"Lee," I called out, "Mike and me will be expecting you to answer."
Chon laughed. "I'm not going anywhere, Johnny. Only around this world
every couple of hours."
"You couldn't make the jump through hyperspace without us, Lee," Ellik
said.
"That's right, Mike. I'm--I'm sorry to quarantine you two down there."
"_Quarantine!_" Ellik stormed. "_We're_ not sick, Lee. _You_ are the
sick one!"
There wasn't any sound, not even of breathing.
"You have an idea to change Lee's mind, Mike?" I asked.
He cupped his hand on the back of my neck. "Affirmative, Jonathan. A
pretty damned good one, too."
Ellik stood staring out the door, gnawing on one of his knuckles,
letting the sun turn the front of him into gold, so he looked like half
a statue, and half a man.
"I suppose it had to come out in him sooner or later," he said.
"What, Mike?"
"What could we expect? It's the basic quality of treachery in the
Oriental mind."
* * * * *
When the shadows were at their longest and the alien sun was down the
closest to the horizon without actually going under, Ellik marched up
the path shoving a new Indigo. The Azures supplied Mike with all the
flunkies he wanted to gather food and the like for him, as his natural
right. But I thought we had enough of them hanging around our quarters.
I couldn't imagine what he would want with another one.
The alien hovered at the door. Ellik kicked him in the calf to make him
understand he was to go inside.
"Look at him, Johnny," Ellik said, pushing the fellow forward. "Not a
mongoloid, would you say?"
"No."
The alien looked stupid--blue and stupid. His face was hanging there,
but it wasn't pushed out of shape any more than the faces of the
Azures. The Indigo blinked back at me. What he also looked was not
friendly.
Ellik took the Indigo's cheeks in his hand and angled the face toward
the light. "He's a half-breed, Johnny, or otherwise the gene was
recessive. He wasn't damaged before birth, only after--when he started
to breathe."
"What do you mean, Mike?"
"You ever hear of cyanosis, Johnny?"
"No."
"Well, these creatures have something like it. The Indigos don't get
enough oxygen in their blood cells. It makes them sluggish; it turns
them blue like the pictures of 'blue babies' in the old books."
"I never saw a picture like that in an old book," I said.
"Did you ever _see_ a book? Sorry, Johnny. Just kidding." Ellik
rubbed his hands together. "Well! I theorized that there is no basic
difference in the Azures and the Indigos except improper aeration of
their blood. So, you see, an Indigo is only a _sick_ Azure, and I am
going to make this Indigo _well_."
"How can you do that?"
"It's simple," Mike said irritably. "The Indigos must have a
malformation of the heart causing an abnormal communication between
the venous and arterial side of the circulation system. A little
surgery and I adjust a valve in the heart. No more communication.
Proper aeration. Enough oxygen. The deep blue color goes, leaving only
the lighter blue of the natural pigmentation. The patient feels better,
acts better, thinks better, looks better. In short, he is no longer an
Indigo but an Azure."
"Is--is this what you're going to show Lee?" I ventured.
"Of course! It proves the Indigos _aren't_ an inferior race. They are
the same as the Azures except that they are sick. Their being sick
can't reflect unfavourably on any terrestrial colored race. There is no
analogy. But I have to prove it to Chon. We're going to tape the whole
process and feed it to him."
"I think," I said, "that that might get to him."
"Sure it will." Ellik's jaw muscles flexed. "I should ruin Lee with
this thing, but I won't. I'm not a vindictive man. Lee and I will
probably be working together for years. But whenever he gets out of
line--has some stubborn idea about doing something his way--don't think
I won't remind him of this!"
Suddenly, he was smiling again. He turned to the gawking Indigo. He
pointed two fingers at him.
"_Mmr?_" Ellik asked.
The alien tapped himself on his chest cavity twice. "_Mhaw_," he gave
his name.
"_Mhaw M'i uh M'i m M'm'-uh?_" Ellik asked him, without even using the
translators.
"_M-m-M-m-M_," the alien went, slapping himself on the chest with his
opened palms.
Ellik turned to me, grinning. "I asked him if he wanted to stop being
an Indigo and become an Azure. He thinks I can do anything and he's all
for it."
* * * * *
After we fed Mhaw a dose of null-shock from our packs, Doc Ellik
started to slice him open with a ceramic knife he had borrowed from the
Azures.
But Ellik had forgotten that the alien might get frightened seeing
himself cut open, even if he couldn't feel any pain. It had never
happened to him before.
