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Transcriber's Note:

    This etext was produced from _Galaxy_ December 1962. Extensive
    research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on
    this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical
    errors have been corrected without note. Subscript characters are
    shown within {braces}.




      _He brought them life and hope.
 Why wouldn't the fools take it from him?_


             By HELEN M. URBAN



               THE GLORY OF
                  IPPLING


There's an axiom in the galaxy: The more complicated the machine, the
bigger mess it can make. Like the time the planetary computer for
Buughabyta flipped its complete grain-futures series. The computer
ordered only 15 acres, and Buughabytians had to live for a full year off
the government's stored surplus--thus pounding down the surplus, forcing
up the price, eliminating the subsidy and balancing the Buughabytian
budget for fifteen years--an unprecedented bit of nonsense that almost
had permanent effects. But a career economist with an eye for flubup and
complication managed to restore balanced disorder, bringing Buughabyta
right back to normalcy.

Or like the time a matter-duplicator receiver misread OCH{3}CH{3}OH, to
turn out a magnificently busted blonde sphygmomano-raiser with an
HOCH{3}OH replacement, putting a strain on the loyalty of a billion
teen-age girls dedicated to Doyle Oglevie worship. Doyle-she insisted
she was Doyle-he, as it took quite a while for her hormones to overcome
the memory of his easy, eyelash-flapping, tone-torturing microphone
conquests. Put a strain on his wardrobe, too.

No machine, of course, can compare for complexity with any group of
humans who have been collected into machine-like precision of
operation. Take one time when an Ipplinger Cultural Contact Group was
handed a Boswellister with V.I.P. connections and orders to put him to
an assignment--for his maturity.

       *       *       *       *       *

Boswellister sat patiently. He squirmed emotionally up and down his
backbone, but he affected a disdainful appearance of patience in view of
the importance of his and his poppa's positions compared with the
pawn-like minusculity of the audience's.

The Blond Terror strode majestically down the aisle of the open air
sports arena, preceded by twenty-four harem-darling dancing girls. The
orchestra wailed an oriental sinuosity of woodwinds and drums,
accompanying the hip-twitching, nearly naked, sloe- (by benefit of
make-up) eyed, black-haired beauties.

Fifteen heavyweights, draped in leopard skins, had preceded the dancers
to set up the Blond Terror's tub on a polar bear rug in the center of
the ring. A dozen luscious watercarriers had emptied their jars into the
tub. Soap and towels, oils and perfumes, mirror and comb, were arranged
on top of a lushly ornamented box that stood by one of the corner posts.

The Blond Terror vaulted the ropes and stood in the ring, popping his
muscles, waiting for his handmaidens to remove the five layers of
elaborately decorated robes that were draped over his super-manly body.

Boswellister cringed slightly (inwardly), speculating that the Blond
Terror really was a muscled man. All that man--nearly seven feet tall,
bronzed, developed, imperious, condescending to notice just slightly the
adulations of the women in the packed arena.

The Blond Terror stepped into the tub, carrying out his advertised boast
of being the cleanest wrestler in the ring, a boast he was unable to
prove with ring action through the exigencies of type-casting, for the
Blond Terror was the villain.

The Blond Terror muscled down into the tub. He was scrubbed, then
rinsed. He stood out onto the white fur rug and sneeringly allowed his
handmaidens to pat him dry and powder him down. They held up the large
hand mirror and allowed him to view his handsomeness while his
short-cropped, blond curls were carefully combed.

"Now." Boswellister spoke the order into the lapel receiver. On the
Ipplinger starship a communications tech slapped home a switch and the
solido-vision circle settled over the Blond Terror's head, a halo of
solid light for a complex Ipplinger signal-reaction device.

"Hail Ippling!" Boswellister shouted.

Boswellister strained forward, clutching the seat arms. It had to work!
His equation must be right! The symbol had the proper cultural
connotations. It was bound to capture the audience, put them in the
right mood of awe-struck superstitious reverence, make the revelation of
the great circle of the Ipplinger starship overhead a thing of
wonderment and devotion-focus.

