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+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #51499 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51499)
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-<pre>
-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blueblood, by Jim Harmon
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
-
-
-Title: Blueblood
-
-Author: Jim Harmon
-
-Release Date: March 19, 2016 [EBook #51499]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLUEBLOOD ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
-
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter">
- <img src="images/cover.jpg" width="397" height="500" alt=""/>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="titlepage">
-<h1>BLUEBLOOD</h1>
-
-<p>By JIM HARMON</p>
-
-<p>Illustrated by WOOD</p>
-
-<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br />
-Galaxy Magazine December 1960.<br />
-Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br />
-the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="figcenter">
- <img src="images/illus1.jpg" width="600" height="458" alt=""/>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p class="ph3"><i>There were two varieties of aliens&mdash;blue<br />
-and bluer&mdash;but not as blue as the Earthmen!</i></p>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p>Even if I'm only a space pilot, I'm not dumb. I mean I'm not <i>that</i>
-dumb. I admit that Dr. Ellik and Dr. Chon outrank me, because that's
-the way it's got to be. A pilot is only an expendable part. But I had
-been the first one to see the natives on this planet, and I was the
-first one to point out that they came in two attractive shades of blue,
-light blue and dark blue.</p>
-
-<p>Four Indigos were carrying an Azure. I called the others over to the
-screen.</p>
-
-<p>"A sedan chair," identified Lee Chon. "Think the light-skinned one is a
-kind of a priest?"</p>
-
-<p>Mike Ellik shook his head. "I doubt it. The chair isn't ornate enough.
-I think that's probably the standard method of travel&mdash;at least for a
-certain social elite."</p>
-
-<p>"Do you notice anything unusual about those bully boys?"</p>
-
-<p>"You tell me what you see," Ellik evaded.</p>
-
-<p>"Three of them are mongoloid idiots," said Chon.</p>
-
-<p>"I thought so," Ellik said, "but I wasn't quite sure&mdash;aliens and all."</p>
-
-<p>"They're humanoids," Chon said, "and humanoids are my specialty. I
-know."</p>
-
-<p>"The fourth one doesn't look much better."</p>
-
-<p>"His features are slack and his jaw is loose, all right, but they
-aren't <i>made</i> that way. It's an expression he could change. His head
-isn't shaped like that."</p>
-
-<p>"Um. The man in the chair is a striking specimen. No cerebral damage in
-him."</p>
-
-<p>"I don't think the answer is brain damage. If the 'noble' trusts those
-four to carry him, their actions and reflexes must be pretty well
-coordinated. They can't have anything like palsy or epilepsy."</p>
-
-<p>"They must breed a special type of slave for the job," Ellik suggested.</p>
-
-<p>"They aren't slaves, Mike," I told him.</p>
-
-<p>"No?" Ellik said, like talking to a kid. "And what are they, Mike?"</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>I breathed out hard, a little disgusted that big brains like Ellik and
-Chon couldn't see the translucent truth. "They are just four dumb slobs
-who can't get a better job, so they are hauling His Highness around
-because they have to make a living the hard way."</p>
-
-<p>"That doesn't quite cover it, Johnny," Chon said. "The carriers are a
-completely different race."</p>
-
-<p>"What's different about them?" I asked. "They've got hands to work
-with, eyes to see with, noses to smell with. If you kick one of them, I
-bet he'll hurt. It's just their bad luck to be dumb slobs."</p>
-
-<p>Ellik grunted. "Unfortunately, Johnny, there are subtler differences.
-The darker aliens, the indigo-colored ones, seem to be definitely down
-further on the scale of local evolution. They must be an inferior race
-to the lighter, azure species."</p>
-
-<p>Chon had been looking at us and listening to everything. Finally he
-said, "You can't be sure of that, Mike. You haven't seen all of the
-Indigos. Some of them may not be as far down as the common carriers."</p>
-
-<p>Ellik sighed. "Explorers have to make snap decisions on insufficient
-data. We don't have time to see the whole damned planet before we write
-up a report."</p>
-
-<p>"Yes, explorers have to make snap decisions," Chon repeated to himself.
-"Are you going to take a look at those buildings, see if it's a
-village?"</p>
-
-<p>"I thought I'd see if our blueblood friend out there wants to show it
-to me," said Mike Ellik.</p>
-
-<p>"He won't," I said.</p>
-
-<p>They both looked at me.</p>
-
-<p>"You don't have any chair and nobody to carry you," I went on. "He'll
-think you're just a slob."</p>
-
-<p>"Jonathan," Ellik said, "you show occasional flashes of genius."</p>
-
-<p>I smiled and shrugged it off. "I know I'm not nearly as smart as you
-boys. But that doesn't mean I can't think <i>at all</i>."</p>
-
-<p>Ellik clapped me on the shoulder. "Of course it doesn't."</p>
-
-<p>But his grip was too strong.</p>
-
-<p>"Johnny," Ellik said gravely, "do you think <i>you</i> could carry me?"</p>
-
-<p>"Wait a minute. You want me to act like one of those slobs? That's
-asking a lot."</p>
-
-<p>"But could you?"</p>
-
-<p>"Not all the way to those buildings. What was the gravity reading, Lee?"</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Chon closed his eyes a second. "Point nine seven three."</p>
-
-<p>"There!" I said. "I couldn't tote you three or four miles piggy-back."</p>
-
-<p>"Look," Chon said, "we can strip down a magnetic flyer and you can ride
-the seat, Mike. Johnny can pretend to carry you, like on a platter.
