Oomphel in the Sky | Page 6

shelters for themselves
against the anticipated storms."
"I hadn't heard about that," Miles said, as the general returned to his
chair and picked up his drink again.
"Yes. They'll need something better than these thatched huts when the
storms start, and working on them will keep them out of mischief.
Standard megaton-kilometer field shelters, earth and log construction. I
think they'll be adequate for anything that happens at periastron."
Anything designed to resist the heat, blast and radiation effects of a
megaton thermonuclear bomb at a kilometer ought to stand up under
what was coming. At least, the periastron effects; there was another
angle to it.
"The Native Welfare Commission isn't going to take kindly to that.
That's supposed to be their job."
"Then why the devil haven't they done it?" Gonzales demanded angrily.
"I've viewed every native village in this area by screen, and I haven't

seen one that's equipped with anything better than those log
storage-bins against the stockades."
"There was a project to provide shelters for the periastron storms set up
ten years ago. They spent one year arguing about how the natives
survived storms prior to the Terrans' arrival here. According to the
older natives, they got into those log storage-houses you were
mentioning; only about one out of three in any village survived. I could
have told them that. Did tell them, repeatedly, on the air. Then, after
they decided that shelters were needed, they spent another year hassling
over who would be responsible for designing them. Your predecessor
here, General Nokami, offered the services of his engineer officers. He
was frostily informed that this was a humanitarian and not a military
project."
Ramón Gonzales began swearing, then apologized for the interruption.
"Then what?" he asked.
"Apology unnecessary. Then they did get a shelter designed, and
started teaching some of the students at the native schools how to build
them, and then the meteorologists told them it was no good. It was a
dugout shelter; the weathermen said there'd be rainfall measured in
meters instead of inches and anybody who got caught in one of those
dugouts would be drowned like a rat."
"Ha, I thought of that one." Gonzales said. "My shelters are going to be
mounded up eight feet above the ground."
"What did they do then?" Foxx Travis wanted to know.
"There the matter rested. As far as I know, nothing has been done on it
since."
"And you think, with a disgraceful record of non-accomplishment like
that, that they'll protest General Gonzales' action on purely
jurisdictional grounds?" Travis demanded.
"Not jurisdictional grounds, Foxx. The general's going at this the wrong

way. He actually knows what has to be done and how to do it, and he's
going right ahead and doing it, without holding a dozen conferences
and round-table discussions and giving everybody a fair and equal
chance to foul things up for him. You know as well as I do that that's
undemocratic. And what's worse, he's making the natives build them
themselves, whether they want to or not, and that's forced labor. That
reminds me; has anybody started raising the devil about those Kwanns
from Qualpha's and Darshat's you brought here and Paul put to work?"
Gonzales looked at Travis and then said: "Not with me. Not yet,
anyhow."
"They've been at General Maith," Travis said shortly. After a moment,
he added: "General Maith supports General Gonzales completely; that's
for publication. I'm authorized to say so. What else was there to do?
They'd burned their villages and all their food stores. They had to be
placed somewhere. And why in the name of reason should they sit
around in the shade eating Government native-type rations while Paul
Sanders has fifty to a hundred thousand sols' worth of crystals dying on
him?"
"Yes; that's another thing they'll scream about. Paul's making a profit
out of it."
"Of course he's making a profit," Gonzales said. "Why else is he
running a plantation? If planters didn't make profits, who'd grow
biocrystals?"
"The Colonial Government. The same way they built those
storm-shelters. But that would be in the public interest, and if the
Kwanns weren't public-spirited enough to do the work, they'd be made
to--at about half what planters like Sanders are paying them now. But
don't you realize that profit is sordid and dishonest and selfish? Not at
all like drawing a salary-cum-expense-account from the Government."
"You're right, it isn't," Gonzales agreed. "People like Paul Sanders have
ability. If they don't, they don't stay in business. You have ability and
people who don't never forgive you for it. Your very existence is a

constant reproach to them."
"That's right. And they can't admit your ability without admitting their
own inferiority, so it isn't ability at all. It's just dirty underhanded
trickery and selfish ruthlessness." He