Allen Kim Lang

“ Takeko giggled. "Forgive me," she said. "Kinodoku semban; but you seem to be sorry to be alive." She was silent for a moment, listening. She pointed north. "My father will appear with our giraffu soon," she said. "I can hear them."
Takeko's father rode up a moment later, an unbent man of seventy. He sat astride his camelopard, a comic quadruped little better designed as a beast of burden than an ostrich, with as much dignity as though his steed were an Arabian stallion. His name, Takeko said, was Kiwa-san. The old man bowed from his saddle when his daughter introduced Hartford. ”

“ Old Kiwa told his daughter.
"Hai, Otosan." The girl turned to Hartford. "In our bodies there are no mischief-makers of the sort Earth-people know. There are not even those juices Pia-san called 'footprints of the bugs.'"
"He must have meant you have no bacterial antibodies," Hartford said. "That explains the whole package," he went on, with growing excitement. "Why I'm alive without my safety-suit. What Piacentelli went outside to find. And, when he found it, why he unsuited himself, knowing this world as pure as Titan. You're Axenites, you Kansans! You're as germ-free as the troopers." ”

“ Is that a name to give a brother?"
"It is better than Stinker," Hartford suggested.
"Hai! I tell you, Lee-san why you must re-name us. It is because men do not kill men until they give their brother-enemy a monstrous name. Why do you wish to kill us all?" she asked.
"I'm not a member of the Brotherhood," Hartford said. "I'm only a man who was born on Axenite. That means, until your beast and my jeep collided, tearing my safety-suit, I was an animal uncontaminated by microscopic life. These microscopic animals, Takeko, are deadly to an Axenite." ”

“ Buds or flower-heads of the sunflower were eaten with sunflower oil, like artichokes. "Your people have a good friend in the sunflower;" Hartford remarked, wiping his lips.
"With the golden flower and the golden giraffu, with the take-grass and the good soil, we had a rich life here before you glass-headed men came," Takeko said. "Now we are treated in our own villages like rats to be driven out, in our fields as gnawing vermin. Why is your Brotherhood so angry with us, Lee-san, who live in only a few places on a wide world? Is there no law among the light-skinned people? ”

“ Nef said. "We garrison a hundred worlds on the Frontier, planets our Stinker masters mustn't visit yet, least Man contaminate some life-form yet unmet. We pioneer, clear planets as safe, and move on. For reward, we Axenites have three worlds of our own in the M'Bwene System, axenized for our use; we have the Academies on Luna and Titan, and a dome on Pluto. It's not enough. We are the new men, the next-comers to humanity. We must have worlds of our own. I, and the Brotherhood whose hand here I am, intend that Kansas shall be ours."
"What about the Stinkers?" Hartford asked. ”

“ In the years before you Latecomers came to build the Stone House and cut roads and practice making holes in paper at a distance, no man died here at the hand of another."
"We cannot teach the glass-heads our way when they walk about only with guns, when they live in the Stone House none of us can enter without dying, when they look at us with glass bowls over their faces and hate in their hearts," Takeko said.
"The hate is hardly needful," Hartford said. "But the helmets must remain if Axenites are to live on Kansas." ”

“ At Kiwa-san's command the two giraffu he'd brought along on lead-reins spread their legs to bring their down-sloping backs a scant four feet from the ground. The saddles, with dangling, boot-like gambadoes in place of ordinary stirrups, seemed inaccessible to Hartford. "Watch me," Takeko told him. She took a short run up behind her giraffu and, with a movement like a leap-frog hurdle, flipped herself up into the saddle. ”

“ What would happen to Hartford-the-deserter? he wondered. At best, he'd be booted out of the troopers and grounded on Titan, or Luna or one of the M'Bwene planets, to serve the rest of his life as a paper-pusher, the bureaucratic equivalent of an endless Kitchen Police. At worst, he'd be exiled to Earth.
That meant exposure to bacteria, a gradual contamination till he'd been exposed to the full dirtiness in which earthlings daily lived, till he'd equipped himself with antibodies and a Stinker's immune-response. ”