The Blond Terror should now look upwards, guide the eyes of the
audience, bring them to the recognition. After all, as a Boswellister
... and according to his great grandfather, and his poppa too....

But the Blond Terror gazed appreciatively into the mirror, smiling slyly
at the audience.

The crowd roared its applause for the trick lighting effect. You could
depend on the Blond Terror. No matter how many times you'd seen his act,
he always managed to come up with something new. Now, for the opening of
the new Million Dollar Ventura Boulevard Open Air Sports Arena, the
Blond Terror had done it again.

Boswellister shouted. He pointed. He stared upwards, trying to draw the
crowd with his vehemence. But he couldn't capture one gaze, no matter
what he did.

He poked the man seated next to him, but the surly fool snarled,
"Shuddup! The Hatchet Man's goin' into his act!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Boswellister moaned. There it was, sailing in the night sky, illuminated
with soft etherealness to give the proper effect to these
superstition-ridden people. All they had to do was glance up and accord
to Ippling the superiority that was Ippling's, and they would be brought
gently, delicately into galactic contact, opening out their narrow ways
into the broad ways of the galactic universal worlds. With Boswellister
to lead them.

But he couldn't make the play. Not a head would tilt up. The TV cameras
that should be scanning the great lighted circle of the Ipplinger
starship had swung to the entrance, waiting for the Hatchet Man.

And here he came, down the aisle like a bolt of Chinese lightning. He
vaulted the ropes, leaped to the tub, overturned it and was gone back up
the aisle before the Blond Terror could retaliate. Bath water sopped the
piles of robes and made a mess out of the bearskin rug; but the ring
attendants carted everything off, removed the waterproof canvas from the
ring mat and prepared to get the match underway.

The Blond Terror paced in his corner, waving his hand mirror,
challenging the Hatchet Man to quick, bloody death. And every few
moments he'd stop to gaze admiringly into the mirror, running his hand
along the edge of the solid band of light, grabbing all the credit for
Ipplinger electronic science. He turned on cue to give the TV audience a
full-face closeup.

Boswellister cursed himself for choosing the Blond Terror. That cynical,
egocentric muscle artist was too pleased with himself to have any room
in his thoughts for proper superstitious awe, and too stupid to
recognize the superior science in back of the halo device.

"Remove the device," Boswellister ordered. There was no point in
allowing it to stay, and that band of solid light, immovably in place on
the wrestler's head, made a perfect battering ram for head-butting
mayhem.

Boswellister paid no attention to the gladiators-at-mat; he left his
seat as soon as the device was removed and walked out onto Ventura
Boulevard. He went over his cultural equation, trying to find the flaw.

In the year he had spent on the preliminary survey, he had assessed this
cultural equation to the last decimal point of surety. He had absolute
faith in these people's superstitions. He knew what to expect; but
somewhere the equation had been off. He should have chosen a quieter
event, he guessed. The audience had been too well schooled in the
acceptance of the spectacular.

What was needed was a more acute contrast, and suddenly he had it: the
burlesque runway. He had watched it many times ... and there was one
girl, a big-bodied blonde with mild eyes.

He checked his watch and hurried his pace. It was about time for Dodie's
turn on the runway that extended out from the front of the gambling
house.

With satisfaction, Boswellister called up the memory of Dodie's peel
act. This would be a natural, and he couldn't think why he hadn't
decided on it right away.

       *       *       *       *       *

In many ways Dodie was a big girl. In clothes she could never be the
fashion ideal, but she certainly made a good thing out of nakedness. Her
soft, heavy, white breasts made old men blanch and young men start to
grab. She was tall, with a narrow waist, flaring hips, long curvy legs
and arms; with those big, innocent blue eyes, wearing high heels and an
ounce of flimsy, up there on the burlesque runway ... mmm ...
Boswellister groaned.

She wouldn't date Boswellister a second time no matter what he
promised, and his promises had included many things she'd never before
heard of. Boswellister squirmed momentarily.

It was too bad there wasn't a better crowd. Most of the Boulevard's
regulars were at the Arena opening, but there were a few loiterers,
standing along the curb, watching the free show. And all he had to do
was make a beginning, Boswellister felt. He was sure that everything
would roll by itself after that. He had faith in his superstition
equation.

