Free Whatever Gods May Be by George P. Saunders Page B

off this world and out of this star system as quickly as possible, and if he had to leave a few planets and a sun crippled to it, he would not hesitate in the least.  Zolan was more than just angry; he was sick with despair.
    When the Rover had informed him that Earth's war was certain, Zolan had taken the news badly.  A good part of his life had been devoted to learning Earth's languages, customs, and history; to do so proficiently, he had sacrificed a century of time away from his home world in the center of the galaxy, to live among Earth people, so that he could, in fact, become a native of the alien planet.  He had made such a sacrifice to compile a comprehensive dossier on Earth, with the hope that it would afterwards be considered for membership to the Galactic Confederation of Planets for Peace - the collective group of civilized worlds within the galaxy that had been formed ten thousand years earlier, for the mutual enhancement and advancement of all intelligent races belonging to it.
    For a millennium, Earth was watched and probed for evidence of suitability.  Mankind was scrutinized thoroughly; his progress was noted, his wars recorded, and his promise for future survivability was assessed and hypothesized upon at great lengths during his thousand year observation period.  At last, the moment had arrived when it became necessary to send a human observer to Earth for the final phase of its probation interval.
    Zolan had been the delegated official for the admittedly difficult task of Planetary Observation.  The job was not a coveted one; in fact, such duties usually were assigned to those individuals who were misfits in one way or another, or whose work records in the past had been deemed less than favorable by GCPP authorities.  The actual work to be performed by them was minimal; the Rover starships processed most of the additional data required on the subject planet, with the PO's acting only as glorified maintenance men.  But the strain and mental hardship a PO experienced from virtual exile was enormous.  Communication with a home system was not possible over such vast distances that usually separated Planetary Observers from GCPP worlds; the space warp that was the Hall appeared only once every century - through this mysterious portal was the only means in which an interstellar voyager could travel or communicate in the vast oceans that separated the stars, without taking hundreds of years to do so.  Consequently, a PO was automatically subjected to a century term of employment away from family and friends.  Like veterans of a foreign war, when PO's returned home, they usually required special attention and complete reorientation.
    Zolan had accepted the post to Earth enthusiastically; he had no family ties or any qualms of leaving the home systems for such a tremendous span of time.  Furthermore, he was one of the few human beings among his kind that was just as ordinary as the creatures he would live with for a hundred years on Earth.  Most of Mankind among GCPP systems were remarkably advanced; people either possessed telepathic, telekinetic, or telempathic abilities to some degree.  Men had become supermen where Zolan came from, and such prodigious gifts of nature or genetically engineered talents belonged to every man, woman and child from birth.
    Zolan Rzzdik was the exception.
    He could neither read minds nor affect the state of matter around him, and these factors, along with various other deviations from the norm, had made Zolan an outcast for most of his life.  Being different, or rather inferior, made Zolan surly, and as a result he had never made many friends as he grew older.  An exception also to most Planetary Observers, Zolan had enjoyed an outstanding career in a number of scientifically-related fields; he had helped prove the existence of the Hall only five hundred years earlier.  Perhaps because Zolan had achieved so much even with his obvious mental and physical handicaps,