Chapter VII

Baker jammed the accelerator of the groundcar down until his thumbnail turned white. The eye of the ETI peepbug observed the police car of the native authorities behind Baker's vehicle, closing fast.

This is how it happens, he subvocalized. A great career in interplanetary crime ends with an arrest by hick cops for selling dirty books. Why had he ever sunk so low? That was easy--it took a stake to do anything big and he had to get a pile by selling books, after _that_ had happened to him on Wellington I.

_The Decameron_, _Forever Amber_, _Pierre Louys_, all the old classics like that still went over with some of the humanoid and biped races. (He had none of the newer stuff, only titles in the public domain--he couldn't force himself to fall to the level of a _literary_ pirate.) But here on Lintz III he was slaying braces of fowl with a single stone. Lintzians were highly stimulated by intricate philosophy and mathematics. This allowed him to sell banned copies of Korzybski at outrageous prices, while at the same time introducing the native intellectuals to human semantics, a definite aid to the natives in throwing off the verbal domination by Earthmen.

* * * * *

The Humans First Lobby in the Galactic Legislature was willing to live with the difficulties caused by the absolute literal-mindedness of most extraterrestrials, so long as they could continue to make them believe in lifetime guarantees and unbreakable toys for inventive youngsters.

True, many a human traveler had lived to regret a chance remark to the effect he could eat a horse, and nobody likes to think of what happened to people who exclaimed a preference for being damned within range of obliging natives, but all in all, those were minor liabilities in the path of the infernal machine of progress. The ETI was working double-shifts to find human renegades who were teaching the semantic variations in words of human speech to aliens. On a world where philosophy and higher math were themselves proscribed because of the limiting factor of narcotic colloidal reaction, he also had to reckon with native cops.

He wasn't going to be able to outrun this squadcar. Baker let it pull alongside and dialed himself regretfully toward the embankment. Then as the police matched his maneuver, he switched on emergency power and sideswiped them with an ear-jarring crash. Thrown from the counterbalance of its gravitic suspension system, the squadcar sailed off as helplessly as a balloon....

* * * * *

"Ryshid!" Baker yelled on entering his quarters. "Get my smoking jacket! Isn't dinner prepared yet?"

The turbaned, green-skinned native did what might have been called a _salaam_ if he had been a Moslem instead of a Hindu. "Everything is in readiness, _Sahib_."

Baker was sorry he had spoken so shortly, but somehow he always did. Ryshid understood. Baker was under a terrible strain, not knowing when the ETI might descend on him. There was also the matter of Malissa, his wife, whom he missed very much. But as a Hinduphile, a true convert, Ryshid was of a gentle and forgiving nature.

As Baker settled back in his easy chair, someone started smashing in the back door.

By the time the police of Lintz reached the living room, Baker was gone.

"Alas," the sergeant-major intoned, "if only the sinner had repented his purchase of the forbidden book before instead of after he finished reading it."

* * * * *

As soon as he lifted the curtain of his own modest dwelling in the native quarter, Ryshid knew there was someone in the darkness, waiting for him.

"I hope you don't mind, old boy," Baker said. "Didn't know where else to go to escape being hunted down."

"I am overjoyed to find you well, _Sahib_. How did you escape?"

Baker told him about his escape, but somehow his talk kept coming back to Malissa, his wife. "I tell you it would take Kathleen Windsor to describe her. She's--but I'm a bore, Ryshid."

Ryshid drew the gun with a graceful movement. "As you say, _Sahib_. I have read of our traditional life in India, and as a Hindu I know what I must do when I find my home has been invaded by a hunted boar."

Ryshid squeezed the trigger.