Dodie peeled. She seemed headed for complete nakedness at any moment,
but to Boswellister's surprise, the revealing costume contained more
pieces than he had remembered.

"Any moment now," he whispered to the solido-tech. "Now, wait ... there
... that should be the last piece. Settle the device around her head,"
he ordered. Then he groaned and countermanded the order. He had
remembered Dodie's details, not her act. For at the last moment she
slipped to the wings, dropping the last swatch of lace to slide down one
long, white, out-thrust leg.

Oh, blessed Ippling! There was his ship, floating majestically overhead,
but no one would give it a glance. He pointed to it. These men _must_
follow his excited gestures and look up; but they were busy calling
suggestions to the line of ponies who had taken over the runway.
Boswellister felt as if he were standing in a desert, surrounded by a
mob of phantoms from his own imagination.

The crying voice of the gambling-house barker rode in over the clang and
brass of jazzy music, but he couldn't turn the tip. As soon as the
line-girls left the over-the-sidewalk runway, the idlers moved on down
the street to take in the next spot's free outdoor lure show.

Boswellister leaned against the wall and watched the barker wipe his
sweat-soaked forehead. He felt kinship with the man in his failure. The
manager came out and talked to the barker for a moment. Boswellister
overheard: "Dodie didn't draw one customer. A buck ain't to be made
these days."

The barker replied, shaking his head, "They're oversold, Marve. The
give-away is all they want."

Boswellister turned away and walked towards his motel. They wanted the
give-away, but the glory of Ippling he had to give made no impression.
He felt desperate. He had to make one more try.

His family position demanded obedience from the starship officers and
crew. He stopped for a moment and gave a swift command into the lapel
pickup, then went on to his motel room.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next morning, full of confidence after a good breakfast, he headed
for the intersection of Laurel Canyon and Ventura Boulevards. There he
would make his stand.

The boulevard swarmed with women shoppers. Cars and trucks roared by.
The spectacular signs and free lure show runways were closed down, for
ballyhoo of a different character had taken their place for the daytime.

Boswellister stopped for a moment to watch a demonstrator work before a
huge, block-long, glittering drugstore.

The demonstrator went into his pitch:

"--money back. Now watch! Into a wet glass I pour a small amount of
medically tested Calsobisidine. See how the Calsobisidine clings to the
sides of the wet glass."

The pitchman smiled with flawless teeth and the women smiled back at
him. His shoes were waxed and buffed; his hair fell in a black curl
across his high forehead; his gardenia dripped dew like the ones in the
box by his elbow. Each bottle of Calsobisidine came complete with an
intimate smile from the pitchman, a fresh gardenia pinned on the breast
by his clever fingers and a trial sample bottle. Just for six
ninety-five, plus tax.

"In the exact same manner, Calsobisidine clings to the lining of your
stomach and intestines, giving positive relief from burning pain and
acid indigestion."

This puzzled Boswellister, and he remarked in a voice that seemed
overloud, "But who has glass insides?"

The women giggled and turned away.

The pitchman's scowl was a menace; his voice bitter: "Go on, scram. You
queered my tip."

Boswellister slipped away while the pitchman started to collect a new
crowd. He popped into the entrance of the drugstore, and as always stood
momentarily amazed by the bewildering variety of merchandise. Gardening
implements, paper goods, dishes and glassware, whiskey, Calsobisidine, a
huge display of baby dolls that performed every human function but
reproduction....

Then he gasped and walked towards the inside demonstration. There,
presided over by a fake medical man, dressed in operating room regalia,
including mask, rubber gloves and stethoscope; there, right in the
middle of the block-long drugstore, a demonstration of the newest
educational doll was taking place. The doll, stretched out on a
miniature hospital delivery table, was being delivered of a replica
new-born infant.

Again and again the "doctor" performed the delivery, alternately
inserting the doll-baby into the doll-mamma and removing it.

Boswellister flushed and walked quickly away. He had no doubt of the
toy's educational value, but nevertheless--he sighed deeply.

