How to Be Ethnic in One Easy Lesson

Adzel talks a lot about blessings in disguise, but this disguise was impenetrable. In fact, what Simon Snyder handed me was an exploding bomb.

I was hard at study when my phone warbled. That alone jerked me half out of my lounger. I’d set that instrument to pass calls from no more than a dozen people, to all of whom I’d explained that they shouldn’t bother me about anything much less urgent than a rogue planet on a collision course.

You see, my preliminary tests for the Academy were coming up soon. Not the actual entrance exams—I’d face those a year hence—but the tests as to whether I should be allowed to apply for admission. You can’t blame that policy on the Brotherhood. Not many regular spaceman’s berths become available annually, and a hundred young Earthlings clamor for each of them. The ninety-nine who don’t make it…well, mostly they try to get work with some company which will maybe someday assign them to a post somewhere out-system; or they set their teeth and save their money till at last they can go as shepherded tourists.

At night, out above the ocean in my car, away from city glow, I’d look upward and be ripped apart by longing. As for the occasional trips to Luna—last time, several months before—I’d found my eyes running over at sight of that sky, when the flit was my sixteenth-birthday present.

And now tensor calculus was giving me trouble. No doubt the Education Central computer would have gotten monumentally bored, projecting the same stuff over and over on my screen, if it had been built to feel emotions. Is that why it hasn’t been?

The phone announced: “Freeman Snyder.”

You don’t refuse your principal counselor. His or her word has too much to do with the evaluation of you as a potential student by places like the Academy. “Accept,” I gulped. As his lean features flashed on: “Greeting, sir.”

“Greeting, Jim,” he said. “How are you?”

“Busy,” I hinted.

“Indeed. You are a rather intense type, eh? The indices show you’re apt to work yourself into the ground. A change of pace is downright necessary.”

Why are we saddled with specialists who arbitrate our lives on the basis of a psychoprofile and a theory? If I’d been apprenticed to a Master Merchant of the Polesotechnic League instead, he wouldn’t have given two snorts in vacuum about my “optimum developmental strategy.” He’d have told me, “Ching, do this or learn that”; and if I didn’t cut it satisfactorily, I’d be fired—or dead, because we’d be on strange worlds, out among the stars, the stars.

No use daydreaming. League apprenticeships are scarcer than hair on a neutron, and mostly filled by relatives. (That’s less nepotism for its own sake than a belief that kin of survivor types are more likely to be the same than chance-met groundhugger kids.) I was an ordinary student bucking for an Academy appointment, from which I’d graduate to service on regular runs and maybe, at last, a captaincy.

“To be frank,” Simon Snyder went on, “I’ve worried about your indifference to extracurricular activities. It doesn’t make for an outgoing personality, you know. I’ve thought of an undertaking which should be right in your orbit. In addition, it’ll be a real service, it’ll bring real credit, to—” he smiled afresh to pretend he was joking while he intoned—“the educational complex of San Francisco Integrate.”

“I haven’t time!” I wailed.

“Certainly you do. You can’t study twenty-four hours a day, even if a medic would prescribe the stim. Brains go stale. All work and no play, remember. Besides, Jim, this matter has its serious aspect. I’d like to feel I could endorse your altruism as well as your technological abilities.”

I eased my muscles, let the lounger mold itself around me, and said in what was supposed to be a hurrah voice: “Please tell me, Freeman Snyder.”

He beamed. “I knew I could count on you. You’ve heard of the upcoming Festival of Man.”

“Haven’t I?” Realizing how sour my tone was, I tried again. “I have.”

He gave me a pretty narrow look. “You don’t sound too enthusiastic.”

“Oh, I’ll tune in ceremonies and such, catch a bit of music and drama and whatnot, if and when the chance comes. But I’ve got to get these transformations in hyperdrive theory straight, or—”

“I’m afraid you don’t quite appreciate the importance of the Festival, Jim. It’s more than a set of shows. It’s an affirmation.” Yes, I’d heard that often enough before—too dismally often.

