Robert Heinlein - A Stranger in a Strange Land

"Okay." Duke spooled back, then announced, "This is ten-to-one."

The scene was the same but the slowed-down sound was useless; Duke switched it off. The box floated slowly from Jill's hands toward Jubal's head, then quite suddenly ceased to be. But it did not simply wink out; under slow-motion projection it could be seen shrinking, smaller and smaller until it was no longer there.

Jubal nodded thoughtfully. "Duke, can you slow it down still more?"

"Just a sec. Something is fouled up with the stereo."

"What?"

"Darned if I can figure it out. It looked all right on the fast run. But when I slowed it down, the depth effect was reversed. You saw it. That box went away from us fast, mighty fast - but it always looked closer than the wall. Swapped parallax, of course. But I never took that cartridge off the spindle. Gremlins."

"Oh. Hold it, Duke. Run the film from the other camera."

"Unh� oh, I see, That'll give us a ninety-degree cross on it and we'll see properly even if I did jimmy this film somehow." Duke changed cartridges. "Zip through the first part, okay? Then undercranked ten-to-one on the part that counts."

"Go ahead."

The scene was the same save for angle. When the image of Jill grabbed the box, Duke slowed down the show and again they watched the box go away. Duke cursed. "Something was fouled up with the second camera too."

"So?"

"Of course. It was looking at it around from the side so the box should have gone out of the frame to one side or the other. Instead it went straight away from us again. Well, didn't it? You saw it. Straight away from us."

"Yes," agreed Jubal. "'Straight away from us.'"

"Out it can't - not from both angles."

"What do you mean, it can't? It already did." Harshaw added, "If we I had used doppler-radar in place of each of those cameras, I wonder what they would have shown?"

"How should I know? I'm going to take both these cameras apart."

"Don't bother."

"But-"

"Don't waste your time, Duke; the cameras are all right. What is exactly ninety degrees from everything else?"

"I'm no good at riddles."

"It's not a riddle and I meant it seriously. I could refer you to Mr. A. Square from Flatland, but I'll answer it myself. What is exactly at right angles to everything else? Answer: two dead bodies, one old pistol, and an empty liquor case."

"What the deuce do you mean, Boss?"

"I never spoke more plainly in my life. Try believing what the cameras see instead of insisting that the cameras must be at fault because what they saw was not what you expected. Let's see the other films."

Harshaw made no comment as they were shown; they added nothing to what he already knew but did confirm and substantiate. The ash tray when floating near the ceiling had been out of camera angle, but its leisurely descent and landing had been recorded. The pistol's image in the:' stereo tank was quite small but, so far as could be seen, the pistol had done just what the box appeared to have done: shrunk away into the far distance without moving. Since Harshaw had been gripping it tightly when it had shrunk out of his hand, he was satisfied - if "satisfied" was the right word, he added grumpily to himself. "Convinced" at least.

"Duke, when you get time, I want duplicate prints of all of those."

Duke hesitated. "You mean I'm still working here?"

"What? Oh, damn it! You can't eat in the kitchen, and Duke, try to cut your local prejudices out of the circuit and just while. Try really hard."

"I'll listen."

"When Mike asked for the privilege of eating my stringy old carcass, he was doing me the greatest honor that he knew of - by the only rules he knows. What he had 'learned at his mother's knee,' so to speak. Do you savvy that? You heard his tone of voice, you saw his manner. He was paying me his highest compliment - and asking of me a boon. You see? Never mind what they think of such things in Kansas; Mike uses the values taught him on Mars."

"I think I'll take Kansas."

"Well," admitted Jubal, "so do I. But it is not a matter of free choice for me, nor for you - nor for Mike. All three of us are prisoners of our early indoctrinations, for it is hard, very nearly impossible, to shake off one's earliest training. Duke, can you get it through your skull that if you had been born on Mars and brought up by Martians, you yourself would have exactly the same attitude toward eating and being eaten that Mike has?"

Duke considered it, then shook his head. "I won't buy it, Jubal. Sure, about most things it's just Mike's hard luck that he wasn't brought up in civilization - and my good luck that I was. I'm willing to make allowances for him. But this is different, this is an instinct."

"'Instinct,' dreck!"

"But it is. I didn't get any 'training at my mother's knee' not to be a cannibal. Hell, I didn't need it; I've always known it was a sin - a nasty one. Why, the mere thought of it makes my stomach do a flip-flop. It's a basic instinct."

Jubal groaned. "Duke, how could you learn so much about machinery and never learn anything about how you yourself tick? That nausea you feel - that's not an instinct; that's a conditioned reflex. Your mother didn't have to say to you, 'Mustn't eat your playmates, dear; that's not nice,' because you soaked it up from our whole culture - and so did I. Jokes about cannibals and missionaries, cartoons, fairy tales, horror stories, endless little things. But it has nothing to do with instinct. Shucks, son, it couldn't possibly be instinct� because cannibalism is historically one of the most widespread of human customs, extending through every branch of the human race. Your ancestors, my ancestors, everybody."

"Your ancestors, maybe. Don't bring mine into it."

"Um. Duke, didn't you tell me you had some Indian blood?"

"Huh? Yeah, an eighth. In the Army they used to call me 'Chief.' What of it? I'm not ashamed of it. I'm proud of it,"

"No reason to be ashamed - nor proud, either, for that matter, But, while both of us certainly have cannibals in our family trees, chances are that you are a good many generations closer to cannibals than I am, because-"

"Why, you bald-headed old-"

"Simmer down! You were going to listen; remember? Ritual cannibalism was a widespread custom among aboriginal American cultures. But don't take my word for it; look it up. Besides that, both of us, simply as North Americans, stand a better than even chance of having a touch of the Congo in us without knowing it� and there you are again. But even if both of us were Simon-pure North European stock, certified by the American Kennel Club, (a silly notion, since the amount of casual bastardy among humans is far in excess of that ever admitted) - but even if we were, such ancestry would merely tell us which cannibals we are descended from� because every branch of the human race, without any exception, has practiced cannibalism in the course of its history. Duke, it's silly to talk about a practice being 'against instinct' when hundreds of millions of human beings have followed that practice."

"But- All right, all right, I should know better than to argue with you, Jubal; you can always twist things around your way. But suppose we all did come from savages who didn't know any better - I'm not admitting it but just supposing. Suppose we did. What of it? We're civilized now. Or at least I am."

Jubal grinned cheerfully. "Implying that I am not. Son, quite aside from my own conditioned reflex against munching a roast haunch of - well, you, for example - quite aside from that trained-in emotional prejudice, for coldly practical reasons I regard our taboo against cannibalism as an excellent idea� because we are not civilized."

"Huh?"

"Obvious. If we didn't have a tribal taboo about the matter so strong that you honestly believed it was an instinct, I can think of a long list of people I wouldn't trust with my back turned, not with the price of beef what it is today. Eh?"