Hartford jumped to attention and formally requested permission to withdraw. Nef nodded. Hartford about-faced and left the room.
VI
The things the colonel had told him hadn't fallen into place in his mind yet. Hartford was numb of thought.
Back in his own room in B.O.Q. the numbness cleared a bit. He poured himself a drink. Somehow, he thought, he'd become fairhaired boy to an Attila the Hun, an Alaric the Goth, a Hitler, a Haman; an Ashurbanipal I, a Rameses II. For Nef was equally with these a servant of Siva the Destroyer, with his plan to make Man pure.
His purification would involve the destruction of all non-axenic men and women all the way from the Home World to the newest beach-head on the Frontier; the sterilization of a hundred worlds as culture media for the new race; and the planting on the newly axenized soil of colonies of Homo gnotobioticus, the feeder-on-hydroponic-greens, the inodorous, the thin-gutted, the strong toothed Superman.
Nef's pogrom had begun with the raid on the village, Hartford mused, his arms behind his head as he lay on his bunk. Nef had decided that this green and pleasant world belonged to the silver men, the true men, the new men. Us, Hartford thought. Earth's Stinkers, ordinary humanity with its common cold and its caries, would follow the Kansan Indigenous Hominid, and the Great Auk, into history.
The double funeral of the Lieutenants Piacentelli was to be held at Retreat, outside the Barracks. Hartford wondered a bit at the haste with which the two bodies were to be consigned to the earth of Kansas. Perhaps haste was necessary because of the micro-organisms with which poor Pia's corpse was necessarily contaminated.
Hartford grimaced. Contaminated humans must lead disgusting lives. They smelled of ferments, were bloated with bacterially elaborated gases, suffered rot in their very teeth. Their corpses—poor forefathers!—suffered corruption that would never touch an Axenite, whose unembalmed cadaver would last longer than the best-mummified Pharaoh.
Whatever mysterious errand it had been that had taken Piacentelli outside the Barracks, it had killed him. It was over.