Doubtless you remember the line of argument the promoters used: “Humankind, gaining the stars, is in grave danger of losing its soul. Our extraterrestrial colonies are fragmenting into new nations, whole new cultures, to which Earth is scarcely a memory. Our traders, our explorers push ever outward, ever further away; and no missionary spirit drives them, nothing but lust for profit and adventure. Meanwhile the Solar Commonwealth is deluged with alien—nonhuman—influence, not only diplomats, entrepreneurs, students, and visitors, but the false glamour of ideas never born on man’s true home. We grant we have learned much of value from these outsiders. But much else has been unassimilable or has had a disastrously distorting effect, especially in the arts. Besides, they are learning far more from us. Let us proudly affirm that fact. Let us hark back to our own origins, our own variousness. Let us strike new roots in the soil from which our forebears sprang.”

A year-long display of Earth’s past—well, it’d be colorful, if rather fakey most of the time. I couldn’t take it more seriously than that. Space was where the future lay, I thought. At least, it was where I dreamed my personal future would lie. What were dead bones to me, no matter how fancy the costumes you put on them? Not that I scorned the past; even then, I wasn’t so foolish. I just believed that what was worth saving would save itself, and the rest had better be let fade away quietly.

I tried to explain to my counselor: “Sure, I’ve been told about ‘cultural pseudomorphosis’ and the rest. Really, though, Freeman Snyder, don’t you think the shoe is on the other foot? Like, well, I’ve got this friend from Woden, name of Adzel, here to learn planetology. That’s a science we developed; his folk are primitive hunters, newly discovered by us. He talks human languages too—he’s quick at languages—and lately he was converted to Buddhism and shouldn’t the Wodenites worry about being turned into imitation Earthlings?” My example wasn’t the best, because you can only humanize a four—and—a-half-meter-long dragon to a limited extent. Whether he knew that or not (who can know all the races, all the worlds we’ve already found in our small corner of this wonderful cosmos?)

Snyder wasn’t impressed. He snapped, “The sheer variety of extraterrestrial influence is demoralizing. Now I want our complex to make a decent showing during the Festival. Every department, office, club, church, institution in the Integrate will take part. I want its schools to have a leading role.”

“Don’t they, sir? I mean, aren’t projects under way?”

“Yes, yes, to a degree.” He waved an impatient hand. “Far less than I’d expect from our youth. Too many of you are spacestruck—” He checked himself, donned his smile again, and leaned forward till his image seemed ready to fall out of the screen. “I’ve been thinking about what my own students might do. In your case, I have a first-class idea. You will represent San Francisco’s Chinese community among us.”

“What?” I yelped. “Bu—but—”

“A very old, almost unique tradition,” he said. “Your people have been in this area for five or six hundred years.”

“My people?” The room wobbled around me. “I mean…well, sure, my name’s Ching and I’m proud of it. And maybe the, uh, the chromosome recombinations do make me look like those ancestors. But…half a thousand years, sir! If I haven’t got blood in me of every breed of human being that ever lived, why, then I’m a statistical monstrosity!”

“True. However, the accident which makes you a throwback to your Mongoloid forebears is helpful. Few of my students are identifiably anything. I try to find roles for them, on the basis of surnames, but it isn’t easy.”

Yeh, I thought bitterly. By your reasoning, everybody named Marcantonio should dress in a toga for the occasion, and everybody named Smith should paint himself blue.

“There is a local ad hoc committee on Chinese-American activities,” Snyder went on. “I suggest you contact them and ask for ideas and information. What can you present on behalf of our educational system? And then, of course, there’s Library Central. It can supply more historical material than you could read in a lifetime. Do you good to learn a few subjects besides math, physics, xenology—” His grimace passed by. I gave him marks for sincerity: “Perhaps you can devise something, a float or the like, something which will call on your engineering ingenuity and knowledge. That would please them too, when you apply at the Academy.”

Sure, I thought, if it hasn’t eaten so much of my time that I flunk these prelims.

“Remember,” Snyder said, “the Festival opens in barely three months. I’ll expect progress reports from you. Feel free to call on me for help or advice at any time. That’s what I’m here for, you know: to guide you in developing your whole self.”

More of the same followed. I haven’t the stomach to record it.

I called Betty Riefenstahl, but just to find out if I could come see her. Though holovids are fine for image and sound, you can’t hold hands with one or catch a whiff of perfume and girl.