-It'll impress the yokels with the strength of our flunkies."</p>
-
-<p>"<i>Mike</i> could carry <i>me</i>," I pointed out.</p>
-
-<p>Chon laid a delicate hand on my back. "But, buddy, Mike outranks you."</p>
-
-<p>I shook my head. "Not that way, he doesn't."</p>
-
-<p>"We may be going to a lot of trouble for nothing," Mike said. "That
-gang may jump us as soon as we decant and try to have us for dinner."</p>
-
-<p>"There's always that risk," Chon agreed solemnly, "but naturally I will
-remain on duty at the controls of the stun cannon."</p>
-
-<p>"Securely inside," Ellik added.</p>
-
-<p>"Always on duty," Chon said.</p>
-
-<p>"Always inside," Ellik said.</p>
-
-<p>"It's in the records, Ellik. I took the last one." Lee said it a little
-too sharp and it cut the kidding.</p>
-
-<p>"Go soak your soft head in brine," Ellik said, disgruntled.</p>
-
-<p>"Wait a minute," Chon called.</p>
-
-<p>Ellik turned back. "Yeah?"</p>
-
-<p>"Don't forget to take your communicator with you." Chon's voice was
-choked. "You may get out of line of sight if you go off with that
-troupe."</p>
-
-<p>"I know this business," Ellik said, turning away.</p>
-
-<p>"Mike, I'm sorry if I offended you. Shake, huh?"</p>
-
-<p>Ellik smiled sourly. "Forget it."</p>
-
-<p>"Come on, shake."</p>
-
-<p>"Okay, we're buddies. Do I actually have to pump your clammy paw?"</p>
-
-<p>"Please!"</p>
-
-<p>"Oh, for Pete's sake!" Ellik turned around and kissed Chon on the
-forehead.</p>
-
-<p>Ellik was just sore, of course. But the manual warns against that sort
-of horseplay when you've been out a long time.</p>
-
-<p>"Satisfied now?" Ellik asked.</p>
-
-<p>"No." Chon's voice was strained tight. "It should have been me to kiss
-you." Chon turned to me. "Luck out there, Johnny."</p>
-
-<p>I grabbed his hand and levered it fast, before he could decide I needed
-kissing. "Sure thing, Lee. Thanks."</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The buildings weren't much to see, but they were a step above primitive
-huts. They were adobe, or maybe plastic. The aliens understood the
-stress principles of the dome, Ellik said, because all the buildings
-had curved roofs. Unbaked pottery was what they looked like to me,
-and they looked as if they would be brittle as coffee-colored chalk.
-Actually, their ceramic surfaces were at least as hard as steel.</p>
-
-<p>The Azure had welcomed Ellik with an outstretched hand. Mike wasn't one
-to jump to conclusions, so he just held out his own hand. The native
-grabbed and let it go after pulling it some.</p>
-
-<p>The alien saw me apparently carrying Ellik on a seat cushion with one
-hand, and he kicked me in the leg. To test my muscles, I guess. I
-managed to keep from yelling or jumping. The Azure looked impressed and
-the Indigos did a bad job of hiding a lot of envy and hate.</p>
-
-<p>As the Indigos toted their man along on the litter and I guided Ellik's
-seat cushion along the channel of magnetic feedback, the two riders
-began talking. Ellik's translator collar broke the language barrier,
-of course. It was a two-way communicator on a direct hook-up to our
-cybernetic calculator on the ship. The brain analyzed the phonetic
-structure of the alien language under various systems of logic or
-anti-logic and fed the translation into Ellik's ear. Then it went
-through its memory banks and played back the right sounds to translate
-Ellik's talk into the alien language. I understand things like that.
-I'm a pretty good mechanic.</p>
-
-<p>I didn't have my translator turned on, but it seemed to me that somehow
-I could understand what the plug-uglies, the Indigos, were saying.</p>
-
-<p>Ellik told me that it was because all their speech was based on the
-one universal humanoid sound, "mama." Everything good in the way of
-nouns and verbs (there were no other particles of speech) was some
-inflection of "m-m" and everything bad was "uh-m-m."</p>
-
-<p>Ellik was pretty "uh-m-m."</p>
-
-<p>I was <i>plenty</i> "uh-m-m." I threatened their jobs, they thought.</p>
-
-<p>They were a real miserable bunch of slobs, those Indigos.</p>
-
-<p>We passed through the wide places between the houses&mdash;I wouldn't call
-them streets&mdash;and saw a lot of Indigos crouched in doorways, watching
-us, and Azures being toted around.</p>
-
-<p>The clothing they wore was also pretty universal for sentient bipeds&mdash;a
-tunic or sarong, kind of. For the Azures, it was smooth and colorful;
-and for the Indigos, a loincloth of some rough, dun-colored stuff.</p>
-
-<p>Ellik chinned off his translator switch and leaned down toward my ear.
-"They are two distinct races, Johnny. Notice that <i>all</i> the Indigos
-are menials. There does not appear to be anything to correspond to a
-freedman or even a higher-ranked house servant. The Azures treat the
-Indigos only as animals."</p>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="figcenter">
- <img src="images/illus2.jpg" width="357" height="500" alt=""/>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p>"Slobs," I said. "Poor dumb slobs."</p>
-
-<p>The nuclear flash washed over us, peppering us with a few excess
-roentgens.</p>
-
-<p>We couldn't look at the spaceship going up, but we knew it was going.
-It was making a dawn.</p>
-
-<p>The aliens were all frightened. They fell on the ground and started
-praying to the ship, all of them, the Azures and the Indigos.</p>
-
-<p>"What's wrong with that crazy Chinaman?" Ellik yelped.</p>
-
-<p>"Lee knows what he's doing," I said.</p>
-
-<p>Ellik unsnapped his communicator from his belt. "Johnny says you know
-what you're doing, Chon. <i>Do you?</i>"</p>
-
-<p>"I know." Chon's voice sounded right beside us, perfectly natural. Belt
-communicators work just as well as those consoles. People only buy
-consoles for prestige.</p>
-
-<p>"Well?" Ellik demanded. "What <i>are</i> you doing, Lee?"</p>
-
-<p>I thought maybe something had gone wrong with the communicator.</p>
-
-<p>Chon's voice finally reached us.</p>
-
-<p>"I'm leaving you and Johnny on this planet, Mike," he said.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>An Indigo brought us in our morning supply of fruit.</p>
-
-<p>Ellik kicked the Indigo. "It's overripe, blockhead. <i>Amum, amum.</i>"</p>
-
-<p>The Indigo backed out, bowing, eyes very round.</p>
-
-<p>Ellik felt me looking at him.</p>
-
-<p>"Well, I don't <i>like</i> kicking the oaf, but that's all he's been
-conditioned to understand as a sign of disapproval."</p>
-
-<p>"Sure," I said.</p>
-
-<p>Ellik passed through the scimitar of gray shadow into the sunlight that
-washed lines and years out of his face. He braced a hand against the
-doorframe and craned his head back. It stopped and steadied.</p>
-
-<p>"He's still there," Ellik said. "Sometimes I wish his orbit would decay
-enough to burn him up in this damned sour air." He coughed into his
-fist.</p>
-
-<p>"He could probably correct," I suggested.</p>
-
-<p>Ellik sneered. "He hasn't got the brains."</p>
