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Title: From Gustible's Planet
Author: Smith, Cordwainer [Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony]
   (1913-1966)
Date of first publication: July 1962
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   If, July 1962
   [New York: Digest Productions Corporation]
   [first edition]
Date first posted: 20 May 2017
Date last updated: 20 May 2017
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1436

This ebook was produced by Al Haines


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






  The aliens relished human ways.
  Unfortunately, the humans relished them too!


  from gustible's planet


BY CORDWAINER SMITH



Shortly after the celebration of the four thousandth anniversary of the
opening of space, Angary J. Gustible discovered Gustible's planet.

The discovery turned out to be a tragic mistake.

Gustible's planet was inhabited by highly intelligent life-forms.  They
had moderate telepathic powers.  They immediately mind-read Angary J.
Gustible's entire mind and life history, and embarrassed him very
deeply by making up an opera concerning his recent divorce.

The climax of the opera portrayed his wife throwing a teacup at him.
This created an unfavorable impression concerning Earth culture, and
Angary J. Gustible, who held a reserve commission as a Sub-chief of the
Instrumentality, was profoundly embarrassed to find that it was not the
higher realities of Earth which he had conveyed to these people, but
the unpleasant intimate facts.

As negotiations proceeded, other embarrassments developed.

In physical appearance the inhabitants of Gustible's planet, who called
themselves Apicians, resembled nothing more than oversize ducks, ducks
four feet to four feet six in height.  At their wing tips, they had
developed juxtaposed thumbs.  They were paddle-shaped and sufficed to
feed the Apicians.

Gustible's planet matched Earth in several respects: in the dishonesty
of the inhabitants, in their enthusiasm for good food, in their instant
capacity to understand the human mind.  Before Gustible began to get
ready to go back to Earth, he discovered that the Apicians had copied
his ship.  There was no use hiding this fact.  They had copied it in
such detail that the discovery of Gustible's planet meant the
simultaneous discovery of Earth...

By the Apicians.



The implications of this tragic development did not show up until the
Apicians followed him home.  They had a planoforming ship capable of
traveling in non-space just as readily as his.

The most important feature of Gustible's planet was its singularly
close match to the biochemistry of Earth.  The Apicians were the first
intelligent life-forms ever met by human beings who were at once
capable of smelling and enjoying everything which human beings smelled
and enjoyed, capable of following any human music with forthright
pleasure and capable of eating and drinking everything in sight.

The very first Apicians on Earth were greeted by somewhat alarmed
ambassadors who discovered that an appetite for Munich beer, Camembert
cheese, tortillas and enchiladas, as well as the better grades of chow
mein, far transcended any serious cultural, political or strategic
interests which the new visitors might have.

Arthur Djohn, a Lord of the Instrumentality who was acting for this
particular matter, delegated an Instrumentality agent named Calvin
Dredd as the chief diplomatic officer of Earth to handle the matter.

Dredd approached one Schmeckst, who seemed to be the Apician leader.
The interview was an unfortunate one.

Dredd began by saying, "Your Exalted Highness, we are delighted to
welcome you to Earth--"

Schmeckst said, "Are those edible?" and proceeded to eat the plastic
buttons from Calvin Dredd's formal coat, even before Dredd could say
though not edible they were attractive.

Schmeckst said, "Don't try to eat those, they are really not very good."

Dredd, looking at his coat sagging wide open, said, "May I offer you
some food?"

Schmeckst said, "Indeed, yes."

And while Schmeckst ate an Italian dinner, a Peking dinner, a red-hot
peppery Szechuanese dinner, a Japanese sukiyaki dinner, two British
breakfasts, a smorgasbord and four complete servings of
diplomatic-level Russian zakouska, he listened to the propositions of
the Instrumentality of Earth.



These did not impress him.  Schmeckst was intelligent despite his gross
and offensive eating habits.  He pointed out: "We two worlds are equal
in weapons.  We can't fight.  Look," said he to Calvin Dredd in a
threatening tone.

