hartford had to see piacentelli's body placed in the barracks morgue, where a necropsy would be performed by a safety-suited gnotobiotician. it was seldom that an axenite was contaminated. rarer yet was the death of a trooper who'd been exposed to bacteria. information held in pia's body might someday save lives.
hartford, directing the sealing-off of the morgue from the rest of the barracks, was not comforted by these reflections. he unsuited, shaved and showered, and put on fresh class b's to finish what remained of this o.g. tour. on his way back up to the board room he had to pass the morgue again. colonel nef, in the midst of a cluster of lesser ranks, was there. on a wheeled cart, covered by a sheet, was a second body.
hartford stopped. "what happened, sir?" he demanded. "who is it?"
nef raised the corner of the sheet with a hand that seemed infinitely weary. the body was paula piacentelli. "another accident," the colonel grunted.
a hydroponics corporal, s.c., spoke up. "she was relieved of duty as soon as she heard about her husband's death, sir. someone should have stayed with her. she went up to level eight to be alone. there are only two of us on duty there through the night. she must have blundered off the walkway, blinded by her tears. however it happened, she caught hold of a lighting-cable where the insulation was frayed, and was electrocuted the moment she touched the wet seeding-bed. colonel nef found her there."
"i was going to console her on gabriel piacentelli's death," nef said. "leave the body here and clear out, all of you." no refrigeration was needed for paula's corpse, of course. an uncontaminated axenite was preserved by purity. the body might dry a bit, the integrity of the internal organs suffer somewhat from the corrosive effects of their own juices: but paula's corpse would otherwise remain uncorrupted until taken outside and buried in bug-dirt. "hartford," nef said, "i'd like to have a talk with you."
"i'm still on o.g., sir," hartford said.
"and i relieve you of that duty," nef snapped. "come up to my quarters."
nasty nef's sitting-room had the only window in the barracks, a skylight through which poured the brilliance of kansas's pyrotechnic flood of stars. "rest, hartford. sit down. brandy?"
hartford allowed that he could use some.
"what do you think of tonight's adventure, lee?" nef asked. "don't look startled. i know the first name of every officer and non-com in the regiment."
"what happened, sir, was horrible," hartford said.
"i understand your feelings," nef said. "two tragic accidents, killing your two closest friends the same night. i am certain that the loss of these comrades will fire your zeal for getting the stinkers under control. isn't that right, lee?" nef took a cigar from the humidor next his chair.
"with all respect, sir," hartford said, placing his empty brandy-glass on the table to his right, "i can hardly see how the events tonight were caused by the indigenous hominids."
"you must use the official name for the gooks, mustn't you?" nef mused. his voice turned harsh: "someone stripped the safety-suit off piacentelli, mister."
hartford nodded, his face pale. the "a" of the axenite's alphabet was apprehension. as a germ-free—axenic, gnotobiotic—human being, he is superior in most ways to ordinary men. he's usually larger and stronger. he never has dental caries, pimples, appendicitis, the common cold or certain cancers. no matter how much or how long he sweats, the axenite doesn't stink; nor do his other excretions. on a contaminated world, however, the axenite is a tender flower indeed. a baby's breath can be death to him, if that baby be a "normal" human; for no microbe is benign to the man without antibodies. to him a drop of rain may reek with pestilence, the scent of evening may be a lethal gas. "i can't understand their stripping pia, sir," he said. "why would they do such a terrible thing?"
"because they're stinkers!" nef said. "can you imagine what it must be like to be one of them? every inch of your skin a-crawl with living filth, your guts packed with foulness, your whole frame a compromise with rottenness? do you wonder that they'd delight to make us as unwholesome as they are themselves?" colonel nef lighted the cigar he'd been mulling. "lee, do you think one stinkerville destroyed is too high a price for them to pay for having murdered two axenite troopers? for piacentelli's wife is as much their victim as her husband."
hartford shook his head. "i'm not sure, sir. what bothers me more than anything else is that it's my fault pia went out last night. he asked me to arrange for him to replace the scheduled picket officer, and i did."
"lee, why was piacentelli so anxious to pull this extra duty?" nef asked.
hartford tried unobtrusively to squirm his chair out of the jet-stream from nef's cigar. "he told me he wanted to work on the language, sir," he said. "pia really had such a project. he'd never had contact with anyone with a speech other than standard before, and the problem of transducing one language into another fascinated him. the kansans call their speech nihon-go. pia taught me to understand some of it."
"a waste of your time, lee," nef said. "you'll never have occasion to speak it. be that as it may, unless piacentelli was attempting to coax a course in bedroom kansan from a stinker maiden, i can hardly understand why his lexigraphical labors should require him to unsuit himself. no, piacentelli was deliberately murdered."
"i'm puzzled, sir," hartford admitted. "when we tossed those smoke-candles, i heard pia shouting for us to stop it. would he have done so if the indigenous hominids had him captive? why did none of the natives lift a hand against us, though we were burning their homes? why did paula piacentelli seem to know why pia was going outside tonight? why did he take a microscope with him? why did paula kill herself?"
"don't noise that last 'why' around the barracks, mister," nef growled. "officially, she died in tear-blinded grief, an accident." he smiled. "whatever our reason for burning out stinkerville, lee, we got it done. the fact that those half-humans down the hill bred and sweat and poisoned the soil within half an hour's walk has been a stench in my nostrils ever since we got here. now they're gone. i'm as sorry as you that the piacentellis are dead. but the manner of their dying was such as to assure axenic mankind a new home."
"i'm not sure i understand you, sir."
nef poured them each a second brandy. he raised his; hartford of necessity followed suit. "to brotherhood," the colonel said. he stared into hartford's eyes. "to the brotherhood," he amended.
hartford was tired, confused and in awe of nef's rank; otherwise he might have ventured protest. nef sipped his drink. "i must emphasize, lee, that what i say is my opinion only, not axenite policy. you see my point."
"i do, sir," hartford said.
"forgive me, then, for prefacing my remarks with a bit of truism," nef said. "in all history before gnotobiotic man was cut from his mother through cellophane, the human being was never pure organism. before us, every man who ever lived was, in fact, one mammal plus the sum of millions of viruses, rickettsia, bacteria, fungi and molds. when the old philosophers asked, 'what is man?' the answer could only be: 'foul smell and blood in a bag.' we're the first men beyond that, lee. the first real men, true men, members of the winner-species. homo gnotobioticus.
"we must destroy the bridge that led to us. we must destroy the stinkers. not just these quasi-human natives here on kansas, but the stinkers on earth, and on every other planet where bug-laden man has followed axenite. what chance has homo sapiens to match his sapiency against homo gnotobioticus, when he is a bifurcate septic tank, a polyculture of a thousand kinds of living dirt?"
hartford finished his brandy, wishing he were anywhere else than in nasty nef's quarters, tired, ill at ease and a little drunk from the two brandies. "what do you propose, sir?" he asked with academy politeness.
"aha!" nef rejoiced, pouring them each another drink. "you justify my trust, lee. you perceive that i speak not merely if-ly, philosophically, but as a man of action, leashed only by temporary practicality." he leaned back in his chair and regarded hartford more as a sculptor might regard a recent product than a father a son, with uncritical approval. "where were you born, lee?"
"on titan, sir."
"i thought so. you have the mark of natal excellence," nef said. "you're a second or third-generation axenite, then?"
"third, sir," hartford said.
"splendid. your grandparents were from their mothers' wombs untimely ripp'd; your parents and yourself born normally, in germ-free ambience. how fortunate we are, you and i! third-generation axenites. eff-two of a new race." nef paused in his recital. "there is one fact that chafes us, though. we, perforce the columbuses of tomorrow, explorers of the planets beyond even the stars we see here on the frontier, are held back by our stinker cousins. they have the proper feeling, that only pure man might pioneer the alien worlds, for fear of destroying what he finds there. but who will inherit those planets when we've finished our explorations? who will at the last till the fields of kansas?"
"colonists from earth, sir," hartford said. "from eurus, tinkle, westside, unashamed, t'ang, williams's world and hope. from all the planets normal man has colonized."
"doesn't that annoy you, lee?" nef asked. "that our work's fruit is to be enjoyed by shiploads of stinkers?"
"they're as human as we, sir," hartford said. he smiled. "you might say they just haven't had our advantages."
"you're tender-minded, lee," nef said. "we garrison a hundred worlds on the frontier, planets our stinker masters mustn't visit yet, least man contaminate some life-form yet unmet. we pioneer, clear planets as safe, and move on. for reward, we axenites have three worlds of our own in the m'bwene system, axenized for our use; we have the academies on luna and titan, and a dome on pluto. it's not enough. we are the new men, the next-comers to humanity. we must have worlds of our own. i, and the brotherhood whose hand here i am, intend that kansas shall be ours."
"what about the stinkers?" hartford asked. "what will happen to them if we decide to axenize kansas?"
"maybe they'll leave," colonel nef said, smiling in the manner that had won him the name "nasty." "a few more punitive expeditions like tonight's—an incendiary grenade was thrown at kansannamura, did you know that, lee? i threw it—and we'll have no stinkers underfoot. we soon will be able to mop and polish this world to our own high standards. we'll walk this lovely world without safety-suits and breathe unfiltered air. we'll enter into our birthright, lee." nef gazed at his cigar admiringly, though it had gone out. "so much for the moment, brother hartford," he said. "perhaps we'd both do well to get some sleep."
hartford jumped to attention and formally requested permission to withdraw. nef nodded. hartford about-faced and left the room.