“ Takeko said. "You are to speak to our chief men there, to tell them what happened to Renkei, why he was killed in the Stone House."
"I may not live through this day," Hartford said. "It is not easy to explain. We wear the 'glass head' to keep out your air. It is deadly, doku, to us. Do you understand, Takeko?"
"You may be tired, having slept on the old bones of the hill," she said. "You may be hungry, having eaten only the squeezings of your metal sausages. But you are not hurt badly, nor are you old, Lee-san. Why should you die?" ”

“ Bond climbed back into the jeep, where he sat with his rifle between his knees, sweeping his attention around him, at the village, at the road behind, at the sunflower-fields, where the blossoms were bleached white and the leaves enameled black by starlight.
With Paula's agreement, Hartford pressed the microphone-switch to talk with Bond. "Have you tried to tap Piacentelli on his suit-receiver, Corporal?"
"Yes, sir," Bond said. "First thing. No answer."
"Turn your bitcher full up, then," Hartford said. "Tell Lieutenant Piacentelli that the O.G. wants him out on the road within five minutes." ”

“ Hartford became every day a better horseman, or rather camelopardist. He in fact rejoiced in opportunities to leap-frog into his saddle, fit his feet and legs into the leather gambadoes, and go hailing off into the hills to recruit men and material. He carried with him the radio he'd salvaged from his safety-suit, and could from time to time pick up First Regiment transmissions. The bitcher from his suit was useful in training large numbers of recruits on the blowgun range, and would be used when the Kansan guerrillas took the field against the troopers. ”

“ Your peaceful words will be drowned out by the roar of Dardick-rifles. How can you hope to live if you will not kill?"
"If the choice were death or killing, Lee-san, we would gladly die," Takeko said. "We have a saying, Muriga toreba dori ga hikkomu. When might takes charge justice withdraws. We will not kill, and neither will we be defeated."
Yamata the calligrapher addressed Hartford. "How badly torn must a safety-suit be, to make necessary the wearer's going into the purification cart?" ”

“ The idea of bedding-down a Stinker wench was a favorite bit of pornographic fantasy. An air-tight safety-suit, though fit with valves as functional as the drop-seat in long-johns, was no garment for romance. To undress, to appear in outdoor Kansas outside that head-to-foot sausage-casing, appealed to none of the troopers. Healthy young men and women don't entertain the thought of painful suicide.
The reporting officer about-faced, saluted Colonel Nef, about-faced again. ”

“ Us, Hartford thought. Earth's Stinkers, ordinary humanity with its common cold and its caries, would follow the Kansan Indigenous Hominid, and the Great Auk, into history.
The double funeral of the Lieutenants Piacentelli was to be held at Retreat, outside the Barracks. Hartford wondered a bit at the haste with which the two bodies were to be consigned to the earth of Kansas. Perhaps haste was necessary because of the micro-organisms with which poor Pia's corpse was necessarily contaminated.
Hartford grimaced. Contaminated humans must lead disgusting lives. ”

“ Hartford, who after Nasty Nef was the man most responsible for the burning of Takeko's village, was silent. "When your jeepu-kuruma hit my giraffu, I think you are Renkei," the Kansan girl said. "Renkei is my cousin. He go to see what can be done."
"Renkei is dead," Hartford told her.
"Iie!" Takeko pressed her hands against her face. "You strangers are quick to kill, to burn, to sweep away." ”

“ No mothers wiped their hands on their aprons as they thought of their sons, and the fleshly price they'd pay for freedom. No teenage girls, those patrons of parades, watched with lips half-open with apprehension and audacious thoughts about the hundreds of gift-wrapped young man marching past. ”

