The things the colonel had told him hadn't fallen into place in his
mind yet. Hartford was numb of thought.
Back in his own room in B.O.Q. the numbness cleared a bit. He poured
himself a drink. Somehow, he thought, he'd become fairhaired boy to an
Attila the Hun, an Alaric the Goth, a Hitler, a Haman; an Ashurbanipal
I, a Rameses II. For Nef was equally with these a servant of Siva the
Destroyer, with his plan to make Man pure.
His purification would involve the destruction of all non-axenic men
and women all the way from the Home World to the newest beach-head on
the Frontier; the sterilization of a hundred worlds as culture media
for the new race; and the planting on the newly axenized soil of
colonies of _Homo gnotobioticus_, the feeder-on-hydroponic-greens, the
inodorous, the thin-gutted, the strong toothed Superman.
Nef's pogrom had begun with the raid on the village, Hartford mused,
his arms behind his head as he lay on his bunk. Nef had decided that
this green and pleasant world belonged to the silver men, the true men,
the new men. 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.
They smelled of ferments, were bloated with bacterially elaborated
gases, suffered rot in their very teeth. Their corpses--poor
forefathers!--suffered corruption that would never touch an Axenite,
whose unembalmed cadaver would last longer than the best-mummified
Pharaoh.
Whatever mysterious errand it had been that had taken Piacentelli
outside the Barracks, it had killed him. It was over.
Hartford marched the Terrible Third into position facing the graves,
cut into the soil at the base of the hundred-foot flagpole. The entire
regiment, less only the handful of men and women necessary to secure
the Barracks, was on the Parade Ground. Colonel Nef, his scarlet
safety-suit brilliant in the light of the setting sun, stood beside the
graves, a finger of his right gauntlet inserted to mark his place in
the black _Book of Honors and Ceremonies_.
The regiment stood at parade-rest as a truck brought the bodies of two
comrades through its ranks. As the improvised hearse halted and twelve
blue-suited casket-bearers stepped forward to lift the flag-draped
boxes, Nef called the regiment to attention. The bearers slow-marched
the caskets to the graves and placed them on the lowering-devices.
* * * * *
Nef's words of funeral were few. He spoke of the dedication of the two
Axenites being laid to rest and bitterly accused the Stinkers--this
word seemed rude, in so formal a setting--of having murdered the young
couple. He spoke of condign justice, and of revenge.
This done, he called: "Escort, less firing-party. Present, HAHMS!
Firing-party, FIRE THREE VOLLEYS!"
The shots of the Dardick-rifles echoed down the plateau to the
smoldering village below. The Regimental Bugler, standing between the
heads of the graves, flicked on his instrument. As the last volley spat
from the muzzles of the rifles, the bugler played _Taps_.
Four men stepped forward to recover and fold the green-silk Pioneer
colors, and the caskets were lowered to corruption in alien earth. The
banner crept down the flagstaff, and the funeral was over.
Bone-weary, Hartford went from the Syphon to the refresher-room, where
he checked his safety-suit and hung it.
Another officer was there, still in his blue safety-suit. Hartford
wondered sleepily why he'd so long postponed unsuiting. Even the
fellow's helmet was sealed. "Our first deaths on Kansas," Hartford
remarked, wanting to coax the man into conversation and learn who he
was. "I'd never realized till now that we're really soldiers, subject
to violent death and formal burying." The man must be a replacement,
come in on the supply ship a month ago, Hartford thought. Black
hair, crewcut. Tanned. Must be from one of the M'Bwene Worlds, where
an Axenite's naked skin can bear unfiltered sunlight. "Both the
Piacentellis were my friends," Hartford said, determined to coax
speech from the stranger.
The man's bitcher boomed, evidently set on full volume. "_Mattaku
shirazu_," he said. "Excuse. Pia not teach entire use of Standard
tongue."
Hartford's right hand tore through the plastic pellicle over his
Dardick-pistol and brought the weapon to bear on the figure before him.
"You're a Stinker!" he said. "Pia's safety-suit--that's the suit you're
wearing."
"_Tonshu_," the Indigenous Hominid said, bowing his head. He indicated
the empty holster at his side: he was unarmed. "I come on _taku_,
here to your honored precincts, to speak of things done and of future
things. You are Hartford?"
Hartford thought quickly. His responsibility was to the Garrison.
This stranger was above all else a possible source of contamination,
a carrier of the micro-bugs that could kill every Axenite on Kansas.
Shooting him would rupture the safety-suit he wore. As it was, his
exterior surface was clean; he could have entered the Barracks only by
marching in from Retreat with the rest of the regiment, through the
sterilizing Syphon. "I am Hartford. Lee Hartford."
* * * * *
"Pia said you are a good man," the stranger said, bowing.
"What is your name?"
"Renkei. As you say, I take Pia's _uwa-zutsumi_, this smooth garment."
Renkei indicated the safety-suit by slicking his hands over it. "I must
enter here to talk with Hartford. To enter, I must have garment. Pia,
my brother, is dead. I borrowed his garment. Can I, with you, stop
the ugly thing that began last night in Kansannamura? _Kuwashiku wa
zonzezu_; I do not know. I can but try."
What a perfect disguise a safety-suit made, Hartford thought. Besides,
it was the only passport a man needed to enter the Barracks. He stared
at the stranger. He looked no different to men Hartford had met before,
Axenites whose grandparents had been born by aseptic Caesarian section
in Nagoya or Canton, two of the great gnotobiotic centers of fifty
years ago. Renkei was a Stinker, a Kansan, an Indigenous Hominid
(ignominious name!); he was also, Hartford felt, a man.