-
-<p>"Pretty hard for one man to manage a takeoff. He was lucky to make it
-into orbit."</p>
-
-<p>"I just wish he would come down. Somehow, someway, I'd get to him, no
-matter where he went on this planet."</p>
-
-<p>"I suppose that's why he stays up."</p>
-
-<p>Ellik slammed his fist into his palm. "I'm going to call him again. He
-can't get away without us. If he fouled up a takeoff that badly, he's
-not going to try to solo into hyperspace."</p>
-
-<p>"I don't think anyone would solo into hyperspace. I don't think he
-would be able to come back."</p>
-
-<p>"Oh, what do you know about it?" Ellik said shortly. "He's just
-building up his courage to try the big jump. He's yellow, sure, but
-sooner or later he'll get desperate enough, or scared enough, to
-actually go. Then we'll be stranded for fair. This planet may not be
-colonized for centuries!"</p>
-
-<p>"Probably never," I said. "Not after Lee's reports."</p>
-
-<p>"You think he would falsify reports?" Ellik asked, blinking at me.</p>
-
-<p>"I suppose he'll have to."</p>
-
-<p>Ellik held his head with his hands. "Of course, of course. There's no
-limit to the depths to which he would plummet." He ran over to the
-corner and snatched a communicator off the pile of our gear. "I'm going
-to call him and tell him what I think of him and his wild obsession."</p>
-
-<p>I didn't remind Ellik that he had been telling Chon just that at least
-once a day for a month. I knew his nerves got tighter and tighter and
-cussing out Chon helped release them and make him feel better.</p>
-
-<p>"Come down, Lee!" Ellik called. "The three of us can make the jump
-together. You're martyring yourself for a crazy reason!"</p>
-
-<p>"We've talked this over before," Chon answered. "This is the last time
-I'm going to respond to your call. I've made it clear to you that I
-think knowledge of this world will cause great suffering, a lot of
-death, among the majority of Earth's people."</p>
-
-<p>"You're talking prejudice, Lee! <i>Your</i> prejudice. People aren't like
-that any more."</p>
-
-<p>"We haven't gone <i>that</i> far, Mike. The bigots, the hatemongers, the
-pettiness and xenophobia lurking in everybody haven't been asleep
-that long. Just look at it from <i>my</i> side, Mike. What will the white
-people of Earth think about the Orientals, Negroes and Indians of
-Earth when they find out the dark-skinned humanoids of another
-planet are&mdash;measurably, unquestionably, vastly&mdash;<i>inferior</i> to the
-light-skinned race of the same world? I ask you, Mike!"</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Mike Ellik said, "It's an inept analogy, Lee, and you know it."</p>
-
-<p>"But most people reason by analogy," said Lee Chon. "No, Mike. I have
-to leave you and Johnny to prevent a recurrence of racial hatred,
-intolerance and all the ugly consequences on both sides. This is the
-last time I'll answer you, Mike. I'm getting lonesome. In a few years,
-I'll get hungry for human companionship. I don't want to be tempted
-down. Good-by, Johnny. So long, Mike."</p>
-
-<p>Ellik screamed. "Wait! Answer one more call, Lee. It's the least you
-can do for me. I don't know when I'll make it. It may be in a few weeks
-or a few years. It won't be just argument, Lee. I'll have something
-you'll <i>want</i> to tell Earth about this place and these people."</p>
-
-<p>"I'm still here. Tell it to me now," Chon's voice said.</p>
-
-<p>"No. I want to get proof. Let me rig up some kind of video circuit for
-you. I can use parts out of our tape camera and the translators. I want
-to get it all across to you."</p>
-
-<p>I could hear Chon breathing. "Very well. I'll answer your next call."</p>
-
-<p>"Lee," I called out, "Mike and me will be expecting you to answer."</p>
-
-<p>Chon laughed. "I'm not going anywhere, Johnny. Only around this world
-every couple of hours."</p>
-
-<p>"You couldn't make the jump through hyperspace without us, Lee," Ellik
-said.</p>
-
-<p>"That's right, Mike. I'm&mdash;I'm sorry to quarantine you two down there."</p>
-
-<p>"<i>Quarantine!</i>" Ellik stormed. "<i>We're</i> not sick, Lee. <i>You</i> are the
-sick one!"</p>
-
-<p>There wasn't any sound, not even of breathing.</p>
-
-<p>"You have an idea to change Lee's mind, Mike?" I asked.</p>
-
-<p>He cupped his hand on the back of my neck. "Affirmative, Jonathan. A
-pretty damned good one, too."</p>
-
-<p>Ellik stood staring out the door, gnawing on one of his knuckles,
-letting the sun turn the front of him into gold, so he looked like half
-a statue, and half a man.</p>
-
-<p>"I suppose it had to come out in him sooner or later," he said.</p>
-
-<p>"What, Mike?"</p>
-
-<p>"What could we expect? It's the basic quality of treachery in the
-Oriental mind."</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>When the shadows were at their longest and the alien sun was down the
-closest to the horizon without actually going under, Ellik marched up
-the path shoving a new Indigo. The Azures supplied Mike with all the
-flunkies he wanted to gather food and the like for him, as his natural
-right. But I thought we had enough of them hanging around our quarters.
-I couldn't imagine what he would want with another one.</p>
-
-<p>The alien hovered at the door. Ellik kicked him in the calf to make him
-understand he was to go inside.</p>
-
-<p>"Look at him, Johnny," Ellik said, pushing the fellow forward. "Not a
-mongoloid, would you say?"</p>
-
-<p>"No."</p>
-
-<p>The alien looked stupid&mdash;blue and stupid. His face was hanging there,
-but it wasn't pushed out of shape any more than the faces of the
-Azures. The Indigo blinked back at me. What he also looked was not
-friendly.</p>
-
-<p>Ellik took the Indigo's cheeks in his hand and angled the face toward
-the light. "He's a half-breed, Johnny, or otherwise the gene was
-recessive. He wasn't damaged before birth, only after&mdash;when he started
-to breathe."</p>
-
-<p>"What do you mean, Mike?"</p>
-
-<p>"You ever hear of cyanosis, Johnny?"</p>
-
-<p>"No."</p>
-
-<p>"Well, these creatures have something like it. The Indigos don't get
-enough oxygen in their blood cells. It makes them sluggish; it turns
-them blue like the pictures of 'blue babies' in the old books."</p>
-
-<p>"I never saw a picture like that in an old book," I said.</p>
-
-<p>"Did you ever <i>see</i> a book? Sorry, Johnny. Just kidding." Ellik
-rubbed his hands together. "Well! I theorized that there is no basic
-difference in the Azures and the Indigos except improper aeration of
-their blood. So, you see, an Indigo is only a <i>sick</i> Azure, and I am
-going to make this Indigo <i>well</i>."</p>
-
-<p>"How can you do that?"</p>
-
-<p>"It's simple," Mike said irritably. "The Indigos must have a
-malformation of the heart causing an abnormal communication between
-the venous and arterial side of the circulation system. A little
-surgery and I adjust a valve in the heart. No more communication.
