BACKLASH
By WINSTON MARKS
Illustrated by SIBLEY
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science FictionJanuary 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that theU.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I still feel that the ingratiating little runts never intended anyharm. They were eager to please, a cinch to transact business with, andconstantly, everlastingly grateful to us for giving them asylum.
Yes, we gave the genuflecting little devils asylum. And we were glad tohave them around at first—especially when they presented our women witha gift to surpass all gifts: a custom-built domestic servant.
In a civilization that had made such a fetish of personal liberty anddignity, you couldn't hire a butler or an upstairs maid for less thanlove and money. And since love was pretty much rationed along thelines of monogamy, domestic service was almost a dead occupation. Thatis, until the Ollies came to our planet to stay.
Eventually I learned to despise the spineless little immigrants fromSirius, but the first time I met one he made me feel foolishlyimportant. I looked at his frail, olive-skinned little form, andthought, If this is what space has to offer in the way of advancedlife-forms ... well, we haven't done so badly on old Mother Earth.
This one's name was Johnson. All of them, the whole fifty-six, took thecommonest Earth family names they could find, and dropped their ownname-designations whose slobbering sibilance made them difficult for usto pronounce and write. It seemed strange, their casually wiping outtheir nominal heritage just for the sake of our convenience—imagine anO'Toole or a Rockefeller or an Adams arriving on Sirius IV and no soonerlearning the local lingo than insisting on becoming known asSslyslasciff-soszl!
But that was the Ollie. Anything to get along and please us. And ofcourse, addressing them as Johnson, Smith, Jones, etc., did worksomething of a semantic protective coloration and reduce some of thebarriers to quick adjustment to the aliens.
Johnson—Ollie Johnson—appeared at my third under-level office a fewmonths after the big news of their shipwreck landing off the Mainecoast. He arrived a full fifteen minutes ahead of his appointment, and Iwas too curious to stand on the dignity of office routine and make himwait.
As he stood in the doorway of my office, my first visual impression wasof an emaciated adolescent, seasick green, prematurely balding.
He bowed, and bowed again, and spent thirty seconds reminding me that itwas he who had sought the interview, and it was he who had the bigfavors to ask—and it was wonderful, gracious, generous I who flavoredthe room with the essence of mystery, importance, godliness andoverpowering sweetness upon whose fragrance little Ollie Johnson hadcome to feast his undeserving senses.
"Sit down, sit down," I told him when I had soaked in all the celestialflattery I could hold. "I love you to pieces, too, but I'm curious aboutthis proposition you mentioned in your message."
He eased into the chair as if it were much too good for him. He wasstrictly humanoid. His four-and-a-half-foot body was dressed in the mostconservative Earth clothing, quiet colors and c