The day after the Strahorn grounded on Fingal, Mirni was called to the bridge. Captain Devista greeted him with a worried expression.
"Mirni, the Fingalese are curious about you," he said. "They are demanding that I turn you over to them for examination."
"Do they have psychographers?" Mirni asked eagerly.
"The planet's filthy with them!" growled the captain.
"O.K. I'm ready to go. Do they want me right now?"
The captain was startled. "You don't understand, son. Fingal is under a monarchy, and the questioning methods here aren't very gentle. I can't expose an Earth citizen to that!"
"If I go willingly, you won't be sending me," Mirni pointed out. "Some way or other, Captain, I've got to get back what I've lost. I'm nothing without it. With it I was . . . I don't know . . . something important. I can stand questioning under torture if that's what it takes to get me free of this torment."
As the captain started to reply Spaceman Ferris came storming up the ladder. "Captain," he demanded hotly, "you're not turnin' the kid over to the Finks, are you?" Devista purpled.
"He's not sending me out," Mirni said quickly. "I'm going of my own accord."
"What?"
"Maybe they can find out what I need to know."
"Bilps and stenchers! They'll just torture you!"
Mirni shrugged. "Maybe that's what it will take."
"For a bright kid you're talkin' stupid!"
"Spaceman Ferris," snapped the captain, "I agree with you completely, but I remind you that Mirni is a citizen of Earth and a passenger on this ship. We cannot legally stop him from going groundside if he wishes. And you are on the bridge without permission!"
"Huh? Oh. Sorry, sir. Look, if he's going out, let me and some of the gang go along as a bodyguard."
"That wouldn't help. Not even your roughneck buddies can take on a whole planet. You would merely make the Fingalese suspicious, and probably harder on the boy. But the offer's appreciated."
Ferris's thick shoulders slumped. "Will you show me which port to use, Mr. Ferris?" Mirni asked him. "Huh? Oh, sure kid. Come on."
The Fingalese inquisitors were efficient but short on enthusiasm in their session with Mirni. The fact that he seemed a nice lad did not restrain them; they had worked over nice lads before. But Mirni puzzled them, first with his unbelievably cooperative attitude and second with his hard-to-swallow life history.
Finally he managed to capture the imagination of one of them.
"Think of the possibilities!" this worthy enthused. "This boy may have a complete new science locked in some dark recess of his brain. Or else maybe some highly-developed extrasensory abilities. Whatever is there, Fingal must have it!"
A colleague complained, "But we've scopped him, infrahypped him, scanned him and electrocited him. With him trying to help, what's more. If he had secrets, we'd know them by now."
"Not necessarily!" argued the excited one. "Obviously his so-called teachers used an erasure technique that goes deeper and is more selective than any method of ours. But it is a well-known fact, gentlemen, that no memory can be removed completely from a living organism. We must dig deeper to find it!"
"Dig with what?" another exploded. "And that 'well-known fact' of yours is just a well-known theory, based on what we can and can't do with our human skills. I say we quit wasting time and make out our report to the Foerst before he gets impatient."
Mirni asked weakly, "Have you tried everything?"
"Everything but splinters under the fingernails," a glum inquisitor replied, "and they wouldn't help, either."
Mirni was given a reviving drink and put in a comfortable room to rest. He slept poorly, but after he was wakened and given breakfast he felt generally recuperated from the effects of the questioning.
He was rushed immediately to the private audience chamber of Foerst Dolfuls IV, who turned out to be a spare man of middle age with a thin, pinched face, old-fashioned exterior spectacles, and cautious, compressed lips. Politely, Mirni gave Fingal's chief-of-state the prescribed chest salute and stood at attention between his guards.
The Foerst's frigid eyes studied him briefly before the monarch spoke. His voice was dry and level, with only a hint of controlled anger.
"Dalton Mirni, you may report to your superiors that their little fraud did not work. Congratulate them for their skill in your preparation—my psychographers were nearly taken in! But I recognize you, of course, for the deception you are. The psychographers have been directed to ignore the content of your purported memory and to destroy all records of the questioning, as I will destroy the report they gave me. They will, however, conduct research on such deep-briefing techniques as have been used on you, and will not easily be fooled again. You may return to your ship."
This speech left Mirni wide-eyed with puzzlement. "Pardon," he faltered. "Is one permitted to ask the Foerst a question?"
"Go ahead," said the Foerst.
"Thank you. I'm . . . not aware of any fraud, sire, but I suppose I would not be if your conclusions are correct. I would like to know the nature of this deception—what it is that I am supposed to fool you into believing."
The Foerst nodded indifferently and said, "Earth is obviously trying to revive the old 'alien menace' myth. You are allowed to fall in our hands with your absurd 'memory' of a super-race of aliens. The object is to scare the independent worlds into uniting—under Earth's leadership, it is hardly necessary to add—in defense against the aliens. But your superiors were too cheap to make your story convincing. They should have let you reveal some of Earth's scientific secrets to masquerade as alien knowledge."
"But . . . but, sire, there is no alien menace!" Mirni exclaimed.