Her phone told me she wasn’t available till evening. That gave me ample chance to gnaw my nerves raw. I couldn’t flat-out refuse Snyder’s pet notion. The right was mine, of course, and he wouldn’t consciously hold a grudge; but neither would he speak as well as he might of my energy and team spirit. On the other hand, what did I know about Chinese civilization? I’d seen the standard sights; I’d read a classic or two in literature courses; and that was that. What persons I’d met over there were as modern-oriented as myself. (No pun, I hope!) And as for Chinese-Americans, vaguely remembering that San Francisco had once had special ethnic sections, I did ask Library Central. It screened a fleet of stuff about a district known as Chinatown. Probably contemporaries found that area picturesque. (Oh, treetop highways under the golden-red sun of Cynthia! Four-armed drummers who sound the mating call of Gorzun’s twin moons! Wild wings above Ythn!) The inhabitants had celebrated a Lunar New Year with fireworks and a parade. I couldn’t make out details—the photographs had been time-blurred when their information was receded—and was too disheartened to plow through the accompanying text.

For me, dinner was a refueling stop. I mumbled something to my parents, who mean well but can’t understand why I must leave the nice safe Commonwealth, and flitted off to the Riefenstahl place. The trip calmed me a little. I was reminded that, to outworlders like Adzel, the miracle was here. Light glimmered in a million earthbound stars across the hills, far out over the great sheen of Bay and ocean; often it fountained upward in a many-armed tower, often gave way to the sweet darkness of a park or ecocenter. A murmur of machines beat endlessly through cool, slightly foggy air. Traffic Control passed me so near a bus that I looked in its canopy and saw the passengers were from the whole globe and beyond—a dandified Lunarian, a stocky blueskin of Alfzar, a spacehand identified by his Brotherhood badge, a journeyman merchant of the Polesotechnic League who didn’t bother with any identification except the skin weathered beneath strange suns, the go-to-hell independence in his face, which turned me sick with envy.

The Riefenstahls’ apartment overlooked the Golden Gate. I saw lights twinkle and flare, heard distant clangor and hissing, where crews worked around the clock to replicate an ancient bridge. Betty met me at the door. She’s slim and blonde and usually cheerful. Tonight she looked so tired and troubled that I myself paid scant attention to the briefness of her tunic.

“Sh!” she cautioned. “Let’s don’t say hello to Dad right now. He’s in his study, and it’s very brown.” I knew that her mother was away from home, helping develop the tape of a modern musical composition. Her father conducted the San Francisco Opera.

She led me to the living room, sat me down, and punched for coffee. A full-wall transparency framed her where she continued standing, in city glitter and shimmer, a sickle moon with a couple of pinpoint cities visible on its dark side, a few of the brightest stars. “I’m glad you came, Jimmy,” she said. “I need a shoulder to cry on.”

“Like me,” I answered. “You first, however.”

“Well, it’s Dad. He’s ghastly worried. This stupid Festival—”

“Huh?” I searched my mind and found nothing except the obvious. “Won’t he be putting on a, uh, Terrestrial piece?”

“He’s expected to. He’s been researching till every hour of the mornings, poor dear. I’ve been helping him go through playbacks—hundreds and hundreds of years’ worth—and prepare synopses and excerpts to show the directors. We only finished yesterday, and I had to catch up on sleep. That’s why I couldn’t let you come earlier.”

“But what’s the problem?” I asked. “Okay, you’ve been forced to scan those tapes. But once you’ve picked your show, you just project it, don’t you? At most, you may need to update the language. And you’ve got your mother to handle reprogramming.”

Betty sighed. “It’s not that simple. You see, they—his board of directors, plus the officials in charge of San Francisco’s participation—they insist on a live performance.”

Partly I knew what she was talking about, partly she explained further. Freeman Riefenstahl had pioneered the revival of in—the-flesh opera. Yes, he said, we have holographic records of the greatest artists; yes, we can use computers to generate original works and productions which no mortal being could possibly match. Yet neither approach will bring forth new artists with new concepts of a part, nor do they give individual brains a chance to create—and, when a million fresh ideas are flowing in to us from the galaxy, natural-born genius must create or else revolt.

