Vilcabamba

“I have some things to tell you, Moffatt,” he declared. No titles of respect: the Krolp had them for one another, but rarely wasted them on humans.

“I listen,” the President said, more resignedly yet, wondering what Grelch would want this time. He was bound to want something, and he’d make trouble if he didn’t get whatever it was.

Not for the first time, Harris Moffatt III wondered what Grelch had done to be forced to flee to Grand Junction. A dozen or so alien renegades lived here. Humans had learned a lot from them, and from their predecessors. But they were deadly dangerous. They were Krolp, and had Krolpish defenses and Krolpish weapons. And they were almost all of them sons of bitches even by Krolpish standards. No alien who hadn’t done something awful to his own kind would have to stoop so low as to live with humans.

“I need snarfar, Moffatt. You’ve got to get me snarfar,” Grelch said.

“I can do that, Grelch.” The President tried to hide his relief. Some Krolp chewed snarfar. It gave them a buzz, the way nicotine or maybe cocaine did for humans. Harris Moffatt III didn’t know the details; snarfar poisoned people. He did know the aliens turned mean--well, meaner--when they couldn’t get the stuff.

But he could get it. They grew it in the flatlands of the Midwest--what had formerly been wheat and corn country. He still had connections in the lands his grandfather once governed. People and things informally slid over the border all the time. He’d arranged to bring in snarfar before. He’d known he would have to do it again, for one Krolp or another, before too long.

“You better do that, Moffatt. By the stars, you better,” Grelch snarled. He turned--which, with that four-legged carcass, needed some room--and stomped out of the Oval Office. The ripe reek that came off his hide lingered in the air.

The President sighed. “That’s always so much fun.”

“Yes, sir,” Jack Pagliarone said sympathetically. Even a renegade Krolp, an alien who’d put himself beyond the pale of his own kind, was convinced down to the bottom of whatever he used for a soul that he was better than any mere human ever born. All the evidence of fifty years of conquest and occupation said he had a point, too.

“If we didn’t need to pick their brains . . .” Harris Moffatt III sighed again. Humanity needed nothing more.

“By the stars, Mr. President, if the first big uprising had worked--” Jack sadly shook his head.

Back when Harris Moffatt III was a boy, Americans, Russians, and Chinese all rebelled against the centauroids at once. They rocked the Krolp, no doubt about it. They killed forty or fifty of them, some with stolen arms, others with poison. But close didn’t count. The Krolp crushed mankind again, more thoroughly this time.

Jack had spoken English with the President. Humans in the free USA mostly did. Even humans in Krolp-occupied America did when they talked among themselves. But the appointments secretary said By the stars anyhow.

Well, Harris Moffatt III sometimes said By the stars himself. More and more humans these days believed what the Krolp believed and tried to imitate the conquerors any way they could. Weren’t the Krolp stronger? Didn’t that prove they were wiser, too? Plenty of people thought so.

The President had when he was younger. Like his father before him, like Harris Moffatt IV now, he’d spent several years in St. Louis, the center from which the Krolp ruled most of the USA. He’d gone to what was called, with unusual politeness, a finishing school. In point of fact, he’d been a hostage for his father’s good behavior, as his older son was hostage now for his.

He’d learned Krolpish--learned it more thoroughly, that is, because he’d already started lessons in Grand Junction. He’d learned the Krolp creed, too. He’d kept company with the pampered sons and daughters of the men and women who helped the centauroids run the occupied USA. Some of them were descendants of people who’d served in the American government with Harris Moffatt I. They were all much more Krolpified than he was. They thought him a hick from the sticks, and weren’t shy about telling him so.

By the time he finished finishing school, he was much more Krolpified himself than he had been when he got there. He was so much more Krolpified, in fact, that he didn’t want to go back to the independent United States. His own people had come to look like hicks to him.

He hoped he’d got over that. He hoped Harris Moffatt IV would get over it when the kid came home. You had to hope. If you didn’t hope, you’d give up. And where would free humans be then?

Come to that, where were free humans now? In places like Grand Junction, Colorado, that was where. Happy day!

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