-Proper aeration. Enough oxygen. The deep blue color goes, leaving only
-the lighter blue of the natural pigmentation. The patient feels better,
-acts better, thinks better, looks better. In short, he is no longer an
-Indigo but an Azure."</p>
-
-<p>"Is&mdash;is this what you're going to show Lee?" I ventured.</p>
-
-<p>"Of course! It proves the Indigos <i>aren't</i> an inferior race. They are
-the same as the Azures except that they are sick. Their being sick
-can't reflect unfavourably on any terrestrial colored race. There is no
-analogy. But I have to prove it to Chon. We're going to tape the whole
-process and feed it to him."</p>
-
-<p>"I think," I said, "that that might get to him."</p>
-
-<p>"Sure it will." Ellik's jaw muscles flexed. "I should ruin Lee with
-this thing, but I won't. I'm not a vindictive man. Lee and I will
-probably be working together for years. But whenever he gets out of
-line&mdash;has some stubborn idea about doing something his way&mdash;don't think
-I won't remind him of this!"</p>
-
-<p>Suddenly, he was smiling again. He turned to the gawking Indigo. He
-pointed two fingers at him.</p>
-
-<p>"<i>Mmr?</i>" Ellik asked.</p>
-
-<p>The alien tapped himself on his chest cavity twice. "<i>Mhaw</i>," he gave
-his name.</p>
-
-<p>"<i>Mhaw M'i uh M'i m M'm'-uh?</i>" Ellik asked him, without even using the
-translators.</p>
-
-<p>"<i>M-m-M-m-M</i>," the alien went, slapping himself on the chest with his
-opened palms.</p>
-
-<p>Ellik turned to me, grinning. "I asked him if he wanted to stop being
-an Indigo and become an Azure. He thinks I can do anything and he's all
-for it."</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>After we fed Mhaw a dose of null-shock from our packs, Doc Ellik
-started to slice him open with a ceramic knife he had borrowed from the
-Azures.</p>
-
-<p>But Ellik had forgotten that the alien might get frightened seeing
-himself cut open, even if he couldn't feel any pain. It had never
-happened to him before.</p>
-
-<p>The alien lumbered to his feet, his chest hanging open, showing his
-heart beating like some animal caught inside a blueberry pudding.</p>
-
-<p>I drove a right cross into his jaw, and felt the jar all the way up to
-my shoulder.</p>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="figcenter">
- <img src="images/illus3.jpg" width="355" height="500" alt=""/>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p>He melted back down onto the pallet.</p>
-
-<p>"Good work, Johnny," Ellik said, stooping and starting his work.</p>
-
-<p>Right away, Mhaw started to lose that Indigo color and get real
-light&mdash;lighter than the Azures, in fact. None of the blue of the race
-was actually in the pigmentation, Mike found out. Even the Azures
-suffered some degree of improper aeration of the blood.</p>
-
-<p>"You going to call Lee Chon now?" I asked Mike. "You going to show him
-the tape we had running during the operation and all?"</p>
-
-<p>"Not quite yet, Johnny," he said. "First I want to educate Mhaw a bit,
-up to the Azure level or better. That should convince Lee."</p>
-
-<p>Mhaw learned fast, probably faster than the Azures, even. Almost the
-first thing he wanted was for us to stop calling him Mhaw and start
-using an Azure name, Aedo.</p>
-
-<p>Once a day, Ellik left our hut to take some exercise&mdash;a walk along
-the alien esplanade, he called it. I used to stay with the doctored
-alien, now Aedo, but we finally learned we could trust him to follow
-our orders&mdash;which were to stay inside, away from the others, since we
-didn't know how they would take him. So I got to walking along with
-Ellik.</p>
-
-<p>As dusk lengthened, we could see the spark that was our ship in its
-orbit along the retreating horizon.</p>
-
-<p>Ellik twisted back his head and the side of his mouth. "Look at him up
-there&mdash;<i>look!</i>"</p>
-
-<p>The spark burned brighter and danced in another direction.</p>
-
-<p>"He's gone! He left us!" Ellik said.</p>
-
-<p>"It's okay. He's still there. Just corrected the orbit a little, I
-guess."</p>
-
-<p>"No, no, no," Ellik said. "He started to make another try. But he got
-afraid to try to go into hyperspace alone."</p>
-
-<p>"He was just correcting for orbital decay."</p>
-
-<p>"You don't understand, Johnny. He's a coward. That makes him dangerous.
-He's getting desperate. That desperation will burst the dam of his own
-weakness and wash away our hope, <i>our lives</i>."</p>
-
-<p>His voice hushed. He stood staring starkly ahead, his palms
-outstretched at his sides.</p>
-
-<p>"Maybe he isn't <i>that</i> cowardly," I said hopefully.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>"Finished," Ellik announced. He meant he had finished editing the tape
-showing the operation on the alien and his recovery from his blue
-disease, from being an Indigo to better than an Azure.</p>
-
-<p>"The transmitter is finished too," I said.</p>
-
-<p>Ellik had suggested a way of switching the tape camera to a video
-converter for one of the audio communicators, and I had been able to
-do it easy. It took parts from both our communicators and translators
-too.</p>
-
-<p>Ellik fitted the coiled snake of tape into place. "This will be a great
-day for your people, Aedo. After our friend from heaven lands, we will
-be able to teach you a way to cure all of your sick, to make all the
-Indigos like you."</p>
-
-<p>"Like me? Make like me?" Aedo said in the pidgin terrestrial that Mike
-Ellik had taught him.</p>
-
-<p>"Yes. We'll show them how we cured you and how all can be cured."</p>
-
-<p>"You make show fellow like me? Make tell make that fellow like fellow
-like me?"</p>
-
-<p>"Everything's ready, Mike," I called.</p>
-
-<p>"That's right, Aedo," Mike said. "You'll show your people the way to
-equality."</p>
-
-<p>"Make all fellow like this fellow?" Aedo asked.</p>
-
-<p>"Shall I call in Lee?" I asked Mike.</p>
-
-<p>"Yes, that's right, Aedo. Just right."</p>
-
-<p>"No," Aedo said.</p>
-
-<p>The alien stomped the tape camera and the communicator to bits before I
-could get a hammerlock on him.</p>
-
-<p>Ellik just stared at the complete wreck of our only means of
-communication with the spaceship.</p>
-
-<p>"I be much man now. I much smart. Much smart than Azure hicks and
-Indigo slobs. I much smart all. I much man! Not to be all same now.
