The Alien Sheriff -- Part 33
by James Patrick Cobb

In the previous episodes ... Buck learns that the brrkup mind control device not only deprives someone of their freewill, it also stops them from keeping any secrets from others.

The device is condemned by Rev. Rollins from the pulpit. People are wrong for agreeing to throw away their freedoms, Rollins says. This opinion is met by a mixed reaction from the congregation who generally favor the brrkup, and see it as terrible how the minister singles Buck and Graax out. Indeed, everyone who has been implanted with the brrkup is in favor of implanting others. Their opinion is discounted by those opposed who see them as merely being controlled by the device.

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Episode 33

That Tuesday, wind soughed through the streets of Contention City, and the rain beat up on the tin roof of the Sheriff's Office. The watery onslaught stopped and started repeatedly, as if as if there were cherubim playing with a great spigot in the sky.

The Brrkup sermon still had me all jiggered up. I wanted to read what Atwell wrote in the paper to put it behind me. It probably wasn't going to come out anytime soon.

I shut the office door as tight as I could. "Hope she holds up," I said of the building. The clouds were trying to make up for a couple years’ dearth of rain in a day. I was sure winds were going to rip apart the town. I might find myself homeless and officeless after this, even though I lived in a stone house. Wind like that could pretty well move a mountain. The tent encampment, at least, surely would blow away.

Every building in a boomtown like Contention is put together hastily, as long as the mineral rush is on. People think only of what they're going to do with the money they'll find, instead of thinking of the boards they're nailing. A storm like this is the furthest thing from their minds, especially when the weather does little more than a sprinkle for months. The people want to hurry up and get things built, get their pay, get their grubstake, buy their equipment and move out into the mountains and fields. There’s nothing to keep people in town once the ore pans out.

Even if you do put a good amount of time and planning into a place, using only the best materials you can find, a powerful storm like that one still can tear down your structure. Even though, your work has a better chance of holding up if it's well assembled.

The wind was bad, but if the rain kept falling in such tremendous quantities, parts of the town would flood. That would present a new range of difficulties. I was sure Contention hadn't been surveyed like better-planned communities in the east.

Graax and I would have to go out in the storm and inspect the damage, rescue whoever needed it. When that was done, we'd need to help rebuild. People expected their sheriffs to do such things.

I didn't want to go out, wishing I had an inside job. Words cannot express how much I appreciated and enjoyed the warmth of the Franklin stove.

We'd be lucky if the Café opened for lunch. I hoped Edith would realize that and come into town with something to eat. I wouldn't have time to get home.

I put a log into the stove to keep the fire crackling, realizing the time didn't have to be wasted. There were some things I still could do. Namely, find out more about Graax. The brrkup was changing the world for the better, and I needed to know more about its direction. I thought the change was going to be mostly good—but how good?

Generally, I believe it isn't right for others to ask prying questions. You tempt a person into telling lies. After thinking about it, however, I decided that I needed to change my mind about that. The brrkup was too important to the world.

     Like I was cooking up a stew of information, I set upon peeling away the layer upon layer of the mysterious Graax, like he was an onion. I gave up too soon. I should have gotten to the core of Graax and the alien society he served as emissary for. I didn't understand some of those layers, but I should have tried!

"It's really blowing!" I said of the weather.

"You could have used this rain water back on the K-10?" Graax said.

"Yup. I wonder how Nuñez and Guzmán are doing. You have rain like this on Squaattoos?"

"Yes," he said, smiling a thin grin, perhaps at the memory of a storm once occurring millions of miles away.

Talking to him meant my being teased with unrealized and unseen visions of the grand universe. When you put the achievements of Earthmen up next to the things the aliens had accomplished, we appeared irrelevant and infantile by comparison—little better than the foolishly prideful savages on reservations.

I treated my co-sheriff as plain "Good 'ol Graax - my alien buddy." But, to me, he was a conquering hero. He was Benjamin Franklin, John Rockefeller and Christopher Columbus all rolled into one. Only the finest laurels would pay him sufficient homage! Still, I thought of him as my friend, though it's impossible to have a friend who's not a peer.

