"You know it wasn't cowardice," I told him. "Your honor would have been intact if you hadn't run in one of my own people to the slaughter. I'd always done your dirty work before."
"You knew the rules," he said sadly. "The traditions, the hazards, the rewards. You accepted them. But now, by having rejected them, you've put yourself in limbo. You are no longer Boru the Fighting Man. You can never achieve the nobility that your prowess could have brought you. Now you are Barry the Alien, and there is no place in our world for you."
"Then I'm fired?" I asked.
"A man in disgrace should be less facetious. There should be a penalty for what you have done, but it was unprecedented. There is only one thing to do. You must be deported."
"To Earth?" All at once this was what I wanted.
"Yes," he said. "To the ugly planet from which you came. It is no more than you deserve. I sorrow that you were not worthy of us."
I felt like making a speech then, about my land and my people. About the Earth being a thousand Earths—a million—two billion—meaning a different thing to every individual whose home it was. How Jones, with his uru drug, roaming the underworld of one city, had naturally seen only the dregs of its society—the users and pushers, the grifters and dreamers, the seekers after the big deal, the short cut, the unearned reward, the big fix. He hadn't seen the Earth I'd known once, the clean and straight world where you earned your way with dignity and integrity....
I didn't make the speech. I didn't have to, of course, because he read it all in my mind. I doubt if it meant anything to him.
"Here," he said.
He handed me a bowl of pungent green liquid. I didn't ask what it was. It was bitter and sickeningly warm but I drank every last drop. Jones watched me sadly. For just a moment I felt ashamed for having let him down.