When Boswellister reached the corner of Ventura and Laurel Canyon, he
made his stand on the southeast corner, facing the hills over which the
Ipplinger starship would come to hover over the intersection and be
revealed by him.

He contacted control and ordered the halo focus for his head. He reached
up and felt the circle, planted firmly over his brow. He smiled to
himself and went into his pitch.

       *       *       *       *       *

"People of Earth," he began in a quavering voice, then he remembered the
Calsobisidine demonstrator, firmed up his tones and started again.
"People of Earth! Listen to the message from the stars!"

"Selling horoscopes," a woman answered her child's question.

"What's a horrorscope, mamma?"

"A bunch of hooey," she snapped in reply, scowled at Boswellister and
jerked her child complainingly down the street behind her.

"People of Earth!" Boswellister stated commandingly. He grasped a man's
arm, saying, "Stand still a moment, friend, and hear the promise of
Ippling. Glory beyond your imagination can be yours with the ascendancy
of Ippling in this world of tears and sorrows."

The man jerked away. "What the hell, Mac!" He looked searchingly at
Boswellister and muttered, "Geez, a nut." He stood back from
Boswellister to listen, smilingly superior, tolerantly waiting to be
entertained. A woman dragging a toddler stopped, then several other
people stopped to see until Boswellister had about ten people standing
around him.

"People of Earth!" he started in again, but he was interrupted by a
cackling voice from the rear.

"Where else?"

The small crowd laughed and started to move away, but Boswellister stood
straight and commanded them. "Listen! Wait for a moment and learn your
glorious destiny.

"Now," he said quietly into the lapel pickup, and the great doughnut
circle of the Ipplinger starship sailed in close over the hills. A line
of brush fire followed the starship.

Boswellister held up his hands and pointed. "Behold the glory of
Ippling that can be yours!" He held onto the halo, trying to get them to
follow the symbolism. "Look upwards!" He screamed at them, but they
watched the brush fire that swept the hill top. It was a goodie. It
would wipe out a number of homes.

He grabbed a boy by the arm and demanded, "Look at the Ipplinger
starship. Behold the glory of Ippling!"

The ten-year-old sneered. "Yah! That's the new 1993 Lockheed X69-P37
experimental ship. I got a model last week."

"No, no, lad! The Ipplinger starship, come to Earth to bring the
blessings of Ippling's culture to this backwards planet. Ippling will
save you from wars and ills, from poverty and hatred. Ippling will be
your destiny. Follow me, Boswellister! Ippling will lead you to the
stars! Glory for all!" Boswellister patted the boy on the head.

"Keep your hands off me, you big stiff!"

Boswellister gulped and pointed upwards. "See the Ipplinger starship!"

"Aah! Shuddup!"

His mother jerked his arm in reproof. "How many times I've gotta tell
you not to say, shuddup. Say, SHUT UP! S-H-U-T U-P!"

"Aah!" the boy said in disgust. "Everybody knows starships are big
rockets!" He'd said the final word; he had no more interest in
Boswellister, for the fire engines were coming.

       *       *       *       *       *

They sirened down Ventura and turned up Laurel Canyon, their heavy
motors, air horns and sirens drowning out Boswellister's speech. Cars
had piled up at the intersection to wait for the fire engines to make
their swing, and Boswellister leaped to the middle of the intersection
as soon as the trucks had turned.

He held up his arms and went into his _People of Earth_ spiel again. But
angry, blasting horns cut his voice to nothing. The drivers pressed
close in on him, pinpointing him in the middle of the intersection.
Shouts and jeers and horns; the roaring scream of fire engines; people
running and shouting; Ventura at Laurel Canyon was a cacophonous
maelstrom.

A traffic officer screeched his copcycle to a halt and made his way to
the center of the mass of tangled traffic. He blew his whistle and waved
his arms, ordering Boswellister to the sidewalk, but Boswellister
refused to move. He had his mission on Earth.

Boswellister shouted over the piled-up noise, waving his hand to the
sky, calling to them to follow his lead to the glory of Ippling.

The officer grabbed his coat collar and hustled him to the sidewalk.
"You're under arrest!"