Graax told me how he came to Earth to gather information for a scientific organization on Squaattoos. I wish I had the foresight to adopt Hank Atwell's later custom of using a note pad to take down information. I find myself writing without any record of the name he used, a combination of alien words sounding like nonsense.

I'll call them the Zaibatsu. To my memory, it sounds right, though I wouldn't bet one penny on its accuracy.

The Zaibatsu had no intention of having any of their representatives making contact with our race without first trying to understand our behavior, Graax said.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

He referenced an event in Squaattoosian history that I didn't fully understand because of his garbled English, namely because he was talking about things that didn't exist on Earth.

The story involved one group expanding beyond its historic boundary. The only way I could make sense out of what he was driving at was to think about what happened to the Indians after my ancestors arrived on the Atlantic shore.

It was a flash of insight for one who regarded the natives alternately with pity and contempt. In his eyes, the white man and the Indians were the same because we came from the same planet.

"It is unfortunate my ancestors didn't have the same foresight," I said, thinking of the Indian's plight which was now my own.

"We had to learn by historical experience," Graax said.

Sometimes accidents happen, like the one bringing us together. Chance forced Graax to abandon his carefully planned long-distance observing mission for a more intuitive, personal mission. His intended mission was one of objective, careful study. The other was replete with anecdotes. Both were necessary to a people studying Earth.

Graax didn't want the mission fate had handed him. No matter how he went about it, he was going to be full of doubt about the correctness of his actions and vulnerable to second-guessing by his superiors.

If their explorers crashed or were stranded on Earth, Squattoosian Explorer Policy called for them to do what Graax was doing—make contact with individual groups and take notes. The Zaibatsu believed contact could potentially benefit both civilizations.

"Your people are kept apart from each other by their still limited development," Graax said. "You do not have harmony in one world."

I didn't have the perspective he did. "But we have more communication than we ever had before," I argued. The locomotive was a wonder, with tracks stretching from coast to coast. So, too, was the telegraph. I thought of these things when I replied. Now somebody invented a contraption that would allow you to talk to someone in another down, I read. That was undreamed of when I was a boy.

He smiled and nodded sagely. "Your people's fate is to build much more. Earth's people may even go to the stars one day," he said. "The Zaibatsu hopes your people get a chance to do everything they're capable of."

"What do you mean?" I said, disbelieving how one war could threaten and involve everyone in the world. I couldn't imagine the Great War.

The alien suddenly turned lugubrious, contrary to his typically flat nature. I suspect he was acting human in order to communicate. "Wars. We had some big ones in ancient times. Your people will build tremendous weapons, like every race facing competition," he said, shrugging. "Which way does it go? Who is to tell? We've already found two ruined civilizations on two different worlds who passed on to the next world in this way."

"Were you there for the fighting?" I said.

"It happened millions of years before we arrived. Our researchers reconstruct their history today."

Everything exists on a precarious balance. The races who don't compete with others on their home world don't develop anything either, he said.

I've always been interested in the tools of warfare. I asked: "What kind of weapons are there to build?"

"I'm not a Madame Zymbalist!" he said, smiling and speaking of the tarot card reader at the Metropolitan.

He puzzled me. I wondered if he was kidding. "She'd know?" I asked, always doubting the abilities of a fortune-teller.

"She might. Powers of the universe grant strange abilities to some individuals," he said.

He made neutral statements so as to not influence my opinions about Madame Zymbalist's powers. Later I realized it was part of his efforts to leave the natives as he found them. It was a contradictory belief system at best. Tools were one thing. Beliefs were another. Tools were okay to change. Beliefs weren't. Sometimes you can’t help but change beliefs when you change the tools, but that was the belief anyway.

"How do you know all this about Earth?" I asked.

"I don't. I reckon this. It's part of my job," he replied.

"What would we do on the stars?" I asked, the potential of the human race gradually dawning on me.

He smiled. "You might not know, but others of your kind might have ideas," he said.

If we went to the stars, we'd want to make money. But they were just pretty to look at—reason enough to go. We needed to say, as a race, we'd been there.

"Money, or whatever the thing is keeping a creature in food and comfort, has a power on what makes the creature do what he does," Graax said. "It is a lessener to him as well as a benefit. At first, he will go to the stars to make money."

