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realtime solar. But tomorrow you head for home, girl." Page 243 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html "That's tomorrow's problem," she replied. Back Next | Contents Framed file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Myers,%20H.L.%20-%20The%20creatures%20of%20man/07434 36075__34.htm (4 of 4)18-1-2007 13:16:10 - Chapter 35 Back Next | Contents file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Myers,%20H.L.%20-%20The%20creatures%20of%20man/07434 36075__35.htm (1 of 6)18-1-2007 13:16:10 - Chapter 35 2 As she hit the fringe of Jopat's atmosphere her shieldscreen stiffened automatically, protecting her body from air friction. At the same time the screen bulged out to act as braking wings. A few minutes later her breathing went exterior. After five days with nothing to do, her nose sniffed the fresh smell of Jopat's air with appreciation. She holstered her gun as she approached the location the general had given her. There she detected only one barb waiting for her, hovering at five thousand feet. She swooped to a halt six feet in front of him and saw that it was Nathel Gromon. He grinned at her. "Well, well, Skinny Hips." He chuckled. "Come all this way because you can't live without me. Right?" "Meatheads aren't my type," she retorted. He chuckled some more. "And you're not old Spart Dargow's type, chicken. He's mad enough to skin you." "This conversation reminds me of how hungry I am, for some reason," she said. "Okay. Follow me down." The barb dropped groundward, leveled off sharply just above the treetops and headed westward. Gweanvin trailed him closely. "One thing puzzles me about you, Nathel," she said. "What's that?" "Most of you idiots came to Jopat because the econo-war back home was fizzling, and out here you and the Lonnies could have a little war of your own. That made a primitive kind of sense under the circumstances. There was nothing for genetic barbarians to do at home, and nobody seemed to know how to get the econo-war heated up again. I even dropped out myself for a couple of years . . ." "I remember." "But you stuck out the doldrums at home, Nathel. You didn't leave until three months ago. That was after our Bauble telepathic communicators had been developed to put the Commonality back on even terms with the Lontastans and their telepath, Monte. The econo-war was coming to life again. Guardsmen were needed especially for planets where Baubles were being installed. There was the prospect of plenty of action for you. And that was precisely when you pulled out. Why?" Page 244 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html Nathel Gromon grimaced. "You said the dirty word. Bauble." "What does the Bauble have to do with it?" "It opened my eyes," he grunted. "It showed me how other people really think of us barbs." "How do they think?" "Oh . . . that we're stupid." "Hell, did you need telepathy to find that out?" She snorted. "I've called you stupid a hundred times! Did you think I was kidding?" Gromon frowned uncomfortably. "It's not the same thing. You and me mentacommed once, if you recall, file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Myers,%20H.L.%20-%20The%20creatures%20of%20man/07434 36075__35.htm (2 of 6)18-1-2007 13:16:10 - Chapter 35 after they got the Bauble on Prima Gran." Gweanvin nodded. "How could I forget?" "Well, the way you thought about me was okay. You think kind of hard and snotty about everybody, did you know that? But all them pencil-pushers . . . it's like I'm some kind of animal, the way they look at it." "Aw-w-w," Gweanvin cooed mockingly. "Did the mean old pencil-pushers hurt Nathel's tender little feelings?" "Go to hell," the big man grunted. "It's just that who needs it! The econo-war is a pencil-pusher's war. It fits them, not us. Hell, they outnumber us a million to one. It has to be their kind of fight. So I say, let them have it their way, and we'll stay on Jopat and have ours our way." Gweanvin shrugged. "Prima Gran sent twenty doctrinists out here a few weeks ago. They were supposed to try to reason with you lunkheads. If they couldn't talk you out of such fallacious attitudes as that, far be it from me to even try." After a moment, she added, "All those doctrinists suddenly went out-comm. What happened to them?" Gromon grinned. "Oh, we listened to them, till they started repeating themselves. That got too boring, so we field-stripped them and grounded them on a semi-tropic island. They're safe enough. The insects here don't like the taste of humans much, and we parleyed with the Lonnies to keep the fighting away from that island." * * * Gweanvin was not especially fond of doctrinists but she failed to share Gromon's amusement. Field- stripping a man was as ugly a crime as horse-thievery had been on an earlier frontier, and for the same reason. A man lived and moved by the life-support devices implanted in his body: power packets, shieldscreen generators, inertia nullifiers, propulsors, communicators and so on. To field-strip him to cut out those devices that could be removed by simple operations was the dirtiest of dirty tricks. In the econo-war not even captured frontliners were subjected to such treatment. But Gweanvin saw no point to making an issue of the transgression. She could guess that the barbs had made it to put everybody on notice that on Jopat the game was played by barb rules, and outsiders had better not try to interfere. "Getting back to the way pencil-pushers think of barbs," she said, "that's something the doctrinists, being pencil-pushers themselves, could hardly explain to you. They take that attitude toward all frontliners toward me the same as toward you idiots. And it boils down to the fact that they just don't dig killing or being killed. They can't play, or even appreciate, a game played on that level." "They're narrow," growled Gromon. "Killing is just bodies. If I get killed, all I got to do is find me a new one. And that ain't hard, because babies are being born every second." "Right," Gweanvin agreed. "You know, all through history the most atheistic Page 245 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html societies, the ones that didn't believe in the survival of the ego-field, were the most squeamish about killing." "But that don't hold any more," objected the barb. "People don't have ignorance as an excuse now." "No, but they have other reasons. Killing is destructive, wasteful and the whole point of the econo-war is to have hard competition that is essentially constructive. It can't be all one way, true. But the vast majority of participants, the pencil-pushers, have to view conflict as a motivator for non-destructive activities." Gromon grunted noncommittally. file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Myers,%20H.L.%20-%20The%20creatures%20of%20man/07434 36075__35.htm (3 of 6)18-1-2007 13:16:10 - Chapter 35 "Also," Gweanvin went on, "killing and being killed are both traumatic. They were basic to the anatomy of unsanity. Pysch-releasing removed that problem quite a few centuries ago, of course, but the old association with unsanity gives killing an ugliness that's still remembered." "Well, I can see all that," Gromon conceded, "but you ain't talking me into going back, girl. I like it here." "Hell," Gweanvin grunted, "if twenty glib doctrinists couldn't talk some sense through your thick skulls, I'm not going to try. Propagandizing's not my line." Gromon turned his head toward her briefly to study her emo-pattern. "Old Dargow figures Prima Gran sent you out here to bring us home," he said. "Do you say different?" "No. That's what I'm here for." "Well, how can you do it, if you don't talk us into it?" he demanded. "You can't force us to go back." "I'll be damned if I know, Nathel," she replied, flashing annoyed frustration. "I'm flying blind on this stupid mission, and that's the disgusting truth." Gromon considered this information with surprise for several seconds before chuckling. "I guess we really got the high brass running in circles back at Prima Gran HQ," he said smugly. "Maybe so," murmured Gweanvin. She had puzzled over the question for hours during her flight to Jopat, and it still made no sense to her. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |