Guzub was beaming at us. When you know your Martians pretty well you learn that that trick of shutting the middle eye is a beam. “You zure bolished ’em ub, boys,” he gurgled.
The factory man felt of his neck and decided his head was still there. “Guzub,” he declared, “I’ve learned me a lesson: From now on, any green giller is safe around me.”
“That’z the zbird,” Guzub glurked. “Avder all, we’re all beings, ain’t! we? Now, wad’ll id be?”
Guzub was hurt when the blond youth ordered milk, but delighted when the factory man said he’d have a Three Planets with a double shot of margil. I’m no teetotaler, but I don’t go for these strong drinks; I stuck to my usual straight whiskey.
We exchanged names while we waited. Mike Warren, the factory man was; and the other—but then I tipped that off already. That was Quinby. They both knew me by name.
“So you’re with Robinc,” Mike said. “I want to have a talk with you about that sometime. My brother-in-law’s got a new use for a robot that could make somebody, including me, a pile of credits, and I can’t get a hearing anyplace.”
“Glad to,” I said, not paying much attention. Everybody’s got a new use for a robot, just like writers tell me everybody’s got a swell idea for a solly.
Dugg Quinby had been staring straight ahead of him and not listening. Now he said, “What I don’t see is why.”
“Well,” Mike began, “it seems like he was stuck once on the lunar desert and—”
“Uh-huh. Not that. What I don’t see is why Venusians. Why we act that way about them, I mean. After all, they’re more or less like us. They’re featherless bipeds, pretty much on our general model. And we treat them like they weren’t even beings. While Martians are a different shape of life altogether, but we don’t have ghettos for them, or Martian-baiting.”
“That’s just it,” said Mike. “The gillers are too much like us. They’re like a cartoon of us. We see them, and they’re like a dirty joke on humans, and we see red. I mean,” he added hastily, his hand rubbing his neck, “that’s the way I used to feel. I was just trying to explain.”
“Nuts,” I said. “It’s all a matter of historical parallel. We licked the pants—which they don’t wear—off the Venusians in the First War of Conquest, so we feel we can push ’em around. The Second War of Conquest went sour on us and damned near put an end to the Empire and the race to boot, so we’ve got a healthy respect for the Martians.” I looked over at the bartender, his tentacles industriously plying an impressive array of bottles and a gleaming duralite shaker. “We only persecute the ones it’s safe to persecute.”
Quinby frowned. “It’s bad enough to do what no being ought to do, but to do it only when you know you can get away with it— I’ve been reading,” he announced abruptly, as though it was a challenge to another fight.
Mike grunted. “Collies and telecasts are enough for a man, I always say. You get to reading and you get mixed up.”
“Do you think you aren’t mixed up without it? Do you think you aren’t all mixed up? If people would only try to look at things straight—”
“What have you been reading?” I asked.
“Old stuff. Dating, oh, I guess, a millennium or so back. There were people then that used to write a lot about the Brotherhood of Man. They said good things. And it all means something to us now if you translate it into the Brotherhood of Beings. Man is unified now, but what’s the result? The doctrine of Terrene Supremacy.”
Guzub brought the drinks and we forked out our credits. When he heard the phrase “Terrene Supremacy,” his left eyelid went into that little quiver that is the Martian expression of polite incredulity, but he said nothing.
Quinby picked up his milk. “It’s all because nobody looks at things straight. Everybody looks around the corners of his own prejudices. If you look at a problem straight, there isn’t a problem. That’s what I’m trying to do,” he said with that earnestness you never come back to after youth. “I’m trying to train myself to look straight.”
“So there isn’t a problem. No problems at all.” I thought of the day I’d had and the jobs still ahead of me and I snorted. And then I had an idea and calmly, between swallows of whiskey, changed the course of terrene civilization. “I’ve got problems,” I asserted. “How’d you like to look straight at them? Are you working now?”
“I’m in my free-lance period,” he said. “I’ve finished technical college and I’m not due for my final occupational analysis for another year.”
“All right,” I said. “How’s about it?”
Slowly he nodded.
“If you can look,” said Mike, wobbling his neck, “as straight as you can hit—”
I was back in my office when the call came from the space port. I’d seen Thuringer’s face red before, but never purple. He had trouble speaking, but he finally spluttered out, “Somebody did a lousy job of sterilization on your new assistant’s parents.”
“What seems to be the trouble?” I asked in my soothingest manner.
“Trouble! The man’s lunatic stock. Not a doubt. When you see what he’s done to—” He shuddered. He reached out to switch the ike-range, but changed his mind. “Uh-uh. Come over here and see it for yourself. You wouldn’t believe it. But come quick, before I go and apply for sterilization myself.”
We had a special private tube to the space port; they used so many of our robots. It took me less than five minutes to get there. A robot parked my bus, and another robot took me up in the lift. It was a relief to see two in good working order, though I noticed