"You can't arrest _me_!" Boswellister squirmed and jerked away. He
shouted, "Follow me!" and ran north, a good part of the crowd after him.
He shrieked an order into the pickup while he ran over the bridge
towards Moorpark.

A woman spotted the Ipplinger starship that followed overhead. "Free
samples!" she screamed, and those who had lagged behind fell into a run
with the crowd following Boswellister.

The northwest corner of Laurel Canyon and Moorpark had been cleared of
houses for the erection of a new billion-dollar shopping center, and the
ground was smooth and bare. Here, in the center of the five-acre
construction site, the Ipplinger starship settled to Earth.

The Ipplinger Supreme Starship Commander was panic-stricken. He had to
rescue Boswellister from that sample-seeking mob. If Boswellister should
be trampled and injured! Each screamed demand, picked up by
Boswellister's lapel microphone, sent the Supreme Commander's blood
pressure up another notch, and the moment the ramp was unshipped he hit
the ground.

Officers and crewmen quickly lined up to pipe Boswellister aboard. But
the crowd pushed in close, forcing Boswellister to the rear as they
screamed for their free samples. Two bulky crewmen stood embattled by
the entrance port, strong-arming the kids who tried to storm through the
port and inside.

"Space Angel's inside!" That was their battle cry as they tried to
wriggle under the legs of the crewmen.

"Ya sellin' Oatbombs?" one screamed in the commander's ear, then reached
up to snatch off a shoulder patch.

Boswellister stood in the rear of the crowd and wrung his hands while
the crowd clamored for their samples.

"Give us the pitch, then pass out the stuff!"

"Lookit that ship! Ain't it a dilly! Whatcha sellin', Wheatsnaps?"

"Bring on the dames!"

       *       *       *       *       *

They pressed in close to the starship, running their hands over the
slick metal surface.

"Boy, what a prop! Bet it cost a million bucks. What ya sellin',
mister?"

"Sanity!" Boswellister shouted from the rear.

His men tried to hold their ranks, but the crowd broke the lines,
jerking the medals off their chests for souvenirs.

Boswellister was almost babbling by the time the commander and his men
battled their way to him.

"You saw it all! You know!" Boswellister protested. "That Blond Terror
and his harem darlings, and those violence-avid ruffians in the
audience! Dodie, the stripper, with her lip-licking ogglers! That
Calsobisidine pitchman, oozing allure and implied invitation! My
equation! My precious equation, buried under a mass of pills, lotions,
toys, food, clothes and everything sold with a bump and grind!"

They fought to the ship with him, while the crowd opposed each step,
yelling for entertainment, for TV cameras, for samples of anything.

"How could I have missed it?" Boswellister moaned. "I should have sold
them with sex, right from the beginning."

"What do you do, handsome? Sing?" A bundle-clutching housewife breathed
into his face, stepping on the commander's foot as she shoved in close
to Boswellister.

"Take me home!" Boswellister beseeched the commander.

The officers and crew, tattered, demedaled, bruised and completely
defeated in morale, formed a flying wedge and drove for the safety of
the ship.

The ramp retracted. The port closed, then opened briefly to eject a
nosey boy, closing finally on the demands and the mocking laughter and
the clangor of arriving police cars.

"Raise ship!" the commander ordered. He sopped at the blood from his
gashed arm and said to his first officer, "Somebody in that mob used a
knife to go after those service stripes."

The first shuddered. "Ugly brutes."

Boswellister leaned against the corridor bulkhead and sighed as the
Ipplinger starship rose from the ground. How could he explain to his
poppa? All his brothers had won their worlds. He _would_ do it. He
squared his shoulders. After all, he was a Boswellister. Boswellister
XIV, no less. A son of Gaphroldshan IX himself, the Prince of Ippling
World LXIV, a Royal Prince of the Central Ippling.

He walked resolutely to the control room, riding the crest of his
refurbished dignity.

"Put me down on that planet we spotted last year," he ordered. "What was
that star map number?"

"G.S.R. 285139-F. R. A. 592-105-R.U. 13," his alert assistant
astronomical officer answered, reading the number from a prepared
memorandum.