“Let us by all means use technical tricks where they are indicated, as for special effects,” Freeman Riefenstahl said. “But let us never forget that music is only alive in a living performer.”

While I don’t claim to be very esthetic, I tuned in his shows whenever I could. They did have an excitement which no tape and no calculated stimulus interplay—no matter how excellent—can duplicate.

“His case is like yours,” Betty told me near the start of our acquaintance. “We could send robots to space. Nevertheless men go, at whatever risk.” That was when I stopped thinking of her as merely pretty.

Tonight, her voice gone bleak, she said: “Dad succeeded too well. He’s been doing contemporary things, you know, letting the archives handle the archaic. Now they insist he won’t be showing sufficient respect, as a representative of the Integrate, for the Human Ethos, unless he puts on a historic item, live, as the Opera Company’s share of the Festival.”

“Well, can’t he?” I asked. “Sure, it’s kind of short notice, same as for me. Still, given modern training methods for his cast—”

“Of course, of course,” she said irritably. “But don’t you see, a routine performance isn’t good enough either? People today are conditioned to visual spectacles. At least, the directors claim so. And Jimmy, the Festival is important, if only because of the publicity. If Dad’s part in it falls flat, his contract may not be renewed. Certainly his effort would be hurt, to educate the public back to real music.” Her tone and her head drooped. “And that’d hurt him.”

She drew a breath, straightened, even coaxed a smile into existence. “Well, we’ve made our precis of suggestions,” she said. “We’re waiting to hear what the board decides, which may take days. Meanwhile, you need to tell me your woes.” Sitting down opposite me: “Do.”

I obeyed. At the end I grinned on one side of my face and remarked: “Ironic, huh? Here your father has to stage an ultra-ethnic production—I’ll bet they’ll turn handsprings for him if he can make it German, given a name like his—only he’s not supposed to use technology for much except backdrops. And here I have to do likewise, in Chinese style, the flashier the better, only I really haven’t time to apply the technology for making a firework fountain or whatever. Maybe he and I should pool our efforts.”

“How?”

“I dunno.” I shifted in the chair. “Let’s get out of here, go someplace where we can forget this mess.”

What I had in mind was a flit over the ocean or down to the swimmably warm waters off Baja, followed maybe by a snack in a restaurant featuring outsystem food. Betty gave me no chance. She nodded and said quickly, “Yes, I’ve been wanting to. A serene environment. Do you think Adzel might be at home?”

The League scholarship he’d wangled back on his planet didn’t reach far on Earth, especially when he had about a ton of warmblooded mass to keep fed. He couldn’t afford special quarters, or anything near the Clement Institute of Planetology. Instead, he paid exorbitant rent for a shack way down in the San Jose district. The sole public transportation he could fit into was a rickety old twice—a-day gyrotrain, which meant he lost hours commuting to his laboratory and live-lecture classes, waiting for them to begin and waiting around after they were finished. Also, I strongly suspected he was undernourished. I’d fretted about him ever since we met, in the course of a course in micrometrics.

He always dismissed my fears; “Once, Jimmy, I might well have chafed, when I was a prairie-galloping hunter. Now, having gained a minute measure of enlightenment, I see that these annoyances of the flesh are no more significant than we allow them to be. Indeed, we can turn them to good use. Austerities are valuable. As for long delays, why, they are opportunities for study or, better yet, meditation. I have even learned to ignore spectators, and am grateful for the discipline which that forced me to acquire.”

We may be used to extraterrestrials these days. Nevertheless, he was the one Wodenite on this planet. And you take a being like that: four hoofed legs supporting a spike-backed, green-scaled, golden-bellied body and tail; torso, with arms in proportion, rising two meters to a crocodilian face, fangs, rubbery lips, bony ears, wistful brown eyes—you take that fellow and set him on a campus, in his equivalent of the lotus position, droning “Om mani padme hum” in a rich basso profundo, and see if you don’t draw a crowd.

Serious though he was, Adzel never became a prig. He enjoyed good food and drink when he could get them, being especially fond of rye whiskey consumed out of beer tankards. He played murderous chess and poker. He sang, and sang well, everything from his native chants through human folk ballads on to the very latest spinnies. (A few things, such as Eskimo Nell, he refused to render in Betty’s presence. From his avid reading of human history, he’d picked up anachronistic inhibitions.) I imagine his jokes often escaped me by being too subtle.