-<i>No.</i>" The snarl hung on in Aedo's throat.</p>
-
-<p>Ellik lifted his head and sort of smiled. But not quite.</p>
-
-<p>"Well," he said slowly and sadly, "what could you expect in the way of
-gratitude from a dirty alien?"</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The Azures did accept Aedo all right. They seem to think he must have
-come from some other tribe. They don't associate him with the Indigo
-that disappeared. No Indigo ever became an Azure before.</p>
-
-<p>Of course, Azures sometimes become Indigos, we found out.</p>
-
-<p>It seems there's a virus of what Ellik called pseudo-cyanosis in the
-air. The Azures have become a pretty resistant breed to it, while the
-Indigos are all easy victims. But once in a while an Azure will come
-down with it and turn Indigo.</p>
-
-<p>Mike Ellik caught it too.</p>
-
-<p>It happened pretty fast. By the time we realized what it was, he was
-already too stupid to finish the operation he started on himself. I had
-to sew him up, not very neatly.</p>
-
-<p>Ellik is treated pretty much like the rest of the Indigos. So am I. He
-takes it all pretty calm. He can still talk a little Earth. Whenever
-anybody kicks him, Ellik just mutters something about, "What can fellow
-expect bunch lousy creeps like those fellow?"</p>
-
-<p>I guess I'll get it too. I think I am getting it.</p>
-
-<p>It won't be so bad for me. Just like maybe going around drunk all the
-time, not being able to think or coordinate very well.</p>
-
-<p>It will be kind of bad being a member of an inferior race, but the
-thing I'll hate about it the most isn't that, or even leaving old Lee
-up there, circling around and waiting for our call forever.</p>
-
-<p>No, the thing I hate is having it happen <i>now</i>, just when I'm beginning
-to <i>learn</i> something.</p>
-
-<p>I'm not dead sure I know just exactly what I learned, but I think maybe
-I do:</p>
-
-<p>You get just what you damned well expected all along from a bunch of
-blue-blooded mongrels!</p>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blueblood, by Jim Harmon
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
-
-
-Title: Blueblood
-
-Author: Jim Harmon
-
-Release Date: March 19, 2016 [EBook #51499]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLUEBLOOD ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- BLUEBLOOD
-
- By JIM HARMON
-
- Illustrated by WOOD
-
- [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
- Galaxy Magazine December 1960.
- Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
- the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
-
-
-
-
- There were two varieties of aliens--blue
- and bluer--but not as blue as the Earthmen!
-
-
-Even if I'm only a space pilot, I'm not dumb. I mean I'm not _that_
-dumb. I admit that Dr. Ellik and Dr. Chon outrank me, because that's
-the way it's got to be. A pilot is only an expendable part. But I had
-been the first one to see the natives on this planet, and I was the
-first one to point out that they came in two attractive shades of blue,
-light blue and dark blue.
-
-Four Indigos were carrying an Azure. I called the others over to the
-screen.
-
-"A sedan chair," identified Lee Chon. "Think the light-skinned one is a
-kind of a priest?"
-
-Mike Ellik shook his head. "I doubt it. The chair isn't ornate enough.
-I think that's probably the standard method of travel--at least for a
-certain social elite."
-
-"Do you notice anything unusual about those bully boys?"
-
-"You tell me what you see," Ellik evaded.
-
-"Three of them are mongoloid idiots," said Chon.
-
-"I thought so," Ellik said, "but I wasn't quite sure--aliens and all."
-
-"They're humanoids," Chon said, "and humanoids are my specialty. I
-know."
-
-"The fourth one doesn't look much better."
-
-"His features are slack and his jaw is loose, all right, but they
-aren't _made_ that way. It's an expression he could change. His head
-isn't shaped like that."
-
-"Um. The man in the chair is a striking specimen. No cerebral damage in
-him."
-
-"I don't think the answer is brain damage. If the 'noble' trusts those
-four to carry him, their actions and reflexes must be pretty well
-coordinated. They can't have anything like palsy or epilepsy."
-
-"They must breed a special type of slave for the job," Ellik suggested.
-
-"They aren't slaves, Mike," I told him.
-
-"No?" Ellik said, like talking to a kid. "And what are they, Mike?"
-
- * * * * *
-
-I breathed out hard, a little disgusted that big brains like Ellik and
-Chon couldn't see the translucent truth. "They are just four dumb slobs
-who can't get a better job, so they are hauling His Highness around
-because they have to make a living the hard way."
-
-"That doesn't quite cover it, Johnny," Chon said. "The carriers are a
-completely different race."
-
-"What's different about them?" I asked. "They've got hands to work
-with, eyes to see with, noses to smell with. If you kick one of them, I
-bet he'll hurt. It's just their bad luck to be dumb slobs."
-
-Ellik grunted. "Unfortunately, Johnny, there are subtler differences.
-The darker aliens, the indigo-colored ones, seem to be definitely down
-further on the scale of local evolution. They must be an inferior race
-to the lighter, azure species."
-
-Chon had been looking at us and listening to everything. Finally he
-said, "You can't be sure of that, Mike. You haven't seen all of the
-Indigos. Some of them may not be as far down as the common carriers."
-
-Ellik sighed. "Explorers have to make snap decisions on insufficient
-data. We don't have time to see the whole damned planet before we write
-up a report."
-
-"Yes, explorers have to make snap decisions," Chon repeated to himself.
-"Are you going to take a look at those buildings, see if it's a
-village?"
-
-"I thought I'd see if our blueblood friend out there wants to show it
-to me," said Mike Ellik.
-
-"He won't," I said.
-
-They both looked at me.
-
-"You don't have any chair and nobody to carry you," I went on. "He'll
-think you're just a slob."
-
-"Jonathan," Ellik said, "you show occasional flashes of genius."
-
-I smiled and shrugged it off. "I know I'm not nearly as smart as you
-boys. But that doesn't mean I can't think _at all_."
-
-Ellik clapped me on the shoulder. "Of course it doesn't."
-
-But his grip was too strong.
-
-"Johnny," Ellik said gravely, "do you think _you_ could carry me?"
-
-"Wait a minute. You want me to act like one of those slobs? That's
-asking a lot."
-
-"But could you?"
-
-"Not all the way to those buildings. What was the gravity reading, Lee?"
-
- * * * * *
-
-Chon closed his eyes a second. "Point nine seven three."
-
-"There!" I said. "I couldn't tote you three or four miles piggy-back."
-
-"Look," Chon said, "we can strip down a magnetic flyer and you can ride
-the seat, Mike. Johnny can pretend to carry you, like on a platter.
-It'll impress the yokels with the strength of our flunkies."
-
-"_Mike_ could carry _me_," I pointed out.
-
-Chon laid a delicate hand on my back. "But, buddy, Mike outranks you."
