Inferno: A Chronicle of a Distant World (The Galactic Comedy) by Mike Resnick

of a siren could be heard in the distance. It got louder as it approached, and at last an armored vehicle pulled up and Gama Labu, now dressed in his general's uniform, got out and walked over to the statue.
    "Look at him," muttered Cartright. "He must have three hundred goddamned medals on his uniform. I'll bet my pension he can't even count that high."
    Labu looked at the holo crew, who nodded, and then he climbed a small dais that had been built that morning and faced the grandstand. The men and women stared at him in sullen silence until one of the soldiers said something that Cartright couldn't hear, and then a ripple of unenthusiastic applause spread through them.
    "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much," said Labu in Terran.
    "I see he's learned three new words," said Cartright caustically.
    "Thank you, thank you," repeated Labu, finally raising his hands to signal an end to the applause.
    "I know," he continued in the Maringo dialect, "what some of you think of me." Again he held up a hand, against an anticipated protest. "No, no, it is all right. This is Faligor, where you are free to think as you please. We do not need a constitution to guarantee you that right."
    He paused and smiled a very alien smile, his golden fur rippling in the hot breeze that whipped across the city center.
    "Many of you think that Gama Labu has no love for your race, that he does not hear your protests, that he wants to rid his planet of you. I assure you, my good friends, that this is not true. There is much about the race of Man to admire. You are not like the moles, who seek only to get rich off the sweat of other races. You have a glorious history, with many great men and women in it. You have conquered half a galaxy, and while you have not conquered Faligor, that does not make your achievement any the less admirable."
    "What the hell is he getting at?" said Cartright.
    "I know that some of you think me ignorant, because I do not speak or read Terran, but I am not ignorant. I know your history well. My close associate, Colonel George Witherspoon, has told me your history, and has translated many of your books for me."
    "Aloud, no doubt," muttered Cartright.
    "There is no reason why we should not be friends. I know that many of your people have left Faligor, but that is because they did not make an attempt to understand me or my people. In my greatness, in my open-mindedness, I do not choose only jasons for my heroes. In fact, I spit on the memories of Disanko and Robert Tantram. I have chosen for my hero a member not of my race but of your own, and I have ordered a statue of him to stand guard over the city of Romulus. Surely this will cement the ties between Man and jason, and prove to you that I harbor no ill will toward your people."
    A small band emerged from the government building and played a discordant jason march on their various instruments, while Labu stood at attention. When they were through, he fumbled around the tarp for a moment, finally found the rope he was looking for, and gave it a sharp yank. The tarp came away to reveal a huge statue of an unimpressive-looking man dressed in a fashion that was almost a millennium out of date. The audience sat still, as if stunned.
    "Who is it?" asked Oglipsi, who had walked over to the window. "Some hero from your ancient past?"
    Cartright shook his head. "I wish it was. That is a statue of Conrad Bland."
    "I am not familiar with the name. Who was Conrad Bland?"
    "In the history of my race, we have had our share of genocidal maniacs: Caligula, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin. The worst of them by far, the greatest killer of them all, was Conrad Bland. Before he was finally hunted down on the planet of Walpurgis III, he was responsible for the deaths of more than thirty million human beings." Cartright paused. "And that is Gama Labu's hero."
    Down on the street, Labu was waiting for the applause that was not forthcoming. Finally he stepped forward again.
    "Conrad Bland, like myself,