the coiled snake of tape into place. “This will be a great day for your people, Aedo. After our friend from heaven lands, we will be able to teach you a way to cure all of your sick, to make all the Indigos like you.”

      “Like me? Make like me?” Aedo said in the pidgin terrestrial that Mike Ellik had taught him.

      “Yes. We’ll