The alien lumbered to his feet, his chest hanging open, showing his
heart beating like some animal caught inside a blueberry pudding.
I drove a right cross into his jaw, and felt the jar all the way up to
my shoulder.
He melted back down onto the pallet.
"Good work, Johnny," Ellik said, stooping and starting his work.
Right away, Mhaw started to lose that Indigo color and get real
light--lighter than the Azures, in fact. None of the blue of the race
was actually in the pigmentation, Mike found out. Even the Azures
suffered some degree of improper aeration of the blood.
"You going to call Lee Chon now?" I asked Mike. "You going to show him
the tape we had running during the operation and all?"
"Not quite yet, Johnny," he said. "First I want to educate Mhaw a bit,
up to the Azure level or better. That should convince Lee."
Mhaw learned fast, probably faster than the Azures, even. Almost the
first thing he wanted was for us to stop calling him Mhaw and start
using an Azure name, Aedo.
Once a day, Ellik left our hut to take some exercise--a walk along
the alien esplanade, he called it. I used to stay with the doctored
alien, now Aedo, but we finally learned we could trust him to follow
our orders--which were to stay inside, away from the others, since we
didn't know how they would take him. So I got to walking along with
Ellik.
As dusk lengthened, we could see the spark that was our ship in its
orbit along the retreating horizon.
Ellik twisted back his head and the side of his mouth. "Look at him up
there--_look!_"
The spark burned brighter and danced in another direction.
"He's gone! He left us!" Ellik said.
"It's okay. He's still there. Just corrected the orbit a little, I
guess."
"No, no, no," Ellik said. "He started to make another try. But he got
afraid to try to go into hyperspace alone."
"He was just correcting for orbital decay."
"You don't understand, Johnny. He's a coward. That makes him dangerous.
He's getting desperate. That desperation will burst the dam of his own
weakness and wash away our hope, _our lives_."
His voice hushed. He stood staring starkly ahead, his palms
outstretched at his sides.
"Maybe he isn't _that_ cowardly," I said hopefully.
* * * * *
"Finished," Ellik announced. He meant he had finished editing the tape
showing the operation on the alien and his recovery from his blue
disease, from being an Indigo to better than an Azure.
"The transmitter is finished too," I said.
Ellik had suggested a way of switching the tape camera to a video
converter for one of the audio communicators, and I had been able to
do it easy. It took parts from both our communicators and translators
too.
Ellik fitted the coiled snake of tape into place. "This will be a great
day for your people, Aedo. After our friend from heaven lands, we will
be able to teach you a way to cure all of your sick, to make all the
Indigos like you."
"Like me? Make like me?" Aedo said in the pidgin terrestrial that Mike
Ellik had taught him.
"Yes. We'll show them how we cured you and how all can be cured."
"You make show fellow like me? Make tell make that fellow like fellow
like me?"
"Everything's ready, Mike," I called.
"That's right, Aedo," Mike said. "You'll show your people the way to
equality."
"Make all fellow like this fellow?" Aedo asked.
"Shall I call in Lee?" I asked Mike.
"Yes, that's right, Aedo. Just right."
"No," Aedo said.
The alien stomped the tape camera and the communicator to bits before I
could get a hammerlock on him.
Ellik just stared at the complete wreck of our only means of
communication with the spaceship.
"I be much man now. I much smart. Much smart than Azure hicks and
Indigo slobs. I much smart all. I much man! Not to be all same now.
_No._" The snarl hung on in Aedo's throat.
Ellik lifted his head and sort of smiled. But not quite.
"Well," he said slowly and sadly, "what could you expect in the way of
gratitude from a dirty alien?"
* * * * *
The Azures did accept Aedo all right. They seem to think he must have
come from some other tribe. They don't associate him with the Indigo
that disappeared. No Indigo ever became an Azure before.
Of course, Azures sometimes become Indigos, we found out.
It seems there's a virus of what Ellik called pseudo-cyanosis in the
air. The Azures have become a pretty resistant breed to it, while the
Indigos are all easy victims. But once in a while an Azure will come
down with it and turn Indigo.
Mike Ellik caught it too.
It happened pretty fast. By the time we realized what it was, he was
already too stupid to finish the operation he started on himself. I had
to sew him up, not very neatly.
Ellik is treated pretty much like the rest of the Indigos. So am I. He
takes it all pretty calm. He can still talk a little Earth. Whenever
anybody kicks him, Ellik just mutters something about, "What can fellow
expect bunch lousy creeps like those fellow?"