Aboard the grotesque1 mount again, he groaned2. To mask the misery3 of his unaccustomed pounding he paid scientific attention to the landscape, the gait of the camelopards, the leather of the saddles, and the posture4 and person of Takeko—this last by far the most effective of his analgesic5 thoughts.
They rode on an ancient piedmont, among the foothills of a worn-down mountain-range. The leather of their saddles and gambadoes was, by its pattern, obviously tanned camelopard-hide. Hartford was certain that this pattern would by the end of their journey be an indelible part of his own hide. The giraffu, remarkably6 swift and easy-moving over the rugged7, heavily grown terrain8, ambled9, moving both legs on the same side together. And Takeko was lovely.
Hartford decided10 to essay his Kansan. He practiced his question: "Is Yamamura far from here?" mentally, moving his lips, until he was sure he'd mastered the phrasing. Then he addressed Old Kiwa. "Yamamura wa koko kara toi desu ka?"
Kiwa smiled, and rattled11 off an answer much too brisk for Hartford to catch. He pointed12 ahead and up. "He says we must go through the pass, under the Great Buddha13," Takeko explained. "We have only an hour to go."
"Arigato," Hartford said, suppressing a moan. Another hour!
The pass Kiwa had spoken of loomed15 ahead. It was quite narrow, and walled on either side by the almost perpendicular16 flanks of mountains, shoulder to shoulder. Kiwa went first, for the cleft17 could only be negotiated in single file. Takeko followed her father, and Hartford took up the rear. In the ravine it was dark. The camelopards, sensing their mangers up ahead, paced more quickly. Suddenly the canyon18 was light, the walls spreading further apart here.
Far up on Hartford's right, seated on a shelf left from some ancient avalanche19, was a gigantic figure cast of a coppery metal, green now against the granite20 wall. "Who is that?" Hartford called to Takeko.
"It is our Daibutsu," Takeko said. "It is the Amida Buddha, the Lord of Boundless21 Light."
"Do you worship him?"
Takeko smiled and shook her head. "We worship not any man, but a Way," she said. "Butsudo—the Way of the Buddha. We are nearly to the village now, Lee-san."
"I thank the Lord Buddha for that," Hartford said, bowing from his saddle toward the great bronze image.
Yamamura nestled in a fold of the high mountains. The fields that supported the village, its population now doubled by the refugees from Kansannamura, were tucked here and there on narrow ledges22, watered by bamboo flumes that stole water from the mountain streams. The crop of greatest importance was the ubiquitous sunflower, supplier of bread and soap ash, of cloth and bath oil, birdseed and writing paper. Bamboo grew in clefts23 and shelves too slight for cultivation24. This was the wood for tools, the water pipe, the house wattles and, in its youth, the salad of the people, the only wood eaten in its native state. There were also carrots, beets25 and tiny plum-trees, and the horseradish, daikon. Yamamura was a lovely place, Hartford decided.
It was twenty hours from the moment of his contamination that Hartford dismounted. He moved into the house Kiwa invited him to with as much tenderness as though he'd been carefully bastinadoed and flayed26. He was, nonetheless, free of febrile symptoms. He had breathed Kansan air, had eaten its fish and drunk its water; he'd spoken with a Kansan native and had lain with his face in Kansan dust. He was still as healthy as any Axenite, never before in the saddle, would be after a five-hour ride.
Kiwa's wife and Takeko's mother was a little woman named Toyomi-san, dressed in brightly patterned garments a good deal more formal than her daughter's jacket and shorts. Toyomi-san spoke14 no Standard, but she made quite clear to Hartford his welcome. She led him into a large, steam-filled room, where she indicated he was first to wash himself then soak, then dry and dress in the clean clothing she'd laid out for his use.
The soaking water was very hot, and very welcome. Hartford sat in the copper-bottomed tub, his muscles hard and sore, until he felt the very marrow27 of his bones had cooked. He stepped from the tub then and dried gently, easy on his chafed28 back and legs.
"The oil will help," Takeko said, slipping a screen shut behind her. She had bathed and brushed her black hair free of the bamboo-thicket dust, and wore now a brilliant, silk kimono of the sort her mother was wearing.
Hartford held the towel at his waist.
"Excuse me," he said.
Takeko giggled29. "Are you unique, Lee-san, that you must hide yourself? Lie down on the cot, and I will make you comfortable."