"I can't see that," I said shaking my head. "There's other things making people do what they do."

"Truth. But for the bosses, that is what it is," Graax said, espousing his alien outlook. "It was not until the universe brought forth Oobaxi on Squaattoos that anything changed."

I didn't agree with that either because I was human. I'd known a number of military officers and rich cattle men. I'd seen them be happy and angry like anybody else—and act accordingly. Nothing he could have said would convince me that every choice any being makes is rational. The leadership types are like everyone else. The reason they're leaders is a combination of some special characteristic and drive. Sometimes they just have a lot of drive.

Their emotional constitution could be different from ours, I considered. "What about love?" I said. "Do the people on Squaattoos love?"

"They do in their way," Graax said. "It's another thing to talk about for another time."

I was impatient with such a slow-moving morning. I had an agenda. "You say that an awful lot! Why don't you just tell me about love on Squaattoos now if you're ever going to tell me?"

"I'm not certain you'll understand," he said.

Though his words sounded condescending, I wasn't irritated. I understood it. Many whites treated Indians in much the same manner. "I never will if you don't try to make me understand," I said calmly.

Graax collected his thoughts, deciding what he would tell, wouldn't tell, and how he'd tell it. "We love like you do," he said. "It's fondness one creature gets for another," he said as if to make sure I understood.

It was a shallow answer, though I didn't think of it like that at the time. I didn't know what I wanted to hear.

Graax hesitated to share his mechanical artifacts. He told me of the brrkup carefully, not before he was ready. He played one mechanical wonder card at a time with a sense of inevitably. I was sure he retained some cards in his deck of wonders.

"A people shouldn't want things a more advanced people has. With power come responsibilities the less advanced people aren't ready for. The society has yet to grow. It is like giving an object to a baby that can harm him," he said, puzzling how to frame his example in a way I'd understand.

"Why'd you show me anything if we're not ready?" I said looking directly into those dark irisless eyes, frustrated.

Graax cast his oversized eyes downward, either humbled or annoyed. He appeared as human as someone with greyish-green skin could. Had he shared his information of his homeworld's mechanics contrary to what the Zaibatsu advocated or what he believed?

"I like you," he finally said as a burst of far-off thunder underscored those words. The cherubs opened the valve wider so the rain flowed violently and the rain pinged ever louder off of the metal roof. "You are my friend. With Ike Renner, you looked like you needed the brrkup."

"I did," I agreed. I couldn't imagine the conflict ending peacefully without it.

"What would have happened if I had not used the brrkup?" Graax asked in a staccato, like the rain. "Would Ike Renner have listened to sense? Would you have just decided he could take as much feed for his animals as they needed? No. It would have been a small war between you two. One of you would have ended up killing the other—or you would have killed each other. No civilization needs war."

"Thanks Graax." Peeling the layers of Graax had gotten uncomfortable. I was the one who was now eager to change the subject. "It'll be a wonder if my people ever get to the level yours are at."

"That's not so," he insisted. "It could be predicted."

"Yours can fly from planet to planet. Mine can't even fly," I rebutted.

"I speak thus because it's true," Graax replied. "Most of what is alive in the universe can fit on the ends of one your wife's pins with room to spare. Ants are big next to most of what is alive."

"How'd you even see it?"

"Tools," he said without elaboration.

I didn't ask what kind. "I'd have never thought that," I said. I never thought about how little I knew before. I did all the time now.

We reached a box canyon in our discussion. I started cleaning the office, straightening papers on my desk, organizing them into piles and putting a paperweight on each pile. I returned some files to the cabinet. I didn't dare to touch anything on Mrs. Anaya's desk. She'd howl at me. Any other cleaning was futile. Many people would be tracking in and out of here with muddy boots for the next few days.

I sat on my desk and watched the rain wear on, slamming into the mud, flowing into rivulets, and settling into puddles. The puddles grew as the torrent weakened on its own.

"There's going to be a problem with mosquitoes," Graax said.

"Yep," I agreed. "You have them damn things back on Squaattoos?"

"Yes. Choprka," Graax replied. "I don't like those either."

