The Pliable Animal.txt

The Pliable Animal
Harry Harrison


Man is a pliable animal,
a being who gets accustomed to everything.
—Feodor Dostoyevsky




Commander Rissby was squat and square, planted solidly behind the desk as if he had been grown there. He gave an impression of strength and determination—which was true—and of slowness and stupidity— which was completely false. He looked particularly bovine at this moment, scratching his close-cropped gray hair with one thick finger and blinking slowly while he talked.

“If I knew what you were looking for, Honorable Sir Petion, maybe then I could be of more help… ?”

The thin albino sitting opposite snapped his answer, cutting through the tentative advance of the Commander’s words. “What I’m doing here is my business—not yours. You will help me and you won’t ask questions. At the proper time you will be informed. Not before. In the meantime you will be able to assist me. First thing— can you get me into the palace without arousing any suspicion as to why I am here?”

The Honorable Sir Jorge Suvarov Petion didn’t really enjoy throwing his weight around. But it had to be done. It was one of the uncomfortable things that occurred in his line of duty—like looking at violently battered corpses. With other men he acted differently. He spoke to Commander Rissby in this manner not from malice but from previous knowledge. It was the only way one could get along with the stolid, unimaginative men of Tacora. They made the most loyal soldiers the Empire had—if you took into consideration their grim fixation with status. Speaking as he had, Petion established his superiority of person as well as of rank. His relationship with the Commander and his soldiers would now be a good one.

Truthfully, Commander Rissby was not insulted by the reprimand. He had questioned the other’s authority and now knew where they both stood. The white-haired man across from him was one of those who held the Empire together. It would be a pleasure to take orders from him. He wasn’t one of those pink-eyed social parasites who grew fat off the work of others. At the appropriate moment Sir Jorge would tell his reasons for being here. Meanwhile, the Commander could be patient.

Commander Rissby wasn’t mentioning it aloud, but he could make a good guess as to what Sir Petion was really after. The palace, that was the key. Turning his chair slightly, he could see it, just above the barracks roof, perched on top of the hill. An unusual structure completely covered with overlapping ceramic plates, all of them in soft pastel colors. Like a candy castle. As if one good kick would send it smashing into a thousand pieces.

“You will have no trouble getting into the palace, Honorable Sir,” the Commander said. “Not after your name and rank are known to the royal family. Very few of the nobility ever visit an off-the-track planet like this, and there is always an official invitation. Would you like me to… ?” He added the question carefully, more of a suggestion than an interrogation.

Sir Petion proved he was not vindictive by nodding at the idea. “Later. Not right now. I want to do a little looking around first. I’ll need your help, but we can’t be too obvious about it. Until the proper time you are the only person who is to know that I am an investigator.”

“As you say, so shall I act.” The Commander repeated the ritual words with sincerity, standing first and clashing the heels of his boots together as Sir Petion left.

Kai was waiting halfway across the barracks square, short and ugly as a tree stump. Even the squat Tacora soldiers towered over him, the one-and-a-half Earth gravities of their home world having had only a slight effect on their height. Kai thought that four gravities were normal, and ruthless genetic selection had compacted his people into almost solid lumps of bone and muscle. His strength was beyond imagining.

There was no hurry in Petion’s step, and apparently no direction. The boredom and dilettantism of the nobility was well known, and made a perfect cover for an investigator’s operation. As he strolled near Kai he snapped his fingers loudly. The short man trundled over with deceptive speed.

“What did you find out?” Sir Petion asked without bothering to look down.

“Everything, but everything, Georgie,” Kai rumbled. “I copied the entire file while the clerk was out.” Kai had worked with the Honorable Sir long before he had been called by that title. He enjoyed a friendship shared by very few others.

“You mean you know who did it?” Petion yawned as he said it. Their conversation couldn’t be overheard, and they kept up the appearance of master and servant to anyone watching from a distance. Kai gave a quick bow that seemed to break him in half and growled his answer.

“I’m good, old buddy, but I’m not that good. We’ve only been on this lightweight planet a couple of hours. But I have a complete transcript of the file, notes, observations—the works. It’s a first step.”

