A Private Little War(70)
Still, after the hundredth or so populated planet was found, it just became annoying. Wonder quickly transmuted to irritation. Discovery fatigue set in. In rather short order, mankind gave up all pretense of being careful curators of life in all its wondrous diversity and just started whacking the little alien fuckers with bats whenever they got in the way. And five minutes after that, Native Rights Intersystem was founded and immediately called for a galaxy-wide ban on the production of Louisville Sluggers.
Put simply, the local cosmic neighborhood was just flat-out packed with leaping, bouncing, slithering, gibbering monsters. And if it wasn’t a peaceful, advanced society of intelligent and socially progressive giant walruses on one planet, it was a bunch of slack-jawed, nose-picking bipeds on another who’d yet even to come down out of the trees. Nearly everywhere man went, it seemed there was already something there waiting, watching, standing on some distant, foreign shore waving arms, tentacles, proboscis, or genitalia at them and saying, “Sorry. All full up here. Maybe try the next planet over, thanks.”
And NRI was committed to defending the rights of every one of them to grub around in the dirt, live in miserable poverty, die of curable diseases, bash one another with rocks, and generally just lie around flinging their own crap at each other until such a day came that they got around to evolving, undisturbed by man, invented lawyers, and sued the shit out of humanity for willful neglect. Carter knew that tomorrow, a survey ship could discover a planet pimpled with solid gold mountains and inhabited entirely by semi-intelligent gophers. When it did, NRI would be right there, saying that everyone should keep their grubby hands off until such a time (undoubtedly a few billion years down the road) that the alien space gophers developed a sociocultural gestalt advanced enough to deal with mankind on an equal footing.
Human instinct, of course, said poison the stupid gophers and take their solid gold mountains back home to Earth where their value could be properly appreciated. NRI said no. The gophers had an inalienable right to life and the fulfillment of their unique cultural destiny so, therefore, deserved protection from all such bastards who felt otherwise.
If this protection could be provided by the courts, then good. NRI had a lot of powerful friends in the Colonial Council. And while a good portion of their membership was made up of young and impressionable kids with too much disposable income, they kept on retainer even more high-powered attorneys.
When politics and the law failed them, NRI would use the media. In terms of public opinion, they swung a big weight because the defense of native species—like the defense of rain forests, the defense of displaced tribal peoples, or the defense of puppies, babies, and pie—gave them a moral high ground that was difficult to assail. It was hard to argue manifest destiny or resource scarcity in the face of sensitive, heartfelt documentaries about the tragic plight of the noble space gophers or pictures of them being starved out of their gopher-homes and clubbed to death by a bunch of swaggering, grimy deep-rock miners. Many tried. Few succeeded. In most cases, careers were ruined the minute they ran up against the NRI media machine.
But if none of this worked, NRI had another side—a militant one that, while less easy to defend in public, was even more effective on the ground. With no sense of hypocrisy, NRI would lay aside the protest signs and injunction paperwork and use guns. Or bombs, flamethrowers, atomics, starships, and anything else at their disposal to go in and kick a little ass in the name of alien gopher solidarity. Nothing made them happier than when one of their own people—wild-eyed with fanaticism, wearing a black NRI armband, holding a terrified space gopher in one hand and a rifle in the other—made it onto the news back home. It was even better if that person was being arrested and dragged away by the Colonial Marines while the cameras rolled. Made them appear fearless and unswervingly committed to their cause. And whenever one of their own got killed under the media glare? Jackpot. After something like that, the donations always came flooding in.
One of the most famous promotional campaigns NRI ever had—the one that brought in more money than any other, that showed up, in poster form, on the walls of more university dorm rooms—centered around a single picture. It was very dramatic, full of fire and action, and showed, center frame, the blasted, bloodied face of one of their young recruits. He sat with his knees up against his chest, his back pressed against a scorch-marked and twisted steel antitank barricade, his arms folded protectively around some froglike, babyish alien critter with huge, expressive eyes and a look of abject, shrieking terror on its reptilian face.