Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail by Jack L. Chalker Page B

to believe; but, in fact, most criminals are pretty nice, ordinary people except for one little area. All these people were extraordinary, because in contrast to my—Tarin Bul’s—rather direct and sloppy job, they had all killed in extremely clever technological ways.
    Just how Talant Ypsir planned to turn such people into model citizens of his new superior society we all discovered the next day. A tall man came in, looking granite-gray in the same way Gorn and Sugra had when we’d first met them. He introduced himself as Solon Kabaye, Gray Basin’s Political Commissioner. His uniform was all black but still styled in the military manner. He had gold braid on his sleeves and a golden-colored belt. On his pocket was the obvious government symbol—a stylized woman’s head with a hair full of what had to be snakes. His manner was easygoing and conversational, like that of most politicians; I may have been the only one to notice his skin color change from that light gray to the Granger shade of Gorn and Sugra. Here was a graphic indication that something inside him worked very differently from anything we were accustomed to.
    “I’m going to be basic and blunt,” he told us, “because that’s the best way to start. Let’s go over a couple of facts right away, shall we? First—you’re stuck. There is no escape from Medusa, no place to run. Therefore, you’d best get used to the world as quickly as possible and settle in as best you can. Your future—the rest of your lives—is here, tied to Medusa. The system works, and it works well. It takes into account our planetary assets, our inherent problems and limitations as Warden citizens, and it gives a strong measure of prosperity to the people. The system evolved over the past century, as various ideas were tried and discarded. This one works. You didn’t ask to be here—but you put yourselves here by your own actions. We didn’t ask for you, either. Frankly, unless you possess some new technological knowledge that could be of use to us, you’re not really needed here. So we have to find out just where you fit—then you fit. You either fit, or you take that last step into the deferred oblivion from which coming here saved you. That’s the bottom line.”
    This was tough talk, and very discomforting as well. Still, it was also very professionally timed. We were stuck here, on an alien world, waiting for a something we couldn’t see, hear, or feel to take over our bodies. Quite simply, we had no real options. After the first night they had even taken away the thermal wear while we slept, leaving us with nothing but flimsy white hospital-type gowns. Try to run now, boy, out into a frigid wilderness.
    “Sounds like the Confederacy,” Turnel, the ruddy, gruff resident grouch of our group noted half under his breath. Of course Kabaye heard him and smiled slightly.
    “Perhaps it does. The Confederacy is a society that exists because it works. That doesn’t make it the best society, or the most efficient, or anything else, but it’s there because it works for the majority of people.”
    “Well, we’re the minority,” noted Edala, a tough, worldly woman prisoner.
    ‘True,” Kabaye agreed. “We all are. I was born and raised in the Confederacy, same as you. So was Talant Ypsir, our First Minister. And now we’re here, and you’re here, and, ironically, folks like the First Minister and myself find ourselves the government rather than opposed to the government. We’re faced with the same problems as the Confederacy, and we have additional problems because of Medusa’s limitations. Our advantage, though, is that Medusa is the wealthiest of the Warden worlds since we control the raw-materials sources, and, with a Warden organism not trying to get in the way of building stuff, we can best exploit these resources. So, let me tell you the score here and then I’ll tell you how you fit in.”
    The “score,” as it were, was that we came from a somewhat