hartford knelt over the microscope in the yoga-posture called for by its being so near the floor and tried to adjust the instrument as he remembered having seen it done. he focused the coarse adjustment of the 'scope till he saw spots darting about the fluid takeko had placed on the slide. he nailed the spots down with a gentle hand on the fine adjustment.
the juice of the pickled turnip was aswim with tiny bodies that looked like tadpoles. "what are they?" he asked, peering into the micro-world below him.
"pia-san named them monads," said the carpenter, white-bearded togo. "we all have them in our bodies. you have them now in yours. our soil is alive with them. they chew the chaff of our fields into black loam; they turn to dust the flesh of our fathers. they cause turnips to become takuwan."
hartford rocked back from the microscope to sit again on his heels. "you have no disease, no benign bacterial flora and of course no bacterial antibodies. instead you have this whip-tailed animalcule, this monad. is this correct?"
"so pia-san said," takeko agreed. "he said that the monad is a jealous beast. it is a tiger among the pygmies, he said. no little nuisance-makers can exist on kansas; the monad would eat them in a rage."
"the ultimate antibiotic," hartford said. "a micro-organism that functions as a saprophyte, a soil-former and a scavenger. besides all this, it's a universal phagocyte, policing up the human environment inside and out, to keep it clean of any other microscopic organisms. the monad fills every niche in the micro-ecology of the planet."
"this is what pia-san and his okusama, poor dead girl, discovered," takeko said. "renkei entered the stone house to tell you that we do not stink, that we are not dangerous. three people have died to tell this—and nef still does not know."
"i think he may know it after all," hartford said. "he knows about the monad, and fears it. this little bug means that every member of the human race can join his damned brotherhood. a crew of monads in his gut would make every man on stinker earth a dignotobiote, germ-free except for his housekeeping protozoa."
"until pia-san told us," yamata said, "we knew nothing except that we lived longer than our ancestors had. we knew that we did not suffer from the strange tirednesses the books told of, ills caused by the little animals. we did not know that the smallest natives of this planet had made of us their fortresses."
"if i could only get past nasty nef to tell this to the axenites," hartford said.
"ron yori shoko," kiwa-san said. takeko translated for her father. "he says, proof is stronger than argument."
"indeed," hartford agreed. "but how do i prove to the troopers that the monad sweeps kansas cleaner than their barracks floors?"
"as pia-san tried to," takeko said. "he removed his glasshead and his silken suit. he breathed our air and ate our food. he wanted to prove that he could live, but he was killed before he could. now you have made that proof. your brothers of the stone house must undress of their silken suits and come among us, lee-san."
"that they will not," hartford said. "they are certain they will die if they inhale a breath of kansas air, chew a bite of kansas food, drink your clear stream water. i was certain i would die when my safety-suit was torn: remember our meeting, takeko-san? it will not be easy to persuade my brothers and sisters in the barracks to forget their fears. we are so sure, we axenites, that contamination will kill us that we'd rather dance with lightning and eat stones than walk this world unprotected and eat its fruits."
when takeko had respoken these words to her father, the old man said again: "ron yori shoko." proof is greater than argument.
"proof?" hartford asked. "i am not proof enough to have a regiment of axenites shed their safety-suits and declare the kansans their brothers. it would take years of lab work before the first of them would walk suitless onto bug-dirt. we'd have to knock down the walls of the barracks and burn two thousand-odd safety-suits, before we'd have the axenite troopers here trapped into being guinea-pigs."
"each trooper carries the stone house with him when he walks our roads," the calligrapher remarked. "we have but to break through the silken suit he wears to make a trooper know the garment isn't needed here."
"he'd die of fright," hartford said. "i very nearly did. besides, each column of troopers, a squad or the regiment, goes out with a decontamination team. if a man becomes septic through some sort of accident, he's hustled by a cleanup squad into a decontamination vehicle for his shower, shave and shots. i know the process well," he said, running his palm over his naked head.
"ano ne," kiwa said. "will this decontamination-kuruma house two thousand men? two hundred? twenty?"
"it will hold two or three troopers at once," hartford answered. "we have several of them, though."
"so ... ka?" white-bearded togo exclaimed. he leaned over to whisper into the ear of takeko's father, who nodded and smiled.
old kiwa spoke, and takeko interpreted. "we must surprise a group of troopers," he said. "we must cause all their silken suits to be torn, or all their glass heads shattered, at one time. it is so simple as that."
"simple in all but the doing," said yamata the calligrapher. he picked up a brush and sketched on the mat before him a line of trooper-silhouettes, a platoon, marching single-file. "how do we break into all those stone houses at once?" he asked.
hartford's face was pale. "we could use grenades, perhaps," he said. "or bombs. after all, these troopers we speak of are no more than my family, my village, my people. i may of course be expected to cooperate in their destruction."
takeko reached over and took his hand, then dropped it. "ano ne! you do not understand! we can no more injure your brothers than you can, lee-san. we may not harm any living person. forgive us. you misunderstand us. we are bound, lee-sensei, by butsudo: the peaceful path of the lord buddha." she bowed toward him, her hands clasped together, her head touching the tatami.
