I was, however, faced with an ethical problem. The Indians, who had discovered heavy rifles similar to mine in some of the stores they had entered, wished me to instruct them in their use. I could see nothing to be gained by such instruction, so I tried to explain to them that this was white man’s magic and so strong that it had destroyed all the white men in the world except me, turning its forces against them in retribution for their own misuse of its power. I also pointed out that all they need do to have this great power at their disposal was to keep me alive and treat me well. I let one man fire a shot lying down, and the recoil broke his collarbone. This seemed to confirm all that I had said.
Until I was with people again, it had not occurred to me to consider my own appearance, because when a man is alone he has no appearance. I found a mirror and examined myself with some attention and amazement. I was as straight as I had always been, but I was much wider than I had thought possible. My arms were as big as my thighs; my chest was immense. My hair was long, reaching halfway down my back, and my beard reached my belt. Both hair and beard were snow white. My body hair, with which I was covered, was white in front of my body and shaded through silver into black along my spine. For ornament, I wore a diamond necklace around my neck; my only clothing was a khaki kilt that I wore for warmth, a leather belt in which was stuck my kukri, and a pair of leather shoes. On my upper arms I had some gold armlets made from expanding wrist-watch chains and other jeweled bracelets that I had joined together and mounted on wide leather straps—a pastime I had indulged in as a hobby. I could not think what I looked like until I suddenly remembered the steel engravings of an old Bible I had had as a child. I looked like Moses when he received the tablets. But the astonishing thing was how well I felt and how immensely strong I was—now that I had others against whom to measure myself.
My appearance does not seem to bother the Indians and it is evident that the two girls—their names are Helen and Christine—want to marry me and are even prepared to share me if necessary, much to the amusement of the braves, who, now that we know each other well, nudge me in the ribs and give me monosyllabic advice amplified by gestures. This situation is still unresolved and becomes daily more precarious.
My personal affairs have, however, no historic interest; and, having completed my story of the end of the white man’s world, I can only say that I ride forward with optimism and can now laugh at the change of circumstance which hoisted my race with the petard of its own ingenuity and returned this great land to its original possessors. “America for the Americans,” I say to Tall Eagle, and laugh. He says nothing. He thinks I am mad. But the girls laugh, because young girls laugh at anything, and it is spring again.
COVENTRY
By Robert Heinlein
“HAVE YOU anything to say before sentence is pronounced on you?” The mild eyes of the senior judge studied the face of the accused. His sympathetic regard was answered by a sullen silence.
“Very well—the jury has determined the fact that you have violated a basic custom agreed to under the Covenant, and that through that act you did damage another free citizen. It is the opinion of the jury and of the court that you did so knowingly, and aware of the probability of damage to a free citizen. Therefore you are sentenced to choose between the Two Alternatives.”
A trained observer might have detected a momentary trace of dismay breaking through the mask of stoical indifference with which the young man had faced his trial. Dismay at the sentence was unreasonable; in view of his offense, the sentence was inevitable—but reasonable men do not receive the sentence.
After waiting a decent interval, the judge turned to the bailiff. “Take him away.”
Before that official could reach him he stood up, knocking over his chair with the violence of his movement. He glared wildly around at the little company assembled about the long table and burst into speech.
“Hold on!” he cried. “I’ve got something to say first!” In spite of his rough manner there was about him, somehow, the noble dignity of a strong and untamed beast at bay. He stared at those around him, breathing heavily, as if they were, in fact, a circle of hunting dogs waiting to drag him down.
“Well?” he demanded. “Well? Do I get to talk or don’t I? It’d be the best joke of this whole damned comedy if a condemned man couldn’t speak his mind at the last!”
“You may speak,” the senior judge told him in the same even, unhurried tones with which he had pronounced sentence, “David MacKinnon, as long as you like, and in any manner that you like. There is no limit to that freedom, even for those who have broken the Covenant. Please speak into the recorder.”
MacKinnon glanced with distaste at the tiny microphone hanging near his face. The knowledge that any word spoke in its range would be broken down into typed phonetic symbols by a recording voder somewhere in the Hall of Archives inhibited his speech. “I don’t ask for records,” he snapped.
“But we must have them,” the judge replied patiently, “in order that others may determine whether or not we have dealt with you fairly and according to the Covenant. Oblige us, please.”
“Oh, very well!” He ungraciously conceded the requirement and directed his voice toward the instrument. “There’s no damn sense in me talking at all—but, just the same, I’m going to talk and you’re going to listen. You talk about your precious ‘Covenant’ as if it were something holy. I don’t agree to it, and I don’t accept it. You act as if it had been sent down from Heaven in a bunt of light. My grandfathers fought in the Second Revolution —but they fought to abolish superstition—not to let sheep-minded fools set up new ones.
“There were men in those days!” He looked with aversion around the ring of faces. “What is there left today? Cautious compromising, ‘safe’ weaklings with water in their veins. You’ve planned your whole world so carefully that you’ve planned the fun and zest right out of it. Nobody is ever hungry, nobody ever gets hurt. Your ships can’t crack up and your crops can’t fail. You even have the weather tamed so it rains politely—after midnight. Why you wait till midnight, I don’t know—you all go to bed at nine o’clock!
“If one of you safe little people should have an unpleasant emotion—perish the thought!—you’d trot right over to the nearest psychodynamics clinic and get your soft little minds readjusted. Thank God I never succumbed to that dope habit. I’ll keep my own feelings, thanks, no matter how bad they taste.
“You won’t even make love without consulting a psychotechnician! Is her mind as flat and insipid as mine? Is there any emotional instability in her family? It’s enough to make a man gag. As for fighting over a woman —if anyone had the guts to do that he’d find a proctor at his elbow in two minutes, looking for the most convenient place to paralyze him, and inquiring with sickening humility, ‘May I do you a service, sir?’ “
The Bailiff edged closer to MacKinnon. He turned on the official. “Stand back, you. I’m not through yet.” Then, resuming, “You’ve told me to choose between the Two Alternatives. Well, it’s no hard choice for me. Before I’d submit to treatment, before I’d enter one of your neat little, safe little, pleasant little reorientation homes and let my mind be pried into by a lot of soft-fingered doctors —before I did anything like that I’d choose a nice, clean death. Oh, no—there is just one choice for me, not two. I take the choice of going to Coventry—and damned glad to. I hope I never hear of the United States again!