"Didn't know you were a Judeo-Christian fundamentalist," said Salazar.
"I am not, young man! But we take the Bible as our point of departure, interpreting its messages in the light of modern knowledge, just as we do with the Holy Qur'an. The passages I cited were put there for sound, scientific, modern reasons."
"What's that?"
"Why, any sexual act in which there is no possibility of conception is a waste of precious seed. This applies equally to contraception, masturbation, sodomy, and bestiality. He who indulges in any of these fails in his duty to increase the tribe—nowadays, the whole human species—to enable it to rule the universe."
"Why should anyone want to rule the universe? My fellow primates have enough trouble ruling much smaller units, like a city or a nation."
"It is the destiny laid upon us by the Supreme God!" roared Dumfries, causing diners at other tables to look around. He glowered at Salazar from under his bushy brows. "Cantemir tells me that you and the other Patelians are environmentalist fanatics who want to preserve this planet just as it is, in the possession of a race of revolting reptiles. You—"
"Who's revolting?" Salazar interrupted. "The Kooks are sentient beings like us, and their moral standards are at least as high as ours. They have nothing like the local underworld for which Sungecho is notorious."
"A reptile is a reptile," boomed Dumfries, whose delivery had become that of an orator haranguing thousands. "In addition to siding with these soulless lower animals against your own kind, you pursue some ridiculous ideal of freezing everything to immobility, as in fairy tales. You would stop all change and progress so you can study and admire a static picture forever, like a habitat group in a museum. But life is full of inevitable ch— Oh, I am sorry!"
A sweeping gesture by Dumfries had knocked over his glass of unfermented bumbleberry juice. While Mao Dai's well-drilled waiters mopped up the spillage and changed the tablecloth, Salazar used the interval to marshal his thoughts. At last he said:
"I'm afraid my motives are not quite so purely unselfish. I make my living studying the biota and reporting on it for my doctorate. If your gang ruins it, my work will go for nothing."
"Have you no loyalty to your own species, man? To any normal human being, a reptile is loathsome, to be slain forthwith. And that includes Kooks!"
"Mere herpetophobia," said Salazar, "which parents implant in their children. Probably goes back to hunting-gathering days, when our naked ancestors couldn't tell a venomous snake from a harmless one."
"If," retorted Dumfries, "the mere sight of these reptiles does not fill you with horror and revulsion, as it does normal human beings, then you are the victim of some congenital abnormality."
"You're the one with the irrational phobia, not me," began Salazar, but Ritter broke in:
"Let's not argue who has the most neuroses. A shrink could doubtless find a few loose screws in each. But Reverend Dumfries, what's your ultimate objective? If your people took over Kukulcan, under your natalist doctrine they would soon fill the planet until it was as crowded and superregulated as poor old Terra. No wild country; every square meter devoted to raising food; every action regulated by a vast bureaucracy to make production and consumption match; births controlled by the Genetics Board."
"To get away from that condition is the whole idea," said Dumfries, "by furnishing an escape valve to relieve population pressure! As fast as one alien world becomes crowded, mankind should go on to open up another. In so vast a galaxy there's no danger of running out of habitable worlds in the foreseeable future."
"But your alien worlds," said Salazar, "will then become overcrowded and overregulated in their turn. From all I hear of life on Terra, it's like living in a neat, clean, humane jail, and who wants to spend his life in even the nicest jail? You're trying to turn the whole galaxy into such a jail."
"Besides," added Ritter, "your scheme will not really relieve population pressure, for logistical reasons. The most people you could move to other planets would be thousands per year, but the natural rate of increase on Terra, before the World Federation clamped down on it, was tens of millions a year. So you could never catch up."
"The Supreme God will show us a way," said Dumfries. "He will instruct his Demiurges, who will pass the solution on to us." He wiped his mouth on a napkin and rose. The chair, held to his vast bulk by the encircling arms, rose with him, but he quickly pushed himself free. He said:
"I apologize, but I find that the prospect of eating with a table full of reptile lovers has quite destroyed my appetite. Good night, and may the Demiurge—not this feeble spook Metasu but our own Terran Yahveh or Allah-grant you wisdom!"
The stout preacher marched out, leaving an embarrassed silence. Dinner arrived.
They were lingering over Mao Dai's desserts and acha when four rough-looking Terrans appeared on the narrow stationary ring of flooring inside the revolving floor. They brandished pistols, saying:
"Stand up everybody, and you won't get hurt!"
"Bozhe moi!" shouted a nearby diner. Cries of alarm and outrage came from the other tables.
"This ain't a robbery," said the first speaker. "Which of you is Kirk Salazar?"
Nobody answered. One of the quartet stepped out and came back dragging Mao Dai's smallest and youngest waiter. The leader pressed his muzzle against the little Gueiliner's head. "Now point out Salazar if you don't want your brains spattered all over the pretty decorations!"
The waiter pointed a trembling finger at Salazar.
"Okay, grab him," said the leader. Two of the quartet holstered pistols and started for Salazar, who picked up a chair. The leader fired a warning shot, bang! over Salazar's head.
Salazar swung the light chair as if he were going to hit the nearest gangster over the head, then reversed and jabbed the man in the belly with the leg. The man doubled up with a grunt, but then the other was upon Salazar. This man, who proved immensely strong, wrenched away the chair and threw it across the room, where it smashed into a table setting with a crash of glass and flatware.
The man got a grip on one of Salazar's arms and twisted. Salazar kicked, aiming for the crotch, but missed.
The man released Salazar's arm with one beefy hand to grab for support because the floor on which they were struggling seemed to have acquired a sudden slant. The whir and creak of the floor-rotating machinery rose in pitch; mingled with it came the rhythmic crack of whips applied with furious intensity.
Salazar guessed what had happened. Mao or his crew must have hitched up the two spare kyuumeis and speeded up the rotation of the ring-shaped floor bearing the tables. Diners, gangsters, tables, chairs, and everything else slid clattering, crashing, and screaming down the centrifugal slope to the outer wall.
Salazar found his arm free and scrambled up the slope before it became too steep to negotiate. A gangster groped for his ankle, but he kicked free and gained the stationary inner ring.
On the fixed flooring Salazar leapt up, pushed past a gaggle of waiters, dashed to the cloakroom, and snatched his pistol from its hook. He returned to the stationary ring, shouting back at the restaurant personneclass="underline"
"Tell them to slow the spin!"
On the stationary ring he watched for his party and the gangsters to come past. As rotation slowed, they appeared. Salazar aimed, saying:
"Hands up, you four!"
"As soon as I—can—stand up," grunted one. As rotation diminished further, another bent and fumbled for his gun amid the wreckage along the outer wall.