-
-I shook my head. "Not that way, he doesn't."
-
-"We may be going to a lot of trouble for nothing," Mike said. "That
-gang may jump us as soon as we decant and try to have us for dinner."
-
-"There's always that risk," Chon agreed solemnly, "but naturally I will
-remain on duty at the controls of the stun cannon."
-
-"Securely inside," Ellik added.
-
-"Always on duty," Chon said.
-
-"Always inside," Ellik said.
-
-"It's in the records, Ellik. I took the last one." Lee said it a little
-too sharp and it cut the kidding.
-
-"Go soak your soft head in brine," Ellik said, disgruntled.
-
-"Wait a minute," Chon called.
-
-Ellik turned back. "Yeah?"
-
-"Don't forget to take your communicator with you." Chon's voice was
-choked. "You may get out of line of sight if you go off with that
-troupe."
-
-"I know this business," Ellik said, turning away.
-
-"Mike, I'm sorry if I offended you. Shake, huh?"
-
-Ellik smiled sourly. "Forget it."
-
-"Come on, shake."
-
-"Okay, we're buddies. Do I actually have to pump your clammy paw?"
-
-"Please!"
-
-"Oh, for Pete's sake!" Ellik turned around and kissed Chon on the
-forehead.
-
-Ellik was just sore, of course. But the manual warns against that sort
-of horseplay when you've been out a long time.
-
-"Satisfied now?" Ellik asked.
-
-"No." Chon's voice was strained tight. "It should have been me to kiss
-you." Chon turned to me. "Luck out there, Johnny."
-
-I grabbed his hand and levered it fast, before he could decide I needed
-kissing. "Sure thing, Lee. Thanks."
-
- * * * * *
-
-The buildings weren't much to see, but they were a step above primitive
-huts. They were adobe, or maybe plastic. The aliens understood the
-stress principles of the dome, Ellik said, because all the buildings
-had curved roofs. Unbaked pottery was what they looked like to me,
-and they looked as if they would be brittle as coffee-colored chalk.
-Actually, their ceramic surfaces were at least as hard as steel.
-
-The Azure had welcomed Ellik with an outstretched hand. Mike wasn't one
-to jump to conclusions, so he just held out his own hand. The native
-grabbed and let it go after pulling it some.
-
-The alien saw me apparently carrying Ellik on a seat cushion with one
-hand, and he kicked me in the leg. To test my muscles, I guess. I
-managed to keep from yelling or jumping. The Azure looked impressed and
-the Indigos did a bad job of hiding a lot of envy and hate.
-
-As the Indigos toted their man along on the litter and I guided Ellik's
-seat cushion along the channel of magnetic feedback, the two riders
-began talking. Ellik's translator collar broke the language barrier,
-of course. It was a two-way communicator on a direct hook-up to our
-cybernetic calculator on the ship. The brain analyzed the phonetic
-structure of the alien language under various systems of logic or
-anti-logic and fed the translation into Ellik's ear. Then it went
-through its memory banks and played back the right sounds to translate
-Ellik's talk into the alien language. I understand things like that.
-I'm a pretty good mechanic.
-
-I didn't have my translator turned on, but it seemed to me that somehow
-I could understand what the plug-uglies, the Indigos, were saying.
-
-Ellik told me that it was because all their speech was based on the
-one universal humanoid sound, "mama." Everything good in the way of
-nouns and verbs (there were no other particles of speech) was some
-inflection of "m-m" and everything bad was "uh-m-m."
-
-Ellik was pretty "uh-m-m."
-
-I was _plenty_ "uh-m-m." I threatened their jobs, they thought.
-
-They were a real miserable bunch of slobs, those Indigos.
-
-We passed through the wide places between the houses--I wouldn't call
-them streets--and saw a lot of Indigos crouched in doorways, watching
-us, and Azures being toted around.
-
-The clothing they wore was also pretty universal for sentient bipeds--a
-tunic or sarong, kind of. For the Azures, it was smooth and colorful;
-and for the Indigos, a loincloth of some rough, dun-colored stuff.
-
-Ellik chinned off his translator switch and leaned down toward my ear.
-"They are two distinct races, Johnny. Notice that _all_ the Indigos
-are menials. There does not appear to be anything to correspond to a
-freedman or even a higher-ranked house servant. The Azures treat the
-Indigos only as animals."
-
-"Slobs," I said. "Poor dumb slobs."
-
-The nuclear flash washed over us, peppering us with a few excess
-roentgens.
-
-We couldn't look at the spaceship going up, but we knew it was going.
-It was making a dawn.
-
-The aliens were all frightened. They fell on the ground and started
-praying to the ship, all of them, the Azures and the Indigos.
-
-"What's wrong with that crazy Chinaman?" Ellik yelped.
-
-"Lee knows what he's doing," I said.
-
-Ellik unsnapped his communicator from his belt. "Johnny says you know
-what you're doing, Chon. _Do you?_"
-
-"I know." Chon's voice sounded right beside us, perfectly natural. Belt
-communicators work just as well as those consoles. People only buy
-consoles for prestige.
-
-"Well?" Ellik demanded. "What _are_ you doing, Lee?"
-
-I thought maybe something had gone wrong with the communicator.
-
-Chon's voice finally reached us.
-
-"I'm leaving you and Johnny on this planet, Mike," he said.
-
- * * * * *
-
-An Indigo brought us in our morning supply of fruit.
-
-Ellik kicked the Indigo. "It's overripe, blockhead. _Amum, amum._"
-
-The Indigo backed out, bowing, eyes very round.
-
-Ellik felt me looking at him.
-
-"Well, I don't _like_ kicking the oaf, but that's all he's been
-conditioned to understand as a sign of disapproval."
-
-"Sure," I said.
-
-Ellik passed through the scimitar of gray shadow into the sunlight that
-washed lines and years out of his face. He braced a hand against the
-doorframe and craned his head back. It stopped and steadied.
-
-"He's still there," Ellik said. "Sometimes I wish his orbit would decay
-enough to burn him up in this damned sour air." He coughed into his
-fist.
-
-"He could probably correct," I suggested.
-
-Ellik sneered. "He hasn't got the brains."
-
-"Pretty hard for one man to manage a takeoff. He was lucky to make it
-into orbit."
-
-"I just wish he would come down. Somehow, someway, I'd get to him, no
-matter where he went on this planet."
-
-"I suppose that's why he stays up."
-
-Ellik slammed his fist into his palm. "I'm going to call him again. He
-can't get away without us. If he fouled up a takeoff that badly, he's
-not going to try to solo into hyperspace."
-
-"I don't think anyone would solo into hyperspace. I don't think he
-would be able to come back."
