Randall Garrett

“ The Peniyan Range is a bleak, windswept series of serrated peaks that crosses the northern tip of the largest continent on Cardigan's Green. Geologically young, craggy, and with poor soil, they are uninhabited, for there is too little there to support life in any great numbers; the valleys and low hills to the south are more inviting and comfortable for humanity. Until the press of numbers forces it, there will be no need for the inhabitants of Cardigan's Green to live in the mountainous wasteland.
Finding a place of concealment in those jagged mountains ought to be fairly easy, Hale decided. ”

“ If there were no interstellar ships at all in the area, it was likely that the planet below was an isolated planet. There were plenty of them in the galaxy; when the infraspace drive had combined with Terrestrial overcrowding to produce the great migration, many of the pioneers had simply found themselves a planet, settled themselves into a community, dismantled their ship, and forgotten about the rest of mankind. ”

“ The population of Cardigan's Green can't have an epidemic of the Plague! Oh, I'll admit that an individual might be conceived now and then without the immunity gene intact, but the foetus would never come to term! An epidemic is impossible!"
"Nevertheless, sir," said Hale complacently, "we have a major epidemic on our hands." He knew he was treading on thin ice at that point, so he turned and called loudly to the boat in the local dialect. "Tell Captain Doctor Wills why we are here!" ”

“ Then, to Wills: "Will your directional pickup reach that man, sir?"
"I think so. Yes."
The first officer of the fishing smack was shouting: "The Plague is here, good sir! Please help us! Give us the medicine!"
Hale snarled under his breath. He wasn't ready to say anything about the medicine yet. Oh, well—water over the dam, spilt milk and all that.
"I'm afraid I don't understand, Lieutenant Hale," said the captain doctor. "How will this help us get off Cardigan's Green? And what's all this about medicine? We don't have any medicine that will cure the Plague." ”

“ Now, a confidence man is an opportunist; no successful con man can afford to be anything else. He must, above all, be able to talk his way out of, or into, anything. Leland Hale's record speaks for itself; killer, thief, yes—but he was also a damned good con man. As Interstellar Police Commander Desmon Shelley remarked some years later: "Leland Hale could have sold antigravity belts to the crew of a ship in free fall at double price—and even then he would have cheated by leaving out the energy units." ”

“ The really adept criminal can easily lose himself in the tremendous whirlpool of stars that forms the Milky Way. Hale knew he had eluded the IP ships; therefore, unless he were found by the sheerest accident, he would be perfectly safe from the police for a long time to come.
Not that he intended to stay on Cardigan's Green for the rest of his life; far from it. He had five and a half million stellors in negotiable notes in the hold of his ship, and he would eventually want to get back to one of the civilized worlds where he could spend it. ”

“ The crags almost seemed to rise out of the water. Hale couldn't see across the body of water, but he knew what its shape was, having seen it from high altitude when he came in for a landing. It was actually a wide channel that cut off a large island from the mainland on which he stood. He narrowed his eyes at the horizon and fancied he could see a shadow of the island, but common sense told him it was an illusion; the island was at least forty miles away.
The water of the channel was quite warm—Hale estimated it at about seventy degrees—and filled with life. ”

“ Human beings are notoriously rapid breeders. Give a group of men and women a chance, and, with plenty of room to spread, they will nearly triple their population in each generation. Many will die, if the circumstances are adverse, but many more will live. Thus, in spite of the depredations of the Plague, the population of Cardigan's Green when Hale landed was well over thirty thousand souls, scattered thinly across the rich farmland near the coast of the channel. ”

“ Grand larceny, fraud, and murder are first-magnitude crimes, but they are far more common than police statistics would lead one to believe. The galaxy is unbelievably vast, and the universe as a whole unthinkably vaster. ”

“ History, by any reckoning, is a fluid thing. Once a thing has happened, no instrument yet devised by man can show exactly what it was in minute detail. All of the data simply cannot be recovered.
In spite of this, if Man were an intellectually honest animal, it wouldn't be too difficult to get a reasonably accurate picture of the past. ”

“ Granted, with a few thousand civilized and tens of thousands semi-civilized planets in the occupied galaxy, the correlation of data is difficult. But, nonetheless, errors of the magnitude of the one made in the history of Cardigan's Green shouldn't be committed.
The average man doesn't give two hoots in hell about historical truth; he would much rather have romantic legends and historic myths. The story of Cardigan's Green is a case in point. ”