"That I am sure of!" the Foerst replied with a humorless smile.
"That is I mean my teachers are no menace. They simply aren't constituted to threaten our sort of life. As for the students' various races, none of them live in this galaxy, and a teacher told me it will be at least seventeen thousand years before humans make broad contact with another intelligence."
A fleeting look of uncertainty crossed the Foerst's face, but he sneered, "You are backing down with a vengeance, now that Earth's scheme is exposed." He glanced at the guards and said, "Leave us. My defenses are adequate."
The guards saluted and left the Foerst alone with Mirni.
"Your words puzzle me, young man," said the monarch. "By admitting that no alien menace exists, you have weakened Earth's chance to succeed with a better-planned effort to repeat this ruse. Why would you be permitted to make such an admission?"
"I can only tell you what I remember, sire. I don't know why those memories are what they are."
The Foerst was silent and expressionless for several minutes and Mirni took the liberty of relaxing his stance.
"What are your views on Earth's interstellar policies?" the Foerst asked at last.
"They seem . . . mixed up, sort of . . . I don't know how to describe them, exactly. I don't really know why Fingal and Earth are mad at each other."
After a flicker of a smile, the Foerst said, "The situation has complexities, but it is basically simple. Earth is striving, with too much success, to keep all the independent planets including Fingal in economic subjection."
"Oh," Mirni nodded. "What is it you need that Earth won't let you get?"
"Manpower," grated the Foerst. "Manpower to support our own industrial economy."
"But the guidebook says you have twenty-seven million people," objected Mirni. "Isn't that enough to build from?"
"Our present population is not available for industry," the Foerst replied impatiently. "Are you familiar with Fingal's cultural pattern?"
"The guidebook calls it feudal-agricultural," said Mirni.
The Foerst nodded grudgingly. "That's close enough. We have an enlightened nobility, the Firsters, the descendants of the earliest settlers. Most of the later arrivals entered the services of the Firsters and the pattern never changed. The result is a stable culture in which each person's role is established before he is born. There is a minority of freemen—in crafts, trades and the like—but they are too few for industrialization. Also, they are needed in their present occupations."
"Then all of Fingal's manpower is pre-empted by your present system?" asked Mirni.
"That's the sum of it," agreed the Foerst.
"Why not bring in immigrants? Earth has too many people—"
"Impossible! Earthmen aren't to be trusted! We will not open our planet to that scum. Also, immigrants would have to be assigned upon arrival to the various Firster estates—all but the tenth my House could claim. They would only reinforce the established pattern."
Mirni looked sympathetic. "Tell me, sire, would something like this be possible: Fingal was settled by people from a Central European state, was it not?"
"That is correct."
"Then couldn't you start a propaganda campaign, saying that Earth was discriminating against the people of the Central European province? You would have to be cagey about how you did it, because later on you would want to be very suspicious of the Central Europeans. The propaganda would stir the sympathy of your people for their old kindred on the mother planet, and build up a demand that the repressed people be offered refuge on Fingal.
"But you would be against that, because Earthmen can't be trusted. Finally you would give in part way, and say Central Europeans could come in, but not under conditions that would allow them to subvert the Fingalese way of life. They would not be permitted to infiltrate the services of the Firsters—"
"The Firsters would not be allowed to grab them, you mean?" asked the Foerst with a glimmer of interest.
"Yes, but you would not put it that way, sire. The refugees would be let in only as wards of the planetary government, so they could be kept under strict surveillance. Of course, the refugees would be expected to earn their keep—I suppose you have title to enough land, mineral rights and so on to provide industrial cities and raw materials?"
The Foerst nodded. He was eyeing Mirni with quizzical approval. "You're a clever schemer, boy," he said. "How did you learn that in your school?"
"I didn't, sire. I learned such things from living with the play-people. Well—it was part of my training, in a way, because I would need to know how to handle people."
"So you manipulated the play-people for practice."
"Something like that, sire."
"Well, you need experience with real people," the Foerst told him with a dry chuckle. "Your scheme is clever, but it is nonsense. First, the Central Europeans are no more discriminated against than any other segment of Earth's population, and the 'big lie' propaganda campaign is an anachronism. The Earth government could kill such a campaign with a sealed-tape plebiscite that would prove the propaganda's falsity."
"By asking the Central Europeans if they were repressed?"
"Certainly!"
"But couldn't the propaganda make the people there think they were repressed?" Mirni persisted. "No planetary government can be so perfect that people can find nothing to complain about."
"That I will definitely grant you!" grunted the Foerst. "But your scheme is still impractical for more reasons than I care to detail. You are too lacking in experience, boy, to expect to solve a world's problems as if they were a puzzle-toy." He pressed a button on his chair arm and added, "But I have enjoyed this interview, young man. For an Earth citizen you are a most pleasant person—but then you say you weren't on Earth very long. If I were advising you, I would suggest that you never stay on that planet long enough to adopt the Earth viewpoint." The guards entered the room and the Foerst gave Mirni a cold, formal nod. "You are dismissed, Dalton Mirni."
Mirni saluted and departed.