"it is my fault if i have misunderstood," hartford said. the men were staring, takeko's eyes were filled with tears, the room was silent. "i do not know you well. i did not know you do not kill."
"let me tell you, then," takeko said, rising to sit beside him. "our people, who once lived on islands in the greater sea of earth, were folk mighty in battle. their pride was named the way of the warrior, which is called bushido. their loveliest flower, the sakura or cherry-blossom, they made the symbol of the warrior, so highly did they hold his calling.
"after their villages had been crushed many times in war, our ancestors vowed forever to abandon bushido, the warrior's path, and to place their feet in the path of the lord buddha, called butsudo. this was many years ago, before any man had ventured into space, before our ancestors found this world you call kansas. when they came here, they came in peace. and they named this place jodo, which we still call it. it means the pure land, where men are just. and all justice is built on a single law. no man shall take man's life."
"i spoke of the axenite brotherhood," hartford said. "these men are a group of our leaders—colonel nef is one; he invited me to join him—who have decided that stinker humanity must go. they're dedicated men, prepared to extinguish all the rest of mankind, to sterilize earth and reseed it as a gnotobiotopic paradise. nef has, i fear, already killed three people to this end.
"you who cannot kill will face an enemy trained in killing," he went on. "your camelopard-mounted messengers will meet veeto-platforms with machine-guns. your peaceful words will be drowned out by the roar of dardick-rifles. how can you hope to live if you will not kill?"
"if the choice were death or killing, lee-san, we would gladly die," takeko said. "we have a saying, muriga toreba dori ga hikkomu. when might takes charge justice withdraws. we will not kill, and neither will we be defeated."
yamata the calligrapher addressed hartford. "how badly torn must a safety-suit be, to make necessary the wearer's going into the purification cart?" he asked.
"only so much as the point of a pin would make would be enough," hartford said.
"we have to drive pins into several dozens of men's clothing at one time," yamata said. he smiled. "so phrased, the mountain does not seem too tall to be climbed."
"it would be difficult to puncture the safety-suits without hurting the wearers," hartford said. "few armies are so solicitous."
"butsudo forbids us to kill men," takeko said. "it does not deny us the right, in pointing them to the path of knowledge, to jab them a bit." she smiled at hartford.
"how do you propose to do this jabbing?" he asked. "i remind you all, if you need reminding, that our troopers travel with dardick-rifles and machine-guns, with rocket-mounted jeeps and veeto-platforms from which bombs can be dropped."
kiwa spoke. "we are like a bear after honey," he said. "we are hungry, but do not wish to taste the stings of the guardians of the hive. we must surprise them."
hartford, his knees stiff with kneeling, his backside sore from the camelopard-saddle despite the expert massage, got up to pace the floor. "we need a needle-gun of some sort," he said.
"no gun," insisted white-bearded togo.
"it need have only slight power," hartford said. "it would throw its projectile only forcefully enough to penetrate the fabric of a safety-suit."
"it has been so many generations since we have been soldiers, we know nothing of weapons," yamata-san said. he wet a fine brush with sumi, chinese ink, and sketched rapidly. "i remember seeing pictures of bushi carrying a sort of throwing-sticks with pointed ends in pockets on their backs, and flinging them like little spears with a kind of one-stringed lute."
hartford stared at the calligrapher's drawing, then exclaimed. "of course! a bow and arrow."
takeko inspected the sketch. "the man who threw the stick is standing," she said. "could we stand against troopers?"
"a man would have to stand exposed to shoot an arrow," hartford admitted. "the dardick-guns would mow us down before we'd punctured a single safety-suit." he paced up and down the room, the only trained warrior there, trying to devise his unkilling weapon.
"we have wine, lee-san," takeko said. "please sit and drink."
hartford, bemused with his problem, folded his legs onto his cushion and lowered himself gently. takeko's mother appeared with tiny cups of hot wine, sake. hartford bowed with the others and sipped. the stuff was good, rather like a dry sherry.
takeko bowed to leave the room, returned, bowed and commenced playing a tune with the instrument she'd brought in. it was a flute made of bamboo, with a high-pitched, pure sound hartford found quite pleasant. he frowned, though, after a moment. takeko took the pipe from her lips. "you do not enjoy my playing?" she asked.
"what is that made of?" hartford demanded. "just bamboo, isn't it?"
"hai, take," takeko agreed. "it is my name. take—bamboo. this is only a shakuha-chi, for very simple music."
hartford smiled and bowed toward togo-san, the white-bearded carpenter. "sir," he said, "if we may have your advice, i believe takeko-chan has helped us find our weapon."
