Knave and The Game by Laurence M. Janifer

Author:Laurence M. Janifer [Janifer, Laurence M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci Fi Short Story Collection
Publisher: Doubleday & Company
Published: 1987-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

And sometimes he just wants to spin a yam, give me a little historical background, so to speak…

This one still strikes me (as I suppose it should) as the only reasonable explanation of UFOs, flying saucers, and the like.

Analog, which ran it originally, ran an illustration with it* that (I am told) is a fairly good picture of a Kelan. Cartoonish, but fairly good.

* by Leo Summers.

TESTING

This one is three hundred years old, and if it weren’t for the Anniversary you wouldn’t be interested. And I wouldn’t be telling it, because I’d have better things to do. As it is, though, this is a footnote to history—no, make that History: why not?—and I have permission to open it up, after all this time. It seems that somebody up there, about three hundred and fifty light-years from home base, happens to like me. Don’t ask me why, unless it’s because I fit their notion of what an intelligent being ought to be.

Hell, I fit my own notion, too—and so do they. There are a lot of odd types, human and otherwise, floating around inside the fairly small volume of space we’ve managed to figure space-four routes in, so far, most of whom are not, by my handy measurement, intelligent. (If you’d like to try measuring friends and neighbors, you can begin with Knave’s First Rule: Never give information away free if there is the slightest chance that somebody might be willing to pay for it. Human or non-human, two legs, six or none, I don’t know one being in a thousand who’s heard of that rule, let alone tried following it. The ones who have, I value. Highly.)

But the Kelans meet my standard. Hell, they meet every standard I’ve ever heard of, and probably a small pile of standards nobody has come up with yet. If there really are any Wise Beings of the Galaxy, they are either Kelans, or beings we’ve never met. You’ve run into Kelan types on 3V all your life, despite its being a fairly tough makeup job—always showing up in the last ten minutes to hand out what the writers seem to think of as Words to Live By. You may even have rim into a Kelan or so: they’re not standoffish, and once you get used to chatting with a teeny green midget who has arms growing out of his ears (as well as the usual-human pair), they’re good people to be around. And, as I say, they do seem to like me.

Well, I did them a favor once—which involves a Princess, a glass slipper, and a Fairy Godfrog, and is a whole other story—and, as payment, the Kelan Advisor-for-Other-Races tossed me this story, permission to retell included. As part-payment, I ought to say: there was also a small purse of actual gold, not subject to Comity tax—the Kelans tend to think big, and, when it comes to payment, so does yours truly, Gerald Knave, Survivor. The small purse sustained what I like to think

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