-
-"Oh, what do you know about it?" Ellik said shortly. "He's just
-building up his courage to try the big jump. He's yellow, sure, but
-sooner or later he'll get desperate enough, or scared enough, to
-actually go. Then we'll be stranded for fair. This planet may not be
-colonized for centuries!"
-
-"Probably never," I said. "Not after Lee's reports."
-
-"You think he would falsify reports?" Ellik asked, blinking at me.
-
-"I suppose he'll have to."
-
-Ellik held his head with his hands. "Of course, of course. There's no
-limit to the depths to which he would plummet." He ran over to the
-corner and snatched a communicator off the pile of our gear. "I'm going
-to call him and tell him what I think of him and his wild obsession."
-
-I didn't remind Ellik that he had been telling Chon just that at least
-once a day for a month. I knew his nerves got tighter and tighter and
-cussing out Chon helped release them and make him feel better.
-
-"Come down, Lee!" Ellik called. "The three of us can make the jump
-together. You're martyring yourself for a crazy reason!"
-
-"We've talked this over before," Chon answered. "This is the last time
-I'm going to respond to your call. I've made it clear to you that I
-think knowledge of this world will cause great suffering, a lot of
-death, among the majority of Earth's people."
-
-"You're talking prejudice, Lee! _Your_ prejudice. People aren't like
-that any more."
-
-"We haven't gone _that_ far, Mike. The bigots, the hatemongers, the
-pettiness and xenophobia lurking in everybody haven't been asleep
-that long. Just look at it from _my_ side, Mike. What will the white
-people of Earth think about the Orientals, Negroes and Indians of
-Earth when they find out the dark-skinned humanoids of another
-planet are--measurably, unquestionably, vastly--_inferior_ to the
-light-skinned race of the same world? I ask you, Mike!"
-
- * * * * *
-
-Mike Ellik said, "It's an inept analogy, Lee, and you know it."
-
-"But most people reason by analogy," said Lee Chon. "No, Mike. I have
-to leave you and Johnny to prevent a recurrence of racial hatred,
-intolerance and all the ugly consequences on both sides. This is the
-last time I'll answer you, Mike. I'm getting lonesome. In a few years,
-I'll get hungry for human companionship. I don't want to be tempted
-down. Good-by, Johnny. So long, Mike."
-
-Ellik screamed. "Wait! Answer one more call, Lee. It's the least you
-can do for me. I don't know when I'll make it. It may be in a few weeks
-or a few years. It won't be just argument, Lee. I'll have something
-you'll _want_ to tell Earth about this place and these people."
-
-"I'm still here. Tell it to me now," Chon's voice said.
-
-"No. I want to get proof. Let me rig up some kind of video circuit for
-you. I can use parts out of our tape camera and the translators. I want
-to get it all across to you."
-
-I could hear Chon breathing. "Very well. I'll answer your next call."
-
-"Lee," I called out, "Mike and me will be expecting you to answer."
-
-Chon laughed. "I'm not going anywhere, Johnny. Only around this world
-every couple of hours."
-
-"You couldn't make the jump through hyperspace without us, Lee," Ellik
-said.
-
-"That's right, Mike. I'm--I'm sorry to quarantine you two down there."
-
-"_Quarantine!_" Ellik stormed. "_We're_ not sick, Lee. _You_ are the
-sick one!"
-
-There wasn't any sound, not even of breathing.
-
-"You have an idea to change Lee's mind, Mike?" I asked.
-
-He cupped his hand on the back of my neck. "Affirmative, Jonathan. A
-pretty damned good one, too."
-
-Ellik stood staring out the door, gnawing on one of his knuckles,
-letting the sun turn the front of him into gold, so he looked like half
-a statue, and half a man.
-
-"I suppose it had to come out in him sooner or later," he said.
-
-"What, Mike?"
-
-"What could we expect? It's the basic quality of treachery in the
-Oriental mind."
-
- * * * * *
-
-When the shadows were at their longest and the alien sun was down the
-closest to the horizon without actually going under, Ellik marched up
-the path shoving a new Indigo. The Azures supplied Mike with all the
-flunkies he wanted to gather food and the like for him, as his natural
-right. But I thought we had enough of them hanging around our quarters.
-I couldn't imagine what he would want with another one.
-
-The alien hovered at the door. Ellik kicked him in the calf to make him
-understand he was to go inside.
-
-"Look at him, Johnny," Ellik said, pushing the fellow forward. "Not a
-mongoloid, would you say?"
-
-"No."
-
-The alien looked stupid--blue and stupid. His face was hanging there,
-but it wasn't pushed out of shape any more than the faces of the
-Azures. The Indigo blinked back at me. What he also looked was not
-friendly.
-
-Ellik took the Indigo's cheeks in his hand and angled the face toward
-the light. "He's a half-breed, Johnny, or otherwise the gene was
-recessive. He wasn't damaged before birth, only after--when he started
-to breathe."
-
-"What do you mean, Mike?"
-
-"You ever hear of cyanosis, Johnny?"
-
-"No."
-
-"Well, these creatures have something like it. The Indigos don't get
-enough oxygen in their blood cells. It makes them sluggish; it turns
-them blue like the pictures of 'blue babies' in the old books."
-
-"I never saw a picture like that in an old book," I said.
-
-"Did you ever _see_ a book? Sorry, Johnny. Just kidding." Ellik
-rubbed his hands together. "Well! I theorized that there is no basic
-difference in the Azures and the Indigos except improper aeration of
-their blood. So, you see, an Indigo is only a _sick_ Azure, and I am
-going to make this Indigo _well_."
-
-"How can you do that?"
-
-"It's simple," Mike said irritably. "The Indigos must have a
-malformation of the heart causing an abnormal communication between
-the venous and arterial side of the circulation system. A little
-surgery and I adjust a valve in the heart. No more communication.
-Proper aeration. Enough oxygen. The deep blue color goes, leaving only
-the lighter blue of the natural pigmentation. The patient feels better,
-acts better, thinks better, looks better. In short, he is no longer an
-Indigo but an Azure."
-
-"Is--is this what you're going to show Lee?" I ventured.
-
-"Of course! It proves the Indigos _aren't_ an inferior race. They are
-the same as the Azures except that they are sick. Their being sick
-can't reflect unfavourably on any terrestrial colored race. There is no
-analogy. But I have to prove it to Chon. We're going to tape the whole
-process and feed it to him."
-
-"I think," I said, "that that might get to him."
-
-"Sure it will." Ellik's jaw muscles flexed. "I should ruin Lee with
-this thing, but I won't. I'm not a vindictive man. Lee and I will
-probably be working together for years. But whenever he gets out of
-line--has some stubborn idea about doing something his way--don't think
-I won't remind him of this!"