All in all, I was tremendously fond of him, hated the thought of his poverty, and had failed to hit on any way of helping him out. I set my car down on the strip before his hut. A moldering con-urb, black against feverish reflections off thickening fog, cast it into deep and sulfurous shadow. Unmuffled industrial traffic brawled around. I took a stun pistol from a drawer before escorting Betty outside. Adzel’s doorplate was kaput, but he opened at our knock. “Do come in, do come in,” he greeted. Fluoro-light shimmered gorgeous along his scales and scutes. Incense puffed outward. He noticed my gun. “Why are you armed, Jimmy?”

“The night’s dark here,” I said. “In a crime area like this—”

“Is it?” He was surprised. “Why, I have never been molested.” We entered. He waved us to mats on the floor. Those, and a couple of cheap tables, and bookshelves cobbled together from scrap and crammed with codexes as well as reels, were his furniture. An Old Japanese screen—repro, of course—hid that end of the single room which contained a miniature cooker and some complicated specially installed plumbing. Two scrolls hung on the walls, one snowing a landscape and one the Compassionate Buddha.

Adzel bustled about, making tea for us. He hadn’t quite been able to adjust to these narrow surroundings. Twice I had to duck fast before his tail clonked me. (I said nothing, lest he spend the next half-hour in apologies.) “I am delighted to see you,” he boomed. “I gathered, however, from your call, that the occasion is not altogether happy.”

“We hoped you’d help us relax,” Betty replied. I myself felt a bit disgruntled. Sure, Adzel was fine people; but couldn’t Betty and I relax in each other’s company? I had seen too little of her these past weeks.

He served us. His pot held five liters, but—thanks maybe to that course in micrometrics—he could handle the tiniest cups and put on an expert tea ceremony. Appropriate silence passed. I fumed. Charming the custom might be; still, hadn’t Oriental traditions caused me ample woe?

At last he dialled for pipa music, settled down before us on hocks and front knees, and invited: “Share your troubles, dear friends.”

“Oh, we’ve been over them and over them,” Betty said. “I came here for peace.”

“Why, certainly,” Adzel answered. “I am glad to try to oblige. Would you like to join me in a spot of transcendental meditation?” That tore my patience apart.

“No!” I yelled. They both stared at me. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “But…chaos, everything’s gone bad and—”

A gigantic four-digited hand squeezed my shoulder, gently as my mother might have done. “Tell, Jimmy,” Adzel said low.

It flooded from me, the whole sad, ludicrous situation. “Freeman Snyder can’t understand,” I finished. “He thinks I can learn those equations, those facts, in a few days at most.”

“Can’t you? Operant conditioning, for example—”

“You know better. I can learn to parrot, sure. But I won’t get the knowledge down in my bones where it belongs. And they’ll set me problems which require original thinking. They must. How else can they tell if I’ll be able to handle an emergency in space?”

“Or on a new planet.” The long head nodded. “Yes-s-s.”

“That’s not for me,” I said flatly. “I’ll never be tagged by the merchant adventurers.” Betty squeezed my hand. “Even freighters can run into grief, though.”

He regarded me for a while, most steadily, until at last he rumbled: “A word to the right men—that does appear to be how your Technic civilization operates, no? Zothkh. Have you prospects for a quick performance of this task, that will allow you to get back soon to your proper work?”

“No. Freeman Snyder mentioned a float or display. Well, I’ll have to soak up cultural background, and develop a scheme, and clear it with a local committee, and design the thing—which had better be spectacular as well as ethnic—and build it, and test it, and find the bugs in the design, and rebuild it, and—And I’m no artist anyhow. No matter how clever a machine I make, it won’t look like much.”

Suddenly Betty exclaimed: “Adzel, you know more about Old Oriental things than he does! Can’t you make a suggestion?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps.” The Wodenite rubbed his jaw, a sandpaper noise. “The motifs—Let me see.” He hooked a book off a shelf and started leafing through it. “They are generally of pagan origin in Buddhistic, or for that matter Christian art…Gr-r-rrr’m…Betty, my sweet, while I search, won’t you unburden yourself too?”

