The General looked on wide-eyed, holding his breath. «Phenomenal!» he murmured, gulping. «And that’s nothing,» the Professor said, with an expression of triumph. «Of course, striking the ledge with your hand alone, you would accomplish nothing. Now watch!» From a corner he picked up a big coconut, rough, hard, impenetrable, and handed it to the General.
«Go ahead,» the Professor said. «Use both hands.
Break it!»
«Oh, come now, Ka,» the General said in a shaky voice. «You know very well that’s impossible. None of us can do it . . . Only a dinosaur can, with a
blow of his hoof. Only dinosaurs can eat the coconut’s meat and drink its milk . . .»
«Well, now you can, too.» The Professor’s voice was filled with excitement. «Watch!»
He took the coconut and set it on the ledge, in the freshly dug crater, then grasped the stone at its opposite end, holding it now by the tip. His arm made a rapid swing, with no apparent effort, and the stone’s thick bottom struck the nut, shattering it. The liquid poured onto the ledge, and bits of shell remained in the furrow, revealing the meat inside, white, cool, luscious. The General seized one of the pieces and greedily thrust it into his mouth. He looked at the stone, at Ka, at what until recently had been a coconut, and he seemed robbed of the power of speech.
«By the Sun, Ka! This is a wonderful thing. With this Thing of yours, man has multiplied his strength a hundred times. He will be able to face any dinosaur on equal terms. He’s become master of rock and trees, has gained an extra arm . . . no, a hundred extra arms, an army of arms! Where did you find it?»
Ka smiled smugly. «I didn’t find it. I made it.»
«Made it? ‘What do you mean?»
«I mean, it didn’t exist before.»
«You’re crazy, Ka,» the General said, quivering.
«It must have fallen from the sky. An envorof the Sun must have brought it here, a spirit of the air . . . How could anybody make what does not already exist?»
«It’s possible,» Ka replied calmly. «It’s possible to take a stone and strike it against another stone until you’ve made it the shape you want. It’s possible to shape it in such a way that your hand can grasp it. And with such a stone in your hand, it’s possible to make many others, even bigger, sharper. I’ve done it, General.»
The General was sweating copiously. «Why, we must tell everyone, Ka! The whole Horde must know about this. Our men will become invincible. You understand? We can take on a bear, now. A bear has claws, but we have this Thing. We can tear him to pieces before he tears us to pieces. We can stun him, kill him. We can kill a snake, crush a tortoise, kill even . . . Great Sun-1 . . . k ill . . . a nother man!»
The General broke off, thunderstruck by this idea. Then he resumed speaking, with a cruel gleam in his eyes. «This way, Ka, we can attack the Koammm Horde. They are more numerous and stronger than us, but now we’ll have them in our power. We’ll destroy them to the last man! Ka, Ka!» The General seized the Professor by the shoulders. «Victory is ours!»
But Ka was grave, wary. He hesitated before speaking. «That’s the reason I didn’t want to show it to you. I realize I’ve made a terrible discovery.
Something that will change the world. I know. I’ve discovered a source of frightening energy. Nothing like it has ever been seen on earth. Which is why I don’t want others to know about it. With such a weapon, war would become suicide, General. The Koammm Horde would quickly learn to make it, and in the next war there would be no victors. I had conceived of this Thing as an implement of peace and progress, but now I see how dangerous it is. I’m going to destroy it.»
The General was beside himself. «You’re out of your mind, Ka! You’ve no right. You scientists and your stupid scruples! For five years you’ve been shut up in here and you don’t know what the world is like anymore. You don’t know that civilization is at a turning point. If the Koammm Horde wins, it will mean the end of peace, freedom, and joy for the human race.
We have a sacred duty to possess this Thing! We won’t necessarily use it, Ka. So long as everyone knows we possess it. We’ll j1:1s give an experimental demonstration in the presence of our enemies. Then its use will be regulated. Nobody will dare attack us. Meanwhile, we can use it to dig graves, build new caverns, break fruit, level land. But as a weapon, we only need to possess it, not use it. It’s a deterrent, Ka. It’ll keep those Koammm barbarians at bay for years to come.»
