The Lost Kafoozalum Read online

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  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction October 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  THE LOST KAFOOZALUM

  by PAULINE ASHWELL

  Illustrated by Schoenherr

  _One of the beautiful things about a delusion is that no matter how mad someone gets at it ... he can't do it any harm. Therefore a delusion can be a fine thing for prodding angry belligerents...._

  * * * * *

  I remember some bad times, most of them back home on Excenus 23; theworst was when Dad fell under the reaping machine but there was alsothe one when I got lost twenty miles from home with a dud radio, atthe age of twelve; and the one when Uncle Charlie caught me practicingemergency turns in a helicar round the main weather-maker; and the oneon Figuerra being chased by a cyber-crane; and the time when Daddecided to send me to Earth to do my Education.

  This time is bad in a different way, with no sharp edges but a kind ofa desolation.

  Most people I know are feeling bad just now, because at RussettCollege we finished our Final Examination five days ago and Resultsare not due for a two weeks.

  My friend B Laydon says this is yet another Test anyone still sane atthe end being proved tough enough to break a molar on; she says alsoThe worst part is in bed remembering all the things she could havewritten and did not; The second worst is also in bed picturing how toexplain to her parents when they get back to Earth that _someone_ hasto come bottom and in a group as brilliant as Russett College CulturalEngineering Class this is really no disgrace.

  I am not worried that way so much, I cannot remember what I wroteanyway and I can think of one or two people I am pretty sure will comebottomer than me--or B either.

  I would prefer to think it is just Finals cause me to feel miserablebut it is not.

  In Psychology they taught us The mind has the faculty of concealingany motive it is ashamed of, especially from itself; seemsunfortunately mine does not have this gadget supplied.

  I never wanted to come to Earth. I was sent to Russett against my willand counting the days till I could get back to Home, Father andExcensus 23, but the sad truth is that now the longed-for moment isnearly on top of me I do not want to go.

  Dad's farm was a fine place to grow up, but now I had four years onEarth the thought of going back there makes me feel like athree-weeks' chicken got to get back in its shell.

  B and I are on an island in the Pacific. Her parents are on Caratacusresearching on local art forms, so she and I came here to be miserablein company and away from the rest.

  It took me years on Earth to get used to all this water around, itseemed unnatural and dangerous to have it all lying loose that way,but now I shall miss even the Sea.

  The reason we have this long suspense over Finals is that they willnot use Reading Machines to mark the papers for fear of cutting downcritical judgement; so each paper has to be read word by word by threeExaminers and there are forty-three of us and we wrote six paperseach.

  What I think is I am sorry for the Examiners, but B says they were theones who set the papers and it serves them perfectly right.

  I express surprise because D. J. M'Clare our Professor is one of them,but B says He is one of the greatest men in the galaxy, of course, butshe gave up thinking him perfect _years_ ago.

  One of the main attractions on this Island is swimming under water,especially by moonlight. Dad sent me a fish-boat as a birthday presenttwo years back, but I never used it yet on account of myabove-mentioned attitude to water. Now I got this feeling of CarpeDiem, make the most of Earth while I am on it because probably I shallnot pass this way again.

  The fourth day on the Island it is full moon at ten o'clock, so Ipluck up courage to wriggle into the boat and go out under the Sea. Bsays Fish parading in and out of reefs just remind her of CulturalEngineering--crowd behavior--so she prefers to turn in early and findout what nightmares her subconscious will throw up _this_ time.

  The reefs by moonlight are everything they are supposed to be, why didI not do this often when I had the chance? I stay till my oxygen isnearly gone, then come out and sadly press the button that collapsesthe boat into a thirty-pound package of plastic hoops and oxygen cans.I sling it on my back and head for the chalet B and I hired among thecoconut trees.

  * * * * *

  I am crossing an open space maybe fifty yards from it when a Thingdrops on me out of the air.

  I do not see the Thing because part of it covers my face, and the restis grabbed round my arms and my waist and my hips and whatever, Icannot see and I cannot scream and I cannot find anything to kick. TheThing is strong and rubbery and many-armed and warmish, and less thana second after I first feel it I am being hauled up into the air.

  I do not care for this at all.

  I am at least fifty feet up before it occurs to me to bite the handthat gags me and then I discover it is plastic, not alive at all. ThenI feel self and encumberance scraping through some kind of aperture;there is a sharp click as of a door closing and the Thing goes limpall round me.

  I spit out the bit I am biting and it drops away so that I can see.

  Well!

  I am in a kind of a cup-shaped space maybe ten feet across but nothigher than I am; there is a trap door in the ceiling; the Thing islying all around me in a mess of plastic arms, with an extensiblestalk connecting it to the wall. I kick free and it turns overexposing the label FRAGILE CARGO right across the back.

  The next thing I notice is two holdalls, B's and mine, clamped againstthe wall, and the next after that is the opening of a trap door in theceiling and B's head silhouetted in it remarking Oh there you are Liz.

  I confirm this statement and ask for explanations.

