The Project Gutenberg EBook of Backlash, by Winston Marks

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Title: Backlash

Author: Winston Marks

Illustrator: SIBLEY

Release Date: June 15, 2010 [EBook #32828]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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BACKLASH

By WINSTON MARKS

Illustrated by SIBLEY

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction
January 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Sidenote: They were the perfect servants--they were willing to do
everything for nothing. The obvious question is: How much is nothing?]

I still feel that the ingratiating little runts never _intended_ any
harm. They were eager to please, a cinch to transact business with, and
constantly, everlastingly grateful to us for giving them asylum.

Yes, we gave the genuflecting little devils asylum. And we were glad to
have them around at first--especially when they presented our women with
a gift to surpass all gifts: a custom-built domestic servant.

In a civilization that had made such a fetish of personal liberty and
dignity, you couldn't hire a butler or an upstairs maid for less than
love _and_ money. And since love was pretty much rationed along the
lines of monogamy, domestic service was almost a dead occupation. That
is, until the Ollies came to our planet to stay.

Eventually I learned to despise the spineless little immigrants from
Sirius, but the first time I met one he made me feel foolishly
important. I looked at his frail, olive-skinned little form, and
thought, _If this is what space has to offer in the way of advanced
life-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 the
commonest Earth family names they could find, and dropped their own
name-designations whose slobbering sibilance made them difficult for us
to pronounce and write. It seemed s