«No, no,» Ka replied. «It must be destroyed.»
«You’re a bleeding-heart liberal, Ka, and also an idiot!» The General was livid. «You’re playing into their hands. You’re a Koammmite sympathizer, like all intellectuals, like that bard the other day who was preaching about a union of humans. You don’t believe in the Sun!»
Ka shuddered. He bowed his head, his eyes narrow and sad under their bushy brows. «I knew we’d come to this. I’m no Koammmite, and you know it. But by the Fifth Rule of the Sun, I refuse to incriminate myself : it might bring down the wrath of the spirits on my head. You may think what you please, but the Thing does not leave this cavern!»
«Yes, it does, and quickly, too, for the glory of our Horde, for the sake of civilization and prosperity, and for Peace,» the General yelled. With his right hand he grasped the Thing, as he had seen Ka do, and brought it down, hard, with anger, with hatred, on the head of the Professor.
Ka’s skull split at the impact, and a stream of blood issued from his mouth. Without a moan, he slumped to the ground, reddening the rock around him.
The General, awed, stared at the device he held in his hand. Then he smiled, and it was a smile of triumph, cruel, merciless.
«Who’s next?» he said.
The circle of motionless men, crouched around the great tree, fell silent, thinking. Baa, the bard, wiped away the sweat that had poured from his naked body during the exertion of his narration. Then he turned to the tree under which the Chief was seated and eating a thick root with evident relish.
«O mighty Szdaa,» he said humbly, «I trust my story was to your liking.»
Szdaa made a gesture of boredom. «I don’t understand you young people. Or maybe I’m just getting old. You have a great imagination, my boy, no two ways about that. But I don’t like science fiction . . . I prefer historical novels.» He signaled to an old man with parchmentlike skin to come to him. «Good old Kgru,» the Chief said. «You may not be a master of the New Song, but you still know how to tell stories that have some flavor. Your turn.»
«Yes, mighty Szdaa,» said Kgru. «I will now tell you a story of love, passion, and death. It’s a tale that dates back to the last century and is called The Primate’s Secret or The Mystery of the Missing Link.
1961
Industry and Sexual Repression in a Po Valley Society
The following study takes as its field of investigation the urban agglomerate of Milan at the northern end of the Italian peninsula, a protectorate of the Mediterranean Group. Milan is located at latitudes about 45° north of the Melanesian Archipelago and 35° south of the Nansen Archipelago in the Arctic Glacial Sea.
Therefore it is more or less centrally situated as far as the civilized world is concerned; but even though it is fairly easily reached by the Inuit, it still remains outside the purview of established ethnographic research. I must thank Professor Korao Paliau of the Anthropological Institute of the Admiralty Islands for first suggesting I study Milan.
Also, I was able to pursue my ffeldwork thanks to a generosity of the Aborigine Foundation of Tasmania, which awarded me a travel grant of twenty-four thousand dog’s teeth, enough to underwrite my expenses and the purchase of required equipment. Nor could I have written up my observations with the necessary tranquillity had Mr. and Mrs. Pokanaou of Manus Island not placed at my disposal a stilt house well away from the usual noise of the trepang fishermen and the copra merchants, who unfortunately have made certain areas of our once-peaceful archipelago uninhabitable.
Nor could I have read my proofs and collated my bibliographical notes without the affectionate assistance of my wife, Aloa, always willing to interrupt her work of making pua garlands to rush to meet the mail boat, and bring to the stilt house the enormous cases of documents I regularly requested from the Anthropological Documentation Center of Samoa. Those cases would have been far beyond my strength.
For years investigators of the daily life and traditional customs of Western peoples have been guided by a priori theory, which effectively prevented the possibility of any real understanding. Dismissing Western peoples as primitive only because they practice machine worship and are still far from any direct contact with nature is a prime example of the false assumptions our ancestors made
