Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell Read Free

survival.” Shoving the file to one side, Wolf informed, “We’ve a punched card for every Terran in existence. In no time worth mentioning we can sort out electronically all those who have false teeth, or wear size eleven shoes, or had red-haired mothers, or can be relied upon to try to dodge the draft. Without trouble we can extract any specified type of sheep from the general mass of sheep and goats.”
    “And I am a specified sheep?”
    “Speaking metaphorically, of course. No insult is intended.” His face gave a craggy twitch that was the nearest it could come to a smile. “We first dug out about sixteen thousand completely fluent speakers of the several Sirian dialects. Eliminating the females and children brought the number down to nine thousand. Then, step by step, we cut out the elderly, the infirm, the weak, the untrustworthy, the temperamentally unsuitable, those too short, too tall, too fat, too thin, too stupid, too rash, too cautious, and so forth. We weren’t left with many among whom we seek for wasps.”
    “What defines a wasp?”
    “Several things—but mostly a shorty who can walk slightly bandy-legged with his ears pinned back and his face dyed purple. In other words, one who can play the part of a native-born Sirian and do it well enough to fool the Sirians.”
    “Never!” exclaimed Mowry. “Never in a month of Sundays! I’m pink, I’ve got wisdom teeth and my ears stick out.”
    “The surplus teeth can be pulled. Surgical removal of a sliver of cartilage will fasten your ears back good and tight, leaving no visible evidence of the operation. Painless and easy, with complete healing in two weeks. That is medical evidence, so don’t argue it.” Again the craggy twitch. “As for the purple complexion, it’s nothing startling. There are some Terrans a good deal more purple-faced than any Sirian, they having acquired the color via many gallons of booze. We can fix you up with a dye guaranteed firm for four months, also a retinting kit that will enable you to carry on as much longer as may be necessary.”
    “But—”
    “Listen to me. You were born in Masham, capital city of Diracta which is the Sirian home planet. Your father was a trader there at the time. You lived on Diracta until age seventeen when you returned with your parents to Terra. Luckily you happen to be a half-pint of just about Sirian size and build. You are now twenty-six and still speak perfect Sirian with a decided Mashambi accent which, if anything, is an advantage. It lends plausibility. About fifty million Sirians speak with Mashambi accents. You’re a natural for the job we have in mind.”
    “What if I invite you to thrust the job right up the airshaft?” asked Mowry, with great interest.
    “I would regret it,” said Wolf, coldly, “because in time of war it is an old, well-founded adage that one volunteer is worth a thousand conscripts.”
    “Meaning I’d get my call-up papers?” Mowry made a gesture of irritation. “Damn!—I’d rather walk into something of my own accord than be frogmarched into it.”
    “So it says here,” informed Wolf, motioning toward the file. “James Mowry, twenty-six, restless and pigheaded. Can be trusted to do anything at all—provided the alternative is worse.”
    “Sounds like my father. Did he tell you that?”
    “The Service does not reveal its sources of information.”
    “Humph!” He pondered a little while, asked, “Suppose I volunteer, what follows?”
    “We’ll send you to a school. It runs a special course that is fast and tough and takes six to eight weeks. You’ll be crammed to the gills with everything likely to be useful to you: weapons, explosives, sabotage, propaganda, psychological warfare, map reading, compass reading, camouflage, judo, radio techniques and maybe a dozen other subjects. By the time they’ve finished with you, you’ll be fully qualified to function as a complete and absolute pain-in-the-neck.”
    “And