Stranger in a Strange Land

«But it can't — not from both angles.»

«What do you mean, “it can't”? It did.» Harshaw added, «If we had used doppler-radar in place of cameras, I wonder what it would have shown?»

«How should I know? I'm going to take these cameras apart.»

«Don't bother.»

«But — »

«Duke, the cameras are okay. What is ninety degrees from everything else?»

«I'm no good at riddles.»

«It's not a riddle. I could refer you to Mr. A. Square from Flatland, but I'll answer it. What is perpendicular to everything else? Answer: two bodies, one pistol, and an empty case.»

«What the deuce do you mean, Boss?»

«I never spoke more plainly in my life. Try believing the evidence instead of insisting that the cameras must be at fault because what they saw was not what you expected. Let's see the other films.»

They added nothing to what Harshaw already knew. The ash tray when near the ceiling had been out of camera, but its leisurely descent had been recorded. The pistol's image in the tank was small but, so far as could be seen, the pistol had shrunk away into the distance without moving. Since Harshaw had been gripping it tightly when it had left his hand, he was satisfied — if «satisfied» was the word.

«Duke, I want duplicate prints of all those.»

Duke hesitated. «I'm still working here?»

«What? Oh, damn it! You can't eat in the kitchen, that's flat. Duke, try to forget your prejudices and listen.»

«I'll listen.»

«When Mike asked for the privilege of eating my stringy old carcass, he was doing me the greatest honor he knows of — by the only rules he knows. What he “learned at his mother's knee,” so to speak. He was paying me his highest compliment — and asking a boon. Never mind what they think in Kansas; Mike uses values taught him on Mars.»

«I'll take Kansas.»

«Well,» admitted Jubal, «so will I. But it is not free choice for me, nor you — nor Mike. It is almost impossible to shake off one's earliest training. Duke, can you get it through your skull that if you had been brought up by Martians, you would have the same attitude toward eating and being eaten that Mike has?»

Duke shook his head. «I won't buy it, Jubal. Sure, about most things it's just Mike's hard luck that he wasn't brought up civilized. But this is different, this is an instinct.»

«“Instinct,”Dreck!»

«But it is. I didn't get “training at my mother's knee” not to be a cannibal. Hell, I've always known it was a sin — a nasty one. Why, the thought turns my stomach. It's a basic instinct.»

Jubal groaned. «Duke, how could you learn so much about machinery and never learn anything about how you yourself tick? Your mother didn't have to say, “Mustn't eat your playmates, dear; that's not nice,” because you soaked it up from our culture — and so did I. Jokes about cannibals and missionaries, cartoons, fairy tales, horror stories, endless things. Shucks, son, it couldn't be instinct; cannibalism is historically a most widespread custom in every branch of the human race. Your ancestors, my ancestors, everybody.»

«Yourancestors, maybe.»

«Um. Duke, didn't you tell me you had some Indian blood?»

«Huh? Yeah, an eighth. What of it?»

«Then, while both of us have cannibals in our family trees, chances are that yours are many generations closer because — »

«Why, you bald-headed old — »

«Simmer down! Ritual cannibalism was common among aboriginal American cultures — look it up. Besides that, as North Americans, we stand a better than even chance of having a touch of Congo without knowing it … and there you are again. But even if we were Simon-pure North European stock (a silly notion, casual bastardy is far in excess of that ever admitted) — but if we were, such ancestry would merely tell us which cannibals we are descended from … because every branch of the human race has cannibalism. Duke, it's silly to talk about a practice being “against instinct” when hundreds of millions have followed it.»

«But — All right, I should know better than to argue with you, Jubal; you twist things. But suppose we did come from savages who didn't know any better — What of it? We're civilized now. Or at least I am.»

Jubal grinned. «Implying that I am not. Son, aside from my own conditioned reflex against munching a roast haunch of — well, you, for example — aside from that trained-in prejudice, I regard our taboo against cannibalism as an excellent idea … because we are not civilized.»

«Huh?»

«If we didn't have a taboo so strong that you believed it was instinct, I can think of a long list of people I wouldn't trust with my back turned, not with the price of beef what it is today. Eh?»

Duke grudged a grin. «I wouldn't take a chance on my ex-mother-in-law.»

«Or how about our charming neighbor on the south, who is so casual about other people's live stock during hunting season? Want to bet that you and I wouldn't wind up in his freezer? But Mike I trust — because Mike is civilized.»

«Huh?»