Mrs. Warhoon saw the sardonic grins on their faces; the same expression sat with some regularity on Mr. War-boon's face. Like a revelation, she saw how much she hated this simian male superiority; and the memory of that gentle and superb statue on Pestalozzl helped her to hate it.
"You're all the same, you men!" she cried. "You're all cut off from the basic realities of life in a way a woman could never be. For good or ill, we're a species of flesh-eaters, and always have been, Meat-of-animal is not poisonous - if you're sick after eating it, it's your mind that has poisoned you. And all this fear of excreta - can't you see that to these poor unfortunate beings we have captured, their waste products are a sign of fertility, that they ceremonially offer their rejected mineral salts back to their earth when they have done with them? My God, what's so repulsive about that? Is it any more repulsive than the terrestrial religions where living human sacrifices are offered up to various supposed deities? The trouble with our culture is that it is based on a fear of dirt, of poison, of excreta. You think excreta's bad, but it's the fear of it that's bad!”
She threw her mescahale down and ground it under-foot, as if to reject all artificiality. Lattimore raised an eyebrow at her.
"What's got into you. Hilary? Nobody's afraid of the stuff. We're just bored with it. Like you say. it's a waste product. Okay, so waste it; don't go down on your knees to it No wonder these goddam rhinomen have gotten no-where if they've oriented their lives round the stuff.”
"Besides." Quilter said reasonably, for he was used to the unreasonable outbursts of women, "our guys don't actually object to shoveling the stuff. They just object to shoveling it without dirty pay.”
"But you are both of you missing my point entirely," Mrs. Warhoon began with heat, running her pretty and dexterous fingers into her hair.
"That'll do, Hilary," Lattimore said sharply. "Come off this coprophilous kick and pull yourself together.”
Next day, the repaired Gansas blasted off from this forbidding planet, carrying safely inside it its cargo of living organisms, their hopes, their phobias, their grandeurs and their failings, transpontentially and transcendentally towards the planet Earth.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Old Aylmer was partial to his sleep. He strongly resisted Snok Snok Kam's efforts to rouse him until the young utod lifted him up with four legs and shook him gently.
"You must bring yourself to full wakefulness. my dear Manlegs." Snok Snok said. "Fit your crutches on and come to the door.”
"My old bones are stiff, Snok Snok. I quite enjoy their stiffness, as long as I'm left horizontal to do so.”
"You prepare yourself for the carrion stage of life," the utod said. He had over the years trained himself to talk only through his casspu and oral orifices; in that way, he and Ainson could converse after a fashion. "When you change to carrion. Mother and I will plant you under the ammps, and in your next cycle you shall become an utod.”
"Thank you very much, but I'm certain that that wasn't what you woke me for. What's the matter?
What's worrying you?1' That was a phrase that in forty years' association with Ainson Snok Snok had never understood. He passed it over.
"Some menlegs are coming here. I saw them bumping on a round-legged four-legs towards our middenstead.”
Ainson was buckling on his leg supports.
"Men? I don't believe it, after all these years.”
Picking up his crutches, he made his way down the corridor to the front door. On either side of him were doors he had not opened for a long while, doors sealing off rooms containing weapons and ammunition, recording apparatus, and rotted supplies; he heeded this material no more than he did the automatic observation post which had long since wilted, together with its aerial, under the majesty of Dapdrofs storms and gravitational pull.
The grorgs scuttled ahead of Snok Snok and Ainson and plunged on into the middenstead where Quequo gently reclined. Snok Snok and Ainson halted in the doorway, looking out through the wire. A four-wheeled overlander had just drawn up at the gate.
Forty years, Ainson thought, forty years peace and quiet - not all of it so damn welcome either - and they have to come and disturb me now! They might have let me die in peace. I reckon I could have managed that before the next esod, and I've no objection to being buried under the ammp trees.
He whistled his grorg back to him, and stood waiting where he was. Three men jumped from the truck.
As an after-thought, Ainson went back down the corridor, pushed his way into the little armory, and stood there adjusting his eyes to the light. Dust lay thickly everywhere. He opened a metal box, took a dull-shining rifle from within. But the ammunition, where was that? He looked round at the muddle in disgust, dropped the weapon on to the dirty floor and shuffled back into the corridor. He had picked up too much peace on Dapdrof to go shooting at his age.
One of the men from the four-wheeler was almost at the front door. He had left his two companions at the entrance to the stockade.
Ainson quailed. How did you address your own kind? This particular fellow did not look easy to address. Although he might well be slightly older than Ainson, he had not spent forty years under 3G's. He wore uniform; no doubt service life kept his body healthy, whatever it did "to his mind. He wore the well-fed but sanctimonious expression of one who has dined at a bishop's table.
"You axe Samuel Melmoth. of the Gansas?" the soldier asked. He stood in a neutral pose, legs braced against the gravity blocking the door with his bulk. Ainson gaped at the sight of him; bipeds La clothes looked odd when you were unused to the phenomenon.
"Melmoth?" the soldier repeated.
Ainson had no idea what the fellow meant. Nor could he think of anything that might be regarded as a suitable answer.
"Come, come, you are Melmoth of the Gansas, aren't you?”
Again the words just baffled.
"He has made a mistake," Snok Snok suggested, regarding the newcomer closely.
"Can't you keep your specimens in their wallows? You are Melmoth; I begin to recognize you now.
Why don't you answer me?”
A tatter of an ancient formula stirred in Ainson's mind. Ammps, but this was agony!
"Looks like rain." he said.
"You do talk! I'm afraid that you've had rather a wait for your relief. How are you. Melmoth? You don't remember me, do you?”
Hopelessly, Ainson peered at the military figure before him. He recollected nobody from his life on Earth except his father.
"I'm afraid.... It's been so long I've been alone.”
"Forty-one years, by my reckoning. My name's Quilter.
Hank Quilter, Captain of the starraider Hightail Quilter. You don't remember me?”
"It's been so long....”
"I gave you a black eye once. It's been on my conscience all these years. When I was directed to this battle sector, I took the chance to come and see you. I'm happy to find you haven't been harboring a grudge against me, though it's a blow to a fellow's pride to find they just are for-gotten. How's tricks been on Pestalozzi?”
He wanted to be genial to this fellow who seemed to bear him goodwill, but somehow he couldn't get the line of talk sorted out "Eh Pesta.... Pesta.... I've been stuck here on Dapdrof all these years." Then he thought of something he wanted to say, something that must have worried him for - oh, maybe for ten years, but that was a long way back. He leant against the doorpost, cleared his throat, and asked, "Why didn't they come for me, Captain ... er. Captain?”