Boswellister hesitated. Should he reprimand the officer for anticipating
his failure or compliment him for his efficiency? Boswellister backed
water and went to his room to learn the language he'd need, while the
officers pulled their own demoralized spirits together so they could go
to work on the crew when the news broke that they weren't going home.

       *       *       *       *       *

They made a quick passage to their destination, and Boswellister--well
rested, well fed, hypnotically tutored, supplied with communicators, a
synthesizer for his food and a portable equation writer strapped to his
back, and his irrepressible, dauntless belief in himself in triumphant
operation--stepped from the ramp onto this newest world of his Princely
destiny.

"Circle in orbit," he ordered. "I'll call you when I need you."

Boswellister walked confidently down the road to town. He congratulated
himself on having learned, also on his wise humility in admitting the
fact of his having learned. He smiled now at the naiveté with which he
had approached his first try at establishing a realm for his Ipplinger
Princedom rights.

He had been so full of illusions that he had landed openly, had stepped
right up and announced that he had come to establish his household and
rear his own Princes, who would, in their maturity, leave to win their
own worlds. In addition to their being small-minded on that first world
about his needing five wives for his household, they had nearly managed
to commit him to a lunatic asylum, for he had overlooked, in his
equation, the fact that his first planet, with its two suns and
perpetual daylight, had never known about the stars. There had been no
way to break through their wall of stupidity, and he had left, the
planet's sanity-police close on his heels. Had he used money it would
have been a cinch, he had realized as soon as he was safely in the ship.

That hard-earned lesson he had applied to his second planet, but there
superstition meant more than money, though money had seemed on the
surface to be the answer to everything. On that second planet he had
made the error of buying his way into the half-political, half-religious
temple setup, and had tried to bring the local superstitions into line
with Ipplinger Reality Philosophy. They had lost an officer and three
men when they rescued him from the temple's torture chamber; and none
too soon, for he had been taking quite a stretching when his rescue had
arrived.

Applied on Earth, the superstition equation had not paid off. He had
failed to notice that they didn't really believe in their religions and
superstitions, though they showed every indication of being extremely
devout and credulous. He should have sold Earth, and sold it with sex.

Well, he had learned, all right, and here, on this new world, in this
fresh start, he would show how well he had learned. In the idiom of
Ventura Boulevard, he'd hit 'em with the whole deck, deuces wild. He'd
give 'em sex and money and superstition and to hell with fact and logic.

These primitive worlds had to be brought slowly into a respect for
logic; for Ipplinger logic, the only valid system of logic in the whole
universe.

In the hovering ship, the commander turned to the astrogator and said,
with the bitterness of yesterday's conflict with the mutinous crew
evident in his voice, "Well, our little vaporized circuit is off again."
He motioned to the image of Boswellister in the forward viewscreen.

It was a sight that tended to increase the tremor in the astrogator's
hands. He replied, "I only hope we can pull the crew through another
pickup. Home and family! Do they think I want mine any less?"

Boswellister marched confidently down the road. He _would_ succeed, for
didn't he have the well oiled machinery of the whole Ipplinger starship
crew of cultural contact specialists to back him up?

       *       *       *       *       *

While he walked, he practiced the strident-voiced delivery of
extravagant lies he had learned so well and had so magnificently
imitated from the Ventura Boulevard pitch artists. He practiced the
leering insinuendo of the barker outside the gambling hall; he gave it
the Calsobisidine con come-on; he sold it solid, dripping with sex,
twitching with lure.

He knew that here, finally, he would succeed.

Boswellister XIV, Noble Prince of Ippling, smiled his confidence in his
sex-money-superstition equation as he walked briskly down the road to
begin his contact with a world that had substituted vat-culture
procreation for sex; that had abolished money in favor of a complicated
system of verbal, personal-honor swapping credits; that had no religions
or superstitions. A world of people who considered the most sweetly
distilled essence of living to be the minute investigation of the fine
points of logical discourse, engaged in on the basis of an incredibly
multiplied logic structure composed of thirty-seven separate systems of
discursive regulations, the very first of which was based on a planetary
absolute, the rejection and ridicule of all persuasive techniques and
those who used them.

                                                      --HELEN M. URBAN