  B says She doesn't understand all of it but it is all right.

  It is not all right I reply, if she has joined some Society such asfor the Realization of Fictitious Improbabilities that is herprivilege but no reason to involve me.

  B says Why do I not stop talking and come up and see for myself?

  There is a slight hitch when I jam in the trap door, then B helps meget the boat off my back and I drop it on the Fragile Cargo and emergeinto the cabin of a Hopper, drop-shaped, cargo-carrying; I have beenin its hold till now.

  There are one or two peculiar points about it, or maybe one or twohundred, such as the rate at which we are ascending which seems to bebringing us right into the Stratosphere; but the main thing I noticeis the pilot. He has his back to us but is recognizably Ram Gopal whograduated in Cultural Engineering last year, Rumor says next to top ofhis class.

  I ask him what kind of a melodramatic shenanigan is this?

  B says We had to leave quietly in a hurry without attracting attentionso she booked us out at the Hotel _hours_ ago and she and Ram havebeen hanging around waiting for me ever since.

  I point out that the scope-trace of an Unidentified Flying Object willoccasion a lot more remark than a normal departure even at midnight.

  At this Ram smiles in an inscrutable Oriental manner and B gets nearlyas cross as I do, seems she has mentioned this point before.

  We have not gone into it properly when the cabin suddenly shiftsthrough a right angle. B and I go sliding down the vertical floor andend sitting on a window. There is a jolt and a shudder and Ram muttersthings in Hindi and then suddenly Up is nowhere at all.

  B and I scramble off the window and grab fix
tures so as to stay put.The stars have gone and we can see nothing except the dim glow overthe instruments; then suddenly lights go on outside.

  We look out into the hold of a ship.

  Our ten-foot teardrop is sitting next to another one, like two eggsin a rack. On the other side is a bulkhead; behind, the curve of thehull; and directly ahead an empty space, then another bulkhead and anopen door, through which after a few seconds a head pokes cautiously.

  The head is then followed by a body which kicks off against the walland sails slowly towards us. Ram presses a stud and a door slides openin the hopper; but the new arrival stops himself with a hand on eitherside of the frame, his legs trailing any old how behind him. It isPeter Yeng Sen who graduated the year I did my Field Work.

  He says, Gopal, dear fellow, there was no need for the knocking, weheard the bell all right.

  Ram grumbles something about the guide beam being miss-set, and slidesout of his chair. Peter announces that we have only just made it asthe deadline is in seven minutes time; he waves B and me out of thehopper, through the door and into a corridor where a certain irregularvibration is coming from the walls.

  Ram asks what is that tapping? And Peter sighs and says The presentgeneration of students has no discipline at all.

  At this B brakes with one hand against the wall and cocks her head tolisten; next moment she laughs and starts banging with her fist on thewall.

  Peter exclaims in Mandarin and tows her away by one wrist like areluctant kite. The rapping starts again on the far side of the walland I suddenly recognize a primitive signaling system called Regretor something, I guess because it was used by people in situations theydid not like such as Sinking ships or solitary confinement; it is doneby tapping water pipes and such.

  Someone found it in a book and the more childish element in Collegelearned it up for signaling during compulsory lectures. Interestwaning abruptly when the lecturers started to learn it, too.

  I never paid much attention not expecting to be in Solitaryconfinement much; this just shows you; next moment Ram opens a doorand pushes me through it, the door clicks behind me and Solitaryconfinement is what I am in.

  I remember this code is really called Remorse which is what I feel fornot learning when I had the chance.

  However I do not have long for it, a speaker in the wall requestseveryone to lie down as acceleration is about to begin. I strap downon the couch which fills half the compartment, countdown begins and atzero the floor is suddenly _down_ once more.

  I wait till my stomach settles, then rise to explore.

  * * * * *

  I am in an oblong room about eight by twelve, it looks as though ithad been hastily partitioned off from a larger space. The walls areprefab plastic sheet, the rest is standard fittings slung in andbolted down with the fastenings showing.

  How many of my classmates are on this ship? _Remorse_ again astapping starts on either side of me.

  Discarding such Hypotheses as that Ram and Peter are going to hold usto ransom--which might work for me, since my Dad somehow got to be amillionaire, but not for B because her parents think money isvulgar--or that we are being carried off to found an ideal Colonysomewhere--any first-year student can tell you why that won'twork--only one idea seems plausible.

  This is that Finals were not final and we are in for a Test of somesort.

  After ten minutes I get some evidence; a Reading Machine is trundledin, the door immediately slamming shut so I do not see who trundlesit.

  I prowl round it looking for tricks but it seems standard; I take aseat in it, put on the headset and turn the switch.

  Hypothesis confirmed, I suppose.

  There is a reel in place and it contains background information on aproblem in Cultural Engineering all set out the way we are taught todo it in Class. The Problem concerns developments on a planet gotsettled by two groups during the Exodus and been isolated ever since.

  Well while a Reading Machine is running there is no time to think, itcrams in data at full speed and evaluation has to wait. However mysubconscious goes into action and when the reel stops it produces aSuspicion full grown.