"Tell me why you made the dangerous journey here, into the midst of
your enemies," he said.
"The death of our friend Pia. The burning of Kansannamura. The war
between my people and you who wear smooth garments," he said. "This is
_aru-majiki koto_."
"A thing that ought not to be," Hartford said, translating. He was glad
for the practice he'd gotten with Pia, speaking the native tongue. "Sit
down," he said. "You must explain, Renkei."
The refresher-room, a hall filled with lockers and the machinery that
automatically tested and refitted the safety-suits each time they
returned to the Barracks, had a dozen entrances and exits. As Renkei,
still completely sealed in Pia's safety-suit, sat on the bench beside
Hartford, the doors all closed at once. They hissed as the pneumatic
seals were set in their frames.
Contamination Alert! Someone, most likely the Service girl on watch at
the Status Board, had discovered that there was one more person in the
Barracks than could be accounted for. A crash-priority head-count had
been made. Each room and compartment had doubtless been eavesdropped
through the built-in TV eyes and microphone ears.
One door at the far end of the hall burst open. A squad of
safety-suited Service Police spilled in. At the point of their wedge
was the scarlet uniform of Colonel Nef. Dardick-pistol in hand, he ran
toward Renkei. "Don't shoot!" Hartford shouted, springing up.
"Get back, Mister," the colonel yelled. He dropped to one knee and
squeezed all twelve rounds into the seated figure to Hartford's right.
Service Police swooped down to pull Hartford away from the shattered
body of Renkei. The lieutenant's tee-shirt was stained,
however, by flecks of blood splashed up as the SPs' bullets chewed into
the Kansan. Hartford was contaminated.
* * * * *
For the next hour, Hartford had no more to say about his disposition
than an angry bullock being dipped and scrubbed against an epidemic of
cattle ticks.
His purification consisted in a sudsing with antiseptic soaps, this
administered by a team of three Service Company gnotobioticians who
were completely indifferent to his modesty and who seemed determined
to peel off the outer surface of his skin. The women, safety-suited
against being themselves contaminated, shaved off all his hair and
ostentatiously packaged-up the shavings to be burned. They administered
parenteral and enteric doses of broad-spectrum antibiotics. By the
time the gnoto girls were finished, Hartford was as bald all over as a
six-weeks foetus, as sore as though he'd been sand-blasted, slightly
feverish as a result of the injections and madder than hell.
Ignoring his demands to see Colonel Nef at once, the Service Company
troopers helped him into his safety-suit. Hartford would have to live
inside the suit for a week's quarantine, watched carefully to see
whether a missed microbe would breed within him in spite of all the
measures taken.
Hartford's company commander refused him permission to speak to the
colonel. The lieutenant was to speak to no one concerning Renkei's
invasion of the Barracks. He would remain safety-suited inside the
Barracks or out; but would otherwise continue with his regular
duties.
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; it removes forever the hope
of understanding him. It ends for all time the conversation by which
brothers may touch one another's mind.
What crap to find in a soldier's thoughts, Hartford told himself.
He was an Axenite trooper, a Pioneer, a pistol-packing officer of
infantry, commander of the Terrible Third Platoon. He was an Axenite,
dedicated by the immaculacy of his birth to the conquest of Man's
frontiers.
Hartford snapped his plastic-sheathed Dardick-pistol, death in a
supermarket wrapper, from his belt and placed it on the shelf of his
locker. He'd seen the village of Kansannamura burned. Pia had died
across his shoulder. Paula lay buried, too. Renkei's life had been
splashed out on a stream of bullets. Enough of death.
Hartford picked up a pack of field-ration squeeze-tubes and walked down
the hallway toward the Syphon.
His leaving would show on the Status Board, of course, but that didn't
matter any more. He was deserting the regiment.
* * * * *
He walked through the valley of desert that was the Hot Gut, and down
into the birth-canal that was the Wet Gut, to emerge in the evening air
of Kansas. The motor sergeant, stationed outside to guard the vehicles,
saluted. "Going for a walk, sir?" he asked.
"If you'll lend me a jeep, I'll go for a ride," Hartford said. "I'd
like to see how things look, down in the village."
"It's against regulations, but if you'll have the truck back by dark I
can let it go, sir."
"Thank you, Sergeant." Hartford returned the salute and drove off
downhill, toward Kansannamura.
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.
The Service Police would be after him soon. Once out of sight of the
Barracks, he turned his jeep off the road, onto one of the numberless
paths used by camelopard riders on their trips between Stinker
villages. He was headed upgrade, now, toward the mountains. On either
side of the jeep were the fields of sunflowers, silent in the twilight
calm. In a few moments the cool winds from the sea would flow into the
land, stirring the billions of heart-shaped sunflower-leaves into the
whisper that filled the evening and early-morning hours of Kansas.
His heart filled with hope and hopelessness, feeling like a happy
suicide, Hartford sang to himself as the sunflower heads and leaves
tattooed against his windshield. _Pioneers! O Pioneers_ he sang, the
anthem of the Axenites, the fellowship he was leaving forever:
Lo, the darting bowling orb!
Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets,
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams, Pioneers!
O pioneers!
The crunching of the jeep over the narrow track, the whipping of the
plants against the vehicle and his singing all combined to drown out
whatever noise it was the girl might have made. Hartford didn't see her
till the jeep, rearing like a startled pony, climbing the flank of the
camelopard the girl rode, tossed him into a tangle of green stalks and
golden flowers.