“ Before us, every man who ever lived was, in fact, one mammal plus the sum of millions of viruses, rickettsia, bacteria, fungi and molds. When the old philosophers asked, 'What is man?' the answer could only be: 'Foul smell and blood in a bag.' We're the first men beyond that, Lee. The first real men, True Men, members of the winner-species. Homo gnotobioticus.
"We must destroy the bridge that led to us. We must destroy the Stinkers. Not just these quasi-human natives here on Kansas, but the Stinkers on Earth, and on every other planet where bug-laden man has followed Axenite. ”

“ He picked up a brush and sketched on the mat before him a line of trooper-silhouettes, a platoon, marching single-file. "How do we break into all those Stone Houses at once?" he asked.
Hartford's face was pale. "We could use grenades, perhaps," he said. "Or bombs. After all, these troopers we speak of are no more than my family, my village, my people. I may of course be expected to cooperate in their destruction."
Takeko reached over and took his hand, then dropped it. "Ano ne! You do not understand! We can no more injure your brothers than you can, Lee-san. We may not harm any living person. ”

“ The troopers walked out, dripping, into a hallway returning in the direction from which they'd just swum. This upper arm of the Syphon was a hallway so brilliantly lighted that the trooper had to drop his polarizing shields over his eyes. The air here in the Hot Gut was spiced with ozone from the ultra-violet sources. ”

“ No man shall take man's life."
"I spoke of the Axenite Brotherhood," Hartford said. "These men are a group of our leaders—Colonel Nef is one; he invited me to join him—who have decided that Stinker humanity must go. They're dedicated men, prepared to extinguish all the rest of mankind, to sterilize Earth and reseed it as a gnotobiotopic Paradise. Nef has, I fear, already killed three people to this end.
"You who cannot kill will face an enemy trained in killing," he went on. "Your camelopard-mounted messengers will meet veeto-platforms with machine-guns. ”

“ No little nuisance-makers can exist on Kansas; the monad would eat them in a rage."
"The ultimate antibiotic," Hartford said. "A micro-organism that functions as a saprophyte, a soil-former and a scavenger. Besides all this, it's a universal phagocyte, policing up the human environment inside and out, to keep it clean of any other microscopic organisms. The monad fills every niche in the micro-ecology of the planet."
"This is what Pia-san and his okusama, poor dead girl, discovered," Takeko said. "Renkei entered the Stone House to tell you that we do not stink, that we are not dangerous. ”

“ Back at Home Base, she'll turn out to be something you scare kids quiet with. She'll talk all the time, leave lipstick on drinking-glasses, or play bridge and talk about it. First thing you know, I'll be volunteering for another five years duty on bug-dirt, just for a chance to leave her behind."
"So pick up a local germ," Piacentelli suggested. "If they can't decontaminate you, they'll send you to Earth. Lots of women on Earth."
"I'd do it," Hartford said, "but I'm still more scared of microbes than lustful for a woman. ”

“ This was many years ago, before any man had ventured into space, before our ancestors found this world you call Kansas. When they came here, they came in peace. And they named this place Jodo, which we still call it. It means the Pure Land, where men are just. And all justice is built on a single law. ”

“ Hartford returned to the refresher-room where the murder had taken place. Renkei's macerated body had been removed for burning. The room had been carefully decontaminated, to the extent of hosing it down with detergent steam and individually re-refreshing each safety-suit in the huge hall's rows of lockers.
There was nothing to be done against Nef's madness, Hartford thought. He sat on the bench where Renkei had sat. The ultimate breakdown in communication is silencing one side of the dialogue, he thought. That's why killing a man is the ultimate sin ”

“ Nef's voice demanded from the speaker on his suit.
"I am coming out unarmed," Hartford radioed.
"Fire the moment you see him," Nef said. One of the officers had his Dardick-pistol drawn, his eyes traversing the canyon walls.
"No, sir!" Felix's voice snapped from his bitcher. "You can't shoot the man till he's had a chance to speak."
"Go to the rear at once, Private Felix," Nef bellowed.
Felix pointed his handgun toward Nef. "No, sir," he replied. "Hartford was my C.O., and an honest man. I'll hear him before I see him killed. Or by my life, sir, I'll kill you after him." ”