I laughed. "You'd think with all the things your people can do you'd find a way to kill them off and not be bothered. The things I'd do with your powers!"

"What else would you do?" Graax said.

I'd thought about what I would do with $10,000 many times. I had an answer for that. I had to think for a moment about what I'd do in an advanced civilization.

"Find a cure for sickness," I said after some thought. "You know everybody's going to be sick after this storm. This wet weather isn't good for anybody."

"What else?" he pressed.

"Kill a few more bugs, pests, cure a few more diseases. I'd do some other things your people do too," I said. "I'd go flying; That'd be a humdinger of a way to spend an afternoon.

"Say," I thought suddenly. "Your people must be bothered with bugs if you've got mosquitoes back on Squaattoos. Why don't you kill them off?"

That launched the first description of the food chain I'd ever heard. I never thought of it.

"Other creatures eat the mosquito. If you take the mosquito away, they eat something else. Then you have something else out of where it's supposed to be.

"It never works the way you want. You're better off letting the annoying creature alone," the alien said. "Because of all the trouble you get, many of us believe the creature has a duty to live."

I furrowed my brow and pursed my lips. He made sense. "You make me think of things I ain't ever thought of before," I said, shaking my head, awed. "Thank you."

I want others to learn what I learned from Graax. That's one of the main reasons I'm writing this.

I said, "I'm glad you crashed so we could meet."

"You shouldn't be," Graax said. "It was unfortunate. Not only did it kill Carxx, a good man, but it bought us together too soon."

I knew he contradicted himself. Before, he'd talked of how he'd adjust his mission, learning anecdotally rather than systematically. Now, he talked of his crash as being a tragedy. I wondered if the storm was somehow affecting him. Some people are afraid of thunder and are saddened on dark days. Could the same thing happen to an alien? "I don't understand," I said.

"We have to show something for our efforts. There are many debates going on among my people. Some think your people should be left alone. Others say there is little value in going to Earth. Others yet say there might be a few things we could learn but we should spend money on other jobs," he said. "Everyone has an opinion. We need something to show all of them."

"Sounds like our government," I said, confused and amazed. It was difficult to imagine a roomful of people like Graax arguing politics and policy, though it was hard to imagine a roomful of people like him at all. One would expect advanced creatures to be beyond those types of discussions.

"That's strange," I said.

"Only because you hold me in awe," he retorted surprisingly, twittering.

"I suppose so," I said. You really can't run any sort of big organization without politics. I should have known that. If my deputies showed no results for all their work, I'd fire them.

Because of the crash, the Zaibatsu and their funding agencies weren't going to get the kind of information they expected. All sides would second guess Graax and his spontaneous decisions. Plans couldn't be made in detail when there was little information to go on.

Graax would have to live the way he'd been living for three years until the crew aboard the headquarters ship woke up and sent a rescue ship. The crew of 10 had to remain in suspended animation in order to conserve energy and equipment.

During what was probably the fiftieth brief abeyance of rough weather that morning, the smell of creosote filled the air. I was keeping track.

"Smell that?" I said.

"The tree?"

"Yeah, the creosote. You like that?" I said.

"I neither like nor not like it," the alien said.

"How that can be? It smells damn good to me."

"Do you want me to tell you why?"

I had to laugh. That morning we had time, but I'd never have enough free time to want to listen to that explanation. "You'd better keep that to yourself. My people will learn for themselves some day."

I said those words or words similar to them too many times in the course of my relationship with Graax. I shouldn't have treated any fact as too trivial. Everything would have been important to someone.

I realized I stopped hearing the pitter-patter. "I wonder if we're done with the storm for right now," I said.

A minute later the storm resumed.

That answered my question. "So, what's it like to travel in space?" I asked, figuring like we'd have a talk like we used to when we were riding the range together on the K-10.

"It's the greatest thing ever, with the possible exception of riding a horse as fast as it can go here on Earth," Graax said.

"Don't fool with me!" I said, suspecting him of being guilty of diplomacy, denigrating a sensation I never expected to experience. "Tell me about space!"

He started sketching on a schoolboy's writing tablet I had pulled out of my desk. I learned of suns bigger than ours and suns smaller. I learned of old suns that started out a hundred times bigger than Earth and ended up the size of Contention City, shrinking, sucking up everything around it, into it with its irresistible draw.