Calvin Dredd braced himself, as he had learned to do.  Schmeckst also
braced him.

For an instant Dredd did not know what had happened.  Then he realized
that in putting his body into a rigid and controlled posture he had
played along with the low grade but manipulable telepathic powers of
the visitors.  He was frozen rigid till Schmeckst laughed and released
him.

Schmeckst said, "You see, we are well matched.  I can freeze you.
Nothing short of utter desperation could get you out of it.  If you try
to fight us, we'll lick you.  We are going to move in here and live
with you.  We have enough room on our planet.  You can come and live
with us too.  We would like to hire a lot of those cooks of yours.
You'll simply have to divide space with us, and that's all there is to
it."

That really was all there was to it.  Arthur Djohn reported back to the
Lords of the Instrumentality that, for the time being, nothing could be
done about the disgusting people from Gustible's planet.

They kept their greed within bounds--by their standards.  A mere
seventy-two thousand of them swept the earth, hitting every wine shop,
dining hall, snack bar, soda bar and pleasure center in the world.
They ate popcorn, alfalfa, raw fruit, live fish, birds on the wing,
prepared foods, cooked and canned foods, food concentrates and assorted
medicines.

Outside of an enormous capacity to hold many times what the human body
could tolerate in the way of food, they showed very much the same
effects as persons.  Thousands of them got various local diseases,
sometimes called by such undignified names as the Yangtze rapids, Delhi
belly, the Roman groanin' or the like.  Other thousands became ill and
had to relieve themselves in the fashion of ancient emperors.  Still
they came.

Nobody liked them.  Nobody disliked them enough to wish a disastrous
war.

Actual trade was minimal.  They bought large quantities of foodstuffs,
paying in rare metals.  But their economy on their own planet produced
very little which the world itself wanted.  The cities of mankind had
long since developed to a point of comfort and corruption where a
relatively mono-cultural being, such as the citizens of Gustible's
planet, could not make much impression.  The word "Apician" came to
have unpleasant connotations of bad manners, greediness and prompt
payment.

Prompt payment was considered rude in a credit society, but after all
it was better than not being paid at all.



The tragedy of the relationship of the two groups came from the
unfortunate picnic of the lady Ch'ao, who prided herself on having
ancient Chinesian blood.  She decided that it would be possible to
satiate Schmeckst and the other Apicians to a point at which they would
be able to listen to reason.  She arranged a feast which, for quality
and quantity, had not been seen since previous historic times, long
before the many interruptions of war, collapse and rebuilding of
culture.  She searched the museums of the world for recipes.  The
dinner was set forth on the telescreen of the entire world.  It was
held in a pavilion built in the old Chinesian style.  A soaring dream
of dry bamboo and paper walls, the festival building had a thatched
roof in the true ancient fashion.  Paper lanterns with real candles
illuminated the scene.  The fifty selected Apician guests gleamed like
ancient idols.  Their feathers shone in the light and they clicked
their paddle-like thumbs readily as they spoke, telepathically and
fluently, in any Earth language which they happened to pick out of the
heads of their hearers.

The tragedy was fire.  Fire struck the pavilion, wrecked the dinner.

The lady Ch'ao was rescued by Calvin Dredd.  The Apicians fled.  All of
them escaped, all but one.  Schmeckst himself.

Schmeckst suffocated.

He let out a telepathic scream which was echoed in the living voices of
all the human beings, other Apicians and animals within reach, so that
the television viewers of the world caught a sudden cacophony of birds
shrilling, dogs barking, cats yowling, otters screeching and one lone
panda letting out a singularly high grunt.  Then Schmeckst perished.

The pity of it...

The Earth leaders stood about, wondering how to solve the tragedy.  On
the other side of the world, the Lords of the Instrumentality watched
the scene.

What they saw was amazing and horrible.  Calvin Dredd, cold,
disciplined agent that he was, approached the ruins of the pavilion.
His face was twisted in an expression which they had difficulty in
understanding.  It was only after he licked his lips for the fourth
time, and they saw a ribbon of drool running down his chin, that they
realized he had gone mad with appetite.  The lady Ch'ao followed close
behind, drawn by some remorseless force.