“ He sat down in the shelter of the cliff, unstrapped his pack, and rummaged inside. Where the hell was the blasted aspirin? There. He took out the bottle and gave himself a massive fifteen-grain dose. Maybe it would make him feel better. He didn't like to use medicine; it made him seem weak in his own eyes. But there are times when necessity is the mother of prevention. ”

“ But Man isn't that kind of creature. Once men discovered the fact that the events of tomorrow are based on what is happening today, it didn't take them long to reach the conclusion that changing the past could change the present. ”

“ Hale had to agree that Yon was probably right. A spaceship practically guides and runs itself when it's in working order. An elementary knowledge of astrogation and a good ship can get a man almost anywhere in the galaxy. ”

“ Words are magic, and the more cleverly and powerfully they are connected together, the more magic they become. The ancient "historians" of Babylon, Egypt, Israel, Sumeria, Judea, and Rome did not conceive of themselves as liars when they distorted history to conform to their own beliefs ”

“ Then a fever and you die."
"And you say Yon the Fisher has it?" Hale felt things were going even better than he had expected. But if the Fisher were to die, the whole deal might fall through. "Look here," he said, "I've got some stuff in my pack that will fix those boys up in no time. Just let me out of here, and I'll—"
The muttering in the crowd began again, and the guard said: "I can't let you out without permission from Yon the Fisher."
"Now, look here," Hale began.
Hale had a persuasive tongue. Even in a strange dialect, he could, given time enough, work men around to his way of thinking. ”

“ Leland Hale had never heard of Wills before; he didn't know if the man had ever done anything in his life. But it's a good bet that a man doesn't become the commander of an IHC hospital ship without doing something noteworthy—or at least something that he, himself, thinks is noteworthy. ”

“ But the battle between the crew and Yon's men had done irreparable damage to the ship. It could neither leave nor communicate with the outside. The crew of the Caduceus was stranded.
They could hold off any attacks; they had plenty of power. But they couldn't, they didn't dare, leave the island. If the Plague struck again—and they had no way of knowing whether it would or not—they would not have enough medicine to be effective.
Stalemate.
And thus it remained for twelve long years, until the day that Leland Hale came plodding along the beach toward the little village of Taun. ”

“ Hale, knowing that the collector had drawn half a million stellors in cash, burgled his home that night. Then he had the temerity to show up the next morning to complete the agreement. When the collector discovered that there was no cash on hand to pay for the "artwork," Hale indignantly refused to sell, on the grounds that the collector had reneged, was unethical, and not to be trusted in any way. ”

“ To Make a Hero is his own answer to the question. It's science fiction told from a historian's viewpoint—an attempt to set the "record" straight on one Leland Hale, a hero who is guaranteed to fascinate you, even if you hate him! ”

“ There is only one decent landing place, a beach near the flat plateau of the Island's top. All the rest of the perimeter is composed of sheer cliffs that drop straight into the surf. The lower cliffs at the southern end of the Island have since been blasted away to make a harbor, but at that time only the small beach afforded an approach.
The sailors of the fishing smack dropped anchor a good hundred yards offshore. Above them, on the flat of the plateau, loomed the huge, weatherstained bulk of the IHCS Caduceus. ”

“ Hale's hands were bound behind him, and the guard with the gun followed directly behind him.
There are no animals fit for riding purposes which are native to Cardigan's Green, and eking out a bare living from the planet left the colonists no time to develop mechanical aids to transportation. They walked.
Several hours later, Leland Hale was inside the hull of the freighter Morris. Under the watchful eye of Yon and his myrmidons, Hale went over the whole vessel, saying as little as possible, and evading the questions that were put to him. ”

“ Ruined their infraspace drive and fouled up their subspace radio—almost no power left."
"Put a call through to the police," the captain replied. "Just relay it through, that's all. Why bother me with something as simple as that?"
"There's more to it, sir; the men are dying. They're sick with some sort of disease."
"What are the symptoms?" the captain asked. There was a marked change in the tone of his voice. This was his meat.
Lieutenant Blair tried to raise the Morris again, but got no response.
"Very well," said Captain Doctor Wills, "call Health Central, tell 'em what's happened. ”

“ Now, one would suppose that, as methods of recording and verifying the contemporary happenings of a culture became more and more efficient and more easily correlated, the ability to change the past would become more difficult. Not true. The actual records of the past are not read by the average man ”

“ Instead, he slept on a high cliff overlooking the sea. In the mountains, he had slept in his insulation jacket for warmth, but here the heat of the sea and the warm breeze that came from it precluded any need for the jacket, so he used it for a pillow. ”