"You mean that you actually kill each other in these contests?" I asked.
"Of course," he replied, "but since the gladiators can wear armor in the sword contests, not very many are killed-only ten or twelve a week but they're still the most exciting contests we have."
"How often," Carol asked, "do you watch these games?"
"Since we work six days a week, and must attend church on Sunday morning, that leaves our evenings and Sunday afternoons for watching the games," he replied.
"My God!" I exclaimed. "Don't you get tired of watching that much fighting?"
He laughed, then said, "There's one thing that we red men never get tired of, and that's fighting!"
"But isn't that sort of brutality against your religion?" I inquired.
"The red religion holds that God created four races of men and was disappointed," he explained. "Then he created the red race to fight for the glory of God. We are the chosen race to lead all other races by our dedication to courage and our loyalty to our race and to God."
"Sounds strangely familiar," Carol commented quietly to me.
"Scoff if you like, decadent woman," he replied angrily, "but our women are proud to bear us warriors, and they are decently married to one man."
Sensing that it might be wise to change the subject, I asked, "As a representative of the chosen red race how do you manage to accept a leader like Elgon, whose skin is certainly not red?"
"It's true that his redness doesn't show," he explained, "but the soul of our president is red. He wears his skin white in sympathy for the weakness of the white race."
"Then how do you know his soul is red?" I asked.
"Because when we asked him, he replied that he would never deny it," was-his response.
That Elgon was a sly one, I thought to myself. Then I decided to ask one more question before leaving. "Tell me," I said, "what do you do that allows you to live in such a large home and in such luxury?"
"I was hoping that you would ask," he said, grinning proudly. "You see, on Micro Island courage, hard work, and a good head for business are rewarded. When I was young I was the most famous gladiator on the island, and I earned a great deal of money which I invested in land and various business ventures. Today I own half the houses in our village and most of the acreage surrounding it.
"Aren't you afraid," Carol asked as she glanced at the valuable articles in the room, "that you might be robbed of some of your wealth?"
He laughed rather scornfully and said, "We believe in the value of personal property, so we have law and order. Every tenth person on our island is a police official and we take great pride in our ability as crime fighters. I myself was appointed personally by President Elgon Ten as one of the ten top law officers in our Red State."
Carol couldn't help but insert, "Micro Island is the only place in the world where police are needed, because it's the only place in the world where crime exists. If you didn't place so much importance on personal properties, you wouldn't need to waste all that manpower on policing your people."
The fat red face of our host grew even redder as he glowered at her saying, "Great personal wealth has always gone to the strong, courageous, and clever people who are willing to take risks and live exciting and rewarding lives."
Now he sneered openly at Carol as he said, "Your Macro society has destroyed all sense of decency or pride in its members by encouraging every vice imaginable and by denying all the virtues-courage, loyalty to one's race, accumulation of personal wealth."
Getting to his feet and waddling furiously about the room he shouted, "Never in the history of our world has such evil, wicked, godlessness been permitted to flourish. But God is not mocked forever! You and all your godless, cowardly breed will soon perish from the face of this earth"
I figured we'd better leave before our host worked himself into some sort of apoplectic stroke. I thanked him for his time and we hastily took our leave, and arrived back at the transair feeling rather depressed at what our host had revealed to us. There was no doubt in our minds that he fervently believed the things he had told us. No one had forced us to choose his home to visit.
Once we were airborne again, Elgon began questioning me about my impressions so far. When I told him quite honestly that I had been depressed by what I had seen, he seemed genuinely sad and shook his great head of long, curly black hair back and forth a number of times before he said, "I'm sorry to hear that the Macro society has already so poisoned your mind against us that you can't see how proud and happy our people are, living free and decent lives."
"Elgon Ten," I asked, "do you really think that everyone-even the poor and unhealthy-is happy here on Micro Island?"
Elgon replied in an extremely sincere and persuasive manner saying, "What you don't understand, Jon -Ten, is that the most' important thing for man is not wealth, or health, or even fame, but personal pride-the feeling that he is better than the others."
He paused now to let this sink into my mind before continuing, "We here on Micro Island have provided man with many opportunities for personal pride; his own family, his own race, his own religion, his own language, his own property, and his own state. All of these the Macro society has denied man and, by so doing, reduced the life of its members to a state of such monumental boredom that they don't care whether they live or die. They come to Micro Island and break our laws so they can have at least the satisfaction of dying in an exciting way even if they can't live that way."
Now it was my turn to shake my head. "I'm sorry, but I just can't see it that way, Elgon."
"I don't ask you to believe what I say," he responded. "Just believe what your eyes and ears tell you. Talk to more of our people. Talk to the poor ones. Talk to what you call the losers in our system. Why, I tell you, the most miserable cowardly loser on our island has more self-pride and joy in living than any person you'll ever meet in the Macro society. But don't take my word for it, see and hear for yourself."
I agreed to do as Elgon suggested and talk with some more people, so he dropped us off beside a village in the Brown State. Here Carol and I talked with a mother and father of 18 children. The mother was only 36. She had married at 12 and had her first child at 14 followed by the birth of one child each year thereafter-18 of them lived.
This family was very poor. Their house was small and they slept seven to a bed. However they were very proud of their family and the fact that the five eldest sons were in training to be gladiators. The whole family worked as tenant farmers, which did not supply them with enough money to survive, so the two eldest daughters had been working as prostitutes for the past several years to supplement the family income. The whole family was very proud of these two girls.
Their health, by Macro society standards, was atrocious. The mother with two babies at her breasts looked a pale and sickly 50, yet she had told me proudly that she was 14 years younger than that. The father at 39 looked younger than the mother, though most of his teeth were rotten stumps and his body looked bloated with unhealthy fat. In contrast, most of the-swarming children looked very skinny, but with complexions just as pallid as their parents.
When we arrived at their home, they were all happily watching the gladiators fighting on TV, which I learned every family purchased even if it had money for nothing else. They were pathetically proud of their dyed-brown skin, their brown religion, and their brown language, their brown state, which had the bravest and strongest gladiators in the world-according to them.