-
-Suddenly, he was smiling again. He turned to the gawking Indigo. He
-pointed two fingers at him.
-
-"_Mmr?_" Ellik asked.
-
-The alien tapped himself on his chest cavity twice. "_Mhaw_," he gave
-his name.
-
-"_Mhaw M'i uh M'i m M'm'-uh?_" Ellik asked him, without even using the
-translators.
-
-"_M-m-M-m-M_," the alien went, slapping himself on the chest with his
-opened palms.
-
-Ellik turned to me, grinning. "I asked him if he wanted to stop being
-an Indigo and become an Azure. He thinks I can do anything and he's all
-for it."
-
- * * * * *
-
-After we fed Mhaw a dose of null-shock from our packs, Doc Ellik
-started to slice him open with a ceramic knife he had borrowed from the
-Azures.
-
-But Ellik had forgotten that the alien might get frightened seeing
-himself cut open, even if he couldn't feel any pain. It had never
-happened to him before.
-
-The alien lumbered to his feet, his chest hanging open, showing his
-heart beating like some animal caught inside a blueberry pudding.
-
-I drove a right cross into his jaw, and felt the jar all the way up to
-my shoulder.
-
-He melted back down onto the pallet.
-
-"Good work, Johnny," Ellik said, stooping and starting his work.
-
-Right away, Mhaw started to lose that Indigo color and get real
-light--lighter than the Azures, in fact. None of the blue of the race
-was actually in the pigmentation, Mike found out. Even the Azures
-suffered some degree of improper aeration of the blood.
-
-"You going to call Lee Chon now?" I asked Mike. "You going to show him
-the tape we had running during the operation and all?"
-
-"Not quite yet, Johnny," he said. "First I want to educate Mhaw a bit,
-up to the Azure level or better. That should convince Lee."
-
-Mhaw learned fast, probably faster than the Azures, even. Almost the
-first thing he wanted was for us to stop calling him Mhaw and start
-using an Azure name, Aedo.
-
-Once a day, Ellik left our hut to take some exercise--a walk along
-the alien esplanade, he called it. I used to stay with the doctored
-alien, now Aedo, but we finally learned we could trust him to follow
-our orders--which were to stay inside, away from the others, since we
-didn't know how they would take him. So I got to walking along with
-Ellik.
-
-As dusk lengthened, we could see the spark that was our ship in its
-orbit along the retreating horizon.
-
-Ellik twisted back his head and the side of his mouth. "Look at him up
-there--_look!_"
-
-The spark burned brighter and danced in another direction.
-
-"He's gone! He left us!" Ellik said.
-
-"It's okay. He's still there. Just corrected the orbit a little, I
-guess."
-
-"No, no, no," Ellik said. "He started to make another try. But he got
-afraid to try to go into hyperspace alone."
-
-"He was just correcting for orbital decay."
-
-"You don't understand, Johnny. He's a coward. That makes him dangerous.
-He's getting desperate. That desperation will burst the dam of his own
-weakness and wash away our hope, _our lives_."
-
-His voice hushed. He stood staring starkly ahead, his palms
-outstretched at his sides.
-
-"Maybe he isn't _that_ cowardly," I said hopefully.
-
- * * * * *
-
-"Finished," Ellik announced. He meant he had finished editing the tape
-showing the operation on the alien and his recovery from his blue
-disease, from being an Indigo to better than an Azure.
-
-"The transmitter is finished too," I said.
-
-Ellik had suggested a way of switching the tape camera to a video
-converter for one of the audio communicators, and I had been able to
-do it easy. It took parts from both our communicators and translators
-too.
-
-Ellik fitted the coiled snake of tape into place. "This will be a great
-day for your people, Aedo. After our friend from heaven lands, we will
-be able to teach you a way to cure all of your sick, to make all the
-Indigos like you."
-
-"Like me? Make like me?" Aedo said in the pidgin terrestrial that Mike
-Ellik had taught him.
-
-"Yes. We'll show them how we cured you and how all can be cured."
-
-"You make show fellow like me? Make tell make that fellow like fellow
-like me?"
-
-"Everything's ready, Mike," I called.
-
-"That's right, Aedo," Mike said. "You'll show your people the way to
-equality."
-
-"Make all fellow like this fellow?" Aedo asked.
-
-"Shall I call in Lee?" I asked Mike.
-
-"Yes, that's right, Aedo. Just right."
-
-"No," Aedo said.
-
-The alien stomped the tape camera and the communicator to bits before I
-could get a hammerlock on him.
-
-Ellik just stared at the complete wreck of our only means of
-communication with the spaceship.
-
-"I be much man now. I much smart. Much smart than Azure hicks and
-Indigo slobs. I much smart all. I much man! Not to be all same now.
-_No._" The snarl hung on in Aedo's throat.
-
-Ellik lifted his head and sort of smiled. But not quite.
-
-"Well," he said slowly and sadly, "what could you expect in the way of
-gratitude from a dirty alien?"
-
- * * * * *
-
-The Azures did accept Aedo all right. They seem to think he must have
-come from some other tribe. They don't associate him with the Indigo
-that disappeared. No Indigo ever became an Azure before.
-
-Of course, Azures sometimes become Indigos, we found out.
-
-It seems there's a virus of what Ellik called pseudo-cyanosis in the
-air. The Azures have become a pretty resistant breed to it, while the
-Indigos are all easy victims. But once in a while an Azure will come
-down with it and turn Indigo.
-
-Mike Ellik caught it too.
-
-It happened pretty fast. By the time we realized what it was, he was
-already too stupid to finish the operation he started on himself. I had
-to sew him up, not very neatly.
-
-Ellik is treated pretty much like the rest of the Indigos. So am I. He
-takes it all pretty calm. He can still talk a little Earth. Whenever
-anybody kicks him, Ellik just mutters something about, "What can fellow
-expect bunch lousy creeps like those fellow?"
-
-I guess I'll get it too. I think I am getting it.
-
-It won't be so bad for me. Just like maybe going around drunk all the
-time, not being able to think or coordinate very well.
-
-It will be kind of bad being a member of an inferior race, but the
-thing I'll hate about it the most isn't that, or even leaving old Lee
-up there, circling around and waiting for our call forever.
-
-No, the thing I hate is having it happen _now_, just when I'm beginning
-to _learn_ something.
-
-I'm not dead sure I know just exactly what I learned, but I think maybe
-I do:
-
-You get just what you damned well expected all along from a bunch of
-blue-blooded mongrels!
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blueblood, by Jim Harmon
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