She twisted her fingers and gazed at the floor. I figured she’d rather not be distracted. Rising from my mat, I went to look over his shoulder—no, his elbow.

“My problem is my father’s, actually,” she began. “And maybe he and I already have solved it. That depends on whether or not one of the possibilities we’ve found is acceptable. If not, how much further can we research? Time’s getting so short. He needs time to assemble a cast, rehearse, handle the physical details—” She noticed Adzel’s puzzlement and managed a sort of chuckle. “Excuse me. I got ahead of my story. We—”

“Hoy!” I interrupted. My hand slapped down on a page. “What’s that? Uh, sorry, Betty.”

Her smile forgave me. “Have you found something?” She sprang to her feet.

“I don’t know,” I stammered, “b-b—but, Adzel, that thing in this picture could almost be you. What is it?”

He squinted at the ideograms. “The lung,” he said.

“A dragon?”

“Western writers miscalled it thus.” Adzel settled happily down to lecture us. “The dragon proper was a creature of European and Near Eastern mythology, almost always a destructive monster. In Chinese and related societies, contrariwise, these herpetoids represented beneficient powers. The lung inhabited the sky, the li the ocean, the chiao the marshes and mountains. Various other entities are named elsewhere. The lung was the principal type, the one which was mimed on ceremonial occasions—”

The phone warbled. “Would you please take that, Betty?” Adzel asked, reluctant to break off. “I daresay it’s a notification I am expecting of a change in class schedules. Now, Jimmy, observe the claws on hind and forefeet. Their exact number is a distinguishing characteristic of—”

“Dad!” Betty cried. Glancing sideways, I saw John Riefenstahl’s mild features in the screen, altogether woebegone.

“I was hoping I’d find you, dear,” he said wearily. I knew that these days she seldom left the place without recording a list of numbers where she could probably be reached.

“I’ve just finished a three-hour conference with the board chairman,” her father’s voice plodded. “They’ve vetoed every one of our proposals.”

“Already?” she whispered. “In God’s name, why?”

“Various reasons. They feel Carmen is too parochial in time and space; hardly anybody today would understand what motivates the characters. Alpha of the Centaur is about space travel, which is precisely what we’re supposed to get away from. La Traviata isn’t visual enough. Gotterdämmerung, they agree, has the Mythic Significance they want, but it’s too visual. A modern audience wouldn’t accept it unless we supply a realism of effects which would draw attention away from the live performers on whom it ought to center in a production that emphasizes Man. Et cetera, et cetera.”

“They’re full of nonsense!”

“They’re also full of power, dear. Can you bear to run through more tapes?”

“I’d better.”

“I beg your pardon, Freeman Riefenstahl,” Adzel put in. “We haven’t met but I have long admired your work. May I ask if you have considered Chinese opera?”

“The Chinese themselves will be doing that, Freeman—er—” The conductor hesitated.

“Adzel.” My friend moved into scanner range. His teeth gleamed alarmingly sharp. “Honored to make your acquaintance, sir…ah…sir?”

John Riefenstahl, who had gasped and gone bloodless, wiped his forehead. “Eh—eh—excuse me,” he stuttered. “I didn’t realize you—That is, here I had Wagner on my mind, and then Fafner himself confronted me—”

I didn’t know those names, but the context was obvious. All at once Betty and I met each other’s eyes and let out a yell.

Knowing how Simon Snyder would react, I insisted on a live interview. He sat behind his desk, surrounded by his computers, communicators, and information retrievers, and gave me a tight smile.

“Well,” he said. “You have an idea, Jim? Overnight seems a small time for a matter this important.”

“It was plenty,” I answered. “We’ve contacted the head of the Chinese-American committee, and he likes our notion. But since it’s on behalf of the schools, he wants your okay.”

“‘We’?” My counselor frowned. “You have a partner?”

“Chaos, sir, he is my project. What’s a Chinese parade without a dragon? And what fake dragon can possibly be as good as a live one? Now we take this Wodenite, and just give him a wig and false whiskers, claws over his hoofs, lacquer on his scales—”

“A nonhuman?” The frown turned into a scowl. “Jim, you disappoint me. You disappoint me sorely. I expected better from you, some dedication, some application of your talents. In a festival devoted to your race, you want to feature an alien! No, I’m afraid I cannot agree—”

“Sir, please wait till you’ve met Adzel.” I jumped from my chair, palmed the hall door, and called: “C’mon in.”