She was out of her mind.  Her eyes gleamed.  She stalked like a cat.
In her left hand she held a bowl and chopsticks.

The viewers all over the world watching the screen could not understand
the scene.  Two alarmed and dazed Apicians followed the humans,
wondering what was going to happen.

Calvin Dredd made a sudden reach.  He pulled out the body of Schmeckst.

The fire had finished Schmeckst.  Not a feather remained on him.  And
then the flash fire, because of the peculiar dryness of the bamboo and
the paper and the thousands upon thousands of candles, had baked him.

The television operator had an inspiration.  He turned on the
smell-control.

Throughout the planet Earth, where people had gathered to watch this
unexpected and singularly interesting tragedy, there swept a smell
which mankind had forgotten.  It was an essence of roast duck.

Beyond all imagining, it was the most delicious smell that any human
being had ever smelled.  Millions upon millions of human mouths
watered.  Throughout the world people looked away from their sets to
see if there were any Apicians in the neighborhood.  Just as the Lords
of the Instrumentality ordered the disgusting scene cut off, Calvin
Dredd and the lady Ch'ao began eating the roast Apician, Schmeckst.



Within twenty-four hours most of the Apicians on Earth had been served,
some with cranberry sauce, others baked, some fried Southern style.
The serious leaders of Earth dreaded the consequences of such
uncivilized conduct.  Even as they wiped their lips and asked for one
more duck sandwich they felt that this behavior was difficult beyond
all imagination.

The blocks that the Apicians had been able to put on human action did
not operate when they were applied to human beings who, looking at an
Apician, went deep into the recesses of their personality and were
animated by a mad hunger which transcended all civilization.

The Lords of the Instrumentality managed to round up Schmeckst's deputy
and a few other Apicians and to send them back to their ship.

The soldiers watching them licked their lips.  The captain tried to see
if he could contrive an accident as he escorted his state visitors.
Unfortunately, tripping Apicians did not break their necks, and the
Apicians kept throwing violent mind-blocks at human beings in an
attempt to save themselves.

One of the Apicians was so undiplomatic as to ask for a chicken salad
sandwich and almost lost a wing, raw and alive, to a soldier whose
appetite had been re-stimulated by reference to food.

The Apicians went back, the few survivors.

They liked Earth well enough and Earth food was delicious, but it was a
horrible place when they considered the cannibalistic human beings who
lived there--so cannibalistic that they ate ducks!

The Lords of the Instrumentality were relieved to note that when the
Apicians left they closed the space lane behind them.

No one quite knows how they closed it, or what defenses they had.
Mankind, salivating and ashamed, did not push the pursuit hotly.
Instead, people tried to make up chicken, duck, goose, Cornish hen,
pigeon, sea-gull and other sandwiches to duplicate the incomparable
taste of a genuine inhabitant of Gustible's planet.

None were quite authentic and people, in their right minds, were not
uncivilized enough to invade another world solely for getting the
inhabitants as tidbits.

The Lords of the Instrumentality were happy to report to one another
and to the rest of the world at their next meeting that the Apicians
had managed to close Gustible's planet altogether, had had no further
interest in dealing with Earth and appeared to possess just enough of a
technological edge on human beings to stay concealed from the eyes and
the appetites of men.

Save for that the Apicians were almost forgotten.  A confidential
secretary of the Office of Interstellar Trade was astonished when the
frozen intelligences of a methane planet ordered forty thousand cases
of Munich beer.  He suspected them of being jobbers, not consumers.
But on the instructions of his superiors he kept the matter
confidential and allowed the beer to be shipped.

It undoubtedly went to Gustible's planet, but they did not offer any of
their own citizens in exchange.

The matter was closed.  The napkins were folded.  Trade and diplomacy
were at an end.



END






[End of From Gustible's Planet, by Cordwainer Smith]
