The Seed of Evil

Go-getters are a kind of glorified galactic scrap merchant. All you need is backing, and a ship, and somewhere unexplored to go. Or you can take a shot in the dark, but that’s pretty desperate. You arrive, look the place over, and when you come back you trade in whatever you’ve discovered there. There’s a high premium on information in modern civilisation. If you’re lucky you might sell a concession on raw materials. More often you make money on selling scientific data, so a go-getter prefers weird places. At the very least the government pays a tithe for having assayed another planet.

Let me make it clear now in regard to my complaints about my brother Jack, that we’re nothing particularly fine as human beings go. The galaxy is wide and unknown, and there are thousands of freelance go-getting teams. Usually they have a vast amount of technical knowledge haphazardly acquired, but no qualifications of any kind. Usually professional men despise them. In a nutshell, they live in a way qualified men disdain, and Jack and I were fairly representative, trading in second-hand plant and equipment when we didn’t have a job.

Our relationship was what you would expect of two brothers, but looking back I can only see its unpleasant tinge.

You never played straight with me, did you, Jack? It was in little things. The small deals. After not seeing you for a week or two, I would get a letter like this:

Dear Bob, the time has come I think to let you know the truth about the cheque. All that I’ve been telling you about it not arriving and then not cashing it is a load of ruthless lies, what really happened is that I was desperate for money and had the audacity to spend the bloody lot. Please don’t think too badly of me, I know the sob-story stuff isn’t much use to you, and all I can do now is try to pay it back somehow. …

And so on. Typical. A frank confession, interlarded with self-pity and promises for the future. That for five hundred pounds or so.

When I faced him, he would say: “I didn’t think you’d mind, Bob. After all, we are brothers.”

He was right, I didn’t really mind when it was over, even though repayment was never forthcoming. After all, we were brothers.

Not until years later did it seem odd to me that I tacitly took Jack for a younger brother, instead of my twin. He seemed so much younger, so much more irresponsible.

And so we stuck together, and I looked after my brother. How often, Jack, did I have to pull you off the spot? I’ve had to kill men to save your neck. Some of the quarters you frequented weren’t fussy about how they dealt with undesirables.

Do you remember the time we cracked up on the tenth world of a star with no name, only a number? You were unconscious and I wasn’t sure you were still alive. But for twenty days I hauled you in your suit over the surface of that planet to make rendezvous with the liaison ship coming up behind us. I’ve never been through anything else as bad as that, because I didn’t believe for a minute that we were going to make it and I was glad you didn’t know what was happening.

Would you have done the same for me? I think so. But of course you had to be the one to get hurt, and it’s been like that all along the line. You’ve never had much opportunity to do me favours.

It’s a funny thing, Jack. As well as a predilection to be underhand, you also have the worst possible luck.

Well, that was how we continued in life for thirty-five years. Every five years or so, I could have looked back and said that the conditions of existence were getting meaner and more desperate. Nothing satisfying ever turned up for me. There was no fulfilment. It was the same for Jack, but he never even thought of that sort of thing. Jack was born for the rat-race.

Year by year, we became more and more enclosed in our way of life.

Then came the time I met Janet.

Don’t ask me how I managed to hit it off, because she, to use a phrase, is way out of our class. She is the daughter of Professor Juker, a name that means something in academic circles. But manage it I did, and then I felt I’d found something.

It had been worth crawling out of the womb, just ahead of complaining Jack, after all.

Soon we were planning to marry.

There was still the question of her father, however, and I admit I felt apprehensive on the day he came with Janet to see Jack and me in our dingy office in the back room of a third floor on Stain Street. Go-getters aren’t always considered the best of choices for a well-set-up young lady.