  The thing is too tidy.

  When we were First Year we dreamed up situations like this and arguedlike mad over them, but they were a lot too neat for real life and toodramatic as well.

  However one thing M'Clare said to us, and every other lecturer too,just before the Finals, was Do not spend time trying to figure whatthe examiner was after but answer the question as set; I am more thanhalfway decided this is some mysterious Oriental idea of a joke but Iget busy thinking in case it is not.

  * * * * *

  The Problem goes like this:

  The planet is called Incognita in the reel and it is right on the edgeof the known volume of space, it got settled by two groups somewherebetween three and three and a half centuries ago. The rest of thehuman race never heard of it till maybe three years back.

  (Well it happens that way, inhabited planets are still turning upeight or ten a century, on account of during the Exodus some folk werewilling to travel a year or more so as to get away from the rest).

  The ship that spotted the planet as inhabited did not land, butreported to Central Government, Earth, who shipped observers out totake a look.

  (There was a rumor circulating at Russett that the Terry Governmentmight employ some of us on that kind of job, but it never gotofficial. I do not know whether to believe this bit or not.)

  It is stated the observers landed secretly and mingled with thenatives unobserved.

  (This is not physically impossible but sounds too like a Field Trip tobe true.)

  The observers are not named but stated to be graduates of the CulturalEngineering Class.

  They put in a few months' work and sent home unanimous Crash Priorityreports the situation is _bad_, getting worse and the prognosis isWar.

  Brother.

  I know people had wars, I know one reason we do not have them now isjust that with so many planets and cheap transportation, pressure hasother outlets; these people scrapped their ships for factories andnever built more.

  But.

  There are only about ten million of them and surely to goodness awhole planet gives room enough to keep out of each other's hair?

  Well this is not Reasoning but a Reaction, I go back to the data foranother look.

  The root trouble is stated to be that two groups landed on the planetwithout knowing the others were there, when they met thirty yearslater they got a disagreeable shock.

  I cannot see there was any basic difference between them, they werevery similar, especially in that neither lot wanted anything to dowith people they had not picked themselves.

  So they divided the planet along a Great Circle which left two of themain land-masses in one hemisphere and two in another.

  They agree each to keep to its own section and leave the other alone.

  Twenty years later, trading like mad; each has certain minerals theother lacks; each has certain agricultural products the other finds itdifficult to grow.

  You think this leads to Co-operation Friendship and ultimateFederation?

  I will not go into the incidents that make each side feel it is beinggypped, it is enough that from time to time each has a scarcity orhold-up on deliveries that upsets the other's economy; and they startexperimenting to become self-sufficient: and the exporter's economy isupset in turn. And each thinks the other did it on purpose.

  This sort of situation reacts internally leading to Politics.

  There are troubles about a medium-sized island on the dividing line,and the profits from interhemispherical transport, and the laws ofinterhemispherical trade.

  It takes maybe two hundred years, but finally each has expanded thePolice into an army with a whole spectrum of weapons not to be used onany account except for Defense.

  This situation lasts seventy years getting worse all the time, nowRumors have start
ed on each side that the other is developing anUltimate Weapon, and the political parties not in power are agitatingto move first before the thing is complete.

  The observers report War not maybe this year or the next but withinten, and if neither side was looking for an Ultimate Weapon to beginwith they certainly are now.

  Taking all this at face value there seems an obvious solution.

  I am thinking this over in an academic sort of way when an itchytrickle of sweat starts down my vertebrae.

  Who is going to apply this solution? Because if this is anything butanother Test, or the output of a diseased sense of humor, I would besorry for somebody.

  I dial black coffee on the wall servitor and wish B were here so wecould prove to each other the thing is just an exercise; I do not doso well at spotting proofs on my own.

  Most of our class exercises have concerned something that happened,once.

  * * * * *

  After about ninety minutes the speaker requests me to write not morethan one thousand words on any scheme to improve the situation and theequipment required for it.

  I spent ten minutes verbalizing the basic idea and an hour or so on"equipment"; the longer I go on the more unlikely it all seems. In theend I have maybe two hundred words which acting on instructions I postthrough a slit in the door.

  Five minutes later I realize I have forgotten the Time Factor.

  If the original ship took a year to reach Incognita, it will take atleast four months now; therefore it is more than four months sincethat report was written and will be more than a year before anyonearrives and War may have started already.

  I sit back and by transition of ideas start to wonder where this shipis heading? We are still at one gee and even on Mass-Time you cannotjuggle apparent acceleration and spatial transition outside certainlimits; we are not just orbiting but must be well outside the SolarSystem by now.

  The speaker announces Everyone will now get some rest; I smellsleep-gas for one moment and have just time to lie down.

  I guess I was tired, at that.

  When I wake I feel more cheerful than I have for weeks; analysisindicates I am glad something is _happening_ even if it is anotherExam.

  I dial breakfast but am too restless to eat; I wonder how long thisgoes on or whether I am