'I don't know.'
'You don't? Since his wife died in your quarters immediately subsequent to sexual intercourse with you, he holds you responsible for her death; you didn't know that? He attacked you once before, here in Centralville; you had forgotten that? Well, the point is, mat Selver's personal hatred for Captain Davidson may serve as a partial explanation or motivation for mis unprecedented assault. The Athsheans aren't incapable of personal violence, that's never been asserted in any of my studies of them. Adolescents who haven't mastered controlled dreaming or competitive singing do a lot of wrestling and fist-fighting, not all of it good-tempered. But Selver is an adult and an adept; and his first, personal attack on Captain Davidson, which I happened to witness pan of, was pretty certainly an attempt to kill. As was the Captain's retaliation, incidentally. At the time,
I thought that attack an isolated psychotic incident, resulting from grief and stress, not likely to be repeated. I was wrong.—Captain, when the four
58
Athsheans jumped you from ambush, as you describe in your report, did you end up prone on the ground?'
'Yes.'
'In what position?'
Davidson's calm face tensed and stiffened, and Lyubov felt a pang of compunction. He wanted to corner Davidson in his lies, to force him into speaking truth once, but not to humiliate him before others. Accusations of rape and murder supported Davidson's image of himself as the totally virile man, but now that image was endangered: Lyubov had called up a picture of him, the soldier, the fighter, the cool tough man, being knocked down by enemies the size of six-year-olds. . . . What did it cost Davidson, then, to recall that moment when he had lain looking up at the little green men, for once, not down at them?
'I was on my back.'
'Was your head thrown back, or turned aside?'
'I don't know.'
'I'm trying to establish a fact here, Captain, one that might help explain why Selver didn't kill you, although he had a grudge against you and had helped kill two hundred men a few hours earlier. I wondered if you might by chance have been in one of the positions which, when assumed by an Athshean, prevent his opponent from further physical aggression,'
'I don't know.'
59
Lyubov glanced round the conference table; all the faces showed curiosity and some tension. 1 'These aggression-halting gestures and positions may have some innate basis, may rise from a surviving trigger-response, but they are socially developed and expanded, and of course learned. The strongest and completes! of them is a prone position, on the back, eyes shut, head turned1 so the throat is fully exposed. I think an Athshean of the local cultures might find it impossible to hurt an enemy who took that position. He would have to do something else to release his anger or aggressive drive. When they had all got you down, Captain, did Selver by any chance sing?''
'Did he what?'
'Sing.'
'I don't know.'
Block. No go. Lyubov was about to shrug and give it up when the Cetian said, 'Why, Mr. Lyubov?'' The most winning characteristic of the rather harsh Cetian temperament was curiosity, inopportune and inexhausitible curiosity; Cetians died eagerly, curious as to what came next.
'You see,' Lyubov said, 'the Athsheans use a kind of ritualised singing to replace physical combat. Again it's a universal social phenomenon that might have a physiological foundation, though it's very hard to establish anything as 'innate* in human beings. However the higher primates here all go in for vocal competing between two males, a lot of howling and whistling; the dominant male may finally give the other a
60
cuff, but usually they just spend an hour or so trying to outbellow each other. The Athsheans themselves see the similarity to their singing-matches, which are also only between males; but as they observe, theirs are not only aggression-releases, but an art-form. The better artist wins. I wondered if Selver sang over Captain Davidson, and if so, whether he did because he could not kill, or because he preferred the bloodless victory. These questions have suddenly become rather urgent.'
'Dr. Lyubov,' said Lepennon, 'how effective are these aggression-channeling devices? Are they universal?'
'Among adults, yes. So my informants state, and all my observation supported them, until day before yesterday. Rape, violent assault, and murder virtually don't exist among them. There are accidents, of course. And there are psychotics. Not many of the latter.'
'What do they do with dangerous psychotics?'
'Isolate them. Literally. On small islands.'
'The Athsheans are carnivorous, they hunt animals?'
'Yes, meat is a staple.'
'Wonderful,' Lepennon said, and his white skin paled further with pure excitement. 'A human society with an effective war-barrier! What's the cost, Dr. Lyubov?'
'rmnotsure, Mr. Lepennon. Perhaps change. They're a static, stable, uniform society. TTiey 61
have no history. Perfectly integrated, and wholly unprogressive. You might say that like the forest they live in, they've attained a climax state. But I don't mean to imply that they're incapable, of adaptation.'
'Gentlemen, this is very interesting but in a somewhat specialist frame of reference, and it may be somewhat out of the context which we're attempting to clarify here—'
'No, excuse me, Colonel Dongh, this may be the point. Yes, Dr. Lyubov?'
'Well, I wonder if they're not proving their adaptability, now. By adapting their behavior to us. To the Earth Colony. For four years they've behaved to us as they do to one another. Despite the physical differences, they recognized us as members of their species, as men. However, we have not responded as members of their species should respond. We have ignored the responses, the rights and obligations of non-violence. We have killed, raped, dispersed, and enslaved the native humans, destroyed their communities, and cut down their forests. It wouldn'tbe surprising if they'd decided that we are not human.!'
'And therefore can be killed, like animals, yes yes,' said the Cetian, enjoying logic; but Lepen-non's face now was stiff as white stone. 'Enslaved?' he said.
'Captain Lyubov is expressing bis personal opinions and theories,' said Colonel Dongh, 'which I should state I consider possibly to be erroneous, and he and I have discussed this type 62
of thing previously, although the present context is unsuitable. We do not employ slaves, sir.
Some of the natives serve a useful role in our community. The Voluntary Autochthonous Labor Corps is a part of all but the temporary camps here. We have very limited personnel to accomplish our tasks here and we need workers and use all we can get, but on any kind of basis that could be called a slavery basis, certainly not.'
Lepennon was about to speak, but deferred to die Cetian, who said only, 'How many of each race?' Gosse replied: '2641 Terrans, now. Lyubov and I estimate the native hilf population very roughly at 3 million.'
'You should have considered these statistics, gentlemen, before you altered the native traditions!' said Or, with a disagreeable but perfectly .genuine laugh.
'We are adequately armed and equipped to resist any type of aggression these natives could offer,' said the Colonel. 'However there was a general consensus by both the first Exploratory Missions and our own research staff of specialists here headed by Captain Lyubov, giving us to understand mat the New Tahitians are a primitive, harmless, peace-loving species. Now this information was obviously erroneous—'
Or interrupted the Colonel. 'Obviously! You consider the human species to be primitive, harmless, and peace- loving, Colonel? No. But you knew that the hilfs of this planet are human? As
63
human as you or I or Lepennon—since we all came from the same, original, Hainish stock?*' 'That is the scientific theory, I am aware—' 'Colonel, it is the historic fact.' 'I am not forced to accept it as a fact,'* the'old Colonel said, getting hot, 'and I don't like opinions stuffed into my own mouth. The fact is that these creechies are a