He did, meter after meter of him, till the office was full of scales, tail, spikes, and fangs. He seized Snyder’s hand in a gentle but engulfing grip, beamed straight into Snyder’s face, and thundered: “How joyful I am at this opportunity, sir! What a way to express my admiration for terrestrial culture, and thus help glorify your remarkable species!”

“Um, well, that is,” the man said feebly.

I had told Adzel that there was no reason to mention his being a pacifist. He continued: “I do hope you will approve Jimmy’s brilliant idea, sir. To be quite frank, my motives are not unmixed. If I perform, I understand that the local restaurateurs’ association will feed me during rehearsals. My stipend is exiguous and—” he licked his lips, two centimeters from Snyder’s nose—“sometimes I get so hungry.”

He would tell only the strict, if not always the whole truth. I, having fewer compunctions, whispered in my counselor’s ear: “He is kind of excitable, but he’s perfectly safe if nobody frustrates him.”

“Well.” Snyder coughed, backed away till he ran into a computer, and coughed again. “Well. Ah…yes. Yes, Jim, your concept is undeniably original. There is a—” he winced but got the words out—“a certain quality to it which suggests that you—” he strangled for a moment—“will go far in life.”

“You plan to record that opinion, do you not?” Adzel asked. “In Jimmy’s permanent file? At once?”

I hurried them both through the remaining motions. My friend, my girl, and her father had an appointment with the chairman of the board of the San Francisco Opera Company.

The parade went off like rockets. Our delighted local merchants decided to revive permanently the ancient custom of celebrating the Lunar New Year. Adzel will star in that as long as he remains on Earth. In exchange—since he brings in more tourist credits than it costs—he has an unlimited meal ticket at the Silver Dragon Chinese Food and Chop Suey Palace.

More significant was the production of Richard Wagner’s Siegfried. At least, in his speech at the farewell performance, the governor of the Integrate said it was significant. “Besides the bringing back of a musical masterpiece too many centuries neglected,” he pomped, “the genius of John Riefenstahl has, by his choice of cast, given the Festival of Man an added dimension. He has reminded us that, in seeking our roots and pride, we must never grow chauvinistic. We must always remember to reach forth the hand of friendship to our brother beings throughout God’s universe,” who might otherwise be less anxious to come spend their money on Earth.

The point does have its idealistic appeal, though. Besides, the show was a sensation in its own right. For years to come, probably, the complete Ring cycle will be presented here and there around the Commonwealth; and Freeman Riefenstahl can be guest conductor, and Adzel can sing Fafner, at top salary, any time they wish. I won’t see the end of that, because I won’t be around.

When everything had been settled, Adzel, Betty, and I threw ourselves a giant feast in his new apartment. After his fifth magnum of champagne, he gazed a trifle blurrily across the table and said to me: “Jimmy, my affection for you, my earnest wish to make a fractional return of your kindness, has hitherto been baffled.”

“Aw, nothing to mention,” I mumbled while he stopped a volcanic hiccough.

“At any rate.” Adzel wagged a huge finger. “He would be a poor friend who gave a dangerous gift.” He popped another cork and refilled our glasses and his stein. “That is, Jimmy, I was aware of your ambition to get into deep space, and not as a plyer of routine routes but as a discoverer, a pioneer. The question remained, could you cope with unpredictable environments?”

I gaped at him. The heart banged in my breast. Betty caught my hand.

“You have convinced me you can,” Adzel said. “True, Freeman Snyder may not give you his most ardent recommendation to the Academy. No matter. The cleverness and, yes, toughness with which you handled this problem—those convinced me, Jimmy, you are a true survivor type.”

He knocked back half a liter before tying the star-spangled bow knot on his package: “Being here on a League scholarship, I have League connections. I have been in correspondence. A certain Master Merchant I know will soon be in the market for another apprentice and accepts what I have told him about you. Are you interested?” I collapsed into Betty’s arms. She says she’ll find a way to follow me.