"You come near that, you'd be crushed," he said.

He told me of other young suns that were still forming. "They'll be forming for many years. Longer than yours and my lifetimes put together. So will the planets around them. Someday there will be life on some of those planets. Some of that life might even become intelligent like humans and people from Squaattoos," he said.

"Then they might go and travel to other planets," I said.

"They might," he said.

"I never knew there was so much I couldn't see when I lay on my back and stared at the sky at night," I said.

"There's even more than that," Graax said. He told me how life began and how the universe started. "It's still growing."

I didn't know whether to believe him.

"All peoples have their own story of creation," he said.

The topic made me uneasy. "Some of the things you're telling me, you could have gotten yourself killed a couple of hundred years ago for saying. There were people who didn't sanction ideas conflicting with the Bible. You best hold that story to yourself, like the brrkup making a body tell the truth," I said. "There's still people like that still around.

"And if Rev. Rollins was mad at us before for taking away people's free will he'd be madder than a March hare thinking we had designs on challenging the Bible."

He regarded me carefully, maybe considering whether I was one of those people. "We had such groups in our past too," Graax said.

I didn't want him to be offended. "That's all I'm saying. Your people can fly! The way I see it, you must know a thing or two about the way the universe works. You keep talking Graax. Just not about that. I'm listening," I said.

Still, he clammed up. I wished I hadn't mentioned the Puritans and Rev. Rollins.

The sound of hail pelting the tin roof filled the conversational void.

Deputy Thomas Russell walked up after hitching his horse in the stable. He opened the office door, but a gust of wind came along and took it from his hand and slammed it open, rattling the glass.

"Watch it!" I yelled.

Luckily the glass held in place, and I straightened up the papers on my desk and put paperweights on them, else the storm would have scattered them. Russell struggled to get a hold of the knob to shut it behind him.

"Ooee! That's one tough mother!" he said of the storm, huffing, puffing, and dripping, as if he'd just emerged from a river having swum fully clothed.

"Sure could have used one with more rain and less wind back on the ranch," I, too, said of the storm. "Busy?"

"Yup, and I'd expect that we'll be even busier later. People are worried that some of the shafts will flood," Russell said.

"Hope nobody's down there," Graax said.

"I do too," I said to Graax. "You don't have anything that will help us get somebody trapped underground—do you?"

"Afraid not," the alien replied.

"Seen Anaya?" I said to Russell.

"Yeah, about an hour ago. He was over at the T.T. He's probably holed up somewhere now," Russell said.    

"Anaya's mom?"

"No," he replied.

"Me either. She never came in," I said.

"She might show later," Graax offered.

"Hope nothing's wrong," Russell said.

Unfortunately, the brrkup couldn't save me from all the work of law enforcement.

We just waited for the inevitable to happen. "So tell me more about Squaattoos," I said.

Graax glared at me with an expression I didn't understand. Probably thinking, Why did I ever agree to come to Earth! It's terrible to be stuck in here with someone who asks me question after question about my home planet!

"We have nothing better to do!" I said defensively.

"Shoot yeah! I've always wanted to know about where you came from," Russell said. "We can't do anything until all this lets up."

"And anything you've got to say is a lot more interesting than hearing about me growing up in Texas, working the cattle drives—or my Army stories," I added jokingly.

"You know, on Squaattoos, we can control the weather in places?" Graax said.

"However you do it, you've got to get us one of those contraptions," Russell said. "Nothing for months and then this. This weather ain't fit for a dog!"

"And you always get too much or too little rain," I added. "That'd be a useful thing to control."

"I need to get some control over my stomach," Russell said, changing the subject. "I should go over and see Slim about picking up something to eat. The tack I bought for lunch ain't going to quite do it."

"You're going out in that?" I said.

"Yup. I'm hungry. Got to."

"But you just got here."

"When I'm hungry my belly tells me what to do, boss."

"Well, then see about something for us as well."

"Sure." With that, Russell headed out into the storm walking across the street.

"Go on," I begged Graax as Russell shut the door behind him.

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