"In the old days," she explained, "back on Earth, if a man scalped
an enemy, he counted coup. The first to strike an enemy in a battle
counted coup, too--a lesser one. Nowadays a man counts coups for
different things, but Ralph's three eagle-feathers mean he's entitled
to as much respect as a warrior in the old days who, three separate
times, had killed and scalped an enemy warrior in the middle of his own
camp. And he is, too!"
Bordman grunted.
"Barbarous, I'd say!"
"If you like," said Aletha. "But it's something to be proud of--and
one doesn't count coup for making a lot of money!" Then she paused and
said curtly: "The word 'snobbish' fits it better than 'barbarous.' We
are snobs! But when the head of a clan stands up in Council in the Big
Tepee on Algonka, representing his clan, and men have to carry the
ends of the feather head-dress with all the coups the members of his
clan have earned--why--one is proud to belong to that clan!" She added
defiantly, "Even watching it on a vision-screen!"
Dr. Chuka opened the outer door. Blinding light poured in. He did not
enter, and his body glistened with sweat.
"Ready for you, Mr. Bordman!"
Bordman adjusted his goggles and turned on the motors of his heat-suit.
He went out the door.
The heat and light outside was like a blow. He darkened the goggles
again and made his way heavily to the waiting, now-shaded ground car.
He noted that there were other changes beside the sunshade. The cover
deck of the cargo space was gone, and there were cylindrical riding
seats like saddles in the back. The odd lower shields reached out
sidewise from the body, barely above the caterwheels. He could not make
out their purpose and irritably failed to ask.
"All ready," said Redfeather. "Dr. Chuka's coming with us. If you'll
get in here, please...."
Bordman climbed awkwardly into the boxlike back of the car. He
bestrode one of the cylindrical arrangements. With a saddle on it,
it would undoubtedly have been a comfortable way to cover impossibly
bad terrain in a mechanical carrier. He waited. About him there were
the squatty hulls of the space barges which had been towed here by
a colony-ship, each one once equipped with rockets for landing.
Emptied of their cargos, they had been huddled together into the three
separate, adjoining communities. There were separate living-quarters
and mess-halls and recreation-rooms for each, and any colonist lived
in the community of his choice and shifted at pleasure, or visited, or
remained solitary. For mental health a man has to be assured of his
free will, and over-regimentation is deadly in any society. With men
psychologically suited to colonize, it is fatal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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