Johnny Bezique and the Lorians

Johnny Bezique and the Lorians form a relationship shaped by mutual threat, radical differences in temperament, and a reversal of the expected conqueror-and-conquered roles. Johnny arrives expecting to assess whether Earth can overpower its neighbors; instead, he encounters a peaceful, prosperous society that judges Earth’s likely aggression more clearly than Earth understands itself. The Lorians eventually ask him to rule them, turning the standard nightmare of alien conquest into an alliance that gives their civilization a forceful human leader.

First Contact and the Lorian Society

Johnny’s approach to Loris follows a familiar Terran logic: Earth sends expeditions outward because it would rather discover an alien civilization before that civilization arrives on Earth. In the standard nightmare, contact with a powerful species leads to Earth being taken over. The essential question, from this perspective, is which side can defeat the other. Johnny reaches Loris prepared to consider the encounter in those terms, but the society he finds complicates the prospect of a simple contest.

Loris is habitable to humans, and its people are humanoid. The Lorians give Johnny hypnopaedic instruction in their language and assign Helmis to guide him around Athisse. In only a few days, he sees a society with no wars, rebellions, or insurrections in five hundred years; stabilized birth and death rates; several races without racial conflict; and advanced technology alongside ecological balance. Machines perform brute labor, leaving individual work creative and freely chosen. Food, clothing, housing, and entertainment are free, and the absence of money extends into everyday trust: doors open and close by mental command, without locks.

The society’s political character also frustrates Johnny’s assumptions. Its government reflects the collective judgment of the Lorian people, with little perceived gap between public desire and official action. Loris seems to have almost no government in the familiar commanding sense. Veerhe, Chief of the Office of Future Projections and the nearest figure to a ruler, issues forecasts rather than orders. The Lorians are not merely peaceful in their public life; their institutions offer Johnny no obvious leader to threaten and no conventional hierarchy through which he can seize control.

Temperamental and Political Conflict

The contrast between Johnny and the Lorians is not simply a difference in military strength. He recognizes their virtues and likes them, yet he comes from a society that assumes good intentions cannot remove the danger of being ruled by aliens. Earth’s fear is directed not only at hostile extraterrestrials but at the possibility of alien authority itself, even when that authority might be benevolent. Johnny therefore evaluates the Lorians through the same competitive framework that has sent him to meet them, despite finding their social arrangements admirable.

The Lorians, in turn, are peaceful and uninterested in territorial expansion, but they are not unaware of the danger Earth poses. Johnny understands that their lack of aggression does not mean they can safely ignore Earth: if they fail to act, Earth may act against them, or at least provoke a crisis in trying. This produces an asymmetry in their calculations. The Lorians do not want conquest, while Johnny believes Terrans will pursue victory more relentlessly than a rule-bound and peaceable opponent. Their difference is thus also a difference in what each side expects the other to do under pressure.

A minor driving dispute makes that mismatch personal. Johnny accuses another driver of cutting him off and risking both their lives; the other driver answers gently and reasons that Johnny had begun an unauthorized left turn. Johnny persists in treating the exchange as a question of blame. His later response to a counselor makes the conflict more consequential: when urged to accept social-adjustment therapy, he refuses to leave the matter unresolved and punches the counselor. On Loris, violence committed against a citizen is treated as grave, and the counselor tells him he must accept restraint while the case is cleared. These incidents show how readily Johnny’s confrontational habits collide with a society whose ordinary interactions are governed by markedly different expectations.

The Reversal of the Expected Conquest

When Lorian monitors pursue him, Johnny’s mental command forces open a door that had remained closed, and nearby doors burst open as well. He escapes them and stops in a piazza to consider his position: one Earthman against a planetful of Lorians. He reaches for a coercive strategy drawn from historical conquest, planning to find the ruler and threaten that figure in order to make the population listen. The plan immediately exposes how poorly he understands the society around him: Loris has no ruler in the sense his strategy requires. Veerhe, as a prominent official, appears to be the closest available substitute.

Instead of responding to Johnny’s threat by asserting a conventional hierarchy, Veerhe presents the Lorians’ own forecast. They have concluded that the Terrans want victory more intensely and will stop at nothing, while the Lorians will continue to play by the rules even in a contest of life and death. Their answer is to put Johnny in charge before a prolonged struggle can bring unnecessary hardship. The offer is not evidence that the Lorians have become aggressive or that they admire conquest for its own sake; it is a strategic decision based on their estimate of the conflict and of Johnny’s likely advantage in it.

Johnny accepts. He admits that he is not qualified, but decides to take over because he believes no one else is qualified either and because he genuinely likes the Lorians. He promises to do a good job and says that the existing arrangement will continue, since he sees nothing he can improve. Veerhe qualifies the offer: Johnny will find the Lorians easy to manage only so long as his orders remain within their psychological capabilities. Their decision gives him authority, but it does not erase the limits imposed by the character and capacities of the people he is to govern.

Rule, Military Power, and Consequences

Once in power, Johnny turns to the institutional forms of rule he recognizes. He wants the Ancient Dynasty Spacefleet data reviewed and proposes a referendum to elect him Emperor before a coronation. His accession thus brings a new political title and a military agenda into a society previously described as having no conventional ruler and little need for force. The Lorians’ choice of Johnny is a way to prepare for danger from Earth, but it also places their future security in the hands of a leader who thinks in terms of command, elections to imperial authority, and the use of a spacefleet.

The resulting reversal divides the consequences between the two planets. From Earth’s perspective, the standard nightmare has finally occurred: an advanced alien civilization is about to impose its culture on Earth. From Loris’s perspective, however, previously defenseless people have acquired an aggressive alien general, and mercenaries are expected to operate their fleet. The same transfer of authority that looks like a catastrophe to Earth appears advantageous to Loris. The relationship therefore unsettles the assumption that contact must end with one civilization simply conquering the other. The Lorians use their understanding of Terran aggression to enlist the kind of leader they believe can protect them, while Johnny’s fondness for them coexists with his ambition to rule. Their alliance rests on that uneasy combination: Lorian consent and foresight on one side, Terran force and imperial habits on the other.