Wondering greatly at the folkways of Kansas, but determined30 to commit no gaffe31 that would imperil his relations with this girl, Hartford lay face down on the mat-covered cot. Takeko removed the tenugi towel with which he'd modestly draped himself and gently stroked sweet-scented sunflower-seed oil into his macerated skin. Using the radical32 border of her hands, which were remarkably strong, Takeko coaxed33 the muscles to relax with effleurage; and she further softened34 the clonic hardness with a kneading motion. "This is," she said, working her thumb-knuckles up his spinal-column as though telling the beads35 of his vertebrae, "one of the good things my ancestors brought from earth."
"Yoroshiku soro," Hartford grunted36 agreement. "It is good."
Half an hour later, his skin soothed37 with oil and his muscles suppled38 by Takeko's massage39, Hartford joined the family for supper. The Kansans used paired sticks for eating. Hartford, who'd not yet been introduced to the skill of using these o-hashi, and who was too hungry to practice now, was given a metal spoon with which to eat.
When they'd finished their meal, several elder Kansans entered Kiwa-san's house. Each bowed to Hartford, who, bald-headed, his feet socked into unfamiliar40 geta and wearing mitten-toed stockings, bowed in return. The newcomers each spoke some Standard, but it was obvious that Takeko was the most fluent of them all. "Pia-san taught Renkei; Renkei taught me," the girl explained. "I was the second-best speaker. It would be better if Renkei were here."
"I regret his death more deeply than I can tell you," Hartford said. "Renkei and Pia my friend are both dead now. This is what Renkei told me: aru-majiki koto, a thing that ought not to be."
The Kansans, seated on the cushions about the room, nodded. "Do you know, Lee-san, the greatest law of life?" Takeko asked.
"You said, beside the stream where we fished, that men do not kill men," Hartford answered. "But they do."
"It is an ideal we have more nearly than the glass-heads," one of the Kansan elders said. "In the past four days, Renkei has died, and Pia-san. In the years before you Latecomers came to build the Stone House and cut roads and practice making holes in paper at a distance, no man died here at the hand of another."
"We cannot teach the glass-heads our way when they walk about only with guns, when they live in the Stone House none of us can enter without dying, when they look at us with glass bowls over their faces and hate in their hearts," Takeko said.
"The hate is hardly needful," Hartford said. "But the helmets must remain if Axenites are to live on Kansas."
"Do you live?" Takeko asked quietly.
"I do," Hartford said. "It puzzles me."
"Does it not puzzle you that none of us harbors open sores, or coughs up phlegm, or dies of fever?" Kiwa asked, speaking through his daughter's intermediation.
"I had not thought of that," Hartford admitted. "I have never before lived so close to Stinkers." Embarrassed, he stopped short. "I'm sorry," he said. "Shitsurei shimashita."
"You meant us no discourtesy," Takeko said. "Think, Lee, of the word you used. Do we indeed stink41?"
"No," Hartford said. "It's strange. I've been told all my life of the rot and fermentation within ordinary mammals, and of the evil smells elaborated by these processes. But you, and all of Kansas, stink no more than Axenites do. You have, as we, the mulberry odor of saliva42, the wheat smell of thiamin, the faint musk43 oil of the hair. Even your camelopards smell sweet."
The girl laughed. "If you think all Kansas a place of sweet perfumes, smell this, Lee-san," she said. She took a covered dish and opened it. "This is takuwan," she said. A smell strong as that of limburger cheese made itself known in the room. "It is pickled turnip44, made in the old manner of our island forefathers45 on Earth."
"Whew!" Hartford said. "There is the true Stinker of Kansas."
"Pia-san learned much from the bad-smelling takuwan," Takeko said. "His wife knew about the small stink-makers, these bacteria; she was a user of microscopes. She looked for them in the air of Kansas, and in our soil. Pia-san went even further. He took drops of our blood and other things to test."
"Tell our guest, Take-chan, what Pia found," Old Kiwa told his daughter.
"Hai, Otosan." The girl turned to Hartford. "In our bodies there are no mischief-makers of the sort Earth-people know. There are not even those juices Pia-san called 'footprints of the bugs46.'"
"He must have meant you have no bacterial47 antibodies," Hartford said. "That explains the whole package," he went on, with growing excitement. "Why I'm alive without my safety-suit. What Piacentelli went outside to find. And, when he found it, why he unsuited himself, knowing this world as pure as Titan. You're Axenites, you Kansans! You're as germ-free as the troopers."
"The whole truth is less simple," said the lean old man who'd been introduced to Hartford as Yamata, the calligrapher48.
"Does the rubble49 of your forest-floors never turn to mould, then?" Hartford asked. "Do the bodies of your buried fathers lie uncorrupted in their graves?"
"Of course not," Takeko said. "If that happened, we would be buried ourselves in unmouldered leaves. The bodies of our ancestors would be stacked about us, unchanging, like logs for the charcoal-burners. Our soil would die, and all men would die with it, if dead things did not crumble50 to make new soil."
"Show our friend the hero of our epic," the calligrapher told her.
"Hai." Takeko stood and went to another room, going through the ritual of kneeling to slide the door screen, standing51, kneeling, standing, with a grace that made the kimono she wore the loveliest of garments. She brought to the small table at the center of the room a heavy object wrapped in a yellow silk tenugui. Near this on the table she placed a small lamp, fueled with sunflower-seed oil. She lighted the lamp and uncovered the instrument she'd brought in.
It was the microscope Piacentelli had taken from the Barracks on his fatal expedition.
Takeko dipped a chopstick into a dish and placed it beneath the objective of the microscope. "We shall look at a spot of evil-smelling takuwan-juice," she said. "There is light enough. Make it fit your eyes, Lee-san; and you will know the secret of Jodo, this world you call Kansas."
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1
grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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2
groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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posture
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| n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势 | |
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analgesic
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| n.镇痛剂；adj.止痛的 | |
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remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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7
rugged
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| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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terrain
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| n.地面，地形，地图 | |
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ambled
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| v.（马）缓行( amble的过去式和过去分词 )；从容地走，漫步 | |
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10
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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Buddha
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| n.佛；佛像；佛陀 | |
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14
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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15
loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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16
perpendicular
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| adj.垂直的，直立的；n.垂直线，垂直的位置 | |
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17
cleft
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| n.裂缝；adj.裂开的 | |
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canyon
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| n.峡谷，溪谷 | |
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avalanche
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| n.雪崩，大量涌来 | |
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granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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ledges
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| n.（墙壁，悬崖等）突出的狭长部分( ledge的名词复数 )；（平窄的）壁架；横档；（尤指）窗台 | |
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23
clefts
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| n.裂缝( cleft的名词复数 )；裂口；cleave的过去式和过去分词；进退维谷 | |
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24
cultivation
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| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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beets
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| 甜菜( beet的名词复数 )； 甜菜根； （因愤怒、难堪或觉得热而）脸红 | |
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26
flayed
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| v.痛打( flay的过去式和过去分词 )；把…打得皮开肉绽；剥（通常指动物）的皮；严厉批评 | |
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27
marrow
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| n.骨髓；精华；活力 | |
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28
chafed
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| v.擦热（尤指皮肤）( chafe的过去式 )；擦痛；发怒；惹怒 | |
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29
giggled
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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31
gaffe
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| n.（社交上令人不快的）失言，失态 | |
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32
radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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33
coaxed
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| v.哄，用好话劝说( coax的过去式和过去分词 )；巧言骗取；哄劝，劝诱 | |
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34
softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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35
beads
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| n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链 | |
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36
grunted
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说 | |
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37
soothed
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| v.安慰( soothe的过去式和过去分词 )；抚慰；使舒服；减轻痛苦 | |
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38
suppled
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| 使柔软，使柔顺（supple的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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39
massage
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| n.按摩，揉；vt.按摩，揉，美化，奉承，篡改数据 | |
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40
unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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41
stink
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| vi.发出恶臭；糟透，招人厌恶；n.恶臭 | |
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42
saliva
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| n.唾液，口水 | |
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43
musk
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| n.麝香, 能发出麝香的各种各样的植物，香猫 | |
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44
turnip
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| n.萝卜，芜菁 | |
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45
forefathers
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| n.祖先，先人；祖先，祖宗( forefather的名词复数 )；列祖列宗；前人 | |
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46
bugs
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| adj.疯狂的，发疯的n.窃听器( bug的名词复数 )；病菌；虫子；[计算机]（制作软件程序所产生的意料不到的）错误 | |
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47
bacterial
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| a.细菌的 | |
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48
calligrapher
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| n.书法家 | |
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49
rubble
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| n.（一堆）碎石，瓦砾 | |
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50
crumble
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| vi.碎裂，崩溃；vt.弄碎，摧毁 | |
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51
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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