“Well let’s take a second one,” Petion said, starting off. “The palace gate will probably be as good a place to start as any.” Kai scuttled after him as he left.

A brief walk took them to the palace. The streets weren’t crowded, and the native Andriadans had a very low curiosity quotient. They made way for the white-haired Earthman, but did it in an automatic manner, their long legs working like stilts.

“Beanpoles!” Kai muttered, offended by the exaggerated length of their legs and thin forms. Any one of them could have stepped over him without breaking stride.

Kai had his notes concealed in an Andriadan guidebook. He apparently read from the book, nodding at the pink, scale-covered wall in front of them. “This is the main gate, the one the car came out of. At exactly 2135 hours according to the guard’s log. It turned down the street behind us.”

“And Prince Mello was alone in it?” Petion asked.

“The driver said he was, and so did the gate guard. One driver, one passenger.”

“All right. How far did they go?” He led the way down the street.

“Just as far as this corner here,” Kai said, seemingly pointing at a mobile of ceramic bells that hung from the building, tinkling in the wind. “The Prince shouted ‘Stop’ and the driver hit the brakes. Before the car had completely stopped moving the prince opened the right-hand door and jumped out, running down this passage.” They followed the route the unlucky Prince had taken a year earlier, Kai tracing the course with his notes.

“The Prince left no orders, nor did he return. After a few minutes the driver began to be worried. He followed the same way—as far as this little intersection—and found the Prince lying on the ground.”

“Dead from a stab wound in the heart, lying alone, soaked with his own blood,” Petion added. “And no one saw him, or heard him or had the slightest idea what had happened.”

He turned in a slow circle, looking at the intersection. Mostly blank walls broken by a few doors. There was no one in sight. Two other streets led away from the small square.

There was a thin creak of unoiled ceramic and Petion turned quickly. One of the doors had opened and a tall Andriadan stood looking at them, blinking. His eyes met the Earthman’s for a single instant. Then he stepped back and closed the door.

“I wonder if that door is locked?” Petion asked. Kai had missed none of the interchange. He moved swiftly up the two steps and leaned against the door. It groaned but did not move.

“A good lock,” Kai said. “You want I should push against it a little?”

“Not now. It’ll keep. The chances are it means nothing.”

They took a different route back to the Imperial compound, enjoying the warmth of the golden afternoon. Andriad’s primary glowed with a yellow brilliancy in the sky, coaxing pastel reflections from the sheen of the ceramic buildings. The air, the background murmur of the city, everything combined to produce a feeling of peace that the two men found alien after the mechanized roar of the central worlds.

“Last place you would expect to find bloody murder,” Kai said.

“My very thought. But are these people as relaxed as they look? They’re supposed to be, I know. Peaceful, law-abiding agrarians, leading lives of unparalleled sweetness and domesticity. All the time— or is there a hidden tendency towards violence?”

“Just like that nice little lady boardinghouse keeper on Westerix IV,” Kai reminisced. “The one who killed seventy-four lodgers before we caught up with her. What a collection of luggage she had in that storeroom… !”

“Don’t make the mistake of assuming similarity just because of superficial resemblance. Many planets—like Andriad here—were cut off from mainstream galactic culture for centuries. They developed trends, characteristics, personality quirks that we know nothing about. That we have to know about if we are working on a case.”

“How about some original research?” Kai asked. “In here.” He jerked his thumb at an outdoor restaurant, with shaded tables around a gently splashing fountain. “I’m dehydrated.”

The Andriad beer was chilled and excellent, served in cold ceramic mugs. Kai sat opposite Petion at the table—no need to keep up the master-and-servant pretense here where they were unknown—and drained his beer almost at a swallow. He banged for more and rumbled deep in his chest as the waiter shambled slowly to fetch it. Sipping slowly at the beer he looked around the garden.

“Have the place practically to ourselves,” he said. “The kitchen must be open, I can smell it. Let’s try the local food. That army chow we had for breakfast is still sitting in my stomach, unchanged and undigested.”

“Order if you like,” Petion said, looking through the carved wood screen at the slow traffic of the street outside. “I doubt if you will like it, t...