“Well, perhaps, perhaps not,” I said. “But you’ll go, if you wish. I promise you. Anybody on this whole planet who wants to will go to Earth.”

As most of them will. I’m certain our idea will be accepted by the Council. The only possible one. If you can’t lick ’em…get ’em to jine you.

I rumpled Mierna’s hair. In a way, sweetheart, what a dirty trick to play on you! Take you straight from the wilderness to a huge and complicated civilization. Dazzle you with all the tricks and gadgets and ideas we have, not because we’re better but simply because we’ve been at it a little longer than you. Scatter your ten million among our fifteen billion. Of course you’ll fall for it. You can’t help yourselves. When you realize what’s happening, you won’t be able to stop, you’ll be hooked. I don’t think you’ll even be able to resent it.

You’ll be assimilated, Mierna. You’ll become an Earth girl. Naturally, you’ll grow up to be one of our leaders. You’ll contribute tremendous things to our civilization, and be rewarded accordingly. But the whole point is, it will be our civilization. Mine…and yours.

I wonder if you’ll ever miss the forest, though, and the little houses by the bay, and the boats and songs and old, old stories, yes, and your darling oontatherium. I know the empty planet will miss you, Mierna. So will I.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go build us that breakfast.”

Honesty

In other times I played the troubadour,
Or thought I did, like any lovesick youth,
And for my Lady’s sake let fancy soar
On flashing-feathered wings above dull truth.
By foam-born Venus foamily I swore
That in my love of her was naught uncouth,
But ’twas her heart and soul I did adore,
Those beauties which we know defy time’s tooth.

The devil now may have such dreary bliss!
Your mortal self is what has made me blest,
Your shining eyes, deep riches of your hair
The springtime drunkenness within your kiss,
The lovely upward surging of your breast,
Soft skin, round hip, slim leg—those things are fair.

The Alien Enemy

Winter darkness falls early on Rotterdam. When my flitter had parked, I walked to a parapet and saw light in star clusters, nebulae, comet tails, filling the spaces of the city. Windows were blinking out in the offices, where towers lifted row on row from the waterfront. But vehicles swarmed, signs danced, shops beckoned, the pavements made a luminous web as far inland as I could see—it appeared to flicker with the ground traffic that counted endless rosaries along it—and the harbor and canals interwove a softer sheen. I was too high to make out people through all that gloom and glow. They were melted into a mere humanity, and their voices came to me as the distant surf of machines.

Up here was less illumination, just some tubes around the lanes and walkways, a fluorescent door to the elevator head, and whatever spilled down from the beacon. So although the air was raw and damp in my nostrils, forcing my hands into tunic pockets, I could look past the electric star which marks this building, out to a few of the real stars. Orion was aloft and the Charles Wain stood on its head over the Pole. I shivered and wished the Ministry of Extraterrestrial Affairs had picked some other place for a centrum, an island farther south where the constellations bloom after dark like flowers.